What happened to Yankee Radicalism?
“American Socialist” is a term that strikes many as an oxymoron, but it was not always that way. From Eugene Debs to Bobby Seale, Helen Keller to Murray Bookchin, to John Brown and the Sons of Liberty; radicalism in general and socialism in particular has been a part of our political landscape since our inception as a nation. This Independence Day we would do well to remember them, and to ask ourselves where exactly these radicals have gone.
Perhaps the most success American Socialists ever achieved was in the election of 1912, when the Teddy Roosevelt’s social-democratic Progressive Party came in second with 27% of the popular vote and Eugene Debs’ orthodox-Marxist Socialist Party came up with 6% of the popular vote (notably more than either the modern Libertarian or Green parties have managed since). The success of the Far-Left in that election as well as the success in the later half of the decade on the part of international working class movements precipitated the greatest campaign of censorship and political terror enacted in the country: The Red Scare.
Officially started in 1917 as a response to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, federal law enforcement agencies began to target “subversive” groups under the guidance of the Overman Committee. The strategy of these agencies was not fully dissolve these groups, as at the time that was considered infeasible, but instead to prevent their unification. This was accomplished in two major ways, firstly by silencing figures like Eugene Debs who had a diverse array of movements at his back and secondly by preventing American Leftist organizations from receiving international aid. The former they achieved through the arrests of Socialist leadership, most notably Debs, who was arrested at a stump speech in Ohio on ten charges of sedition. The latter they achieved by raiding establishments with ties to international Socialist movements, most notably the 1919 May Day Raid on the Russian People’s House.
1919 proved to be a quite eventful year indeed, as Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer put a young J. Edgar Hoover at the head of task force created to eliminate radicalism and dissent. This task force then conducted two huge police actions against suspected radicals known as the Palmer Raids. In total 556 “Reds” were captured and deported. Hoover continued his surveillance program, monitoring and occasionally seizing Socialist communiques, and assembling a list of “marked men” who were repeatedly the targets of hit pieces in the press and had their character sabotaged by the strategic release of compromising documents held by Hoover. This served to drastically reduce the public appeal of the 1920 May Day marches and the American Left in general.
Despite Leftists loosing much of their public appeal as a result of Hoover’s campaigns against them, they continued to influence the public through the spread of theories and ideas of Socialist origin. This meant that though “Socialists” were no longer a potent political block in America, Socialist ideas would slowly be implemented as sympathetic centrists would subconsciously promote them. This changed, however, as the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II made the Soviet Union a challenger to American supremacy and once again made Leftism the target of American Government.
Loyalty tests started in 1949 for government officials revealed ideological “impurities” permeating every level of American social structure, as most moderate Americans held views that one could consider “quietly Marxist”. From beliefs that Wall Street and Washington worked against the common man, to beliefs that people should own what they produce; the elites feared that the American populace was ripe for mass conversion to the side of “the Reds” should a Leftist insurrection ever occur in the United States. So, they set about purging Leftist thought from American consciousness.
The process for doing so was threefold: Firstly, they played up fears of a foreign Communist attack to brand Leftism as un-American. Next, they used public figures as scapegoats and strawmen, to promote ideological orthodoxy in the masses out of fear. Lastly, and most far reachingly, they set about diluting Leftist theory so that Leftists could be coopted into manageable positions in the future.
These first two steps were implemented under the supervision of Senator Joe McCarthy’s House Committee on Un-American Activities which saw the promotion of propaganda against Communism as well as saw numerous public figures publicly questioned as to their involvement with Leftist organizations. As the trials wore on, they began to pursue figures with scarcer and scarcer connections to the political Left, thereby forcing a terrorized populace to rid themselves of whatever Marxist leanings they may have held. In response to this, universities began to ban Marx from the classroom, Hollywood began to deny films and shows with Leftist themes a greenlight, and Communist theories became muddled and misunderstood in the American consciousness.
With strong Marxist theories effectively censored, new ideas began to pop up masquerading as “Marxist”. Soon American “Marxism” became a mess of competing theories that drifted further and further from their root. “Cultural Marxism” became the newest iteration of theory, a shell of the former glory of the American Socialist Party. Instead of “the Class Struggle” Cultural Marxists promoted the “Axes of Privilege” wherein oppression was no longer based in an objective Class Struggle that saw a unified proletariat combating a unilaterally oppressive bourgeoisie master class but rather based in a subjective matter of identity. Making every individual simultaneously oppressed and oppressive, as an individual holds both “marginalized” (oppressed) and “privileged” (identities). The term “Communism” got even worse treatment, being altered in the public’s mind from an economic system wherein the means of production are owned publicly to a catchall term for “when the government does stuff”.
Naturally, there were opponents to this declawing of the Left, most notably the Black Panthers. Universally they were met with incredible violence, with their leadership being executed without a trial in police raids. Eventually, however, as bourgeois academia began to accept the new post-Marx narratives given to them, authorities did not even need to address those who would see American Leftism return to its roots; the new followers of neoliberal Social Justice fought them themselves.
All is not lost, however, as the flawed analyses put in place in the last century to restrict American political thought has been growing increasingly unpopular as more and more failings come to light. Now, with the rise of new progressive figures like Senator Bernie senators (who, while not perfect, does carry the faintest hint of Debsian rhetoric) “American Socialists” are rising from obscurity to once again try to wrest control of society from the elites and return it to the hands of the working class. So, as we embrace another 4th of July, we should not hate this country for its sins, but should instead remember where we once were and the potential for us to reach such heights again.
