Pretty much in the title, but was wondering who were the important figures in the American socialist movement in the early 20th century? I'm aware of Eugene Debbs, but who else stood out as leaders? Were there any particular darker characters with a Leninist bent to the philosophies? Just doing a bit of research and wondering what kind of personalities, good and bad, there were.
Figures in the American Socialist Movement?
- Thread starter DAv
- Start date
This is a tough question because the "American socialist movement" - which was never that unified to begin with, similarly to most lefty movements - splintered repeatedly. In terms of electoral/public prominence, the other prominent national leader besides Debs was definitely Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian minister and pacifist activist who repeatedly ran for President in the 1930s and 1940s. As for actual electoral success, there are several Socialist Party members who were elected to Congress and various municipal offices in the 1910s and later, including guys like Meyer London and Victor Berger (the last major Socialist politician to win office was Frank Zeidler, who was mayor of Milwaukee in the 1950s).
There's also the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), the more radical element of the American left, whose most prominent leader was probably Earl Browder. Browder was a staunch defender of the USSR and Stalin - which caused some problems for the CPUSA...
Depending on how late you want to go, you may also want to look into guys like Vito Marcantonio (a very left-wing Congressman in the late 1940s) or even Michael Harrington (not a politician but a fairly influential figure in 1970s-1980s American leftism).
Really, there are A LOT of interesting figures in American socialism, especially in the first two or three decades of the 20th century. Beyond the mainline socialists and communists, there's also more fringe figures like Daniel De Leon, or outright cranks like "Chairman Bob" Avakian, or whatever the hell Lyndon LaRouche is.
EDIT: I feel bad because I know I'm also leaving out a lot of the other mythical figures of American leftism - Big Bill Haywood and the Wobblies, or John Reed - and the infamous personalities - the more violent or solipsistic New Left radicals like the Weather Underground or even the SLA.
There's also the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), the more radical element of the American left, whose most prominent leader was probably Earl Browder. Browder was a staunch defender of the USSR and Stalin - which caused some problems for the CPUSA...
Depending on how late you want to go, you may also want to look into guys like Vito Marcantonio (a very left-wing Congressman in the late 1940s) or even Michael Harrington (not a politician but a fairly influential figure in 1970s-1980s American leftism).
Really, there are A LOT of interesting figures in American socialism, especially in the first two or three decades of the 20th century. Beyond the mainline socialists and communists, there's also more fringe figures like Daniel De Leon, or outright cranks like "Chairman Bob" Avakian, or whatever the hell Lyndon LaRouche is.
EDIT: I feel bad because I know I'm also leaving out a lot of the other mythical figures of American leftism - Big Bill Haywood and the Wobblies, or John Reed - and the infamous personalities - the more violent or solipsistic New Left radicals like the Weather Underground or even the SLA.
Last edited:
Yeah, figuring out LaRouche seems to be virtually impossible. I hesitated to include him on a list of "leftists" at all.
RightHoJeeves
Banned
Huey Long comes to mind even though he rejected the socialist label. Fierce advocate of wealth redistribution and government welfare.
I'd also toss Emma Goldman into the mix for her radical agitation for the overthrow of capitalism even though she also rejected socialism in favor of anarchism.
I'd also toss Emma Goldman into the mix for her radical agitation for the overthrow of capitalism even though she also rejected socialism in favor of anarchism.
Very few of the leaders of the Socialist party-even of the so-called left wing--went into the Communist Party when it was founded. (Charles Ruthenberg and Alfred Wagenknecht, both of Ohio, were the major exceptions.) The SP's losses to the Communists were mainly among the non-English speaking language federations. As James Weinstein explains:
'Most of the Americans who joined the left wing had no concept of what later came to be called the Leninist party. Quite the contrary, they had traditionally opposed Hillquit and Berger as bureaucrats, and had advocated greater decentralization and autonomy. . . . The native left-wingers who went Communist did so out of romantic identification with the Russian Revolution, and because of the panicked, bureaucratic action of the Old Guard in expelling the foreign language federations in the spring of 1919. But few of them could remain for long in a party that boasted, as Alexander Bittelman did in 1924, of its ability to change its line in 24 hours at the behest of the International...'"
https://books.google.com/books?id=fud1BwAAQBAJ&pg=PR135
Anyway, major figures in the SP other than Debs would include:
(1) Victor Berger. Congressman from Milwaukee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_L._Berger
(2) Morris Hillquit, who got 22% of the vote on an antiwar platform in his 1917 campaign for Mayor of New York City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Hillquit
(3) Meyer London, Congressman from the Lower East Side of New York: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_London
(4) James H. Maurer, president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, twice Socialist candidate for vice-president of the United States. He helped to make Reading, Pennsylvania a Socialist stronghold:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Maurer
(5) Oscar Ameringer, active in both Oklahoma and Wisconsin (two of the SP's strongest states): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Ameringer
(6) Kate Richards O'Hare, columnist for the *National Rip-Saw* (a St. Louis Socialist publication), jailed for her fiery antiwar oratory (unfortunately, like Berger, she was also a racist): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Richards_O'Hare
(7) William English Walling, whose racial views were very different from those of Berger and O'Hare--he was a founder of the NAACP. He was one of the small group of Socialists who left the party because he supported the war in 1917. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_English_Walling
(8) Charles Edward Russell, another NAACP founder and journalist; he also left the SP because he supported the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Edward_Russell (People like Walling and Russell who left the SP because it was too anti-war get less attention than the "left-wingers" who left the SP because it was not antiwar and revolutionary enough; yet Jack Ross, in his recent history of the Socialist Party, has argued that the loss of the Wallings and Russells may actually have hurt the SP more.)
(9) Louis Boudin, the SP's leading Marxist theorist. He was one of the Left Wingers who were disillusioned with the SP for not being anti-war and militant enough--yet in the end found himself unable to join the Communist party, which he thought guilty of serious theoretical errors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_B._Boudin
(10) Big Bill Haywood, IWW leader, ousted from the SP's national executive committee for his support of sabotage and other forms of "direct action" and his opposition to the idea that socialism could be achieved through the ballot. He later fled to Soviet Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Haywood