ABSTRACT
In a very real sense the United States was conceived and firmly established by the radicals of 1776. It was Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson and many others like them who risked their liberty, if not their lives, in their efforts to overthrow British rule and unite the colonies into a nation dedicated to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. The complexity of human nature made it inevitable for the critics of the economic status quo to take divergent paths in their eagerness to reach the goal of social democracy. The Marxian socialists have been the most persistent and the most radical critics of the status quo. Their agitation proved ineffective because their basic principles of the class struggle and the cooperative commonwealth seemed both pernicious and preposterous to a people imbued with the Tightness of the laissez-faire doctrine.
