A Socialist of the Heart

William Appleman Williams, the most influential U.S. historian since Charles an Mary Beard, was also a most curious socialist thinker. While keenly interested in Marx, he remained a romantic “socialist of the heart” who favored a decentralized, regionalist cooperativism. In the absence of socialism, however, he preferred “enlightened conservatism,” a la Herbert Hoover, to the corporate liberalism of Woodrow Wilson or Harry Truman. Much like his fellow (unacknowledged) Christian socialist Michael Harrington, Williams aspired to reach “middle America” with radical ideas. But his impact remained essentially scholarly. Indeed, he was rarely an activist, and never joined any left-wing group.

This sum...