Will look at the progressive era, a period of, you know, a lot of labor unrest, the Industrial Workers of the world, the Womens Suffrage Movement coming to the fore, municipal reform, many other things. But today our subject is the socialist party, the rise of socialism as a key element of american radicalism in the early 20th century. We told him we were in the Suffrage Movement and the various times of socialism at that time. From 1860 at least onward, there had been some kind of socialist presence in the United States, but largely confined to immigrants from europe, particularly germans, english. The emergence of a mass social movement with a real base in the american political system followed and defeat of the populist party in the 1890s. The inheritors of 19th century radicalism were forced to kind of think about new ways confronting the problems and the inequities of the rapidly changing Industrial Society of that time. Socialism was typically untheoretical. Unlike european or other kinds of socialism, very few americans produced theoretical works about this. Many more socialists here were influenced by their experience in populism or the bellamy movement, remember, or just the experience of the Labor Movement than by reading karl marx or Something Like that. This kind of socialism derived from the thinking or writing of carl karl marx, which can be interpreted in different ways. What people learned from marx was, first of all, history was the class struggle. The struggle between classes is the driving force in history, he claimed. Under capitalism, the society is being divided inextricably into two classes, the working class and the proletariat, or the working class. Production is inevitably being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, giant corporations, and the gap between the what i guess today they call the 1 and the 99 , the gap between the rich and everyone else would inevitably get wider and wider. Some of this resonates, of course, to the present day. 30 years of the administrations of Ronald Reagan and bush and clinton and bush and obama have done more to confirm marxs prediction of the rich getting richer than 75 years of the soviet union, perhaps. What was appealing to marx was that at the time, remember, of this dominant free contract idealogy which the Supreme Court and others were implementing, social darwinism, the idea that the marketplace is just a site where equal participants compete and the result is best for all, marx kind of pierces through to the underpinning of the labor market and Labor Relations and shows that its based on inequality, exploitation and wage earners not getting what they deserve, something, of course, that had been an idea floating around american radi l radicalism for a long time. What was different about him, he insisted that capitalism was inevitably creating the instrument of his own destruction. Thats what he called the proletarian workers, whose coming social awareness would lead to them seizing power in the system. Not because they were better than anyone else, but the very nature of their social existence sort of made them inexorably pushed toward the whole system. They cannot abolish their own conditions of life without abolishing all the human conditions of present day society. Oddly in the year 2000 and soon after that, there was kind of a flurry of a rediscovery of karl marx. In fact, there was published man of the century, karl marx. Why . Because marx was the man of global capitalism. The man who saw capitalism must expand to make itself a global system. Unlike the previous most previous american radicals, marx analyzing capitalism as a system, not as bad individuals, not trusts, you know, corrupting the political system, not nonproducers kind of conspiring. The system itself has a logic which has to be understood. In a way you can put marx, and many people do, in the same category of thinker as, lets say, darwin. Darwin tried to understand the underlying principles of the natural world, or froeud a litte later trying to understand the inner workings of the mind, m pa marx is trying to understand the economic world. Im just going to read a couple sentences from the communist manifesto of 1888 where he lays out the common manifesto, which is highly oversimplified and then waited through the three ultra dense volumes of dos capital. What did they find when they turned to this manifesto . First they found that the revolutionary element in the world is capitalism. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without human production and with them the whole revelations of society. Confirmation of old form was the first existence for earlier industrial classes, constantly revolutionizing a production. Thats what characterizes the present world, he says. All frozen relations are swept away, all newly formed ones become antiquated ones before they can ossify. That is our condition right now, all that is solid melts into air. Thats the evidence of the system, the constant revolutionizing of everything. There is no nostalgia here. Marx is not like early radicals trying to go to a previous golden age. There is no previous golden age, and the nature of life now is just this constant change of everything. And then, as i say, its not a national system. The need for a constantly expanding market chases the b e borguissie is a National Industry destroyed. Thats whats happening today, National Industry is destroyed by the inexorable forces of globalization. This is 150 years later. All of them are destroyed or daily being destroyed moreover in the place of old wants satisfied by the production of the country. We find new wants requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climbed. National onesidedness becomes more and more impossible. In other words, this is a global system of global world, global interchange, and thats good. This is not a critique, that is good. That is part of the progress of history. Capitalism is creating the conditions in which a humane life is possible. It is overcoming the barriers of nature and population to massive production. The possibility for an equal or Fair Distribution of wealth around the world is for the first time created by advanced capitalism. Many people who read the communist manifesto are very surprised that most of it is based on praising capitalism for sweeping away all these old systems that are an obstacle to progress. Many of the people who followed marx thought of him as scientific. Later on its called scientific socialism, because hes trying to understand the system. But marx there are very few predictions in marx. Much of his writing is analytical, not predictive. And his predictions change over time, even though there was an etiology, that history was moving in a certain direction, but later readers would see it as a sort of predetermined end. In the 1880s, the American Labor journalist john swinton went to england and interviewed karl marx and he asked marx, what do you see for the future . Marx thought for a minute and answered in one word struggle. The future will see struggle. He didnt say the end of that struggle is inevitable, he didnt say what that struggle is going to lead to. Thats what he saw. As well see in a minute, many people saw in marxism kind of a way of predicting the future which i think not really the essence of what hes talking about. But point is the whole analysis suggested that once you marry the productive capacity, the radical productive capacity of socialism to a more equitable distribution and a more democratic control of the economy, its a u t utopian wor in a way. Its like bellamy, a world of equality. Socialism appealed to people on an equitable level as well as an analytical level. It was an unbalanced dream. Foriet promised people would be 10 feet tall under socialism. All children would grow up to be galileos under socialism. It was inevitable in a way, not inevitable, but it was the process of history working in that direction. But ultimately, especially in the United States, the ultimate appeal of socialism is ethical, moral as much as analytical and economic. Socialism said eugene debs capitalism said debs is simply wrong. The vast inequality is simply wrong. Its a kind of christian, underlying notion of morality beneath the scientific analysis. Anyway, in the 1890s, we mentioned this last time, the main expression of socialism in the u. S. Was the tiny socialist labor party headed by daniel leon, who i mentioned last time. Leon, a very strange and difficult guy, was one of the first to think in the United States of some of the modern problems of radicalism. The rise of mass culture. What does that mean for alternative . Already youre getting mass newspapers and magazines and things like that. What should radicals do in a society where, you know, a certain dominant culture this goes back to goodwin is kind of permaneeating the society . He determined the way to determine that is creating a radical Political Party to mobilize workers to get them to think in a radical way. Not a new idea, but he also concluded that the entire Labor Movement was basically an obstacle to this, particularly the American Federation of labor, which he said was dominated by what he called labor fakers who and the role the immediate role of socialists said to leon was to destroy the existing Labor Movement and create new radical unions. You can imagine that the existing unions were not too happy with the notion that the role of socialism were the first to destroy their unions. Some had joined the socialist labor party in the 1890s, and then he said, wait a minute. Why is the Political Party trying to destroy my union im working with . So many of them left rather quickly, but leon, his views actually well see next time would influence the Industrial Workers of the world, which attempted to mobilize or organize those mass production workers which the American Federation of labor had left out. But when the socialist party of america is founded in 1901, deleon and his little group remained outside, were not really part of this group. So who does come together in 1901 to form this socialist group . A conglomeration of people. After the defeat of bryan in 1896, remember, some bellamyites, followers of eugene debs and others had formed a group called the brotherhood of commonwealth. They had a plan to move en masse to some Western State with limited population and basically take over the state by people moving in. They thought maybe they would plant colonies in the state of washington or something. Really didnt get anywhere, but thats sort of the old communitarian ethos, but the brotherhood is part of this socialist party. Many people who were disaffected by the failure of populism come in, quite a few labor unions, the American Railroad union of debs, mine workers, others come in. In 1901, as i say, under this umbrella they formed the socialist party of america, a very small group. Within a decade or so, were up to world war i. This is really the point here. Between 1901 and world war i which breaks out in 1914 but the u. S. Doesnt enter until 1917, socialism grows to become a significant part of the political discourse in the United States, a factor in american life. Not a majority by any means, of course, but not a fringe sectarian group as it would later become. And the first thing we have to do to think about this is to remember my admonition which i mentioned before to read history forward, not backward. You cannot understand the socialist party of the preworld war i period without, in a sense, forgetting about world war i, the russian revolution, the cold war, and many, many other things that will happen in the history of socialism and then communism which will split socialism into sectarian groups which will discredit it in many ways in the eyes of people, but nobody knows thats coming in the period from 1901 to 1914 or 1917. Today socialism to the extent that it exists at all in our political discourse is just an allpurpose term of abuse, right . You hear on tv, obama is a socialist, right . What do the people who say that mean . They dont actually understand either obama or socialism. Its just a way of saying, i dont like obama. I dont like this thing hes done, that thing hes done. Fair enough, but to call him a socialist is absurd, but nonetheless, that is what the term so we have to go back before that, before all these events in the 20th century to understand in its own context socialism of the early 20th century. And its difficult to do because the historical literature doesnt help us all that much. Liberal historians which is probably the majority, thinks socialism is really kind of irrelevant because the real story is the rise of 20th century liberalism from Woodrow Wilson through the new deal of franklin d. Roosevelt and then on to the great society, et cetera. Thats the trajectory and socialism is just irrelevant next to that. On the other hand, communist historians, who wrote in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, saw the socialist party as lacking in revolutionary fervor. It seemed kind of mild in terms of socialism later on, so they didnt think much of it, yert. Bait broader based social movement did exist in america in the two decades coming up to world war i. At the height of their influence, the socialist party had 150,000 duespaying members. Today to be a member of a Political Party, you just register and vote in the primary, but these were people who paid dues to the socialist party. There were hundreds of socialist newspapers scattered around the country. Debs, you will see in a minute in 1912, polled nearly a million votes running for president in the fourway president ial election of 1912. More than a thousand public local Public Officials were elected by the socialist party from places like bridgeport, connecticut to milwaukee, congressmen from new york, mostly in Industrial Areas but also in the west, local socialist legislators, mayors, et cetera, et cetera. And when the af of l, the American Federation of labor, had their conventions, at least onethird called themselves socialists of one kind or another. Moreover, the socialist party, as i said, was not a narrow fringe. It was kind of an umbrella through which many people passed or took part who were connected to other major movements of the time. Womens suffrage, for example, connected to the socialist party in some ways. Demands for Public Ownership of utilities like streetcar lines and gas works and things like that. In other words, it was a broad amorph amorphous, broad party, and many were connected to it or sympathetic in some way or another. The idea of socialism was a vague to do idea to many people it was part of the political discourse. As i said, the socialism had different elements and often described as radical versus reform, or whatever you want to call it within the socialist party, but what did they hold in common . One central thread which does take us back into the radical tradition of the 19th century was a faith in education as the way to build a mass socialist movement. Marx wrote of socialism in the communist manifesto as a revolutionary doctrine, a doctrine of revolution. But the american soldiers were not socialists, but a few used socialist rhetoric. They thought the way social change would come was by education, by convincing people, was by you could convince people to be socialists by talking to them, by giving them things to read, et cetera, et cetera, as long as you did it in the language of American Society, not in this european jargon as many socialists said. A leading socialist writer at the time says, too long our socialist writings have been made up by the application of german mehta metaphysics. The great task is to interpret the American Experience in a language or style which will appeal to the american people. In sort of straightguard commfo common sense, he said non therapeutic science. Simons did this in not so much American History. Simons published the first socialist history of the United States called class struggles in American History which is written in a very popular manner and is essentially in a way its borrowed from Frederick Jackson turner, who had developed the frontier thesis in the 1890s and, you know, so American History was starting in a very democratic mode, and eventually with the end of the frontier and corporations of inequality and leading up to a social movement. Thats his effort to bring socialism to people in that kind of language. But the notion of education, though, is broader than that. It is and we should understand this, actually, being in a Great University like this. Socialists, marxists saw themselves as heirs of the western tradition. This is hard to understand when today people see socialist ideas as kind of alien. They were the heirs of the enlightenment, they felt. The heirs of the socialist movement, the effort to analyze society rationally and to understand it and to try to improve it. Back in the 1980s, i cant remember the name of this, there was one of these french movies, really boring. A bunch of guys sitting around talking for two hours. Thats it, thats the movie. Low budget, true, but still. I kind of like those movies. But, anyway, this was about the socalled new philosophers at that time, and one of them was asked in this movie by the narrat narrator, well, do you think that marx is dead . His answer, well, if marx is dead, that means shakespeare is dead, einstein is dead, and im not feeling all that well myself