Americans by Choice

by John Palmer Gavit

EFFECT OF THE WAR ON SOCIALISM

What might have been the development of political Socialism in the United States had there been no war in Europe it is impossible to say. To what extent the Germanization, not only of the Socialist party, but of large elements of politics in the old parties, might have gone on, it is impossible to say. The reactions of the war spirit, and of the variants of sympathy among the racial groups, produced profound effects. They were marked in the Socialist movement, tending to drive into the “left” or extreme radical wing, and even out of the party into the nonpolitical and antipolitical movements, many of the foreign-born Socialists who during past years have been trying to make the Socialist parties and the labor organizations of various sorts more and more radical, less and less patient toward political methods and measures. Inevitably these ultraradicals took on, or were regarded as taking on, the aspect of opposition to the cause of the Allies, to the participation of the United States in the war—to out-and-out pro-Germanism. That this pro-Germanism among the ultraradicals was not imaginary may be illustrated by one episode reported by an investigator for the Americanization Study:

In 1915, in the capacity of a field investigator of the conditions of unskilled labor for the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, I happened to visit Port Arthur in the eastern part of Texas, where a Standard Oil refinery is located. There was some labor excitement. A young German, 22 or 23 years of age, who had come to this country when a small boy and who was one of the local leaders of the I. W. W., addressed a meeting. In attacking all capitalists of all countries he also spoke of the war which, according to him, was started and prosecuted by the czars, kaisers, kings, and capitalists of all countries at the expense of the working classes, etc., etc..

After the meeting I interviewed a number of local labor leaders. The youthful orator was sitting on a lumber pile a few feet from me. Oil barges were passing back and forth on the canal, carrying oil from the refinery to a large British tanker in the harbor. The boy intently watched the barges, and exclaimed, as if to himself, in a low tone of disgust and desperation:

“Hm! Britain gets all the oil; Germany—nothing!”

All his reasoning, based upon international class solidarity, had given way to his patriotic German heart!

There was, further, the inevitable influence of the fact that the German Social Democracy has, on the whole, been more close-knit, more effective in propaganda, and the German Socialist literature, from Marx down, more widespread in its distribution, than the propaganda in any other language. Even now, the Germans and pro-Germans in the Socialist ranks habitually declare that the war was ended by the German Social Democrats through a revolt against the Kaiser.

The native-born Americans, English, and other English-speaking Socialists, most of whom had been in sympathy with the cause of the Allies, revolted against the pacifist, antiwar, and pro-German element in the Socialist party, and the turmoil shook the organization to its foundation. The end of this is not yet; but one big result in the Socialist party itself has been to reinforce the influence of the moderate element and to some extent to drive the extremists into the so-called Communist parties and the I. W. W., which, whatever else may be said of them, do not exercise themselves directly about political affairs.

To the deep rift in the Socialist ranks on this account may be attributed in large part the failure of the Socialists to live up to their expectations and promises in the presidential election of 1920. It is far too soon to speculate with any confidence upon what may be the course of political Socialism in the United States in the years immediately before us when the emotions excited by the war die down, the hysterical opposition to immigrants as such fades out, and economic and industrial forces are permitted to operate “normally” in their effects upon the motives of the working people and their expression of those motives through their ballots.