Upton Sinclair and the Socialist Response to World War I

Abstract

It was maintained by many historians until quite recently that 1912 was the high point in the influence of socialism in the United States. Daniel Bell wrote in 1952: "The War and the defections of many party leaders merely completed, but were not themselves the cause of, the isolation of the socialist movement from American politics. The eclipse of American socialism took place in 1912; the rest of the years were trailing penumbra."1 Ira Kipnis in his book of the same year. The American Socialist Movement. ended the work in 1912 with the claim that the party had then started on its irreversible decline because of opportunism, racism and the lack of party democracy. Another common belief was that Wilsonian democracy pre-empted many of the planks that the Socialist Party had been fighting on.