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Citation: The Progressive Jan 1999, v.63, 1, 16(1)
Author: ZINN, HOWARD
Title: Eugene V. Debs and the Idea of Socialism.(late leader
of the Socialist Party) by HOWARD ZINN
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COPYRIGHT 1999 Progressive Inc.
We are always in need of radicals who are also lovable, and so we would do
well to remember Eugene Victor Debs. Ninety years ago, at the time The
Progressive was born, Debs was nationally famous as leader of the Socialist
Party, and the poet James Whitcomb Riley wrote of him:
"As warm a heart as ever beat Betwixt here and the Judgment Seat."
Debs was what every socialist or anarchist or radical should be: fierce in
his convictions, kind and compassionate in his personal relations. Sam Moore,
a fellow inmate of the Atlanta penitentiary, where Debs was imprisoned for
opposing the First World War, remembered how he felt as Debs was about to be
released on Christmas Day, 1921: "As miserable as I was, I would defy fate
with all its cruelty as long as Debs held my hand, and I was the most
miserably happiest man on Earth when I knew he was going home Christmas."
Debs had won the hearts of his fellow prisoners in Atlanta. He had fought
for them in a hundred ways and refused any special privileges for himself. On
the day of his release, the warden ignored prison regulations and opened every
cellblock to allow more than 2,000 inmates to gather in front of the main jail
building to say goodbye to Eugene Debs. 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.
This was not his first prison experience. In 1894, not yet a socialist but
an organizer for the American Railway Union, he had led a nationwide boycott
of the railroads in support of the striking workers at the Pullman Palace Car
Company. They tied up the railroad system, burned hundreds of railway cars,
and were met with the full force of the capitalist state: Attorney General
Richard Olney, a former railroad lawyer, got a court injunction to prohibit
blocking trains. President Cleveland called out the army, which used bayonets
and rifle fire on a crowd of 5,000 strike sympathizers in Chicago. Seven
hundred were arrested. Thirteen were shot to death.
Debs was jailed for violating an injunction prohibiting him from doing or
saying anything to carry on the strike. In court, he denied he was a
socialist, but during his six months in prison he read socialist literature,
and the events of the strike took on a deeper meaning. He wrote later: "I was
to be baptized in socialism in the roar of conflict.... In the gleam of every
bayonet and the flash of every rifle the class struggle was revealed."
From then on, Debs devoted his life to the cause of working people and the
dream of a socialist society. He stood on the platform with Mother Jones and
Big Bill Haywood in 1905 at the founding convention of the Industrial Workers
of the World. He was a magnificent speaker, his long body leaning forward from
the podium, his arm raised dramatically. Thousands came to hear him talk all
over the country.
With the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 and the build-up of war fever
against Germany, some socialists succumbed to the talk of "preparedness," but
Debs was adamantly opposed. When President Wilson and Congress brought the
nation into the war in 1917, speech was no longer free. The Espionage Act made
it a crime to say anything that would discourage enlistment in the armed
forces.
Soon, close to 1,000 people were in prison for protesting the war. The
producer of a movie called The Spirit of '76, about the American revolution,
was sentenced to ten years in prison for promoting anti-British feeling at a
time when England and the United States were allies. The case was officially
labeled The U.S. v. The Spirit of '76.
Debs made a speech in Canton, Ohio, in support of the men and women in jail
for opposing the war. He told his listeners: "Wars throughout history have
been waged for conquest and plunder.... And that is war, in a nutshell. The
master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought
the battles." He was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison by a
judge who denounced those "who would strike the sword from the hand of this
nation while she is engaged in defending herself against a foreign and brutal
power."
In court, Debs refused to call any witnesses, declaring: "I have been
accused of obstructing the war. I admit it. I abhor war. I would oppose war if
I stood alone." Before sentencing, Debs spoke to judge and jury, uttering
perhaps his most famous words. I was in his hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana,
recently, among 200 people gathered to honor his memory, and we began the
evening by reciting those words--words that moved me deeply when I first read
them and move me deeply still: "While there is a lower class, I am in it.
While there is a criminal element, I am of it. While there is a soul in
prison, I am not free."
The "liberal" Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking for a unanimous Supreme Court,
upheld the verdict, on the ground that Debs's speech was intended to obstruct
military recruiting. When the war was over, the "liberal" Woodrow Wilson
turned down his Attorney General's recommendation that Debs be released, even
though he was sixty-five and in poor health. Debs was in prison for thirty-two
months. Finally, in 1921, the Republican Warren Harding ordered him freed on
Christmas Day.
Today, when capitalism, "the free market," and "private enterprise" are
being hailed as triumphant in the world, it is a good time to remember Debs
and to rekindle the idea of socialism.
To see the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a sign of the failure of
socialism is to mistake the monstrous tyranny created by Stalin for the vision
of an egalitarian and democratic society that has inspired enormous numbers of
people all over the world. Indeed, the removal of the Soviet Union as the
false surrogate for the idea of socialism creates a great opportunity. We can
now reintroduce genuine socialism to a world feeling the sickness of
capitalism--its nationalist hatreds, its perpetual warfare, riches for a small
number of people in a small number of countries, and hunger, homelessness,
insecurity for everyone else.
Here in the United States we should recall that enthusiasm for
socialism--production for use instead of profit, economic and social equality,
solidarity with our brothers and sisters all over the world--was at its height
before the Soviet Union came into being.
In the era of Debs, the first seventeen years of the twentieth
century--until war created an opportunity to crush the movement--millions of
Americans declared their adherence to the principles of socialism. Those were
years of bitter labor struggles, the great walkouts of women garment workers
in New York, the victorious multiethnic strike of textile workers in Lawrence,
Massachusetts, the unbelievable courage of coal miners in Colorado, defying
the power and wealth of the Rockefellers. The I.W.W. was born--revolutionary,
militant, demanding "one big union" for everyone, skilled and unskilled, black
and white, men and women, native-born and foreign-born.
More than a million people read Appeal to Reason and other socialist
newspapers. In proportion to population, it would be as if today more than
three million Americans read a socialist press. The party had 100,000 members,
and 1,200 office-holders in 340 municipalities. Socialism was especially
strong in the Southwest, among tenant farmers, railroad workers, coal miners,
lumberjacks. Oklahoma had 12,000 dues-paying members in 1914 and more than 100
socialists in local offices. It was the home of the fiery Kate Richards
O'Hare. Jailed for opposing the war, she once hurled a book through a skylight
to bring fresh air into the foul-smelling jail block, bringing cheers from her
fellow inmates.
The point of recalling all this is to remind us of the powerful appeal of
the socialist idea to people alienated from the political system and aware of
the growing stark disparities in income and wealth--as so many Americans are
today. The word itself--"socialism"--may still carry the distortions of recent
experience in bad places usurping the name. But anyone who goes around the
country, or reads carefully the public opinion surveys over the past decade,
can see that huge numbers of Americans agree on what should be the fundamental
elements of a decent society: guaranteed food, housing, medical care for
everyone; bread and butter as better guarantees of "national security" than
guns and bombs; democratic control of corporate power; equal rights for all
races, genders, and sexual orientations; a recognition of the rights of
immigrants as the unrecognized counterparts of our parents and grandparents;
the rejection of war and violence as solutions for tyranny and injustice.
There are people fearful of the word, all along the political spectrum. What
is important, I think, is not the word, but a determination to hold up before
a troubled public those ideas that are both bold and inviting--the more bold,
the more inviting. That's what remembering Debs and the socialist idea can do
for us.
Howard Zinn, author of "People's History of the United States," wrote "There
Are Lies, and There Are Lies" in the November issue.
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