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America Compared

Tammy Williams

WHY IS THERE NO SOCIALISM IN THE U.S.?

• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, could not decide whether the U.S. was ahead or behind other capitalist societies on the path to socialism.

• Frederick Jackson Turner’s writing suggested that the combination of free land on the frontier and progressive social legislation rendered socialism irrelevant to American workers.

• Why workers’ protests and programs did not take the form of a powerful political party devoted to labor interests.

• First, our tradition of worker militancy, the narrow and conservative trade unionism of the American Federation of Labor became the dominant thrust of American Labor activism.

• To be an American worker was to be a trade unionist and a Democrat or a Republican, but not a socialist.

• Second, distinctive American brand of industrial capitalism.

• Two sectors of the work force was produced: the “white-color” office workers, and a “labor aristocracy” of skilled native-born tradespeople who bargained peacefully with employers and who opposed the immigration of cheap unskilled labor.

WHY US THERE NO SOCIALISM IN THE U.S.?• Third, political institutions.

• Unlike western Europe, democratic politics preceded industrialization, so that by the time the workers formulated their demands.

• Two major political parties were well-entrenched coalitions that vied for the labor vote.

• Two-party system resisted class-based third parties such as Populists of the 1890s and the socialists of 1910s, and it successfully lured their followers by adopting some of their proposals.

• American economic and political arrangements are distinctive rings truer than simplistic, monocausal explanations for the failure of American socialism.

• Eric Foner wrote, “Only time will tell whether the United States has been behind Europe in the development of socialism, or ahead of it, in socialism’s decline.

The Meaning of American Jazz in France

Gerald Early declared, “There are only three things America will be known for two thousand years from now: the Constitution, jazz music, and baseball.”

Jazz was developed in the late nineteenth century out of African American musical expression that included work songs, marches dance music, and spirituals.

Jazz blended African harmonic and rhythmic elements with American themes.

Born in New Orleans, jazz music spread north, east, and west to American cities where blacks migrated hunting for jobs during and after WWI.

The Meaning of American Jazz in France

American soldiers and black entertainers introduced in Europe and spread quickly in 1920.

Especially in Paris, crowds flocked to cabarets and clubs in the bohemian districts of Montmartre and Montparnasse to drink, dance, and revel in the wild and exotic sound of jazz.

The jazz craze of Paris in the 1920s and the cultural exchange it represented formed one episode of a larger transatlantic cultural shift.

The American “Roaring Twenties” were paralleled by the “Crazy Years” in France, and the two were described in strikingly similar language.

Because jazz was American, it symbolized the “Americanization” of France that took off in the 1920s thanks to the influx of American tourists.

People adrift in poverty, resentment, and despair turn to confident and charismatic political leaders during the Great

Depression.

Franklin Roosevelt and Adolpf Hitler are two such men.

Both came to power about the same time, following inept and unpopular predecessors.

Their ignorance about economics as well as their political pragmatism reflected in their improvised policymaking.

Both began advocating a form of “corporatism,” or government-supervised cooperation between business and

labor.

Neither Roosevelt nor Hitler solved the Great Depression, though hitler was more successful at restoring full

employment.l

ROOSEVELT AND HITLER

Their sense of action, confidence, and purpose brought to their roles – highlighted by skillful propaganda – kept the people on their sides and helped carry them through the

crisis.

The differences in the degree and intensity with the psychological pressures were applied to the Nazis and New

Dealers.

The two movements reacted to the depression in similar ways.

The Nazis handled their monetary and trade problems more successfully.

Neither regime solved their problem of maintaining prosperity without war.

When war was forced upon them, they both took the same apporach and achieved the same result.

ROOSEVELT AND HITLER

The American and Soviet Cold War Empires

The United States and the Soviet Union were as close as any great powers have been to controlling “the destinies of half the world.”

States exist within and anarchic environment, survival is their common objective; power is the means to ensure it.

Historians point out, that however “great” the United States and the Soviet Union were during the cold War, the “power” they obtained and wielded was rarely comparable.

It is a big difference if great powers have to extend their authority against, rather than with, the wishes of those subjected to it.

Where Western resistance was unlikely, as in Eastern Europe, Stalin would in time attempt to replicate the regime he had already established inside the Soviet Union.

The American and Soviet Cold War Empires

Stalin’s policy was one of imperial expansion and consolidation differing from that earlier empires only in the determination with which he pursued.

When comparing the American empire to its Soviet counterpart, is a striking reversal in the sequence of events.

The United States had been poised for global domination at the end of World War I.

Military forces played a decisive role in bringing that conflict to an end.

One empire arose by invitation and the other by imposition.

Globalization and American Power

Globalization has different meaning to different people. Widespread agreement is that the concept refers to an intense

acceleration of the movement of capital, goods, people, and information around the world during the past generations.

Joseph Nye writes, “globalization is an old story.” “Its seeds were planted when separate human societies or tribes first

made contact with another through war, trade, and disease. During the 1500s this contact truly started the global proportions when

the European’s trade along with the colonization of the Americas. The United States, not Britain, took the lead in the recent round of

globalization.

Globalization and American Power

The United States pioneered advances in computer technology and the “information revolution” that replaced industrial manufacturing as the driver of economic growth.

Is globalization another name for American empire? Alexander Motyl defines empire as “a hierarchically organized political

system with a hublike structure – a rimless wheel – within which a core elite and state dominate peripheral elites and societies by serving as intermediaries for their significant interactions.”

Globalization points towards a diffusion of power among nations as well as growing role for new international players.