ABSTRACT
American socialists failed because they were unable to recruit large-scale support in the working class. This was not because of the absence of trade unions, but because of the absence of enough so-cialist-organized or socialist-oriented ones. The socialist working-class party is not the only kind of party to have mass membership, but it has been the most frequent, and all socialist parties that have become major political forces have mass memberships. Germany can really be included among those nations where a chiefly Catholic response to Marxism succeeded in keeping socialists from organizing industrially and politically in sufficient strength to achieve an electoral majority. Given the association of successful socialist parties with large-scale class-conscious unionism, it should follow that diminution of this working-class base—whether in the size of the industrial working class or in the intensity of its sense of alienation—would reduce socialist party success.
