A case of american exceptionalism : why is there no socialist tradition in the United States?

• Autor(a) principal: Matos, Constança Soares Correia de
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/31267
• topic: Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Ciências Políticas

Unlike other major developed nations, the United States has never witnessed the development of a broad socialist-inspired movement, nor have its most prominent socialist party organizations ever achieved electoral success at the national level. It is the purpose of this dissertation to explain the exceptional nature of the nation’s social and political experience and, most importantly, to provide an informed, sensible and credible answer to why there is no socialist tradition in the United States. In order to do so, the analysis will focus on two influential works – Werner Sombart’s Why is there no Socialism in the United States? and Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks’ It didn’t happen here: why socialism failed in the United States –, both of which contain a comprehensive depiction of the American socialist movement at distinct historical times, and that, most importantly, provide well-founded answers to the initial research question. The main conclusions pertaining to why socialism did not thrive in the United States may be summarized as the product of the interaction of human agency and several distinctive factors of social, historical, political and economic nature. In addition, whilst the recent political developments may demonstrate that support for socialism in the United States is on the rise – especially amongst Democratic voters and the younger generations –, most indicators reveal that the latter still constitutes a minority. Hence, although support for socialist-inspired policies will most likely never cease to exist – regardless of its numerical expression –, there is ample reason to believe that the United States still remains as exceptional as ever in this regard.