Seymour Martin Lipset has died (see here and here for commentary and round-up), and hopefully taken to his grave the mis-specified question of why there is no socialist party in the United States.
I say that with a great deal of admiration for Lipset's career, research interests, and writing. His writing was provocative in the best way, his research comparing Canada and the United States illuminated our understanding of both those countries (and others), and proved the basis for a long career. As one long interested in at least dabbling in comparative history you have to admire and engage Lipset's work. You do have to wonder a little how someone can make a career out of the logical trap of seeing the United States as "exceptional," yet also open to understanding by comparison.
Lipset was scarcely responsible for originating the question, since Werner Sombart got in well before him with his 1906 book, Why is there no socialism in the United States? (Google books link in German only!) Yet there was socialism in the United States. Not as a governing party anywhere, not as a winning political movement (unless you count wins against other left-wingers, which socialists have more often specialized in achieving), but certainly as an animating idea in the heads of many laborers and intellectuals. Lipset re-specified this already badly specified question a little by asking why there wasn't really even a social democratic party in the United States.
The changing question gives some of its own answer: the supposedly socialist Labo[u]r parties of Australasia and Britain had become social democratic to actually gain and maintain governments. As a swag of recent literature shows the actual policy differences between social democratic governments in Canada and Australasia, and American Democratic administrations were smaller than the difference in rhetoric would imply. Moreover, it's quite clear that the parties saw themselves as representing the same elements and ideas in their respective polities. The Australasian Labour parties saw the Democratic party as their American counterpart. While population differences meant the relationship was asymmetric, Democrats who did look abroad for inspiration saw the Labo[u]r parties.
The substantive difference to be explained is how socialist and social democratic ideas were incorporated into national governments in different ways in different places. As Lipset noted, socialists did win office in the United States. At the local and state level. But national office was something else. To win and maintain office, the Labour parties had to abandon much of what made them truly socialist.
The largest difference in policy between the Democratic party and the Labour parties would appear to be over national government ownership of companies. Specifically, in Australasia and Britain socialism became watered down to the national government owning the "commanding heights" of the economy: airlines, banks, energy and much else besides. Yet even here, the socialism was thin, and the contrasts with the United States overdrawn. For example, the federal government owns substantial amounts of land, particularly in the western states, that have been leased cheaply to private farmers. Fannie Mae was and continues to be a massive intervention in the residential property market by the federal government.
The arguments social democratic parties made for nationalizing businesses veered away from socialism, and towards market failures (often monopoly) and ensuring social opportunity for individuals and families—arguments similar to those made for United States federal government interventions in the economy. It remains broadly true also that the federal government is somewhat less important in the United States than the national governments in Australasia and Canada. A true accounting of the success of social democratic ideas would have to trace them across the states and provinces as well. United States governments (state and federal) have, broadly speaking, relied more on regulation and subsidy than outright ownership of private business. Placing some sort of value on these regulatory interventions, subsidies and tax breaks, and evaluating the rhetoric surrounding them would probably show smaller differences in the success of socialism or social democracy than Lipset allows.
Lipset's point that the Democratic party has never been a true social democratic party is mostly well made. If (if!) the Democratic party had evolved in the North only, perhaps it might have become a social democratic party. But for a century after the Civil War it remained the political vehicle for segregationist southern whites. If anything is allowed to stand for a single explanation of why social democracy did not flourish in the United States, that would be it.
Posted by eroberts at January 12, 2007 2:06 PM