The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History

by Jack Ross

Overview

At a time when the word "socialist" is but one of numerous political epithets that are generally divorced from the historical context of America's political history, The Socialist Party of America presents a new, mature understanding of America's most important minor political party of the twentieth century. From the party's origins in the labor and populist movements at the end of the nineteenth century, to its heyday with the charismatic Eugene V. Debs, and to its persistence through the Depression and the Second World War under the steady leadership of "America's conscience," Norman Thomas, The Socialist Party of America guides readers through the party's twilight, ultimate demise, and the successor groups that arose following its collapse.

Based on archival research, Jack Ross's study challenges the orthodoxies of both sides of the historiographical debate as well as assumptions about the Socialist Party in historical memory. Ross similarly covers the related emergence of neoconservatism and other facets of contemporary American politics and assesses some of the more sensational charges from the right about contemporary liberalism and the "radicalism" of Barack Obama.

Jack Ross is a freelance editor and independent historian in Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in the American Conservative, Tikkun, the Mitrailleuse, Daily Caller, Mondoweiss, and Antiwar.com. He is the author of Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism (Potomac, 2011).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612344904
Publisher:	Potomac Books
Publication date:	04/15/2015
Pages:	824
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.00(h) x 2.60(d)

About the Author

Jack Ross is a freelance editor and independent historian in Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in the American Conservative, Tikkun, the Mitrailleuse, Daily Caller, Mondoweiss, and Antiwar.com. He is the author of Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism (Potomac, 2011). 
 

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Part I
1. The Roots of American Socialism (1876–1892)
2. Populism and Beyond (1893–1900)
3. The Party Is Born (1901–1904)
4. The Fate of American Labor (1905–1909)
5. The Triumph of Progressivism (1910–1912)
6. Calm Before the Storm (1913–1916)
7. The Terror (1917–1918)
8. Fatal Alienation (1919–1920)
Part II
9. A New Hope (1921–1924)
10. Changing of the Guard (1925–1929)
11. Depression and Renaissance (1930–1933)
12. The Two-Front Putsch (1934–1936)
13. American Catalonia (1937–1940)
14. Not to the Swift (1941–1948)
Part III
15. The Twilight of American Socialism (1949–1963)
16. Out with the Old, In with the New (1964–1972)
17. Social Democrats USA and the Rise of Neoconservatism
18. Democratic Socialists of America and the Roots of Post–Cold War Liberalism
19. Socialist Party USA and the Radical Left since 1973
20. After Exceptionalism
Appendix A: National Officers of the Socialist Party
Appendix B: Socialist Elected Officeholders, 1897–1960
Appendix C: Presidential Vote Totals
Notes
Bibliography
Index
 

Editorial Reviews

“Jack Ross has performed a prodigious and provocative feat of recovery and historical interpretation. In Ross’s telling, the Socialist Party of America is not just a dreary dress rehearsal for Cold War liberalism or neoconservatism but rather, at its best, a living, breathing embodiment of populist American radicalism.”—Bill Kauffman, author of Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism

Bill Kauffman

“There have been books before on the history of the American Socialist Party, but none that I know of takes the story from the party’s roots in the late nineteenth century through its devolution after World War II into Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the proto-conservative Social Democrats USA. Ross tries to answer the difficult question of why the American Socialists never became a major party, providing an important history not only of the American left but of the right as well.”—John B. Judis, senior writer for the National Journal

John B. Judis

“Not only does Jack Ross cover the history of the [Socialist Party of America] and its leading adherents, he also offers an analysis of socialism’s rise, decline, and persistence as a marginal movement in the United States that is more complete and original than that of any other scholars of the political left. . . . This history deserves the attention and respect of every reader.”—Melvyn Dubofsky, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of history and sociology at Binghamton University, SUNY, and coauthor of John L. Lewis: A Biography

Melvyn Dubofsky

There have been books before on the history of the American Socialist Party, but none that I know of takes the story from the party’s roots in the late nineteenth century through its devolution after World War II into Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the proto-conservative Social Democrats USA. Ross tries to answer the difficult question of why the American Socialists never became a major party, providing an important history not only of the American left but of the right as well.”—John B. Judis, senior editor of the New Republic and coauthor of The Emerging Democratic Majority

“Jack Ross has performed a prodigious and provocative feat of recovery and historical interpretation. In Ross’s telling, the Socialist Party of America is not just a dreary dress rehearsal for Cold War liberalism or neoconservatism but rather, at its best, a living, breathing embodiment of populist American radicalism. The socialists whom Ross most admires—such as Norman Thomas, Meyer London, and the Mark Twainish Oscar Ameringer—urged upon our lost and faltering country a path not taken: that of peace and the republic, not perpetual war and soul-corroding empire. Even nonsocialists may regret their loss.”—Bill Kauffman, author of Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism

“The title of Jack Ross’s book says it all. He has written the first history of the Socialist Party of America in more than half a century. Not only does Ross cover the history of the party and its leading adherents; he also offers an analysis of socialism’s rise, decline, and persistence as a marginal movement in the United States that is more complete and original than that of any other scholars of the political left. Ross is as astute in his treatment of the Socialist Party’s opponents on the left as he is in his analysis of the party; and especially cogent in his interpretations of conflicts between the party and the communists, their own Young Turk critics, and the New Left. This history deserves the attention and respect of every reader.”—Melvyn Dubofsky, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of history and sociology at Binghamton University, SUNY, and coauthor of John L. Lewis: A Biography

From the Publisher