Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:45:45.438Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Geography of American Socialism: Continuity and Change, 1900-1912

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Sari Bennett
Sari Bennett*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The history of American socialism is a history of failure, unless one accepts the more charitable interpretations of Michael Harrington (1972). Why did it fail? Why, among industrial democracies in the West, is the United States exceptional for its lack of a labor party? These questions are perennial ones, yet the lines of explanation invariably curve back to one of the two distinct points-of-view. One line of explanation was framed at the beginning of this century in the now-classic volume by Werner Sombart (1906 [1976]), Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? Socialism, in Sombart’s structuralist interpretation, was an incompatible philosophy in an American environment characterized by high wages, a fluid social and economic structure, and—their precondition—cheap land. Yet perversely, at the very moment when Sombart’s thesis appeared in the Archivfur Sozialwissenschaft and Sozialpolitik in 1905, socialist politics experienced a remarkable expansion in the United States—an expansion that warranted skepticism toward the structuralist interpretation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Summer 1983 , pp. 267 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1983 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bell, D. (1967) Marxian Socialism in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Bennett, S. and Earle, C. (1983) “Socialism in America: a geographical interpretation of its failure.” Pol. Geography Q. 2 (January): 1–25.Google Scholar
Bennett, S. and Earle, C. (1982) “The geography of strikes in the United States, 1881-1894.” J. of Interdisci plinary History 13 (Summer): 63–84.Google Scholar
Benson, L., Silbey, J. H., and Field, P. F. (1978) “Toward a theory of stability and change in American voting patterns: New York State, 1792-1970,” pp. 78–105 in Silbey, J. H. et al. (eds.) The History of American Electoral Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Blum, A. (1968) “Why unions grow.” Labor History 9 (Winter): 39–72.Google Scholar
Clubb, J. M., Flanigan, W. H., and Zingale, N. H. [eds.] (1981) Analyzing Electoral History. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Congressional Quarterly (1975) Guide to U.S. Elections. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Deutsch, K. W. (1953) Nationalism and Social Communication. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Dick, W. M. (1972) Labor and Socialism in America, The Gompers Era. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat.Google Scholar
Ginger, R. (1949) The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Green, J. R. (1978) Grass-Roots Socialism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Gutman, H. G. (1970) “The workers’ search for power: labor in the gilded age,” pp. 31–54 in Morgan, H. W. (ed.) The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal. Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Harrington, M. (1972) Socialism. New York: Saturday Review Press.Google Scholar
Hoxie, R. F. (1912) “The Socialist party in the November elections.” J. of Pol. Economy 20 (March): 205–223.Google Scholar
Hoxie, R. F. (1911) “The rising tide of socialism: a study.” J. of Pol. Economy 19 (October): 609–613.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr. (1959) “Secular realignment and the party system.” J. of Politics 21 (May): 198–210.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr. (1955) “A theory of critical elections.” J. of Politics 12 (February): 3–18.Google Scholar
Kleppner, P. (1970) The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Kolko, G. (1970) “The decline of radicalism in the twentieth century,” pp. 197–220 in Weinstein, J. and Eakins, D. (eds.) For A New America: Essays in History and Politics from Studies on the Left, 1959-1967. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Laslett, J.H.M. (1970) Labor and the Left: A Study of Socialist and Radical Influences in the American Labor Movement, 1881-1924. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lipset, S. M. (1978) “Marx, Engels and America’s political parties.” Wilson Q. 2 (Winter): 90–104.Google Scholar
Lipset, S. M. (1977) “Why no socialism in the United States,” pp. 31–149 in Bialer, S. (ed.) Sources of Contemporary Radicalism. Boulder: Westview.Google Scholar
MacRae, D. Jr. and Meldrum, J. A. (1960) “Critical elections in Illinois 1888-1958.” Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev. 54 (September): 669–683.Google Scholar
McNaught, K. (1966) “American progressives and the great society.” J. of Amer. History 53 (December): 504–520.Google Scholar
New York Department of Labor (1905-1908) Annual Report on the Board of Mediation and Arbitration. Albany: Author.Google Scholar
Robinson, E. E. (1970) The Presidential Vote 1896-1932. New York: Octagon.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, A. M. Jr [ed.] (1948) Eugene V. Debs: Writings and Speeches. New York: Heritage House.Google Scholar
Sombart, W. (1976) Why is there no Socialism in the United States? (1906). White Plains, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Stave, B. M. [ed.] (1975) Socialism and the Cities. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1913) Thirteenth Census of the United States, volume 3. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Weibe, R. (1967) The Search for Order. New York: Hill & Wang.Google Scholar
Weinstein, J. (1967) The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912-1925. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Yeates, M. (1974) An Introduction to Quantitative Analysis in Human Geography. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar