A Socialist Organization in the U.S. Today?

A Socialist Organization in the U.S. Today?

A Socialist Organization in the U.S. Today?─Yes!

Gordon Haskell

In his article “Sects and Sectarians” which appeared in the Autumn 1954 issue of DISSENT, Lewis Coser calls for the dissolution of all existing socialist organizations in America.

The following is an answer as much to DISSENT’S claim to represent a superior substitute for a socialist organization in America today as it is directed against Coser’s particular treatment of the subject.

As a member of the Independent Socialist League, I naturally believe that my organization is superior to the others in the field not only in its politics but in the other aspects of socialist organization discussed. Since neither Coser nor the editors of DISSENT have chosen to deal with any particular socialist organization in specific terms, my defense has been general too.

Should the socialist movement continue to exist in organized form in America? That is the question raised by Lewis Coser in the last two pages of his article in the Autumn 1954 issue of DISSENT. He answers the question with the denunciation of all existing socialist organization, and a call for their dissolution.

This is not the first time that the cry has been raised for the liquidation of what is left of the socialist movement in this country. On the right the cry is rising to an unprecedented crescendo, and is accompanied by very concrete governmental action designed to wipe out organized socialism in this capitalist fortress. An index of our times is that this cry for liquidation is also raised from a section of the “left,” and has become a standard theme among the ex-socialists who would rather have no living organism to remind them, and more important, their employers and the authorities, of their past. And now we also hear it from people who call themselves socialists, but who have come to the conclusion, in the midst of the witch hunt, that the socialist movement in America is really finished for the present, and that its members would do everyone concerned a favor if they would disband and disappear into the somewhat larger body of “radicals.”

Of course, the motives which animate these would-be liquidators of socialist organization in America are dissimilar, and only a dabbler in sociological typology or a scoundrel might try to make them appear identical.

The reactionaries want to destroy socialist organizations because they fear them. However feeble such organizations may be at present, however isolated, the reactionaries have a healthy respect for their potential ability to arouse and help organize the masses, The less sophisticated or the more demagogic believe, or claim to believe, that revolutions are made by tiny handfuls of dedicated people who band together in a conspiracy to “foment” and “infiltrate” their way to power.

The ...