Socialism at the Edges of Civilization: Louis Pio and Colonial Visions in Scandinavia and the United States

In 1877 after years of labor organizing in Europe, Louis Pio, the founder of the
Danish Social Democratic Party, fled to America to escape persecution. In the United
States, Pio attempted to establish a socialist commune, proposed a socialist thirdparty
initiative, published a socialist newspaper in Chicago, involved himself in
the Knights of Labor, and supported Edward Bellamy’s movement to nationalize
production. Throughout his life, however, Pio’s commitment to equality, stretching
back to his involvement in the International Workingmen’s Association, was
undermined in practice by his ideas about European civilizational superiority.
This article uncovers the roots of Pio’s racial ideology—which made him part of a
broader pattern that few Northern European socialists managed to break from—
and analyzes how it shaped Pio’s activities in postbellum America