IN THE TIME OF THE "MUGWUMPS"

BOOK REVIEW

THE AGE OF REFORM: FROM BRYAN TO FDR, RICHARD HOFSTADTER, Knopf, New York, 1972

At one time I used to believe that the Progressive Era in America, roughly from 1900- 1920, was the real source of post World War II ideas of social progress such as Truman’s Fair Deal, Kennedy’s New Frontier and Johnson’s Great Society. Previously I had placed those ideas on the doorstep of Franklin Roosevelt. Ah, but those were the silly days of my youth when I believed that the Democratic Party could be pushed to the left and made the equivalent of a European social-democratic organization responsible to its working class base.

I now believe that the progressive period is decisive but for a different reason, that is, its role in sucking up the leftist political landscape and preventing a hard core working class-centered socialist party from crystallizing in this country. For those, like myself, who look hard for antecedents, this is important to an understanding of why today, in face of incredible provocations by the two major political parties, we have no independent class party of the working people. Thus, a look at the period becomes essential for understanding the malaise that we find ourselves today. A good place to start, and I would emphasize the word start since the book originally took form in the 1950's, is Professor Hofstadter’s book on the period. While one does not have to be sympathetic to his generally pro-Progressive tilt this little book, complete with important footnoted source references, gives a very good outline of the personalities, issues and sociological trends that broke the back of fight for an independent mass socialist party in the period.

Ironically in Europe, in the period under discussion, large, well-organized class-conscious labor parties some of them, like the Bolsheviks in Russia even revolutionary were rearing there heads. Although a relatively small, loosely organized, and programmatically amorphous Socialist Party did emerge in the United States at this time it was definitely (and occasionally, by choice) subordinated to the Progressive movement. Unless one is eternally committed to the political strategy of the ‘popular front’, that is multi-class organizations based on the lowest common denominator policies in order to achieve social change this was a very badly missed opportunity by socialists.


Hofstadter makes the interesting, and basically true, point that the whirlwind Populist movement that sprang out of the farms of the American prairie in the early 1890’s and embraced Free Silver and Bryan in 1896 was fundamentally hostile to the urban classes and particularly to the working class. I have argued elsewhere that the working class had no interest in the inflationary silver coinage issue. Moreover the populist movement, except in the South where it had the potential of driving a wedge against the rampant race segregation there, was the last gasp effort of the small capitalist family farmer in the face of the victory of mass industrialization and the rise of finance capital. I would however, argue that as late as 1896 it was still possible that the bedeviled populist movement could have been an auxiliary to an urban-based workers party. With the rise of the middle class Progressive movement such a possibility was derailed.

The rise of the Progressive movement is the strongest part of this book. Hofstadter having staked out his own personal political philosophy under the aegis of that movement has many interesting things to say about it. The fundamental driving force behind this movement was the fact of ruthless industrialization and the reaction to it by those who either had previously benefited from society, the classic “Mugwumps”, or were being driven under by ‘ the captains of industry’. Particularly well done are the analyses of the rise of the professoriat, the increase in the number of cities and their size and with it the creation of new political organizations, the change in the status of the clergy and the free professions, immigration (that round of it, anyway) and the changing mores which broke down the prevailing ideology.

While one may, as this writer does, disagree with the depth of the positive effects that the various pieces of legislation that the Progressives were able to get passed one can nevertheless see that a different class axis would have been necessary in order to make fundamental changes. Thus, although Hofstatder will not be you last place to look in understanding the evolution, such as it is, of American society for this crucial period in working class history it certainly should be your first stop.