alternatehistory.com

Jack Ross's recent *The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History* is a fascinating if to my mind often perverse book. Ross (whose previous book was a laudatory biography of the anti-Zionist rabbi Elmer Berger; see http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/140536 for a favorable review, http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/957/features/jews-against-zionism/ for an unfavorable one) makes no secret of his sympathy for "right-wing populism" which he finds closer to the spirit if not the substance of the Socialist Party of Debs' day than the modern American left is. He defends the anti-interventionists of World War II as well as World War I--including Norman Thomas's association with the America First Committee. He even defends Harry Elmer Barnes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Elmer_Barnes#Holocaust_denial "Barnes was a principal target of author Deborah Lipstadt in her treatment of the phenomenon known as 'Holocaust denial,' equating all efforts at Second World revisionism with Nazi apologetics. For a defense of Barnes see [Henry] Regnery, *A Few Reasonable Words*, 202-9." https://books.google.com/books?id=fud1BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA24-IA6 You get the idea...

Ross's antiwar stance starts with the American Civil War. (He once had a blog entitled "The Brooklyn Copperhead.") He accepts the Beardian view of the war (railroad lawyer Lincoln pursuing the Federalist-Whig state-capitalist agenda) and sees much of the northern resistance to it as an incipient proletarian revolution (even if accompanied by anti-black pogroms he does not mention...):

"In July 1863, the Draft Riots that seized New York were led by ironworkers in Manhattan and longshoremen in Brooklyn--a near-revolution in many ways anticipating that which the young Workingmen's Party of America would make a bid to lead in 1877. Similar insurrections also broke out in Albany and St. Louis; in Hartford, Indiana; Port Washington, Wisconsin; and among coal miners across Pennsylvania. In this last case, grievances over working conditions of the miners combined with the protest of conscription.6 For if one accepts that conscription is slavery, ever a cardinal principle of the Socialist Party of America, it cannot be denied that the Draft Riots were a greater insurrection against slavery than any that took place in the South during the war." http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/Supplements/excerpts/Spring 15/9781612344904_excerpt.pdf

I don't think it would be an exaggeration to call Ross' book "socialism for readers of *The American Conservative.*" Ross has acknowledged his admiration for the magazine (to which he has often contributed): "Irving Howe (of whom my father was a friend and admirer) recalls in the film how the review section of *Partisan Review* gave him the best education one could ask for -- Orwell, Hemingway, Edmund Wilson, Dwight Macdonald -- 'while the Communists were reading palookas like Howard Fast.' I may have an awful lot of chutzpah in saying so, but I take every bit the same pride in what I learned from TAC's back-of-the-book -- Waugh, Wodehouse, Oakeshott, Gore Vidal, D. H. Lawrence, Robert Nisbet, Herbert Butterfield -- while the Leon Wieseltier fan club [i.e., *The New Republic*--DT] was reading palookas like Saul Bellow and Cynthia Ozick..." http://mitrailleuse.net/2014/12/19/coming-of-age-with-the-american-conservative-2/

To dwell on this aspect is of course not to do justice to Ross' book: see http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/...Socialist-Party-of-America-a-Complete-History for a fuller summary. But even his attempt to rehabilitate the "Populist Right" brings forth interesting facts. For example, concerning Father Coughlin:

"For his part, Father Coughlin, fated to a far more fearsome reputation as a rightist demagogue than any of his contemporaries, was actually engaged in a constructive dialogue with Norman Thomas throughout 1935. Coughlin was on record saying, 'The kind of Socialism as predicated by Norman Thomas is not Socialism in its real sense and has more right than wrong in it.' On those who charged him with being a fascist, he assured Thomas,

"'Fascism endeavors to protect private ownership and control of money and credit. Herein I differ from the Fascist. If I understand it, Fascism hopes either to establish a dictatorship or else, if it remains democratic (which I do not believe it can) it hopes to do away with geographical representation in parliament and establish an economic representation. Thus we would have the Senator from the motor industry, the Senator from the textile industry, etc. As a matter of fact, this very thing has been going on at Washington for a long time.'

"Thomas replied that he was 'pleased to observe your repudiation of fascism,' adding, 'The list of things that should be socially owned that you have given is extraordinarily inadequate'..." https://books.google.com/books?id=fud1BwAAQBAJ&pg=RA1-PR77

Ross clearly wishes that Thomas would have given up his sectarianism and realized that the only hope of the Socialist Party in 1936 was as part of a broader Farmer-Labor Party--which perhaps could include Coughlin, Lemke, etc. (Ross ridicules the idea that Lemke was a potential fascist. Why, he says, the man was so un-authoritarian he pledged to serve only a single term!) He notes a very interesting and neglected fact: while everyone knows that the 1935 convention of the American Federation of Labor rejected John L. Lewis's call for industrial unionism, what is less well-known is that it rejected a resolution calling for a labor party *by only four delegate votes*! https://books.google.com/books?id=MnflBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA365
Top