Some years ago, Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks published It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States which neatly summed up the ideological differences in the history of the American and European Labor movements and why the Socialist idea caught fire in Europe but died in America. Essentially, they found the same answer as did Alexis de Tocqueville, American social mobility and the lack of any class/caste legacy of feudalism left American workers and labor activists unreceptive to calls for revolution. Trade unions like the AFL-CIO became, as Lenin predicted, bastions of anti-Communism and sought material improvements for their members and not Bolshevism. Or even Social-Democracy, as a German or a Scandinavian would understand that term.
Where did American Socialism flourish if it failed among the mass of citizenry ? Primarily among materially secure but psychologically alienated intellectuals.
As a rival Rule-set to liberal, market democracy, the Socialist idea offers little that is attractive in the objective measurements of GDP, economy of resources, living standards or even the ability to plan social outcomes, the supposed strength of that value-system. What Socialism retains however, is its utility as a rationale to invest great swaths of arbitrary authority in a mandarin class of intellectuals who can fill the ranks of a regulatory state machine – lawyers, social workers, economists, statisticians and various kinds of apparatchiks. Socialism is attractive to them for the same reason American society is not – self-aggrandizing will to power as a class.
The heyday of these people had its origin in WWI where administrators like Herbert Hoover and William McAdoo were the heroic celebrities of that war moreso than generals. When the calamity of the great Depression and the Second World War struck America, the public was ready in the spirit of emergency to go along with the vast expansion of the state and the methods of the would-be planners. This phenomena was in sync with a global shift toward the state and was examined in detail by Friedrich von Hayek in his classic Road to Serfdom.
What did not happen however, was a fundamental shift in American values away from liberty and equality toward statism and paternalism on the European model. The socialist intellectuals had the keys to the kingdom on an empirical-results trial basis only and when their demand-side Keynesian prescriptions broke down in the 1970’s with stagflation the voters threw the Left and their premises out on their ear in 1980. This would not have happened on the European continent where parties come and go but the welfare state remains inviolate and the regulatory Brussells leviathan is actually be regarded by some as being ” ultraliberal”.
As a value-rival Rule-set, Socialism failed here as it dies in any cultural soil rich in optimism and well grounded in the concepts of cause and effect. It needs envy and fatalism to grow.
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Dan tdaxp:
July 11th, 2005 at 3:07 am
As always, a perfect post.
The “S” in the PISRR stages of victory can stand for “subdue” or “subvert,” and the Left has tried both against the market economy.
In “Old Europe,” the Left was able to subdue market liberals by agitating against the concept of business, entrepreneurship, and profit.
Over here, they were never able to. They tried subversion attacks instead, trying to “save capitalism from itself.” Jim Taggert’s complaints against “destructive competition” in Atlas Shrugged demo’s the tactic in America.
Until Carter began breaking the system of controls, they were succeeding. One reason for America’s success since then is that even though Reagen turbocharged the reforms, the fact they began under Carter paralyzing them with self-doubt.
-Dan tdaxp
mark:
July 11th, 2005 at 4:59 am
Hi Dan,
You wrote:
“Until Carter began breaking the system of controls, they were succeeding. One reason for America’s success since then is that even though Reagen turbocharged the reforms, the fact they began under Carter paralyzing them with self-doubt.”
Excellent !
Not very many people catch that “reform” aspect of Carter’s presidency – except perhaps to see a little bit of willingness to change old ideas in his rightward shift in foreign and defense policies during 1980.
Carter was a moderate liberal but he was more importantly an engineer by training and he had a penchant for rational solutions and a hatred of waste. Carter drove the Northeastern liberals in his party nuts with his unwillingness to play Santa Claus and his tendency to focus on the substance of problems rather than their politics.
Perhaps if Carter had been less timid and experimented boldly and earlier in his term he’d have been regarded more highly by the electorate
BTW -Loved the Jim Taggert reference.
Larry Dunbar:
July 11th, 2005 at 9:39 pm
Perhaps if Carter had not gone after the obscene profits of the oil companies he may have lasted longer. It wasn’t long after he determined that the oil companies were making obscene profits that all hell went wrong with his presidency. They may not have brought him down, but when that much power is turned against a president, he proved it is hard for a president to recover. I haven’t seen any make the same mistake!
mark:
July 11th, 2005 at 11:22 pm
Hi Larry,
You’ve moved to a point where I’d need to go back and look at the month by month polls. The gas lines, I recall, did not help Carter’s approval rating much. He did initiate a windfall profits tax ( if I remember correctly) on the oil companies but supply was a problem only eased by deregulation and conservation. Too little too late.
My father at the time, for example, was moved to start voting Republican for the first time ever because he was being squeezed by inflation, taxes, gas prices and interest rates. He was from a solidly Democratic demographic too and even today is an independent voter rather than a member of the GOP.
Dan tdaxp:
July 11th, 2005 at 11:36 pm
Not very many people catch that “reform” aspect of Carter’s presidency
Well, even I have to give History’s Greatest Monster credit where credit is due 😉
-Dan tdaxp
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