It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States

Marx decreed in Capital that the most industrially advanced nation would usher the world into the bright dawn of socialism. But it didn't happen in America, the pinnacle of capitalist achievement. This broad but unambitious survey addresses one of the classic questions of American historiography: What accounts for the weakness of working-class radicalism in the U.S.? Preferring to restate the highlights of an admittedly worked-over literature on the subject rather than make significant new arguments of their own, Lipset (professor of public policy at George Mason University) and Marks (political science at UNC-Chapel Hill) present a ""political sociology"" of socialism's American flop. Lacking the feudal history that spurred Europe's early labor movements, the authors explain, American workers were ""born conservatives,"" already enjoying social mobility and a relative prosperity. Moreover, strong constitutional limits on government power thwarted collectivists from the get-go and led homegrown radicals toward libertarian or anarchist camps. America's invincible two-party system made it all but impossible for a socialist candidate to succeed; since the Civil War, the authors point out, just nine non-major party candidates have won more than 5% of the national vote in any presidential election. What surprises there are in this book pop up in little-known annals of U.S. radicalism, such as the North Dakota Nonpartisan League, a strikingly successful contingent that in 1919 proposed a system of state ownership, only to be bitterly attacked by America's socialist party as an opportunistic rival. Green parties, the authors say, are the latest venue for utopian reform desires; again, the U.S. remains exceptional, as they point out, with no influential environmental party. (July)