ABSTRACT
This chapter tries to explain the reason for there being no Socialism in the United States by specifying the particular conditions in which the American proletariat lives. It first deal with the character of political life, since that is what every observer considers most obviously distinctive. It has been heard that the lack of Socialism in America is based not on the character of American life but rather on the special characteristics inherent in the Anglo-Saxon race. There are millions of people in America who during the last generation have immigrated from countries where Socialism flourishes. In explaining the circumstances of interest to us, we must therefore exclude any argument based on racial membership. Instead, the explanation is more likely to be found in the variegated mixture of the American population, which at the same time exhibits extremely homogeneous developmental characteristics, the determining factors of which are to be sought in the features of American life.
