The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History Hardcover – April 15, 2015

Exhaustive history of the Socialist Party of America. Ross gives an almost year-by-year account of SPUSA, it's predecessors and antecedents from the Populist Party of the late 19th century to remaining fragments. At over 700 pages, I haven't read it all yet, but I've enjoyed what I have read.

Big book. Good history.

Jack Ross would like us to reconsider the old Socialist Party of America (1901 – 1972, with remnants lingering on to the present day). Like the Socialist Party, he supports unions and the interests of the working class. Like the Socialist Party, he opposes war and the imperial American State that sends its military into endless wars around the world in the interests of multinational corporations. He sees the Socialist Party leaders; Eugene Victor Debs, Victor Berger, Morris Hilquit, Norman Thomas and many others; as “prophets, who warned of the folly in which the country and its leaders were setting out and who offered the alternative path of peace and justice.”

This is a complete history only in the chronological sense. Many important issues are left out, despite 600 pages of text and an additional 150 pages of notes, bibliography, index and a listing socialist leaders and elected officials. The book focuses on two main points, a question of political strategy – the formation of a labor party or farmer-labor party, and the peace issue – the Party’s efforts to keep America out of the World Wars. Ross gives little attention to the Socialist Party’s domestic program, theoretical ideas, or issues of race and sex. His focus on the national organization gives the reader little idea of how the Socialist Party interacted with the people on a day to day level, gaining the enduring support of a large part of the voting population in some cities, but failing to win over most workers.

Ross criticizes previous historians for romanticizing the left wing of the Socialist Party and the IWW and failing to give appropriate credit to the leaders of its electoral and union work, who had major successes, bringing Party membership up over 100,000 in 1912. He believes that if the Socialist Party had made somewhat different strategic decisions, they could have created an enduring and successful Labor Party with working-class oriented domestic policies and isolationist foreign policies that, if implemented, would have kept the United States “a republic and not an empire”. This is an interesting and thought-provoking perspective, but there are many flaws to the argument, not least of which is that the U.S. has always been both a republic and an empire.

There is a major internal contradiction in Ross’ analysis between his desire for a Labor Party that might have become a major political party and his celebration of the consistent anti-war positions of the Socialist Party. In America, as in Europe, organized labor swung firmly behind the war effort as soon as the national government committed itself to war. The Socialist Party of America was able to take a position of principled opposition precisely because it was not closely tied to the unions, which otherwise would have controlled or been the largest single influence on the direction of the Party.

The main focus of the middle third of the book is the Socialist Party effort to keep America out of World War II, under the leadership of Norman Thomas, a former Presbyterian minister and near-pacifist. Thomas believed, based on the repression of dissent during and immediately after World War I, that if America went to war again it would result in the replacement of democracy with fascism. In the early 1930s the Party had about 20,000 members, but so many members left due to Thomas’ unwillingness to confront Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan that it had only 1,000 members left by 1941, when Pearl Harbor settled the issue. Ross defends Thomas to the end and gives scarcely a nod towards those Socialists who had a more realistic understanding of the threat of fascism abroad.

The final third of the book is a detailed history of the Socialist Party during its period of complete irrelevance, from 1942 until its final disintegration in 1972, and of the different factions that continued afterwards. Over the course of its history, the Socialist Party of America carried the hopes of millions of Americans for a more just and democratic society. Regrettably, Ross has not given us the history it deserves.

Alternative reading suggestions:
A readable overview is John Nichols, The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition…Socialism (2011).
The best work on the Socialist Party at its peak is Nick Salvatore, Eugene Debs: Citizen and Socialist (1982)
The best study of why the Socialists did not become a major party is Lipset and Marks, It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (2000).

An excellent book. Jack Ross has written an interesting and complete history of the Socialist Party. The book begins in 1867 and really takes off in the era of the Populist Movement and then takes on a journey to the Debs era, the Great Depression, the Norman Thomas years and the party's decline and eventual fascinating contribution to the current Neoconservative movement and it's largest successor the Democratic Socialist of America.

Anyone with an interest in the history of the American Left and radical movements will enjoy this book. One of main themes is that the Socialist Party missed opportunities to truly become a second or third party of consequence in the US via happenstance, outside interference, sabotage by fellow Marxists, party infighting and just plain mistakes in organization and campaigning.

This book also gives us a good insight into the founding of the Communist Party in America and the growth and enduring influence of Leon Trotsky in American politics via people who became the Neoconservatives. Of note is the sectarian infighting and splinter groups which hurt the socialist party. Those of you who like inside baseball politics will enjoy this. Those of you interested in labor history will also like this book as the there are so many interloping between labor and the radical leftwing politics. If you are interested in the birth of the New Left and the SDS then this is a good book for you also.

Ross rightly pays attention to the three most important people involved in this history: Debs, Thomas, and Harrington. Those of you sympathetic to socialism will be sadden to read the tale of how a unique American Socialism on the cusp of something bigger collapsed and it is a lesson to the left in the America. The reason why we don't have a true social democratic movement in this country is due to sectarian fighting and the personal agendas of people who place their own concerns and the concerns of their sect over the larger concerns of the American People.

The Bernie Sanders campaign may be the last chance for a long time in truly putting together a democratic socialist movement in this country. Those of you on the left will be well served to read this history and not repeat the same mistakes. Forget about being a Maoist, Leninist, DeLeonist, Marcyist, Avakianist or Trotskyite and concentrate on a building an American socialist movement which borrows a little bit from each in forging a true American movement.

I have not read the book, but I saw Ross give an overview of the book on a C-SPAN edition of "Book TV."
The problem for me was that he basically read his notes and seldom if ever paused or even looked up at his audience.
His presentation was so detailed and often hard to follow was frustrating, but I understood enough to want to take a look at his "complete history."

History is a confluence of stories, traditions, abrupt and slow changes that often turn our notions of a tidy narrative on its head. I am glad for his book, for I suspect it will bring out lots of forgotten events and how they still affect us all today.

I am intrigued by socialism, especially since I have learned we still practice it in many aspects of our lives. The police and fire companies, the U.S. military, utilities, libraries are just a few of the examples of socialist solutions built into the fabric of America.

I look forward to being challenged by the book and maybe even "set adrift" in some way. It helps me improve my brain.