[sewercake]

I didn't take OPs comment as a 'snipe' -- America has a relatively weak left wing political base / history. Most of the canonical left wing thinkers, events, and successes have occurred outside of America, so it's always nice (and a little surprising) to hear about little tidbits of history like this.

[mempko]

This isn't true at all. The USA has a strong left-wing history and events. These are forgotten in America but remembered by the rest of the world. It's just that nowhere has this history been more "erased" than in the USA. The rest of the world remembers.

- An example is May 1st, international workers day which was inspired by the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago.

- Another example is the Republican party! which was started by Socialists in Wisconsin.

- Or the fact that Abraham Lincoln corresponded with Marx (most Americans read Marx at the time) and one of his army generals distributed the communist manifesto to the public during the civil war.

- The writings of Thomas Paine were incredibly popular in the USA and abroad.

- Russian Anarchists like Tolstoy was inspired by American Quackers, who later inspired Gandhi.

- Influential thinkers like Chomsky and David Graeber are alive and American.

The connections are deep!

[ultrarunner]

While there were a few midwestern socialists that joined on the newly formed (past tense, at this point) Republican Party, it was very much committed to limited governmental intervention. The idea that there are socialist ideas at the bedrock of the Republican Party is misleading. Those are a much later development.

Read Tolstoy. He was chiefly inspired by the Quakers' nonviolence. In reality, the Quakers themselves were a heavily Republican group (insofar as they identified with government force at all).

While there are left-wing inspired (and somewhat developmental) incidents throughout US history, I wouldn't characterize the situation as either "strong" or "erased." On the contrary, the U.S. has accepted many people fleeing from failed or failing socialist states, which may affect the local popular understanding of true left-wing ideology.

[DFHippie]

There are still American Quakers. Though there have been many schisms, they are not now a heavily Republican group by any stretch. They were when Lincoln was in office, of course, but party identification underwent a well-known realignment over the past 150 years, so if 19th century Quakers are who you have in mind, this is more a misleading than an enlightening observation.

Full disclosure: I grew up Quaker. The Quakers I knew were more like this fellow than Herbert Hoover or Nixon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Morrison

[mempko]

Maybe your understanding of socialist ideas is a little bit simple. Limited government (and even no government, like anarchism) is at the bedrock many strains of socialism. There is no "one socialism" just as there isn't "one capitalism". To attribute a big government to socialism is simply ignorant.

[ultrarunner]

Yes, that's a completely fair point, especially given the time period being discussed. What I was getting at, though was that the Republican Party was simply not formed by "socialists from Wisconsin."