The Yankee International : Marxism and the American reform tradition, 1848-1876 / Timothy Messer-Kruse.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Messer-Kruse, Timothy.

Messer-Kruse, Timothy, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

International Workingmen's Association (1864-1876)--History.

International Workingmen's Association (1864-1876).

Socialism--United States--History--19th century.

Socialism.

Radicalism--United States--History--19th century.

Radicalism.

Social reformers--United States--History--19th century.

Social reformers.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 319 p. ) ill. ;

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, c1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Examining the social and intellectual collision of the American reform tradition with immigrant Marxism during the Reconstruction era, Timothy Messer-Kruse charts the rise and fall of the International Workingman's Association (IWA), the first international socialist organization. He analyzes what attracted American reformers--many of them veterans of antebellum crusades for abolition, women's rights, and other radical causes--to the IWA, how their presence affected the course of the American Left, and why they were ultimately purged from the IWA by their orthodox Marxist comrades. Messer-Kruse explores the ideology and activities of the Yankee Internationalists, tracing the evolution of antebellum American reformers' thinking on the question of wage labor and illuminating the beginnings of a broad labor reform coalition in the early years of Reconstruction. He shows how American reformers' priority of racial and sexual equality clashed with their Marxist partners' strategy of infiltrating trade unions. Ultimately, he argues, Marxist demands for party discipline and ideological unity proved incompatible with the Yankees' native republicanism. With the expulsion of Yankee reformers from the IWA in 1871, American Marxism was divorced from the American reform tradition.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-308) and index.

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

9798890869494

9780807863374

0807863378