Alexander Trachtenberg, International Publishers editor, historian and veteran of the Socialist Party who knew and worked with Debs for twenty years, writes this fine, substantial appreciation of the foremost Socialist in U.S. history on the second anniversary of his passing.

‘Eugene Victor Debs’ by Alexander Trachtenberg from The Communist. Vol. 7 No. 11. November, 1928.

Born of poor Alsatian parents in Terre Haute, Ind., on November 5th, 1855, Debs went to work in a railroad shop at the age of fourteen and at sixteen he was firing a freight engine on the railroad. He joined the Brotherhood of Firemen and Enginemen, becoming within a few years the editor of its official journal and secretary of the organization. During his term as leading official of his union, Debs helped to organize several other railroad unions, among them the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, the Railway Carmen, the Switchmen, and the Railroad Telegraphers. Having been instrumental, in 1893, in organizing the American Railway Union—a union comprising the different crafts employed on the railways—Debs resigned his post as secretary of the Firemen’s organization to become the leader of this industrial union of railway workers. Before a year passed, the new organization became involved in a struggle with the Great Northern Railroad, terminating successfully for the union. The same year the A. R. U. joined in a sympathetic strike in defense of the Pullman Company workers who struck against a wage cut. The struggle was a bitter one with the Federal troops helping the paralyzed railroads to break the strike. The strike was lost and Debs was sent to jail for six months for continuing the struggle in spite of the sweeping injunction which the courts issued against him and other strike leaders.

It was during his imprisonment in the Woodstock jail that he saw a gleam of the political implications of the A. R. U. struggle and defeat. Debs was then not new to politics. In 1878, the year in which he became editor of the Firemen’s Journal, he was offered a congressional nomination by the Democrats of Terre Haute which under the prevailing array of political forces meant an election. Debs declined the nomination, being then greatly concerned with the building of the union. In 1885, he was elected to the state legislature of Indiana in which he served one term.

When he came out of Woodstock in 1895, he was shaken from his capitalist party moorings, but not sufficiently, for the next year he followed Bryan, who gathered around him the petit-bourgeois reform elements, including the Populists. The lessons of the A. R. U. strike, however, were being crystallized, and in 1897 he ad- dressed a political letter to the members of the A. R. U. in which he declared that “the issue is socialism versus capitalism.” That it was the Pullman strike and Woodstock that led Debs to socialism we read in his own account which he gave to the court when he was tried for his leadership in the strike: “I was baptized in socialism in the roar of conflict.”

With his followers in the A. R. U., which in the meantime greatly declined, and representatives of different socialistic groups in the middle west, Debs organized in 1897 the Social Democracy of America, which took up as its main task the organization of socialist colonies— a Utopian scheme which had met with failure in America fifty years before. With Victor Berger, Debs organized a split at a convention of the Social Democracy in 1898 and formed the Social Democratic Party of America, which was to be built on the pattern of the European socialist political parties.

This party later united its forces with a split-off faction of the Socialist Labor Party in 1900 and formed the Socialist Party. Debs was the first presidential nominee of the united party and polled about 100,000 votes. He was also a candidate in the three successive presidential elections, receiving 402,000, 420,000, and 897,000 votes respectively. He declined to be a candidate in 1916. That year the S. P. vote dropped to 585,000. In 1920, while in prison, he was again a candidate and received 920,000 votes.

Besides participating in the national elections as standard bearer of the party, Debs traveled extensively throughout the country on agitation tours for the party and subscription drives for the various publications with which he was connected, such as the Appeal to Reason, the Rip Saw, etc. He also contributed to the International Socialist Review which was a left-wing organ in the Socialist Party. Debs was always in demand as a speaker at demonstrations, strikes, free speech fights, defense cases, and similar struggles.

Debs’ writings and reported speeches are mostly fugitive. Be- sides an early collection of his utterances and the sentimental vaporings of a would-be Boswell, there is a collection of his war speeches issued by the National Committee of the Socialist Party, in which his attitude on war is deleted from his speeches to the jury and to the court during his Cleveland trial. The excuse given by the S. P. for the elimination was that the Supreme Court was reviewing the case. However, an edition has been published containing material dated 1925, and not only are references to his war stand deleted but also his remarks concerning the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution.

In the following pages the editor attempted to give a critical estimate of Debs’ place in the American revolutionary movement. It is based on personal observation of his activities during a period of twenty years. The attitude of Debs on the trade unions and the Socialist Party, as well as his stand on the War and the Russian Revolution, were the only questions which could be taken up in this already too long introduction. The writer believes, however, that the true character of Debs is mirrored in his utterances reproduced in the volume and his position on the several questions discussed in the introduction. His brother, Theodore, graciously aided the editor in supplying him with material which he had in his possession.

Debs and the Trade Unions

“Debs was a revolutionary trade unionist. His whole experience in the labor movement had taught him that only a trade union based on a class program can cope with the offensive of the employers and serve the workers properly in their everyday struggles. His revolutionary conception of the role of the trade unions, as well as his experience in craft unions, led him to adopt the idea of industrial unionism. ‘These two motivating forces caused him to sponsor the formation of the I. W. W. in 1905.

As a socialist Debs did not believe in the neutrality policy of the S. P. Unlike the “pure and simple” trade unionist he knew that there could be no absolute separation between the political and economic phases of the labor movement. In 1912, when the Socialist Party was at the height of its strength in membership and influence, he wrote: “The S. P. cannot be neutral on the union question. It is compelled to declare itself by the logic of evolution, and as a revolutionary party it cannot commit itself to the principles of reactionary trade unionism.” Debs stood for the permeation of the existing unions by the socialists, advocating the policy of “boring from within.” As a matter of fact, this tactic was enunciated at the very inception of the Socialist Party as against the policy of deserting the existing unions and leaving them to the reactionary leaders. Debs never failed to emphasize the need of the organization of the unorganized,—another policy which is stressed to-day only by the communists and the left wing. Neither did Debs recoil from the idea of organizing the unorganized into mew unions in view of the failure of the official labor movement to pay attention to the hosts of workers left outside the labor organizations. He wrote in 1912: “I would encourage industrial independent organization, especially among the millions who have not been organized at all, and I would also encourage the ‘boring from within’ for all that can be accomplished by the industrial unionists in the craft unions.” Even in 1910, in a letter to Tom Mann, he wrote: “We must bore from within and without.”

Debs hated class collaboration with all his being and he frequently used his invectives against Gompers, who more than any one else personified this policy. Gompers’ connections with the Civic Federation always came in for scathing criticism from Debs. “For the very reason Gompers was glorified by Wall Street, Bill Haywood is despised by Wall Street,” he thus compared the two outstanding figures who represented the opposite poles in the labor movement. Although many prominent socialists were active in the leadership of various unions, the A. F. of L. was always considered by Debs as the bulwark of reaction and its affiliation with the Civic Federation was for Debs a sufficient indication of its hopeless class-collaborationist policy. He knew well that when a labor organization collaborates with an employers’ organization it is the latter that will exert the influence, secure the benefit of such collaboration, and completely demoralize and annul the very purposes for which the union was organized. Although fully recognizing the reactionary character of the A. F. of L. and never failing to attack its leaders for their class-collaborationist policies, Debs, however, failed organizationally to challenge Gompers’ leadership and call upon his party to solidify the large numbers of organized workers who followed the party into an organized opposition within the A. F. of L. on the platform of the class struggle vs. class-collaboration. He wrote in 1911: “The A. F. of L., as an organization, with its Civic Federation to determine its attitude and control its course, is deadly hostile to the S. P. and to any and every revolutionary movement of the working class. To kowtow to this organization and to join hands with its leaders to secure political favor can only result in compromising our principles and bringing disaster to the party.” How prophetic these words sound to-day when we observe the support which the S. P. leaders now extend to the Greens, the Wolls, the Lewises and the Sigmans in their fight against the militant rank and file in the labor unions. The S. P. has indeed brought disaster upon itself through its policy of making common cause with the reactionary leadership of the A. F. of L. and through them with all the enemies of labor.

The Gompers’ policy of “No politics in the unions” always amused Debs who knew that Gompers himself was a Democratic politician and that his lieutenants were working in elections for either the Republican or the Democratic Party in consideration for favors or jobs. The policy of the A. F. of L. to petition Congress or otherwise depend upon government bodies was repulsive to Debs. “Can they not see that we have a capitalist class Congress and capitalist class legislatures and that it is the very height of folly and depth of humiliation for a committee of the working class to beg the representatives of the capitalist class to legislate in the interest of the working class?” From the very beginning of his acceptance of socialism as his guiding philosophy, Debs understood that the only real labor union is the class union. He never failed to drive home this lesson. The old union—by which he meant the union which Gompers helped to develop through class-collaboration and which was founded on the policy of a “fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage,”—he considered as entirely opposed to the interests of the workers. He maintained that this union is “organized on the basis of identity of interests between the capitalists and the wage workers, and spends its time and devotes its energies to harmonizing these two classes; and it is a vain and hopeless task. When this interest can be even temporarily harmonized it is always in the interest of the capitalist class and at the expense of the working class.”

Debs became a convinced industrial unionist as a result of his experience with the unions on the railroads. This is why he helped to form the American Railway Union as an industrial union of the workers employed on the railroad. He witnessed the resultant jurisdictional disputes which were sapping the vitality of the labor unions from the inside, and he saw how the employers were better able to defeat the workers because of their division along craft lines. The reactionary character of the craft union, according to Debs, lay also in the fact that its persistence was atavistic, as it was not keeping in touch with the development of industry.

Debs understood the nature of the class struggle and he always saw the array of class forces in every fight the workers waged. This can be observed in all his utterances. He also knew the power and the role of the state in class conflicts. He experienced it many times on himself during the struggles in which he was engaged. He saw the A. R. U. strike broken by military force and when he later described it he wrote that “in the gleam of every bayonet and the flash of every rifle the class struggle was revealed.”

Debs and the Socialist Party

On many occasions Debs was in open conflict with the S. P. leadership. Although considered as such, Debs really was never the political leader of the party. He represented perhaps the greatest peculiarity in the American socialist movement. Considered by the rank and file as the personification of the fighting spirit of socialism and looked upon by the outside world as the outstanding personality in the American socialist movement, Debs never wrote a platform for the party, never sat on its executive committee, except for the last two or three years of his life, when he was brought in more for window dressing, never was sent as a delegate to a national or international convention, never was permitted to participate in the councils of the party to formulate policies and worn out tactics. The leadership of the S. P. studiously avoided bringing Debs into the organization. He was kept on the platform where his eloquence was capitalized, or he was allowed to write in fugitive and privately owned socialist journals rather than in the official organs of the party.

The S. P. leadership feared Debs’ revolutionary attitude on the burning questions which agitated the membership of the party. They knew his uncompromising stand on many questions and they preferred not to have any quarrels with him. He spoke his mind from time to time, but being organizationally removed from the membership he could not exercise the influence over them which otherwise would have been his. Debs should never have permitted himself to be placed in such a position by the S. P. leaders. His place was among the proletarian members, guarding the party against the reformist leaders and guiding the membership in his own spirit of militancy. He should have been the political leader of the party instead of letting that leadership fall into the hands of lawyers and ministers.

During the years 1910-12 the S. P. grew in membership, reaching the highest number in its history (over 120,000). Debs saw the entrance of elements into the party who were joining it not as a revolutionary socialist party but as a third capitalist party. While in other countries there were liberal parties which petit-bourgeois elements, disillusioned with conservative parties, could join, America had two equally reactionary parties from which these elements sought to escape. The S. P. was the only available political home for all those who favored reforms which the two main parties opposed. Advocates of woman’s suffrage, direct election of sena- tors, abolition of child labor, protective labor legislation, etc., joined the Socialist Party through which they hoped to promote these reforms, not bothering about the ultimate aims which were written into the program of the party. In this manner the proletarian and revolutionary sections in the party were permeated by altogether alien elements.

With his revolutionary instinct Debs felt the danger lurking for the Socialist Party in the admission of such elements. ‘These were the years of “trust-busting” campaigns, of muck-raking and the offering of all sorts of panaceas against the encroachments of corporate wealth. ‘The petit-bourgeoisie was beginning to feel the solidification of American capital and it was looking to reforms to help it out of the difficulty. These elements were finding their way into the Socialist Party, and the well known among them, particularly the writers and journalists, were immediately acclaimed as leaders. Charles Edward Russell, Allan Benson, and their like became overnight spokesmen of the party. They were elected to executive committees and designated as standard bearers of the part.

Writing in 1911 under the title “Danger Ahead,” Debs warned the party against the degeneration which was sure to set in as a result of the admixture of elements entirely foreign to its program and its aims. He wrote: “It (the S. P.) may become permeated and corrupted with the spirit of bourgeois reform to an extent that will practically destroy its virility and efficiency as a revolutionary organization…The working-class character and the revolutionary character of the S. P. are of first importance. All the votes of the people would do us no good if we cease to be a revolutionary party.”

Debs crossed swords with the S. P. leaders when they advocated the A. F. of L. policy of excluding immigrants. In a letter to a delegate to the 1910 convention, which adopted a resolution dealing with immigration, he wrote: “I have just read the majority report of the committee on immigration. It is utterly un-socialistic, reactionary and in truth outrageous, and I hope you will oppose it with all your power. The idea that certain races are to be excluded because of tactical expediency would be entirely consistent in a bourgeois convention of self-seekers, but should have no place in a proletarian gathering under the auspices of an international movement that is calling on the oppressed and exploited workers of all the world to unite for their emancipation.”

To Debs such a stand meant forsaking the principle of international solidarity and he called upon the members “to stand squarely on our revolutionary working-class principles and make our fight openly and uncompromisingly against all our enemies, adopting no cowardly tactics and holding out no false hopes.”

When the Left Wing split from the S. P., Debs was in prison. Only partial information could reach him regarding the controversy in the party which preceded this split. While Debs was bound by many ties to the Socialist Party, he did not fully agree with its leadership. During the 1919 convention the remaining Left Wing elements succeeded under pressure of the split to force a resolution nominating Debs for president for the 1920 elections. The leaders did not wish to have Debs, who was then in prison, nominated as a candidate. They feared that the size of the vote might be affected and did not want to flaunt before the country a presidential candidate who was in prison. When he was finally nominated in 1920 and a committee consisting of Steadman, Oneal and others was sent to visit him in prison to notify him officially of the nomination, he surprised it with a devastating criticism of the party.

Regarding the platform adopted at the convention which nominated him, he said: “I wish I might say that it had my unqualified approval,” modifying it by saying that platforms are not so important, as “we can breathe the breath of revolution into any platform.” He emphasized, however, that socialist platforms are not made to catch votes” and that “we are in politics not to get votes but to develop power to emancipate the working class.” It was also significant that on that occasion he ex- pressed regret “that the convention did not see its way clear to affiliate with the Third International without qualification.” Debs, therefore, allied himself with the third of the delegates of the 1920 Convention which favored the acceptance of the twenty- one points of admission and was opposed to Hillquit’s proposal for affiliation with reservations. To the S. P. leaders who were present he addressed himself point blank with the following rebuke: “There is a tendency in the party to become a party of politicians, instead of a party of the workers.” Removed by his incarceration from the outside world, Debs, perhaps, could not see sufficiently that this was no longer a tendency, but a fact. The process of degeneration, beginning with the struggle against the Left Wing, was fast being completed and Debs, having recognized that the S. P. was becoming “a party of politicians instead of a party of workers,” should have definitely broken with the politicians and joined with the revolutionary workers who left or were leaving the S. P. in large numbers. Although in prison, Debs should have put himself at the head of the militant elements who were deserting the reformist party and were being organized under the leadership of the Third International, instead of allowing the importunities of his friends to reserve final judgment until he was released. Debs knew enough about the party to realize that it no longer was the party as he visioned it in 1908, a “‘class-conscious, revolutionary socialist party which is pledged to abolish the capitalist system, class rule and wage slavery, a party which does not com- promise or fuse, but, preserving inviolate the principles which quickened it into life and now give it vitality and force, moves forward with dauntless determination to the goal of economic freedom.”

Unlike Lenin on an international scale, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, and Ruthenberg in this country, who not only criticized the reformist leaders but fought them and organized against them, Debs remained only the critic. When he was released from prison he allowed the same leaders whom he held responsible for ruining the party, to use him as a shield to cover their alliances with the trade-union bureaucracy and capitalist politicians. Beginning under his “chairmanship,” the leaders have completed the transformation of the Socialist Party into a party of liberal reform, even going as far as deleting the clause dealing with the class struggle from their membership application blank.

Debs wrote in 1905 on the place of the class struggle in the program of the labor movement, not to speak of a socialist party: “We insist that there is a class struggle; that the working class must recognize it; that they must organize economically and politically upon the basis of that struggle; and that when they do so organize they will then have the power to free themselves and put an end to that struggle forever.”

The S. P. has forsaken the class struggle and its leaders advocate class peace. Debs saw this degeneration coming and it was therefore his historic mistake of not breaking with the moribund organization and joining the party of the class struggle—the Communist Party.

Debs on War

Debs was an uncompromising opponent of capitalist wars and as such he was imprisoned during the war. Although he knew the economic causes of wars, he did not fully comprehend the nature of modern imperialism. Unlike C. E. Ruthenberg, who under- stood the role of American imperialism and was among the first to be imprisoned during the war, Debs was guided in his anti-war stand mainly by his loyalty to the principle of international solidarity of socialism. He denounced the European socialists who turned social patriots, and with the socialists who voted war credits in mind he wrote: “If I were in Congress I would be shot before I would vote a dollar for such a war.” Although probably not acquainted with Lenin’s writings, he expressed in a crude way the tactics of fighting the imperialist war and the capitalists of various countries with working-class action. “When capitalists declare war, it is then for us to declare war on them, paralyze industry by the strike and fight every battle for the overthrow of the ruling class.”

Some of Debs’ utterances betray pacifist notions and repugnance to violence. “When I think of a cold, glittering, steel bayonet being plunged into the white, quivering flesh of a human being, I recoil with horror,” he declared in his Canton speech. We find sufficient proof, however, that Debs was not opposed to war in general, but to capitalist wars.

In 1915, when America began to prepare for war, Debs wrote an article for an anti-preparedness issue of the Appeal to Reason in which he derided those who would enlist in the army. There were many expressions in that article which did not harmonize with his known convictions. He was, however, accused of harboring pacifist illusions. In a reply in another issue of the paper Debs came back with a declaration of his position which should cause his self- appointed successor, Norman Thomas, to renounce his memory forever after. “No, I am not opposed to all war, nor am I opposed to fighting under all circumstances, and any declaration to the contrary would disqualify me as a revolutionist,” was his statement dictated by his revolutionary instinct Debs reiterated that he was “only opposed to ruling-class war,” and that he refused “to obey any command to fight for the ruling class, but will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class.”

Debs felt that, since the question was raised, he must answer it categorically and completely. He wrote further: “I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul and that is the world-wide war of the social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make it necessary, even to barricades.” He concluded: “There is where I stand and where I believe the Socialist Party stands, or ought to stand on the question of war.” With the support of the League of Nations, which the S. P. once declared was the capitalist Black International, the World Court and other imperialist instruments among their articles of faith, is it any wonder that the S. P. leaders are forsaking Debs’ memory as they ignored his opinions when he lived?

Debs took the St. Louis anti-War resolution of 1917 seriously. At the Ohio state convention of the party held at Canton he gave expression to what he had said before America’s entrance into the imperialist war. Ruthenberg, the leader of the party in Ohio, was already in prison and Debs took the cause of his imprisonment as the text for his address to the convention. The Government convicted Debs and tried to make an example of his conviction and imprisonment, just as the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti was to serve as a warning to the militant workers in the present period. Due to nation-wide agitation, Debs was later offered his freedom, but he would not leave prison except on his own terms. On December 25, 1921, after almost three years of incarceration in one of America’s bastiles, the 68-year-old revolutionist walked out of the prison doors in broken health, which he never regained till his death five years later.

Debs and the Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution found in Debs an immediate and sympathetic response. It must be noted, however, that although he considered it “the greatest in point of historic significance and far-reaching influence in the annals of the race,” he did not grasp the full meaning of the November Revolution to the world revolutionary movement of the workers. Debs sensed the difference between the compromising Mensheviks who supported Kerensky and the indomitable Bolsheviks who forged ahead toward the proletarian revolution. In addressing himself to the Russian Bolsheviks in 1918 on the first anniversary of the November Revolution he wrote: “The achieved glory of your revolutionary triumph is that you have preserved inviolate the fundamental principles of international socialism and refused to compromise. It will be to your everlasting honor that you would rather have seen the Revolution perish and the Soviet with it than to prostitute either one by betraying the workers to alleged progressive reforms, which would mean to them an extension of their servitude under a fresh aggregation of exploiters and parasites.” When the name Bolshevik was spoken with derision among his party friends, Debs declared publicly: “] am a Bolshevik from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes.” To the jury he defiantly declared: “I have been accused of expressing sympathy with the Bolsheviks of Russia. I plead guilty to the charge.”

Debs was not clear on proletarian dictatorship as he was not clear on several fundamental problems, especially on the state as taught by Marx and Lenin. He spoke about the “unfortunate phrase” and stated that “dictatorship is autocracy,” but he immediately explained that “there is no autocracy in the rule of the masses.” ‘The experienced revolutionist in him, even if only by instinct, led him also to the conclusion that “during the transition period the revolution must protect itself.” To those of the socialist leaders who were “for” the Russian Revolution, but “did not like certain features of it,” Debs openly declared in speaking to the S. P. committee which came to Atlanta Penitentiary to notify him of his nomination for the presidency in 1920: “I heartily support the Russian Revolution without reservations.”

Debs the Orator

The fact that Debs was the most eloquent speaker the American labor movement has produced contributed a great deal to his being kept on the platform. American history abounds with names of great orators who flourished in the legislative halls and the pulpits. Daniel Webster and Wendell Phillips are probably the most illustrious representatives of these types of American oratory. Debs was much impressed with the published orations which he read, and in his youth trained himself in the art of public speaking.

There was not that intellectual force that was behind Lassalle’s oratory, nor did he become the public tribune as Jaures. Debs on the platform was more the evangelist. He appealed to his audience rather than reasoned with it. He always tried to convert and his speaking pose always betrayed his deep earnestness. His figures of speech were apt and poetic. He often grew lyrical and his rhythmic body responded to the rhythm of his utterances. He kept his audience in raptures and he often appeared to those near him as though he were in a religious ecstasy.

His writings were of the same pattern as his speeches. He probably dictated most of his published articles. ‘They read like impassioned orations. They particularly suited a paper like the Appeal to Reason, which was perhaps the best agitational medium the American labor movement ever produced.

With his eloquent voice and trenchant pen, Debs stirred the imagination of large sections of the American working class. His appearance in a struggle was sure to result in the revival of militancy, for he knew how to describe to the workers their life under capitalism and to inspire them with hope for ultimate victory.

Debs—A Fearless Revolutionist

In the two outstanding events in Debs’ life in which his class integrity was tested,—the A. R. U. strike and the World War,— he revealed himself a fearless revolutionist. “I would rather be a thousand times a free soul in jail than a sycophant or coward on the streets,” Debs prefaced his famous anti-war speech at Canton. Knowing that there were Government agents who were gathering “evidence” against him, many in his audience felt that Debs was walking right into the jaws of the Department of Justice. He probably read on their faces their concern over his freedom. “Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourself,” he importuned them.

Not only during the war but in times of “peace,” Debs urged revolutionary action upon the workers. When the miners in Rockefeller-owned Colorado were being beaten into submission by the hired assassins of the state and the coal companies, when the holocaust at Ludlow was demanding working-class action, Debs appealed for a defense fund for the Miners’ Union, not to hire lawyers to argue in the courts about the “inalienable rights” of workers to strike, but to “provide each member with the latest high-power rifle, the same as used by the corporation gunmen, and 500 rounds of cartridges. In addition to this, every district should purchase and equip and man enough Gatling and machine guns to match the equipment of Rockefeller’s private army of assassins.”

Throughout the trial for treason for his Canton speech which began September 9, 1918, Debs conducted himself as a revolutionist. He refused to allow witnesses for the defense and himself spoke to the jury rather than permit his lawyers to use tricks known to the legal profession to mitigate his status before capitalist law. Debs pleaded guilty to the charges made against him by the Government and used the court as a tribune to speak to the workers of the country. He refused to recant or to take back anything he said. In his speech to the jury he repeated in substance what he had said at Canton and, in fact, made it stronger. The anti-War resolution of the St. Louis Convention, which was fast becoming a mere scrap of paper, was revivified. Flesh and blood was put on its skeleton when Debs spoke for two hours to the jury on that memorable September 12.

The jury having found Debs guilty “as charged,” he was brought for sentence on September 14. Availing himself of the customary right to speak before sentence is imposed, Debs prefaced his remarks to the court as follows: “Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest of the earth. I said then, I say now, that 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.” He took his conviction of ten years’ imprisonment as a revolutionist. When the U. S. Supreme Court, including the so-called liberal Justices, Holmes and Brandeis, unanimously affirmed the conviction, he declared: “The decision is perfectly consistent with the character of the Supreme Court as a ruling-class tribunal.”

On April 19, 1919, though the war was over, Debs, at the age of 65 and in delicate health, entered Moundsville (W. Va.) prison to serve his sentence. (The Federal prisons were still overcrowded, housing many political prisoners. Later Debs was removed to the Federal penitentiary at Atlanta.) To the workers of America, whose minds and hearts were turned to him, Debs declared: “I enter the prison doors a flaming revolutionist,—my head erect, my spirit untamed and my soul unconquerable.”

Debs began his career in the ranks of the labor movement. He reached a high position in his union and led several historic battles. When he came to the socialist movement he was a national figure with a prison term and a record of heroic labor struggles behind him.

We already had occasion to refer to the policy which the S. P. leadership employed to exploit Debs to recruit members, to gather subscriptions for various publications, and especially to obtain votes in national elections. In keeping with the party’s “neutrality” policy with regard to the trade unions, Debs, though he was opposed to this policy, was nevertheless won away from the field of labor struggles to the narrow parliamentary and agitational fields of activity. The result was that Debs who could organize labor unions and, through his great eloquence and inspiring appeal, move large masses into action, became a platform speaker and a presidential candidate. If it were not for the fact that Debs would frequently rebel against the position in which he was placed by the S. P. and on his own initiative throw himself into struggles which would flare up from time to time, thereby keeping his militant spirit alive, we might have witnessed the transformation of a mountain eagle into a bird of paradise.

The ideological level of the S. P. was rather low. Almost no original Marxist literature was produced and whatever educational work was done among the members was in the main superficial. ‘There was no grounding in revolutionary theory and, in building a party mainly for election purposes, there was little opportunity for revolutionary experience. The milieu in which Debs worked was not conducive to the development of his native abilities and talents as a mass leader and organizer. Nor was there an opportunity for Debs to train for real political leadership. The S. P. received from Debs more than it gave him. He lived and drew sustenance from his earlier attainments.

This condition helps to explain the absence of clarity and theoretical precision on various questions. His main shortcoming was that he was not always able to pass judgment upon a new situation engendered in a new period of struggle. That he was always attuned to the manifestations of the class struggle, that he was a militant, and glorified revolutionary action, the material culled from his speeches and writings will bear witness. Even though in disagreement with persons or organizations in the labor movement, his voice and pen were always placed at the disposal of all who were engaged in struggles. Thus we see him rushing to aid the I. W. W., joining the Friends of Soviet Russia and the International Labor Defense, though these organizations were on the S. P. blacklist because they were led by communists. Forgotten and unsung by the official labor movement or the S. P., the martyrdom of the Molly Maguires, and the Chicago anarchists were to him golden pages in the history of the American labor movement, and the Sacco-Vanzetti campaign was always close to his heart.

Jeffersonian democrats, anarcho-liberals and pacifists of all hues, who passed for socialists and were connected with the socialist press, used Debs for copy, particularly during the war and during his confinement in prison. They went out of their way to advertise Debs as the “great humanist,” the “great libertarian,” taking advantage of his good nature and friendliness to everybody. These appellations could not be meant for Debs who wrote that “the most heroic word in all languages is Revolution,” and who always wanted to be known as an unalloyed revolutionist.

Debs was a revolutionist and, with all his shortcomings, he generally eschewed any other but the revolutionary path. As such he is remembered by the present generation of American revolutionists, who will keep his memory green so that it may be passed on to future generations. Eugene Victor Debs, better known to all those who worked with him as Gene Debs, belongs to the revolutionary traditions of the American working class.

There were a number of journals with this name in the history of the movement. This ‘The Communist’ was the main theoretical journal of the Communist Party from 1927 until 1944. Its origins lie with the folding of The Liberator, Soviet Russia Pictorial, and Labor Herald together into Workers Monthly as the new unified Communist Party’s official cultural and discussion magazine in November, 1924. Workers Monthly became The Communist in March,1927 and was also published monthly. The Communist contains the most thorough archive of the Communist Party’s positions and thinking during its run. The New Masses became the main cultural vehicle for the CP and the Communist, though it began with with more vibrancy and discussion, became increasingly an organ of Comintern and CP program. Over its run the tagline went from “A Theoretical Magazine for the Discussion of Revolutionary Problems” to “A Magazine of the Theory and Practice of Marxism-Leninism” to “A Marxist Magazine Devoted to Advancement of Democratic Thought and Action.” The aesthetic of the journal also changed dramatically over its years. Editors included Earl Browder, Alex Bittelman, Max Bedacht, and Bertram D. Wolfe.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/communist/v07n11-nov-1928-communist.pdf