1. The term "The Left" dates back to the French Revolution when in the constituent assembly, the more extreme and militant delegates occupied seats to the left of the front of the hall from the viewpoint of someone facing the delegates. In more modern parlance, it refers to those who perceive some urgent need for democratic and egalitarian change in existing circumstances and who believe that collective action is necessary to achieve it. Leftists can be defined in part by what they oppose, notably militarism, racism, elitism, authoritarianism. But within the broad tent occupied by people of The Left, there are many diverse tendencies, movements, perspectives, and organizations. Some of the fiercest political battles of the 20^th century were among people who saw themselves as being part of The Left but who disagreed sharply-even at times, violently-with others who also claimed that rubric. One broad division is between those who believe that capitalism must be supplanted by common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, on the one hand, and those who believe that meaningful democratic and egalitarian reform can take place within capitalist structures.
 

2. Marxism. Karl Marx (1819-1883) was the author of Capital, the classic and basic text of modern socialism. He was also a shrewd and incisive journalist and commentator, as well as a political activist. Along with his collaborator and financial angel, Frederich Engels, Marx saw capitalism as both a liberating and an exploitative force. Its dynamism destroyed all the old traditions and hierarchies, freeing people from the dead hand of the past. However, its success depended on the exploitation of labor and the appropriation of wealth by an increasingly small and powerful class of owners of the means of production (and their political henchmen). Capitalism carried within itself the seeds of its own destruction because in exploiting labor, it created an ever larger and more alienated class of workers whose increasingly desperate conditions and outrage at their exploitation would eventually lead to revolutionary action. Eventually, as the social crisis created by capitalism deepened, the expropriators (i.e., capitalists) would be expropriated (i.e., workers would destroy the system and gain control of the means of production themselves).
 

Marxism was (and is) a broad, generic intellectual and political tendency. Some Marxists see Marx's writings as virtually sacred and probe them endlessly for instructions on how to act. More sophisticated Marxists, however, take his basic insights as to the material basis of all political and social life and seek to apply them in a flexible way. Agreeing with Marx's basic analysis, contemporary socialists believe that the apocalyptical vision of a labor-capital Armageddon is no longer relevant. Others stress the democratic thrust of Marxism, the call for empowering the majority and resisting the claims of the wealthy. Still others stress Marx's early writings, in which he wrote lyrically about the need to reclaim human agency in the face of relentless division of labor and alienation of workers from the tools of production. There are Christian Marxists, Marxist humanists, neo-Marxists, even pro-market Marxists. For my money, the best single book on Marxism, one that has insightful things to say about its application to conditions in the US, is Michael Harrington, Socialism (1972).
 

3. Socialism. Socialism is the generic term applied to those on the Left who believed (and believe) that a truly just and humane society cannot be achieved so long as the means of production, distribution, and exchange remain in private hands and who believe that the state must play a crucial role in the transition to a new form of social organization. Traditionally, socialism has been associated with government ownership and operation of economic activities, although many socialists believe(d) that only the "commanding heights"-the large, concentrated, critical industries and utilities such as railroads, steel, banking-need be publicly owned. There are and have been many varieties of socialism but in the absence of explicit qualifying remarks, for the purposes of this class when reference is made to "socialism," it means the ideas and programs and movements associated with the main socialist political parties and labor organizations in the western countries (i.e., industrialized regions, mainly Western Europe, the British Commonwealth, the US) in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. These socialist movements were strongly critical of the inequities of capitalism, strongly supportive of organized labor, and quite confident that socialism represented the wave of the future. In Europe, socialist organizations were at the forefront of those seeking to expand the suffrage and to bring working people into the political community. In more recent decades, socialists have lost much of their previous confidence but they continue to be critical of market capitalism, which they believe breeds inequality, waste, political corruption, and the disempowerment of ordinary people.
 

4. Social Democracy. In the heyday of socialism (ca. 1880-1950), many socialists, while remaining critical of capitalism, came to believe that Marx's basic analysis needed revision in light of more recent developments. Many of those active in the German Social Democratic Party (which was the largest political party in Germany for much of this period) and the British Labour Party (which after 1919 constituted the main opposition party in Britain and which came to power in 1945) came to regard the reform and regulation of capitalism as the only realistic goal. In Marx's day, so raw and naked was the exploitative thrust of capitalism it was reasonable to regard its overthrow as possible and necessary. But now, Social Democrats (most of whom remained active in socialist parties and organizations) argued, we have shown that it is possible to control capitalism through public regulation and legislation to protect workers from its excesses by encouraging trade unionism and regulating working conditions, as well as by state provision of medical, old age, and unemployment benefits. Social Democrats continued to be sharp critics of capitalism and often continued to believe that in the very long run capitalism would have to be supplanted but in practical political affairs they reached out to non-socialist progressives and liberals, cut back on the revolutionary rhetoric, and operated within the political system to improve the social welfare, educational, and regulatory functions of government. In 1959, the German Social Democratic Party formally abandoned explicitly revolutionary intent, while in 1995 the British Labour Party rescinded Clause Four of its 1919 constitution that had called for full public ownership of the means of production and distribution. In the US, the Socialist Party of America reached a peak in the WWI era, with its charismatic early leader Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) capturing 900,000 votes in the 1912 presidential election and many local officials and two congressmen gaining election on the Socialist ticket. Since the 1920s, however, socialism has been only a marginal element in US political life and leading American socialists such as Norman Thomas (1884-1968) and Michael Harrington (1929-1989) have functioned more as social democratic critics and champions of social justice than leaders of a vanguard party.
 

5. Anarchism. The anarchist criticism of capitalism is both similar to and very different from that of the Marxist. "Man was born free," declared Rousseau in the 18^th century, "but is everywhere in chains." In common with Marxists, anarchists such as Mikhail Bakunin denounced the exploitation inherent in capitalism. But whereas Marx and later socialists saw as the goal of revolutionary activity the gaining of state power, anarchists warned that any government, no matter how formally democratic, would inevitably degenerate into tyranny. This would especially be true of a socialist government that combined political and economic functions. Instead of gaining control of government, whether by revolutionary or legal means, anarchists believed, it was necessary for workers and citizens to gain democratic control of their workplaces and neighborhoods. While socialists envisaged a kind of superstate, coordinating everything from the top, anarchists believed in grass roots activism, without formal structures of governmental authority being necessary. Only through local activism and the insistence on grass roots democratic decision-making could people be truly free.
 

Some anarchists turned to violence, believing that "propaganda by the deed" could shatter the existing order and provide a liminal moment in which old structures of capitalist economics and bureaucratic government might be destroyed, providing room for the sprouting of innumerable popular organizations in workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities. Some anarchists preached sabotage and even assassination and indeed during this period there were many episodes of political murder (e.g., the killing of President William McKinley in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, a self-styled anarchist) and bombings perpetrated by violent anarchist groups in the US, Russia, and Western Europe. Most anarchists, however, rejected violence. Over the years, the repression and victimization of anarchists (and other radicals) by public authorities and private vigilantes in the West far exceeded the violence perpetrated by radicals.
 

6. Syndicalism. Syndicalism is the belief-actually, an extension and application of anarchist principles-in workers' control. The workplace, syndicalists such as Georges Sorel held, is the nodal point of modern civilization. Sorel spoke of the "myth of the general strike," meaning by the word "myth" not a falsehood but an organizing and sustaining principle or goal. Workers have the inherent power to gain control of the means of production and, through the exercise of this power, the central economic and political structures in society. Syndicalists urged that exploited workers ignore political action, which they felt was a distraction and a blind alley, and that they exert their decisive power at the point of production. Fight "on the job, where you're robbed," in the words of an American Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) slogan. Worker solidarity across lines of skill, gender, nationality, race, and ethnicity would enable workers to bring down the existing order and "create a new world from the ashes of the old." The militant syndicalism of the IWW, implying as it did the ignoring of existing structures of power and the building of an alternative social order from the workplace outward, is sometimes termed anarcho-syndicalism.
 

7. Leninism. Leninism, Bolshevism, or Soviet Communism are roughly synonymous terms. Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) was the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the main Russian socialist party and leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and head of the new Soviet state. Two main ideas characterize Leninism: 1) rather than waiting for the masses of people to develop a revolutionary consciousness, a small cadre of dedicated revolutionaries must foment revolution and control its processes, bringing the masses along through their example and through the instruments of state power developed in the Bolshevik seizure of power; 2) the only reason that capitalism in the industrialized West has not followed the trajectory outlined by Marx is because of western states' imperial expansion and domination of what later would be called "the Third World." In effect, Lenin argued, western capitalist regimes had been able to buy off their working classes through economic exploitation of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the wealth of which provided a sufficient surplus for capitalists and their political henchmen to raise living standards at home and thus deflect potentially revolutionary activism. While the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union initially derived from the common critique of capitalism shared by all on the Left, it soon developed a dynamic and a character of its own. Particularly after Lenin's death in 1924 and the emergence of Josef Stalin (1879-1953) as the Soviet leader, the Russian Communist regime deepened the authoritarianism toward which Leninist doctrine seemed in any event to tend. The term "Stalinism" has come to indicate a particularly brutal authoritarianism. During the 1930s and World War II, many western liberals and radicals chose to ignore the more sinister features of Soviet Communism under Stalin in light of the Great Depression that afflicted the West and the Russian people's heroic struggle against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Others in labor, socialist, and liberal movements, however, viewed Stalinism as the perversion of socialism and opposed it root and branch even during this period.
 

A major fault line among people on the Left even today runs between those who see the crimes of Stalinism has having perverted and betrayed the original, hopeful promise of the Bolshevik Revolution, and those who see the evils of Stalinism (and Maoism in China) as being traceable directly to the Bolsheviks' contempt for "mere" democracy and due process. Still another dimension of the dramatic controversies that swirled about the Russian Revolution and that made the "short" twentieth century (1914-1989) so ideologically and politically turbulent is provided by Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), a brilliant co-revolutionary, founder of the Red Army, and, many thought, heir apparent to Lenin. First exiled and then murdered in 1940 by a Stalinist agent, Trotsky remains for some the embodiment of the tragic failure of the Russian Revolution, while to others he remains squarely-if with greater charisma and intellectual brilliance-firmly within the authoritarian and murderous traditions of Bolshevism and Soviet Communism.
 

8. Socialism vs. Fascism. Students often profess to be confused about the differences between socialism and fascism. (Recall that by "socialism," I refer here to the ideas, policies, programs, and activities of the socialist and social democratic parties and movements of the West during the late 19^th and 20^th centuries [see No. 3, above]). Socialism and fascism are antithetical concepts. About their only point of agreement is that government must be used as a positive instrument of social and economic development. There are grounds for confusion, though. For example, Hitler's Nazi movement in 1920s and 1930s Germany adopted the name "National Socialist Party," and there are some conservative critics-historian John Lukacs is a good example-who believe that the kinds of enhanced government power advocated by socialists, as well as their scapegoating of certain categories of people-capitalists; the bourgeoisie; non-socialist politicians-is broadly equivalent to the authoritarianism and scapegoating central to fascism. But, unlike fascists or "national socialists" such as the Nazis, western socialists have never celebrated authoritarian rule, nor have they sought the physical liquidation of the people whom they identify as class enemies.
 

Here are some points to keep in mind:
 

• Socialists are democrats. Socialists, especially in Europe, fought for the expansion of the suffrage and the establishment and defense of what in America we call First Amendment freedoms. Fascists are authoritarians who regard democratic politics as a sham and constitutional freedoms as irrelevant, to be valued only insofar as they can be exploited to advance the fascist agenda.

 
• Socialists are anti-militarists while fascist movements typically extol and glorify military and martial values. Socialists are not necessarily pacifists, and indeed many early socialists believed that only through armed struggle on the part of the masses could a just society be created. But socialists as socialists never privileged military action or celebrated the kinds of discipline and authority that militarism entails.

 
• Socialists reject all forms of racism, while fascism is usually linked to violent victimization of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in the name of some mythical racial ideal. Historically, it is true that socialists in the past sometimes shared in the prejudiced racial and ethnic attitudes prevailing at the time but the socialist movement has never embraced racism as a positive value or actively promoted the victimization of "undesirable" people.

 
• Socialists favor a strong and autonomous labor movement and strong non-governmental civic institutions. Fascists regard the labor movement as one of their prime enemies and seek to create party- or regime-dominated pseudo-organizations of workers (and other groups) for the purpose of mobilizing uncritical support for the party or regime.

 
 


Additional Observatons

On History and Hyperbole

In serious political discourse, it is important to use ideological terminology carefully and precisely. While in barroom or dormitory arguments short-hand labels are harmless enough, in more formal or public settings, it is wise to weigh one's words thoughtfully and to strive for fairness and exactitude. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't be passionate, engaged, and even partisan. But even in the most heated public political or ideological brawl, we do better when we strive for accuracy and fairness. It is the mark of our best and most astute political commentators, all along the political spectrum, that they represent their opponents' views rigorously and precisely.

There is a tendency, for example, among those on the political left to use inflammatory sobriquets with which to characterize their conservative opponents. "As a matter of strict fact," I recall a leftist friend of mine in the early 1960s declaiming, "Richard Nixon is a fascist." As a virtually life-long Nixon hater, I bow to no one in my disdain for our 35^th president. In my view, he was a liar, a demagogue, and a perverter of the democratic process. But he was, as a matter of strict fact, no more a "fascist" than my Aunt Tillie.

As a kind of conscious, almost playful hyperbole among like-minded people in private settings, such extreme language probably does no harm. But in any sort of serious public setting-a political debate, a classroom, an informed discussion among people of diverse views-this sort of over-the-top language would rightly be regarded as unfair and disreputable and would, again rightly, identify the speaker as reckless, irresponsible, and unserious. Labels such as "fascist," "communist," "militarist," "racist," and, yes, "socialist" carry a lot of emotional and political freight and need to be used judiciously and cautiously.

Which brings us to the question of whether there is "any socialism" in today's America. Of course, there are explicitly socialist groups whose agendas and positions can easily be found via the internet. I've noted the websites of the two most active and visible of such groups below. Things get more problematic, however, when the term "socialism" or "socialist" is used by opponents to describe or characterize the views or policies of their political adversaries within the context of the prevailing two-party system. No serious socialist-a member, say of the Socialist Party of the United States or the Democratic Socialists of America-would credit the Democratic Party or any leading Democratic politician or spokesman with being a fellow socialist. As described in the on-line reading on this syllabus, a socialist, if she believes in anything, believes at some level in public, or at least common, ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. No figure in the Democratic party has ever advanced such an agenda and so to characterized the Democratic party as "socialist" insults both Democrats and real socialists, who regard the mildly liberal programs and policies outlined, in, say, the Democratic party's 2004 platform as efforts to strengthen capitalism and to bolster so-called "free enterprise," not as steps in the direction of establishing a "cooperative commonwealth."

There are perhaps two possible ways in which it might in theory be considered legitimate to use the "socialist" label with reference to liberal groups or to the Democratic party. It might be argued that certain influential Democrats or liberals are trying to mislead the public. They secretly favor public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange but they know that any explicit effort to enact such a program would meet with public hostility. Hence, they mask their intentions, claiming that they are merely well-intentioned reformers. Once elected, however, they attempt to enact their socialist agenda. Folks who believe that secret socialists are at work within the Democratic party are folks who tend to see any expansion of governmental activity-environmental regulation, regulation of workplace health and safety, publically financed efforts to provide affordable healthcare-as evidence of what we might call "Crypto-Socialism." However, it would be hard to find any evidence, either in public or private utterances, on the part of any Democrat that she or he secretly favored the promulgation of a socialist agenda, however much she or he might favor specific policies that involved the expansion of governmental involvement in the economy.

Perhaps more seriously, it might be argued that while liberals and Democrats may not be aware of it, certain policies or programs that they support-health care reform and regulation of corporate activities, for example-in some unintended way move the country in the direction of socialism (i.e., toward public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange). You can't have the kind of national health care system urged by certain Democrats, the argument goes, without having, finally, to have the federal government take over control of all medical facilities and to make medical practitioners employees of the government, even though no real existing Democrat would be caught dead advocating such a development. Regulatory rules and requirements, it is sometimes argued, will inevitably have the long-range effect of stifling enterprise, impoverishing business people, and requiring that the federal government take over key economic functions. Thus, without anyone explicitly intending it, critics of interventionist policies warn, we will wake up one day to find the government owning and operating "the means of production, distribution, and exchange." We might call this scenario "Unintended Socialism."

It seems to me that both of these scenarios are pretty far-fetched. It is true that the one formally socialist member of Congress, Vermont Representative Bernie Sanders, does usually vote with the Democrats with respect to the organization of the House. And that he often sides with them in floor votes on specific issues. But it seems on the face of it absurd to see the 211 Democratic House members as stealth socialists, secretly waltzing down the trail blazed by one lone representative from Vermont.

The argument that the liberal Democratic agenda invariably segues into socialism, whatever the acknowledged intentions of its supporters, seems to me equally insubstantial. Beginning with the New Deal of the 1930s, government has played a larger role in American life than was the case before. Yet proportionately, over the past thirty years, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, the number of federal employees has been in decline. Non-military government spending has been claiming a shrinking proportion of the federal budget and of the GNP. Unless one simply argues that any expansion of the federal government's role is by definition a step toward "socialism"-an argument from faith and from definition, not one from analysis and evidence-the US seems even further from socialism today than it did to Werner Sombart nearly a century ago. Indeed, then there was a growing Socialist party which was electing scores of local officials and exercising considerable influence within an expanding labor movement. But today, Sanders excepted, there are no elected socialist public officials. A declining labor movement has long since repudiated the thin strands of socialism that it once exhibited. Socialist organizations, though often containing articulate social critics, have few members and little public visibility.

I mention these points not in an effort to defend Democrats (though, yes, I am one) or to promote the party's positions. Public policy proposals advanced by Democrats in Congress, on the state and local levels, and in the current presidential campaign are clearly subject to close public scrutiny. The view that this or that policy initiative will lead to greater red tape or unnecessary governmental intrusion is a legitimate one that needs to be argued on the facts and merits, issue by issue. I'm sure that we can rely on Republicans and non-party conservatives to perform this service, just as Democrats and liberals will criticize the record of President Bush and the positions that he has taken. But none of this has anything to do with "socialism" unless by "socialism" one simply means "policies and programs that I don't like."

****
Socialist websites:

Socialist Party of the United States: http://sp-usa.org/

Democratic Socialists of America: http://www.dsausa.org/