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Title: It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States by Seymour Martin Lipset, Gary Marks ISBN: 0-393-32254-8 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Left Behind
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Socialism in the American Political System
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Exceptionalism of the United States
Comment: 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.
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