Is Socialism Becoming More Popular in America?

In the wake of the worst financial and economic crisis in many decades, it appears many Americans have warmed up to leftist ideas, at least if anecdotes and polls cited by the The Nation are to be believed:

A new Gallup Poll finds that socialism is now viewed positively by 39 percent of Americans, up from 36 percent in 2010. Among self-described liberals, socialism enjoyed a 62 percent positive rating, while 53 percent of Democrats and independent voters who lean Democratic gave socialism a thumb’s up.

Of course, this is something many conservatives wouldn’t bat an eyelash at: they’ve long argued that liberals in general are socialist sympathizers, not that this wouldn’t make many of them nervous. What’s more surprising is which group has seen the largest growth in socialist sympathies:

The most significant increases in sympathy for socialism over the past two years—since the last time Gallup polled on economic and ideological terms such as “socialism” and “capitalism”—have been among self-identified “conservatives” and “Republicans.”

In 2010, only 20 percent of conservatives viewed socialism favorably. Today, the number is 25 percent.That’s right: one-quarter of American conservatives view socialism favorably.

Among Republicans, the increase has been slightly more notable. In 2010, only 17 percent of self-identified Republicans had a positive view of socialism. Now, that number had increased to 23 percent. So if you meet four Republicans, one of them is harboring socialist sentiments.

Perhaps what’s more surprising is that, well, this trend shouldn’t be surprising, as presumably, socialism – or ideas similar to it – have a long history in America:

Socialism has deep America roots—going back to when Tom Paine used his final pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, to outline a social-democratic model for establishing a just and equitable society. Socialist communes and political movements flourished in the United States during the first decades of the republic’s history, and the advocates for those movements found a home in the radical experiment that came to be known as the “Republican” Party.

Founded at Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854 by utopian socialists and militant abolitionists, the early Republican Party included many German-American immigrants who arrived in the United States after the European revolutions that stirred in 1848 were repressed. The man who issued the call for that meeting in Ripon, and who is to this day frequently identified as a founding figure for the Republican Party, was Alvan Earle Bovay, a veteran radical who had led militant movements for land reform that urged the poor to organize politically and “Vote Yourself a Farm.”

Among the first Republicans were many allies and associates of socialist causes, and even of Karl Marx. Among their number was Joseph Weydemeyer, a former Prussian Army officer who would continue to correspond with Marx as he rose through the ranks as a military officer during the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln, like most of the leading Republicans of his day had read Marx and Engels in the pages of the Horace Greeley’s New York Herald Tribune (for which the two men wrote for many years as European correspondents). The sixteenth president spoke often about the superiority of labor to capital and was highly critical of concentrated wealth. Toward the end of the Civil War, the White House accepted the congratulations of Marx and his fellow London Communists after Lincoln’s 1864 re-election.

Lincoln was no Marxist. But, like a good many of the initial leaders of the Republican Party, he had been exposed to the ideas of Marx and Engels in the Tribune. In fact, Lincoln chose as one of his closest White House aides (and eventually as his assistant secretary of war) Charles Dana, Marx’s long-time editor. Famously, Dana once declared, “Everyone now is more or less a Socialist.

Indeed, the US has long served as something of a petri dish for testing all sorts of political, social, and religious ideas – and for the formation of completely new ones. Being built from scratch, so to speak, this nation was subject to all sorts of ideas of what it should stand for and how it should be governed. A prevailing characteristic of our political culture has been this constant soul searching for what a trust and just America should look like.

And this is perfectly healthy, if not ideal to the founding principles of the country:

…Americans are less inclined to be troubled by mentions of socialism, or by socialist and social democratic ideas today than in the past—just as Americans are less inclined (according to a recent CNN poll) to be unsettled by the mention of Libertarianism  or by libertarian and libertarian-lite ideas. This is healthy. A republic is best served by differing ideas and ideals with regard to economic and social arrangements.

The question is, where will this increasingly polarized country go? Will there ever be a consensus? I think that eventually there will be, albeit after a long and hard slog. Thoughts?