The July 2003 special issue of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era revisited the history of the Socialist Party of America during the Progressive Era. This second issue on “New Perspectives on Socialism” examines socialism largely outside the party context, thereby challenging the tendency of scholars and non-scholars alike to identify socialism with a party-based political movement. To the degree that the essays collected here examine party-based socialism, they focus on the gradualist or revisionist wing of the party, whose socializing and democratic reforms, programs, and ideas helped establish a context for the Progressive Era and thereafter, when a “social democratic” type of politics became intrinsic to the mainstream American politics.

The conference at which a shorter version of this discussion was originally presented had as its theme, “Eugene V. Debs and the Politics of Dissent in Modern America.” Let me begin with a few words about “the Politics of Dissent,” because it was part of the overall framework of our discussions, and because it has a significant bearing on the way we think about capitalism and socialism.

In 1913 Socialist Party (SP) leader Morris Hillquit contended that the United States had embarked on the path toward socialism. He argued that the “modern principle of control and regulation of industries by the government indicates the complete collapse of the purely capitalist ideal of non-interference, and signifies that the government may change from an instrument of class rule and exploitation into one of social regulation and protection.” He then asserted that like “the industries, the government is being socialized. The general tendency of both is distinctly towards a Socialist order.” This fit with his understanding of the stages a nation underwent as it progressed first from a society with little to no state involvement in the economy, to a social democracy with state regulation of corporations and protections for workers, to, finally, a socialist state where a government which the people elected managed the economy.

In the history of American socialism William English Walling occupies a special place. Born into a wealthy Midwestern family, Walling was educated at the University of Chicago and Harvard, but soon found a calling as a social reform activist when he learned first hand about the conditions of working people as an Illinois factory inspector and a habitué of turn-of-the-century social settlement houses and the Jewish ghetto scene. From that point forward Walling was a major influence wherever he directed his fertile mind and instinct for provoking controversy and precipitating new movements. In 1903, Walling helped found the National Women's Trade Union League and became president of its New York chapter. Six years later he cobbled together a group of anti-racist socialists to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – then invited W.E.B. DuBois to become editor of its journal, The Crisis.

My purpose here, apart from convincing you that John Dewey was quite possibly right about American entry into World War I, is to address the repression and mutilation of pragmatism by left-wing intellectuals in the twentieth century. These would seem to be very different purposes, but in fact they are the same. If we are to understand how pragmatism acquired its unsavory reputation among leftists everywhere, we must go back to 1917, when Randolph Bourne denounced not only Dewey's decision in favor of American entry but also pragmatism itself as the source of that decision. These almost ancient denunciations would not matter very much, except that they are repeated in every subsequent account of the American Left in World War I, and are recalled if not reiterated in every subsequent critique of pragmatism – they still determine our thinking about Dewey, about pragmatism, and about the war. Revisiting this primal scene allows us to ask why. It allows us to convert the following statement, which still serves as a left-wing credential, into a question: Dewey's support for American entry into the Great War demonstrates that pragmatism is a philosophy of acquiescence to “the existing fact,” a philosophy that must validate capitalism, accept imperialism, and repudiate socialism.