Elena Kagan's Undergraduate Thesis

[RoyGBiv]

I saw this over at Brad DeLong's blog. It's incredibly insightful for an undergrad thesis. Oh, who am I kidding. I've read worse PhD dissertations.

http://delong.typepad.com/files/elena-kagan-thesis.pdf (PDF)

Ever since Werner Sombart first posed the question in 1905, countless historians have tried to explain why there is no socialism in America. For the most part, this work has focused on external factors--on features of American society rather than of American socialist movements. Socialists and non-socialists alike have discussed the importance of the frontier... the fluidity of class lines... the American labor force's peculiarly heterogeneous character, which made concerted class action more difficult than it might otherwise have been. In short, most historians have looked everywhere but to the American socialist movement itself for explanations of U.S. socialism's failure. Such external explanations are not unimportant but neither do they tell the full story. They ignore or overlook one supremely important fact: Socialism has indeed existed in the United States.... The Socialist Party increased its membership from a scanty 10,000 in 1902 to a respectable 109,000 in the early months of 1919... a party press that included over three hundred publications with an aggregate circulation of approximately two million....



In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories rather than of socialisms greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation's established parties?

In answering this question, historians have often called attention to various charcteristics of American society... an ethnically-divided working class, a relatively fluid class structure, an economy which allowed at least some workers to enjoy what Sombart termed "reefs of roast beef and apple pie"--prevented the early twentieth century socialists from attracting an immediate mass following. Such conditions did not, however, completely checkmate American socialism.... Yet in the years after World War I, this expanding and confident movement almost entirely collapsed.... he experience of New York.... From the New York socialist movement's birth, sectarianism and dissension ate away at its core. Substantial numbers of SP members expressed deep and abiding dissatisfaction with the brand of reform socialism advocated by the party's leadership. To these left-wingers, constructive socialism seemed to stress insignificant reforms at the expense of ultimate goals. How, these revolutionaries angrily demanded, could the SP hope to attract workers if it did not distinguish itself from the many progressive parties, if it did not proffer an enduring and radiant ideal? How, the constructivists angrily replied, could the SP hope to attract workers if it did not promise them immediate benefits, if it did not concern itself with their present burdens?...

Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP exhausted itself. forever.... The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one's fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if 'the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/05/elena-kagans-undergraduate-thesis.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal+%28Brad+DeLong%27s+Semi-Daily+Journal%29

[Cha]

1. Thanks BIV..I'm going

to give this a kick so it won't fall off the radar.:)

[RoyGBiv]

2. The final bit is the kicker ...

"The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one's fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if 'the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope."

The socialists suffered from it along with the populists before/at the same time as them. SNCC arguably ceased to be an effective organization due to such infighting. It helped bring us Nixon and just a decade later Reagan and then Bush. Every single time we break down into our groups built on ideological purity, we fail.

[RoyGBiv]

3. A bit of weirdness ...

I don't quite know what to make of this.

Kagan theses to be available online

By Garance Franke-Ruta
The White House announced Monday that it would make Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's Princeton senior thesis available for online publication. Her Oxford graduate thesis would also be made available for online posting, a White House official said, as "a demonstration of our commitment to transparency."

Permission to publish the two papers will be granted when the White House sends the Senate Judiciary Committee Kagan's responses to questions from the panel about her background, an administration official said. But it remains unclear when that will happen, in large part because the Clinton Presidential Library is still compiling documents from Kagan's four-year tenure in the Clinton White House.

Princeton University had sent news organizations and blogs copies of the thesis for research and personal use purposes -- hence the many excerpts from it in news stories -- but objected when a conservative blog posted the full document online late last week. The university declined to grant permission to The Post to publish it, as well, saying Friday that only Kagan could give that permission because she was the copyright holder on the 1981 document detailing the collapse of the Socialist Party in New York.

Asked by The Post for permission to publish the document Friday, the White House said it would review the matter. Other major media outlets also requested permission last week to publish the paper.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/05/kagan-theses-to-be-available-o.html

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/05/the-garance-on-the-kagan-thesis.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal+%28Brad+DeLong%27s+Semi-Daily+Journal%29