why have socialists become irrelevant in u.s. politics?

[RedMaterialist]

socialists are irrelevant in u.s. politics. why is this?

[Marxaveli]

Well, I would argue that we never were really relevant in US politics. America has always been a very very reactionary nation (for the most part), from colonial times to now. But lately, I would say its getting worse, as always is the case when Capitalism reaches crisis......I think this trend is something Marxists need to study and understand better, because it stems from that ever famous quote "the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result". For some insane reason, people want to solve the crisis with more of what caused the crisis. Right now, in a lot of ways, America reminds me of Germany in the very early 1930's before Hitler came to power, albeit a much less extreme economic situation, but culturally and politically, for sure.

But to answer your question, a lot of it has to do with propaganda. Politicians and media pundits have gone out of their way to paint Socialists as a bunch of blood thirsty dictators, as well as point to the collapse of the USSR as the mayflower failure of "Socialism"....beyond those things, Gramsci's concept of "Cultural Hegemony" does a pretty good and comprehensive job of explaining the lack of a Socialist movement in the US, I think.

[Krano]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-baiting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

[Ostrinski]

The implication here is that socialists have ever been relevant in American electoral politics. The best a left wing candidate has ever done in an election in the US (nationally) was in 1912, when Debs received 6% of the vote. He got 3% in 1904 and 1920 and 2% in 1908, and then Henry Wallace (:lol:) got 2.4% in 1948 against Truman, Dewey, and Thurmond.

Other than I'm afraid there's not much in the way of significant socialist entries into American politics where they've had any sort of relevant effect.

[sixdollarchampagne]

In any discussion like this, I think it is helpful to point out that the US had mass left-wing parties: the Debsian Socialist Party was big at one point, and so was the CPUSA, at a different time. There was a time when Norman Thomas' Socialist Party had enough support to appear on the ballot in all (48) states.

And then the US government repressed, first, the SP, after World War I, because the SP was anti-war, IIRC, and then the CPUSA, after World War II. So the narrowness of the political spectrum in this country is not "natural." It was achieved through state terror, and I am sure that the relentless media saturation we all endure is an important factor in maintaining the political monopoly of the elephant and the ass (quoting an old Spart chant, that I heard at a demo in Boston decades ago, "Break with the elephant and the ass/Build a party of the working class!")

I believe Marxism is directly relevant to the emancipation of labor; one can phrase the question of the OP in a different way, pointing out that it is the bourgeois parties, Dems, the GOP, the pro-capitalist Green Party, etc., that are irrelevant to solving the serious problems workers face.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I disagree that the US is somehow or always has been a conservative country. I think this is the history we've been taught.

For one thing it's a country with a history as rebellious as any other modern countries. There was frequent unrest in the colonial period and slave revolts (although not as large as in some other parts of the Americas due to the ratio of slaves and non-slaves in the population). The country was officially founded on a Revolution and then the Civil War created the modern U.S. and had an impact on the population and the economy sort of like WWI in impact and there was a rise of a very violent period of labor battles, battles by blacks for political power during reconstruction.

The major difference in this time period between the US and Europe was that in the US there was a great deal of land expansion and so there was a possibility of some workers actually getting away from industrial areas and conditions. Second and related to that, there was mass migration from Europe and the US to grow and maintain a labor pool and the bosses used this dynamic to isolate some workers (irish and dutch initially, eastern European and Italian and Chinese a little later). So this caused some animosity within the working class (along with anti-black racism and sexism since many of the first US industrial workers were women) but also caused organic lessons of struggle to be sort of segregated and not generalized. So it took a while for the Easter European revolutionary traditions and the Italian syndicalism and Irish traditions of fighting oppression and workplace conditions in the US to become shared and more generalized. In this period there would be some Native-born populist sort of socialists and anarchists, then there'd be German Marxists who only published in German, Italian revolutionaries publishing for just Italians etc.

But there was still influential movements which developed such as the Socialist Party with Debs as one of the more left and better representatives and the IWW (which was radicals and the left wing of the Socialist Party) and there was another period of industrial struggles in the early 20th century that included general strikes, and all sorts of other things. It took a Red Scare and a shift nationally to the right in the 1920s to stop this and people in the 1920s basically declared the earlier agitation a permanent thing of the past... but then there was the crash and folks probably know the histroy of the 1930s as being a period of radical struggle.

But in my opinion while the CP was a big part of that radicalism, their politics also allowed for the gains of the early 20th century (in terms of increased radical organization and action) to be undone. Their alliegence to the USSR and the line of the Comintern (which was based on what was best for Russia, not the class struggle locally or internationally by that time) caused them to repeatedly betray sections of the class. They used their influence in the unions and enforced the no-strike policies during WWII, the eventually abandoned their fantastic anti-racist work because they wanted to ally with the Democrats and so agitating against Jim-Crow policies would have embarassed the southern wing of the Democrats who were the political power behind Jim-Crow. They were also just sectarian and turned on other radical groups and so when the conditions changed after the war and the Democrats no longer needed the CP, when McCarthyism hit the CP, they had burned so many bridges that they became isolated.

Of course McCarthyism had a wider impact than just the CP. Any militant could be accused of being a communist and then driven out of their job or out of the union. Gays and Lesbians were also attacked and a general period of conformity set in. Labor took to a cooperation scheme and negotiation, not class struggle became their model and the bosses were making so much profits due to the destruction of their competitors in Europe and Asia, that they could afford to steadily increase wages in order to just ensure social peace under their rule.

Radicalism again happened and became very wide-spread by the early 1970s with huge parts of the population - youth and black youth specifically identifying as Revolutionaries (if often in a confused way, like people joining communes or just thinking that revolutionary means being a rebel). Again the US used both legal and forceful means to attack this rise of radicalism. They also had a concerted effort of co-option of movements.

So we've basically been living in a period of reaction ever since because while radical consiousness rose in the 1960s/70s and this still has an impact on the class, no organization of any real influence was maintained and so there were no vehicles for resisting the attacks from our rulers in the neo-liberal era. When the unions were pushed back, esentially workers were demoralized and the leadership ran even more into the arms of the Democrats. The black movement also was destroyed directly (by police and courts or sabotage even) on the one hand and coopted into the Democratic party on the other. So as the Democratic Party has moved to the right, so has the country.

Yeah, things are hard and it will take a lot of work to actually have established and organic working class radicalism int he US again. Occupy, Wisconsin, increased resistance to some kinds of oppression all show that it is more possible today than anytime other than the anti-globalization movement to begin to unite and build some fight-back from our side. But to the origianal point. I don't think radicals have been un-influential to the development of histroy here and I don't think radicalism is alien to people in the US - I think the fact that our opposition in the past have created the KKK to put down the struggles of blacks after the civil war and to put down worker struggles in the 1920s, had to have numerous red scares, had to execcute anarchists and arrest communists and union militants, how the FBI said the pathers were the most dangerous thing in the US, that the government had to derail and disrupt our movements, that they had to rid the unions of reds and demonize them repeatedly in the press for decades (not just in a nationalist competition with the USSR sense, but in a: "this movement is run by reds" way) gives a sense of the influence radical politics and organization has had.

There is no short cut IMO to turning this situation around, we have to organize build up our confidence and the confidence of people at our jobs and schools to fight in their own class interests. The good news is that this is now easier than anytime in my lifetime because the crisis has thrown the top off of many of the myths most of us probably heard our entire lives.

[Bardo]

Is it possible that socialists are irrelevant because the electoral system renders us irrelevant?

The winner take all system of electing representatives eliminates the chance of putting any socialist/communist party candidate into office unless they are able to garner more votes than either bourgeois party. If 6% of the electorate voted socialist under a proportional system, we would be a lot less irrelevant simply by getting a foot in the door and having at least some representation in congress as opposed to none at all.

Obviously there are socialists in America, we're just not being represented.

[Jimmie Higgins]

If we are talking about the influence in electoral poltics, well then if it's possible to boil it down to one reason, that is because the CP decided to advocate support for Democrats. The Socialist Party earlier had an electoral presence and following. The IWW rejected official poltics (partly as a reaction to some of the crappyness that electoralism caused in the SP). The CP and CIO probably could have founded a labor party in the US, but both ended up as part of the Democrat's "big tent". Of course the Democrats have been screwing radicals and unionists all while taking their support and organization and credibility.

Out of the 1960s movements, many small parties were formed, but it wasn't like any of the forces behind them were as influential and significant by themselves as the CP had been, so a lot of these efforts just became tiny little regional parties or fronts.

I think the electroal question might become significant at some piont, and I do think that it is sometimes worth it to try and organize something in the electoral sphere like opposition to a proposition or supporting a protest candidate, but I think it puts the cart before the horse for radicals to even talk about forming some oppositional party. We have no wider support in the class to speak of so such a party would either just be a small marginal front for some group or it would attract people but become a more general reform party like the Farm-Labor party or something because there are more liberals than radicals involved. I don't know, maybe the farm-labor party did somethings worth supporting, but ultimately electoralism can't help workers win power for themselves, it can be a sort of auxiliary thing.

[Raúl Duke]

I personally feel it has to do with how the left has interacted with the rest of society, at least in modern times plus a dose of Gramscian "false consciousness."

After all, to many people, "socialism is against human nature" and whatever.

[Geiseric]

There's been general strikes that have shut down the entire U.S. economy. How is that not significant? Communists like James P. Cannon were instrumental in founding and organizing the AFL and CIO. Electoral politics always come down to who has more money to advertize, and the capitalists will always have us beat there unless we as communists can win over a solid source of monetary and electoral support.

That source as we've seen worldwide has been from unions for various marxist socialist and non marxist socialist parties. We as marxists need to win the unions by fighting for the demands that rise out of labor disputes and various cuts to public sector jobs.

[Le Socialiste]

That isn't necessarily true, actually. Socialists have played an integral role in American politics for over a century now, and have historically been at the center of things like the 8-hour workday, civil rights, the anti-war and LGBTQ movements, labor, and other related struggles. In many ways socialists have been some of the strongest driving factors in building and sustaining these movements, a point which is conveniently omitted in your standard K-12 textbook(s). As for why it's at such a weak point politically, theoretically, and in relation to working people, one simply has to look at the intense level of intimidation, subversion, co-option, and outright repression exercised by the American ruling-class, including the immense toll 'Stalinism' had on the rev. left since 1930 on. The left is only now beginning to shake off this legacy and all its baggage; we're still regrouping, and it will be some time before the left is anywhere near as large and/or influential as it was for much of the last century and a half.

[the last donut of the night]

socialists and the radical left has almost always been irrelevant in the US, but not working class activity. i think it's in part due to the fact that, unlike the rest of the world, there was never a strong "romantic" period in american ideology/philosophy, so pretty basic (and antiquated) enlightenment principles continue to hold strong in american society. the fact that the US electoral system is so restricted also explains why "electoral" socialism never became popular in american politics the way it has been in europe and latin america, for example

mis dos centavos para ustedes

[blake 3:17]

technical malfunction

[Rugged Collectivist]

I want to say the red scare had something to do with it, but other countries had similar propaganda and the socialist movement did fine there.


The implication here is that socialists have ever been relevant in American electoral politics. The best a left wing candidate has ever done in an election in the US (nationally) was in 1912, when Debs received 6% of the vote. He got 3% in 1904 and 1920 and 2% in 1908, and then Henry Wallace (:lol:) got 2.4% in 1948 against Truman, Dewey, and Thurmond.

I could be mistaken, but wasn't Upton Sinclair elected to congress? Or was he like an early 20th century Bernie Sanders who doesn't count?

[sixdollarchampagne]

I want to say the red scare had something to do with it, but other countries had similar propaganda and the socialist movement did fine there.

I could be mistaken, but wasn't Upton Sinclair elected to congress? Or was he like an early 20th century Bernie Sanders who doesn't count?

IIRC, Upton Sinclair ran for US Congress, but was not elected. He had a plan to End Poverty In California, EPIC.

He also wrote a series of longish social-democratic and, ultimately, anti-communist novels. I guess his trajectory mirrors the development of liberalism.

[Ocean Seal]

We've never been all that relevant, but part of the reason that the influence that we had went away is due to Keynesianism, the second world war, and neoliberalism.
Keynesianism destroyed the depression, asserted itself as the dominant economic tendency, the second world war gave everyone jobs, white-washed the Soviet union, and neoliberalism destroyed the vehicles for working class revolution (the unions).

[Zealot]

I think it's false to say that Socialism was always irrelevant in the US since the labour movement was relatively quite powerful in the early twentieth century.

I would also like to point out something that hasn't been mentioned yet; the Taft-Hartley Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act) which, by the way, is still in effect today. It severely restricted the power of unions and stipulated that union leaders had to file affidavits declaring they were not members of, or supporters of, any Communist party.