In Search of American Socialism? Oliver Cromwell Cox and Talcott Parsons on Race and Citizenship

The fate of socialism (social democracy) is usually addressed in terms of issues of class formation and agency. Writing 20 years apart, Oliver Cromwell Cox in Caste, Class and Race (1948) and Talcott Parsons, in ‘Full citizenship for the Negro American?’ (1967) came to the similar conclusion that American socialism depended on recognising the leadership provided by the political agency of African Americans in overcoming racialised divisions for the benefit of all. Cox and Parsons are usually seen as diametrically opposed – one a Marxist, the other a structural-functionalist – but I shall argue their arguments share Weberian assumptions that de-centre economic class (assumptions that Cox later left behind), albeit differently articulated. Parsons asked the question, “Why ‘freedom now’, not yesterday?”, highlighting the agency that had produced the Civil Rights Acts, while identifying the possibility of reaction. For Cox 20 years earlier, it had also been ‘freedom now’ similarly based on ideas of political agency against racial inequality. By the time that Parsons declared America to be once again ready for freedom, Cox’s arguments were forgotten, including those of possible resistance to freedom for all. The paper will address the different approaches of Cox and Parsons to identify the racial obstacles to socialism. It will conclude that Cox’s arguments are more cogent. They have been neglected within sociology, but the paper will argue that they are central to providing a sociological understanding of the possibility, finally, of freedom now.