American Socialist - by Ryan C McIlhenny (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Ryan McIlhenny's American Socialist recovers the largely forgotten history of Laurence Gronlund (1844-1899), the nation's most influential socialist. Gronlund cultivated a unique polemic against capitalism by adapting Marxism to the American context in the late nineteenth century. His works influenced prominent Gilded Age intellectuals in North America and those across the Atlantic. Acclaimed author Edward Bellamy, who incorporated key elements of Gronlund's cooperative socialism in Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888), believed that "school children of the future would be taught to revere the name of Laurence Gronlund." Novelist William Dean Howells said that Gronlund was "a man to be read with respect, and his works cannot be ignored by anyone who wishes to acquaint himself with the hopes and motives of a very intelligent body of men." In a letter written to Gronlund in 1890, Leo Tolstoy expressed high praise for the ideas espoused in Gronlund's penultimate work, Our Destiny (1890), which connected the purification of morality through the advancement of socialism. Finally, in his testimony before the US Strike Commission in the aftermath of the 1894 Pullman Strike, Eugene V. Debs admitted to aligning himself with Gronlund's "collectivist principles" after reading his most popular work-Cooperative Commonwealth (1884)-while serving time for violating a federal injunction to end the strike. Even Gronlund's critics-Henry George chief among them-could not deny the importance of his work and influence. Few late-nineteenth-century radical intellectuals presented the type of socialism that synthesized Marxian socialism with Darwinian evolution, rejected class violence, and emphasized cooperation over competition as clearly and confidently as Gronlund did. Nevertheless, at the center of his socialism was a philosophy of history that included the material stages related to modes of production and the active role of a divine force advancing history toward its end in the "cooperative commonwealth." Highlighting Gronlund's belief in a divine force behind the evolution toward a socialist commonwealth captures the central intent of McIlhenny's biography. The material progress of history, through the various modes of production through cooperation rather than revolutionary violence, was also the move toward greater human liberation, which, in turn, would lead to greater consciousness of God. Gronlund believed cooperation was the only means toward complete human emancipation, which would concurrently bring a realization of the divine. American Socialist is the first scholarly biography of Gronlund and is sure to attract readers interested in the life of the nation's most important socialist and the roots of socialism in the United States"--

Book Synopsis

Ryan C. McIlhenny's American Socialist is the first comprehensive biography of Laurence Gronlund (1844-1899), one of the nation's most persuasive proponents of socialism. Gronlund cultivated a unique polemic against capitalism by advocating positions that synthesized Marxism with Darwinian evolution, rejected class violence, and emphasized cooperation over competition. According to McIlhenny, a belief in a divine force advancing history toward a "cooperative commonwealth" underpinned his philosophy. Gronlund's books enjoyed a wide and dogmatic readership during the late nineteenth century, and his teachings inspired prominent Gilded Age figures, including Edward Bellamy, Leo Tolstoy, and Eugene V. Debs. American Socialist masterfully restores Gronlund to his place among the nation's most important political thinkers.

Review Quotes

"American socialism has always been religious, and socialist religion has always overflowed the banks of even the most justice-minded of churches. Laurence Gronlund was the theorist who made socialism truly American by tapping into its spiritual depths, and McIlhenny's careful exegesis makes Gronlund's vision accessible to a new generation of scholars and socialists."--Dan McKanan, author of Prophetic Encounters: Religion and the American Radical Tradition

"Ryan C. McIlhenny has written one of the best intellectual biographies I have ever read. In clear, concise prose, he leads readers through the economic, political, and historical writings of Laurence Gronlund, showing us that the unkempt economist was one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth century. Gronlund called out capitalism for robbing people of sympathy for one another, for causing people to give up on God, and for creating the stratification of great poverty and great wealth. His abiding faith in bloodless revolution broke through the polarities of the late nineteenth century, imagining a path--guided by the divine--between capitalism and anarchy. In McIlhenny's beautiful telling, Gronlund's vision of cooperative industry, nationalized mines, public utilities, and universal public education was much more than a political conceit. He had a spiritual vision for individual and social evolution, and convinced many Americans that they could work together without violence to forge a vastly different world."--Janine Giordano Drake, author of The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement

About the Author

Ryan C. McIlhenny is professor of liberal arts and humanities at Xing Wei College in Shanghai, China, and the author of To Preach Deliverance to the Captives: Freedom and Slavery in the Protestant Mind of George Bourne, 1780-1845.