Socialism in America from the Shakers to the Third International

Defining socialism as the natural progeny of Jeffersonian egalitarianism whose soul was maimed by the Bolshevik revolution and its aftermath, the editor has stuffed religious and secular communitarian tracts together with early socialist, Socialist Party and IWW writings into an anthology covering the period 1808 - 1919. Four of nine chapters present visions of nineteenth-century agrarian micro-utopias, many of which were never implemented. The latter half offers categorically socialist writings. Among the most interesting are the debate between the American S.P.'s left wing and the Hillquit-Berger leadership. The speeches by Debs, Louis Fraina, Bill Haywood and Upton Sinclair make excellent period pieces and political testaments. The editor evinces a strong anti-radical bias, characterizing the S.P. as "moderate and constructive" and the militant I.W.W. as a miniscule ragtag bunch of bomb-throwers. As a pedagogical ancillary, the book insufficiently explains the historical context of each reading; Kipnis' The American Socialist Movement 1897 - 1912 (1952) is better for the material covered, and Tyler's Freedom's Ferment (1944) offers a greater understanding of communitarianism. As a documentary collection, it's only novel contribution is some out-of-print Christian Socialist selections. As a thematic anthology, its original juxtapositions are rather on the order of a peanut-butter-and-artichoke casserole, while its conception of "socialism" exceeds the bounds of permissible tendentiousness in such matters. Fried is co-editor of an anthology of European socialist writings. (Kirkus Reviews)