It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (Norton Paperback) - Softcover

Lipset Ph.D., Seymour Martin; Marks Ph.D., Gary Wolfe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393322548 ISBN 13: 9780393322545

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001

Synopsis

"[T]his impressive work...offers paths toward new and rich understandings of American history."―The New York Times Book Review

Why socialism has failed to play a significant role in the United States―the most developed capitalist industrial society and hence, ostensibly, fertile ground for socialism―has been a critical question of American history and political development. Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks "survey with subtlety and shrewd judgment the various explanations" (Wall Street Journal) for this phenomenon of American political exceptionalism. "Clearly written, intelligent, filled with new information" (Times Literary Supplement), this "splendidly convincing" (Michael Kazin, Georgetown University) work eschews conventional arguments about socialism's demise to present a fuller understanding of how multiple factors―political structure, American values, immigration, and the split between the Socialist party and mainstream unions―combined to seal socialism's fate. "In peak form, two master political sociologists offer a must-read synthesis."―Theda Skocpol, Harvard University

About this title

About the Author:

Seymour Martin Lipset is the Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Gary Marks is professor of political science and director of the Center for European Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

From Publishers Weekly:

Marx decreed in Capital that the most industrially advanced nation would usher the world into the bright dawn of socialism. But it didn't happen in America, the pinnacle of capitalist achievement. This broad but unambitious survey addresses one of the classic questions of American historiography: What accounts for the weakness of working-class radicalism in the U.S.? Preferring to restate the highlights of an admittedly worked-over literature on the subject rather than make significant new arguments of their own, Lipset (professor of public policy at George Mason University) and Marks (political science at UNC-Chapel Hill) present a "political sociology" of socialism's American flop. Lacking the feudal history that spurred Europe's early labor movements, the authors explain, American workers were "born conservatives," already enjoying social mobility and a relative prosperity. Moreover, strong constitutional limits on government power thwarted collectivists from the get-go and led homegrown radicals toward libertarian or anarchist camps. America's invincible two-party system made it all but impossible for a socialist candidate to succeed; since the Civil War, the authors point out, just nine non-major party candidates have won more than 5% of the national vote in any presidential election. What surprises there are in this book pop up in little-known annals of U.S. radicalism, such as the North Dakota Nonpartisan League, a strikingly successful contingent that in 1919 proposed a system of state ownership, only to be bitterly attacked by America's socialist party as an opportunistic rival. Green parties, the authors say, are the latest venue for utopian reform desires; again, the U.S. remains exceptional, as they point out, with no influential environmental party. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0393322548
• ISBN 13: 9780393322545
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 374