Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist

by W.A. Swanberg

The dust jacket has minor wear to the extremities.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, American History

540 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

A graduate of the University of Minnesota, William Andrew Swanberg worked as a journalist for newspapers in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and as an editor for Dell Publishing. After serving in the Office of War Information during World War II, Swanberg worked as a freelance writer and an author of a number of scholarly biographies.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

My family has deep roots in the Socialist Party. Mother and certain members of her side of the family were supporters of the Norwegian left, her father retaining an autographed book by Marcus Trane as a cherished possession, Mother being a member of the Labor Party. My paternal grandfather, Einar Graff Sr., a Chicago journalist and colleague and neighbor of fellow-socialist, Carl Sandburg, ran as the Party's candidate for alderman in the 49th Ward. Father, Einar Graff Jr., was a supporter of Norman Thomas, a member of the ACLU which Thomas helped establish and a supporter of his son, myself, in my activities with the party (and the ACLU for that matter) which began when I was about fifteen. Following in his footsteps, I attended Grinnell College like he had, having written an essay about Thomas as part of the application process there.

[RYD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Norman Thomas was, like his predecessor Eugene Debs, a Socialist whose influence extended far beyond his perennial abysmal performances at the ballot box. W.A. Swanberg is a great biographer, though I wish he had spent more time on the specific policies Thomas pushed and how they compared to the America of his time. But I took home two important messages from this book. The first was how the factionalism of the principled left hurt its ability to organize a mass movement. The second was how figures like Thomas were far ahead of their time, for instance in civil rights, where he advocated for black sharecroppers in the 1930s, years before the major parties were willing to even consider it as a national issue.

From the book:

“The Party platform, which Thomas had a large part in shaping, favored public works, a shorter work week, agricultural relief, unemployment insurance, the elimination of child labor, slum clearance, low-cost housing, higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and the nationalization of basic industries – all Socialist measures which capitalist American would condemn but would ultimately adopt, every one but the last.”

Here’s the author’s basic conclusion, written in description of a celebration of Thomas’ 80th birthday:
“The United States, in its twin drives of fighting Communism and winning affluence, had opted for the morals of the Communists and the sharpers. There seemed no drawing back from the turns made at the Bay of Pigs and Tonkin Gulf, any more than there was repentance in the advertising boardrooms or the labor unions. In a sense – and some of them may have realized it – the nineteen hundred people at the Astor were honoring the last great American idealist. There would always be more Dulleses and Nixons, but Thomas, in his plush red chair, was on the way to becoming a lost national asset.”

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the definitive biography of a remarkable yet mostly forgotten figure in American political history. Thomas ran for president six times (1928 - 1948) as the candidate of the Socialist Party and was known during his lifetime first as FDR's nemesis on the left, and then in later years as "America's Conscience." Norman Thomas was a major inspiration for Ralph Nader, who met him when Nader was an undergraduate at Princeton in the 1950's (Thomas was a Princeton alumnus as well), and he remains to this day an inspiring figure for what is left of American radicalism & the movement for democratic socialism.