I've been reading various articles and a book by Lipset for the complete lack or a weak presence of a social democratic or socialist party in the United States. Hartz contends that the lack of a feudal tradition is one reason for the lack of a strong left-wing party in the United States; men were relatively 'equal' and as a result "no rigid and explicit class structure developed". However, in the American South, there is an explicit history of Black slavery, "a slave system that became a caste system, a very hierarchical social structure, and a very strong and repressive government apparatus" of which its implications continue to this day.
Assuming it didn't take deep root. why didn't socialism take root amongst African-American's in the South? Moreover, is there any difference amongst Europeans under a feudal system and African-Americans under slavery visavis the momentum of a socialist movement? Did African-Americans just lack the resources? Any ideas?
I know there's a myriad of reasons for the weakness of socialism in the US. However, I am looking for answers that are specific to European feudalism vs African-American slavery in the South. In Europe, were there relatively more workers who felt disenfranchised and had strength in numbers to mobilize? whereas in the American South, African-American slaves were relatively weaker? What accounts for the discrepancy for European peasants/workers to 'successfully' mobilize against capitalists and the failure of Black slaves in the US to fight for their emancipation early on under a banner of egalitarianism or socialism?
Observation: In Europe, the struggle against feudalism and the ravages of industrialization took on a class conscious character in a relatively homogeneous population, and this class based identity continued to develop. Some would argue that the Southern US did exhibit a feudal structure visavis the slavery of African-Americans. However I would contend that in the Southern United States, mobilization against slavery (which had qualities similar feudalism) took on a exclusively racial character, as the emancipation of Black folk, as opposed to being defined as a class struggle?
I think the contention that feudalism was a heavy contributor to socialism is a pretty weak one. What is Lipset's evidence for that assertion? I think the rise of socialism is a heck of a lot more complex than "the struggle against feudalism and the ravages of industrialization took on a class conscious character in a relatively homogeneous population".
If we don't accept that as true, we have to look for other reasons that African-Americans didn't turn to socialism as an answer. On the other hand, it must also be remembered that the socialist movement in the United States was heavily involved in the civil rights struggle (and one of the justifications of the heavy handed FBI surveillance and infiltration of those civil rights movements).
Please do not ignore population density. It is such a huge factor that I don't understand how it always gets ignored.
The whole concept of social mobility or lack of a class system in the US rested or maybe still does on cheap land or homesteading, meaning theat people did not feel they are "condemned" to a life of being working-class employees and never starting their own business. I can't quote directly but I have heard Lincoln saying something like that the absence of a permanent working class makes American democracy possible, because after a few years of being a wage-earner people pack up and go on the frontier and become independent. What he may have meant with it, that democracy tends towards socialism in the sense that the poor will often vote to confiscating the property of the rich, but when they can just homestead land for themselves then not.
Europe was basically... "full" for a long, long time. Sometimes wars depopulated a territory, e.g. the Ottomans parts of Hungary which means the Habsburgs brought in German settlers to repopulate those regions, but in general there was more of the indeed semi-feudal attitude that class barriers are fixed and born into because land was taken, so if your family had no property what could you do? No wealth, hardly any education meant you are working class forever. If you look at the British comedy You Rang Milord, you get the impression that it is somehow the same thing to be a Lord and own a factory. And it suggests that a working class person could not develop an own workshop into a factory because he would not have that style and dress and taste to be considered a classy gentleman, so it would be inappropriate for him to be a businessman. Working-class American millionaries who did not have gentlemanly styles and tastes and upbringing were often ridiculed in Europe up to say first decades of the 20th century, there was this stereotype of the crass Californian soap king who has money yet he talks like a working class person . So yes European capitalism was at least partially based on aristocratic elements at least in style and taste being gentlemanly.
The point I am making is simply that the lack of rigid classes in the US largely comes from low population density and thus free or cheap land, because anyone who did not want to work for others could as well become an independent farmer, a mini-agrobusinessman. In Europe if you are born working class, pretty much all the arable land is already taken, population density is so high that you could not walk 10km in a German forest without hitting a village, so you are probably staying working class.
I was asking the same question as yourself from the exactly opposite angle: how is it possible that one simply cannot sell a right-libertarian, pro-capitalist political philosophy in Europe? And my answer was that due to high population densities, people do not feel independent enough, it is hard to own land, to own a house, they often feel they are stuck as employees and renters, thus the whole sense of independence needed for libertarian thinking does not appear, they think they are stuck with the boss and the landlord forever so they want them to be regulated.
Consider the following. Victor David Hanson wrote a nice elegy about how his California Swedish ancestors were the perfect libertarians who always worked hard and never asked for government handouts. He just missed one, crucially important detail: they worked on their own land which they got back when it wa free or almost so. Why did those guys even have to move from Sweden to California and why did their relatives who stayed home probably became social democrats? In my opinion the evidence is very clear that it was population density, so free or cheap land that did the trick. They were condemned to be perpetual wage laborers in Sweden because all the good land was taken, which predisposes one towards socialism, they could find cheap or free land in California so basically they could work their own land, farm it and become middle-class, independent agri-businessmen, so for them accepting libertarian values was easy.
You might be interested in the account from "Americanism and Fordism" in Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. Gramsci discusses at length how the old established socioeconomic strata carried over from feudal Europe provide a pivotal obstacle to the easy development of "rationalised" industrial production as seen in the US, and how the US working classes by comparison are much more easily molded according to capitalists' blueprints for social engineering and "scientific management" a la Frederick Taylor. Of course Gramsci as a Communist Party leader (at the time, imprisoned by the fascist regime of Mussolini) is quite clear as to which side his bread is buttered on, but it's an interesting analysis nonetheless.