With socialism enjoying a boom right now, I thought it’d be appropriate to write a biography of the most prominent socialist during the mid 20th century. During his long career, Thomas moved the Socialist Party’s image from being a bunch of soapbox orators to an almost respected pressure movement on the left. Even into his old age, he was a tireless activist for social justice and a prolific writer throughout. The Thomas era of socialism was a testament to how social democracy evolved after the war and can teach today’s left a thing or two.
Thomas was born in 1884 in Marion, Ohio. He was the oldest of six children and his father was a Presbyterian minister. During High School, he was a paper carrier for the Marion Daily Star, a newspaper owned by none other than Warren Harding. After graduating, he attended Bucknell University, and left after 1 year after the fortune of an uncle of his allowed him to attend Princeton. After graduating in 1905, he decided to become a minister like his father. He attended the Union Theological Seminary in New York and was ordained in 1911. UTS was a bastion for the social gospel and Thomas would preach this at his congregation where he spoke out against US entry into World War I. This pacificism alienated the leaders of the Presbyterian Church of New York, and he was forced to resign.
But as the saying goes, when one door closes, another one opens. Thomas became employed with the New York mayoral campaign of Socialist Party leader Morris Hillquit in 1917. This would be his gateway into leftist politics. After the First World War ended, he quickly moved his way up the hierarchy of the socialist movement, at a time when it was being hit hard by the Palmer Raids. He became an editor at The Nation magazine in 1920, co-director of the League for Industrial Democracy (LID) in 1922, and would go on to help found the National Civil Liberties Bureau, which became the ACLU.
He also mounted several electoral campaigns. He ran for Governor of New York in 1924, Mayor of New York City in 1925 and 1929, State Senate in 1926, and Alderman in 1927. None of these were successful.
But it would be his 6 failed attempts at the presidency which would shoot him to fame. When the legendary Eugene Debs died in 1926, SPA was left in a power vacuum. Hillquit and Victor Berger, both natural successors, were born in Russia and Hungary, respectively, and ineligible to run for the Presidency. So, Thomas became the public face for the party. While his runs for the White House were all unsuccessful, he would be more influential than most other perennial candidates.
During the 1930s, Thomas began his shift from politician to intellectual. He was highly critical of FDR’s New Deal, branding it as “state capitalism” and mocking those who claimed it was socialistic. He accused Roosevelt of using the power of the government to protect corporate profits as opposed to his supported policy of nationalization. At the same time, Thomas fought those to his left. He was scathing in his views of the Soviet Union, writing in an LID pamphlet Russia- Democracy or Dictatorship? :
Soviet experience demonstrates that real liberty is not likely to exist in a one party
state. When, as has happened in the U.S,S.R., democracy is crushed within that party, then liberty is surely dead. For what has happened to freedom and democracy in Soviet Russia, Stalin's regime cannot alone be held responsible. It would be more accurate to say that he carried to an extreme certain practices and methods inherent
in Bolshevism itself.
His anti-communism earned him much scorn from the Communist Party, whose General Secretary Earl Browder, he got in a vicious war of words with.
Thomas initially held steadfast to his pacifism when war broke out. But he changed his mind after Pearl Harbor and later admitted his naivete. He would be one of the few public officials to crticize Japanese internment. In his 1944 Presidential campaign, he became less radical in his ambitions, praising the “achievements of Democratic Socialism in the Scandanavian countries and New Zealand” and stating that there would be a place for private enterprise in his ideal society as opposed to his earlier calls for a co-operative commonwealth. He also called for an effective reconstruction program in Asia to stop Stalin from dominating the region.
After the war, Thomas worked to build up the anti-communist left. He supported Harry Truman’s containment policy. In 1958, SPA absorbed the Independent Socialist League. This would inject important new life into the party. ISL was led by Max Schactman, who pioneered the idea of the Soviet Union being a “degenerate workers state”. His charisma attracted many people. Among them were Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph, who would become key organizers in the March on Washington. Also, Michael Harrington, whose book The Other America is credited with convincing President Johnson to declare War on Poverty.
At the same time, Thomas established himself as a voice of morality on many issues. He opposed the atomic bombings of Japan, called for international control of nuclear arms, opposed US support for anti-communist dictators, criticized colonialism, condemned Israel’s policies towards Palestine, and defended the victims of Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt. On a wide range of issues, Thomas had a remarkable skill in being on the right side of history.
This transition was a testament to the remarkable anti-communist consensus of the time that stretched even to much of the left. This occurred abroad too. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who created the NHS and nationalized railroads, steel, and electricity, would take Britain into NATO and send troops to Korea to fight Stalin’s imperialist ambitions. Social Democrats, who elites had feared would bring Bolshevism to their doorsteps, turned out to be very strong allies in the fight against communism.
Thomas had achieved an impressive level of respect by the 60s. So much so that in 1961, Senator Barry Goldwater was willing to debate him. Also, when William Buckley started his show Firing Line, he invited Thomas to be his first guest where they discussed the Vietnam War. Thomas opposed the war, joining the Writer’s Tax Pledge. This would be one of his last acts of politics before he died in 1968, just days before Christmas at age 84. Upon his death, he received a larger outpouring of grief from the political establishment than any socialist leader before or since, with eulogies from President Johnson and Vice President Humphrey, and even from the Governor of New York who happened to be the grandson of that old Socialist foil John D Rockefeller. The New York Times Editorial Board, which in 1921 criticized President Harding’s decision to commute Eugene Debs’ prison sentence, said of Thomas “his moral fervor for social justice has contributed to a more just America”.
The above quote has circulated around the right’s fever swamps for decades. Most famously, Ronald Reagan cited the dubious quote in a speech on the dangers of “socialized medicine” in 1961. The origin of this probably starts with a similar quote which the author Upton Sinclair wrote to Thomas in 1951:
The American People will take Socialism, but they won’t take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to ‘End Poverty in California’ I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.
It seems likely that through a game of telephone, the quote was rewritten and then falsely attributed to Thomas. But while Thomas never said that, he did frequently boast of the fact that many of his ideas that were considered “radical” would be accepted by both parties. As he put it in 1953:
When I first ran for President on the Socialist ticket in 1928, neither major party advocated any sort of security or welfare legislation. Yet, in 1952, the conservative General Eisenhower said that the “social gains” of the last 20 years are “overwhelmingly accepted by the American people,” and “not a political issue.” As a socialist spokesman in 1928 and 1932, I certainly found them political issues
He was right. There is a remarkable pattern of big new social programs going from being “godless socialism” to basic parts of American life and widely accepted even by Republicans. As an example, Reagan, who was using a fake quote to discredit “socialized medicine” in 1961 would sign an expansion of Medicare as President in 1988. Ironically, that would be repealed. We also see how the Republicans are unable to repeal Obamacare (except for the unpopular coverage mandate) and are forced to lie about protecting pre-existing conditions coverage. In fact, in last week’s elections, the voters in Utah, probably our most conservative state, voted to expand Medicaid. And in June, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) heaped scorn on President Trump for proposing to privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority.
What this shows is we should not be afraid of pushing to envelope on expanding government. Because, as Norman Thomas demonstrated, if it is popular and effective enough, what is socialism today will become as American as apple pie tomorrow.