Eric Blanc, interviewed by David Griscom on The Jacobin Show, takes on the oldest smear in American socialist history. “Sewer socialist” was coined by rival leftists as an insult for municipal do-gooders — but Milwaukee’s Socialists ran the city for most years between 1910 and 1960 and were, Blanc argues, the most important socialist organization the US has ever produced. Mayor Zohran Mamdani cites them as an inspiration; Blanc thinks their method is the best model for the Left right now.
What they actually were:
- Committed democratic socialists whose goal was overcoming capitalism — with the discipline to meet working people where they were (“the message discipline of Bernie or Zohran”)
- Builders of proof of concept: sewers and clean water when cholera killed kids, parks, free public concerts — bread and roses, delivered through public power
- Leaders of labor: around 60 percent union density in Milwaukee, with the state intervening on strikers’ side — in one case shutting a company down to keep scabs out
- Electoral plus extra-electoral: rarely a council majority, never statewide power, they won by pairing elected office with relentless neighborhood and workplace organizing
- Victor Berger’s founder’s insight: “Despair is the chief opponent of progress. Our greatest need is hope.”
Blanc’s research also overturns the convenient story that these were racists not worth studying. Berger started as an open white supremacist — then flipped during World War I as scientific racism collapsed and Black Milwaukeeans became the party’s most loyal constituency, the only politics of the era fighting the Klan and lynching.
The lesson for today is methodology, not mimicry: prove the public sector works, use the state to build organization from below, and don’t mistake good vibes for roots. With New York DSA at fifteen thousand members, Blanc’s warning is pointed — that base is still shallow next to the sewer socialists’, and the race against the clock is on.