EUGENE VICTOR DEBS (1855-1926) was one of the greatest and most articulate advocates of workers’ power to have ever lived. He refused to fight it out within the party, believing that ultimately the workers themselves would chase out the Bergers and Hillquits. Eugene V. Debs helped workers around the nation realize their rights by using a worker’s most powerful weapon–the labor strike. (Howard Zinn, Eugene V. Debs, and the Idea of Socialism, Progressive, Jan 1999). Buy This Program. But Debs viewed elections only as a means of political education. Those who fought for the exploited victims were regarded as disloyal or traitors to their land. 155, July-October 2010 ›, Internationalism no. We spoke with one of them, who detailed Debs’s extraordinary journey from moderate young trade union leader to courageous socialist militant. In 1915, after observing the betrayal of Europe’s socialists in the defense of “their” ruling classes, Debs wrote: I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; and I am a citizen of the world . In the Canton, Ohio speech for which was sentenced to 10 years in prison, he not only attacked the war and praised other revolutionaries who had spoken out against the war, but also expressed solidarity the Russian Revolution, hailing it as the dawn of a new world. During the early years of the labor movement in the United States, Debs was far ahead of his times, leading the formation of the American Railway Union (ARU) and the American Socialist Party.. Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on November 5, 1855. A drawing of Eugene Debs from the 1895 book A Momentous Question. “It proposes to abolish the capitalist system to transfer from private hands all the means of production and distribution and turn them over to the people in their collective capacity.”. He is the administrator of the Eugene V. Debs Internet Archive on the Marxists Internet Archive. To Isserman, Debs was, in sum, a moral crusader unwittingly mobilized (“whether consciously or not”) by religious and patriotic concepts. Eugene V. Debs: A Graphic Biography- Art by Noah Van Sciver, Script by Paul Buhle and Steve Max with David Nance This book is divided into text sections and graphic sections, with each graphic section introduced by text with a few illustrations. The Day of the People, Class Struggle, Feburary 1919.). Debs dropped out of high school at age of 14 to w… Bernie Sanders has long claimed Eugene Debs as … In tours of the Deep South at the very height of Jim Crow segregation, Debs refused to appear before segregated audiences and delivered speeches insisting on the equality of all toilers. As he started down the walkway from the prison, a roar went up and he turned, tears streaming down his face, and stretched out his arms to the other prisoners. He also wrote, "The workers have no country to fight for. Debs tended to equate nationalization with socialism, a mistake he shared with many revolutionaries of the period. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. … In Russia and Germany our valiant comrades are leading the proletarian revolution, which knows no race, no color, no sex, and no boundary lines. This was a losing proposition. We should carry forth that Debsian vision today — by recognizing that class struggle is the precondition for winning a more democratic world. Template:Infobox State Senator Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. On the day of his release, the warden ignored prison regulations and opened every cell-block to allow more than 2,000 inmates to gather in front of the main jail building to say good-bye to Eugene Debs. In 1884, he ran successfully as a Democrat to represent Terre Haute in the Indiana General Assembly. Support our work and help keep the Debs legacy alive. Cannon, James P., The First Ten Years of American Communism: Report of a Participant, Ginger, Ray, The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs, University of Rutgers Press, 1949, Salvatore, Nick, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist, University of Illinois Press, 1982. This is the aim behind the New York Times ’ publication last week of a column on the pioneering American socialist, Eugene V. Debs. The Legacy of Eugene Debs Submitted by Internationalism USA on 18 April, 2010 - 09:55 The year 2010 is the 90th anniversary of the presidential campaign of Federal Prisoner 9653, Eugene Debs, and in anticipation of the ruling class' efforts to distort the historical contributions of Debs, we wanted to take a few moments to set the record straight. Debs helped motivate the American Left to organize political opposition to corporations and World War I. American socialists, communists, and anarchists honor his work for the labor movement and motivation to have the average working man build socialism without large state involvement. Debs wrote these lines weeks before he began a prison term for violating the Espionage Act, in his famous Canton Speech opposing US entry into World War I. You do not belong there.”. Photo: Library of Congress He … He did not clearly understand that the era of reform had ended and that unions had crossed to the other side of the class line. International Committee of the Fourth International. Join us for a discussion of the first time in history that the working class took power. … Socialism must be organized, drilled, equipped and the place to begin is in the industries where the workers are employed.”, The overriding aim of Debs’s political activity was to wrest workers away from the Democratic Party. Let the bourgeoisie be brutal to the true internationalists, to the true representatives of the revolutionary proletariat! Written by … In 1919, he wrote an essay defending Soviet Russia and eviscerating the treachery of reformist socialists: Lenin and Trotsky were the men of the hour and under their fearless, incorruptible and uncompromising leadership the Russian proletariat has held the fort against the combined assaults of all the ruling class powers of earth. "Wall Street does not fear Sammy Gompers and the AFof L...Every plutocrat, every profiteering pirate, every food vulture, every exploiter of labor, ever robber and oppressor of the poor, every hog under a silk ties, every vampire in human form, will tell that the AF of L under Gompers is a great and patriotic organization..." IWW Bogey, International Socialist Review, `February 1918). 153, January-April 2010, Against Mass Unemployment The United Struggle of The Whole Working Class, ‘Health Care Reform’ Capitalism’s New Deception, Students in California Fight Back Austerity Attacks, The ‘Tea Party’: Capitalist Ideology in Decomposition, Internationalism no. It comes as no surprise of course that the biggest distortion of Deb's legacy comes in regard to his opposition to World War I. “The Socialist Party is not a reform party!” Debs thundered in a speech to miners in 1902. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles." It belongs to the capitalists and plutocrats. From the time of his incarceration at Woodstock prison for his leadership of the Pullman Strike of 1894, Debs always credited Marx, Engels, and their great German popularizer, Karl Kautsky, as his primary influences, and forcefully rejected conceiving of socialism as a reformist program. The staff writers at the AFL-CIO's official web site apparently worked around the clock to concoct an image of Debs as the ideological architect of the New Deal. (Appeal to Reason, September 11, 1915. In response to a letter from novelist Upton Sinclair, who like many other adherents of the Second International, betrayed the working class and rallied to the flag of the national bourgeoisies during WW I, Debs wrote: "Any kind of any army that may be organized...under the present government will be controlled by the ruling class, and its chief function will be to keep the working class in slavery." Any conception of workers councils is missing from his writings and he was unclear on the relationship between party and class. ... Last Years and Legacy . While imprisoned in federal penitentiary at Atlanta, Debs refused every privilege offered by authorities to him as a prominent political prisoner and spoke out against the mistreatment of his fellow inmates. "It was this vision that sustained me in the hour of my imprisonment." J. Grevin 15/01/10 (based on an earlier article published in Internationalism 13), Communist Organisations and Class Consciousness, Internationalism no. All Debs really wished for, according to Isserman, was “another, more equitable America.” This portrayal serves a definite political purpose, revealed by Isserman in the column’s last sentence. The “spirit of bourgeois reform,” he warned, would “practically destroy…a revolutionary organization.”. The year 2010 is the 90th anniversary of the presidential campaign of Federal Prisoner 9653, Eugene Debs, and in anticipation of the ruling class' efforts to distort the historical contributions of Debs, we wanted to take a few moments to set the record straight. Written by Hamilton College professor Maurice Isserman, the article presents Debs as a tragic figure who attempted to create a distinctly “American socialism” only to see it fail. There is, however, another side to the story that, in Debs’s own time, allowed him to be manipulated by right-wing socialists like Victor Berger of Milwaukee and Morris Hillquit of New York--and which today provides the origin of the attempt to manipulate his legacy. David Walters is a founding member and director of the 'Marxist Internet Archive'; and co-editor of the 6 volume “Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs” published by Haymarket Books in Chicago, Illinois. 155, July-October 2010, Internationalism no. In a 1911 article, legendary socialist Eugene Debs excoriated the US Constitution as an “autocratic and reactionary document” written by aristocrats and “in every sense a denial of democracy.” To mark Presidents’ Day, we reprint the fiery essay here in full. Debs’ first experience in politics was as a young man in Terre Haute, where he served two terms as City Clerk beginning in 1879. Some of his political shortcomings were the inevitable result of the period in which he lived. His father Jean Daniel, who was born to a prosperous family in France, owned a textile mill and meat market. The end of profit and plunder among nations wil also mean the end of war and the dawning of the era of ‘Peace on Earth and Good Will Among Men.'" Later, he … To be sure, Debs’s speeches and writings—like those of Abraham Lincoln whose youth in rural Indiana was only a few decades and 100 miles removed from Debs’s own in Terre Haute—feature biblical metaphor and invocations of equality and liberty, the revolutionary legacy of 1776. As a socialist, Eugene Debs unsuccessfully ran for president four times. (The Canton, Ohio Anti-war Speech, June 16, 1918). What is needed today, he argues, is a form of American radicalism that joins “the redemptive promise of moral protest and the practical achievements of political action. They are setting the heroic example for worldwide emulation. Let us like the, scorn and repudiate the cowardly compromisers within our own ranks, challenge and deny the robber -class power and fight on that line to victory or death. What Debs and many other “sincere revolutionists” of the Second International did not understand was that the reformist leaders were not simply mistaken. "Although none of his dreams were realized during his lifetime, Debs inspired millions to believe in ‘the emancipation of the working class and the brotherhood of all mankind,' and he helped spur the rise of industrial unionism and the adoption of progressive social and economic reforms. "I saw the working class in which I was born and reared, and to whom I owe my all, engaged in the last great conflict to break the fetters that have bound them ages, and to stand forth, as last, emancipated from every servitude, the sovereighn ruler of the world. Father, give ALL of us our daily bread.”-Margaret Haile, 1903 During forty years in the workers movement, he spent nearly four years behind bars. This same reactionary law will serve as the legal basis for any prosecution of another class war prisoner, Julian Assange, 100 years later, a fact that Isserman and the Times fail to note. What made Debs different from the right-wing socialists was his uncompromising view of the class struggle. The life and legacy of Eugene V. Debs stands as a rich and vibrant testament to one man’s dedication to a liberated future. "From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet I am Bolshevik and proud of it." Eugene V. Debs (November 5, 1855 to October 20, 1926) was an influential organizer and leader of the American labor movement, democratic socialist political activist, and a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). This is the aim behind the New York Times’ publication last week of a column on the pioneering American socialist, Eugene V. Debs. (Walls and Bars, 1926). Eugene Debs was born on November 5, 1855, in Terre Haute, Indiana to parents Jean Daniel and Marguerite Marie Bettrich Debs, who both immigrated to the United States from Colmar, Alsace, France. What we see is the concert effort to transform Debs, a revolutionary internationalist, a militant who lived and breathed the class struggle and transform into a good-natured reformer, a moralists and pacifist and thereby rob the working class of part of its revolutionary legacy. 21 min read. They are setting the heroic example for world-wide emulation. …” One suspects the professor may have in mind Bernie Sanders. "I am not a capitalist soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist...I am opposed to every war but one: I am for that war with heart and sould and that is the world-wide war of the social revolution. The Legacy of the American Revolution 2020 summer lecture series by the Platypus Affiliated Society Chris Cutrone on the Gilded Age and Second Industrial Revolution ... Liberal capitalism was opposed by a mass industrial workers politics — for instance the Socialist Party of America of Eugene Debs. But the true legacy of Eugene V Debs speaks to America’s radical tradition during his own time and the potential popularity of socialist ideas today. In answer, it is worthwhile to let Debs speak for himself. Shortly before his death, Debs wrote: "Often at night in my narrow prison quarters when all about me was quiet, I beheld as in a vision, the majestic march of events in the transformation of the world. Furthering the distortion of Debs' legacy, last year,  the Eugene Debs Foundation in Terre Haute, Indiana presented its annual award to Ron Gettlefinger, the president of the United Auto Workers , who they claimed "has been reasonable successful, although fighting against overwhelming odds, to protect the wages and benefits of UAW members, active and retired," as if someone who cooperated with the ruling class' restructuring of the auto industry and destruction of thousands of jobs somehow personified the political principles of Eugene Debs. Though he admits that Debs “certainly read his Marx and Engels,” and that he never joined a church and professed no religious faith, Isserman nonetheless argues that Debs really stood in the tradition of “Protestant radicalism,” tracing this pedigree back to religious dissent in “the founding days of Massachusetts Bay Colony.” After religious influences, Isserman gives pride of place in Debs’s political worldview to the concept of “citizenship,” writing that Debs “spoke American, not Marxist.”.
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