American Left
The American Left refers to the groups or ideas on the left of the political spectrum in the United States. It is occasionally used as a shorthand for the Democratic Party and groups aligned with the Democratic Party. At other times, it refers to groups that seek or have sought egalitarian changes in the economic, political, and cultural institutions of the United States. Various left subgroups with a national scope are active. Liberals and progressives believe that equality can be accommodated into existing capitalist structures, but they differ in their criticism of capitalism and on the extent of reform and the welfare state. Anarchists, communists, and socialists with international imperatives are also present within this macro-movement. Many communes and egalitarian communities have existed in the United States as a sub-category of the broader intentional community movement, some of which were based on utopian socialist ideals. The left has been involved in both the Democratic and Republican parties at different times, having originated in the Democratic-Republican Party as opposed to the Federalist Party.
Although left-wing politics came to the United States in the 19th century, there are currently no major left-wing political parties in the country. Despite existing left-wing factions within the centre-left Democratic Party, as well as minor third parties such as the Green Party, Communist Party USA, Party for Socialism and Liberation, American Communist Party, Workers World Party, Socialist Party, and American Solidarity Party, there have been few representatives of left-leaning third parties in Congress. Academic scholars have long studied the reasons why no viable socialist parties have emerged in the United States. Some writers ascribe this to the failures of socialist organization and leadership, some to the incompatibility of socialism with American values, and others to the limitations imposed by the United States Constitution. Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky were particularly concerned with the lack of a viable American Left because it challenged orthodox Marxist beliefs that advanced industrial countries, like the United States, would provide a model for the future of less developed nations. While branches of the Working Men's Party were founded in the 1820s and 1830s in the United States, they advocated land reform, universal education and improved working conditions in the form of labor rights, not collective ownership, disappearing after their goals were taken up by Jacksonian democracy. Samuel Gompers, the leader of the American Federation of Labor, opposed communism in favor of Georgism and thought that American workers must rely on themselves because any rights provided by government could be revoked.
Economic unrest in the 1890s was represented by populism and the People's Party. Although using anti-capitalist rhetoric, it represented the views of small farmers who wanted to protect their own private property, not a call for communism, collectivism, or socialism. Progressives in the early 20th century criticized the way capitalism had developed but were essentially middle class and reformist; however, both populism and progressivism steered some to left-wing politics; many popular writers of the progressive period were left-wing. Even the New Left relied on radical democratic traditions rather than left-wing ideology. Friedrich Engels thought that the lack of a feudal past was the reason for the American working class holding middle-class values. Writing at a time when American industry was developing quickly towards the mass-production system known as Fordism, Max Weber and Antonio Gramsci saw individualism and laissez-faire liberalism as core shared American beliefs. According to the historian David De Leon, American radicalism was rooted in libertarianism and syndicalism rather than communism, Fabianism and social democracy, being opposed to centralized power and collectivism. The character of the American political system is hostile toward third parties and has also been presented as a reason for the absence of a strong socialist party in the United States. Political repression has also contributed to the weakness of the left in the United States. Many cities had Red Squads to monitor and disrupt leftist groups in response to labor unrest such as the Haymarket Riot. The legacy of slavery and racial discrimination created deep divisions within the working class, producing a racially stratified, two-tiered labor force. These divisions fostered divergent political priorities and undermined class solidarity, making it more difficult for left-wing movements to build broad-based coalitions.
During World War II, the Smith Act made membership in revolutionary groups illegal. After the war, Senator Joseph McCarthy used the Smith Act to launch a crusade to purge alleged communists from government and the media. In the 1960s, the FBI's COINTELPRO program monitored, infiltrated, disrupted and discredited radical groups in the United States. In 2008, Maryland police were revealed to have added the names and personal information of anti-war protesters and death penalty opponents to a database which was intended to be used for tracking terrorists. Terry Turchie, a former deputy assistant director of the FBI Counterterrorism Division, admitted that "one of the missions of the FBI in its counterintelligence efforts was to try to keep these people out of office."
History
Origins and developments (17th century–20th century)
Many indigenous tribes in North America practiced what Marxists would later call primitive communism, meaning they practiced economic cooperation among the members of their tribes.The first European socialists to arrive in North America were a Christian sect known as Labadists, who founded the commune of Bohemia Manor in 1683, about west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their communal way of life was based on the communal practices of the apostles and early Christians.
The first secular American socialists were German Marxist immigrants who arrived following the Revolutions of 1848, also known as Forty-Eighters. Joseph Weydemeyer, a German colleague of Karl Marx who sought refuge in New York in 1851 following the 1848 revolutions, established the first Marxist journal in the U.S., called Die Revolution, but It folded after two issues. In 1852 he established the Proletarierbund, which would become the American Workers' League, the first Marxist organization in the U.S., but it too was short-lived, having failed to attract a native English-speaking membership.
In 1866, William H. Sylvis formed the National Labor Union. Frederich Albert Sorge, a German who had found refuge in New York following the 1848 revolutions, took Local No. 5 of the NLU into the First International as Section One in the U.S. By 1872, there were 22 sections, which were able to hold a convention in New York. The General Council of the International moved to New York with Sorge as General Secretary, but following internal conflict, it dissolved in 1876.
A larger wave of German immigrants followed in the 1870s and 1880s, which included social democratic followers of Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassalle believed that state aid through political action was the road to revolution and was opposed to trade unionism which he saw as futile, believing that according to the iron law of wages employers would only pay subsistence wages. The Lassalleans formed the Social Democratic Party of North America in 1874 and both Marxists and Lassalleans formed the Workingmen's Party of the United States in 1876. When the Lassalleans gained control in 1877, they changed the name to the Socialist Labor Party of North America. However, many socialists abandoned political action altogether and moved to trade unionism. Two former socialists, Adolph Strasser and Samuel Gompers, formed the American Federation of Labor in 1886.
Anarchists split from the Socialist Labor Party to form the Revolutionary Socialist Party in 1881. By 1885 they had 7,000 members, double the membership of the SLP. They were inspired by the International Anarchist Congress of 1881 in London. There were two federations in the United States that pledged adherence to the International. A convention of immigrant anarchists in Chicago formed the International Working People's Association, while a group of Native Americans in San Francisco formed the International Workingmen's Association. Following a violent demonstration at Haymarket in Chicago in 1886, public opinion turned against anarchism. While very little violence could be attributed to anarchists, the attempted murder of a financier by an anarchist in 1892 and the 1901 assassination of the American president, William McKinley, by a professed anarchist led to the ending of political asylum for anarchists in 1903. In 1919, following the Palmer Raids, anarchists were imprisoned and many, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, were deported. Yet anarchism again reached great public notice with the trial of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, who would be executed in 1927.
Daniel De Leon, who became leader of the SLP in 1890, took it in a Marxist direction. Eugene V. Debs, who had been an organizer for the American Railway Union formed the rival Social Democratic Party of America in 1898. Members of the SLP, led by Morris Hillquit and opposed to the De Leon's domineering personal rule and his anti-AFL trade union policy joined with the Social Democrats to form the Socialist Party of America. In 1905, a convention of socialists, anarchists and trade unionists disenchanted with the bureaucracy and craft unionism of the AFL, founded the rival Industrial Workers of the World, led by such figures as William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, Helen Keller, De Leon and Debs.
The organizers of the IWW disagreed on whether electoral politics could be employed to liberate the working class. Debs left the IWW in 1906, and De Leon was expelled in 1908, forming a rival "Chicago IWW" that was closely linked to the SLP. The IWW's ideology evolved into anarcho-syndicalism, or "revolutionary industrial unionism", and avoided electoral political activity altogether. It was successful organizing unskilled migratory workers in the lumber, agriculture, and construction trades in the Western states and immigrant textile workers in the Eastern states and occasionally accepted violence as part of industrial action.
The SPA was divided between reformers who believed that socialism could be achieved through gradual reform of capitalism and revolutionaries who thought that socialism could only develop after capitalism was overthrown, but the party steered a center path between the two. The SPA achieved the peak of its success by 1912 when its presidential candidate received 5.9% of the popular vote. The first Socialist congressman, Victor L. Berger, had been elected in 1910. By the beginning of 1912, there were 1,039 Socialist officeholders, including 56 mayors, 305 aldermen and councilmen, 22 police officials, and some state legislators. Milwaukee, Berkeley, Butte, Schenectady, and Flint were run by Socialists. A Socialist challenger to Gompers took one-third of the vote in a challenge for leadership of the AFL. The SPA had 5 English and 8 foreign-language daily newspapers, 262 English and 36 foreign-language weeklies, and 10 English and 2 foreign-language monthlies.
American entry into the First World War in 1917 led to a patriotic hysteria aimed against Germans, immigrants, African Americans, class-conscious workers, and Socialists, and the ensuing Espionage Act and Sedition Act were used against them. The government harassed Socialist newspapers, the post office denied the SP use of the mails, and antiwar militants were arrested. Soon Debs and more than sixty IWW leaders were charged under the acts.