The Rise and Fall of Sewer Socialism
by Mike M and Ari S
The political pragmatism and electoral success of Milwaukee's "sewer socialists" are an inspiration for a broad section of today's socialists, even including Zohran Mamdani's campaign for mayor of NYC. What lessons can this history teach us?
Henry Glissenkamp, Voting Machines
Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor of New York has become an important front of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)’s work, both in the city and nationally. In interviews Mamdani commonly cites the legacy of the “Sewer Socialists” of Milwaukee as a political inspiration for his vision of socialism. The importance and visibility of his campaign requires that we understand and evaluate this history. For all the positive lessons Milwaukee’s socialists can teach us, they also had their shortcomings which should make us wary of reviving the Sewer Socialist banner.
Five words or less
In the general elections of 1904, the voting public of Wisconsin approved a ballot measure to conduct party nominations by direct vote. This was a victory for Wisconsin's Progressive (and Republican) Governor, Robert M. La Follette, over his conservative intra-party rivals. It instituted a system of open party primaries in the state, and voters could now decide a party's nominees in future general elections, cracking open the elite-driven primary process of the major parties.
At the same time, the election delivered another notable result in Wisconsin—it sent six Socialists to the state legislature. Earlier that year nine socialist aldermen were elected to Milwaukee's Common Council, capturing nearly thirty percent of its seats. Though these were not the first socialists elected to municipal and state government in the United States, their victory was held as a triumph for the Social-Democratic Party (SDP) of Wisconsin, a branch of the then recently-formed Socialist Party of America (SPA).
The introduction of direct primaries and socialist legislators was of course troubling to the traditional parties. In large part due to the Socialist threat, the state instituted nonpartisan elections in 1912, disallowing party designations from appearing on the ballot. Instead, candidates were allowed a statement of principle, not to exceed five words. Not unlike today’s ecosocialists in NYC, the Social Democrats chose "Public Ownership of Public Utilities" as their ballot statement. However, compared to today’s call to “Build Public Renewables,” the SPA’s slogan was a much broader statement of principle rather than a single policy. When viewed in the context of the SPA’s platform, it becomes clear that they were arguing not just for building new public utilities, but expropriating existing ones as well.
The principle of public ownership anchored the party's municipal platform as early as 1898. As the Socialists’ flagship demand, it helped build the SDP’s popular support and won them enormous electoral victories in the early decades of the 20th century. The promise, however, remained largely unfulfilled. To understand why we must look deeper into Milwaukee’s socialist project—its rise, its brief municipal majority in 1910-12, and the Socialist mayors that held executive power into the 1930s.
Dovetail
A crucial pillar for socialist electoral wins in Milwaukee was its relationship with organized labor. Victor Berger, a founder of the SPA in 1901 and top political leader in the Wisconsin branch, was largely responsible for its trade-union policy. The crux of the policy was, in Berger’s words:
This insistence on politically neutral trade-union unity was in tension with those in the socialist movement's left wing, who preferred strategies of dual-unionism and open confrontation with the established American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The SDP’s natural ally in Milwaukee was the Federated Trades Council (FTC), an affiliate of the AFL. Prior to the Social-Democratic Party's formation in 1898, Berger formed close ties with the council through participation in local union struggles. He was able to secure FTC endorsements of the party and its daily publication the Wisconsin Vorwärts and later secured publishing status as the council's official organ via the weekly Social Democratic Herald. In December of 1899 the FTC held a general meeting to elect its executive committee. The committee elected was composed exclusively of socialists, including Berger.
The SDP was admittedly careful around its agitation of union members, recognizing they may belong to different parties. And there was some anti-socialist sentiment from unions in the council, notably the Printing Pressmen's Union. But between 1900 and 1910, the FTC continually provided financing to both the party and the Herald, and the party saw its share of votes grow. By 1902 the SDP received 8,453 votes for mayoral candidate Howard Tuttle, more than a three-fold increase from 1898. With SDP members in FTC leadership and on the shop floor as trade-union members themselves, the party was better able to appeal to union members and grow its electoral voting strength. The relationship worked both ways in that it also provided an on-ramp for union members who wanted to seek public office.
A second pillar of Socialist electoral strength came from the legacy of the Populist party and the contemporary Progressive movement. Prior to the SDP's founding, the Populist party agitated around many of the same local issues, including municipal ownership of public utilities. In the SDP's meager 1898 showing, Democratic candidate David Rose swept the race on a largely Populist platform. While Rose proved popular with Democrats, he was more pragmatic than principled, and granting concessions to the local street railway company lost him Populist support during his first term.
For their part the Progressives made their political home in the Republican party, with the aforementioned governor La Follette winning election in 1900. They too promoted municipal ownership of utilities, but after losing their 1902 municipal nomination to a conservative, they made a deal to support Rose, paving the way for another victory in the 1902 election. At the state level Progressives held sway with Milwaukee SDP voters, and La Follette ran nearly twelve hundred votes ahead of SDP nominee Emil Seidel on their own ticket.
While the Progressive movement can be said to have brought support to the Socialists, Berger and the early SDP sought no association with Progressives during the height of their success, and criticized them for their commitment to the principle of private property rights. This would later change. In 1924, after the party’s support had already collapsed nationally, they supported La Follette’s presidential run on a reformist platform (Miller, Sally M, Milwaukee: Of Ethnicity and Labor, Socialism and the Cities, Kennikat Press, 1975, 60).
Labor and coalitions
The early SDP deeply embedded itself in Milwaukee’s trade-union movement, steering union workers into support for the Socialist party and their ballot line. Their effort was eased by two factors. Both constituencies were composed mainly of German immigrants already accustomed with socialism, and the national AFL was still young and willing to look the other way on socialist intervention for the sake of loyal support. Today's socialists enjoy no such luxuries. In the course of the 20th century, the ruling class systematically purged the labor movement of radical influence, cutting off the most active and dynamic organizers from the mass of the union movement and setting the stage for today's disorganization.
There are no longer large socialist parties with deep roots in working class communities driving the labor movement in the direction of systemic change. The Rank and File Strategy pursued by DSA is a step in the right direction, but as outlined in Marxist Unity Group’s tasks and perspectives, in its current practice it risks making the same error as Berger’s neutralism, which lost opportunities to create well-rounded socialists out of union militants. In some cases, especially visible in Berger’s example, neutralism even meant tailing the xenophobia and racism of the contemporary labor movement, emanating from structural divisions within the working class.
The party’s reformist orientation also dictated how it approached the other main actor in their coalition: Progressive voters. Although the early party was quick to criticize and distance itself from Progressive politics, there was crossover in their immediate demands. And as the SDP began winning elections based on these demands, the reform-minded middle-class became an essential component to growing their ranks in public office. Because the “sewer socialist” strategy dictated they could achieve their long-term goal of a cooperative commonwealth via the ballot, without transforming the existing political system, they were not necessarily turning voters into socialists. Instead, the party chose to reach them by dulling their program's horizon, and by seeking short-term common-sense wins to the detriment of their long-term vision.
NYC-DSA today is in a similar position. In pursuit of our electoral program we prioritize consolidating reform-minded Democratic Party voters around targeted campaigns for legislation, without effectively tying these efforts into any long-term vision for our socialist project. While participating in the electoral arena is a critical plank of any socialist party, it should be in service of reaching the widest possible part of the population with our message. Our messaging should center the need for large scale transformation of the political system, exposing its undemocratic nature and offering an alternative. Even inside of DSA, much more can be done to educate members in socialism, and expose them to varied work beyond the “community organizing” and mobilization tactics of the progressive non-profit complex.
Milwaukee City workers inspect a sewer line in the 1900s, from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee archives
The Breakthrough
In the summer of 1903, Milwaukee’s press began to expose the systematic graft and corruption throughout municipal government, whipping up a massive public scandal. Democratic and Republican officials alike were accused of bribe-taking, misusing funds, even outright theft of public money. Berger put the Herald to work in tying the stories of graft to the capitalist system, and insisting on socialism as its solution.
When Progressive reformers arranged a mass meeting to address the situation, the SDP used it as an opportunity to agitate against what they saw as the useless spectacle of convening the Progressive circle, which included the very businessmen and attorneys who the SDP charged were responsible for the graft in the first place. The SDP’s lone speaker at the event, Winfield Gaylord, called out the vice-presidents (sponsors) of the meeting for their role in the current state of affairs. The meeting appointed a Citizens' Committee of Ten, a civic reform group. The SDP refused to associate or work in coalition with the committee, asserting that it would be useless and at best would uncover those who took bribes, rather than those in the capitalist class who gave them.
After the scandal, many in Milwaukee anticipated further SDP victories in the 1904 elections. The party's city convention was covered widely by the press. In an attempt to capture lightning in a bottle, the party nominated Victor Berger for mayor. A remark made in his nomination acceptance speech reveals the party’s early attitude toward electoral victories:
"It makes no difference to us whether we win or lose in Milwaukee. We are fighting a bigger fight than for a political victory in this city. If we are defeated, we will be here again next year, and the year after, and every year until we succeed."
Progressives also took advantage of the moment and successfully nominated one of their own, Guy D. Goff, to the head of the Republican ticket. The Democrats again nominated Mayor Rose. The Friday before the election, the SDP held a large rally with Eugene Debs as speaker.
Though the SDP nearly doubled their mayoral vote from the previous election, the Democrat Rose walked away with the victory. He was able to peel off conservative Republicans through associating the Progressive Goff with the Socialists, and by heavily campaigning in the city's Catholic Polish community on an anti-socialist platform. Despite the mayoral loss, the election was a success for the party. For the first time they had elected nine aldermen to the Common Council. In November came further victories, with five members elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly and one to the State Senate.
The SDP were able to get their foot in the door at a moment when the traditional parties were weak with voters due to scandal. The Zohran Mamdani campaign is currently benefiting from similar circumstances. Until recently, incumbent Democratic Mayor Eric Adams was facing federal corruption charges, and current frontrunner Andrew Cuomo holds a blemished past of his own. Combined with the anxieties introduced by the second Trump administration, it is not a stretch to imagine the city’s Democratic voters will seek an alternative in a young, self-described socialist with a plan.
While the Mamdani campaign has so far done an excellent job messaging around his platform, it's hard not to wonder how a programmatically-united DSA could utilize such a large stage to associate the municipal reform platform with a national movement for revolutionary democracy. Our lack of programmatic unity sits downstream of organizational tensions around theories of change, structural democracy, and party discipline.
First blush
When the nine aldermen joined the Common Council, they immediately operated under impressive party discipline. They voted as a bloc against all appointments, and each signed an undated resignation card that was left with the party to be used in case of emergency. By alderman Emil Seidel's count they introduced 318 measures, with 71 of them having "a wider bearing on social welfare and social trends." These included plans for a municipal ice plant, using union labels on city printing, fixing the sale of gas at forty cents, and empowering the council to fix salaries. It is unclear how many of these measures passed, and we can assume the more contentious of them did not. But the socialist members were seen to be fighting for a clean and efficient government on behalf of the working class. They crafted an image and reputation that they felt would carry them to further victories.
Toward the end of their first term, in the ramp-up to the 1906 elections, the party faced its first dilemma in government. The SDP's platform included the demand that no new franchises be awarded for public utilities, which would contradict the fight for public ownership. During their term the alderman followed this plank to the letter and voted against all franchise requests submitted to the council. But the growing city put an increasing demand on railroad and street railway service. And as socialists were committed to approving no franchises, they were unable to take credit for franchises that could be more favorable to the city than the existing monopolies.
In an effort to make the party more palatable to reform-minded professionals, the SDP struck the franchise plank from their platform and replaced it with a set of conditions by which a franchise could be approved. The story of this pivot is a glimpse into Victor Berger’s hold on the party. On the day of the SDP convention to approve a platform, Berger printed an editorial in the Social Democratic Herald arguing for the platform change. The party adopted it that same day, and the conditions therein were lifted verbatim from Berger's editorial. This change was also included in the state party platform later that year.
A parallel is obvious between the franchise question and NYC-DSA’s actions and commitments regarding housing. While sometimes advocating for new social housing, a truly socialist policy, the pressures of coalitions and immediate feasibility have forced an adaptation to “market-oriented” solutions relying on capitalist developers. In both cases these adaptations erode the very purpose of socialist organizing as separate from progressive activism.
The 1906 election saw the SDP gain an additional three seats on the Common Council and again grow their vote share for mayor, though by a lower rate than the previous race. Mayor Rose was finally unseated by Republican Sherburn Becker, the son of a local financier. This term saw the Social Democrats begin to solidify their reputation. They bloc voted on every measure, and put forward proposals that generated increasing public attention. They seemed to bring a much desired respectability to the council after the municipal graft scandal.
Discipline and the party
The SPA was by no means a happy family. Its origins lie in a merger between Berger’s Social-Democratic Party and an expelled faction of Daniel De Leon’s Socialist Labor Party. The tactics of the Wisconsin organization were a continual source of debate and tension in the Party, not unlike the relationship between the NYC chapter of DSA and its national body today. Berger was on its reformist, self-described “constructive” wing, and Wisconsin often flouted party decision-making at the national level.
Despite their divergence from the SPA nationally, the Wisconsin organization still benefited from operating under the discipline of a party formation. Compared to the electoral experiences of some other SPA branches, notably that of George Lunn and the Schenectady, New York branch, Victor Berger ran a fairly tight ship. Electeds were expected to vote as a bloc in alignment with the party platform. In contrast, DSA’s electoral project has yet to achieve consistent bloc voting from our Socialists in Office. Endorsed electeds cast controversial votes without consequence, and the committees formed to liaise between electeds and membership are woefully opaque. Combined with a practical necessity to run on Democratic Party ballot lines, our ability to use these races to build an organizational presence in the minds of voters beyond the bubble of political media is hampered.
DSA is at best a proto-party, and while there is no such thing as a silver bullet, it is clear that we should take a cue from the socialist parties of the early 20th century to move beyond our perennial controversies. Democratic centralism in this context would simply mean having an organization-wide set of standards on conduct and voting for members within legislatures, standards mapped to a democratically determined program, and that breaking from these standards would have organizational consequences for these members.
The aim of centralist discipline isn’t to police members for the sake of moral purity, but to help create a culture where members, especially those in public view, see themselves as representatives of a movement and a party. That kind of culture begins with unity around a common program and common work. In a healthy organization, coercion of any kind would not be necessary outside of rare exceptions, and the actions of leadership would be checked by the regular practice of democracy, through free and open debate.
A municipality of one's own
Prior to 1924, the city of Milwaukee did not operate under “home rule,” or municipal self-governance. The state of Wisconsin set Milwaukee's tax rate and held substantial power over the city's affairs. Since the creation of Milwaukee's first charter in 1846, the city was in a battle with the state to obtain its own autonomy. It was curtailed in the first place after city ward aldermen abused their debt-issuing authority to nearly drive the city to insolvency. Rural conservatives controlled the state legislature, and as capital interests found them easier to work with than the city legislatures, they typically supported efforts to retain the state’s power over the city. Given the issue was fairly non-partisan from the city's perspective, however, home rule was supported (at least rhetorically) by most municipal candidates seeking office.
In 1907 Milwaukee was authorized to hold a convention to prepare a home rule charter. That same year the state also remade the makeup of Milwaukee's Common Council. Now each ward elected one alderman instead of two, with twelve aldermen elected at-large by the whole city. This was an effort by the Democrats and Republicans to forestall the Social Democrats' accrual of power. In the 1908 municipal elections, David Rose was reelected mayor with SDP candidate Emil Seidel beating out the Republican for second place. But while the SDP elected nine aldermen, under the new council configuration they wound up with fewer seats.
Preparations for the home rule charter convention later that year proved controversial. When it appeared that Republicans and Social Democrats would make up the majority of delegates, Mayor Rose declared the whole thing unconstitutional. He denied the convention use of city hall and had the finance committee of the council block funding of the event. Despite this the convention went ahead with plenty of civic support. Unfortunately, while the charter for home rule passed in the state senate, it was defeated in the assembly.
Structural barriers
Sewer Socialism’s theory of change implies that we live in a democracy. While citizens are nominally free to vote for anything they want, and we are nominally free to run any candidate or form any party, there are massive systemic barriers to democratic political transformation. At every level of government, judicial review and arcane constitutional systems block popular will. The SDP were consistently routed in their efforts by an antagonistic state legislature, and a Mamdani administration will no doubt confront similar antagonism when seeking to touch the MTA budget or raise the corporate tax rate.
These realities functionally preclude socialist power within the capitalist state. Agencies beyond popular control have their own agendas which span across administrations. Those who are tasked to implement progressive change are often most invested in the reactionary status-quo. Gerry-mandering, fundraising challenges, regulations, and capitalist control of the press further limit democracy.
If we are to win a truly democratic society, we as socialists must persistently identify and communicate to the public the roots of our domination in the US constitution and the capitalist empire which upholds it. It is our ability to organize a popular opposition to our undemocratic institutions that will determine our success. To the extent we are able to elect public officials through this process, we can be confident that we are building a base capable of withstanding the winds of reaction, acting as a democratic counterbalance to undemocratic institutions until we have a majority mandate to replace them.
Our year
For the ten years after 1898, the Social-Democratic party steadily increased their share of the mayoral vote and gained a positive reputation on the Common Council. Now it was time for their efforts to bear fruit. The party's image had so decisively changed in the city, even the typically anti-socialist editorial of the Daily News had this to say:
"… It is an insult to the intelligence of the people of Milwaukee constantly to hold up the thousands of hard-working, industrious men that compose the bulk of the Socialists as a menace to the community. Instead of being a menace, they are one of the chief sources of its prosperity. In this connection we need not consider Socialism whatsoever. For it is not within the power of the Socialists of Milwaukee to enact Socialism–the most that they could do, even if given a free hand in municipal affairs, would be to work a program of moderate reforms …" (Daily News, May 3rd 1909)
On April 5th, 1910, voters in Milwaukee elected their first socialist Mayor—former alderman Emil Seidel. They also won fourteen of twenty-three available ward-alderman seats, seven of the twelve available at-large seats, two civil judges, the positions of Comptroller, Treasurer, and City Attorney, and a majority on the county board. Crowds filled the streets the night of the election, and when the race was called the Milwaukee Sentinel lit a searchlight in the sky with the results, sending the crowd to deafening cheers (Milwaukee Herald, April 9 1910). Triumph carried into the general election later that year, and the party sent thirteen members to the state legislature. Victor Berger won the fifth congressional district, becoming the first Socialist Party member elected to US congress.
A key factor in Seidel's success was carrying the Polish-Catholic dominated fourteenth ward. This had been a Democratic stronghold, where the Catholic church proved successful in hampering the socialist vote. The SDP put a strong effort into reaching these voters, distributing translated literature and sending native speakers to the ward. Five months before the election the party established an entire newspaper in Polish, the Naprzod, while also distributing a translated campaign paper titled Voice of the People.
It should be mentioned that the Wisconsin SDP, and its electoral success, was primarily a product of the German immigrant community. Milwaukee’s German wards were its strongholds, and the party’s efforts to reach out to the Polish community and others via its foreign language sections give us a view of the path not taken for expanding its proletarian base.
The party’s orientation seems especially jarring at a time when women and Native people could not vote and had little civic protection, and Jim Crow reigned over the Black population. Were it not for Berger’s notorious racism, we could imagine the party doing similar outreach to Milwaukee’s Black community. Instead, the party chased the votes of the relatively privileged section of the proletariat and the petit-bourgeoisie, with strict limits on what kind of socialism they would tolerate. This was another example of the narrow vision inherent to Sewer Socialism which missed an opportunity to advance the struggle for democracy. These kinds of errors would limit their tenure in power.
In power
The party's 1910 platform included much more specific demands than those previous, heavily influenced by their six years of legislative experience. Home rule became the first plank, with municipal ownership moving to second. Further planks included raising corporate taxes, building public slaughterhouses and municipal hospitals, operating a municipal stone quarry, annexing territory for the city, ward redistricting, and providing all city workers with a fair wage, among other reforms.
In their two years in power Seidel's administration did much work to improve the efficiency of the city government. Shortly after the election Berger offered economist and labor historian John R. Commons a job in Milwaukee to help reorganize government processes. Over eighteen months Commons and his team, as the Milwaukee Bureau of Economy and Efficiency (BEE), produced reports and made recommendations concerning cost-systems and the organization of departments. Similar bureaus existed in Chicago and New York and Commons visited them to recruit and study.
Following the bureau's guidance, the city made successful interventions in first responder telegraph systems, plumbing inspections, the reorganization of garbage, and new unit cost systems for materials, labor, and management. Meanwhile, the comptroller's office inventoried all tax-delinquent and city-owned property and created an indexed payroll system from scratch. Using scientific management methodologies, the administration was able to accomplish more without having to raise taxes.
The BEE recommended delegating certain municipal problems to commissions composed of interested citizens. One of these became the Child Welfare Commission, which in its pilot was able to reduce child mortality in an allocated district by sixty-six percent through one-on-one nursing assistance with new mothers.
The administration also made interventions in labor, raising the wage of day laborers employed by the city from $1.75 to $2.00 a day. They further implemented the eight-hour day for all city and contracted employees. Union labor was employed whenever possible, and the SDP helped in organizing unions where city employees were without one. Similarly to the Child Welfare Commission, a citizens committee on unemployment was created to help job seekers.
The election of the Socialists in 1910 was a wake-up call to the old parties, and it fundamentally altered the political calculus of Milwaukee. In response, the old parties were forced to join together and endorse a nonpartisan candidate, Gerhard A. Bading. The coalition proved too much for the SDP to overcome, and Seidel was defeated in the 1912 election. Socialists also lost ten seats on the Common Council, costing them their majority. This was despite the fact that the party actually grew its vote totals, and for the first time elected an alderman in the Polish fourteenth ward, Leo Kryzcki (Milwaulkee Herald, April 13 1912. Following the success of this strategy, state lawmakers pushed a bill through the legislature to officially adopt nonpartisan elections mentioned in the introduction.
On Good Government
The Seidel administration no doubt left Milwaukee in better shape than they found it. Their interventions in accounting, labor and management helped bring Milwaukee’s government into the 20th century. But similar changes were occurring at the same time under non-socialist administrations. The ultimate lesson of the Sewer Socialists is that “Good Government” is not enough. They won a supermajority, conquered the red-baiting of local press, governed without a blemish, and two years later lost their mandate. Why? Because they relegated their function in office to managing an undemocratic system, barely distinguishing themselves from liberal progressives. Eugene Debs understood as much, writing shortly after the SDP’s 1910 victory in a January 1911 article titled “Danger Ahead:”
“The truth is that we have not a few members who regard vote-getting as of supreme importance, no matter by what method the votes may be secured, and this leads them to hold out inducements and make representations which are not at all compatible with the stern and uncompromising principles of a revolutionary party. They seek to make the socialist propaganda so attractive—eliminating whatever may give offense to bourgeois sensibilities—that it serves as a bait for votes rather than as a means of education, and votes thus secured do not properly belong to us and do injustice to our party as well as to those who cast them.
These votes do not express socialism and in the next ensuing election are quite as apt to be turned against us, and it is better that they be not cast for the Socialist Party, registering a degree of progress the party is not entitled to and indicating a political position the party is unable to sustain.”
Democrats and Republicans have no trouble manipulating the legislative system at junctures beyond socialist control, or even adopting progressive messaging, should it become necessary. When it became necessary in Milwaukee, the capitalist parties united using every tool at their disposal, and the voter coalition the SPD had built couldn’t withstand the onslaught.
The torchbearer
Though the SDP had lost its hard-won majority, they held onto a presence in City Hall through Daniel W. Hoan and a minority on the Common Council. Hoan was elected as City Attorney along with the Seidel administration in 1910, at the age of twenty-nine. He alone would stay on through the losses of 1912, and in 1916 he went on to win the mayoralty and govern the city for twenty-four years.
After the nonpartisan bill of 1912 the political lines in Milwaukee sharpened. With all non-socialists in coalition against them, the SDP had trouble holding on to the middle-class reformers who swung their way in 1910. In Hoan’s 1916 run against Gerhard Bading, the slogan was once again “Public Ownership of Public Utilities.” The Seidel administration had been unable to meet this demand, due to a dependency on state legislation which allowed opposition to stall their bills. Existing franchises for street railway and gas companies were also not up for renewal during the 1910-1912 term.
The 1916 race held an opportunity for the Socialists, as it coincided with a referendum to take the city’s street lighting under municipal ownership. As Bading and the old parties could never support municipalization, Hoan was able to take the opportunity of differentiation and press the SDP’s line. He held a good reputation with voters from his accomplishments as City Attorney, which included concessions from public utility companies. Bading resorted to red-baiting, but Milwaukee voters by this point were numb to such attacks. Hoan won the election and the street lighting referendum passed, putting the SDP once again back in the executive. This time however they lacked a council majority, taking eleven seats of the thirty-seven member chamber.
Though Hoan held the mayor’s office for twenty-four years, the SPD never again gained a majority on the Common Council, nor was Hoan able to fulfill the party’s demand for public utility ownership. Despite this his administrations held some notable accomplishments, and it was during Hoan’s tenure that Morris Hillquit, leader in the New York SPA, coined the term “Sewer Socialism” to describe Milwaukee’s Socialists. A 1920 city zoning ordinance introduced some measure of urban planning, and in 1921 Milwaukee became the first city in the United States to publicly finance cooperative housing under the “Garden Homes” project. The law was later changed, however, to allow individual owners to obtain a personal deed to their property when paid in full, and the cooperative dissolved over time. In 1935 the council passed the Boncel Ordinance, which allowed the Mayor or Chief of Police to close strikebound industries. And in the spirit of the Social Democrats’ fiscal responsibility, Hoan was able to bring the city budget to operating nearly on a cash-basis, with little debt to speak of.
Daniel Hoan finally lost the mayor’s office in 1940 to young nonpartisan upstart Carl Zeidler. He barely won reelection in 1936 after the Socialist Party once again sought coalition with the Progressives, abandoning their independent electoral column (Miller, 64). His longevity in office was due primarily to his prioritization of working relationships with the nonpartisan coalition, rather than any mandate for municipal socialism. The New Deal of the 1930s siphoned off the reform-minded electorate from the Socialists, and the unions moved on with them. With the Second World War and the Cold War still to come, the Social-Democratic Party left the stage.
Conclusion
The essence of “Sewer Socialism” as opposed to other trends in socialism, is a de-emphasis on systemic thinking about capitalism, and large scale social transformation. It aims to find an existing majority support in common-sense policy which represents good governance and increased quality of life.
There is an obviously positive side to this vision, which is responsible for its legislative victories. This is the idea that socialism serves the interests of the working class majority and uses the resources of society to improve quality of life. While effective sewers, transportation, health and education are arguably in the interests of the whole society, the problem of taxation, varying economic interests between sectors, the undemocratic nature of the regime, and ideological factors make it impossible for the capitalist parties to deliver. This is particularly the case in the era of falling profitability and neoliberalism.
The same dynamics faced by the SDP face us today, where NYC-DSA’s landmark legislative victory, the Build Public Renewables Act, is hollowed out and opposed at every turn by the state government mandated to implement it. It’s only a genuinely majoritarian (working class) party, supporting a revolutionary program for social transformation, which can actually deliver on the public good and represent all of society.
The idea that there is pre-existing majority support for progressive policies which does not require a vision of social transformation, leads us to a dead end. While ordinary people might recoil from the significant disruption and the uncertainty implicit in the idea of revolution, and obviously most people are not ideologically socialists, a program which represents popular policies that would improve people’s lives can win majority support. For every proposal we make, people ask “how do you pay for that?” and we need to have an answer. That answer in itself requires reckoning with the question of power in society, enforcing progressive taxation, expropriation or cuts to the budget of repressive forces of the state.
If the party behind the reform platform is also carrying out systematic education and propaganda, we can leverage support for policies to create more socialists and win support for more radical measures necessary to enforce and protect reforms from the ruling class. This grounding also helps people to understand the barriers we face in making progressive democratic change, and protects against demoralization following temporary setbacks and losses. As it turns out, winning bold reform planks like Medicare For All and fast and free public transportation are often impossible without a vision for revolutionary social transformation.
