Socialism is having a politically effervescent moment: From a self-professed socialist winning New York’s mayoralty to leftist members of Wisconsin’s Legislature forming a “Socialist caucus” for the first time since 1931, the soft-core version of Marxism is gaining prominence.
One marker: A member of that caucus, Rep. Francesca Hong of Madison, has led a crowded Democratic Party primary race for governor in three runs of the well-regarded Marquette Law School poll. She identifies as a Democratic Socialist, as do many of her ideological soulmates who seek office.
She is running in a state where socialists have had more success via democracy than perhaps any other, albeit a century ago. Friendly media outlets frequently refer to Wisconsin’s 20th-century dalliance with socialism — especially Milwaukee’s, where socialists held the mayor’s office for 38 years between 1910 and 1960, a fact so well known that it long since has worked its way into pop culture.
The references to Milwaukee’s so-called “sewer socialist” era are meant to defuse the radical nature of socialism’s politics, with references to Milwaukee’s socialist mayors embracing public works, parks and anti-corruption measures.
The nostalgia leaves some parts out. One of Milwaukee socialism’s high points was electing the first Socialist to Congress. Victor Berger won the seat representing northern Milwaukee County in 2010, after Socialist Emil Seidel was elected Milwaukee mayor in the spring.
Often glossed over is that fact unearthed in a Badger Institute story that Berger was a virulent bigot.
He argued against granting women the right to vote, saying they were “not as favorable to Socialism as men are,” being “under the domination of reactionary priests.” He opposed immigration from eastern Europe, saying such “modern white coolies” would depress wages. A newspaper publisher and writer, he wrote the he had “no doubt that the negroes and mulattoes constitute a lower race.”
In that era, deep-seated racism wasn’t the sole province of socialists. The giants of Progressivism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison were his equal in bold-faced bigotry, and Berger eventually fell out with other Socialists for such views.
His economic views, on the other hand, were orthodox socialism: He was for “the collective ownership of all the means of production and distribution,” and his aim was “to abolish the capitalist system entirely.”
The monicker “sewer socialists,” today a means of suggesting the movement’s ambitions are uncontroversial, was first applied to Milwaukee’s mayors, especially Daniel W. Hoan, as denigration by Socialists seeking more radical change.
Seidel served one term before losing, but not before proposing by his count 318 ordinances —including regulations on streetcar operations, on the price of ice and the weight of bread — almost none of which passed.
Hoan, elected in 1916 and serving until 1940, toyed with the idea of municipal food marketing, but that came to nothing, and his initiatives to take over the private operator of streetcars and the electrical power supply flopped after he put the question to voters. Today, 81 Wisconsin municipalities own their own electric power utility, yet electricity production in Milwaukee remains in the realm of free enterprise.
Milwaukee’s sewerage system was improved during the Socialist years, though the city had both sewers and a public water supply long before, and thousands of other American cities had equivalent public plumbing without Socialist rule. So, too, the city’s parks were improved under the Socialists, though many were established in 1890, long before the party’s rise to power. As with sewers, most other large cities have major parks, even without Socialist mayors in their history.
Among the major accomplishments during the final 12 years of Socialist rule, the 1948-1960 term of Mayor Frank Zeidler, was the city’s launch of the region’s freeway system — a public amenity built in most other American metropolises, serving a form of transportation that gets little admiration among modern socialists.
In fact, the comparison to Milwaukee’s past Socialist mayors’ accomplishments highlights how proposals by current Democratic Socialists are much more radical, even if they’re rhetorically similar.
For instance, socialists both then and now show hostility toward Wisconsinites who earn a lot of money or possess a lot of wealth. Milwaukee’s first Socialist mayor, Seidel, proposed taxing wealth that remained in taxpayers’ hands even after Wisconsin’s new income tax skimmed off between 1 and 6 percent.
Seidel’s plans didn’t go well: In fact, he later blamed public opposition to a wealth tax for his losing office after a single term.
Notably, Seidel’s proposal came the year before the federal government imposed its own income tax, one that applied to 0.8 percent of households and topped out at 7 percent.
Democratic Socialists’ national platform today explicitly calls for a wealth tax on the productive assets that taxpayers manage to keep after paying federal income taxes that now top out at 37 percent. Hong’s campaign has made a habit of short videos in which she shouts, “Tax the f—- billionaires!” She and others in the Socialist caucus propose legislation to raise Wisconsin’s top income tax rate — already highest among non-coastal states other than Minnesota — by more than a percentage point to just under 9 percent, and to add another bracket atop that to levy 17.7 percent off of incomes over $1 million. Hong also proposes letting Wisconsin cities add their own income taxes on top state and federal ones.
It is unclear how she would keep billionaires in Wisconsin, given the known propensity of high earners to flee excessive taxes, not to mention wealth taxes.
Socialists in Milwaukee’s golden era were strong backers of labor unions. But public sector employees were not unionized.
Wisconsin pioneered public sector unionization just as Zeidler was giving way to a succession of Democratic mayors, and today public sector unions constitute the bulk of the labor movement in Wisconsin.
The current Democratic Socialist platform, meanwhile, contains a number of measures seeking to increase unions’ sway over the economy. Hong for her part would repeal the Act 10 labor reforms that loosened public sector unions’ grip on local governments’ budgets. She would require union labor on state projects, and repeal Wisconsin workers’ “right to work” ability to opt out of unions.
Modern socialists are proposing other ideas that the sewer socialists didn’t enact — Hong wants a taxpayer-funded network of grocery stores, a government-owned bank and taxpayer-funded child care, for example.
It’s worth noting that the Socialist era came to an end after only three mayors — all separated by stretches of non-Socialist rule. Voters turned two of them out, and Zeidler retired in 1960.
In Zeidler’s last term, the Baby Boom led to an increase in Milwaukee’s population, which peaked in the 1960 census. But population growth was much faster in suburbs beyond the Socialists’ control, so the city’s share of metropolitan Milwaukee’s population dropped sharply. And the transplants often worked to eliminate any chance of Socialist governance — to the point of changing state law to stop Zeidler’s city from annexing their homes back into the city. There was little nostalgia for the Socialist regimes they’d lived under and fled — much less, in fact, than you see among Socialists wearing red-colored glasses today.
Patrick McIlheran is the executive editor at the Badger Institute.
Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute Marketing Director Matt Erdman at matt@badgerinstitute.org.
Submit a comment
Go to the full page to view and submit the form.
