Municipal Governments and the Nonoccurrence of an American Socialist Party

Few scholars have sought to explain the lack of a broad-based socialist party in the United States in terms of municipal politics and, more specifically, the institutional and historical aspects of local governments. This dissertation will explore the structure of local governments during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era as a factor for explaining the nonoccurrence of a broad-based socialist party in the United States. In doing so, it will compare the socialist movements in Chicago during the Gilded Age with those in Milwaukee during the Progressive Era and conclude with an analysis of the municipal characteristics of America’s twenty-first-century socialist revival, especially as it has related to Chicago. During Chicago’s Gilded Age, corrupt political machines competed with the recently emergent Socialistic Labor Party for the city’s immigrant working-class vote. Despite the remarkable success of the Socialistic Labor Party during the 1879 election, the socialists were ousted from power through election fraud and machine shenanigans. In contrast, in Milwaukee during the Progressive Era, the city’s local political machine was humiliated by the socialists’ electoral victory of 1910. However, by 1912, the socialists had lost their majority on the common council and the mayorship. Unlike Chicago, the loss in electoral power was not the result of the local political machine. Instead, the city’s professionalization movement waged an aggressive fusion campaign that accused the socialist government of mismanagement. These exclusions from local governments—while epitomized in Chicago and Milwaukee—occurred throughout the United States. Collectively, they made it impossible for socialists or any other labor-based progressive movements to successfully challenge the dominance of the United States’ two-party system.