Debsian Socialism Through a Transnational Lens ¹

Stephen Burwood
State University of New York College at Geneseo

Socialism in the United States between 1901 and 1919 has usually been viewed in a national context replete with assumptions about American Exceptionalism. Taking their cue from Werner Sombart's classic 1906 essay "Why Is there No Socialism in the United States?," historians of American socialism from Daniel Bell and David Shannon to Seymour Martin Lipset have pointed to distinctly American conditions inimical to the growth of Socialism. For Ira Kipnis and Philip Foner, the problem was that American socialism before World War One was too rooted in American political traditions, not pure or Marxist enough.2 For Daniel Bell, it was a "foreign virus," and was unable to be domesticated. And in the work of Paul Buhle, the "foreign" nature of American socialism in its ethnic and immigrant members has found its rescuer. The distinction between the "American" and "foreign" character of American socialism dominated debate for far too long.3	1
In this article, the distinctively "American" version of socialism, popularly known as Debsian Socialism � the pre-World War One Socialism of the American heartlands (the Midwest, Southwest, and West) that looked to Eugene V. Debs and a distinctively American vernacular � provides the focus for exploration beyond conventional national boundaries.4 Was it so exclusively "American" after all? The recent importation into historical circles of the concept of the transnational offers us an opportunity to look anew at the language and tone, even some of what have been considered the distinctive concerns and policies of the Debsians.5 In doing so, we can raise, if not definitively answer, important questions as to the balance between national and international influences on American history, a task so impressively pioneered by Daniel Rodgers for the Progressives and New Dealers.6	2
In utilizing the concept of the transnational we run up against an older term, routinely attached to studies of socialism: internationalism. After the fall of Communism, enough time has now elapsed that the older term has lost its readily understood meaning for many historians. Indeed, the entire conceptual framework of socialism more generally and Marxism more specifically has faded badly to the point where graduate history students, even of Europe, no longer are required to acquire it. As with so much however, plus �a change, plus c'est la même chose (the more things change, the more they are the same). The older term carries with it much that has been absorbed into the new.	3
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