Spargo, John

SPARGO, JOHN (1876–1966). One of the most prominent socialist writers and speakers before World War I, John Spargo had the ability to present complex intellectual issues simply. He affiliated himself with the “Right” wing of the Socialist Party, espousing a sophisticated version of a consumer-and-worker democracy. And yet while stridently anti-Left, he vigorously opposed racism, xenophobia, and indifference to women’s issues within the socialist movement.

A British granite-cutter by background, Spargo became a union official and member of the executive committee of the Social Democratic Federation, educating himself in part through extension courses at Oxford and Cambridge. He immigrated to the United States in 1901, and five years later wrote the best-selling exposé of slum life, The Bitter Cry of Children. His Socialism (1906) was widely considered the best textbook popularization of the early movement. The Spiritual Significance of Modern Socialism (1907) put forward a bridge to religiously inclined socialist sympathizers. Karl Marx: His Life and Work (1910), the first full-length US biographical treatment, depicted the founder of scientific socialism as sentimental, but above all a pragmatic tactician. His reverence for women filled the pages of Socialism and Motherhood (1914).

Spargo was often the center of political controversy in the socialist movement. While supporting the woman suffrage movement and suggesting a positive attitude toward Blacks, he ardently objected to the strongly held view within socialism’s conservative wing that immigration restriction would be necessary to protect American labor (and win over the American Federation of Labor to socialist ideas). He strongly attacked the Industrial Workers of the World, holding that the Wobblies’ use of the term “sabotage” and its advocacy of the general strike were inflammatory, inviting employer and state repression. He sought the decentralization of power, calling for each industry and trade to be governed by boards of producing workers and “accredited representatives of society as a whole,” and advocating a mixed economy of state enterprises, privately held small business, and worker-owned cooperatives. With the U.S. entry into World War I, Spargo appealed to delegates for a pro-war policy. Defeated, he abandoned the Socialist Party, became antisocialist, and eventually opposed the New Deal. He also founded, in 1927, the Bennington (Vermont) Museum, an important historical and art repository, devoting most of his remaining years to its development.

Ruotsila, Makku. John Spargo and American Socialism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Spargo, John. Papers. Collection Overview. Jack and Shirley Silver Special Collections Library, University of Vermont Library. http://scfindingaids.uvm.edu/repositories/2/resources/1101