Books and Cooks West
January 2001
It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States by Gary Wolfe Marks and Seymour Martin Lipset
It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States by
Gary Wolfe Marks and Seymour Martin Lipset
Date to be determined, Time to be determined
Place to be determined
Menu: To be determined
Our rating: 3.5 cups of tea!
Book Description from Amazon.com
Two of America's leading political sociologists explore a phenomenon of
American political exceptionalism: the failure of the socialist movement
in the United States. Parties calling themselves Socialist,
Social-Democratic, Labor, or Communist have been major forces in every
democratic country in the world, yet they have played a surprisingly
insignificant role in American politics. Why the United States, the most
developed capitalist industrial society and hence, ostensibly, fertile
ground for socialism, should constitute an exception has been a critical
question of American history and political development. In this probing
work the authors draw on rich contrasts with other English-speaking
countries and extensive comparisons within the United States at the state
and city levels, eschewing conventional explanations of socialism's demise
to present a fuller understanding of how multiple factors--political
structure, American values, and the split between the Socialist party and
mainstream unions--combined to seal socialism's fate. Further chapters
examine the distinctive character of American trade unions, immigration
and the fragmentation of the American working class, socialist strategies,
and repression, concluding with a penetrating analysis of American
political exceptionalism up to the present day.
