As a Socialist Party candidate, Debs ran for president five times in the early 1900s, twice gaining over 900,000 votes.
Can Trump Pull A Eugene Debs In 2024 After Indictment In Classified Documents Case?
Джо Байден сегодня — Байден назвал США самой важной страной. Сенатор США Скотт заявил о недоверии американцев администрации Байдена. On August 29, 1895, Eugene Victor Debs penned a letter from his cell at the federal prison in Woodstock, Illinois, to the Terre Haute, Indiana Labor Day Committee. Юджин Дебс покидает Белый дом вскоре после своего освобождения из тюрьмы, 1921 год. Eugene Victor Debs left school at the age of fourteen, to scrape paint and grease off the cars of the Vandalia Railroad, in Indiana, for fifty cents a day.
Юджин Дебс – цитаты
Кливленда забастовка была подавлена федеральными войсками. Джирарде, штат Канзас. В 1908 и 1912 гг. Лудлоу, штат Колорадо; призывает рабочих к сопротивлению. Дебс совершает турне по стране, выступает против войны в Европе, за установление мира между народами, против подготовки США к вступлению в Первую мировую войну. Публикует много сильных антивоенных статей. В этой победе он видел приближение окончания войны, усиление социалистического движения в США. Дебс опубликовал статью «Душа русской революции». Дебс произносит свою знаменитую антивоенную речь в г.
Кантоне, штат Огайо, на съезде социалистов.
I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.
In this country—the most favored beneath the bending skies—we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child—and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all. This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a great economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth.
There are today upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex. They are all making common cause. They are spreading with tireless energy the propaganda of the new social order. They are waiting, watching, and working hopefully through all the hours of the day and the night. They are still in a minority. But they have learned how to be patient and to bide their time.
The feel—they know, indeed—that the time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when this emancipating gospel will spread among all the peoples, and when this minority will become the triumphant majority and, sweeping into power, inaugurate the greatest social and economic change in history. In that day we shall have the universal commonwealth—the harmonious cooperation of every nation with every other nation on earth. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice. I can see the dawn of the better day for humanity. The people are awakening.
In due time they will and must come to their own. When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people everywhere take heart of hope, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning. His citizenship was not restored until five decades after his 1926 death.
In a worst-case scenario, Trump could still follow in the footsteps of Debs, who ran for president even from prison in 1920. Trump reportedly faces seven charges in the criminal case, brought by the U. Department of Justice. In a series of posts on his Truth Social platform Thursday, the Republican 2024 frontrunner said he was summoned to appear in a Miami federal court on June 13.
He wrote it was the "corrupt Biden Administration" that informed his attorneys about the indictment, "seemingly over the Boxes Hoax. Trump said it was a "dark day" for the U. He noted the charge was "ludicrous.
It is with little exception not studied in the law schools, and it is rarely cited or noted in even the more elaborate casebooks or treatises on constitutional law. Though it is still too soon to predict an imminent change in First Amendment law, such changes often follow dramatic shifts in dominant cultural values. Though these notions have cast a pall of orthodoxy over academic institutions and many other organizations and venues, they have not made their way into the law—yet.
Премия Юджина В. Дебса
Debs was indeed an imprisoned man—who also happened to be running for President of the United States from his cell. Who was Eugene Debs? They came to the U. This was at a time when workers toiled for 16 hours a day, six days a week. In response, Debs and the ARU organized a massive sympathy boycott of any trains and railroads using Pullman cars, and by June, 125,000 ARU workers had joined the cause. A nation that thrived on cross-country train commerce was now being stopped in its tracks. After Debs made a speech to workers on June 29 in Blue Island, Illinois, some in the crowd broke off and began a riot.
With the U. The press at the time turned on Debs, too, claiming the strike he organized around the Pullman situation was a power grab. Constitution [ PDF ].
Meanwhile, many of his leading activist supporters and pundit allies were completely purged from that platform , blows that greatly hindered his reelection campaign. With Trump banned from Twitter in early 2021, his political standing soon ebbed away as more and more of his low-information political base gradually forgot about him.
This led many observers to conclude that his time had passed and some rival would likely capture the Republican nomination in the 2024 primaries. With such exciting new topics, the endless Trump Political Reality show had suddenly returned as popular entertainment, regaining the very high ratings it had previously enjoyed. Trump once again became the great hero of his populist Republican supporters, with recent polls showing he was drawing far more support in the 2024 primaries than all his Republican rivals combined. Indeed, some cynical observers even suggested that this outcome might have been intentional. Perhaps the Democrats regarded Trump as the weakest Republican candidate they might face in 2024, and sought to ensure his renomination.
Such a deeply Machiavellian strategy might be possible, but all of these various prosecutions and trials will surely keep Trump at the top of the news cycle from now until November 2024, whether Election Day finds him still on trial or already serving time behind bars. As of a week ago, Trump had already been facing 71 separate state and federal felony indictments. Then he was struck by the weightiest federal charge of all, accusing him of organizing a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results. These days American society is deeply polarized and most of the charges against Trump will be tried in venues such as DC, Manhattan, and Atlanta where the jury-pools are sure to be heavily larded with Trump-haters. With so many dozens of serious charges against him, our 45th President seems likely to end up behind bars.
These latest indictments finally moved longtime progressive columnist and cartoonist Ted Rall into that same camp of outright Trump sympathizers. The massive vilification of Trump in such quarters indicates that those elites fear Trump as their most dangerous foe, so many voters may eventually conclude that the enemy of their enemy is at least worth a casual vote on the November ballot. But although countless American candidates throughout our history have bitterly complained about stolen elections and sometimes contested the outcomes, our rabidly partisan Democratic prosecutors have now decided to treat that behavior as a crime, apparently hoping to destroy their Trumpian nemesis using the power of the courts. This judicial innovation may be unique in the developed world and seems extremely rare even outside it. Rather than being prosecuted and imprisoned, AMLO eventually gave up on his unofficial presidency and after creating a new party as his vehicle, ran for president a third time in 2018, winning in a huge landslide despite any election fraud.
Print Eugene Debs speaking to a crowd in Canton, Ohio. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street, go to war.
Я думала, что он был действительно щедрым человеком, но обнаружила, что снаружи он отличался от того, каким он был внутри». Они использовали меня в полной мере, а теперь хотят меня уничтожить, потому что я их не слушаю. Никто не добился такого результата за 30-летнюю историю индустрии развлечений, как я всего за два года после создания NewJeans.
Но HYBE пытается убить того, кто сделал то, что сделала я, будучи главой дочерней компании». Она добавила: «Какой мой грех? Я думаю, что мой грех только в том, что я делаю свою работу хорошо». Я не говорю о них ничего плохого. Участницы невиновны. Это взрослые согрешили.
Они просто скопировали все формулы, которые мы использовали с NewJeans. Очевидно, что ADOR будут сравнивать с тем, что сделали они. Им никогда не следовало использовать систему с несколькими лейблами, а следовало просто сделать то, что делают SM и YG. Когда кто-то копирует кого-то и делает это хорошо, это всех расстраивает. Это разрушает всю индустрию. Это наносит ущерб ценности акционеров.
Меня не волнует, что меня ругают, но я чувствую облегчение от того, что сегодня могу говорить обо всем. Все должно измениться». Все, о чем я могу думать, это о том, что они пытаются убить NewJeans. Они делают нашу вещь устаревшей. Зачем им это делать, когда мы в одной команде? Дело даже не в уважении творческих прав.
Зачем вам это копировать? Действительно, это так. Вы не можете отличить их друг от друга. Эти намерения настолько нечисты. Мы дебютировали группу на мероприятии Chanel. Это не было с подачи HYBE.
Я хочу извиниться за то, что беспокою их. Но в любом случае мы дебютировали с Chanel, но это не было нашей целью. Просто это мероприятие проходило перед телешоу, и я подумала, что это может быть что-то новое.
An Ominous Trend
Eugene Debs was a presidential candidate ran for election from prison. In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, polled nearly a million votes without ever hitting the campaign trail. Юджин Дебс умер в октябре 1926 года, до последнего уверенный в том, что социалистическая революция может быть задержана, но неизбежно произойдет. Дебс, Юджин — Юджин Дебс Eugene V. Debs профсоюзный лидер Дата рождения: 5 ноября 1855(1855-11-05) Место рождения: Терре-Хот, Индиана, США Дата смерти: 20 октября 1926(1926-10-20) (70 лет) Место смерти: Элмхёрст, Иллинойс, США Юджин Виктор Дебс. Информация Новости Контакт Род занятий. TikTok for Good Реклама Developers Прозрачность TikTok Rewards TikTok Embeds. Новости на Google News.
Премия Юджина В. Дебса
| ДЕБС ЮДЖИН | Стрелял профсоюзный лидер Юджин Дебс, чтобы отметить Четвёртое июля: то был не побег из тюрьмы, то было требованием иной свободы. |
| «Формат с двумя картами ведёт к ничьим» — Ceb о групповой стадии ESL One Birmingham 2024 | Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) was the founder and first president of the United Socialist States of America, which was the first Communist country on the planet. |
| Eugene Debs | Eugene V. Debs, labor organizer and Socialist Party candidate for U.S. president five times between 1900 and 1920. |
ДЕБС ЮДЖИН
He is facing racketeering and conspiracy charges related to his alleged efforts to overthrow the 2020 election results. While the incident is making headlines across the world, a late politician, Eugene V Debs is garnering attention on social media platforms. The socialist party member, Eugene Debs ran for the US presidential elections five times from 1900 to 1920. In the year 1920, he contested the presidential elections from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
It was a not a bum rap. Debs had defiantly disobeyed a law he deemed unjust, the Sedition Act of 1918. The act was an anti-free speech measure passed at the behest of President Woodrow Wilson. The law made it illegal for a U. By the time he was imprisoned for sedition, Eugene Victor Debs had enjoyed a lifetime of running afoul of government authority.
Born in 1855 into bourgeois comfort in Terre Haute, Indiana, he worked as a clerk and a grocer before joining the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in 1875 and finding his vocation as an advocate for labor. Representing American socialism For the next 30 years, Debs was the face of socialism in America. He ran for president four times , in 1900, 1904, 1908 and 1912, garnering around a million votes in the last cycle. Both lost. On May 21, 1918, wary of a small but energized and eloquent anti-war movement, Wilson signed the Sedition Act into law.
National Archives at Chicago, RG 21 Instead, Debs reasoned that his recently formed American Railway Union ARU was the model organization to unite all railway workers in a powerful, national, and united voice in the industry. Paul to Seattle. On July 2, 1894, federal judges in Chicago issued an injunction prohibiting Debs and the strikers from interfering with the regular transmittal of mail via the railroad. As the strike spread and the injunction failed to halt the strikers, Pullman and other railroad owners called on President Grover Cleveland for support. The President sent in Regular Army troops to quell the violence and subdue the strikers. Convicted of violating the injunction, Debs was sentenced to six months in jail.
While serving his prison term, Debs reexamined his political philosophy and declared himself a socialist. By the time Debs was released from prison in November 1895, he had become a nationally recognized celebrity and political force.
In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street, go to war. Debs in Canton, Ohio on June 16, 1918.
June 16, 1918: Eugene V. Debs Speech Against WWI
| The Untold Truth Of Eugene V. Debs | Although it is well-known that Eugene V. Debs, Socialist Party nominee, ran for president while imprisoned in 1920, this Seattle Times story provides many interesting details. |
| Eugene Debs: When a prisoner ran for president | BrandeisNOW | Marguerite Bettrich and Jean Daniel Debs, two immigrants from Alsace, France, welcomed Eugene Victor Debs into the world on November 5, 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana. |
| Дебс, Юджин — Википедия | According to "Eugene V. Debs: an American paradox," Debs soon split with the IWW "in protest against its policies regarding the use of sabotage and ”direct action.'". |
ДЕБС ЮДЖИН
Eugene V. Debs was a US politician and a member of the Socialist Party and ran for President five times since 1900. Socialist politician and trade unionist Eugene V. Debs, the preferred candidate of the Forverts and namesake of our radio signal, WEVD, ran for president in 1920 from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Eugene Debs made his famous anti-war speech protesting World War I which was raging in Europe. “It’s a stewing sense of unfairness last tapped to broad affect by a couple of his political heroes: socialist presidential candidates Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas, each of whom lost five times in the early.
OPINION: A day with Eugene Debs
это награда, присуждаемая Юджином В. Фонд Дебса, в Терре-Хот, штат Индиана, ежегодно с 1965 года чествует человека, чья работа соответствует д. Their leader Eugene Debs, who actually ran for President more often than Joe Biden, summed up his view of the world in saying. Юджин Дебс — одна из фигур, без которых невозможно представить историю не только американского, но и мирового профсоюзного движения. The standard biography of Eugene Debs is Nick Salvatore’s Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1982). 20 октября 1926) был американским социалистом, политический активист, профсоюзный деятель.
An Ominous Trend
Герой этого рассказа высоко оценивал Ленина, да и Ленин, надо сказать, сам удостаивал Юджина Дебса добрым словом: «... Дебс с восторгом следил за русской революцией, но видел ее в каких-то евангельских тонах: «Какова ни была бы судьба революции... Дальше — больше: «Пока существует низший класс — я к нему отношусь, пока есть преступники — я один из них, пока хоть одна душа томится в тюрьме — я не свободен». Эти чересчур, казалось бы, высокопарные слова повторял перед своей аудиторией Курт Воннегут, которому не откажешь ни во вкусе, ни в ироническом отношении к миру: «В последнее время я обязательно предупреждаю, что эти слова нужно воспринимать всерьез. Иначе аудитория начинает смеяться. Они смеются без злобы, они знают, что я люблю быть смешным. Но их смех говорит о том, что это эхо Нагорной проповеди сейчас воспринимают как устаревшую, полностью дискредитировавшую себя чушь». Америка посыл Дебса оценила: разные силы по-своему. Власти отправили его в тюрьму, приговорив к десяти годам заключения. Рабочие же помогали Дебсу прямо из тюрьмы вести президентскую кампанию — и мало какой заключенный в истории США имел такой бурный политический успех! Кто же такой этот Юджин Дебс, один из создателей самого воинственного профсоюза Америки «Индустриальные рабочие мира», «почти коммунист», шестикратный кандидат в президенты США, он же — «заключенный номер 9653»?
Его родители, эмигранты из Эльзаса, имели небольшой магазинчик в одном из многочисленных маленьких городков «одноэтажной Америки». Городок находился в штате Индиана и звался Терре-Хот, но к чему подробности? Правда, Дебса явно не прельщала перспектива просидеть всю жизнь в конторе. В 14 лет он бросил школу и пошел работать на железную дорогу. Вначале чистил локомотивы в депо, затем малевал дорожные знаки, и наконец, несколько лет спустя, юноше доверили настоящее дело — он стал кочегаром. Локомотивная обслуга — бравые ребята, элита железнодорожных рабочих, доллар за смену, немалые по тем временам деньги, но и работа опасная. Аварии на железных дорогах тогда случались регулярно, и счет смертям рабочих шел на десятки. Как ни нравилась Дебсу такая жизнь, ему пришлось пожалеть мать, измученную постоянной тревогой за сына. Спустя несколько лет молодой человек возвращается в родной город, где ему подыскали работу клерка с перспективами карьерного роста. Мало радости в такой жизни!
Дебс активно занимается самообразованием, но конторская работа гнетет его, а железная дорога манит обратно. Вскоре жизнь предложила Дебсу неплохой компромисс: его разыскали бывшие сослуживцы и пригласили на работу в общество локомотивной обслуги «Братство кочегаров и машинистов». Это был классический для тогдашней Америки цеховой профсоюз, устроенный по принципам масонской ложи. Опыт клерка Дебсу пригодится — равно как и знания, которые он жадно глотал в перерывах между сменами на железной дороге, и природная харизма. Скоро он станет весомой фигурой и в профсоюзе, и в политической жизни своего городка и даже штата. Двадцати пяти лет от роду он будет секретарем мэрии Терре-Хота, а несколькими годами позже попадет в ассамблею Индианы. Примерно в то же время Дебс станет одним из первых лиц профсоюза. В 1877 году Америку потрясла Великая железнодорожная стачка. В течение 45 дней движение поездов парализовано в нескольких штатах, горят железнодорожные конторы, на улицах городов проходят кровавые стычки рабочих с полицейскими.
His totals jumped to around 402,000 votes ; in 1908, he returned with 420,000 votes , losing to Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft , respectively. Debs fell short once again, but his total ballooned to more than 900,000 votes —6 percent of the popular vote. It would be another eight years before his fifth and final presidential campaign—arguably one of the strangest the country has seen. The profit system is responsible for it all. Debs traveled across the Northeast to speak to his base of frustrated workers looking for a unifying voice against war. On April 6, 1917, the United States officially declared war against Germany. Debs knew the risks he was taking with his anti-war crusade, but he continued throughout the Midwest, culminating in a speech at a Socialist Party gathering in Canton, Ohio, on June 16, 1918. For two hours, the impassioned orator made his case, criticizing everything from the war to the Sedition Act to the military draft. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives. The jury found him guilty on three counts of violating the Espionage and Sedition acts.
Марк зачитал эту речь в рамках проекта «Голоса народной истории Соединённых Штатов» в церкви Всех Святых в Пасадене, Калифорния, 1 февраля 2007 года.
Within a year he became a fireman for the railroad. In 1875 Debs, now unemployed, accepted a position with H. Debs was a charter member and was elected recording secretary. Debs believed that small, disparate, class- and trade-driven unions possessed little power to influence social change for their members. National Archives at Chicago, RG 21 Instead, Debs reasoned that his recently formed American Railway Union ARU was the model organization to unite all railway workers in a powerful, national, and united voice in the industry. Paul to Seattle. On July 2, 1894, federal judges in Chicago issued an injunction prohibiting Debs and the strikers from interfering with the regular transmittal of mail via the railroad. As the strike spread and the injunction failed to halt the strikers, Pullman and other railroad owners called on President Grover Cleveland for support.
The Untold Truth Of Eugene V. Debs
| Eugene V. Debs, the Five-Time Socialist Candidate for President Who Once Campaigned From Prison | The latest and best Eugene Debs news and articles from the award-winning team at |
| Eugene Debs | NationofChange | Add to that the uniformly hostile media coverage, and Trump’s prospects of acquittal seem as dim as those faced by Debs in the wartime atmosphere of 1918. |
| Eugene V. Debs (United Socialist States of America) | Alternative History | Fandom | Судя по реакции Дебса на фразу Вэна, ему пришлось спросить тиммейтов на сцене, какую шутку он пропустил. |
| Премия Юджина В. Дебса | Labor leader, socialist, and five-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) had a twofold relationship with the First Amendment. |
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OPINION: A day with Eugene Debs
On May 29, 1920, in a carefully choreographed event, newsreel cameras filmed a delegation from the Socialist Party arriving at the Atlanta penitentiary to inform Debs officially of his nomination. The New York Times was aghast that a felon might canvass for votes from the motion picture screen. Public opinion turns On Nov. Debs was a distant third, but he had won 3. To be fair, that was when he was more mobile. Congress on Dec. But public opinion had turned emphatically in favor of the convict-candidate. President Harding, who took office in March 1921, finally commuted his sentence , effective on Christmas Day, 1921, along with that of 23 other Great War prisoners of conscience convicted under the Sedition Act. As Debs exited the prison gates, his fellow inmates cheered. He raised his hat in one hand, his cane in the other, and waved back at them.
Прибыв на вокзал, он отказался от роскошного пульмановского вагона, заняв вместо этого более скромное место. Разницу в стоимости проезда он пожертвовал в фонд помощи голодающим в Советской России. На станции он сделал заявление прессе по поводу заключенных в тюрьме сторонников: «Я оставил там 2300 человек, и все они должны быть освобождены». По прибытии в Терре-Хот его приветствовала толпа из 50 тысяч человек. Однако здоровье Дебса было подорвано тюремным заключением, и, несмотря на предпринимаемые им попытки поправиться, через пять лет после освобождения он в 1926 году скончался.
In Brazil, the conservative establishment had used a somewhat doubtful corruption conviction to block former President Lula from seeking to regain the presidency , but once it was overturned by the courts, he successfully did so, and his own courts then used the excuse of election protests to prohibit his defeated rightwing opponent President Bolsonaro from trying to do the same in four years time. In India, the ultra-rightwing Modi government is overwhelmingly popular, but still decided to take no chances. The parliamentary opposition is led by Rahul Gandhi, the son, grandson, and great-grandson of past Prime Ministers, but the government prosecuted him for making a public statement seeming to imply that Modi was crooked, successfully banning him from politics as a consequence, though on Friday a court overturned the verdict. I fear that all too many democratic or semi-democratic governments around the world will now eagerly seize upon the innovative electoral strategy pioneered by our own Democratic Party and henceforth use judicial means to eliminate their political rivals. Moreover, while the ferociously anti-Trumpist media would never admit the possibility, the Donald and his angry supporters actually have a very strong case in their bitter complaints of a stolen 2020 election. I explained those simple facts back in January 2021. Although hardly suggested by our mainstream media, the officially-reported results demonstrated that our 2020 presidential election was extraordinarily close. All the regular pre-election polls had shown the Democratic candidate with a comfortable lead, but just as had been the case four years earlier, the actual votes tabulated revealed an entirely contrary outcome. But control of the White House depends upon the state-by-state tallies, and these told a very different story. Incumbent Donald Trump lost Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by such extremely narrow margins that a swing of less than 22,000 votes in those crucial states would have gotten him reelected. With a record 158 million votes cast, this amounted to a victory margin of around 0. So if just one American voter in 7,000 had changed his mind, Trump might have received another four years in office. One American voter in 7,000. Such an exceptionally narrow victory is extremely unusual in modern American history. More recently, George W. Bush won a narrow reelection over Sen. John F.
In the United States, this project has only ever been a variant of capitalist empire that, even when grafted to the cause of democracy, has been deeply inhospitable to the strategic thinking and moral fiber that can sustain the Left. Today, when the Left is often conscripted into a project to defend democracy rather than re-create it, Debs can still offer us guidance. Recalling what Marxism taught Debs can show us how the dominant themes of American democratic discourse — especially its conceptions of property, freedom, and self-rule — do not provide a foothold for a democratic left. Instead, they obscure our path toward a just society at home and abroad. American Democracy vs. When Debs called out the absurdity of the wartime view that patriotism means dying overseas for capitalist profits while treason consists in defending workers everywhere, he showed us the proper response to nationalist ideology: not to try to hijack it for progressive ends, but to liberate us from its obfuscations. Through the ordinary electoral process, a liberal party could fulfill working-class demands by curbing the political power of business, defending democratic rights and freedoms, and guiding capitalist growth according to an inclusive sense of the public good. Most of all, Schlesinger sought to show that Marxism was as foreign to Debs as it was to America. Among the US left, he singled out Debs for praise because, in his view, Debs was always closer to liberal democratic Americanism than Marxist totalitarianism. And as an inveterate democrat, Debs could never accept the revolutionary Marxist program of proletarian class rule, nor could he sacrifice immediate associational freedoms for the sake of historical progress, both of which threatened a totalitarian takeover of democratic institutions. Theory alone would not have brought Debs to socialism if it did not clarify his experience in the labor movement. Ultimately, Schlesinger saw Debs as a useful figure to make a broader argument about the place of the Left in progressive politics. Like Debs or so Schlesinger imagined , leftists should accept the basic justness of American democratic institutions, inhabiting a position of critical dissent that holds liberals to account without ever exercising real independent power. Debs was a democrat, but he was also a Marxist and an internationalist. He believed that working-class democracy was only possible if workers controlled the capital infrastructure they set into motion, operating it according to social principles entirely different from those of the profit-seeking capitalist market. Anyone familiar with Debs lore knows that he probably encountered Marxist theory for the first while imprisoned for his leadership of the Pullman strike.