"Like a Large Body of Water Fed by Three Currents, One Religious, One Political, and One Creedal"

"To many supporters and critics alike, the word sounds like a claim to superiority and privilege. But the first people to use the term 'American exceptionalism' thought of the United States as anything but virtuous. For the Communist International in the 1920s (and for Marx and Engels before it), the United States posed a vexing problem. According to Marxist theory, as the world's most advanced industrial nation it should have been leading the way on the path to working-class consciousness and revolution, yet it was not playing the part. Jay Lovestone, head of the Communist Party USA, argued that because of the nation's economic opportunity and egalitarian civic culture, and prosperity that extended to the working class, the inevitable crisis of American capitalism lay far in the future; hence, the Party would need to follow a different path in the United States. The debate came to an abrupt end in 1929 when Joseph Stalin summoned Lovestone to Moscow to inform him that he was incorrect. Lovestone was driven from his leadership position in the Communist Party USA for what Stalin called his 'heresy.'" 

At The Hedgehog Review, Steve Lagerfeld explores the concept of American exceptionalism.