Nov
13
The Promise but Inevitable Difficulty within the Socialist Party of America
Filed Under From the Field, Minor Party Influence | Leave a Comment
Louka Fetter is a junior majoring in both Politics and International Relations as well as Economics.
This post is the fifth of this season of From the Field. If you have not yet done so, please read this brief post by the series editor introducing our focus for the season.
Despite record numbers of American voters declining to affiliate with either major party, both of which they increasingly doubt really represent their interests, the two-party stranglehold on American politics is as strong as ever. According to historic polling data, the percentage of voters identifying as independents has climbed from 31% to 43% in the past twenty years, while the percentage citing Republican or Democratic affiliation has plummeted. However, this century’s elections have seen a negligible number of ballots cast for third parties, which stands in stark contrast to a century ago when a variety of minor parties won meaningful shares of the vote. One such party was the Socialist Party of America, considered by some to be “the most important minor political party in the history of the United States in the twentieth century” because it achieved success in having many of its policy proposals implemented (xvii). However, a closer dive into the party’s history unveils a theme common to many minor parties in which its success – the implementation of its policy proposals – was also the reason for its downfall. Only through electoral reform allowing voters to express their genuine preference for their favorite candidate, such as ranked choice voting, might third parties be viable in future American elections.
The Socialist Party of America (Socialist Party) was founded in 1901 and experienced a swift rise to relevance in the decade that followed. The party enjoyed a quick ascent in part because it was formed from several existing groups, like the Populist movement and the Socialist Labor Party, allowing it to generate support from coal miners, laborers, and the working class (53). At first, the party differentiated itself as a left-wing alternative by proposing state involvement and asserting the futility of capitalism in proposing solutions to the economic issues of the day, including child labor, wealth inequality, and urban poverty. The party grew its support across the nation, enjoying its greatest electoral success in 1912 when it earned 900,000 votes in the presidential election – 6% of the total vote – and captured over a thousand offices across the nation (287). Bearing many of the hallmarks of a major party in development, the prevailing expectation by the 1910s was that the Socialist Party would continue to develop to compete as a major party in American politics (xvii).
However, the Socialist Party ultimately lost viability by suffering from the same fate that befell many other minor parties in American history. Throughout the early 1900s, the major parties absorbed and co-opted much of the ideology and policy proposals of the Socialist Party, rendering the party unable to present itself as a viable and differentiated alternative (51, 60). This phenomenon was especially apparent at two crucial points in the development of the Socialist Party – the elections of 1912 and the Great Depression – when the party’s viability was undercut at moments when it seemed poised to flourish. While 1912 did mark the party’s greatest success, the party was disappointed because it had expected to garner up to 3 million votes, and it fell short of expectations because of the major parties’ appeals to the same progressive and reform-minded base that the Socialists pursued (62). Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson was a devoted progressive, and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt was so left-wing to be accused by the Socialists of being excessive and insincere and “stealing the Socialist’s issues” (62). These two candidates garnered a significant number of votes that might have otherwise gone to the Socialist Party because they were perceived as more electorally viable options that would pursue similar left-wing policies.
The party fell victim to the same fate after it was granted new life with the difficult economic conditions surrounding the Great Depression, which increased its appeal (308). However, this revival was short-lived after Roosevelt and the Democratic Party advocated for many of the same policies as the Socialists in addressing the Depression through their New Deal platform. The Socialist Party had long advocated for major legislation including the shortening of the workday, increased inspection of factories, mines, and shops, an end to child labor, the prohibition on interstate shipment of goods made from child labor, a minimum wage law, and a graduated income tax. If many of these policies sound familiar, it is because they were implemented by Democrats as a part of the New Deal. Many supporters of these policies voted for the Democrats, a more viable electoral option, instead of the Socialist Party, with the hopes that these policies would be implemented. Moreover, many members of the Socialist Party increasingly left to join the Democrats after the passage of the New Deal because this success demonstrated the emergence of a viable way to implement left-wing policy. To the Socialist Party’s disillusionment, as soon as economic conditions arose that warranted the implementation of their left-wing policy, the Democrat Party was there to adopt and implement those policies as their own. As a result, the New Deal permanently destroyed the viability of the Socialist Party, for it failed to stand as either a clearly differentiated or electorally viable alternative to the major parties.
During two critical moments of the Socialist Party’s existence where success was anticipated, the party failed to prove itself as a feasible alternative. Both disappointments are largely due to the same phenomenon – the absorption of the Socialist Party’s positions by the major parties in America. Both major parties are very flexible and able to adapt to absorb different issues, movements, or ideologies to maintain the current two-party system (344). This development also serves to prevent minor parties from developing or maintaining a constituency, rendering them unable to supply voters with a differentiated and viable alternative and thereby affirming the two-party stranglehold on the American political system.
For minor parties to be viable in American politics, voters need an incentive to support them regardless of their chances of beating the two major parties, which might be accomplished through reforms like the implementation of ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting is an electoral system recently implemented in several areas across the country where voters have the option to rank every candidate on the ballot according to their ordinal preferences (366). Ranked choice voting has been shown to increase the frequency of votes for minor parties by between 200% and nearly 400%, showing that “ranked-choice voting may play an important role in increasing the electoral performance of third-party candidates” (374). Ranked choice voting allows voters to express their first-choice vote for a minor party without having the fear of their vote being wasted when also choosing between the major parties. While there are some challenges with ranked-choice voting, like ballot exhaustion, the need for voter education, and the potential for voter confusion, this reform seems to represent the best option for promoting the success of minor parties.
The Socialist Party greatly influenced American politics through its advocacy of left-wing economic legislation that was eventually instituted as policy. However, the Socialist Party failed to achieve viability because its policies were absorbed by the major parties during two crucial episodes, the 1912 election and the Great Depression. As a result, the Socialist Party failed to gain lasting traction and ascend to major party status. Changes to the American voting system, such as ranked-choice voting, could allow for genuine party preferences to be expressed at the ballot box. Such a change might also provide an opportunity for various minor parties to increase in viability and contribute once more to the increased representativeness of the American political system.