Whatever Happened to the Socialist Party

Failure of a Dream?: Essays in the History of American Socialism. Edited by John H. M. Laslett and Seyfnour Martin Lipset. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1974. 754 pp. Joseph H. Cash. Working the Homestake, Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State University Press, 1973.137 pp. James C. Duram. Norman Thomas. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1974.165 pp. The Thurber cartoon lady who posed the question which serves as title for this essay would not get a very clear answer from current historians. For twenty years, since the publication of David A. Shannon's Socialist Party of America, the fires of debate on the failure of socialism have blazed, fanned more recently by the appearance and subsequent decline of the New Left. The need for some recapitu- lation and synthesis is partly provided for in Failure of a Dream?: Essays in the History of American Socialism. Each chapter consists of an original statement by a participant in the debate followed by a rejoinder and, where possible, a counter- reply by the original writer. One section deals with 'internal' explanations of socialism's failure (bad tactics, internal dissension, etc.), and another with exter- nal factors, (i.e., factors derived from the nature of American society and culture as a whole). A final section attempts to relate the Old Left and the New. Two essays introduce the book, one by Betty Yorberg giving the socialists' view of the problem, and another, much longer, by the editors themselves, representing the social science profession

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