Some midcentury pamphleteering

 I'm not even sure why I ended up reading Norman Thomas' 40-page pamphlet Democratic Socialism: A New Appraisal, published in 1953 by the League of Industrial Democracy, considering the '50s were not exactly a high point of socialist agitation. But I stumbled upon it in the course of researching a SocFund presentation and it's not very long, so read it I did.

This piece is most interesting as a historical document -- the bits I reacted to most strongly were a) the parts where things appear to have sadly not changed at all since 1953 and b) the parts where, dang, things have changed a lot since 1953! Thing that have sadly not changed include the dependence of American prosperity on the arms economy ("Profound as would be the rejoicing were a miracle from heaven to assure us of everlasting peace, our rejoicing would almost immediately turn into lamentation for economic disaster unless there were plans, now mostly non-existent, to turn armed expenditure to the conquest of poverty, to the building of hospitals, houses, schools, roads"), the entrenchedness of the two-party system, and "free enterprise" being a falsehood due to the amount of subsidies businesses get from the government. Things that have changed a lot since 1953 include the erosion of unions and functional regulation as a countervailing force against the big capitalists ("Big business has no such sweeping control over us as in the days of the elder Morgan" ::line of crying face emojis::), the Southern segregationists still being part of the Democratic Party (Thomas actually rather presciently insists that they'll have to get booted from the party sooner or later), and the intensity and transparent self-interest of the business class' opposition to "socialized medicine." Another thing that has changed is that the USSR was still around in 1953; Thomas spends several pages decrying the USSR's authoritarianism and explaining how his philosophy and aims differ from Leninist strains of Marxism. One of the absolute most interesting bits to me was his ruminations on the two-party system; Thomas was the last person to regularly run for President on the Socialist Party ticket back when you could actually do stuff like that, and his grudging acceptance of emerging reality that this just wasn't feasible anymore is quite an interesting read from the vantage point of 66 years later, when running for President on a third-party ticket is pretty much the fastest way to make the whole country hate you forever. 

 

Overall it is not a scintillating read but it is quite a good snapshot of a particular time and place in American history, and I have a soft spot for Norman Thomas due to his opposition to Japanese internment, even if he does sound very fifties at times (the gendered language especially sticks out when you compare it with most modern left writing).