Elena Kagan’s Thesis: Yes, She is a Radical Socialist!

Erick Erickson uncovered Elena Kagan’s college thesis. I knew this sounded familiar, the Daily Princetonian covered it over a week ago but the full thesis was not linked. The pdf of the thesis can be found here. I haven’t heard anything about Kagan to suggest her radical socialist views have changed since she wrote this in 1981 during the Cold War.

The document is over 130 pages long. Doug Ross transcribed some key passages to give you a glimpse into the mind and soul of the woman who may be our next Supreme Court Justice.

Acknowledgements …I would like to thank my brother Marc, whose involvement in radical causes led me to explore the history of American radicalism in the hope of clarifying my own political ideas…

…most historians have looked everywhere but to the American socialist movement itself for explanations of U.S. socialism’s failure…

…the American socialists· “failure to build a movement that even resembled Sombart’s idealized notion of a class-conscious party–a failure which they shared with most of their European counterparts–did not render their party any less significant. Nor did such a failure render their party any less successful…

[To explain why the] American socialist movement of the Progressive Era suddenly fell apart… we must turn to the internal workings and problems of the socialist movement itself.

…the dissolution of the Socialist Party resulted not from the walkout of the syndicalists in 1912 but from the infinitely more disastrous departure of the communists seven years later…

…[Early on] the [American] socialists divided into two camps: those of “constructive” and “revolutionary” socialism.

[...]

Conclusion In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness… Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force?

…[America's] societal traits… a relatively fluid class structure, an economy which allowed at least some workers to enjoy [prosperity]… prevented the early twentieth century socialists from attracting an immediate mass following. Such conditions did not, however, completely checkmate American socialism…

…Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP exhausted itself forever and further reduced labor radicalism… to the position of marginality and insignificance from which it has never recovered. The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America.

…if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope.

It will probably be argued that this thesis was just a scholarly study of a political and economic system, written while Kagan was but a young college student. But again, where is the evidence that she changed her views? Where is the evidence that she doesn’t believe the decline of socialism in the US was a “sad story?” Notice, too, how back in 1981 Kagan talked of unity and hope – two of Obama’s campaign slogans. No wonder she and Barack Obama became such good friends.

Supreme Court Justices can’t just be voted out at the next election. This will be a lifetime appointment and Kagan is only fifty years old. The Republicans in the Senate must do everything they can to block this nomination.

Doug Ross has more passages from the thesis if you don’t have time to read the whole thing.

More reaction: Left Coast Rebel, The Jawa Report, Another Black Conservative, Hot Air, memeorandum

Tags: Barack Obama, college, communist, Elena Kagan, hope, Marxist, socialist, thesis, unity