The Golden Age of Wisconsin Socialism
At its peak in the 1920s and early ’30s, the Socialist Party in Wisconsin used both confrontational tactics and pragmatic alliances with nonsocialists to make legislative advances. It’s a model that may hold promise for socialist legislators today.
Governor Philip La Follette signing the old-age pension bill in Madison, Wisconsin, June 12, 1931. (Angus B. McVicar / Wisconsin Historical Society / Getty Images)
The socialist movement in the United States finds itself in a conundrum. On the one hand, Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020 sparked a rebirth of socialist organizing. The number of elected socialist politicians, mostly members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), has risen across the country to numbers not seen since the Socialist Party of America’s heyday prior to World War II. On the other hand, the inherently antidemocratic nature of American politics has placed various roadblocks in front of socialist proposals at all levels of government, ranging from the filibuster in the US Senate (itself an antimajoritarian institution) to a governor’s veto pen at the state level. And socialists have not expanded their base of support much outside urban liberal strongholds.
It would be easy for those of us who recognize the need for radical change to become discouraged about the lack of progress toward economic, racial, and environmental justice, or the Left’s failure to protect trans rights, access to abortions, and Palestinian lives in Gaza. There is a lot to be discouraged about. But it is essential to not let discouragement lead us into nihilism. If nihilism takes root, the project of building a more just and truly democratic society might be scuttled for another generation or two.
Where can we look for inspiration? Like the US left today, socialists in the early twentieth century had to overcome political obstacles, too — the US political system has never embraced socialism with open arms. Nevertheless, Wisconsin socialists achieved inspiring successes through their efforts in the state legislature. From 1905 to 1945, the Wisconsin legislature passed over five hundred pieces of socialist-authored legislation. They accomplished this despite never holding more than 20 percent of the seats in the state assembly or senate. (Wisconsin socialists had their largest caucus during the 1919 legislature, when they had sixteen assemblymen and five senators.)
How did they do it? Socialist state legislators achieved that success by adopting a pragmatic philosophy. They forged a political alliance with progressive allies in the Wisconsin Republican Party and built institutional power with which they could mold legislation in a socialist direction.
The Golden Age of Wisconsin Socialism
Wisconsin’s political conditions were very conducive for socialist advance in the early twentieth century. After World War I, the Wisconsin Democratic Party disappeared, for all intents and purposes, at the state level due to the party’s support for the war.
Wisconsin Republicans experienced constant ideological factionalism between a progressive wing, led by Robert La Follette Sr, and a conservative wing. Always on the lookout for opportunities, socialists frequently sided with the progressive wing of the Republican Party and brokered deals with their new allies to advance their agenda. Socialists and progressive Republicans created their own de facto caucus to seize control of the state’s legislative agenda from the more conservative members.
Wisconsin socialists found immediate success in the statehouse by being willing to work with their allies, as well as knowing when to play hardball. The first socialist-authored bills signed into law came in 1905. One bill mandated that married women receive their paychecks themselves, instead of employers sending them to husbands. The other bills focused on workplace safety, improving air quality in factories, and raising the number of workplace-safety inspectors.
These legislative achievements do not appear radical on their face, but they meant something to the socialists’ working-class constituents who called for those reforms. As socialists achieved tangible results, no matter how small, they proved to their supporters that they would fight for change. Socialist voters rewarded the effort by sending elected socialists to the statehouse for forty years.
Wisconsin socialists’ pragmatic governing style meant they would help shape and vote for Republican-authored bills as well. In 1911, socialists worked with progressive Republicans to approve sweeping reforms demanded by the state’s labor movement, including shorter working hours and a workmen’s compensation program. The creation of workmen’s compensation was notable because the idea started as a socialist bill written by Frederick Brockhausen, state representative and secretary of the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor (WSFL), in 1905. Six years later, Republicans embraced workmen’s compensation, which ensured its passage alongside socialist votes.
The socialists’ close relationship with progressive Republicans allowed the Socialist Party to apply political pressure through tangible threats. Socialists knew that progressive Republicans needed socialist votes to pass their proposals, so the socialist caucus would threaten to withhold their votes unless Republican leaders supported some socialist bills in return. For example, Republican governor John Blaine ran as a champion of the labor movement during the 1924 elections.
The Socialist Party called the governor’s bluff and made sure he lived up to his campaign promises once the legislative session began. During campaign rallies and speeches on the floor of the legislature, socialists lambasted Blaine as a politician who “had no labor program in mind and was extremely timid about taking a stand on any labor question.” In a shrewd political maneuver, the socialists offered a lifeline to Blaine and promised to stop criticizing the governor if he threw his support behind the WSFL’s major labor demands, which included a general eight-hour day, a ban on the use of private detectives during labor disputes, and the creation of old-age pensions.
The political pressure worked. The Wisconsin legislature approved, and Governor Blaine signed forty-five socialist-authored bills during the 1925 session. Most of the bills came from the labor movement’s demands, like the expansion of medical treatments covered under workmen’s compensation and the outlawing of private investigators during labor disputes.
Socialists flourished in Wisconsin during the 1920s because of the close-knit relationship between the Socialist caucus and progressive Republicans. Socialist proposals to strengthen child labor laws passed, and Wisconsin became one of the first states to approve the Child Labor Amendment to the US Constitution. Socialist Walter Polakowski successfully proposed reforms to the state’s prison system by expanding workmen’s compensation to prison labor and creating investigative committees to inspect living conditions throughout Wisconsin’s prison system. Wisconsin socialists also proposed more radical ideas like nationalizing the state’s railroad system, but that was a step too far for Republicans.
After the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929, socialists unleashed a deluge of proposals aimed at bringing the power of government to the aid of workers across the state. During the 1931 legislative session, socialists were at the height of their influence due to the progressive Republicans’ precarious position. As an olive branch to the Socialist caucus, progressives appointed Thomas Duncan chairperson of the Joint Finance Committee (JFC).
Duncan had served as socialist state legislator since the early 1920s and previously worked as the secretary for Daniel Hoan, Milwaukee’s socialist mayor. The JFC was arguably the most important committee in the legislature because it oversaw approving a budget before presenting it to the entire legislature for a vote. In other words, socialists exercised great influence over the legislature’s purse strings and were prepared to unleash the spending necessary to tackle the Depression.
The Great Depression
By the end of the legislative session in the summer of 1931, progressive Republican governor Philip La Follette had signed fifty bills authored by members of the Socialist caucus, which ran the gamut of Socialist dreams dating back to before World War I. The approved legislation included a series of workmen’s compensation bills that strengthened and expanded the program. In addition, socialist bills further regulated the use of private detectives, expanded the power of cities to establish public utilities, and created a program for old-age assistance. The legislature also approved the socialists’ calls for increased penalties on the use of prison labor, as well as on hotels that violated regulations on working hours.
At the same time, socialists recognized when they needed to give ground to their allies to ensure a proposal could pass. The 1931 session’s most contentious moment revolved around the question of whether the legislature would create a state program of unemployment compensation. Both the Socialist and progressive caucus had their own proposals, and the debate raged for months over which version of the bill would pass.
Socialist representative George Hampel’s version proposed $12 (about $248 in 2024 dollars) a week in unemployment payments. It also included an eight-hour working day provision across all industries, which proved untenable for progressives during the negotiations. Progressives rallied behind Republican Harold Groves’s version, which called for $10 a week (about $207 in 2024 dollars) in payments, but did not have a cap on working hours.
Not surprisingly, the Socialist caucus derided the progressives for not limiting working hours, which they argued could have ensured full employment of workers around the state. Socialist representative George Tews summarized the caucus’s sentiment when he declared on the floor of the assembly that a progressive was “a socialist with their brains knocked out.”
Despite the tension, the socialists backed the progressives’ version of unemployment compensation, which was at risk of failing without their votes. Socialists believed that any version of unemployment compensation was better than ending the session with nothing. Their pragmatism allowed them to see the big picture and bring tangible victories to the people who needed it most: the state’s unemployed.
The Legacy of Wisconsin Socialists
Wisconsin socialist state legislators’ willingness to work pragmatically proved to be one of the group’s most potent weapons. They fostered alliances with other politicians because that is what was necessary to achieve political victories. Those alliances, paired with the caucus’s longevity in the legislature and strategic threats, resulted in a golden age of the socialist movement that has not been replicated since.
This golden age waned by the end of the 1930s. By that time, the conditions that allowed socialists to succeed had changed. The outbreak of World War II, and a conservative backlash to progressive policies at all levels of government, began to unravel the progressive-socialist alliance and its electoral opportunities.
There is no guarantee that socialists today can replicate the success of early-twentieth-century Wisconsin socialists. And even the Wisconsin Socialist Party at its peak was not able to parlay its considerable legislative victories into electoral dominance in the state, let alone carry out the more ambitious restructuring of the economy that is socialists’ ultimate horizon.
Still, the Wisconsin experience offers hopeful guideposts: it does not take a socialist majority in a statehouse to pass meaningful pro-worker reforms. It does require the willingness to ally with nonsocialist politicians to overcome the antidemocratic and conservative forces that routinely stifle socialist policies from the onset, as well as a willingness to strategically confront and criticize those allies when necessary.
Wisconsin socialists worked for forty years to cement their golden age; in many states today, the socialist movement is only beginning to see electoral results, so the possibilities for meaningfully productive political alliances are just starting to present themselves. What elected socialists and their supporters decide to do with those opportunities may decide whether another golden age is possible.