A recurring dispute in the historiography of America concerns whether the United States has been an exceptional nation with unique characteristics, and if so, what is the source and nature of this exceptionalism, how has it been manifested, and can we expect it to continue?1 This debate involves such contemporary issues as the distribution of income, social and economic mobility, welfare policies in the United States when compared to those in Europe, and whether America, because of its continued involvement is such areas as East Asia and the Middle East, should be considered an imperial nation. For some historians, the debate over American exceptionalism has been meaningless. Princeton historian David A. Bell has argued that the concept of American exceptionalism “makes very little analytical sense,” and has served as “an empty symbol, a mere marker of difference and superiority and a convenient rhetorical cudgel in the country’s unending, vicious political combat.”2
Foreign observers such as Godfrey Hodgson of Great Britain and Ian Tyrrell of Australia have been particularly critical of the concept of American exceptionalism, arguing that it has fostered a sense of superiority and arrogance and encouraged imperialism, racism, nativism, and an acceptance of the economic and political status quo along with a reluctance to challenge the pieties of capitalism. America’s failure in Vietnam and the Middle East, combined with its dysfunctional politics, slowing economic growth and increasing economic inequality, they have argued, indicate that the long period of supposed American exceptionalism, if it ever existed, is coming to an end.
And yet despite these doubts, the idea of exceptionalism, along with the notion of “chosenness,” has been widely accepted by the American public and is a staple of national political discourse. Politicians who question it risk serious political blowback. Indeed, Tyrrell noted, doubts regarding American exceptionalism “has grown at the same time that the affirmation of exceptionalism has intensified and become a matter of political and ideological conformity.”3 Historians have been reluctant to dismiss this preoccupation with American exceptionalism, but there has been no agreement as to its source or content. Americans have been variously described as religious and materialistic, philanthropic and self-centered, idealistic and practical, pacifistic and militaristic, and libertarian and conformist. Michael Kammen titled his Pulitzer Prize-winning examination of American exceptionalism People of Paradox due to the tendency to ascribe to Americans a variety of contradictory traits.4
The notion of American exceptionalism can be traced back to the early seventeenth century. John Winthrop’s sermon “A Model of Christian Charity,” given in March, 1630 in Southampton, England to a group of immigrants prior to their embarking to the new world, has been the most famous statement of American exceptionalism. Winthrop emphasized the providential and exceptional character of this new abode. It was not simply another land but “a city upon a hill,” an example to the rest of the world of a people bound together in a covenant with God. If the settlers observe God’s ways then “the Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us as His own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth than formerly we have been acquainted with.” Their goals should be to create a “new” England, a land purged of the social, political, and religious corruptions they had known in old England. This emphasis on American newness was reflected in the names that the earliest settlers gave to their settlements: New London, New Bedford, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Newton, New Canaan, New Britain, Newburgh, New Haven, Newport, New Rochelle, Newark, New Paltz, and New Hope, just to name a few.
But, Winthrop warned, should the settlers go astray, God will “withdraw His present help from us” and “we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land wither we are going.” This belief in a covenant between God and the American people was secularized in future generations, but the idea that the United States was a providential and exceptional nation remained and is engraved on the Great Seal of America.
Nineteenth century Europeans were eager to visit America in order to discover its exceptional character. One of these was Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat who visited America during the 1830s and then wrote Democracy in America, arguably the single most important book about America. For Tocqueville, democracy was the source of American exceptionalism. Marxists, while not sharing Tocqueville’s politics, agreed with him regarding the exceptional nature of America.
In a 1851 letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, a German socialist who had immigrated to America, Friedrich Engels mentioned “the special American conditions” which temporarily impeded the growth of socialism. These included “the ease with which the surplus population is drained off to the farms, the necessarily rapid and rapidly growing prosperity of the country, which makes bourgeois conditions look like a beau ideal to them, and so forth.” Critics of American exceptionalism also included Pope Leo XIII. His 1889 apostolic letter Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae condemned America for exhibiting a variety of modernist heresies, including liberalism, pluralism, and the separation of church and state.
This belief in American exceptionalism was especially strong in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Abraham Lincoln famously described the United States as “the last, best hope” of mankind and a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” His belief in American exceptionalism helps explain his determination to preserve the Union and to see the Civil War to its bloody conclusion. This belief in American newness, a fresh start for humanity, was also a major theme in American literature. Thus, the central character in Henry James’ 1877 novel The American is Christopher Newman, “Christopher” perhaps a reference to Christopher Columbus and “Newman” to evoke America’s newness.
Frederick Jackson Turner, arguably the nation’s most important historian, also believed in American exceptionalism. Beginning in the 1890s, he argued that the frontier experience had stripped away European influences and fostered a regime of democracy, equality, and individualism. Turner wondered whether America would come to replicate European countries once the influence of the frontier would end, as the census of 1890 seemed to indicate.
One of the major proofs for the exceptional character of America is that it has been the only major Western industrial power never to have had a strong socialist movement. Socialists have expended much ink and power attempting to show that the reasons for socialism’s failure in America were not intrinsic to socialism or to the United States. The failure of American socialism has intrigued socialists and non-socialists alike for nearly two centuries, particularly students of comparative politics and history, and seemed to confirm the belief that the American working class, American social patterns, and American cultural values were unique.
For more than a century scholars have examined why American socialism never developed into a major political movement. Karl Marx argued that the most advanced capitalist society would also have the most advanced socialist movement, and in the 1870s he predicted that the first socialist victory would necessarily take place in America. And yet something resembling the opposite of this has occurred. The United States, the capitalist nation exemplar, has had the weakest socialist movement of the major industrial nations. Socialism’s success in neighboring Canada makes its absence in the United States even more mysterious. The United States has provided an alternative to that offered by socialism, and judging by immigration to America, this alternative has proven to be quite attractive. “In the war of abstractions, socialism had trounced capitalism which had precious few defenders,” Joshua Muravchik noted, but “in the competition between real living systems, America offered an image that was the envy and yearning of the world.”5
The failure of socialism in America has been for the American Left what the defeat of the Confederacy was for white Southerners, a great lost cause, and in both cases, there is a vast literature replete with heroes and villains, the settling of old scores, and fanciful speculations as to how things could have turned out differently. The first major effort to understand why America has been a bulwark of opposition to socialism was Werner Sombart’s 1906 book Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus? (Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?). Sombart, a German sociologist, provided several answers, including the two-party political system, the lack of a feudal past, and the economic opportunities offered by cheap land in the West. But the most important factor was that the American working class already enjoyed many of the economic benefits socialism promised: “on the reefs of roast beef and apple pie socialistic Utopias . . . are sent to their doom.”
Sombart, nevertheless, had been influenced by Marx, and he predicted at the end of his book that American socialism had a bright future. “All the factors that till now have prevented the development of Socialism in the United States are about to disappear or to be converted into their opposite, with the result that in the next generation Socialism in America will very probably experience the greatest possible expansion of its appeal.”
Sombart couldn’t have been more mistaken. Socialists were unable to build a mass appeal even during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Instead, the country turned to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal which sought not to destroy but to save capitalism. In the presidential election of 1936 in the depths of the Depression the vote for the socialist and communist candidates was less than one percent of the vote for Roosevelt. Socialists had prided themselves on the assumption that they were not prisoners of narrow class interests but instead had objectively and correctly understood the processes of American economic, social, and political development. But they had sadly exaggerated socialism’s appeal. And yet the dream of a socialist America lives on, reminding one of the famous definition of second marriages — the triumph of hope over experience.
Sombart’s book initiated a century-long investigation by social scientists and historians into the failure of socialism in the United States. The answers are varied and include the existence in the U.S. of an ethnically, racially, and religiously diverse laboring-class which impeded worker solidarity; a dynamic free-market economy which prized entrepreneurship and upward economic and social mobility and provided a high standard of living; birthright citizenship. which guaranteed all the rights of citizenship, including voting, to those born in America; the availability of cheap land; the absence of a feudal past which restricted economic enterprise and social mobility; the economic and social opportunities provided by westward expansion; a national ideology that prized economic freedom and individual self-advancement; the theft of socialist ideas by the two major political parties; and capitalist efforts to repress the socialist movement.
Many of these explanations do not hold up. Capitalists in Europe also attempted to weaken socialism, but their efforts were not as successful as those of their counterparts in America. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the standard of living of American workers was little higher—if higher at all—than that of workers in Europe’s industrial nations. A diverse working class existed in other countries alongside strong socialist movements. The absence of a feudal past in Australia and New Zealand did not prevent the emergence of strong socialist movements in both countries. There was plenty of land for dissatisfied workers in Australia and New Zealand, but these safety valves, contrary to what presumably took place in America, did not impede the rise of socialism.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the attempts of Sombart and others to discover the reasons for the failure of socialism in America is not their varied answers but the way the question has been posed in the first place: “why is there no socialism in America?” This wording assumes that economic and political obstacles unique to America, as well as the ideological backwardness of Americans, aborted socialism’s triumph which would have occurred under more normal circumstances. In other words, it is not the presence of socialism but its absence that is abnormal. America, from this perspective, is a deviant society. But in light of the dismal history of socialism over the past century and the superior economic performance of countries which have adopted free-markets, what seems to need explaining is socialism’s appeal.
Perhaps the question should have been “why would anyone be a socialist” or “how can one explain the success of socialism elsewhere?” Americans seem to have been prescient and astute rather than abnormal and backward in not seeing socialism as the wave of the future. One need only compare the economic stagnation of Cuba, East Germany, North Korea, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, China before the reforms of the 1970s, and other nations where socialism triumphed to the economic growth in Taiwan, Singapore, India, South Korea, Hong Kong, and other places which have rejected socialist nostrums. Sombart and his early acolytes at least had the excuse of not having seen socialism in action and having lived at a time when socialism was a vibrant movement with a bright future.
But what can be said about later observers who have continued to support socialism despite the manifest economic and political misery it has caused? The economist Doug Cardell has recently noted that socialism simply “cannot do the job of ordering an economy effectively” and “every centrally planned economy has ultimately failed.” Socialism has been “the biggest lie in history. It claims to be humanity’s salvation, but instead, it has caused more death and destruction than any other single cause.” The free market, by contrast, has “significantly enhanced the quality of life, elevated living standards, and fostered economic freedom and prosperity.”6
The economic failures of socialism are, however, not the issue. For its contemporary supporters, socialism is less an economic system than a faith community of true believers. Irving Howe, in reflecting on the appeal of socialism, argued that its economics was not a major concern. The socialist belief in the abolition of private property, the nationalization of industry, and economic planning were no longer important to socialists. Rather, people turned to socialism “because they were moved to fervor by the call to brotherhood and sisterhood; because the world seemed aglow with the vision of a time in which humanity might live in justice and peace.” For Howe, the refusal of Americans to respond to socialism was their failing, and he called on Americans to repent and stop wallowing in privatism and self-indulgence.
The realization of the socialist hope depends on the growth of consciousness, a finer grasp of the possibilities of citizenship and comradeship than now prevails. Times change. We will emerge from our present slough of small-spirited conservative acquiescence and live again by more generous aspirations.
Howe did not speculate on why the charitable impulse so pervasive in America did not extend its “generous aspirations” to socialism.7
These reflections are for Howe, and presumably for other socialists as well, evidence that socialism had become a belief system resembling a religion. It had prophets, a canonical literature, a moral code, the promise of individual and social salvation, a system of rewards and punishments, and the possibility of transcending physical limitations. Under socialism, Leon Trotsky once famously said, everyone could become a Beethoven or a Goethe. Part of the appeal of socialism, Joshua Muravchik remarked, “was its ability to feed religious hunger while flattering the sense of being wiser than those who gave themselves over to unearthly faiths.”8
The worldwide history of socialism has been dismal, and its historiography resembles a lament. Irving Kristol wrote that, “The most important political event of the twentieth century is not the crisis of capitalism but the death of socialism.” The socialist ideal “has not been adapted to reality but contemptuously repudiated by it … and when breathed upon by reality, suffers immediate petrification.”9 The sociologist Daniel Bell agreed. “The death of socialism,” he argued, “is the most tragic political fact of the twentieth century, and those who still mouth phrases about strategies for revolutionary change rarely, if ever, match that utopian ideal with the brutal consequences that have followed everywhere in its wake.”10
The historian Bernard K. Johnpoll noted that socialism has been “merely another in a long line of myths by which man has deluded himself into believing that, ‘Thy will could, in fact, ‘be done on earth as it is in heaven.’” Socialism, he concluded, “has proven to be a mirage.”11 And yet socialism continues to exhibit one of the fundamental beliefs of traditional religion—that there can be life after death
The debate over American socialism has particular relevance today in light of the election in November, 2025 of Zohran Mamdani, a self-declared democratic socialist, as mayor of New York City, home to the nation’s major stock exchanges, banks, brokerage firms, and some of the country’s most important corporations and wealthiest citizens. Does his election challenge the concept of American exceptionalism and refute the assumption that Americans are not as hostile to socialism as commonly believed?
While Zohran Mamdani’s true commitment to socialist policies is unknown, it is doubtful he will be able to institute a significant socialist regime in New York City. There are, after all, constitutional protections for private property and the system of federalism has entangled the city in a massive web of dependence on the state and federal governments. Any proposal to raise taxes, for example, requires the approval of New York’s legislature and governor, both cognizant of the possibility that such tax hikes could lead to an exodus of the city’s wealthiest residents. Furthermore, some of his socialism-light proposals would negatively affect the very people he ostensibly wants to aid. Free busing would harm taxi cab drivers, most of whom are immigrants struggling to move up the economic ladder. Free groceries would harm the many bodegas and small grocery stores owned by Hispanics and Asian Americans. Replacing the police with social workers would leave the city’s poorer inhabitants vulnerable to the criminal element.
All of which raises the question of whether Mamdani’s mild brand of socialism played any meaningful role in his election. Obviously, the promise of free stuff (e.g. transit, food) has widespread appeal. But it is also true that many of Mamdani’s supporters are college graduates, and faculty lounges remain among the few places in America where socialism is still taken seriously. Socialism, to paraphrase Raymond Aron, is the opiate of the intellectuals.
If college attendance was a significant factor in Mamdani’s support, it would confirm what critics have identified as a leftist “march through the institutions.” After the upheavals of campus life in the 1960s, many veterans of the hard Left settled comfortably into careers in teaching and higher education, where they now wield significant influence over America’s young people. That influence has benefited the Democratic Party at the ballot box, but it has not—until now, perhaps—produced a meaningful shift toward socialism in economic policy. Does Mamdani’s election suggest that such a shift may finally be on the horizon?
But the socialist movement itself has changed. Economic concerns, once the central focus of socialist politics, have largely been displaced by issues of ethnic and gender equity and, since October 7, 2023, by opposition to the state of Israel. A political program centered on immigrant rights, feminism, LGBTQ rights, police reform, affirmative action, and sympathy for Hamas has already attracted a large following in places such as New York City and in many cultural and academic institutions. It has also gained the support of important political figures in Washington, D. C. But it has also resulted in a widespread backlash, so the battle against identity group socialism has been joined. Whether this shift from economics to identity will reverse American socialism’s dismal history is the major question facing the movement.
Edward S. Shapiro is professor emeritus of history at Seton Hall University; edshapiro07052@yahoo.com. He is the author of A Time for Healing: American Jewry Since World War II (1992), Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot (2006), and A Unique People in a Unique Land: Essays on American Jewish History (2022) and is the editor of Letters of Sidney Hook: Democracy, Communism and the Cold War (1995). Shapiro appeared in our Winter 2025 issue with “Taking No for an Answer,” a review of Pamela Nadell’s Antisemitism: An American Tradition.
1 The literature on American exceptionalism is voluminous. See for example Daniel Bell, “The End of American Exceptionalism,” Public Interest, 41 (Fall, 1975), 193-224; Daniel T. Rogers, “Exceptionalism,” in Anthony Molho and Godson S. Wood, eds., Imagined Histories; American Historians Interpret the Past (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 21-40; Byron E. Shafer, ed., Is America Different: A New Look at American Exceptionalism (Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 1991); Ian Tyrrell, “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History,” American Historical Review, 96 (October, 1991), 1031-72; Michael Kammen, “The Problem of American Exceptionalism: A Reconsideration,” American Quarterly, 45 (March, 1993), 1-43; Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996); James W. Ceaser, “The Origins and Character of American Exceptionalism,” American Political Thought, 1 (Spring, 2012), 3-27; Abram C. Van Engen, City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism (New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 2020); and David A. Bell, “American Exceptionalism,” in Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies about Our Past (New York: Basic Books, 2022), 13-24.
2 David Bell, “American Exceptionalism,” 15-17.
3 Ian Tyrrell, American Exceptionalism: A New History of an Old Idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021), pp. 204-207; Ian Tyrrell, “American Exceptionalism in an Era of International History,” American Historical Review, 96 (October, 1991), 1031-72; Godfrey Hodgson, The Myth of American Exceptionalism (New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 2009).
4 Michael Kammen, People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973).
5 Joshua Muravchik, Heaven on Earth; The Rise and Fall of Socialism (New York: Encounter Books, 2002), 229.
6 Doug Cardell, Why Socialism Struggles: Exposing the Economic Errors That Undermine Utopian Ideals (Austin, Tex.: Greenleaf, 2026), 120, 239-40. See also Daniel J. Mahoney, The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now (New York: Encounter Books, 2025), 48-50, 92-93.
7 Irving Howe, Socialism and America (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 214-15.
8 Muravchik, Heaven on Earth, 342.
9 Irving Kristol, “Socialism: An Obituary for an Idea,” in Kristol, Reflections of a Neo-Conservative (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 114-20.
10 Daniel Bell, “Our Country–1984,” Partisan Review, 51 (1984), 636-37.
11 Bernard K. Johnpoll with Lillian Johnpoll, The Impossible Dream: The Rise and Demise of the American Left (Westport, Ct.: Praeger, 1981), ix, 345.
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