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.