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Changes in the Nomenclature of the American Left
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2009
Abstract
A frequency survey of Google Books and other digital sources indicates that in political terminology the use of the phrase “American socialism” yielded to “American left” in the course of the twentieth century. Reasons for this include the tactical and personal ambitions of reformers who saw advantage in dropping the socialist tag in the face of domestic antisocialism. In mid-century, domestic antisocialism revived both in extremist rhetoric and in mainstream Republican charges of “creeping socialism.” The Cold War also played a role in changing the nomenclature balance, as it led to the identification of American socialism with the creed of the Soviet adversary. At the same time, a broadening in the left's agenda beyond the election platforms of the Socialist Party of America contributed to the change. The nomenclative “-ism” failure is significant as an indicator of left tendencies because it relates to perceptions of the failure of socialism itself.
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1 This article is about the use of terminology and does not offer authorial definitions of the terms “American socialism” and “American left.” The actors involved defined socialism and the left in a number of ways. For social democrats, the principles of socialism were outlined in the election platforms of the Socialist Party of America, for example public ownership, a federal income tax, the welfare state, free education, equality and justice for African Americans and the promotion of civil liberties. Texts of the 1904, 1912 and 1928 platforms are in H. Wayne Morgan, ed., American Socialism, 1900–1960 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 47–50, 55–60, 102–6. Definitions for the American left overlapped with those for “liberalism” and “progressivism.” At various times, its agenda was assumed to have broadened to embrace, for example, opposition to compulsory school prayers, support for multiculturalism, a wider civil liberties agenda, a more principled and just foreign policy, advocacy of the use of federal power to protect consumers and the environment, and acceptance of new formulations of family life. All socialists were regarded and regarded themselves as being on the left; the more modern left accepted and still fought for old socialist goals like the welfare state, but its designation as “socialist” came mainly from the right.
2 Sidney G. Fisher, The Struggle for American Independence (Philadelphia: Lipincott, 1908), 90, emphasis added.
3 The date of this digital search was 14 July 2008.
4 New York Times, 13 May 1907.
5 The date of this digital search was 27 Aug. 2009.
6 In the modern era the New York Times had “American left” mis-hits in areas where Google Books did not. The main such area was the paper's sports coverage, as in a golf reference to an “American left-hander.” New York Times, 17 June 2008, emphasis added.
7 See http://books.google.com/googlebooks/history.html. Accessed 27 Aug. 2009. According to The Guardian, 8 Sept. 2009, the number has now risen to 10 million.
8 A. M. Schlesinger Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), 36; Palmer's reply to charges made against the Department of Justice by Louis F. Post and others: Hearings before the United States House Committee on Rules, 66 Cong., 2 sess., 1 June 1920, 445.
9 Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000–1887 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; first published 1887), 149.
10 The Wisconsin intellectuals drew up plans for a welfare state when working for a federal investigation. See, for example, Selig Perlman, “Preliminary Report on Welfare Work and Social Insurance,” 1 Sept. 1914, and idem, “Digest of Mr. Perlman's Report on Welfare Work and Social Insurance,” 1 Sept. 1914, both Reel 6, US Commission on Industrial Relations, 1912–1915: Unpublished Records of the Division of Research and Investigation: Reports, Staff Studies, and Background Research Materials (Frederick, MD: University Microfilms of America, 1985).
11 Fink, Leon, “Leon Fink Responds,” American Historical Review, 96 (April 1991), 429–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Perlman set the trend for being a neoconservative in being an apostate, as so many neoconservatives were in the later Cold War years. More recent conservatives, however, tend not to have gone through a socialist phase in reaching their final ideological destination.
12 C. Wright Mills, The Marxists (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), 95, 97–98.
13 Lee Benson, Turner and Beard: American Historical Writing Reconsidered (New York: Free Press, 1960), 106.
14 Smith, T. C., “The Writing of American History in America, from 1884 to 1934,” American Historical Review, 40 (April 1935), 447CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Charles A. Beard, “Introduction to the 1935 Edition,” An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1961; first published 1935), xii; Ellen Nore, Charles A. Beard: An Intellectual Biography (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983), 148, 191–92.
16 A. Lozovskii, The World's Trade Union Movement (Chicago: Trade Union Educational League, 1924), 7, 8.
17 The date of both digital searches was 28 Aug. 2009. Because of a peculiarity in the New York Times software and the need to maintain consistency, the runs were 1981–89 and 1991–99. The Nation had no references to political correctness until after 2000.
18 John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace (New York: Norton, 2000), 472.
19 The political scientist Harold Laski wrote in 1947 that the Truman administration regarded socialism as “hardly distinguishable from Communism.” Laski's contribution to The Nation quoted in Jonathan Bell, The Liberal State on Trial: The Cold War and American Politics in the Truman Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 96.
20 Marcantonio speaking in the House of Representatives, 6 Oct. 1941, in Box 41, folder “Legislative Record of Marc,” Papers of Vito Marcantonio, New York Public Library.
21 Folder “Bills by Marc,” Box 41, and folder “European Recovery Program,” Box 51, both in Marcantonio papers; Congressional Quarterly, Jan.–Feb.–March 1948, S 7–11.
22 Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917–1994 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 110, 114.
23 For an expression of the New Left critique of the New Deal's inadequacy, see Paul K. Conkin, The New Deal (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), 81 and passim. More recently, a group of feminist historians has argued that the welfare state provisions of the 1930s stemmed from the earlier reform initiatives of “maternalists” – and, by implication, not from socialism at all. For a review of ten books falling into this category see Wilkinson, Patrick, “The Selfless and the Helpless: Maternalist Origins of the U.S. Welfare State,” Feminist Studies, 25 (Fall 1999), 571–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946–1948 (New York: Schocken, 1974; first published 1971), 5.
25 David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (London: Secker and Warburg, 1978), 349.
26 Michael J. Heale, American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830–1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), xiv; and idem, McCarthy's Americans: Red Scare Politics in State and Nation, 1935–1965 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998).
27 The title of her book is taken from Justice Robert Jackson's observation in 1950: “[national] security is like liberty in that many are the crimes committed in its name.” Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), vi, x, 86, 203.
28 Congressional Quarterly, Jan.–Feb.–March 1948, S 7–11.
29 New York Times, 23 Oct. 1943.
30 Karl Schriftgiesser's review for the New York Times, 2 Oct. 1949, 14.
31 John T. Flynn, The Road Ahead: America's Creeping Revolution (New York: Devin-Adair, 1949), 9, 75.
32 John E. Moser, Right Turn: John T. Flynn and the Transformation of American Liberalism (New York: New York University Press, 2005), pp. 7, 59, 177–78.
33 Taft quoted in New York Times, 2 April 1950, 143.
34 Thomas letter, New York Times, 1 Nov. 1952.
35 McCarthy quoted in Albert Fried, ed., McCarthyism, The Great American Red Scare: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 179.
36 Stevenson quoted in New York Times, 3 April 1954, 1.
37 George quoted in New York Times, 21 Aug. 1954, 9.
38 Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (London: Jonathan Cape, 1966), 98; Robert A. Goldberg, Barry Goldwater (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 184.
39 Ronald Reagan, An American Life (London: Hutchinson, 1990), 67.
40 The date of this digital search was 1 Dec. 2008. Emphasis added.
41 James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic, 1991), 42.
42 New York Times, 18 Aug. 1992, A8.
43 The use of the term “Clintonian left” is bound to raise eyebrows. The Clinton administration set out to balance the federal budget, and cut back on welfare. Clinton supporters were more likely to use other labels such as “Clintonian progressivism,” “Clintonian liberalism” and “Clintonian populism.” The situation suggests both contested territory and overlap, in that progressivism, liberalism and populism are all just as difficult to define as the (political) word “left,” and in that all have characteristics in common such as concern with the plight of the poor. In wishing to improve health care, the Clinton administration was part of the left tradition, even if it was at the same time progressive, liberal and populist and thus would lend itself with equal validity to historical discourses on those traditions. It is worth adding that the nomenclative dodging game is not confined to words like “left” and “socialist” – as any student of the use and abuse of the word “liberal” will attest. See, for example, the remarks on Adlai Stevenson in Eric Alterman, Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America (New York: Viking, 2008), 31.
44 Author's interview with Senator Bernie Sanders, 15 May 2008.
45 The date of this digital search was 26 March 2009.
46 Pelosi and Charles R. Geisst quoted in New York Times, 26 Jan. 2009, A1. Geisst is the author of a number of books on business history, including Wall Street: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
47 Newsweek, 16 Feb. 2009; Rasmussen Reports, 9 April 2009.
48 Adam Nagournay, “The Caucus,” New York Times, 21 May 2009; St Petersburg (Fla.) Times, 31 July 2008, 10A; The Guardian, 12 Aug. 2009, 1.
49 Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), 334. The planks and evidences of their enactment are listed on 360–61.