Eric Blanc challenges a seventy-five-year historiographic consensus with a startling claim: the founder of America's most successful socialist movement didn't just tolerate racism; he actively dismantled his own white supremacist views decades before the Civil Rights era. This isn't a rehabilitation of a bigot, but a forensic excavation of a political evolution that has been systematically erased, offering a crucial roadmap for socialists governing major cities today.
The Erasure of Transformation
Blanc opens by confronting the dominant narrative head-on. For generations, historians have painted Victor Berger as "America's prime example of a racist white socialist," a figure whose personal flaws supposedly doomed the entire "sewer socialism" experiment. Blanc writes, "One-sided portrayals of Berger have long steered US radicals away from learning from our country's most successful socialist organization." This framing is vital because it shifts the debate from moral purity to political utility. If we dismiss the only socialist movement to govern a major American city for fifty years simply because its founder started with bigoted views, we lose a unique case study in how radical politics can actually work.
The author's discovery of a 1929 obituary from Milwaukee's NAACP praising Berger's "very broad and sympathetic views" serves as the pivot point. It forces a confrontation with Berger's infamous 1902 declaration that "there can be no doubt that the negroes and mulattoes constitute a lower race." How do we square these two realities? Blanc argues that the answer lies not in Berger's personality, but in his responsiveness to evidence and changing demographics. As the Great Migration brought more Black residents to Milwaukee, the local socialist press began to reflect a new reality. Blanc notes that "generation after generation of historians had somehow managed to overlook a remarkable transformation: not only did Berger eventually ditch white supremacist views, but he and his paper became ardently anti-racist during the 1920s."
Berger's evolution is in itself a remarkable, somewhat puzzling, and ultimately hopeful story.
Critics might argue that focusing on Berger's later redemption distracts from the genuine harm his early writings caused, or that his shift was merely political calculation rather than moral growth. Blanc anticipates this, insisting we cannot "paper over Berger's initial white supremacist views," which activists today are "obviously right to reject." However, he contends that the dismissal of the entire movement based on these early views is a strategic error that ignores the movement's capacity for change.
From Scientific Racism to Class Solidarity
The article meticulously details the pre-war era, where Berger's writings were indeed abominable. He embraced "scientific" biological racism, arguing that Asian immigrants were "more simian (ape-like)" and that the US "must remain a white man's country." Blanc points out that this wasn't just a tactical concession to win votes; Berger was "genuinely racist at this time." This honesty is refreshing. It avoids the trap of sanitizing history to make it palatable for modern readers. Instead, Blanc uses this darkness to highlight the light that followed.
The turning point, according to Blanc, was a combination of personal experience and new scientific research. As the Milwaukee Leader began citing anthropologist Franz Boas's work debunking biological race, the paper's tone shifted. By 1915, the publication was denouncing "the poison of prejudice and the degrading sense of advantage, of a superiority that passes itself off as inborn." Blanc writes, "Far from hating one another by instinct, the alien races are often instinctively drawn to one another." This rhetorical shift from biological determinism to class solidarity is the core of the argument. It suggests that racism is not an immutable feature of the working class, but a barrier that can be overcome through political education and shared struggle.
Blanc highlights a 1912 editorial on a New York waiters' strike to illustrate this new approach: "This matter of using color against color, race against color, is one of the most dangerous things in this country... This is not a race question, but a wages question, a question of class, and all of them belong to the working class." While this "colorblind" approach sometimes downplayed the specific burdens of non-white workers, Blanc argues it was a "real step forward" compared to the explicit racism of the past. It laid the groundwork for the movement's later, more robust anti-racist actions.
The Legacy of Sewer Socialism
The stakes of this historical correction are high. With socialists poised to govern in New York City and Seattle, the question of how to build a multiracial coalition is immediate. Blanc argues that the "sewer socialists" offer a proven model of governance that prioritized practical improvements—sewers, schools, and sanitation—while evolving on racial justice. He notes that "no other group has come close to replicating the Wisconsin socialists' continued governance over almost five decades." This longevity wasn't achieved by ignoring race, but by eventually confronting it head-on, even if the path was imperfect.
The article also shines a light on the contributions of Black socialists like William Bryant, whose work was overshadowed by the focus on Berger. Blanc writes, "Berger's anti-racist transformation has been entirely overlooked in the published literature — an erasure that has, in turn, erased the contributions of Milwaukee's first Black socialists." This dual focus—on Berger's change of heart and the Black activists who pushed him—is a nuanced approach that avoids the trap of the "Great Man" theory while still acknowledging the power of leadership.
We can't afford to keep dismissing sewer socialism, especially now that socialists are about to govern New York City and Seattle.
Blanc acknowledges that the "colorblind" socialism of the 1910s had limitations, often failing to identify the specific obstacles facing Black workers. A counterargument worth considering is whether this early focus on class unity inadvertently delayed a more robust anti-racist platform. However, Blanc's evidence suggests that the movement's willingness to evolve was its greatest strength, not a weakness.
Bottom Line
Eric Blanc's piece is a necessary corrective that refuses to let history's complexities be flattened into a single moral judgment. Its strongest asset is the rigorous documentation of Berger's shift from white supremacist to anti-racist advocate, proving that political evolution is possible even for those deeply entrenched in prejudice. The argument's vulnerability lies in its reliance on a "colorblind" framework that modern activists might find insufficient for addressing systemic racism today. Nevertheless, the core lesson remains: dismissing a political tradition because of its founder's early failures is a luxury the left cannot afford when the alternative is political irrelevance.