Re: A highly critical take on Fitch
Marvin Gandall wrote:
There’s lots of literature, of course, on why there was no lasting socialist movement in America. I don’t think you really have to look that far; America’s constantly expanding economy, built on the continent’s great wealth, produced a more powerful capitalist class able to provide more consistent upward mobility to successive generations of immigrants, as well as shelter from the two wars which ravaged Europe and served to raise the political consciousness of its working class. Immigration, as well as race, also served to divide the US working class to a greater degree than was the case with the more homogenous working classes in the European states.
All true, but there’s also Dan Lazare’s favorite argument: the constitutional structure of the US, with its divided government and federal system all designed to frustrate popular power.
Doug