The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History

Description

At a time when the word "socialist" is but one of numerous political epithets, divorced from its historical context in America's political history, The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History presents a new, mature understanding of America's most important minor political party of the twentieth century. From its origins in the Labor and Populist movements at the end of the nineteenth century, to its heyday under the charismatic Eugene V. Debs and persistence through the Depression and Second World War under the steady leadership of "America's conscience," Norman Thomas, The Socialist Party of America guides readers through the Socialist party's twilight, ultimate demise, and the successor groups that arose from the party's collapse.

Jack Ross attended Montgomery College and George Mason University before receiving his BA in labor history from the National Labor College in 2006. His work has appeared in Antiwar.com and Taki's Magazine, as well as The American Conservative, History News Network, and Washington Report for Middle East Affairs. He is the author of Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism (Potomac, 2011).

"Not only does Jack Ross cover the history of the [Socialist Party of America] and its leading adherents, he also offers an analysis of socialism's rise, decline, and persistence as a marginal movement in the United States that is more complete and original than that of any other scholars of the political left. . . . This history deserves the attention and respect of every reader."--Melvyn Dubofsky, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of history and sociology at Binghamton University, SUNY, and coauthor of John L. Lewis: A Biography--Melvyn Dubofsky (10/15/2014) "Jack Ross has performed a prodigious and provocative feat of recovery and historical interpretation. In Ross's telling, the Socialist Party of America is not just a dreary dress rehearsal for Cold War liberalism or neoconservatism but rather, at its best, a living, breathing embodiment of populist American radicalism."--Bill Kauffman, author of Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism--Bill Kauffman (10/15/2014) "There have been books before on the history of the American Socialist Party, but none that I know of takes the story from the party's roots in the late nineteenth century through its devolution after World War II into Michael Harrington's Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the proto-conservative Social Democrats USA. Ross tries to answer the difficult question of why the American Socialists never became a major party, providing an important history not only of the American left but of the right as well."--John B. Judis, senior writer for the National Journal--John B. Judis (10/15/2014)