Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?

Contents

1. Preface 2 min 5

   Sombart explains that these studies first appeared in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik and are reprinted with a few new figures. He decided to publish them as a book only once he was sure he had found the truth: his bourgeois friends in America agreed with him, and so did the socialist leaders, whose International Socialist Review reprinted most of the articles. The book supplements his Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung. Dated Breslau, August 1906.

2. Intro. I Capitalism in the United States 39 min 29

   Sombart sets out to prove that the United States has the most developed capitalism in the world. The land is rich in metals, soil and routes; the settlers brought a Puritan ethic and scarce labour drove mechanisation. Banks, industrial capital and the trusts are unequalled; no feudal classes survive; the cities are rational creations; extremes of wealth and poverty are the greatest anywhere. Even the national character, its valuation of everything in money, its cult of size and success and its demand for laissez-faire, he derives from capitalism.

3. Intro. II Socialism in the United States 27 min 24

   If socialism necessarily follows capitalism, the most capitalist country should be the classic land of socialism, yet American workers are said to have none. Sombart qualifies the claim: two socialist parties polled over 450,000 votes in 1904, and the AFL makes radical legislative demands. But the typical worker is contented, patriotic and not hostile to capitalism; the unions are business organisations, and their leaders collaborate with employers in the National Civic Federation. He then asks what conditions produced this outlook and whether they will last.

4. I.1 Politics and Race 5 min 7

   Sombart opens his political explanation by rejecting a racial one. The Anglo-Saxon race is not immune to socialism, as Chartism and Australia show, and the American working class is not mainly Anglo-Saxon: Germans and Irish far outnumber English and Scots among immigrants and their children. Millions came from countries where socialism flourishes. The explanation must therefore lie in the conditions of American life, beginning with politics.

5. I.2 The Political “Machine” 13 min 6

   American democracy elects not only legislatures but governors, judges and a host of local officials; a citizen of Ohio must choose about twenty-two officials a year. Such a system needs professional politicians. Since the 1820s a guild of them has run a pyramid of primaries and conventions, with armies of workers and huge sums of money: Tammany’s campaigns cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. A new workers’ party would have to build such a machine against old parties already in possession.

6. I.3 The Monopoly of the Two “Great” Parties 25 min 25

   The two great parties hold a monopoly. They are financed by corporations, assessments on officials and fees from candidates; they buy votes, give favours to the poor, and reward and punish through their control of offices. The spoils system draws place-seekers and labour leaders into them. Because American elections remove governors and judges, workers seek quick results through the big parties, as in Colorado in 1904. The American love of size and majorities and his loyalty to party complete the circle.

7. I.4 The Failure of All “Third” Parties 12 min 6

   The old parties work like giant trusts, crushing all competitors. Sombart lists the failed third parties, from the Anti-Masons and Know-Nothings to the Greenbackers and Populists, whose success in 1892–94 ended in absorption by the Democrats. Their failure discredits any third party. Yet the Republican party itself rose on the anti-slavery cause, and a party of proletarian emancipation might do the same. The deeper reasons must lie in the inner nature of the parties.

8. I.5 The Inner Nature of the Ruling Parties 30 min 11

   The Democratic and Republican parties differ in no principle: their positions on currency, tariff, drink and trusts are evasive, and their division is historical accident kept alive by the hunt for office. Nor do they have a class character; region, race and nationality group voters instead. A worker can therefore belong to either without betraying his class, and the parties court labour. The AFL’s new system of questioning candidates, set out in a 1904 questionnaire, formalises the belief that workers can get what they want through the old parties.

9. I.6 The Position of the American Worker in the State 10 min 10

   Besides the party system, the worker’s whole political position attaches him to the state. Americans revere the Constitution; universal suffrage, popular sovereignty and the rule of public opinion give the poorest citizen a feeling of power, and public opinion has favoured labour. Yet political equality alone cannot content a hungry man. The absence of socialism must therefore also be explained by the worker’s economic situation, the subject of Part Two.

10. II.1 Survey 5 min 1

    Sombart explains how to compare standards of living. Household budgets alone do not show how typical they are, so he will first establish the levels and gradation of money wages in America and Germany, then compare prices, and only then compare budgets of families at similar positions on the income scale.

11. II.2 The Money Income of the Worker in America and Europe 16 min 17

    Census averages, wage-class statistics for Massachusetts and Illinois, and figures for mining, cigar-making, chemicals and woodworking are set against German data from Baden, Stuttgart, Hanau, the Ruhr and elsewhere. Sombart concludes that American money wages are two to three times the German, and occasionally more: 100 per cent higher than in the best-paid German regions and 150–200 per cent higher than in the poorest. The question becomes what these wages will buy.

12. II.3 The Cost of Living over There and Here 31 min 11

    American prices reflect a colonial country with cheap land and dear labour, and an advanced industry: services and luxuries are dear, food and mass products cheap. For the worker the dollar buys as much as three or four marks. Comparing rents city by city, coal, furniture, food prices and clothing, Sombart finds that housing costs no more than in Germany for the same space, food about the same, furniture less, and clothing little or no more.

13. II.4 How the Worker Lives 27 min 13

    Using American and German household budgets, Sombart finds that American workers save a little more but chiefly live better: four to five rooms against fewer than two, far more meat, flour and sugar, and clothes like the middle class. They spend a similar share on necessities, leaving no larger free income; but the German spends his surplus on drink, three to four times as much as the American. After drink, the American’s free income is the larger.

14. II.5 Standard of Living and Outlook 4 min 5

    The American worker lives in comfort: a home rather than a room, ample food, the dress of a gentleman. Steady economic growth over two generations, brought about by capitalism, has made him love the system and become a calculating businessman with a patriotic pride in American progress. “On roast beef and apple pie all socialist utopias came to grief.” But his ideal standard of living, his social position, also had to be favourable.

15. III.1 The Democratic Cut of Public Life in America 5 min 2

    The American worker’s social position is better than the European’s. In a colonial society without feudal traditions, liberty and equality are partly real. Workers dress and bear themselves like citizens, are treated alike by waiters and policemen, travel in a single class of railway carriage, and are respected because work itself is honoured. The distance between classes is smaller, and feels smaller still.

16. III.2 Employer and Worker 11 min 11

    Equality also rules in the factory. Employers treat workers courteously, give them freedom and small comforts, though they neglect safety. Sombart holds that American workers are objectively the most exploited in the world, but employers keep them content: they do not cut piece-rates, reward suggestions, as at the National Cash Register Company, and sell them shares, as U.S. Steel did in 1903, binding workers to capitalist interests.

17. III.3 The Worker’s Flight into Freedom 15 min 13

    The decisive factor is the chance to escape wage-labour: to rise, or above all to take free land in the West under the Homestead laws. Census figures show millions of farms founded and millions migrating westward, especially in depression years. Even the possibility of leaving calmed the worker, as Henry George observed. Sombart concludes that all these factors are about to disappear or turn into their opposites, and predicts that socialism will flourish in America in the next generation.