Love's Labour's Lost: A History of the Question
"Why is there No
Socialism in the United States?"
Alexander M. Dunphy
Portland State University 2014
BA Honors Thesis
EXCERPT
Marx celebrated the history of the United States’ Working Men’s parties of the 1820s and
1830s as some of the first labor-oriented political organizations in the world. Emanating from the concerns of craftsmen and skilled journeymen over their low social and economic status, the
members of the Working Men’s parties, or “Workies,” pressed for universal male suffrage, equal
educational opportunities, protection from debtor imprisonment, greater financial security, and
shorter working hours. Marx and his partner, the German social scientist, political theorist, and
philosopher Friedrich Engels also admired the Knights of Labor (KOL), the first national labor
organization in the United States. Organizing along industrial lines, rather than the more
conservative craft model, the KOL engaged in struggles for the eight-hour workday without
regard to ethnicity, sex, or skill set in the years following the U.S. Civil War. Engels even went
as far as to advise the “backwards workers” of Britain to follow their example. The existence of
these unions was a sure sign of the advanced level of the working class of the United States.
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