Socialism

Socialism is the name we give to ideas developed in the 19th century about the necessity of sharing the costs and benefits of economic productivity broadly through cooperative means of production or through government redistribution of benefits and social provision. The nature of American society changed dramatically in the last decades of the 19th century. The nation became more urban and industrial as people moved from the farm to the city. City life was vastly different from rural life, and millions of new immigrants meant that the country was more racially and ethnically diverse. The nature of work changed as well. Semiskilled factory workers gradually replaced skilled craft workers. Goods were increasingly mass-produced on assembly lines, and the pace of work increased as employers attempted to streamline production and maximize profits. Finally, the rise of a new financial and industrial elite resulted in growing social and political inequality.

These changes convinced many American citizens to reject the capitalist system and to insist that socialism was the only viable alternative. In its purist form, socialism rejected private property, the free-market economy, and inequality. It advocated that the means of producing goods and wealth be controlled and shared equally by all members of society. Socialism had roots dating back to the utopian socialism of the 1840s, but scientific socialism began to take hold in the 1870s. The Socialist Labor Party (SLP) was established in 1877 and quickly came under the leadership of Daniel De Leon. It specifically looked toward craft and industrial workers for its support and hoped to achieve control over the labor movement as a means for acquiring political power. A competing faction, the Socialist Democratic Party (SDP), was formed in 1898. More broad-based agrarian socialism found expression in the populist movement. By the turn of the century, socialists were looking to found a new organization.

Led by Eugene V. Debs and Victor Berger, the SDP merged with the SLP in 1901 to form the Socialist Party of America (SPA). The SPA grew steadily between 1900 and 1912. From a membership of barely 10,000 in 1901, the party grew to over 150,000 members by 1912. Debs also played a leading role in mobilizing the left wing of the labor movement between 1900 and 1920, helping to form the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1905. As head of the Socialist Party, Debs ran for the presidency in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. Although he garnered only 96,000 votes in 1900, the SPA had become the largest third party in the country by 1904, when Debs received over 400,000 votes. He tallied 897,000 votes in 1912. Socialist candidates also gained a small minority of state and local offices across the nation, in a showing of working-class strength.

From the outset, socialist organizations represented an uneasy coalition of supporters, ideas, and objectives. Adherents included radical immigrants, workers, pacifists, Zionists, Christian socialists, revolutionaries, and reformers. They supported a broad range of issues, including prison reform, birth control, woman suffrage, and municipal ownership of streetcar companies and public utilities, in addition to more extreme demands to abolish private property and overthrow capitalism. Socialists also created institutions and organizations to support their struggle, including newspapers and journals, socialist summer schools and camps, and communal settlements. Many of these activities had an ethnic cast. In northern cities such as New York and Chicago, immigrant radicals fostered workingmen’s circles, newspapers, and drama societies, along with ward clubs. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, became known for its socialist city government. In rural areas where populism once held sway, socialist organizations reemerged. The Appeal to Reason, a national socialist newspaper, was edited and published in Kansas; the Non-Partisan League sprang to life in North Dakota and Minnesota; and the Green Corn Rebellion arose in Oklahoma.

Within the socialist movement, there were long-standing debates about the pace at which American capitalism should be overturned. Some advocated immediate revolution, and others urged more gradual reforms. Still others believed in using socialist means to moderate the effects of industrial capitalism through state regulation of industry and finance, the passage and enforcement of antitrust laws, the institution of democratic reforms of referendum, initiative, and recall, and protective labor measures.

There were numerous ideological variations of early-20th-century American socialism, including communism, anarchism, and syndicalism. All adhered to the basic tenets of socialism, which advocated a fair distribution of public goods and popular control of the economy; but on the best way to achieve those ends, they differed greatly. Anarchists and syndicalists argued that a strong, centralized government was the biggest obstacle to socialism while democratic socialists believed that some form of activist government was essential to ensure progress and a more equitable society. While there was widespread disagreement about the use of direct action and violence for change, some radical socialists and anarchists believed that a revolution was essential and that gradual reform would not work. Ideas about gender equality, sexuality, and marriage also differed greatly among socialists.

The Socialist Party of America was the dominant socialist organization between 1900 and 1930. As a result, the party frequently became the target of repression. When war broke out in Europe in 1914, Debs and the SPA opposed American intervention and warned the public against American involvement. When Congress and President Woodrow Wilson declared war against the Central Powers on April 6, 1917, Debs and the SPA reiterated their opposition to the war. Congress attempted to silence opposition by passing the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it illegal to criticize the American government and its involvement in the war. Debs, however, continued to agitate against conscription and the war. Following a June 18, 1918, speech in Canton, Ohio, he was arrested and—after a short trial—sentenced to a 10-year prison term.

After the outbreak of World War I, the SPA became more radical, particularly as class relations grew hostile. Debates between militant unionists and conservative craft workers grew more intense as well. By the time of Debs’s arrest and imprisonment, a powerful faction in the SPA was advocating revolution, instead of gradual reform. Its antiwar position and increasing radicalism made the party one of the chief targets of the conservative postwar backlash that culminated in the Red Scare. Led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, the government launched a series of raids against suspected socialists. Beginning with American entry into the war and the end of the Red Scare in 1921, American socialists suffered serious setbacks. The party differed on its attitude toward and support for the Russian Revolution, and it began to splinter into small new parties intent on capturing the support of the emerging Soviet Union. The Communist Party, a much smaller entity, formed in the early 1920s. The Socialist Party itself remained intact, although it suffered from the absence of its longtime leader Eugene Debs. Although Debs remained in prison, he again was the party’s presidential candidate in 1920 and received almost 1 million votes. The election, however, proved to be a last gasp. The conservative backlash of 1919-21 resulted in the election of the Republican Warren G. Harding and his successor Calvin Coolidge. Between 1921 and 1930, socialism ceased to be an important factor in American political life. Socialism and its many heirs would again become influential with the onset of the Great Depression.

Further reading: James R. Green, Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895-1943 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978); Ira Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement, 1897-1912 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952); John H. Laslett and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Failure of a Dream? Essays in the History of American Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America (New York: Macmillan, 1955).

—Robert Gordon