New Perspectives on Socialism II:
Socialism and Capitalism Reconsidered

Richard Schneirov
Indiana State University

The July 2003 special issue of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era revisited the history of the Socialist Party of America during the Progressive Era. This second issue on "New Perspectives on Socialism" examines socialism largely outside the party context, thereby challenging the tendency of scholars and non-scholars alike to identify socialism with a party-based political movement. To the degree that the essays collected here examine party-based socialism, they focus on the gradualist or revisionist wing of the party, whose socializing and democratic reforms, programs, and ideas helped establish a context for the Progressive Era and thereafter, when a "social democratic" type of politics became intrinsic to the mainstream American politics.	1
It is commonplace when we consider socialism to think of it in relation to a party with socialism or communism in the name. Thus, when the question is asked "why no socialism in America," historians and social scientists tend to translate the term "socialism" to mean an electorally significant socialist party. Yet, it is well worth remembering that the political content of parties does not depend on the name of the party in question. As Martin J. Sklar points out, there has been no "Capitalist Party" in America, yet capitalism exists nonetheless, and socialism may be said to have the same kind of extra-party reality.	2
Of course, it takes only a moment's reflection to recognize that what activists and intellectuals called socialism was never one thing. It was always many things. It has been a powerful critique of the existing industrial system. It has always had ethical, utopian, and ideological dimensions. It also was a political program relating immediate reforms and day-to-day activity to a vision of long-term social change. Socialism was a broad movement overflowing the boundaries of party and disseminating characteristic beliefs, values, attitudes, and demands among a host of American movements and institutions.	3
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