Ira Kipnis - The American Socialist Movement 1897-1912

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Text originally published in 1952 under the same title.

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The American Socialist Movement 18971912

by

IRA KIPNIS

Contents

for Jake

THE CONTRIBUTIONS made by ones associates during the long process which finally culminates in the publication of a book can perhaps be acknowledged only in generalizations. However, the usual thanks would not begin to express my gratitude for the considerable and generous assistance of professors Bessie Louise Pierce, Kermit Eby, and Walter Johnson, all of the University of Chicago. Professor Pierces detailed criticism of the first five chapters did much to alter, and, I hope, improve the remainder of the work. Professor Eby read the entire manuscript, and his experience and concern with the problem of factionalism were invaluable. To Walter Johnson should go much of the credit for whatever worth this study may have. He first called my attention to the need for an investigation of the role of the Socialist Party during the era of the Progressive Movement, and throughout the period of research and writing gave generously of his time, knowledge, and penetrating interest in all phases of historical inquiry. Unfortunately, there is a limit to the aid which even the most able and liberal scholars can provide. For such shortcomings as this study reveals, therefore, I alone am responsible.

IRA KIPNIS

February 21, 1952.

AMERICAN CAPITALISM has been praised for many virtues. Its supporters have credited the unrestricted operation of the free enterprise system with extending the national boundaries from coast to coast, developing an enormous productive plant, rewarding the industrious, encouraging the poor, bringing prosperity to all, and providing the only environment for a society dedicated to freedom, democracy, and social justice.

Yet, throughout our history many Americans have found that what was praised in theory did not work in practice. Negro slaves, indentured servants, debt-ridden farmers, propertyless workers, ambitious professionals, and hard-pressed businessmen have all concluded at one time or another that society would benefit from some more or less basic changes in the operation of the American economy. Comparatively few ever went so far as to suggest that capitalism itself be eliminated. But many held that if they were to have the opportunities assumed to be available to all under a competitive system, the activities of those who had clawed their way to positions of economic power would have to be regulated and restricted.

Most American reformers have continued to seek ways to compel the free enterprise system to operate equitably. But the hardships and dislocations caused by the impact of industrial capitalism on Americas relatively egalitarian agrarian society caused the ideology of European utopian socialism to be greeted with considerable enthusiasm before the Civil War. The new working class of the 1820s was discovering that the Declaration of Independence needed restating to meet the problems created by industrial capitalism.

Co-operative colonies were not the only utopian solutions attempted by dissatisfied members of society. Producers and consumers co-operatives flourished sporadically for over forty years as utopian alternatives to the production and distribution relations of capitalism. With every new industrial crisis, with every failure of the trade unions to alter materially the conditions of labor and the standard of living in pre-and post-Civil War America, farmers and workers turned anew to co-operatives as a way to beat the capitalists at their own game. While some co-operatives were successful for short periods, none succeeded in freeing its members from the web of capitalist wages, prices, and depressions.

The utopian socialists did their best to point up the need for drastic remedies in an industrial society which they accused of causing the creator of wealth to lose more and more of his just reward. But the building of socialist islands in capitalist oceans did little to enable labor to keep all it produced. The Utopians saw no need to fight for immediate gains within the existing economic system. Therefore, the trade union movement was neglected. Socialism was to be achieved by withdrawing from contact with the evils of society. Therefore, there was no reason to engage in political activity to change that society. Thus, while the Utopians spotlighted the shortcomings of capitalism they actually weakened the day-to-day struggles of the unions and radical political parties. The utopian socialists saw no relation between the development of capitalism, the growth of the working class, the daily class struggle, and the winning of socialism.

Economic and social conditions even before the Civil War had been such as to bring forth proposals for a complete overhauling of the economy. But the domestic conflicts which followed the war made ante-bellum America seem in retrospect a land flowing with milk and honey for all. While production expanded at an unprecedented rate in the thirty-five years following the abolition of slavery, competing small-scale manufacture rapidly gave way to non-competitive giant industrial enterprise. The small manufacturers vision of limitless opportunities for expansion in a slaveless America vanished in the struggle to maintain a precarious business position against increasing monopoly pressure. The farmers hope for endless prosperity inspired by the prospect of free land and adequate transportation disappeared in a flood of mortgages, high freight rates, falling prices, and vanishing frontiers. The workers dream of job security, a rising standard of living, and escape into farming or even business ownership in an expanding economy turned into a nightmare of depressions, wage cuts, and unemployment.

In this atmosphere of ruined hopes and lost fortunes, of jobless workers and factoryless businessmen, of land-poor farmers and farmless laborers, the schemes for alleviating hardship and returning to the more or less imaginary good old days of competition and equality through government intervention were legion. Farmers granges and alliances, producers and consumers co-operatives, antimonopoly, union labor, and Peoples parties all sought to break the trusts tightening stranglehold on the nations economic life. Each in turn disappeared, victim of monopolys tremendous strength, shaky theoretical assumptions, and an inability to unite farmer, worker, and small businessman against the common enemy.

But attempts to return to more competitive conditions or to escape into co-operative colonies or factories were no longer the only alternatives offered those who believed there was too much opportunity for Satan in Americas devil take the hindmost economy. Marxian socialism was first advocated in the United States in the 1850s, and political parties based on the social analysis of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were organized on a national basis almost immediately following the end of the Civil War. By 1900, Marxian or scientific socialism was the ideology of almost all American movements designed to eliminate the inequities of capitalism by replacing it with socialism. The socialism that inspires hopes and fears today is the school of Marx, wrote Thorstein Yeblen in 1907. No one is seriously apprehensive of any other so-called socialistic movement, and no one is seriously concerned to criticise or refute the doctrines set forth by any other school of socialists.