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Seymour Martin Lipset

It Didn't Happen Here (Norton Paperback) Paperback – January 23, 2013

by Seymour Martin Lipset (Author)

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"[T]his impressive work...offers paths toward new and rich understandings of American history."―The New York Times Book Review

Why socialism has failed to play a significant role in the United States―the most developed capitalist industrial society and hence, ostensibly, fertile ground for socialism―has been a critical question of American history and political development. Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks "survey with subtlety and shrewd judgment the various explanations" (Wall Street Journal) for this phenomenon of American political exceptionalism. "Clearly written, intelligent, filled with new information" (Times Literary Supplement), this "splendidly convincing" (Michael Kazin, Georgetown University) work eschews conventional arguments about socialism's demise to present a fuller understanding of how multiple factors―political structure, American values, immigration, and the split between the Socialist party and mainstream unions―combined to seal socialism's fate. "In peak form, two master political sociologists offer a must-read synthesis."―Theda Skocpol, Harvard University

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Clearly written, intelligent, filled with new information. -- Times Literary Supplement

[S]plendidly convincing. -- Michael Kazin, Georgetown University

[T]his impressive work...offers paths toward new and rich understandings of American history. -- The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Seymour Martin Lipset is the Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Gary Marks is professor of political science and director of the Center for European Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Product details

Publisher : Norton (January 23, 2013)
Language : English
Paperback : 384 pages
ISBN-10 : 0393322548
ISBN-13 : 978-0393322545
Item Weight : 11.6 ounces
Dimensions : 6 x 0.96 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #360,619 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #311 in Radical Political Thought
- #787 in Communism & Socialism (Books)
- #1,055 in Economic History (Books)

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Richard E. Hegner

Thorough analysis of complex subject, tho rather laborious

Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2000

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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.

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bovaxty

Boring

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2016

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Boring, ponderous prose style. Reading 10 pages feels like reading 100.

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A FASCINATING ANALYSIS OF THE FAILURE OF U.S. SOCIALISM TO TAKE HOLD

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2012

The authors wrote in the Preface to this 2000 book, "It is the purpose of this book to examine the validity of the main lines of explanation that have been put forward in these literatures. In doing so, we hope to provide not only a political sociology of socialism's failure in the United States, but larger insights into American society and polity. Our project has been guided from the beginning by the conviction that however politicized the intellectual terrain, we could offer an explanation as plausible to a person whose sympathies lie on the right of the political spectrum as to one whose sympathies lie on the left." (Pg. 10)

They admit, "The continued inability of socialists to create a viable movement in the United States was a major embarrassment to Marxist theorists." (Pg. 18) They suggest that "Although the United States is the most productive industrialized nation, it has never had a viable left-wing working-class party." (Pg. 19) In fact, the Socialist party and the American Federation of Labor "were locked into intense mutual hostility." (Pg. 123) However, the Great Depression "gave rise to planning, the welfare state, and greatly extended government regulation in society generally." (Pg. 40)

They later note that "The fact that socialism was introduced into American by German speakers, ane was disproportionately supported by foreign-accented workers and intellectuals... allowed its opponents to attack it as fundamentally un-American." (Pg 126) A more important factor is perhaps that "The Socialist party has never, even for a single year, been without some issue which threatened to split the party and which forced it to spend much of its time on the problem of reconciliation or rupture." (Pg. 167) Furthermore, most Socialists attacked the New Deal as "state capitalism and as a system for institutionalizing scarcity." (Pg. 207)

They conclude, "In this book we argue that socialists failed in the United States for cultural and institutional reasons." (Pg.288)

This is a very interesting book, and should be able to appeal to readers on all sides of the political spectrum.

5 people found this helpful

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Steven S. Berizzi

Socialism in the American Political System

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2000

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.

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