Socialism and America

Based on his own participation in the movement and on theoretical issues that have been debated since the turn of the century, Howe presents a searching review of American socialism--its past, present, and future. The essays deal with the promise of the Debs era (1912-1920), the disaster of 1936, when the socialist party broke with organized labor and opposed FDR's re-election, the formation of the popular front with the Communist Party in the late thirties, and why socialism failed. Surveying the movement he has known first-hand since 1930, Howe takes the state-centered political structure as it is and tries to work through it to effect the economic and social changes he thinks socialism is about. He allows for the particular historical constraints under which socialists of the past acted, hopes for a reconciliation of liberalism and democratic socialism, and weighs the chances for the survival of socialism as a living ideal. ISBN 0-15-183575-6 : $17.95.