cawacko
Well-known member
Interesting essay on socialism and the various folks who have carried the socialist mantle in Congress as well as how some of their ideas have been absorbed through time into the mainstream. Our socialist/communist friend iolo complains about America not being socialist because of McCarthy but the first paragraph addresses the issue going back to 1906.
Socialists Are No Strangers to Congress
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t the first self-described socialist elected to the House. Her predecessors include reformists and Soviet sympathizers.
‘Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?” asked the German sociologist Werner Sombart in a famous 1906 essay. He wanted to figure out why European countries had developed influential left-wing political movements but the U.S. hadn’t. His answer: The relative affluence of American workers blunted revolutionary impulses. “On the shoals of roast beef and apple pie,” he wrote, “socialist utopias are sent to their doom.”
But Werner Sombart never met Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. These incoming Democratic members of Congress also claim membership in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization founded in 1982. “It’s a part of what I am,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said about her socialism on “Meet the Press.” Indeed, since Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid, many Democrats have been embracing ideas that, though not explicitly socialist, are decidedly left-wing—like free public college for all and single-payer health care.
Because the socialist label has been fairly toxic in American politics, left-wing politicians have usually shunned it—but not always. In fact, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Tlaib aren’t the first socialists to make it to Congress. A handful of predecessors got there in the last century, and their performance suggests that while socialists on Capitol Hill never proved to be the vanguard of a new politics, they did manage to serve as a prod to reform.
The first socialist elected to Congress, in 1911, was Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin, a German-born Jew who had founded the Socialist Party of America along with the labor leader and perennial presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs. Berger was a reformist who believed in “step at a time” socialism, which to some radicals made him a sellout. A few measures he advocated were classically socialist, like the nationalization of the radio airwaves; other radical ideas included abolishing the presidential veto and the Senate. But none of these proposals got very far. On the other hand, he touted some causes that were eventually adopted and became popular—notably, old-age pensions, which in 1935 became law with the passage of Franklin Roosevelt’s Social Security Act.
Often paired with Berger in the history books is Meyer London, another Socialist Party member, who represented Manhattan’s Lower East Side in Congress in 1915-19 and again in 1921-23. A Jewish immigrant from Russia, London also pushed for reforms that appeared radical at the time but seem mainstream today: a minimum wage, unemployment insurance and anti-lynching laws. At the same time, London, like Berger, disavowed insurrectionary rhetoric. He decried Lenin’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” in Bolshevik Russia and insisted it wouldn’t work in America.
Rather less innocuous in his activities was Samuel Dickstein, a Democrat who replaced London in Congress in 1922. Dickstein was best known for leading the original Special Committee on Un-American Activities, created in 1934 to target pro-Nazi groups and other far-right subversives. By the 1940s, though, the committee had evolved into the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC, which became notorious for its pursuit of Communists and left-wing subversives. Ironically, it was revealed after the Cold War that Dickstein was himself a Communist spy: From 1937 to 1940, the Soviets paid him to pass on information about committee business.
The best-remembered far-left radical to hold a congressional seat was Vito Marcantonio, who represented East Harlem. Though originally elected as a liberal Republican, a few years later he joined the American Labor Party, a breakaway faction of the Socialist Party that supported Franklin Roosevelt in the 1936 election. But his tiny party soon came under Soviet control, and Marcantonio followed suit; he’s often described, a little misleadingly, as America’s only Communist congressman. An advocate of civil liberties and labor rights, in 1948 he backed the third-party presidential candidacy of Henry Wallace, a defiant critic of Harry Truman whose campaign was heavily influenced by the Communist Party. In 1950 Marcantonio cast the only vote in the House against a bill to aid countries resisting communist subversion and one of just two votes against tightening laws against espionage.
Marcantonio briefly had a party-mate colleague in Congress. In February 1948, a one-term New York state assemblyman named Leo Isacson won a special election for a seat representing the Bronx, in an upset that presaged Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s Democratic primary victory over incumbent Joe Crowley last summer. Mystified analysts attributed the surprise win to light turnout and Isacson’s staunch support for recognizing Israel in the year of its birth. But Isacson lost to a Democrat in November.
Since then, no member of Congress has been elected as a representative of a socialist party. Ron Dellums, the longtime congressman from Oakland, and Major Owens, who represented Brooklyn for 24 years, both belonged to DSA, but they were elected as Democrats and their socialist tendencies rarely attracted comment. Mostly they were viewed as left-wing Democrats. Curiously, Bernie Sanders, who refused to join the Democratic Party (except when seeking its presidential nomination), isn’t a DSA member. In Congress his formal party affiliation has been “independent,” though as a matter of philosophy he identifies as a socialist, not a liberal.
Socialists in American politics have come and gone, often quickly. That is because, as various scholars have argued in response to Sombart’s question, our two-party system has usually proven responsive and malleable enough to embrace popular new proposals from the left, blunting the demand for a wholly new movement or party. Ideas such as old-age pensions and a minimum wage, though backed by socialists, soon came to be viewed as mainstream liberal positions. Whether it was Berger and Meyer in the Progressive Era, Marcantonio and Isacson in the 1940s, or Dellums and Owens in recent times, they have had influence only insofar as they worked within the Democratic Party.
The election of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Tlaib should likewise not be overhyped, especially when stacked alongside the dozens of liberal and moderate Democrats who also won House races in November. (More new members have joined the New Democrat caucus than the Progressive Caucus.) Contrary to some fears, their presence in Congress hardly augurs a radical transformation of the Democratic Party.
Yet like their socialist predecessors, their arrival in Washington is also more than a novelty or a fluke. Like the Progressive Era and the 1930s and 1940s, our current moment is pregnant with anxiety about the future and discontent with the political solutions on offer from the major parties. In the past, the Democratic Party has frequently paid attention to those voices of discontent, even if it hasn’t always adopted their preferred solutions. Its prospects in the coming years may depend on whether it does the same today.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/socialists-are-no-strangers-to-congress-11546530927?mod=hp_lead_pos11
Socialists Are No Strangers to Congress
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t the first self-described socialist elected to the House. Her predecessors include reformists and Soviet sympathizers.
‘Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?” asked the German sociologist Werner Sombart in a famous 1906 essay. He wanted to figure out why European countries had developed influential left-wing political movements but the U.S. hadn’t. His answer: The relative affluence of American workers blunted revolutionary impulses. “On the shoals of roast beef and apple pie,” he wrote, “socialist utopias are sent to their doom.”
But Werner Sombart never met Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. These incoming Democratic members of Congress also claim membership in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization founded in 1982. “It’s a part of what I am,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said about her socialism on “Meet the Press.” Indeed, since Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid, many Democrats have been embracing ideas that, though not explicitly socialist, are decidedly left-wing—like free public college for all and single-payer health care.
Because the socialist label has been fairly toxic in American politics, left-wing politicians have usually shunned it—but not always. In fact, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Tlaib aren’t the first socialists to make it to Congress. A handful of predecessors got there in the last century, and their performance suggests that while socialists on Capitol Hill never proved to be the vanguard of a new politics, they did manage to serve as a prod to reform.
The first socialist elected to Congress, in 1911, was Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin, a German-born Jew who had founded the Socialist Party of America along with the labor leader and perennial presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs. Berger was a reformist who believed in “step at a time” socialism, which to some radicals made him a sellout. A few measures he advocated were classically socialist, like the nationalization of the radio airwaves; other radical ideas included abolishing the presidential veto and the Senate. But none of these proposals got very far. On the other hand, he touted some causes that were eventually adopted and became popular—notably, old-age pensions, which in 1935 became law with the passage of Franklin Roosevelt’s Social Security Act.
Often paired with Berger in the history books is Meyer London, another Socialist Party member, who represented Manhattan’s Lower East Side in Congress in 1915-19 and again in 1921-23. A Jewish immigrant from Russia, London also pushed for reforms that appeared radical at the time but seem mainstream today: a minimum wage, unemployment insurance and anti-lynching laws. At the same time, London, like Berger, disavowed insurrectionary rhetoric. He decried Lenin’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” in Bolshevik Russia and insisted it wouldn’t work in America.
Rather less innocuous in his activities was Samuel Dickstein, a Democrat who replaced London in Congress in 1922. Dickstein was best known for leading the original Special Committee on Un-American Activities, created in 1934 to target pro-Nazi groups and other far-right subversives. By the 1940s, though, the committee had evolved into the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC, which became notorious for its pursuit of Communists and left-wing subversives. Ironically, it was revealed after the Cold War that Dickstein was himself a Communist spy: From 1937 to 1940, the Soviets paid him to pass on information about committee business.
The best-remembered far-left radical to hold a congressional seat was Vito Marcantonio, who represented East Harlem. Though originally elected as a liberal Republican, a few years later he joined the American Labor Party, a breakaway faction of the Socialist Party that supported Franklin Roosevelt in the 1936 election. But his tiny party soon came under Soviet control, and Marcantonio followed suit; he’s often described, a little misleadingly, as America’s only Communist congressman. An advocate of civil liberties and labor rights, in 1948 he backed the third-party presidential candidacy of Henry Wallace, a defiant critic of Harry Truman whose campaign was heavily influenced by the Communist Party. In 1950 Marcantonio cast the only vote in the House against a bill to aid countries resisting communist subversion and one of just two votes against tightening laws against espionage.
Marcantonio briefly had a party-mate colleague in Congress. In February 1948, a one-term New York state assemblyman named Leo Isacson won a special election for a seat representing the Bronx, in an upset that presaged Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s Democratic primary victory over incumbent Joe Crowley last summer. Mystified analysts attributed the surprise win to light turnout and Isacson’s staunch support for recognizing Israel in the year of its birth. But Isacson lost to a Democrat in November.
Since then, no member of Congress has been elected as a representative of a socialist party. Ron Dellums, the longtime congressman from Oakland, and Major Owens, who represented Brooklyn for 24 years, both belonged to DSA, but they were elected as Democrats and their socialist tendencies rarely attracted comment. Mostly they were viewed as left-wing Democrats. Curiously, Bernie Sanders, who refused to join the Democratic Party (except when seeking its presidential nomination), isn’t a DSA member. In Congress his formal party affiliation has been “independent,” though as a matter of philosophy he identifies as a socialist, not a liberal.
Socialists in American politics have come and gone, often quickly. That is because, as various scholars have argued in response to Sombart’s question, our two-party system has usually proven responsive and malleable enough to embrace popular new proposals from the left, blunting the demand for a wholly new movement or party. Ideas such as old-age pensions and a minimum wage, though backed by socialists, soon came to be viewed as mainstream liberal positions. Whether it was Berger and Meyer in the Progressive Era, Marcantonio and Isacson in the 1940s, or Dellums and Owens in recent times, they have had influence only insofar as they worked within the Democratic Party.
The election of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Tlaib should likewise not be overhyped, especially when stacked alongside the dozens of liberal and moderate Democrats who also won House races in November. (More new members have joined the New Democrat caucus than the Progressive Caucus.) Contrary to some fears, their presence in Congress hardly augurs a radical transformation of the Democratic Party.
Yet like their socialist predecessors, their arrival in Washington is also more than a novelty or a fluke. Like the Progressive Era and the 1930s and 1940s, our current moment is pregnant with anxiety about the future and discontent with the political solutions on offer from the major parties. In the past, the Democratic Party has frequently paid attention to those voices of discontent, even if it hasn’t always adopted their preferred solutions. Its prospects in the coming years may depend on whether it does the same today.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/socialists-are-no-strangers-to-congress-11546530927?mod=hp_lead_pos11
