American Democratic Socialism: History, Politics, Religion, and Theory

A sweeping, ambitious history of American democratic socialism from one of the world’s leading intellectual historians and social ethicists

The United States is witnessing a surge of democratic socialism, a reflection of a widespread recognition that global capitalism works only for a minority and is harming the planet’s ecology. This history of American democratic socialism from its beginning to the present day begins with radical democrats of the early American republic and tracks the American refashioning of a European idea. It tells a story about socialists who founded the Republican Party and the first American socialist organizations, emphasizing that women and African Americans came to socialist activism mostly through Christian socialism, as did leaders of the first great hope of radical industrial unionism, the Knights of Labor.

Comprehensive, deeply researched and highly original, this book offers an impressive synthesis of secular and religious socialisms, detailing both their intellectual and their organizational histories.