If there’s one thing you hear over and over again in the American political discourse,
it’s socialism as a word to represent generic badness.
And America indeed doesn’t appear to have a left-wing party in their political system.
Many other countries have democratic socialist parties, but the US seems to act as a strange
exception to this.
So… why?
Hi, I’m Tristan Johnson, and this is Step Back History.
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Unlike in Canada, a good chunk of Europe, and Oceania, a social democratic party never
entered the halls of Congress.
It almost rings as just political wisdom in American political speech.
Never mention socialism.
Everything private is better than public, corporations always good, unions always bad,
progressive taxation bad, trickle down good.
You saw accusations of encroaching socialism from the American right for over half a century
now.
Most recently it was the Limbaugh's and the Gingrich's arguing that the tiniest government
regulation from Obama meant the imminent rise of Soviet communism, even when all his best
friends were bankers.
Well, to channel Morpheus, what if I told you Socialism isn’t some foreign ideology,
antithetical to American values?
What if I told you that it was the work of Socialists that you have all your fingers,
and you likely worked 8 hours today?
This is the story of a group of political activists who without getting to play in congress
or the white house, still made a lot of modern America.
What we could call socialist communities in America date all the way back to the early
19th century.
Groups like the Shakers, activists like Josiah Warren, and communities founded by people
like Charles Fournier experimented with socialist type policies and actions, just without the
name.
As industrialisation expanded in America, you saw a massive increase in the country’s
wealth.
In the 19th century, the per capita wealth increased by about 1000 dollars, but it was
incredibly uneven.
In 1901, one percent of the population owned about 54 percent of the wealth.
This is around double of their share today.
This economic situation is often credited for the spread of socialist ideas in America.
Funny that.
So in the late 19th century, socialist movements started to bubble up in America.
One such example is the presidential run of Victoria Woodhull.
She was the publisher of the Communist Manifesto in America and ran for president under the
Equal Rights Party all in 1872.
The law at the time said that women couldn’t vote, but nothing said they couldn’t run
for office.
At one point she even tried to court Frederick Douglass as her running mate.
Her platform was to reform political and social abuses, emancipate labour, and give women
the vote.
She also wanted to abolish the death penalty and improve civil rights.
Socialist groups, trade unions, and suffragists supported her bid for the white house.
However because she was under the age of 35, she wasn’t allowed on the Ballot.
Now President Woodhull is an alternate history scenario I want to read!
Socialism in the late 19th century usually wasn’t in these electoral arenas.
Groups formed from trade unions and were popular amongst British, German, and Jewish immigrants.
There were a few attempts to build a party, including the 1874 workingmen’s party and
the 1877 Socialist Labour Party, but the real big step for Socialism in America was the
founding of the...
Socialist Party of America in 1901.
Its primary goals were to collectivise those means of production.
The party was, however, very decentralised to allow for flexibility and to serve diverse
interests around the country.
It attracted a motley crew of both immigrant and native-born workers, tenant farmers, middle-class
intellectuals, a few champagne socialist rich people, urban reformers, and the nascent feminist
movement.
The party did pretty well for itself, claiming about 10,000 members on its founding, and
growing to 150,000 by 1912, the high watermark for the party electorally.
Socialist magazines like Appeal to Reason had circulations over 760,000.
This period also saw the rise in Anarchist activism.
A group of left-leaning folks who believe that there’s no government like…
no government.
Anarchists were active parts of this surge in left-wing politics going on, albeit with
a few objecting to their tactics.
Assassinating the president, not exactly the best PR.
In May of 1883, a labour demonstration exploded in violence.
Literally, there were bombs.
This event, which I am glossing over because it really should be its own video, is called
the Haymarket affair, or by people on the left, the Haymarket Massacre.
It spawned International Workers Day, which is a holiday around the world.
Except in America and Canada, where they instead have a labour day in September very few people
even know is about labour.
Several anarchists were found guilty of conspiracy after the event and executed for their involvement
with the bombing.
Anarchists in this period had a reputation for liking bombs.
So what were these labour activists goals?
The big move around the world among socialists was an 8 hour work day, but many had the long-term
goal of eradicating capitalism.
Where they fought was in how.
Some were revolutionaries who wanted to use bullets and bombs to overthrow the state,
and some argued for a reformist approach.
Things were looking good after 1912, but it wouldn’t last.
The drums of war began to beat over in Europe in 1914.
The empires of the world clashed in one of the biggest, deadliest, and most pointless
wars in human history.
Most socialists opposed the struggle, claiming that it was a result of empires competing
over colonies.
They implored the US to stay neutral in such a conflict.
However, in 1917, the US declared war on the central powers.
This war led to a lot of changes in America.
It was the beginning of the income tax, but also when the US passed the espionage act.
This very constitutional law made it a crime to make speeches undermining the war effort.
It resulted in the imprisonment of a lot of anti-war protestors.
Among them was Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs.
Socialist magazines were forced shut, except for Appeal to Reason which decided to support
the war to keep its doors open.
After the war, the attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer became convinced that communists were
planning to take over America.
See, the Russian revolution in what would become the USSR really freaked him out.
He recruited a special assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, and used that espionage act as well
as a similar Sedition Act to attack pretty much every left of centre organisation.
On the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution, over 10,000 activists were arrested under
what is today called the Palmer Raids.
Those arrested who were immigrants found themselves facing deportation.
By the way, that revolution Palmer was convinced entirely was going to happen was bogus.
They found no evidence of such an activity.
However, that didn't stop many of these activists from being held without trial for a very long
time.
Most were released, but some famous activists like Emma Goldman were deported to Russia.
The Socialist party began to decline in the 20s.
However, that didn’t stop Eugene Debs from raking in almost a million votes in the 1920
election while in prison.
In the 1930s, the Socialist party was supplanted by Communist Party USA, often called CPUSA.
People were afraid of the consequences of supporting these causes.
As a result of the government crackdowns, many socialist newspapers, even the ones that
survived the war, had to shut down.
As the Depression took hold, and the New Deal began to show a lot of success, many socialists
decided to vote Democratic.
Socialist party membership dropped over 80 percent between 1932 and 1936.
However, there were some holdouts.
One place the Socialists succeeded was in Milwaukee, where Daniel Hoan served as the
mayor from 1916, all the way to 1940.
The second punch came in the 1950s.
During the peak of the cold war with the USSR, a senator named Joseph Mccarthy, who looks
a lot like Ted Cruz, capitalised on paranoia about Soviet spies and began a witch hunt
for secret communists.
This led to a lot of destroyed lives of anyone who ever associated with these socialist groups,
even if that association was decades ago.
It also resulted in a lot of closeted LGBT people suffering threats of being outed.
It’s called the lavender scare and a story for another video if you want it.
Due to this second red scare, membership in the socialist party fell to below 2,000 members
as people either retreated in fear or joined the Democrats in hopes that they could push
their ideas there.
Gosh, that’s been going on for a long time…
In the 60s, some high profile American socialists actually were called in by the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations to help with the war on poverty and the great society.
Socialists also began to show up in the civil rights movement, and to a much lesser extent
amongst the 60s counterculture.
Speaking of the 60s, there was a rise in a liberal pro-capitalist, but still socially
progressive...ish group called the new left.
After the 60s, this began to be what would take over the Democratic party.
That being said, over the late 60s and early 70s the socialists tended to throw their support
behind the Democratic candidate.
In 1976, the Socialist party ran its first presidential candidate in two decades, and
the candidate was a former mayor of Milwaukee.
Since then, the Socialist party pretty much broke with the Democrats.
Well, through their policy positions, it's more the Democrats broke up with them.
So the socialists do seem at quite a low point, but things seem to be open to change.
The cold war is long dead, and in 2013 a poll of identified Democrats found a 49% support
for socialism, compared to a 39% support for capitalism.
The presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders and the organised young fight against
the Trump administration has resulted in an explosion of support for socialism in America.
Since the Sanders campaign, the Democratic Socialists of America have reported that their
membership has more than doubled.
It’s still unclear how socialism will fit into the future of American politics, but
it seems that it will be part of it.
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