The Left in History — How and Where Has the Left Succeeded?

Before mapping out the left's future, it is first necessary to consider its past. This past, as we shall see, is widely misunderstood. When understood correctly, it helps bring the left's future into focus — a future far more promising than most currently believe.

What is the left? Historically, the term goes back to the French Revolution, when those who supported the absolute monarchy sat on the right in the National Assembly and those who supported change sat on the left. Through many changes and permutations, these terms have stayed with us to the present day, with similar, if updated, connotations. The right today generally defends the class structure and economic outcomes of the current system (capitalism) as fair and efficient, sees traditional norms and social structures as fundamentally positive and does not believe that the scope of political and economic democracy needs to be expanded. The left generally believes the class structure and economic outcomes of the current system need to be significantly changed, sees traditional norms and social structures as negative constraints on human potential and does believe that the scope of political and economic democracy needs considerable expansion.

This is a pretty broad definition. But it is appropriate. There is no sound reason to confine one's definition of the left to those who believe capitalism is fatally flawed and must be replaced with something different or those who believe, more generally, that the current system must be radically restructured to achieve any modicum of justice. Socialists and radicals may choose to conceptualize themselves as "the left," categorizing those who believe significant reform within the system is both desirable and feasible as props to the system rather than part of the left. No one can stop them from doing so. But this is an arbitrary distinction we need not accept. Instead, the left should be defined on the basis of commitment to change, rather than on a single preferred strategy for achieving change.

Thus the left, broadly conceived, certainly includes socialists, social democrats and radicals, but also greens, liberals, progressives and generally left-of-center parties like the Italian and American Democrats. Defined in this way, how and where has the left succeeded historically? And by "success" I don't mean struggled valiantly or had large demonstrations: where have they actually achieved reforms that made people's lives better?

By and large, the left has achieved much more success when times were good than when times were bad. Hard economic times and rising inequality, rather than generating broad support for more democracy and social justice, more typically generate pessimism about the future and fear of change. In contrast, when times are good, when the economy is expanding and living standards are steadily rising for most of the population, people see better opportunities for themselves and are more inclined toward social generosity, tolerance and collective advance.

THE POST–CIVIL WAR ERA AND THE LEFT

Take, for example, the post–Civil War history of the United States until the Great Depression. The second industrial revolution gathered force right after the Civil War. A wave of technical innovation created or transformed the chemical, electrical, petroleum and steel industries. And massive infrastructure development knitted the country together into a powerful world-class economy. Growth was particularly strong in the 1870s: real per capita income went up almost 3 percent per year. Parallel to this economic advance, the first shoots of the American welfare state came into being. Spending on poor relief in the states increased tenfold, and the postwar pension system for disabled veterans and veterans' wives — American's first national anti-poverty program — was dramatically expanded in 1879. Public spending on education ramped up all over the country. And until the latter part of this period, significant progress was made on improving the condition of blacks, both legislatively and materially.

But this tremendous growth and climate of social advance did not last. Income growth in the post–Civil War era, which had started out so well, ran into severe problems in the 1880s. In that decade, per capita income growth fell to just 0.6 percent per year. The situation worsened in the first half of the 1890s, as the recession of 1893 saw increased unemployment, from 4 percent to 18 percent, and sharply reduced incomes. By 1895, per capita income growth had stagnated for 15 years, punctuated by numerous economic dislocations, leading to bitter resentment among the working classes. The gap between the rich and poor — already a problem — worsened over this period, with the wealthiest Americans amassing fabulous fortunes, while workers, particularly immigrant workers, lived in appalling conditions in the cities.

Then there were the farmers. This group was isolated from the urban-industrial life that was beginning to dominate the country, promoting a sense of relative economic decline and obsolescence. And with the declining farm prices initiated by the 1873 recession, they were suffering materially as well. By the end of that decade, wholesale farm prices had declined by 28 percent. By the mid-1890s, they had fallen another 43 percent. Between the early 1870s and the mid-1890s, the price of wheat fell from $1.12 a bushel to 50 cents or less, while the price of corn decreased from 48 cents a bushel to 21 cents a bushel.

Finally, the rising "new middle class," especially its professional component, felt deeply aggrieved by the country's failure to make more progress. Despite the expert tools that were now at this class's disposal, there was little scope to apply those tools, as status quo interests fiercely resisted any kind of meliorative agenda. Thus, despite the fact that their economic situation was typically far better than the workers and farmers, their sense of frustration was as deep or deeper.

So by the time the 1890s rolled around, no one in America was really happy with the state of the country save the wealthy. Dissatisfaction was concentrated in three general areas: the evils of bigness, the evils of corruption and the evils of injustice. The concern with bigness was centered on the super-rich and the monopolies they controlled, which were believed to rig the economic game in their favor and impoverish the workers and farmers. The concern with corruption reflected the public's perception that the political parties were under the control of the big interests, who were using government to enrich themselves and fix elections, not to try to solve social problems. The concern with injustice included everything from the raw...