Mamdani’s election no victory for socialism (2025)

From the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Zohran Mamdani began his victory speech on being elected mayor of New York City:

‘The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said: “I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.” For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands.’

and ended it:

‘Together, New York, we’re going to freeze the rent. Together, New York, we’re going to make buses fast and free. Together, New York, we’re going to deliver universal childcare. Let the words we’ve spoken together, the dreams we’ve dreamt together, become the agenda we deliver together. New York, this power, it’s yours. This city belongs to you.’

This is a bold claim that his election represented the passing of political power in New York into the hands of ‘working people’. In fact, it represented the election of a political leader who promised to improve things for them. No doubt he is sincere and no doubt many are hoping that he will do this, but the question is will he be able to?

Peter Joseph, of Zeitgeist fame, thinks not:

‘For 18 years, I’ve tried to explain that the idea of getting the right person into political power—by whatever means—will never be enough to bring society back onto a sustainable and equitable path. The larger systemic forces, spiraling like a hurricane of negating feedback loops, will devour any fundamentally contradictory personality, policy, or platform. This is not an indictment of democracy as an idea, but of democracy as it exists within the larger construct of market capitalism—a power structure first and foremost. I want everyone to watch, as time moves forward, how this well-meaning man will be completely paralyzed and ultimately destroyed if he truly attempts any meaningful anti-market policy changes, or what he refers to as “democratic socialism.” By the end of this exercise, I hope people will realize that if you expect to change society, the political system cannot be the only system you rely on, because it is fundamentally and inherently corrupt by its very nested nature within the confines of market capitalism.’

We don’t know about wanting people to just watch Mamdani fail (they should rather be active in campaigning to replace the profit system with socialism as a society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of life) but Joseph is basically right. There are structural reasons why no politician operating within capitalist system can honour their promises to improve things, however sincere or determined they might be.

Mamdani has been elected to run the affairs of a big city but within the framework of capitalism, and capitalism is a system that imposes its priority — the making and accumulation of profits — on political as well as economic actors. That profits need to be made, and encouraged to be made, is something that anyone elected to political office within capitalism has to contend with and, in the end, accept and even impose.

Even though elected as the candidate of the pro-capitalist Democratic Party, Mamdani stated that he was a ‘democratic socialist’ and is in fact a member of the ‘Democratic Socialists of America’ (DSA) which proclaims:

‘Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society… We want a democracy powered by everyday people. The capitalist class tells us we are powerless, but together we can take back control.’

The DSA is one of the fragments of the old reformist ‘Socialist Party of America’ that imploded in 1972, with one part — them — deciding to enter the Democratic Party and pursue their aims there. The SPA was the party of Eugene Debs — hence Mamdani’s nod to him in his opening remarks. Debs stood for President of the USA on five occasions between 1900 and 1920. Launching his 1912 campaign he said of the Republican and Democratic parties:

‘They are substantially one in what they stand for. They are opposed to each other on no question of principle but purely in a contest for the spoils of office. To the workers of the country these two parties in name are one in fact. They, or rather it, stands for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation of the workers, and for wage-slavery.’

This is as true today as it was then, but if it’s reforms you are after (as Mamdani and the others in the DSA are) there is some sense in working within a party that has a good chance of winning political office and so be in a position to implement reforms. Mamdani is now in that position and can (if he can raise the funds) implement this but faces a further obstacle — the capitalist economic system which will not allow people’s needs to be put before profit and will undermine his reforms, in particular his flagship ones aimed at reducing the cost of living (rent freeze, free buses, free childcare) as this will exert a downward pressure on money wages. It will be swings and roundabouts.

If, on the other hand, you want socialism this makes no sense at all since, in supporting a party that stands for capitalism, you are supporting capitalism even if you seek to improve it. That’s why we say Mamdani’s election was not a victory for socialism.

Adam Buick

Quote. [voting] (1908)

From the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The only way to guard against throwing your vote away is to vote for the party that stands for what you stand for. To vote for something that you don’t want in order to avoid something else that you don’t is to do worse than throw your vote away."—The Call.

Blogger's Note:

My educated guess is that The Call cited above was The New York Call, which had been launched in May of 1908. There was a British 'socialist' paper with the title of The Call but that dates from 1916-20.

Anybody else think that the quote is reminiscent of the following famous Eugene Debs' quote?:

“I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want, and get it.”

That Blessed Word : Unity ! (1908)

From the July 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard 

(Con)Fusion in America.

A few years ago the question of Socialist unity engaged the attention of the two “Socialist” parties in this country. Votes were taken of the rank and file and large majorities voted in favour of fusion, but as the leaders did not desire fusion they did not allow it to come to pass.

Similarly the cry for “unity” has been raised in America, and again those first in raising the cry have been the smallest of the parties concerned.

As in England a knowledge of the mental make-up of the parties enabled many to see through the fake proposal, so will similar knowledge of the American “fusionists” enable us to value their “unity” cry for what it is worth.

In 1896 the Socialist Labour Party of America declared for the “new” Trade Unionism, and started the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance, a union affiliated to the Socialist Labour Party, and out to smash the “pure and simple” trade unions. This caused a “split” in the Socialist Labour Party, a large section leaving and, with the “Social-Democracy” of Eugene V. Debs, forming the Socialist Party of America.

A fight then commenced between the two, most of the fighting being done by the Socialist Labour Party, who long and loudly denounced the prominent members of the latter party— Debs, Carey, Mother Jones, Simons, and so on—as “freaks,” “frauds,” and “fakers,” while the Party as such was in turns termed the “Multi-cocoa Party,” the “Kangaroos,” in fact, anything but a Socialist party, and no Socialist Labour Party member was allowed on their platform except in opposition.

After some nine years of this fighting, and at the same time attempting to organise the working class in the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance, the membership was found to be declining at such a rapid pace that something had to be done.

Mr. F. Bohn, organiser, visiting Chicago, found himself among the “freaks,” “frauds,” and “fakers” that the S.LP. and the S.T. and L.A. were fighting—Mother Jones and A. M. Simons among them—and without instruction from either the S.L.P. or the S.T. and L.A. (his paymasters), he joined with them in signing a manifesto calling for a new union to be formed. In thus proclaiming the failure of his own union Bohn was supported in the Weekly People by such writers as Olive M. Johnson and Dan. De Leon. The Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance was thus crucified, betrayed by the leaders of the S.L.P. into the hands of the “freaks,” “frauds,” and “fakers,” and a new union—the Industrial Workers of the World—was formed. This new union, having for its object the organising of the workers to “take and hold” what they produce, enrolled a large membership, including men of all shades of political thought and of none. Those who had been “freaks” and “fakers” now became honest and earnest comrades on the economic field ; and to hide political differences politics were relegated to the rear, economic organisation and action being given the place of prime importance, and Mr. De Leon, editor of the American Weekly People, “discovered” that Marx had in 1869, said somewhere, sometime, to some one, that “only the economic organisation could set on foot the true political .party of Labour.”

Did Mr. De Leon know this before he helped to form the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance, and before he joined the Socialist Labour Party, or is it now that he is wangling ? As there is no evidence that Marx ever made such a statement, I beg to answer the latter question in the affirmative.

But in case Marx is not sufficient, Engels is dragged in, and one need not be surprised if at any time we are told that Christ talked Industrial Unionism in the Sermon on the Mount, or that even if he did not, what he did say may be “adapted to American conditions.”

When, as a result of capitalist persecution, W. D. Haywood had become the momentary idol of thousands of American workmen, and, while still in prison, was nominated by the Socialist Party as candidate for Governorship, the S.L.P. found itself in a dilemma. Haywood was member and nominee of the “rotten” Socialist Party —yet he was a member of the pure I.W.W. According to the S.L.P. rules they could not support him, but could they risk opposing the popular Haywood ? Eventually the Colorado State Executive decided to call upon every member of the S.L.P. in Colorado to withdraw from the Party until after the election, so that they could vote for Haywood ! This remarkable wangle was supported by O. M. Johnson and Mr. De Leon, and we were told the S.L.P. refused to oppose Haywood politically because they were supporting his “economic side” !

On his release from prison, however, Haywood toured America for the Socialist Party. This roused the ire of the S.L.P., who then denounced him as a coward and a craven.

Meanwhile the I.W.W., which for a time had proved a happy hunting-ground for S.L.P. literature sellers, had had a serious split. Most of its original founders had left it. E. V. Debs, had joined the staff of the Appeal to Reason, an anti-I.W.W. paper, and those who were left were largely inclined towards the Socialist Party. This not suiting the “fighting” S.L.P., who, not content with fighting the “cravens” like Haywood, outside, and the “physical force-ists” like Williams, inside, wanted a new excuse for a declaration of war on the Socialist Party, up went the cry for Socialist “unity.”

The E.C. of the S.L.P. invited the Socialist Party to consider proposals with a view to fusion, knowing they would be rejected. They were rejected, and now the S.L.P. can forget the fond embraces indulged in with the “freaks,” “frauds,” and “fakers” at the funeral of the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance, and clears the decks anew for hostilities.

Had the “unity” proposals been accepted bj the Socialist Party and a juncture fixed up, splits would, of course, immediately have followed; but the chance would have been taken. and the S.L.P. would have been scuttled and swallowed up in a new party, with the consent and approval of its friends, as was the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance in 1905.

In either case it was a wangle on the part of the S.L.P. leaders, a case of heads I win, tails you lose, but the Socialist Party leaders declined to enter the game.

It will thus be seen that, as in Britain, so in America, the “fusion” trick is but a move in the long game practised by faction leaders at the expense of the principles they are supposed to be advocating. It is therefore, up to the rank and file, as the Americans would say, to checkmate the players, to overthrow the “leaders,” the “intellectuals,” to act on the truly Marxian dictum that “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.” When they will place principles above personalities, and understand the difference between capitalist reform and social revolution, they will find there is but one party for them. Here it is The Socialist Party of Great Britain ; in America it has yet to be born.

A. W. Pearson

Editorial: The Passing of De Leon. (1914)

Editorial from the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death of Daniel De Leon in America recalls the controversy over so-called Direct Action by the working class. Joining the S.L.P. when it was nominally, as well as actually, a reform party, De Leon also affiliated with the corrupt Knights of Labour, and as a result of the secession of some elements the Socialist Trades and Labour Alliance was formed to act in co-operation with the S.L.P. But a union of opposing elements could not succeed. In spite of the claim that by economic unity political unity would also be established, a split soon took place, and the Socialist (!) Party of America was formed.

In 1905 “Industrial Unity” was again the cry, and once more it was urged that by uniting economically, political harmony would be secured.

De Leon, Debs and other political enemies came together in the I.W.W., which taught that Industrial Unionism would establish Socialism. Politics was but a reflex or an afterthought, so to speak. Anarchists as well as “Socialists”, reformers as well as others, came together in the Industrial Workers of the World. Some of them believed in politics, while others did not.

Such fictitious unity could not last, and soon it was found that, instead of uniting, it made those it embraced more divided than ever. It was not long before Debs and his “Socialist” Party friends were outside the I.W.W. Soon arose the question of what Industrial Unionism meant, some contending that politics were unnecessary and others that they might be useful, and so on.

The arrival of Wm. Haywood from jail soon caused a split among the unity-hunters of the I.W.W., and we were faced with two I.W.W.’s – one forced to give some vague recognition of the value of political action, and the other, embracing Haywood, Bohn, Ettor and Giovannitti, yearning for sabotage, physical force, and such moonshine.

The closing years of De Leon’s life were practically a sea of troubles on this “industrial action” question. One after another his lieutenants went over to the so-called Socialist party, or to the rival I.W.W. Frank Bohn, James Connolly, Trautmann (who has now come home to the I.W.W. fold), and even his own son, Solon De Leon, making tracks for that ark of confusion, the S.P. of A.

Verily the Industrialist rubbish spelt Nemesis for the S.L.P.

There is a lesson for the workers on this side of the Atlantic to leave the suicidal policy of Industrial Unionism severely alone.

Bird’s Eye View: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me (2023)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the June 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me

1865: ‘Instead of the conservative motto, A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, Abolition of the wage system’ (Value, Price, and Profit, Marx).

1928: ‘Earning a wage is a prison occupation’ (Wages, DH Lawrence).

1965: Workers still ‘…don’t realise that they can abolish the wages system’ (What are your wages?, Socialist Standard).

1 April 1999: Britain gets first legally binding minimum wage of £3 if 21 or under, £3.60 for those over.

1 April 2023: ‘Today’s minimum wage rise by the UK Government will still leave thousands of Scots in poverty, say opposition parties’ (Daily Record, tinyurl.com/ajapsnxh ).

Rich stay rich poor stay poor

‘For more than a dozen years now, Wall Street and corporate lobbyists have blocked both financial executive pay restrictions and a federal minimum wage increase. This speaks volumes about who has influence in Washington — and who does not’ (Common Dreams, 1 April).

Sarah Anderson is being quoted here. She directs the Global Economy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies, is a co-editor of Inequality.org, and champions several measures including a ban on stock options at Wall Street banks. These measures can only be considered revolutionary in that they represent yet another spin on the reformist misery-go-round. As Eugene Debs said in 1913 ‘What the poor need is that the rich shall get off their backs’ (The Oppressed Need Justice, Not Charity).

None so blind

Helen Keller, one year earlier (1912) in an essay titled How I Became a Socialist, wrote of the hypocrisy of self-styled philanthropic elites who assailed working-class radicalism: ‘I like newspapermen. I have known many, and two or three editors have been among my most intimate friends. Moreover, the newspapers have been of great assistance in the work which we have been trying to do for the blind. It costs them nothing to give their aid to work for the blind and to other superficial charities. But socialism — ah, that is a different matter ! That goes to the root of all poverty and all charity. The money power behind the newspapers is against socialism, and the editors, obedient to the hand that feeds them, will go to any length to put down socialism and undermine the influence of socialists’.

‘Who was Karl Marx and What is Communism? . . .'

"Let’s start with where it came from, because ’the roots’ are always connected to ’the fruits’. Communism grew out of the haunted life of Karl Marx (1813-1881), a German philosopher whose life seemed to be shadowed by something dark. Several of his children died before reaching adulthood, he had extremely poor hygiene, he was often covered in painful boils and he could barely keep a job. Marx lived on the generosity of his friend Friedrich Engels. Ironically, Engels got his money from the same capitalist factories that Marx came to criticise. Marx was also known for his infatuation with the prince of darkness himself. In many of his writings he openly expressed admiration for Satan. People around him sensed he was troubled. Even his own father-in-law, worried that the “demon” that pestered Marx would kill his own daughter" (The Stream, 1 April). 

This bad biographical sketch would have Marx spinning in his grave – two years before he died in 1883. And what follows is even worse! Our A to Z of Marxism is concise, fact-based and provides suggestions for further reading.

Pie in the sky

‘Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei earlier threatened to prosecute “without mercy” women who appear in public unveiled, Iranian media reported… Describing the veil as “one of the civilisational foundations of the Iranian nation” and “one of the practical principles of the Islamic Republic,” an Interior Ministry statement on Thursday said there would be no “retreat or tolerance” on the issue’ (Raisi says hijab is the law in Iran as unveiled women face ‘yoghurt attack,’ Yahoo. 1 April).

Religion is the badge of the mentally enslaved. It uses a cloak of mystification to reinforce its authority by promising a mythical afterlife as a reward for blind obedience and by making threats of eternal punishment, backed up by intimidation and persecution for those who do not submit. It has been a useful tool in the hands of the ruling classes to keep their subjects subservient.

Keller again:

‘This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil. What have you to fight for? National independence? That means the masters’ independence. The laws that send you to jail when you demand better living conditions? The flag? Does it wave over a country where you are free and have a home, or does it rather symbolise a country that meets you with clenched fists when you strike for better wages and shorter hours? Will you fight for your masters’ religion which teaches you to obey them even when they tell you to kill one another? Why don’t you make a junk heap of your masters’ religion, his civilisation, his kings and his customs that tend to reduce a man to a brute and God to a monster? Let there go forth a clarion call for liberty. Let the workers form one great world-wide union, and let there be a globe-encircling revolt to gain for the workers true liberty and happiness’ (Menace of the Militarist Program).

Bird’s Eye View: Quayle, Reagan, Carlin, Debs, Sade, Bukowski and Sanders (2023)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the January 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

’I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy, but that could change’ – Dan Quayle

Andy Borowitz’s new book Profiles in Ignorance divides America’s recent history into three phases. In the first, “ridicule”, ignorant politicians do their best to pretend they are smart. This is the age of Ronald Reagan and Dan Quayle. A fellow California politician said: “You could walk through Ronald Reagan’s deepest thoughts and not get your ankles wet”. Of Quayle — who, as George HW Bush’s vice-president, was most famous for having told school children to spell “potato” with an “e” at the end — one professor observed: “When I looked into his eyes I could see to the back of his head.” In an effort to appear smart, Reagan once tried to quote America’s second president, John Adams, on facts being stubborn things. Instead, he said: “Facts are stupid things”….’ (Financial Times, 3 November).

The sad fact is, before these jokers were born let alone elected by our class, socialists were already asking ‘In the light of experience, why should you vote for either the Republican or Democratic parties?’ (Eugene Debs, Quotations from Speeches Made on the 1908 Campaign Trail, bit.ly/3zMOyj3).

Today, the vast majority of the working class blindly support capitalism. None of them can escape responsibility for the consequences. For the power wielded by the rulers of world capitalism is a reflection of the political ignorance of the working class everywhere. Some dictators are homegrown and elected. They include the likes of King & Queen Ortega, Turkey’s ever power-hungry president Erdoğan, Rodrigo Kill ’em All Duterte of the Philippines and his replacement Marcos Jnr. Other odious examples include Hitler, the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front, Meloni, Orbán and Trump. Former Democrat Debs was clear: ‘I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands’ (1908).

’It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it ’ – George Carlin

‘President Biden on Saturday said people holding signs calling him a socialist were idiots…’ (The Hill, 5 November, ).

Correct. Do his Republican opponents really believe that Joe understands and accepts that capitalism is based on the legalised exploitation of the wealth producers by those who own and control the means of wealth production and distribution, that the state only exists to protect the power and privilege of the exploiting class and that he urges workers to abolish the wages system and establish a classless, moneyless society? Is Joe nothing less than a social revolutionary who wants to destroy civilisation as we know it where war and want are endemic and billions are compelled to accept wage slavery? Of course not.

Actually, the Marquis de Sade, a contemporary of the Founding Fathers, who died over 200 years ago in an insane asylum, has better claim to the label socialist. He championed democracy, was opposed to every form of punishment (‘it is far simpler to hang men than to find out why we condemn them’), saw the class-divided nature of society and sided with ‘those who can only get a living by their labour and sweat.’ Indeed, Geoffrey Gorer in The Revolutionary Ideas of the Marquis De Sade (1964) points out that Sade stood in opposition to contemporary philosophers for both his ‘complete and continual denial of the right to property,’ and for viewing the struggle in late 18th century French society as being not between ‘the Crown, the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy or the clergy, or sectional interests of any of these against one another’, but rather all of these ‘more or less united against the proletariat.’ Gorer thus argued, ‘he can with some justice be called the first reasoned socialist.’

’Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors’ – Charles Bukowski

‘”at a time when half of American workers are living paycheck to paycheck, and millions of people earn starvation wages and struggle to put food on the table, the wealthy and powerful have never had it so good,’ wrote Bernie Sanders (Common Dreams, 4 November).

Fine sounding, but let us not be deceived. He went on in an email: ’What we are seeing all across the country and in every sector of our economy is that working people are standing up in the face of corporate greed, demanding fairer wages, better working conditions, and the dignity and respect on the job that they deserve’.

De Sade again: ‘you can only govern men by deceiving them; one must be hypocritical to deceive them; the enlightened man will never let himself be led, therefore it is necessary to deprive him of enlightenment to lead him as we want…’ Sanders’ occasional use of revolutionary rhetoric should not obscure the fact that he has voted with the Democrats 98 percent of the time. Let us put his qualified support for $18/hour into context:

1865: ‘Instead of the conservative motto, A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, Abolition of the wage system’ (Marx, Value, Price, and Profit).

1928: ‘Earning a wage is a prison occupation’ (Wages, DH Lawrence).

1965: Workers still ‘don’t realise that they can abolish the wages system’ (Socialist Standard).

2009: Current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour introduced.

2022: ‘Bernie Sanders Backs Historic $18 Minimum Wage’ (Common Dreams).

On Labour Leadership (1942)

From the September 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

“I am not a Labour leader. I do not want you to follow me or anyone else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in someone else could lead you out. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise, it will be with the ranks, not from them.”—Eugene V. Debs (quoted in “Forward,” July 25th, 1942).

Chicken Little Politics? (2004)

From the March 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

I am addicted to reading political journals of all stripes, left, right and center, as well as socialist. As I came to the positions of the World Socialist Movement, I began reading left newspapers with a new understanding. I now see a nearly constant hysterical pitch- Doom is coming! Fascism! Economic Collapse!! Environmental Degradation!!! Repent sinners, the end is near, join our vanguard, coalition and/or the affinity group and save the world through action, action, action . . .

But is the left (which is distinct from socialism) advocating practical action or perpetual motion? There have been plenty of perpetual motion machines invented, and they are as successful as the left has been, doomed to entropy. In racing around posing countless reforms, transitional demands, desperate for any contact with the working class, the left has forgotten what it is they thought they wanted in the first place.

Instead of seeing that the revolution will come from a profound change in social consciousness, they substitute adrenaline headlines to try and scare folks into party activities, which aim for reforms, which they think will slowly raise consciousness. But the problem is that working for reforms can succeed only if we don’t talk about, or at best downplay, talking about the “s” word.

A friend of mine in my union is active in a post-trotskyist group that does many good union activities in the US and Canada. They teach workers how to take back their unions, fight the boss on the shop floor, etc. For 30 years they done very good, practical, day-to-day union work. My friend has told me that some founders, after all these years of working for these reforms for the workers, have confessed to him they are disappointed that they never, ever, get to talk about their ‘socialism’.

Likewise the doddering Communist Party USA acts as the loyal left wing of the Democratic Party. Both parties are active in much practical work, have lots of followers. But when the need for socialism gets left behind, what is the practical consequence? You maintain capitalism and the problems you are trying to stop.

Throughout the 100 years of the existence of the World Socialist Movement, we have refused to play the game of chicken little politics. In the 1930s, when the left from Social-democrats to anarchists were hysterically calling that the economy was about to collapse, and that would be the end of capitalism, we said no, while the economy may or may not collapse, that doesn’t mean that capitalism will. Then and now we will tell you that there may or may not be fascism around the bend, and environmental collapse may occur or maybe the lions will sleep with the lambs.

We’re socialists, not fortune tellers, what we do know is that capitalism is based on the exploitation of workers. As workers understand that, become conscious, we will have the ability to create a new world free of the inhuman demands of a system driven by profits.

Eugene Debs once said, “It's better to ask for what you want and not get it, than ask for what you don’t want and get it.” If you really want socialism, join the World Socialist Party. Ask for what you do want.

F.N. Brill

Rear View: Science v. superstition (2020)

The Rear View Column from the April 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Science v. superstition

Donald Trump’s appointment of vice-president Pence as head of the US response to the coronavirus provoked rage and ridicule from health professionals and others. Pence is a lawyer. Does he expect to stop the virus by serving it a writ?! Socialists here are perhaps for the first time in agreement with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez: ‘Mike Pence literally does not believe in science,’ she tweeted… ‘It is utterly irresponsible to put him in charge of the US coronavirus response as the world sits on the cusp of a pandemic. This decision could cost people their lives. Pence’s past decisions already have,’ she said. Ocasio-Cortez reminded people of Pence’s credentials for the job: ‘While he was governor of Indiana, he oversaw an HIV crisis that was so severe that at its peak, 20 new cases of HIV were diagnosed every week. As governor, Pence’s science denial contributed to one of the worst HIV outbreaks in Indiana’s history’ (theguardian.com, 28 February).


Reform or revolution

Given a choice between a voice of reason Democrat such as AOC and a bible-thumping, science-denying Republican e.g. Pence, who is more deserving of the socialist vote? Neither. Both support capitalism. Science aside, the real question is do we want to end war and want or not? Leftist luminaries, including Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich and Michael Albert ignore the lessons of history and support the ‘lesser evil’. Their open letter (truthdig. com, 24 January) states ‘…real solutions require Trump out of office. Real solutions will become far more probable with Sanders or Warren in office… ‘ Slavoj Zizek agrees: ‘…US political life to be radically reinvented… Sanders is to be unconditionally supported’ (rt. com, 11 February). The Sanders ‘meantime’ must be a capitalist meantime and is no responsibility of those who seek to replace it with a better system. The establishment of socialism depends on a majority of us withdrawing our support of capitalism. It becomes practicable only to the extent that socialist ideas are accepted, and it will become a reality when action in line with those ideas is taken. Supporting Sanders or any leader amounts to trying to patch up capitalism, the existence of which is the cause of the problems we all want to solve.


More of the same

That reformists such as Sanders do not represent a threat to the status quo is confirmed by history and current mainstream comment. ‘It should be clear to anyone who is not trying to frighten voters that Sanders is a social democrat… ‘(marketwatch.com, 11 February). MarketWatch, it should be noted, is an American financial information website that provides business news, analysis, and stock market data. It is a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, a property of News Corp, which also owns The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. Similarly, we read: ‘In capitalist mecca Las Vegas, social democrat Sanders cements Democratic front-runner status’ (cbc.ca, 23 February). ‘Like most Democrats, Kimberly Carr said she’d vote for anyone against Trump. But she wants Sanders. The VIP host at the Bellagio supported Elizabeth Warren, then switched to Sanders on the second ballot in Saturday’s caucuses. She said the party needs someone with fire in the belly and bold policy ideas to take on Trump. ‘Eugene Debs knew better: ‘The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles’ (1904).


Then and now

Fifty years earlier, one former slave wrote: ‘The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to ONE slave-holder, and the former belongs to ALL the slave-holders, collectively. The white slave has taken from him, by indirection, what the black slave had taken from him, directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers’ (Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855). Today, ‘Target Workers Unite recently released a survey of more than 500 Target workers around the US, representing 382 different stores in 44 states. Only 12.7% of the workers who responded said they could survive on the wages from Target alone, with 56% of workers citing they have run out of food while employed at Target, and 12.8% of workers reported experiencing homelessness’ (‘Target raised wages. Then it cut workers’ hours and doubled their workload’, theguardian.com, 27 February). Target’s annual gross profit for 2019 was $22.057bn. Post November’s presidential election, it will be business as usual.

11 — 11 — 11: 101 years since the end of World War I

From the World Socialist Party of the United States website

Exactly 101 years ago today the Armistice that ended World War I was signed and came into force. It was signed between 5 and 6 am but did not come into force until 11 am. Fighting continued in many places right up to the last minute: nearly 11,000 men were killed or wounded on that last morning of the war.

As the Armistice had already been signed, why could it not have come into force earlier – say, at 7 am? Or, even if it was not yet time to lay down arms, could commanding officers not have avoided offensive action?

Some did. One British general, acting on his own initiative, ended the war in his sector early in the morning. Prime minister David Lloyd George was annoyed when he heard of it and deprived the general of his pension. The prime minister was planning to announce the Armistice in the House of Commons later in the morning – few Members of Parliament are ‘early birds’ – and wanted the dramatic effect of the guns falling silent just as he was speaking. Lining up three elevens – ‘at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month’ – also had a rhetorical appeal. It still has. Surely that was worth a few thousand casualties?

Another ‘softie’ was Major General William Haan, commander of the 32nd Division of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), who received a field telephone call from his subordinate in command of the 63rd Brigade asking permission to attack in order to straighten out a dent on his front. Haan retorted that he did not intend to throw away men’s lives on the war’s last morning to tidy up a map. 

Other commanders were made of tougher stuff. Major General Charles P. Summerall ordered V Corps to force a crossing of the Meuse River that last morning at the cost of over 1,100 dead and wounded. One of his men, Henry Gunther, was the last soldier killed in action in World War One. He died at one minute before 11 am while charging astonished German troops. He had been despondent over a recent reduction in rank and was apparently trying to redeem his reputation.

The 167th Field Artillery Brigade of the 92nd Division of the AEF, consisting of black men, was ordered to launch its final charge at 10.30 am. 

Many artillery units continued to fire on German targets to avoid having to haul away their spare ammunition. Another good reason, eh? 

In fact, the war could easily have been ended not a few hours but three days earlier, when a German delegation, headed by Matthias Erzberger of the Catholic Center Party, drove through Allied lines in order to negotiate an armistice. The delegation was escorted to the Compiègne Forest near Paris where, in a railroad dining car converted into a conference room, they were met by Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies. Foch presented the Allies’ terms and told Erzberger that he had 72 hours to obtain the consent of his government or the war would go on. ‘For God’s sake, Monsieur le Marechal,’ Erzberger pleaded, ‘do not wait for those 72 hours. Stop the hostilities this very day.’ His appeal fell on deaf ears. 

Foch had good reason to be confident that the Allies’ terms, harsh as they were, would be accepted. Six weeks earlier, on September 29, the German Supreme Army Command had informed the Kaiser and the Imperial Chancellor that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless. Then, on the night of October 29-30, sailors at the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven, unwilling to be sacrificed in a final naval offensive, had mutinied and their revolt had quickly spread to other ports. The army too was starting to disintegrate under the impact of mass desertions. It was now politically as well as economically and militarily impossible for Germany to sustain further hostilities.

What socialists said about World War 1 at the time

Leaflet by Karl Liebknecht, May 1915:

The main enemy of every people is in their own country!

Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis of German Social Democracy, written in prison in the spring of 1915 and first published at Zurich in February 1916, illegally distributed in Germany:

  Gone is the euphoria… In the prosaic atmosphere of pale day there sounds a different chorus – the hoarse cries of the vulture and the hyenas of the battlefield. Ten thousand tarpaulins guaranteed up to regulations! A hundred thousand kilos of bacon, cocoa powder, coffee-substitute – COD, immediate delivery! Hand grenades, lathes, cartridge pouches, marriage bureaus for widows of the fallen, leather belts, jobbers for war orders – serious offers only! The cannon fodder loaded onto trains in August and September is moldering in the killing fields of Belgium, the Vosges, and Masurian Lakes where the profits are springing up like weeds. It’s a question of getting the harvest into the barn quickly. Across the ocean stretch thousands of greedy hands to snatch it up. 

  Business thrives in the ruins. Cities become piles of ruins; villages become cemeteries; countries, deserts; populations are beggared; churches, horse stalls. International law, treaties and alliances, the most sacred words and the highest authority have been torn in shreds… 

  Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form…

Friedrich Engels once said:  ‘Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.’ What does ‘regression into barbarism’ mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves manfully to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales. In this war imperialism has won. Its bloody sword of genocide has brutally tilted the scale toward the abyss of misery. The only compensation for all the misery and all the shame would be if we learn from the war how the proletariat can seize mastery of its own destiny and escape the role of the lackey to the ruling classes.

Eugene Victor Debs, The Canton, Ohio Anti-War Speech, June 16, 1918

  Sam Johnson declared that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people… 

The working class, who fight all the battles, the working class, who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class, who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace.

Yours not to reason why; 
Yours but to do and die.

That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation…
You need at this time especially to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder. You need to know that you were not created to work and produce and impoverish yourself to enrich an idle exploiter. You need to know that you have a mind to improve, a soul to develop, and a manhood to sustain… 

They are continually talking about your patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches…

Sources

On the last day of the war: here

General background here

On the sailors’ revolts see the first part of Gabriel Kuhn (translator), All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919 (2012)

Stefan

Rear View: Republicans or Democrats: same difference (2019)

The Rear View Column from the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Democratic platform is a political omelette made of stale eggs.’

The 2020 ‘… candidates’ divisions laid bare in feisty TV debate’ (bbc.com, 27 June) resulted in much hot air. The so-called Democratic Socialist (a tautological misnomer) Bernie Sanders added his reformist 50 cents on ‘issues’ such as Medicare, student loans, and taxes. Unsurprisingly, neither he nor the other would-be mis-leaders spoke of the urgent need for a world of free access and production for use where the best education and healthcare would be available for all. And all this without taxes, which might at first glance please Donald Trump. He actually provided the best summary of the debate by tweet the same day: ‘BORING!’

‘The Republican stands for the system as it is; the Democratic Party for the system as it was; the Socialist Party for a new system, the Socialist republic.’

This remains true, although the past for some of today’s Democrats is New Deal America under President Roosevelt. Between the years 1933-36 a series of reforms were introduced as a result of the Great Depression. The Democrats of the time favoured more government intervention, which contemporary Republicans opposed. The Workers’ Socialist Party of the United States, today’s WSP (US), commented: ‘Economic developments are producing conditions that make the case for Socialism more strikingly clear than was possible in the past era of rampant individualism, and collectivistic ideas of sorts are floating around and being discussed in the most unlikely circles. But in the building up of a sound and powerful party of Socialists… a very great amount of work remains to be done’ (More about Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’, Socialist Standard, August 1934).

‘In the light of experience, why should you vote for either the Republican or Democratic parties?’

Indeed, and as true then in 1908 as today. War and poverty remain as does the boom and bust cycle of capitalism. Prior to FDR’s election in 1933, our US-based comrades wrote: ‘It should be clear to all workers that the working class, if they are to escape from the misery of capitalism, must first understand their class position, and must then build up a Socialist political party for the purpose of capturing the powers of government in order to introduce Socialism’ (Socialist Standard, October 1932).

‘This is the only solution of the economic problems of the working class. All else will leave them wage-slaves still’.

The Democrats and Republicans want the 99 percent to take yet another spin on the reformist misery-go-round. Sanders has voted with the Democrats 98 percent of the time. Let us put his qualified support for $15/hour into context:

• 1865: ‘Instead of the conservative motto, A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, Abolition of the wage system’ (Marx, Value, Price, and Profit).
• 1928: ‘Earning a wage is a prison occupation’ (Wages, DH Lawrence).
• 1965: Workers still ‘don’t realise that they can abolish the wages system’ (Socialist Standard).
• 2019: $15/hour by 2024? (Sanders’ Raise the Wage Act).

‘You workers make everything and the capitalists have everything.’

A recent study shows that the richest 0.00025 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans (commomdreams.org, 10 February). Wealth is the product of human labour, acting upon nature-given materials, that is capable of satisfying needs. We work, they take and pass on. Some of today’s capitalists have many centuries of legalised theft behind them. The richest families in Florence got a head start and have been at it for the past 600 years.

‘If the workingmen are to be emancipated, they must emancipate themselves.’

If the quotations above seem dated yet strangely relevant, it is because they were made by a founding member of the IWW and former Democrat Eugene Debs on the US presidential campaign trail in 1908 for the (now defunct) Socialist Party of America. Notably he also said that year: ‘The capitalist system under which we live has about run its historic course, and on every hand we see unerring signs of a change. It has begun to write again its record of bankruptcy and failure, of idleness and distress, of despair and death.’ And: ‘There will be no trouble about the necessities of life when the working class takes over the machinery. They will have all the best food they need, the best homes that can be built, the best schools — no child labor, no grinding toil — and all the beautiful things will be for everyone’ (Source: LINK).

Left Unity, Broad Church (2013)

From the October 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you have ideas that aren’t supported, but you want your ideas to win support what do you do? Should you dismiss the ability of people to think and change and set out to deceive people not supportive of your ideas, since this is what most political parties do? Should you play down your ideas in an organisation, in order to win supporters, putting numbers of supporters as more important than your ideas?

Of course big ideas overlap, it would be sectarian to suggest otherwise, but what if those ideas are political and require political organisation for a political purpose? How important is sticking to your ideas, or what might be called principles, then? What if the idea is socialism, which represents a fundamental break with previous society? How important then, is clearly defining supporters from non-supporters?

The project called Left Unity then is going for the broad approach. There is a willingness to accept subscriptions from members not in agreement on political purpose with other members. Agreeing on action first, then (if at all) worrying about ideological agreement (as unfashionable as that is), is not the way to persuade people. Very quickly they will find out that some ideas negate other ideas, such as higher wages negates abolition of the wages system. Some supporters of the organisation will become ideological opponents (or at least non-supporters) when revolutionary change arises.

The greatest American orator for socialism once said ‘It is better to vote for what you want and not get it, than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.’

Voice From The Back: Down with Leaders (2015)

The  Voice From The Back column from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Down with Leaders

Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor, Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders? Nay, nay and thrice nay! No Governments, No Leaders, No Led! Take Bernie, a staunch supporter of the Democrats. If he becomes the next US President (or, indeed, if Jeremy Corbyn becomes next Prime Minister), what would this mean for the 99 percent? More of the same – and business as usual for the capitalist class. Eugene Debs, an earlier candidate for the same office, made the same observation in 1904: ‘The Republican and Democratic parties … are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principle. With either of these parties in power one thing is always certain and that is that the capitalist class is in the saddle and the working class under the saddle … The ignorant workingman who supports either of these parties forges his own fetters and is the unconscious author of his own misery.’ The same could be said of Labour and the Tories in this country.

Praying for Armageddon

’Pope Francis will give mass in Cuba’s capital on an altar next to a portrait of the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara. A construction crew has begun erecting the altar where Pope Francis is planned to give mass on 20 September as part of his tour to Cuba and the United States. The altar will be placed next to a 36 meters high sculpted outline of Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara, which covers the facade of the Ministry of Interior. The portrait is based on a famous photo by Alberto Korda and sculpted by Cuban artist Enrique Avila’ (telesurtv.net, 4 August). This seems appropriate as Che is viewed as the patron saint: at school every child must repeat each morning, ’we will be like Che.’ The icon is on record as stating, one year after the Cuban missile crisis: ’the people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face of the earth because of an atomic war unleashed in their names … they will feel completely happy and fulfilled.’

Ru$$ia

’Pictures of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman flashing a watch worth an alleged $620,000 [£397,000] on Monday sparked controversy in the crisis-hit country. Dmitry Peskov, who is given a broad remit to voice the views of the Kremlin strongman, was photographed wearing the pricey timepiece as he tied the knot with Olympic ice dancer Tatiana Navka on Saturday in the Black Sea resort of Soch’ (Zee News, 3 August). Socialists are not surprised by such news, having long ago realised that the November 1917 revolution did not end capitalism or the class system which continue today under Putin.

Up, up and away

The development of nuclear missiles in India started decades ago and more recently the launching of satellites commenced. Back on Earth, we are reminded that ’of the 300 million households surveyed, an overwhelming majority (73 percent) live in villages. Of this rural population, less than 5 percent earn enough to pay taxes, only 2.5 percent own a 4-wheeler vehicle and less than 10 percent have salaried jobs. Not only does rural India have miserable statistics on income and asset ownership, its literacy rates are low. Only 3.5 percent of students graduate and around 35.7 percent of residents can’t read or write’ (CNN, 2 August). The same source adds ’it comes as no surprise that the bulk of the Indian population is still overwhelmingly poor.’ Indeed.

Beyond economics

‘When discussing my upcoming book on the economics of Star Trek with people who have only a passing interest in the show, I have noticed that the issue of work keeps coming back. More specifically, casual viewers, professional economists and members of the press alike seem to hone in on the (fictional) consequences of automation. Arguably, Star Trek is the only sci-fi franchise that takes automation seriously. In Star Trek, the necessity to work to provide for oneself has vanished. Star Trek society, as depicted in the show, is perhaps the most popular example of what is called a ’post-scarcity’ economy, for lack of a better term’ (Business Insider, 3 August). Everyone in a socialist world will have the possibility to live long and prosper – without money.

Employment is prostitution

There has been much debate in the Guardian this summer over prostitution, should it be decriminalised or not? Lacking, sadly, is the socialist perspective, as put forward by Marx in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, for example, in which he saw such work as ’only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer.’ Such dehumanisation of those involved will only end when the terms buyer and seller become redundant with the establishment of socialism.

The SPA: Dashed on the Rocks of Compromise (2016)

Book Review from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Other than in our Socialist Party, way too much thought on revolutionary socialist organisation gets written advocating Lenin’s way as the one and only way and applying historic conditions under Russian feudalism to Western democracies today, and whose justification amounts to thinly veiled apologetics for ‘history is written by the victors’. The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History by Jack Ross, published last year, joins the comparatively smaller range of literature not from this vanguard perspective, and even opposed to it. Ross declares that the Socialist Party of America was unique in the history of American politics as a minor party that enjoyed a consistent level of public support, a wide ranging impact and respected place in the national conversation for half a century. The term ‘social democracy’ he argues, captured more accurately and precisely their goals marked also by a commitment to the ballot box as a means of advancing a political economy in the interests of the working class represented by the trade union movement.

Eugene Debs
The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was formed in 1901 by the merger of the Populist movement remnant led by Eugene V. Debs and the dissenting faction led by Morris Hillquit of the ‘increasingly sectarian’ Socialist Labor Party (SLP) of Daniel De Leon. Before Lenin, revolutionary insurrection was not the goal and Marxists looked to the electoral success of the German SDP. The founding principles, the Rochester platform from 1899, adopted by 125 delegates, were compromised from the start, adopting the short and succinct list (albeit as an addendum) of ‘immediate demands’ of the Social Democrats such as Debs, Job Harriman and Victor Berger.

The SPA believed in independent action on class conscious lines and refused to seek to wrest control of the main trade union body, the American Federation of Labor (AFL). They believed themselves worthy of trade union support. A Chicago convention they packed in 1901 saw them voting down forming a Labour party. They respected the autonomy of unions engaged in struggle and rejected movement towards a general strike. Ira Kipnis wrote in The American Socialist Movement 1897-1912 that ‘by the 1904 convention, the party had already divided into three loose factions, left, right and center.’ Ross argues this history is discredited and no-one in the SPA pre-1905 rejected the ballot box outright but the adoption of ‘immediate demands’ (other than socialism) was to prove its undoing.

In 1904 these ‘immediate demands’ were an eight hour day, social insurance, an income tax, inheritance tax, abolition of child labour, women’s suffrage, the initiative referendum and recall at all levels of government. A resolution also passed against the syndicalist idea of dual or ‘revolutionary’ unionism. Ross says it was probably in the platform debates of 1904 that the label ‘impossibilist’ emerged describing the ‘utopian’ belief that socialism was impossible through legislative reform and could only be created through revolution. Nevertheless SPA Presidential candidate Eugene Debs declared ‘Government ownership of public utilities means nothing for labor under capitalist ownership of government’ and won just under three percent of the vote.

In 1908 the immediate demands from 1904 were made ‘more comprehensive’, ‘but still concise, establish[ing] the general program that would remain largely unchanged through the end of the 1930s’ and a train ‘the Red Special’ was even leased for the 1908 presidential campaign. The American trade union body the American Federation of Labor (AFL) endorsed the Democratic Party, a rare constant for the twentieth century. Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset argues the obstacles could all have been overcome had the AFL endorsed the SPA. This conclusion is the wrong way round and the AFL probably quite correctly judged the Democrats as better able to deliver immediate demands, and the immediate demands of the SPA as a poor imitation departing from socialism. Ross tacitly acknowledges ‘popularity of the SPA did not come from any ‘boring from within’ of parliamentary trickery whereby the unions were to be put on record as supporters of socialism, but by socialists … converting them to their way of thought.’

Keir Hardie visited in 1909 calling for an Independent Labour Party as a united formation. Thankfully this wasn’t without opposition, although (p. 139) Ross seems to conflate the majority ‘impossibilist’ opposition (and the IWW) with the minority ‘Left-wing’ opposition (under International Socialist Review).  One member W.E. Walling summed it up: ‘Labor parties adopt the ethics and philosophy of capitalism . . .  denying the class struggle.’

That anti-Labor party impossibilism was not synonymous with ‘the Left wing’ was aptly demonstrated when Berger, Hillquit, Harriman and Spargo all agreed ‘any member who opposes political action or advocates crime, sabotage or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working-class to aid in its emancipation, shall be expelled.’ Even Debs was ‘against sabotage, and every other form of violence and destructiveness suggested by what is known as direct action.’ Both peak vote and peak membership were achieved in 1912 when Debs ran for President and achieved six percent of the vote and membership reached 150,000 paying dues.

At this point, it should have been clear that a long-term strategy of rejection of Labor party immediate demands, commitment to the ballot box and rejection of direct action insurrection and respect for trade union autonomy was not only sustainable but an effective strategy. If their strategy was good, the same could not be said for their policy. Immediate demands were kept, with Roosevelt ‘annexing a large slice of the reform program’ and the large Debs vote was misleading (‘The Pseudo Socialist Vote’, Socialist Standard January 1913).

There were two other factors that came into play, one was World War I and the other was Bolshevism. The mainstay SPA publication Appeal to Reason (under new ownership) came out in favour of the war, and while Keir Hardie was helping conscription efforts in Britain (contrary to Ross’ assertion on p. 157 that Hardie was anti-war), Eugene Debs was locked up for publicly calling to resist conscription. This imprisoning of those perceived as socialists was part of the first Wilsonian Red Scare. The Daily Kos review of Ross’s book (LINK) comments ‘organized labor swung firmly behind the war effort … There is little evidence to support the idea that the anti-war tradition would have continued to be dominant in a genuine Labor Party.’

As we commented in the Socialist Standard at the time: ‘Victor Berger, one of the most anti-Socialist leaders of the SPA, has also been given 20 years, though he supported the Mexican War and militarism. He was widely known as a pro-German. While Berger wrote the pro-German articles for the Milwaukee Leader, Simons did the pro-Ally work on the same periodical.’ ‘The mass of S.P. membership can be estimated by their continual support of the official clique and by their sticking to such a rotten organisation. Morris Hillquit, the “brains of the S.P.,” one of the many lawyers on the National Executive, offered to organise an army of Socialists to help to explain democracy to the Germans overseas. He also admitted that if he had been a member of Congress he would have voted for the war’ (‘Class Struggle in the USA’, Socialist Standard, September 1919).

At this point, 42 SPA members left the Detroit local. With others who had not been SPA members they formed the Socialist Party of the United States on July 7 1916. They later described the SPA as confused reformers and confused direct actionists (Western Socialist #4 1966). The SPA threatened them with a lawsuit over their name and so they renamed themselves the Workers Socialist Party of the United States. No mention is made of them in Ross’ book.

The second factor of interest, was a personal visit by Trotsky to an SPA member in Brooklyn on Jan 14 1917 who ‘personally initiated and inspired much of the left-wing fury, … motivated by his pathological hatred for Hillquit in particular.’ At the 1919 August 30 convention, John Reed assaulted SPA chair Julius Gerber leading one member to comment ‘Many believe it is not only possible to follow the Russian example but mandatory. They declare that they alone hold the secret of success and it is their duty to impose it on the party.’ Ross mentions the expulsion of John Keracher’s Proletarian Party from Michigan as a ‘tiny sect almost entirely based in Detroit until the end of the 1960s.’

A measure of the socialist understanding of the members of the SPA was the anti-war St Louis Platform. This lost more pro-war members from the SPA than were lost to Bolshevism and the American Communists who boasted that they could change their line in 24 hours. Victor Berger commented ‘in this game of would-be radical phrases, the emptier the barrel the louder the sound.’

Norman Thomas
The 1919 conference saw the ‘Communist Left-Wing’ depart the SPA to form their own party. And in 1920 the SPA reaffirmed its disinterest in a Labour party by declaring its refusal to work with other groups. In 1927 the SPA launched its own radio station called WEVD which managed to broadcast until the 1980s. Two founding figures were lost when Eugene Debs died in 1926 and Victor Berger in 1929. A new faction rejecting the ballot box appeared, called the Militant faction proving past lessons hadn’t been learned.

In 1934 the SPA held a rally at Madison Square garden which was attacked by Communist Party members. Against the insurrectionary rhetoric of the Militant Faction inside the SPA stood the ‘Old Guard’ of the SPA who issued a 1934 restatement of principles calling themselves the Committee for the Preservation of the Socialist Party. It argued for education and propaganda not direct action and insurrection. In 1935, the SPA went on the offensive, Norman Thomas debated Earl Browder the new leader of the Communist Party and the ‘Old Guard’ dissolved twelve New York Militant branches.

The new presidential candidate Norman Thomas’ vote peaked in 1932, proving not quite as popular as Debs. New president Franklin D. Roosevelt received Norman Thomas and Morris Hillquit at the White House following the 1932 election shortly before Hillquit died a year later. Roosevelt’s New Deal would successfully co-opt all radical opposition and the following election in 1936 saw the SPA not on a record number of state ballots. This is the dire consequence of political trading with shrewd operators like Roosevelt.

Some resolve prevailed intermittently, with Norman Thomas observing and commenting: ‘Trotsky and above all Stalin, pioneered in that contempt for pity, and that Machiavellian ruthlessness in which Hitler has become so adept’ and expelled Trotskyist entryists in the SPA, leading one prominent Trotskyist, Hal Draper, to form the Socialist Workers Party (US). The SPA unambiguously opposed World War II and in 1940 expelled the Militants, but on the other hand also watered down even their immediate demands.

It is strange that Ross should neglect to mention at all (even in the footnotes) the World Socialist Party, a non-Leninist and non-reformist group but he also dismisses the SLP (US) as ‘sectarian’ without fully explaining why (where Kipnis devotes at least one chapter to the SLP). The SLP (US) expelled SPA members from the IWW union, seemingly disenchanting the SPA with syndicalism, before the SLP (US) found themselves expelled (see ‘Marxism in the USA’, Socialist Standard December 1968). To explain this would highlight Ross’ attachment to syndicalism and forming a Labor party by trade unions. Ross casts the 19th century Populist Party and the early 20th century Progressive Party as missed opportunities for the SPA. Ross claims ‘a Labor party, had it emerged would have profoundly differed from post-war liberalism’. This is to go against the experience of the Labour Party in Britain.

Trotskyism and the New Left
In 1952, the SPA presidential candidate Darlington Hoopes polled so disappointingly poorly that the SLP (US) outpolled them for the first time ever, and the SPA stopped fielding presidential candidates for good not long after. The SPA had survived the Commies in 1919 and survived the Militants in 1934, but it was one-time Trotskyist Max Shachtman who would prove their undoing in the 1960s.

One SPA member wrote ‘I can’t see why the official pacifist groups have to spend so much time on piffling projects like those temporary fasts, White House picketing etc. when all it does is impress its terrible weakness applying some of the minor Gandhi tactics where their chance of success is infinitely smaller that it makes them look ridiculous’.

Ross observes ‘This transformation of the American left that began with the rise of the Popular Front in the 1930s amounted to the displacement of historic American Socialism by a deeply undemocratic approach to politics. Throughout the 1960s, Erich Fromm’s ‘Let Man Prevail’ SPA manifesto was constantly in demand from the national office whereas Max Shachtman’s tome on the development of Stalinism, ‘the Bureaucratic Revolution’ gathered dust on the shelves’.

Ross writes ‘The Shachtmanite SPA majority endorsed the Democrats at the 1968 SPA conference.’ ‘A long wave of SPA resignations began.’ ‘In November 1970 the SPA and Democratic Socialist Federation jointly sponsored a rally for Israel, a merger had been in the works since 1969.’ ‘In December 1972 the SPA announced it would be known as the Social Democrats USA. The Wisconsin Socialists passed a resolution that they interpreted this to mean the SPA had ceased to exist.’ ‘In 1980 the SDUSA endorsed Ronald Reagan and invited the Nicaraguan contras to speak at their 1985 conference’.

The Socialist Party of America ceased to be in 1972 when the Chairman, Michael Harrington, resigned in October. Then in December it changed its name to ‘Social Democrats, USA.’ There was a minority without legal entitlement to the membership or assets, determined to continue. One minority later launched the SPUSA, a ‘broad multi-tendency democratic socialist’ organisation which exists to this day. It runs candidates for President and is doing so again this year.

Ross writes that the SPA was an exceptional party in an exceptional nation. The review of his book  in the American Conservative argues ‘Ross pays little attention to ideas and proceeds chronologically rather than analytically’ and concluded that socialist parties in Europe embraced much the same blend of social welfare, economic corporatism, and militarized internationalism that had defined the Democratic Party at least since FDR. So perhaps America is not exceptional after all.

Two excerpts from our history demonstrate the foresight of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and our American companion party and provide a rather more fitting conclusion:

  ‘If the Socialist Party of America had preached Socialism and got votes for Socialism, neither Republican nor Democrat could have enticed their votes away’ (‘Lessons from the American Elections’, Socialist Standard, January 1929). 

‘Labor Parties are the same everywhere. They are all parties of reform. Names mean nothing. The Social Democratic Party of Germany, The British Labor Party and the Socialist Party of America—where the P. P. came from in 1919—are Labor Parties, whose purpose is to reform the capitalist system. They gather into their ranks all kinds of cranks and misleaders voicing hazy notions of a land of promise somewhere in the future. Their history shows that their leaders were ever willing to betray the workers. During the war all the Labor Parties supported their respective governments. Even now in Britain where the Labor Government rules, nothing has or will be done to endanger the steady flow of profits into the coffers of the capitalists’ (The Socialist, March 1930).

DJW