Author/Artist: Seymour Martin Lipsett and Gary Marks
Publisher: Norton
Media: Book
Reviewer: Pan
This is not a look at why socialism failed in the United States, rather it is a book with a much narrower focus. The central question that Lipset and Marks examine is why the United States, uniquely for any Western society, has never been home to a large and electorally significant Social-Democratic or Labour Party. That this does not equate to socialism in any meaningful sense goes without question, but given the narrowness of the subject matter this book is both extremely readable and raises many interesting questions with a far wider significance.
The paradox of US labour history is that it has offered us the examples of militant, class-conscious organisation, (of which the Industrial Workers of the World are the most obvious but by no means unique example), and yet this tendency towards syndicalism (whether the title was ever consciously adopted or not), co-existed with a wider political landscape where leftist organisations have rarely been able to organise more than tiny sections of the working class.
The Socialist Party represented the most consistent attempt to organise a national class-based party. In contrast to the experience of socialist parties in the UK, Canada, France, Germany and so on, the US Socialist Party adopted a less reformist stance, sticking to core class-based principles rather than compromise with liberal elements of the bourgeois establishment. It's experience is both interesting and instructive, pointing out the contrasts between the US on one side and Europe and the English speaking Commonwealth on the other. The success and failures of the Socialist party cast much light on the unique characteristics of American society and how these have shaped the experience of the working class there.
Where the Socialist Party was successful, (and to this reader at least the scale of some of these successes is something of a surprise), it was a local rather than national level. In cities such as Milwaukee the Party turned out consistent electoral successes and established power bases that managed to endure for a number of years. As the authors point out, this degree of success was rooted in a sub-culture of class-based groups and organisations, as well as with links to trades unions and shop-floor organisations. However, this subculture, which was able to withstand anti-working class mainstream culture, was also based on specific ethnic and national groups within US society. In the same way that much Anarchist activity was also embedded within distinct ethnic communities, (particularly Jewish/Yiddish workers in New York), the Socialists were also associated with specific immigrant communities - such as the German community in Milwaukee.
Race and ethnicity are one of the key differentiators between the US and the European experiences. Successive waves of immigrants meant that the US working class was often stratified on ethnic lines. Established immigrant groups who had arrived earlier and had achieved a degree of relative economic advancement were often defensive and/or antagonistic to newer arrivals and to existing Afro-American and Afro-Asian communities. Entrenched within craft unions, they campaigned against industrial unionism and adopted reactionary or racist policies, including support for segregation.
It was not simply the race issue which worked against class-based organisation. Lipset and Marks also point out that the nature of the US political system - especially the system of primaries, separate state and federal politics and the amorphous, coalition-based nature of the Republican and Democratic parties - have made it difficult for third parties to break the duopoly of power enjoyed by the two main parties. Where third-party campaigns have become prominent they have been swallowed up by the Democrats or the Republicans. This has happened to those considered on the left as well as the right, and again this book documents cases where labour-based campaigns and their leaders have been absorbed by both of the big parties.
This process of recuperation is as apparent now as it was then. The anti-globalisation movement is at greater risk of being swallowed up by the Right than it does of being co-opted by social-democrats or Leninists.
There are lessons to be learned from the failures of the US Socialist Party, even if you have no interest whatsoever in electoral politics. Firstly, and most importantly, bitter experience shows that no campaign can withstand pressure from mainstream culture unless it is firmly entrenched within a wider community. Isolated militants are easy to pick off, it's that simple. People like Lorenzo Komboa Ervin has focused on community-based organising for many years, but theirs is by no means the majority view, despite the sound reasons for their thinking.
Secondly, for those tempted by the seductions of electoral activity, whether it be in Green groups or protests like Ralph Nader's, the Democrat/Republican system will co-opt and absorb all forms of simple protest.
Finally, as the book makes abundantly clear, ideological purity is simple in a vacuum, it's also ultimately futile.
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