Berger, Victor L.

BERGER, VICTOR L. (1860–1929). One of the pivotal leaders of the Socialist Party of America, along with Eugene V. Debs and Morris Hillquit, in its most expansive era, Berger was a founder of the national party and the key figure in shaping the Milwaukee branch, which held power in that city for over three decades. His career—as editor, party leader, and public officeholder—paralleled the rise and fall of the socialist movement.

Born in the Nieder-Rehbach region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Berger was the son of conservative innkeepers whose fortunes declined during his childhood. He briefly studied at universities in Vienna and Budapest, and in 1878 he emigrated to the United States with his family, settling in Milwaukee, where the German ambience and radical-oriented labor movement soon enveloped him. He became a language teacher and was active in the local Turnverein, and in 1889 joined the Socialist Labor Party. Soon driven from it by the tight centralization and ideological rigidity he perceived, but committed to socialism, he became an editor and publisher of various German- and English-language socialist newspapers. He edited the Wisconsin Vorwärts (1893–1898), the Social Democratic Herald (1900–1913), and the Milwaukee Leader (1911–1929), as well as more ephemeral sheets. In the meantime, he dabbled in Populism, then joined the Social Democracy and was a founder of the Social Democratic Party in 1898 and of the Socialist Party of America in 1901.

Berger was a political reformist and revisionist who supported the theoretical views of Eduard Bernstein of the Second Reich’s Social Democratic Party but departed from them as he deemed necessary. Berger advocated educating the enfranchised proletariat while pursuing electoral politics. As a pragmatist, he believed that Marxist principles must be modified to meet the opportunities presented by changing political and economic conditions, an approach that led orthodox Marxists to call him an opportunist. He viewed the triumph of socialism as inevitable and yet he argued that the transformation of the system should be directly encouraged at the ballot box. He maintained that the eventual socialist system would permit a degree of individual ownership within a democratic structure, and throughout his career opposed communism, for he thought that nationalization of all property would be retrogressive.

Berger supported the American Federation of Labor and for twenty years was a delegate to its conventions, where he pursued a policy of “boring from within” while simultaneously opposing the industrial unionism of the Industrial Workers of the World. On the issue of race, Berger was a virulent bigot, believing that groups were innately unequal. He argued that “white civilization” in the United States was threatened by the influx of “new immigrants,” and he was convinced of the absolute inferiority of American blacks. On female emancipation, he accepted the party position in support of universal suffrage, but privately he was concerned that enfranchised women would be a conservative force in politics. In Milwaukee Berger shaped a uniquely integrated movement in which the local Socialist Party and the trade unions cooperated fully on policy, finances, and electoral politics. Berger’s success there rested firmly on the German roots of each organization. The Milwaukee Social Democratic Party first elected a member to the city council in 1904, and later won many offices, including the mayor’s office, 1910–1912 and 1916–1940. Berger always sought to protect his Milwaukee base by stressing the principle of local autonomy within the national party. While he himself served briefly on the city council, he was essentially active behind the scenes, thereby inviting charges of bossism.

In the national party Berger was a fixture on the National Executive Committee and the National Committee, was usually a convention delegate, and served on ad hoc committees. He was known as an intense but honest infighter, a good negotiator, skilled debater, and an intellectual. Not personally charismatic, he was nonetheless influential and was never hesitant to assume individualistic positions, however unpopular. As examples, he supported the idea of national self-defense, arguing that workers identified with their nations, and he favored citizen-armies and public service conscription. He also flaunted party policy against class collaboration with reformers and peace groups.

Berger was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1910, the first of only two Socialists, and was elected five additional times. In Congress he introduced measures addressed to the condition of workers, sponsoring bills promoting public-work jobs, old-age pensions, and shorter workdays, and he successfully pushed through hearings on issues related to the McNamara–Los Angeles Times bombing case and the Lawrence strike of 1912. His efforts were criticized as counter-productive by the socialist Left, but he did serve to introduce a class perspective into congressional debates.

During World War I Berger opposed preparedness, endorsed his party’s major antiwar statement, and was a founding member of the socialist People’s Council that sought to coordinate the peace movement. He conducted a strong campaign for the U.S. Senate as a peace candidate in 1918 and was elected to the House that same year. But the war cost his newspaper its second-class mailing privileges, and he, with other party officials, was convicted of conspiracy under the Espionage Act, a verdict later overthrown by the Supreme Court. Because of his conviction, however, the House of Representatives twice excluded him from his seat, and he was unable to represent his constituents during the war era.

After the Socialist Party schism and Red Scare, Berger remained with the rump party. He warned his comrades against the folly of imitating Soviet models, condemning the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and he opposed membership in the new Communist International. In the 1920s he served three terms in Congress and was a founder of the Conference for Progressive Political Action, a farmer-labor coalition. He died on 7 August 1929, the victim of a traffic accident.

Berger Victor L., Broadsides. Milwaukee: Social-Democratic Publishing Co.,1912. Internet Archives. https://archive.org/details/broadsides00bergiala/page/n5/mode/2up

Miller, Sally M. Victor L. Berger and the Promise of Constructive Socialism, 1910–1920. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973.

Miller, Sally M. “Casting a Wide Net: The Milwaukee Movement to 1920.” In Socialism in the Heartland: The Midwestern Experience, 1900–1925, edited by Donald T. Critchlow. South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986.

Stevens, Michael E. The Family Letters of Victor and Meta Berger, 1894–1929. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1995.