American Socialists and Evolutionary Thought by Mark Pettinger (review)

Book Reviews 175 Annexation, division, conquest, and other processes of American extension are viewed as transactional. A growing America did interact with other societies, and even within its own borders it was obliged to face the "geopolitical management of captive peoples" (170). Expansion in America is neither consistent with an overgeneralized model of migration westward, nor is it explained in a complex of stages and regional components. Rather, the author navigates easily past mired controversies over what colonial society went where and in what form, and manoeuvres expertly to define the issues which matter in westward expansion: "making new pathways," "tying the parts together" with national programs of route design, building new urban centres, and adding the cement of nationalism in form as well as in rhetoric. In this book, a new meaning emerges for the shape of the United States. Volume Two of the Shaping a/America series, like its predecessor, is a joy to read and savour. Meinig has mastered the art of weaving rich detail through a work of enormous scope. Herein a chapter on Cherokee history, society, and migration easily resides with a discussion of Yankee colonization of Syracuse, New York. This attention to detail within an easy-to-follow framework will appeal to nonscholarly as well as academic readers. Both groups will find the book a vital addition to their collections on America's past. Continental America is another superb achievement in an emerging series which promises to revise and revitalize our perspectives on the history of the United States. Victor Konrad Ca11,1d11-U11ited States Fulbright Prograni and C1rl~tcm U11illersity. Mark Pettinger. Americ,m Socialists ,md Euol11tio11t1ry Thought. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. Pp. x + 310. Published in the History o/Americ,m Thought and Culture series, edited by Paul S. Boyer, this study elaborates a definite thesis. Pettinger argues that previous work on the American socialist movement has overlooked the central role played by evolutionary theories. Richard Hofstadter and others have amply demonstrated the unfortunate utility of Darwinian and Spencerian notions in conservative and progressive thinking and policy: 176 Canadian Review oiAmerican Studies Pettinger maintains that socialists were no less seriously infected. However, he suggests evolutionism, especially in its inevitabilist aspects, betrayed and hobbled the socialists-at least until after 1908. Bitter electoral experience in 1904 and 1908 led to a pronounced downplaying of 'science' and 'evolution' in socialist discourse, and to a corresponding stress upon organization, pragmatism, and politics. Pettinger makes a fairly distinct division between Gilded Age and Progressive Era socialist intellectuals-with the founding of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) the breakpoint. Throughout both periods (from about 1870 to 1914) Pettinger seeks to demonstrate that socialists' appropriation of evolution theories and the fascination with science, which they shared with most other Americans, invalidates Daniel Bell's silly dichotomy: that socialists could be 'in' but not 'of' America. In the Gilded Age, he argues, people as disparate as R. T. Ely, John Bates Clark, Lawrence Gronland, or Edward Bellamy, saw socialism as a benign alternative to violent class conflict. Their socialism mixed Christian, utopian, and Marxian formulae indiscriminately. As the 'Marxist' Gronland put it, socialism was the future because "God wills it" (10). But not only God; also Herbert Spencer and Lamarck. In a sophisticated, finely researched survey of the immense array of Gilded Age socialist writing, Pettinger suggests how the various inevitabilities undermined political activism. Few of his Gilded Age socialistintellectuals would join the SPAafter 1901. 'Scientific' evolutionism in socialist thinking throughout both periods severely weakened political socialism in other ways also. Despite Eugene Debs's insistence that the class struggle must be colour blind, and despite the pleas of socialist feminists, the SPA remained resolutely racist and sexist. In this respect, of course, the socialists were very much 'of' America. But in sharing racist, sexist blinkers with their compatriots, they stood to lose much more than did the Progressives, Democrats, or Republicans; because the socialist appeal, if it were to succeed at all, would have had to be addressed to all the dispossessed. I think Pettinger might have made more of this. When he reaches the Progressive Era, Pettinger depicts a deepening division, pitting those socialists...