The Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor Republicanism in Post–Civil War America

One of the most natural thoughts, in post-Civil War America, was that wage-labor was inconsistent with the national commitment to republican liberty. That there might be a large class of permanent wage-laborers had always been an object of concern, but the emergence of an industrial society, in a nation that had just fought a war to eliminate one form of dependent labor, pressed this question to the fore. Concentrated around the Knights of Labor, figures like Ira Steward, William Sylvis, and George McNeill, argued that the logic of abolition carried forward into a critique of wage-labor. They sought to replace the industrial labor system with a “people in industry,” or producer's cooperatives united in a national economy supported by the state. What is striking about these late nineteenth century ideas and figures is not just that they represented a homegrown form of socialism, but that their vision shared in and overlapped with a wider current of social republicanism found in Europe. It is no wonder then that emigre figures, like Theodore Cuno and Victor Drury, as well as various members of the First International, Socialist parties, and fellow-traveling expats all found themselves in the Knights at one point or another.