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It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States

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This ambitious and generally excellent book by two veteran political sociologists seeks to explain why the United States, alone among industrial societies, lacks a significant socialist movement or labor party. According to Seymour Martin Lipset, who currently teaches at George Mason University of Virginia, and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, they are addressing " a classic question of American historiography." That is an accurate assessment, and the authors tackle it with intelligence, imagination, and useful comparative analysis. In an era of global capitalism triumphant, I suspect that most readers will not be interested in a long, albeit erudite, discussion of why the working-class challenge to industrial capitalism failed in the United States. Nevertheless, I recommend this book because it offers deep insights into American society which go far beyond answering the narrow question presented in the title.

Lipset and Marks present three principal reasons for the failure of socialism in the United States. First, that it is "but one instance of the ineffectiveness of third parties in the United States over the last century." Second, socialists and labor unionists "never succeeded in bringing the major union movement, the American Federation of Labor and later the AFL-CIO, to support and independent working-class political party." Third, "immigration created an extremely diverse labor force in which class coherence was undermined by ethnic, racial, and religious identity." Lipset and Marks devote a long, detailed chapter to each reason, and they are the heart of the book, along with the authors' fascinating discussion of the socialists' tendency to battle among themselves over issues of "ideological purity." Rarely has the history of the American labor movement and its political failures been surveyed so effectively.

Even general readers will instantly grasp why, as Lipset and Marks put it, the Great Depression "presented the Socialists with their final opportunity to build a viable political party." Especially in the early 1930s, in the authors view, "[r]ampant poverty, mass unemployment, widespread bankruptcies, and the public's general uncertainty about the future gave the Socialists grounds for believing that they could finally create a durable mass movement." That failed to happen and, in 1932, the Socialist candidate for president received only 2.5% of the total popular vote. The authors write: "Socialists were bitterly disappointed by the vote for [Norman] Thomas in 1932." Even in this time of obvious economic crisis, most American voters refused to turn to a third party. One reason certainly was the Socialists' extreme positions. According to Lipset and Marks, "the majority of Socialists stood far to the left in the first years of the Roosevelt administration, sharply attacking the New Deal as state capitalism." President Roosevelt shrewdly adopted "leftist rhetoric," offered "progressive policies in exchange for support from radical and economically depressed constituencies," and recruited "actual leaders of protest groups by convincing them that they were part of his coalition." At the end of their chapter on the 1930s, Lipset and Marks conclude that the "Great Depression politicized American labor," but the political party which labor embraced was the Democrats, not the Socialists. After World War II, socialism never had a chance. Communists and their fellow travelers were demonized, and leftists of all other shades were marginalized. In contrast with the conventional wisdom, Lipset and Marks make the important observation that "the Communists had lost most of their influence and membership before (Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist) crusade." They assert correctly, therefore, that "the long history of repression of American socialists cannot explain their failure to establish a viable political party." I take that remark to mean that repression, alone, does not account for the failure of socialism in the United States, but it certainly was a factor.

Lipset and Marks wisely concede early in the book that the question they pose - Why did socialism fail in the United States? - "may never be ultimately resolved." But, at the beginning of their final chapter, the authors come close to an authoritative answer when they incisively observe that the "United States is the only Western democracy to have a party system dominated by two parties, both of which are sympathetic to liberal capitalism and neither of which has inherited a socialist or social democratic vision of society." Lipset and Marks explain: "Distinctive elements of American culture - antistatism and individualism - negated the appeal of socialism for the mass of American workers for much of the twentieth century. Socialism, with its emphasis on statism, socialization of the means of production, and equality through taxation, are at odds with the dominant values of American culture." More than anything else, therefore, socialism may have conflicted with the American political tradition and its long-standing social and economic ideals.

Lipset and Marks are correct that socialism promises "to eliminate poverty, racism, sexism, pollution, and war," and its program clearly has its attractions, especially, as the authors observe, "to the idealism inherent in the position of young people and intellectuals." However, some of the most attractive features of the socialist platform have been coopted by the mainstream political parties. This may explain why moderate middle-class reform in the 200h century (progressivism, the New Deal, and the Great Society) has succeeded, while its working-class variant (socialism) failed. This book is not merely about of why socialism did not take root in the United States. It is about the essential characteristics of the political and socio-economic order in American society.

Gary Marks and Seymour Lipset may seem to be taking on an easy mark in their book explaining why socialism never made much headway in the United States. However, they are doing something much broader and more interesting than simply explaining a single failure; instead, they have constructed a theory of American political life that shows (according to them) that socialism NEVER COULD HAVE been successful in the United States. In some ways, it is a pity that this book's title will probably limit its appeal to students of socialism, because it addresses far more.

Their thesis has many, many supporting arguments, but the two most important to me seemed to be first, that American political culture is naturally predisposed against collectivism and class warfare. The authors trace this tendency back to 19th-century economic and social conditions, and discuss how it interacted with incoming groups of immigrants. Second, the authors discuss the inability of socialism to offer the most attractive vision of the future to the working class (unlike in Europe, where the unions are all socialist). This failure meant that socialism could never attract a mass base, and as a result was confined to the vocal but numerically insignificant leftist intelligentsia.

I did not agree with everything in this book, but I found it extremely thought-provoking and recommend it wholeheartedly.

The authors take on the perennial question of why a strong socialist movement never developed in the United States from virtually every imaginable angle--including American "exceptionalism," our electoral system, American federalism, the nature of unionism in the U.S., persection of leftists, etc. The emphasis here is on thorough--they have obviously reviewed all the major social science thought and research on this issue and added some original thinking of their own. (The footnotes are extensive, if not somewhat overwhelming.) They seem at their best when they approach the issues from the perspectives of political science and history, less so when they attempt sociological or economic explanations or attempt to draw lessons from international comparisons or multivariate analysis. (They frequently make comparisons with the experiences of such nations as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, which seem to verge on irrelevance in places.) The style of the book is that of a social science textbook--at once both its strength and its weakness, in that the book's theses are well developed but hammered home rather repetitively. The summaries at the end of each chapter are especially useful. The book is something of an effort to read, given the amount of detail offered, but it is a worthwhile and thought-provoking investment of time.

Seymour Martin Lipset's and Gary Mark's book, It Didn't Happen Here, explores the various reasons why Socialism never became an influence in the United States. They combine an historical perspective looking at events in America with a comparative approach to politics in other countries where Socialism influenced the political life. The book is thorough and well researched and should set an example for an approach to the subject. There are times that it does become repetitive in presenting a point repeatedly and much of the book is not as fascinating as the first and concluding chapters where a whole range of ideas are presented in a more general fashion. This book, though, is ideal for the reader with an interest in comparative politics who desires an in-depth look at left wing politics in connection with unions, immigrants and American exceptionalism (an idea that is in some ways showing a bit of decline as the rest of the world becomes politically more similar to the United States). The intellectual effort getting through this book does eventually pay off.

This was one of Professor Seymour M. Lipset's last works, and reflects his personal philosophic journey as a former leftist more than the actual history it painstakingly reviews. Professor Lipset was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who bequeathed their radical traditions, which led young Seymour against Stalinism and into the Socialist Party, then away into the liberal "mainstream" of the 1960s. Most of Professor Lipset's career was dedicated to expounding "American exceptionalism" and debunking the left. This work was perhaps his grandest effort. In doing so, he's largely reified the long-held analyses and generalizations of others for a century and a half, and recapitulated his own. It's a dense read and only those with an interest in socialism in America would readily take it in hand.

But that said, he paints his ideological landscape with a broad brush, showing us the limitations and opportunities in American society that neutralized the rise of labor-based politics. In doing so I feel he's let his old axe against the left grind away a little too closely and ignored some obvious political points.

When he states that the American left has a "special character," and "above all" has "never taken a socialist or class-conscious form" (p. 41, hardback ed.) I have to blink as I reread such a gaff. The libertarianism he sees in the US left has its echo in the anarchist leftism of Spain or Italy, as even he alludes; the anti-statism of the IWW or the 60s New Left is not sui generis at all. Such anarchism is not anti-labor socialism, but a variant of it. Thus if he is equating socialism with class-consciousness he couldn't be more wrong, as class identity has permeated US politics from the beginning. Even William McKinley campaigned on the "full dinner pail" of the American workingman, while Teddy (not Franklin D.) Roosevelt coined the phrase "malefactors of great wealth" in describing the ruling American plutocracy.

He does show why this class-consciousness did not take the form of a specific labor party, that class has been integrated into a broad definition of democracy from which all are free to take what they need under the patronizing umbrella of one of the major parties. The latter in turn have been flexible enough to co-opt grass roots movements (labor, civil rights) and give them a role onstage, even a starring one. This co-optation - "working within the system" or not - has indeed been the source of division on the left (but also on the right) Professor Lipset describes. This has led to splintering and sectarianism, but is this the "triumph of democracy" or its effective marginalization?

When Professor Lipset argues that Americans are "anti-statist" he is taking rhetoric at face value and, thanks to his anti-socialist tack, is not looking closely enough. American cultural anti-statism is the rejection of externally-imposed restraints, but when it comes to using government to enhance personal interest, Americans are highly statist. All Americans (even conservative, white, working-class devotees of Fox News) believe that precisely because they have inalienable rights, they also have the right to sue for them. The US is probably the most litiginous state in the Western world. Lawyers are the backbone of the US political system for a reason. Despite the rhetoric of libertarianism, even conservatives rest on a solid state foundation of the military and the Supreme Court. They have used executive state power to smash unions and the freedom to organize, as witness the personal rise of Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan. The decline in union membership is not just a reflection of prosperity softening the class struggle, but rather the vigorous application of class principles - from the top.

Class was and remains an integral aspect of American society and identity, even when it's being denied. Socialist Europeans may have missed the mark in trying to analyze it from their continental perspective; but no more so in Professor Lipset's attempt to deny it altogether. The system's political flexibility, and its general prosperity, has saved it from a number of crises and allowed Americans to swallow patent nostrums like "supply-sidism" because its bitter taste is camoflauged by saccaharine consumerism. But we see in recent elections that the system is losing that flexibility, politicians now claiming that "the full dinner pail" is too expensive. The reaction to this has shown that class is alive and well. Will new movements arise from it? Maybe. But let the politicos touch Social Security and Medicare, and the anti-statist theorists from Professor Lipset to the Cato Institute will be in for a rude awakening to reality.

This book thoroughly (and in some cases, repetitively) analyzes why the authors think socialism failed in the US, or what they consider socialism to be, which isn't manifestly apparent. In a country where, politically, anything presumptively bad is typically labeled "socialism," I think that omission on their part is important.

Other things I didn't like was the endless cycle of socialism gaining favor, and then ultimately losing it, as they analyzed it from chapter to chapter. Since they explored it along various thematic lines, this makes sense, but it sort of tires you out as a reader, watching socialism die a thousand deaths by the end of the book. I also didn't like the ending of the book, which merely offered a conclusion to the last chapter, rather than an overarching conclusion or retrospective. The last chapter seemed to try for that, but I think it ultimately failed, in that respect. I would have liked something more definitive and global, instead of simply restating the points brought up so many times earlier.

Still, this is an interesting book, which, along with Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in America", Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," and Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda" can offer an American reader a sense of the American political landscape that won't be covered by the punditocracy. There are very good sections in this book, and useful insights, but I felt that the whole didn't exceed the sum of the parts. I would have liked to see more in-depth exploration of the "sewer socialism" of Milwaukee, which only got brief references, although I suppose it would exceed the thesis of the book.

One undercurrent I think that might be of use to leftist radicals today is the repeated (if indirect) assertion by the writers that Americans are more suited to anarchism than to old-school, Old Left Socialism, given the rejection of statism and centralization that is strongly evidenced in American political thought. This only gets alluded to in a roundabout fashion, but it's there for the alert reader. I think, ultimately, that socialism does exist (and strongly) in the US, but only in very select areas -- like the military, for example, which is a huge socialist institution (budget: $330 billion+) and in the universal health care given to members of Congress and the federal judiciary at taxpayer expense.

This isn't the kind of book somebody simply picks up out of the blue; you have to be fairly motivated to figure out why socialism failed in the US to read this, but if you are so motivated, it reads pretty well, overall. Tables are peppered throughout, with some interesting details.

OK, I get it. Aside from academia and its lapdogs in the media, socialism doesn't exist in the U.S. Why? The answers provided by these academics ignore several elephants in the living room. Principal among them:

1. The influence of the Roman Catholic Church. In the late 19th and early 20th century, with its absolute opposition to communism and emphasis on a "living" or "family" wage, the Church reached millions of working people, 1st and 2d generation immigrants, with a potent message. Don't vote Red!

2. Failure to co-opt the unions. Since union leadership came very largely from the same Catholic ethnics (see #1), it's not surprising that Reds were not exactly welcomed with open arms into the unions.

3. Takeover of unions (and, to a large extent, the Democratic Party) by the Mafia in the 20s and 30s. Whatever their other characteristics, the Mafiosi were conservative, entrepreneurial businessmen, not susceptible to the socialist/anarchist crazies running around trying to make revolution in New York and San Francisco. Also, the Mafiosi made sure they were baptised, married and buried in Catholic churches. So Reds need not apply at their union halls.

Why cannot American historians recognize such obvious causal factors as not only significant, but controlling? For example, there are all kinds of books praising FDR, but not one noting that FDR's electoral successes (and Truman's and Kennedy's) were due largely to the Mafia-controlled, conservative urban political machines? Looking longingly at FDR and Walter Reuther, or at a few urban nut cases, does not constitute a satisfactory history of the failures of socialism (communism) in the U.S.

Copiously footnoted and annotated, Marks and Lipset give a comprehensive description of why socialism failed in America. I learned a lot more about the history of the US, and the nature of socialism. Through comparison to the situation in other countries, the authors make a powerful case that it failed because of the mistakes within the Socialist Party- where it refused to compromise and work with other groups, including unions, in order to get closer to the desired goals. Marks and Lipset also show how the nature of the American political system makes it more difficult for minority parties- although not impossible. And they do a good job of proving that the nature of immigration and political repression weren't major forces keeping socialism from developing. Other groups faced the same hurdles and were able to develop, in America and abroad. What caused the downfall of socialism was a combination of factors, largely of their own making.

But a major problem with the work is that the terms are defined too narrowly. Socialism didn't fail. It has succeeded, and continues to grow in America. It is rather the Socialist Party which failed. Lipset and Marks continuously refer to socialism and then talk only of the one party- even differentiating socialism from the Communist Party, the Green Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, and the New Deal. While these are certainly separate groups, they all clearly also fall under the socialist umbrella. And then there are times when the definition is expanded, especially in the first chapter on the uniqueness of America politics, and socialism as an ideal is discussed, rather than just the party. One could easily imagine another book, with the same information, entitled "It Already Happened: How Socialism Succeeded in the United States"- if it is recognized that the ideas are larger than the party called "The Socialist Party".

It is also a shame that such short shrift is given to the African-American experience. Although there are passing references to the lack of socialist involvement in the African-American community, nowhere do Lipset and Marks really address this as a substantial failing on the part of the Socialist Party, or socialism in general. Although they show quite clearly that we are a relatively classist society, broken up on ethnic lines, we do have one huge significant class structure- stronger in the past, but still enduring. It just happens to also dovetail with ethnicity. African-Americans have been systematically debased throughout the history of our country. Following Marx and Engel's philosophy, this would have been the natural group to target in the pursuit of socialism. And though Marks and Lipset mention that socialists did not because of their own inherent racism, Marks and Lipset do not really give us enough research and information on this glaring failing.

I would still heartedly recommend the book. It gives a strong economic understanding of the history of the country as it pertains to socialism; how America is unique, and how it is not; and the failings and successes of socialism as theory and practice. The strength of the research carries the book and outweighs those the theories that were not pursued enough.

Americans do a lot of talking about their world historical destiny but a close look at the video tape shows they are missing some major marbles in the democracy check list, as this old chestnut makes clear. Karl Marx minus his ravings about revolution spent the dog years after 1848 doing class struggle 101 in the labor movement, and the results speak for themselves in the social democracies of most advanced industrial nations, and the lack of results in the USA, now beset with the dismal swindle underway in this land of the brave. Among multiple aspects recounted in this highly instructive history is the ironic way universal suffrage appeared very early in the Americas, but only appeared in the European systems as a result of leftist agitation. That and many other factors might explain the facts of the case to anyone suddenly puzzled at why he is losing his shirt in the botched American system. With the passing of the left it was only a matter of time before the whole pack of thieves came out in force.