E-grāmata: American Socialist: Laurence Gronlund and the Power behind Revolution

"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 realizationof 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"--

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.