Forgotten Apostate

...supported the dissidents within and the indigenous rebels without who fought them militarily...

...He saw public funding of government projects as steps that retarded, rather than advanced, economic recovery...

...His most natural allies, he came to believe, were conservative anti-Communists, and he liked what he saw as the Republican party’s active, anti-Bolshevik foreign policy...

...Spargo ignored Debs, and continued to carry out a systematic reexamination of the nature of Marxism, making him America’s major revisionist socialist...

...The social and economic policies of the New Deal similarly outraged him, and he developed what Ruotsila calls (in today’s terminology) a “Leftlibertarian case against” the New Deal...

...Chamber of Commerce and in a pamphlet entitled “Why I Am No Longer a Socialist...

...America had become a nation whose system embodied the best of socialism: a belief in equality of opportunity, economic growth that would benefi t the working man as well as the wealthy, and regulation of industry when it was deemed necessary...

...Spargo also feared that Wilson did not comprehend the true nature of the Bolshevik threat, and would not enact the kinds of measures necessary to counter it...

...Markku Ruotsila has succeeded in restoring to historical memory the fascinating life of John Spargo, a man who did much “to shape twentieth-century debates over American domestic and foreign policies in signifi cant and lasting ways...

...With his authorship of the Note unknown, Spargo was able to write a New York Times article calling it “the most effi cient single force recently directed” towards destruction of the Bolshevik government...

...The strategy adopted by the Reagan administration against communism was one that, had Spargo lived, he would have certainly applauded: “Destruction of Bolshevism was his cause for almost 50 years,” Ruotsila writes...

...During World War II he proved his fl exibility by backing Lend Lease and supporting a military alliance with the Soviet regime he detested...

...The Harding administration continued to back the substance of the Colby Note, as did the Coolidge and Hoover administrations...

...But the Spargo-inspired policy toward Soviet Russia began to unravel when Franklin D. Roosevelt became president...

...Like Sidney Hook, Spargo had written many early books advocating an American style of Marxism...

...Before he died, in the last article he wrote, Spargo argued that although Barry Goldwater failed to gain the presidency, he should act as the “rebuilder and intellectual inspirer of the GOP...

...By the age of 20, he was a leader in the South Wales union movement, and stood for a seat in the House of Commons...

...Most striking, writes Ruotsila, is “the resemblance between Spargo’s trajectory and that of the neoconservative movement...

...Certainly, as Ruotsila says, John Spargo deserves “his pride of place” in the pantheon of those who waged the struggle...

...waged relentless ideological warfare on those who appeased communism at home, and became a supporter of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy...

...A fl aming radical, he announced he agreed with the famous Mother Jones who had said that “all human liberty is dead in America...

...Although he was rising quickly in the ranks of the British left, at age 25 he suddenly and precipitously sailed for New York with his new wife...

...Ronald Radosh, adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, is working with Allis Radosh on a book about Harry S. Truman, the creation of Israel, and American foreign policy...

...In his fi nal years, the aging Spargo was a confi rmed Cold Warrior...

...In a new era, he wrote, capitalist America had progressed towards “a new type of communism, based upon private property and individualism,” in which the genius of capitalism would be channeled to achieve “socialization of results...

...Many of his policies were adopted...

...With the support of both ex-presidents Roosevelt and Taft, Spargo soon gained great infl uence in newly emerging anti-Communist organizations, whose leaders favored military intervention to destroy Bolshevism...

...In addition, he feared that some New Dealers favored an American style of central planning that would lead to collectivism and have the same dangerous results as in the Soviet Union...

...The result was condemnation by Debs as one of the “cowardly progressive capitalists” who used socialist phraseology for antisocialist ends...

...The neoconservatives stayed rooted, as Spargo did, in their old philosophical suppositions...

...Over the ensuing years, this careful intellectual effort led him to a unique analysis of the American political and economic structure...

...In 1920 John Spargo attained his greatest success...

...Using his contacts to get to Wilson, he drafted a proposed diplomatic note he hoped the administration would consider as a basis for dealing with the Bolsheviks...

...He and others did their part to try to convince British, French, and Italian socialists to support the Allied coalition, and at home they offered their services to the Wilson administration by writing pro-war propaganda...

...that is, that the United States economy grew to wealth and power with complementary elements of both socialism and capitalism...

...As he came to know his adopted country, he gradually changed his views...

...Spargo wrote the fi rst anti-Communist book, Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy, which was immediately attacked by John Reed as a “very clever and subtle misrepresentation of Bolshevism”—a system Reed supported by soon writing Ten Days That Shook the World, the most infl uential pro-Bolshevik book published in America...

...When World War I began, Spargo was one of the few pro-war socialists who broke with their party’s complete opposition to the war...

...In 1909 he was elected to leadership of the new Socialist party of Eugene Debs and became part of its so-called right wing...

...but he opposed any move of government into business, arguing that it would lead not only to an unnecessary bureaucracy but also to increased taxes that would harm the production of wealth...

...He landed in 1901, and although he was without funds or a job, he immediately made contact with American socialists...

...Spargo, Ruotsila proves, was important to key decisions made by Woodrow Wilson in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution...

...It is the merit of the Finnish historian Markku Ruotsila that he has resurrected the importance of this once well-known American socialist...

...Spargo was soon forced to reconcile his growing interest in mainstream political practice with allegiance to Marx’s revolutionary doctrine: Between 1907 and 1917 he became an American supporter of the revisionist Marxists in Europe...

...Though he supported private enterprise, Spargo also favored regulatory legislation that would stifl e corporate greed...

...His articles explaining this theory were published by the U.S...

...By 1904 he saw the power of electoral politics and became interested in what he once rejected: immediate and practical social reform...

...The path he took was taken fi rst by John Spargo (1876-1966...

...Roosevelt’s domestic policies were, in effect, what Spargo had opposed when he was a socialist: a centralized bureaucracy leading to a new state capitalism...

...At age 14, he began his study of the writings of the famed British socialist H.M...

...Spargo called it “a communism of opportunity” or “socialized individualism...

...Before long, his reputation in the movement grew, and as in Britain, his drive and brilliance propelled him “to the top of the American socialist movement,” in Ruotsila’s words...

...By the 1960s, Spargo maintained that the only genuine liberalism came from the Goldwater campaign, and he wrote that he “hoped that Senator Goldwater will initiate a new period of growth and progress, making the Republican party a great dynamic force...

...From the time he authored it, Ruotsila writes, Spargo found “contentment and meaning in his life in the passionate crusade against Bolshevism...

...BY RONALD RADOSH A few years ago, a well-known neoconservative asked a simple question: “Why do so many of us persist in calling themselves social democrats...

...He was letting people know that, philosophically, he was carrying on the values and traditions that came from his old socialist convictions...

...Spargo took the opportunity to cement his ties with major Republican conservatives, formally joining the party and endorsing Calvin Coolidge’s 1924 campaign for the White House, which led to a close relationship between Coolidge and Spargo...

...He called Ronald Reagan’s famous televised speech for Goldwater “in the great classical tradition of political campaign oratory . . . [the] only logical presentation of the issues...

...Nevertheless, Hook continued to proudly wear the rubric of social democrat...

...And of course, like Spargo, they favored the use of American military power when needed, and during the Cold War were strong and principled anti-Communists...

...It was in foreign policy, however, that Spargo would have the greatest impact...

...In Spargo’s eyes, New Deal agencies created a new and dangerous government bureaucracy...

...When FDR announced in 1933 that he would move to recognize the Soviet regime, Spargo was the fi rst person publicly to condemn the new policy in print...

...founded National Review, Spargo’s “infl uence on early Cold War anticommunism was of the same kind, his goals the same, and his trajectory largely the same” as those of James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Max Eastman...

...For the rest of his life, Spargo carried on the fi ght from his rural home in Vermont...

...He helped build a countercoalition against liberal policies, and worked to resuscitate the Republican party at the grassroots level...

...other of his ideas vigorously debated: Spargo alone went back to the start, with the birth of the Soviet Union...

...That name, unlike Hook’s, is almost unknown today...

...He opposed those who sought d?tente with the Soviets...

...Before long he was editing a major socialist magazine and writing a new book almost every year...

...As an alternative, he favored an industrial democracy similar to that called for by social democrats, and based on cooperation of progressive businessmen and moderate trade union leaders...

...Hyndman, and left the church to immerse himself in the writings of various Marxists...

...The New Deal, he thought, was driving towards what Ruotsila calls a “centralized, illiberal and coercive governance on par with Bolshevism and Fascism...

...He was most likely thinking of the late Sidney Hook and his disciples in Social Democrats USA—a group that fought alongside conservatives against Communist totalitarianism in the waning days of the Cold War...

...When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in 1917, Spargo became the fi rst prominent anti-Bolshevik in American socialist ranks...

...He began by building a coalition of liberals, whom he knew would favor social reform that would undermine the Communist message, and conservatives, whom he knew would favor containing the Soviets and eventually support measures to destroy the new Bolshevik regime...

...He argued that, through wartime collectivism, labor would gain new rights and the socialdemocratic transformation of America would be accelerated...

...In subsequent years, Spargo continued to be of infl uence as he regularly had contact with people such as Herbert Hoover, Bernard Baruch, Arthur Vandenberg, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, and Calvin Coolidge...

...Named for Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, the Colby Note advocated opposition to the dismemberment of Russia, support of an independent Poland, and a fi rm refusal to recognize the Bolshevik regime as the legitimate government of Russia...

...Spargo’s Bolshevism gained wide support from both disillusioned socialists and American statesmen...

...Like Spargo, he notes, neoconservatives rediscovered the role of religious perspectives on American life, and celebrated American democracy “and the global benefi cence and mission of a regulated American-style capitalism...

...Spargo’s unique role was both as an architect of early anti-Communist foreign policy and as an intellectual thinker who sought to modify Marxist doctrine...

...Hook was second to none in his hatred for Communist societies and the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism that guided them...

...His life as an active socialist began in the west of England, when he became a Methodist preacher...

...He tried to rehabilitate Herbert Hoover’s reputation, and worked to gain support for William Green and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) when the Left was backing the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO...

...It also suggested that military aid be extended to any sovereign governments threatened by Soviet aggression...

...As Ruotsila points out, Spargo had argued fi rst in the 1940s what they were saying in the 1950s...

...The system was what the historian Martin J. Sklar has called “a mix of capitalism and socialism...

...It was this passion, and Spargo’s solid understanding of Marxist doctrine and Soviet practice, that led to his playing a major role in the Wilson administration...

...Hook, it turns out, was not the fi rst self-proclaimed social democrat to take such a course...

...In 1944 he supported the presidential campaign of Thomas E. Dewey, seeing Dewey as a person who would favor a decentralized government pledged to voluntary associationalism and individual liberty, but who would also support an internationalist policy of cooperation between nations in the postwar period...

...His next step was to convince the Wilson administration to adopt his views—a diffi cult task since, during the war, Spargo strongly opposed Wilson’s curbs on civil liberties, openly campaigned to free Eugene Debs from prison, and fought limits imposed on sending the socialist press through the mail...

...Leninism, he argued, was not only a false claimant to the name of socialism, it also produced a regime whose foreign policy of exporting revolution endangered world peace and the very advances of social democracy he and his followers supported...

...Much to his surprise, that draft became the policy statement itself...

...By the time William F. Buckley Jr...