JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
  • About K
  • Academics
  • Admission
  • Alumni Relations
  • Giving to K
  • News & Events
  • Student Life
  • HORNET HIVE
  • ATHLETICS
  • SITEMAP
  • WEBMAIL
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   CACHE Homepage
    • Academic Departments, Programs, and SIPs
    • History
    • History Senior Integrated Projects
    • View Item
    •   CACHE Homepage
    • Academic Departments, Programs, and SIPs
    • History
    • History Senior Integrated Projects
    • View Item

    War, Repression, and Factionalism : The Collapse ofthe American Socialist Movement in the Early Twentieth Century

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Searchable PDF / Kalamazoo College Only (4.656Mb)
    Date
    2015
    Author
    Olert, Bryan
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    The socialist movement in the United States was never monolithic in terms of its ideology, demographics, or geography, and it suffered from intense and often debilitating factional struggles. Historians have attempted to pinpoint the dichotomies in American socialism in order to help explain the apparent failure of the socialist movement in the United States: evolutionist or gradualist vs. revolutionist, intellectual or bourgeois vs. proletariat, native vs. foreign-born, East vs. West. These dichotomies are accurate, but they also lead to oversimplification. They remain useful, however, because they highlight the inability of each socialist faction to instill American workers with their particular ideology, be it democratic socialism, revolutionary socialism, syndicalism, or De Leonism. Socialists met with success at the polls and increased their membership when they appealed to the immediate needs of the working class; most of the workers who cast their votes for socialist candidates were not typically members of the Socialist Party of America or of any other group. At the start of the First World War in the summer of 1914, socialists seemed relatively secure in their position in American politics; they had had their most successful electoral season ever just two years earlier. However, by the final months of 1919, socialists had experienced a series of reversals that threatened the survival of the movement. A dramatic and sudden shift in American political ideology and public opinion accompanied President Woodrow Wilson's declaration of war on the Central Powers in April 1917. Correspondingly, American socialism experienced an equally dramatic change, not so much a shift as a splintering. The debates that had already existed reached a crescendo, fracturing the movement even further and almost completely removing any ability to affect political change.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10920/29619
    Collections
    • History Senior Integrated Projects [664]

    Browse

    All of DSpaceCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    Login

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2022  DuraSpace
    DSpace Express is a service operated by 
    Atmire NV
    Logo

    Kalamazoo College
    1200 Academy Street
    Kalamazoo Michigan 49006-3295
    USA
    Info 269-337-7000
    Admission 1-800-253-3602

    About K
    Academics
    Admission
    Alumni Relations
    Giving to K
    News & Events
    Student Life
    Sitemap
    Map & Directions
    Contacts
    Directories
    Nondiscrimination Policy
    Consumer Information
    Official disclaimer
    Search this site


    Academic Calendars
    Apply
    Bookstore
    Crisis Response
    Employment
    Library
    Registrar
    DSpace Express is a service operated by 
    Atmire NV