National Socialism
From a practical point of view, the antebellum experiments with Utopian communities were failures. However, they inspired
the creativity of a genre of Utopian fiction writers in the latter part of the nineteenth century that provided the ideological
basis for twentieth century progressives. In 1884, Laurence Gronlund published The Cooperative Commonwealth: An
Exposition of Modern Socialism. Gronlund’s book was average in terms of popularity but it was responsible for the
conversion to socialism of Massachusetts newspaperman and novelist, Edward Bellamy.
Bellamy, inspired by The Cooperative Commonwealth published the Utopian novel Looking Backward in 1888. In Looking
Backward, Julian West a wealthy Bostonian falls into a trance-like sleep and awakens in the year 2000. In the Boston of
2000, the government is the sole capitalist and landowner. Americans have been organized into a giant industrial army. There
is full employment, but everyone is assigned work according to the planners’ determination of societal needs. “Scientific”
social and economic management has transformed twenty-first century America into a paradise, where there is practically no
crime and no poverty. Heredity flaws and mental infirmities have been eliminated through an aggressive program of eugenics
.
Everyone’s needs are supplied by the state. Each year every citizen is issued a stipend using a system similar to modern-day
debit cards. The stipend is the same for everyone. Using it they can shop for their needs at state run cooperatives, the 1887
concept of “Sam’s club” and “Costco”. In Bellamy’s Utopian America there is no military, no state governments, tax
collectors, political parties, labor unions, juries, or jails. The entire society is regimented much like an army and operates with
a military like efficiency. Looking Backward became the third best-selling work of fiction in the nineteenth century, ranking
just behind “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Ben Hur”. By the end of the century, there were more than one million copies in
print.
The success of Looking Backward inspired hundreds of copycat books, many containing not-so-covert references to
Bellamy’s book in their titles. Looking Within, Looking Forward, Looking Further Backward, Looking Further Forward, and
Mr. East’s Experiences in Mr. Bellamy’s World, were all attempts by authors and publishers to capitalize on the success of
Looking Backward.
In the world of the Utopian novelist, jealousy, envy, hate, malice, anger, and lust had become obsolete. Eugenics was openly
and enthusiastically touted by many of the Utopian writers. As one historian put it, “Utopian novelists engaged in a group
fantasy that saw future ages creating a race of supermen.” The impact of Bellamy’s book on the literary, intellectual,
political, and reformer classes in America was phenomenal. They saw in it the opportunity to make the idealism of Karl Marx
and Robert Owen a reality. Daniel De Leon, Eugene Debs, John Dewey, Upton Sinclair and Franklin Roosevelt all spoke of
being strongly influenced by Looking Backward.
Many followers of Bellamy, anxious to explore the social implications of Looking Backward’s vision for the future, began to
form discussion groups known as “Bellamy Clubs“. Soon Bellamy Clubs were organized throughout the country. Eventually
there would be 167 of them From Boston to San Francisco. The Chicago Club was headed by Clarence Darrow, best known
as the defense lawyer in the trials of thrill killers, Leopold and Loeb in 1924, and John Scopes in the famous “scopes monkey
trial” of 1925.
The first club was formed in Boston on September 18, 1888 by two Civil War veterans, General A. F. Devereux and Captain
Charles E. Bowers. Bellamy himself attended a meeting at Captain Bowers’ office on December 15, 1888. Also in attendance
were Cyrus Willard of the Boston Globe and Sylvester Baxter of the Boston Herald along with five Christian socialists, Alzire
Chevallier of the Christian Science Monitor, Frederick White, Reverend W.P.D. Bliss, Edward Everett Hale, and William
Dean Howells.
Bellamy requested that his name not be used by the club. Acceding to his request the name was changed to “Nationalist
Clubs” at the suggestion of Captain Bowers. The name “Nationalist” was not chosen to reflect a patriotic or nationalistic
cause in the classic sense, but rather, to express the club’s desire for the “nationalization” or public ownership and
management of the economy. The Boston Nationalist Club held discussions on theory and values, sponsored lectures, and
engaged in discussions and contacts with other worldwide socialist and reform movements. Much of its work was carried
out in conjunction with an auxiliary group, the Christian Society of Socialists.
The Christian Society of Socialists was formed in Boston February 18, 1889 by two charter members of the Federalist Club,
W.D.P. Bliss, a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and cousin of Edward
Bellamy. Edward Bellamy’s father and maternal grand-father were both Baptist ministers. His father was eventually forced
out of the ministry after he joined the Freemasons.
The Society’s Declaration of Principles stated that economic powers were the gifts of God and should be used for the benefit
of all. They believed that the fluctuations in the capitalist economic system was due to its unplanned structure. They also
believed that capitalism led to the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, resulting in poverty, intemperance,
indolence and crime among the masses. The Society’s goal was to show that the goals of socialism and the goals of
Christianity were not only compatible, but synonymous as well, and that the Christian Church should apply the “social gospel
of Christ” through socialism.
The differences between Marxist Socialism, National Socialism and Progressive Socialism is not to be found in ideology, but
in methodology. The Marists believed socialism could only be brought about through revolution, Nationalists and
Progressives believed it could best be realized through evolution. Progressives, however, have never recognized or admitted
that their policies constitute socialism.
The panic of 1893 caused a dramatic decline in the Nationalist Clubs and the Christian Socialists, but their ideals and goals
became “mainstream” in the American consciousness. The cause would be carried forward by the progressive politicians of
the twentieth century.
The catalyst for progressive political involvement in the spread of national socialism was the emergence of nationally
circulated magazines and the popularity of yellow journalism. Two prominent leaders in the yellow journalism field were
McClure’s magazine and the Hearst newspapers.
William Randolph Hearst began his publishing empire when he took over the Los Angeles Examiner from his father in 1887.
He later acquired the New York Morning Journal becoming the major rival of Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World. Over
the next few years he expanded his publishing business into magazines, becoming the most influential journalistic enterprise in
America with thirty newspapers located in most of the major cities in the country
At its peak, the Hearst empire included such molders of public opinion as the Los Angeles Examiner, the Boston American,
the Atlanta Georgian, the Chicago Examiner, the Detroit Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Washington Times, the
Washington Herald, and his flagship the San Francisco Examiner; plus such popular magazines as Cosmopolitan, Good
Housekeeping, Town and Country and Harper's Bazaar. Hearst was an avid opponent of socialism, yet he unwittingly
furthered its spread with the practice of yellow journalism and the employment of investigative reporters labeled by Teddy
Roosevelt as, “muckrakers”.
McClure’s Magazine was a popular monthly magazine founded in 1893 by S.S. McClure. McClure’s is credited with
establishing and popularizing muckraking journalism. Two of its most famous “muckrakers” were Ida Tarbell and Upton
Sinclair. Stories by Ida Tarbell chronicling John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, led to the breakup of Standard Oil; Upton
Sinclair’s expose of the meatpacking industry in Chicago with his popular novel “The Jungle” led to major labor reforms and
establishment of the Food and Drug Act; Graham Phillips, another popular muckraker, writing for Hearst’s Cosmopolitan
Magazine published a series of articles on Corruption in the Senate that later contributed to adoption of the Seventeenth
Amendment.
The anti-establishment, anti-government, anti-capitalist slant of biased reporting on the part of muckraking journalists at the
turn of the century led to a number of reforms in government and economic institutions. The popularity of the ideas of the
utopian novelists coupled with the exposures of corruption in government and deplorable working conditions in factories,
gained support for major societal changes and the establishment of America‘s own unique form of socialism known as
“progressivism.”
Economist Thorstein Veblen helped to further the cause with his popular book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in
1899. In it, he postulated there was a basic difference between the productiveness of "industry," run by engineers, which
manufactures goods, and the parasitic nature of "business," which exists only to make profits for a leisure class. The chief
activity of the leisure class was "conspicuous consumption", which Thorstein considered as waste, contributing nothing to
productivity. He taught that conspicuous consumption and the ability to engage in conspicuous leisure were mere status
symbols whose sole purpose was to impress others.
Envy and jealousy are attributes of the fallen nature of man. However, efforts at organizing these attributes into a political and
social system did not emerge until the mid-nineteenth century advent of socialism in Europe. In the years following
reconstruction, European socialist workers migrated to America in large numbers. There were some twenty-four socialist
newspapers printed in America between 1876 and 1877. Of these, only eight were printed in English. None of the English
language papers were still in existence in 1880. The Socialist Labor party had less than ten percent native-born American
members throughout the decade.
In the early 1890s, membership in the Socialist Labor Party ballooned; still, less than thirty percent of its members were
native born. The European socialists who were responsible for the antebellum Utopian societies were mostly from the
wealthy and upper social classes. The later arrivals were mostly of the working class. These newcomers soon made up a
large segment of the core constituents of the American labor movement.
The European socialists did not mix well with American workers, however. American union members were interested in
working conditions, wages, fewer hours and shorter workweeks. They had little interest in worker ownership of the means
of production and other revolutionary goals that formed the centerpiece of European socialism.
In 1880, partly to escape from the labor strife in Chicago, George Pullman, a manufacturer of railway cars moved his
company into a South Chicago suburb and established the company town, Pullman, Illinois. Pullman attempted to do for his
workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company what Robert Owen had attempted to do for his mill workers in New Lanark,
Scotland a century before. Life in Pullman, however, was far from “Utopian”. Although Pullman built comfortable housing
for his workers and constructed parks, libraries and theatres, he also denied to them the right to own their own homes, start
a business or use alcohol and termination of their employment meant the loss of their home. With Pullman being a
combination employer and landlord, workers sometimes saw their paychecks shrink to pay back rent.
A severe downturn of the economy in the mid-1890s forced the Pullman company to reduce the wages of its workers. In the
summer of 1894 the American Railroad Union, led by Eugene V. Debs went on strike. Violence and mayhem from the strike
soon spread from coast to coast affecting most of the major railroads and leaving thirteen workers dead, thousands
blacklisted and an estimated $80 million in property damage. Debs was imprisoned for failure to obey a court injunction
against the strike. While incarcerated in the jail at Woodstock, Illinois, Debs spent the time educating himself in socialism and
came out as a dedicated socialist activist. He soon became America’s best known socialist, running for President in 1900,
1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920. He was convicted of violating the Espionage Act in 1918 for his opposition to conscription
during World War One, and conducted his campaign for President in 1920 from his prison cell.
The idealistic visions of the Utopian fiction writers, the muckraking journalism that chronicled everything supposedly wrong
with capitalism, and the deplorable working conditions and low wages in America’s leading industries, coalesced at the turn
of the twentieth century to provide the impetus for the progressive movement in America. Socialism has never been popular
with the American people. However, the socialists’ vision fired their imaginations and the siren song of its promises became a
part of the “American pipe dream”. America rejected the title of socialism but embraced its core principles with one minor
variation. They embraced the aims of socialism contained in its concept of “social justice” but modified its call for “public
ownership of the means of production.”
Instead of wresting ownership from the hands of capitalists, they set out to control the economy through unionism and
government regulation. America had established its own unique form of socialism. Starting in about 1890 America began a
steady movement toward socialism under the pseudonym, “progressivism”. The Sherman Anti-trust Act was passed in 1890
on a vote of 293-1. Its purpose was to protect competition in the marketplace by restricting the formation of monopolies. Its
popularity indicates the effectiveness of demonizing the “robber barons of industry” like J.P. Morgan and John D.
Rockefeller. Ironically, one of the first applications of the law was against the American Railway Union and Eugene Debs in
an effort to end the Pullman strike in 1894.
From a practical point of view, the antebellum experiments with Utopian communities were failures. However, they inspired
the creativity of a genre of Utopian fiction writers in the latter part of the nineteenth century that provided the ideological
basis for twentieth century progressives. In 1884, Laurence Gronlund published The Cooperative Commonwealth: An
Exposition of Modern Socialism. Gronlund’s book was average in terms of popularity but it was responsible for the
conversion to socialism of Massachusetts newspaperman and novelist, Edward Bellamy.
Bellamy, inspired by The Cooperative Commonwealth published the Utopian novel Looking Backward in 1888. In Looking
Backward, Julian West a wealthy Bostonian falls into a trance-like sleep and awakens in the year 2000. In the Boston of
2000, the government is the sole capitalist and landowner. Americans have been organized into a giant industrial army. There
is full employment, but everyone is assigned work according to the planners’ determination of societal needs. “Scientific”
social and economic management has transformed twenty-first century America into a paradise, where there is practically no
crime and no poverty. Heredity flaws and mental infirmities have been eliminated through an aggressive program of eugenics
.
Everyone’s needs are supplied by the state. Each year every citizen is issued a stipend using a system similar to modern-day
debit cards. The stipend is the same for everyone. Using it they can shop for their needs at state run cooperatives, the 1887
concept of “Sam’s club” and “Costco”. In Bellamy’s Utopian America there is no military, no state governments, tax
collectors, political parties, labor unions, juries, or jails. The entire society is regimented much like an army and operates with
a military like efficiency. Looking Backward became the third best-selling work of fiction in the nineteenth century, ranking
just behind “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Ben Hur”. By the end of the century, there were more than one million copies in
print.
The success of Looking Backward inspired hundreds of copycat books, many containing not-so-covert references to
Bellamy’s book in their titles. Looking Within, Looking Forward, Looking Further Backward, Looking Further Forward, and
Mr. East’s Experiences in Mr. Bellamy’s World, were all attempts by authors and publishers to capitalize on the success of
Looking Backward.
In the world of the Utopian novelist, jealousy, envy, hate, malice, anger, and lust had become obsolete. Eugenics was openly
and enthusiastically touted by many of the Utopian writers. As one historian put it, “Utopian novelists engaged in a group
fantasy that saw future ages creating a race of supermen.” The impact of Bellamy’s book on the literary, intellectual,
political, and reformer classes in America was phenomenal. They saw in it the opportunity to make the idealism of Karl Marx
and Robert Owen a reality. Daniel De Leon, Eugene Debs, John Dewey, Upton Sinclair and Franklin Roosevelt all spoke of
being strongly influenced by Looking Backward.
Many followers of Bellamy, anxious to explore the social implications of Looking Backward’s vision for the future, began to
form discussion groups known as “Bellamy Clubs“. Soon Bellamy Clubs were organized throughout the country. Eventually
there would be 167 of them From Boston to San Francisco. The Chicago Club was headed by Clarence Darrow, best known
as the defense lawyer in the trials of thrill killers, Leopold and Loeb in 1924, and John Scopes in the famous “scopes monkey
trial” of 1925.
The first club was formed in Boston on September 18, 1888 by two Civil War veterans, General A. F. Devereux and Captain
Charles E. Bowers. Bellamy himself attended a meeting at Captain Bowers’ office on December 15, 1888. Also in attendance
were Cyrus Willard of the Boston Globe and Sylvester Baxter of the Boston Herald along with five Christian socialists, Alzire
Chevallier of the Christian Science Monitor, Frederick White, Reverend W.P.D. Bliss, Edward Everett Hale, and William
Dean Howells.
Bellamy requested that his name not be used by the club. Acceding to his request the name was changed to “Nationalist
Clubs” at the suggestion of Captain Bowers. The name “Nationalist” was not chosen to reflect a patriotic or nationalistic
cause in the classic sense, but rather, to express the club’s desire for the “nationalization” or public ownership and
management of the economy. The Boston Nationalist Club held discussions on theory and values, sponsored lectures, and
engaged in discussions and contacts with other worldwide socialist and reform movements. Much of its work was carried
out in conjunction with an auxiliary group, the Christian Society of Socialists.
The Christian Society of Socialists was formed in Boston February 18, 1889 by two charter members of the Federalist Club,
W.D.P. Bliss, a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and cousin of Edward
Bellamy. Edward Bellamy’s father and maternal grand-father were both Baptist ministers. His father was eventually forced
out of the ministry after he joined the Freemasons.
The Society’s Declaration of Principles stated that economic powers were the gifts of God and should be used for the benefit
of all. They believed that the fluctuations in the capitalist economic system was due to its unplanned structure. They also
believed that capitalism led to the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, resulting in poverty, intemperance,
indolence and crime among the masses. The Society’s goal was to show that the goals of socialism and the goals of
Christianity were not only compatible, but synonymous as well, and that the Christian Church should apply the “social gospel
of Christ” through socialism.
The differences between Marxist Socialism, National Socialism and Progressive Socialism is not to be found in ideology, but
in methodology. The Marists believed socialism could only be brought about through revolution, Nationalists and
Progressives believed it could best be realized through evolution. Progressives, however, have never recognized or admitted
that their policies constitute socialism.
The panic of 1893 caused a dramatic decline in the Nationalist Clubs and the Christian Socialists, but their ideals and goals
became “mainstream” in the American consciousness. The cause would be carried forward by the progressive politicians of
the twentieth century.
The catalyst for progressive political involvement in the spread of national socialism was the emergence of nationally
circulated magazines and the popularity of yellow journalism. Two prominent leaders in the yellow journalism field were
McClure’s magazine and the Hearst newspapers.
William Randolph Hearst began his publishing empire when he took over the Los Angeles Examiner from his father in 1887.
He later acquired the New York Morning Journal becoming the major rival of Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World. Over
the next few years he expanded his publishing business into magazines, becoming the most influential journalistic enterprise in
America with thirty newspapers located in most of the major cities in the country
At its peak, the Hearst empire included such molders of public opinion as the Los Angeles Examiner, the Boston American,
the Atlanta Georgian, the Chicago Examiner, the Detroit Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Washington Times, the
Washington Herald, and his flagship the San Francisco Examiner; plus such popular magazines as Cosmopolitan, Good
Housekeeping, Town and Country and Harper's Bazaar. Hearst was an avid opponent of socialism, yet he unwittingly
furthered its spread with the practice of yellow journalism and the employment of investigative reporters labeled by Teddy
Roosevelt as, “muckrakers”.
McClure’s Magazine was a popular monthly magazine founded in 1893 by S.S. McClure. McClure’s is credited with
establishing and popularizing muckraking journalism. Two of its most famous “muckrakers” were Ida Tarbell and Upton
Sinclair. Stories by Ida Tarbell chronicling John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, led to the breakup of Standard Oil; Upton
Sinclair’s expose of the meatpacking industry in Chicago with his popular novel “The Jungle” led to major labor reforms and
establishment of the Food and Drug Act; Graham Phillips, another popular muckraker, writing for Hearst’s Cosmopolitan
Magazine published a series of articles on Corruption in the Senate that later contributed to adoption of the Seventeenth
Amendment.
The anti-establishment, anti-government, anti-capitalist slant of biased reporting on the part of muckraking journalists at the
turn of the century led to a number of reforms in government and economic institutions. The popularity of the ideas of the
utopian novelists coupled with the exposures of corruption in government and deplorable working conditions in factories,
gained support for major societal changes and the establishment of America‘s own unique form of socialism known as
“progressivism.”
Economist Thorstein Veblen helped to further the cause with his popular book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in
1899. In it, he postulated there was a basic difference between the productiveness of "industry," run by engineers, which
manufactures goods, and the parasitic nature of "business," which exists only to make profits for a leisure class. The chief
activity of the leisure class was "conspicuous consumption", which Thorstein considered as waste, contributing nothing to
productivity. He taught that conspicuous consumption and the ability to engage in conspicuous leisure were mere status
symbols whose sole purpose was to impress others.
Envy and jealousy are attributes of the fallen nature of man. However, efforts at organizing these attributes into a political and
social system did not emerge until the mid-nineteenth century advent of socialism in Europe. In the years following
reconstruction, European socialist workers migrated to America in large numbers. There were some twenty-four socialist
newspapers printed in America between 1876 and 1877. Of these, only eight were printed in English. None of the English
language papers were still in existence in 1880. The Socialist Labor party had less than ten percent native-born American
members throughout the decade.
In the early 1890s, membership in the Socialist Labor Party ballooned; still, less than thirty percent of its members were
native born. The European socialists who were responsible for the antebellum Utopian societies were mostly from the
wealthy and upper social classes. The later arrivals were mostly of the working class. These newcomers soon made up a
large segment of the core constituents of the American labor movement.
The European socialists did not mix well with American workers, however. American union members were interested in
working conditions, wages, fewer hours and shorter workweeks. They had little interest in worker ownership of the means
of production and other revolutionary goals that formed the centerpiece of European socialism.
In 1880, partly to escape from the labor strife in Chicago, George Pullman, a manufacturer of railway cars moved his
company into a South Chicago suburb and established the company town, Pullman, Illinois. Pullman attempted to do for his
workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company what Robert Owen had attempted to do for his mill workers in New Lanark,
Scotland a century before. Life in Pullman, however, was far from “Utopian”. Although Pullman built comfortable housing
for his workers and constructed parks, libraries and theatres, he also denied to them the right to own their own homes, start
a business or use alcohol and termination of their employment meant the loss of their home. With Pullman being a
combination employer and landlord, workers sometimes saw their paychecks shrink to pay back rent.
A severe downturn of the economy in the mid-1890s forced the Pullman company to reduce the wages of its workers. In the
summer of 1894 the American Railroad Union, led by Eugene V. Debs went on strike. Violence and mayhem from the strike
soon spread from coast to coast affecting most of the major railroads and leaving thirteen workers dead, thousands
blacklisted and an estimated $80 million in property damage. Debs was imprisoned for failure to obey a court injunction
against the strike. While incarcerated in the jail at Woodstock, Illinois, Debs spent the time educating himself in socialism and
came out as a dedicated socialist activist. He soon became America’s best known socialist, running for President in 1900,
1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920. He was convicted of violating the Espionage Act in 1918 for his opposition to conscription
during World War One, and conducted his campaign for President in 1920 from his prison cell.
The idealistic visions of the Utopian fiction writers, the muckraking journalism that chronicled everything supposedly wrong
with capitalism, and the deplorable working conditions and low wages in America’s leading industries, coalesced at the turn
of the twentieth century to provide the impetus for the progressive movement in America. Socialism has never been popular
with the American people. However, the socialists’ vision fired their imaginations and the siren song of its promises became a
part of the “American pipe dream”. America rejected the title of socialism but embraced its core principles with one minor
variation. They embraced the aims of socialism contained in its concept of “social justice” but modified its call for “public
ownership of the means of production.”
Instead of wresting ownership from the hands of capitalists, they set out to control the economy through unionism and
government regulation. America had established its own unique form of socialism. Starting in about 1890 America began a
steady movement toward socialism under the pseudonym, “progressivism”. The Sherman Anti-trust Act was passed in 1890
on a vote of 293-1. Its purpose was to protect competition in the marketplace by restricting the formation of monopolies. Its
popularity indicates the effectiveness of demonizing the “robber barons of industry” like J.P. Morgan and John D.
Rockefeller. Ironically, one of the first applications of the law was against the American Railway Union and Eugene Debs in
an effort to end the Pullman strike in 1894.
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E-mail address
jfm@illinoisconservative.com
jfm@illinoisconservative.com
| Philosophy of Evil Socialism in America "The struggle of History is not between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; it is between government and the governed." Jerry McDaniel |
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| Philosophy of Evil Socialism In America By Jerry McDaniel Chapter 24, Continued Utopian Socialism |
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