Title: Marxism and the American Experience
1Marxism and the American Experience
- History 351
- January 10, 2007
2Announcements
- The University is closed on Monday, Jan. 15 for
Martin Luther King Jr. Day. No class that day. - Please be sure to put the Hist 351 syllabus on
your favorites list http//www.uoregon.edu/dapop
e/351syl--w07.htm is the URL. - A short video or website review is due Jan. 29.
For instructions, see http//www.uoregon.edu/dapo
pe/351webvideo--w07.htm
3More Announcements Emma Goldman Video Showings
- Well show the video on Emma Goldman this
afternoon in 248 Gerlinger after class.
(330-500) and again next Wednesday (Jan. 17),
same time and place. - A copy of the video should be on reserve in
Knight Library soon.
4Some Links to Explore
- Marxists.org, a vast internet archive of Marxist
writings - A brief intellectual biography of Werner Sombart
- Brief excerpts from Robert Hunters 1904 study,
Poverty. Hunter estimated that there were about
ten million poor Americansabout the same poverty
rate as in the U.S. today (12.7 in 2004)
5Some Information on Hunger in the United States
and in Oregon
- Here are some recent figures on hunger in the
United States and in Oregon
6(No Transcript)
7Marxism in One Easy Lesson
- From Utopian to Scientific Socialism
- Discovering the laws of motion of capitalism
- Exploitation, Capital Accumulation, Worker
Immiseration - Contradiction and Revolution
- Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to
lose but your chains. You have a world to win. - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist
Manifesto, 1848
8Marxisms Great Lesson/Marxisms Great Error
- Does capitalism create within itself
contradictions that lead to crises and eventually
capitalisms downfall? - Contradiction between the forces of production
and social relations of production - Contradiction and class conflict. Does
capitalism create its own gravediggers, the
proletariat?
9Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
10Two Paths in Early 20th Century Marxism
- If Marx was correct, would the laws of motion of
capitalism themselves inevitably cause its
collapse? What should Marxists do? Sit around
and watch the process unfold? - Two responses emerged around the turn of the 20th
century - Leninism in Czarist Russia
- Revolutionary vs. Trade Union Consciousness
- Vanguard PartyBolsheviks
- Dictatorship of the Proletariat
- Revisionism in Germany
- Eduard Bernstein Evolutionary Socialism
- Parliamentary Socialism and the SPD
11Eduard Bernstein/V.I. Lenin
12The (Ir)relevance of Marxism
- Determinism and destiny?
- Classes and other social groupings
- A theory of production in a consumer society?
- Dominating nature in an era of environmental
limits?
13Werner Sombart and American Socialism Explaining
an Absence
- Why is there no socialism in the United States?
(1906) - The German contrast with the United States
- American Exceptionalism
14Roast Beef and Apple Pie
- All socialist utopias come to nothing on roast
beef and apple pie. - The American worker lives in comfortable
circumstances. On the whole, he is not familiar
with oppressively impoverished housing
conditions. He is not forced out of his home
into the tavern, because his home is not like the
room of the worker inEurope.He is well fed
and is not acquainted with the discomforts
thatresult in the long run from the mixing of
potatoes and alcohol. It is no wonder if, in
such a situation, any dissatisfaction with the
existing social order finds difficulty in
establishing itself in the mind of the worker.
15Democratic Style of Public Life
- In his appearance, in his demeanour, and in the
manner of his conversation, the American
workercontrasts strongly with the European one.
He carries his head high, walks with a lissom
stride, and is as open and cheerful in his
expression as any member of the middle class.
There is nothing oppressed or submissive about
him. He mixes with everyonein reality and not
only in theoryas an equal. - The bowing and scraping before the upper
classes, which produces such an unpleasant
impression in Europe, is completely unknown.
16Frontier as Safety Valve
- The mere knowledge that he could become a free
farmer at any time could not but make the
American worker feel secure and content.One
tolerates any oppressive situation more easily if
one lives under the illusion of being able to
withdraw from it if really forced to. - (The most famous statement of this safety valve
concept was the essay of historian Frederick
Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier
in American History, 1893.)
17Sombart on the Future of American Socialism
- All the factors that till now have prevented the
development of Socialism in the United States are
about to disappear or to be converted into their
opposite, with the result that in the next
generation Socialism in America will very
probably experience the greatest possible
expansion of its appeal.
18Was Werner Sombart Right?
- About 1906?
- About 1930s?
- About today?
- Pedlar living in a cellar with three others, New
York, 1892