Eugene V. Debs: A journey from capitalist reformer to socialist

US Army vs. unarmed striking workers

The NPR program Throughline broadcast a 64 minute episode, American Socialist, about Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926). Debs was a restless mind. Among other things, he worked in the railroad industry and then as a city clerk for Terre Haute Indiana and a state legislator before becoming a political activist. Debs had an understanding of and sympathy for regular people and their plights. Many workers worked 14-16 hours/day, 6 or 7 days a week. The work was often crushing.

In the early days there were no worker protections or labor unions. Workers were routinely injured, killed or their health broke due to overwork. In some places there were company towns and when economic times turned bad, workers were not paid enough to pay for rent and food. That kept them in constantly increasing debt to the company. In bad times, companies cut worker pay so that the impacts on the flow of wealth to owners and shareholders was minimized. There was serious poverty in cities like East St. Louis, where starving men, women and children begging for food roamed some of the streets, presumably streets where they were allowed to roam.  

Debs quit the railroad in East St. Louis after a friend was crushed to death by a locomotive. He moved back to Terre Haute and determined he would do what he could to improve working conditions for railroad workers. That's when he ran for city clerk and was elected. While he was a clerk for Terre Haute, he tended to not impose fines on prostitutes because fines were not imposed on their customers. After two terms there, he was elected to the Indiana state general assembly. 

In the state legislature, Debs introduced a bill that would hold Railroad companies liable for the deaths and injuries of their workers. The state House passed his bill, but Indiana Senate gutted it by removing enforcement measures. This experience led Debs to lose faith in the political process. It began his transition from a capitalist who wanted meaningful reform to a socialist. Debs left politics and moved on to labor organizing and writing articles for newspapers. Early on he argued for capitalist reform.

Debs became disillusioned because labor groups that were forming were fragmented and often competed against each other. The biggest union, the AFL led by Sam Gompers was exclusive, women and racial minorities were mostly excluded. Debs believed there was more strength in labor unity than in fragmentation based on worker skill level, race and sex. Debs then founded the American Railway Union (ARU), which attempted to unite railway workers nationwide. Debs tried and almost succeeded in getting the ARU to accept black workers, particularly the black porters who worked for the Pullman rail car company. That close failure might has altered the course of labor history in the US. Without the porters, the ARU had to resort to tactics that eventually led to the breaking of the union.

One of the program's two hosts and co-founders, Rund Abdelfatah, commented on the issue of divided labor: "When we allow ourselves to be pitted against each other, we gut our own chances of success."

Debs was sort of imprisoned (a 'soft' house arrest) for leading a strike against the railroads. At this time he could have all kinds of visitors, and socialists approached Debs to try to recruit him. Debs' logic included his observation that the Republican Party was the party of the big capitalists, while the Democratic Party was the party of the little capitalists, leaving no party on the side of the workers. Debs resisted socialism a couple years more, but eventually accepted that it was the only realistic alternative to the two-party system of his time.

Debs later ran for president 5 times, once from prison. In 1897, he founded the Social Democracy Party of America based on the remnants of the old ARU. He was vilified by some as an anarchist and others as a dictator. His speeches against Woodrow Wilson arguing resistance to the World War I military draft landed him in jail under the Sedition Act. Wilson called Debs "a traitor to his country."[1] Debs argued strenuously that the American people had no say in making war. He saw World War I as a rich man's pursuit using the blood of the people as a consumable in the effort to make money for themselves.

Debs and the American socialist movement scared the bejesus out of hard core capitalists. They used their own private militias, state and local police and the US Army to fight against and murder striking workers. But over time, some of the more astute and less rigidly ideological among the elites realized that some worker concessions would be needed or things might really get out of hand and actual socialism could rise in America. Things like the 40 hour work week, some worker protection laws, and the beginning of a social safety net eventually came into being. The capitalists opposed it all, but over time they were forced to civilize themselves at least enough to co-opt the socialists by making some concessions and keeping workers as divided among themselves as possible. All of that continues to this day. 

Capitalist tactics have not changed. Capitalism has one and only one universal or nearly universal moral imperative, profit without social conscience, despite some recent squeaks to the contrary.[2] Maximize profit, minimize risk, externalize worker and environmental damage as much as possible, whenever possible by any means possible, legal or not. That's the capitalist moral mindset. It does not look to be merely amoral.

Personal observations and comments

For what it's worth, this broadcast really resonated personally. The mental journey that Debs went through from capitalist reformer to socialist (presumably also with some capitalism reformation) is akin to a mindset reassessment I'm going through now. The corrosive moral rot of capitalism's constant assertion that it is just business and amoral, is pure deceit. It's a Big Lie. The moral rot inherent in unregulated capitalism is a significant source of the degradation of American democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. To me, unregulated capitalism is inherently demagogic and autocratic-plutocratic. In my opinion, the high stakes political fight we are in now is a continuation of the fight that Debs engaged in long ago.

That fight is corrupt, autocratic, Christian nationalist Republican Party demagoguery fighting hard and dirty for power and wealth concentrated among the chosen elites against a fragmented, divided and distracted urge for democracy with less demagoguery fighting for more distributed power and wealth.

Regarding socialism, capitalists always paint it as a failed ideology and point to the worst of the worst examples. The ideology has never dominated in America, so how it would work here is an open question. Capitalists also always vilify European socialism, but (i) they never mention the fact that many European countries have populations that are happier than Americans, and/or (ii) they downplay happiness as something not important.

 

Questions: 

1. Is it reasonably accurate to boil current American politics mostly down to a fight between forces that want authoritarianism with power and wealth concentrated among the elites against forces that want democracy and civil liberties with power and wealth more distributed among the masses? 

2. Is it correct to argue that unregulated capitalism is (i) often or usually inherently immoral and/or (ii) inherently anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian? 

3. Does American public education do a great, good, mediocre, bad or God awful job of teaching children the sordid, violent history of American labor and the role of heavily vilified, slandered and lied about people like Debs?

Footnotes: 

1. For context, President Wilson mounted a massive federal government propaganda campaign manned by over 150,000 people to deceive and con the American people. The goal was con mostly reluctant Americans into supporting World War I and volunteering to fight in that mindless, hideous slaughter. The tactics that Wilson's "Committee on Public Information" (1917–1919), used included vicious propaganda. One favorite tactic included the still-popular modern tactic of tarring people who oppose war as traitors. Does that sound familiar and contemporary? It should because it is. 

Looking back one can now reasonably ask, was the real traitor to the American people Wilson or Debs? 

2. Nobel prize laureate Milton Friedman publicly argued that CEOs with a social conscience were subversive because they tended to be damaging to profit. 

Sixteen Tons - Tennessee Ernie Ford 

Some people say a man is made outta mud

A poor man's made outta muscle and blood

Muscle and blood and skin and bones

A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

You load 16 tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine

I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine

I loaded 16 tons of number nine coal

And the straw boss said, "Well, a-bless my soul"

You load 16 tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

etc.