DOOR OPEN ON THE LEFT
Thomas, Norman
Door Open On the Left By Norman Thomas WHEN the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party U.S.A. voted by a substantial majority to recommend that the Party discontinue Presidential...
...We socialists know that there is no magic power in socialism...
...The answer lies in the great differences in the objective situation...
...LaFollette got about five million votes, his labor supporters fell away, and the Socialist Party almost had to make a fresh start in 1928...
...It was, however, only about 1,000,000 and was largely a protest vote...
...We and the whole world have seen the socialist name and ideals degraded by Hitler's National Socialist Party, and in the Soviet Union where Stalin says that the socialism which he has betrayed has been fulfilled...
...We have to reexamine the question of who ought to own what and why in order to make progress toward the socialist goal of a fellowship of free men and free nations...
...It also offered a worthwhile opportunity to rebuild and reactivate the party...
...The election results, however, in comparison to the interest which the campaign aroused, were disappointing and showed how reluctant were the American people to lose a choice between the two principal contenders...
...We live in a time when our political and economic philosophies and slogans, socialist as well as capitalist, do not accurately correspond to the facts...
...IV Republicans and Democrats don't really believe in a free enterprise system as a polite description of a laissez-faire economy...
...In that year, Andrew Carnegie made $23,000,000 and paid no income taxes, while the steel worker averaged $400 a year in steel mills...
...In 1952 they recognized that Ijact and all minor parties together polled one-half of one per cent of the vote...
...American capitalism never really conquered poverty despite the extraordinary advantages enjoyed by America in size and resources, but under the conditions prevailing on this continent, it was easier in this country for the kind of men who made the Labor Party in Britain to rise out of their class than to rise with it...
...Why this dramatic difference in the history of the parties...
...Wliy then did I run in 1928, and five times thereafter...
...The tightening of the ballot laws after 1932 greatly contributed to our difficulties...
...After 1948, it seemed to me clear that our campaigns were not educating for socialism...
...We don't vote to save our immortal souls or merely to bear witness to a faith...
...Politics has been called "the science of the possible...
...At this moment in history we are likely to win far more converts if socialists in labor unions, farm organizations, and civic associations of all sorts say to their fellow citizens: "Look, you may be right and A is preferable to B and that we should therefore work and vote for A. But we should be in a position to say to A that his plans aren't good enough...
...Democratic socialism in America can no longer be based on a contrast between a horrible society waiting for redemption by a working class Messiah in one apocalyptic triumph...
...Ill I do not offer this historical review to prove that our socialist decision to run campaigns was right but rather to show that we tried diligently to use campaigns for educational and organizational purposes—with little success...
...In America the contrasts in wealth and power between an owning class and the masses of the people are not as stark as when Gene Debs first ran for President...
...So great was the interest in socialism in the dark days of 1932 that for a short while I began to hope that the Socialist Party might suddenly grow to become a major contender...
...voted by a substantial majority to recommend that the Party discontinue Presidential campaigns", the newspapers found the announcement more newsworthy than any of the recent activities of the Socialist Party...
...Nevertheless, we socialists felt that it was still worthwhile to do an educational job for socialism as we saw it—a job which Roosevelt, and certainly his party, were not doing...
...In the Republican Party there are elements led and symbolized by men like Sens...
...II That first campaign was in some ways most discouraging business, but we socialists were persuaded that it fully justified the effort...
...This emphasis on a labor party was accepted by a convention in 1922, and Morris Hillquit and other socialists were leading architects of the coalition which backed Robert M. LaFollette Sr., for the Presidency in 1924...
...We cannot at a leisurely pace build for a bright tomorrow or the day after...
...The present Socialist Party came into being in 1900 as a result of the union of the Social Democrats of the Middle West, led by Eugene V. Debs and Victor Berger, and a rather large group led by Morris Hillquit of New York, who had broken away from the Socialist Labor Party...
...The recommendation was in line with the course I have urged for the last three years...
...Under the latter a new party, to be a serious contender, must rapidly become one of the two major parties which compete for power...
...But what poor tools they are for democracy, and how great is the need for a realignment...
...World War I brought a confusion of hopes and fears...
...No socialist—least of all myself, after running on the Socialist ticket six times for President—can like the situation...
...The difference between better and worse may well mean the difference between peace and war, semi-fascism and democracy, reasonable economic security for the people and such economic tragedy as we knew in the thirties...
...I am sure its educational quality can and must be improved by activities other than running candidates in order to hasten the day of a desirable political realignment...
...It was largely because of the obvious difficulties of finding alternatives that the Party with dwindling membership has stuck to running candidates...
...Debs, the prisoner in Atlanta, got his largest absolute—but not proportional—vote in 1920...
...That year they were not so anxious to elect Roosevelt as to defeat Hoover...
...We vote, or should vote, according to conscience to do the best that can be done for all the people...
...It is in them and what they symbolize that the danger of fascism and semi-fascism lies...
...Things aren't perfect now, but the immediate demands which Debs and other socialists urged have accomplished something which can't be ignored...
...He did it largely by appropriating Socialist proposals...
...McCarthy and Jenner whom the more enlightened Republicans of the Committee for Economic Development sort may have great trouble in controlling...
...In that campaign, and still more in the campaign of 1932, we and we only got large audiences for those welfare measures, then regarded as socialist, which by 1952 Gen...
...Socialist locals and branches should be powerhouses for discussing and preparing appropriate programs and for training socialists to present them effectively in all sorts of meetings, by letters to the newspapers, and the like...
...Yet the latter is today the opposition party in Britain, having held office with honor through six critical years, while our Socialist Party polled only some 20,000 votes (that were counted) in the 1952 Presidential campaign...
...Yet emphatically there are other things to be done...
...In Gene Debs' first four campaigns, 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1912, the increase in the size of the Socialist vote and the attention aroused by the Socialist campaigns excused, if they did not justify, the confidence of his admirers, many of whom expected to live to march in a triumphal inaugural procession...
...That admirable candidate, Adlai Stevenson, was greatly handicapped by his Party, and his present titular leadership will suffer from the fact that, under our curious system, the states he carried were politically and economically the most backward and the farthest from his thoughtful progressive — but not socialist— philosophy...
...Certainly I did not expect to be elected in that, my first, campaign...
...The day came when I found that I could speak to larger audiences when I wasn't campaigning than when I was...
...It is the purpose of this article to analyze the facts...
...The leaders of the Socialist Party wisely saw that hope lay, most likely, in the building of an American labor or farmer-labor party, to the formation of which the Socialist Party could contribute greatly...
...Moreover, unsatisfactory as were both the old parties, it could not truthfully be said that the differences between them, and more especially between their candidates, were merely the differences between tweedledum and tweedledee...
...Even in democratic Britain, we have learned that nationalization of industries isn't socialization, and that socialization requires more than a formula of ownership...
...It implies no abandonment of democratic socialism, but it does acknowledge the necessity for finding other alterna-tivea to running candidates for advancing our cause...
...There's the rub...
...Moreover, after the 1944 election I set forth in The Progressive the reasons why a new or third party must be organized on a national scale and rapidly become at least the second party, if it is to live...
...It was formed about the same time that the British Labor Party came into existence, and for a few years it was at least as important in American life as was the Labor Party in the life of the United Kingdom...
...We live and vote in years where time runs out...
...This day is not just around the corner...
...But I do not think that our work has been in vain...
...Eisenhower discovered had been overwhelmingly endorsed by the American people...
...Join us socialists in planning and working for it...
...On the whole, they tended to irritate those elements in the workers' and farmers' movements most sympathetic to socialism, whose support was essential to the growth of our party or any useful political realignment...
...The last election may have made a contribution to its coming by breaking the Solid South, but there is little sign of an organic union of conservative or reactionary Democrats with Republicans...
...Every four years the great question is: Who of two men is preferable for an office for which the victor must have a majority of the electoral college...
...This new line of work for socialism must be based on some careful rethinking and restating of the fundamental principles of democratic socialism...
...Our hopes and fears are too complex for that...
...If I may speak personally, I must sorrowfully acknowledge my sense of failure in the fact that we socialists have brought about no political realignment similar to that which the Labor Party achieved in Britain...
...Nevertheless, in all those campaigns, our great hope was not of socialist victory but of a socialist contribution to an honest and realistic political realignment through the rapid formation of a party like the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Canada, which under American conditions seemed a model preferable to the British Labor Party...
...But by 1936, Roosevelt had acquired the following of all the elements which could bring strength to the Socialist Party or could build a labor party...
...Moreover, the British parliamentary system makes it far easier to start a new party than does our Presidential system...
...When socialist campaigning no longer contributes definitely to winning converts to socialism and hastening a political realignment, it is time to seek other methods...
...I should accept the definition, though I should prefer the word art rather than science...
...The best immediate choice of tools we may have is the Democratic or Republican Party, or perhaps some endorsement of good candidates in both parties...
...Sensible voters must make the choice...
...The normal business of a party is to run candidates, and in election activities loyal socialists found their chief opportunity for expressing their faith...
...I have discussed this question at far more adequate length in my book, A Socialist's Faith...
...But it is stupid and cowardly not to face facts...
...Similar reasons rightly or wrongly persuaded me to run in 1940 and 1944...
...To them, as well as to the more enlightened capitalists and internationalist Republicans the best answer lies in the democratic socialist faith restated, worked out in programs and propagated with new intelligence and power...
...that better plans are available which we should discuss with him...
...My primary reason was that the campaign under the condition that prevailed in 1928 offered the best available chance for socialist propaganda and education...
...Although Sen...
...This fact is basic in the situation confronting socialists...
...Clearly no coalition, much less a labor party, was possible that year...
...In 1948, at a time when the Socialist Party had been working unsuccessfully for the formation of a third party, it seemed to me most important to run lest all the enthusiasm for a new party and a kind of pragmatic socialism should be captured by Wallace's Progressive Party which, as he himself later admitted, was manipulated by the Communists...
...I answer for myself because I know my own reasons, and I strongly suspect that, with some possible shifts of emphasis, they were the reasons why loyal socialists supported me...
Vol. 17 • February 1953 • No. 2
