Whither American Socialism?

For two centuries socialism—a term first used by the French political economist Pierre Leroux—has been both a critique of capitalism and an alternative to it. In the United States, it has proved far more influential as the first than as the second. Before a joint session of Congress in 1825, Robert Owen, a wealthy, altruistic factory owner, condemned “this inferior trading system” (that is, capitalism) for allowing people “to obtain advantages over others” and giving “a very injurious surplus of wealth and power to the few” while inflicting “poverty and subjection on the many.” But nearly every agrarian collectivist colony he inspired across the country scattered to the winds after just a few years.A socialist movement composed largely of wage earners sprang up toward the end of the nineteenth century. It effectively denounced the robber barons of industry and finance for ruling the economy, busting unions, and buying off politicians. But Marxists who dreamed of a workers’ republic could not compete with the reformers in Congress who enacted such measures as a progressive income tax, antitrust legislation, and a ban on child labor. Skillful organizers who belonged to the Communist ...