Davenport and Walters, eds., The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs, Volume 3: The Path to a Socialist Party, 1897-1904

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs, Vol. 3: The Path to a Socialist Party, 1897–1904 ed. by Tim Davenport and David Walters William E. Cain The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs, Vol. 3: The Path to a Socialist Party, 1897–1904 Edited by Tim Davenport and David Walters (Chicago, Ill.: Haymarket Books, 2021. Pp. 733. Illustrations, index. Clothbound, $75.00; paperbound, $36.00.) Expertly organized and edited by Tim Davenport and David Walters, this is the third in a six-volume project from Haymarket Books. Covering the period from 1897 to 1904, it is essential reading for everyone interested in Eugene V. Debs, socialism in America, radical politics, and the bitter and often bloody struggle, here and abroad, between labor and capital. Debs supported the Democratic/Populist William Jennings Bryan in the presidential election of 1896. Bryan was decisively defeated by the Republican nominee William McKinley, and, on New Year's Day 1897, Debs announced, "I am a socialist." He took direct aim at capitalism, pledging "with all the emphasis of which my words are capable, my implacable hostility to this system, and my determination to battle with all my power for its overthrow" (p. 59). In 1900, Debs was the Social Democratic Party candidate for the presidency, but the outcome was a disappointment: he received only 0.6 percent of the popular vote. He was on the ballot again in 1904, this time as the candidate of the Socialist Party, and he did better with 3 percent. During these campaigns, indeed in everything he said and wrote, Debs called for the political education and organization of the working class. "The labor movement must be class conscious," he maintained (p. 432). Debs also highlighted the importance of the ballot—"a revolution can be brought about by this method," for "the ballot is the weapon"—and he was an advocate for women's suffrage (pp. 229, 409). For Debs, the labor movement was national and international; he condemned militarism and imperialism. He railed against business leaders and financiers (John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan), politicians (William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt), and their agents in the pro-corporate media. In contrast to these adversaries, Debs invoked a range of heroes, models, and precursors, including William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Edward Bellamy. At the center for Debs was the Socialist Party, "the only party that stands squarely upon the class struggle as the basis of its revolutionary character" (p. 559). He was fervently optimistic, convinced that the signs were pointing to the collapse of capitalism and the triumph of socialism: "The future is bright" and socialism "is coming just as certain as the rivers find their way to the sea" (pp. 252, 327). Debs's strengths were many, but this volume also dramatizes his limitations. He said hardly a word about the resources and connections of working-class cultures; his emphasis was [End Page 344] always on the worker's degradation, oppression, exploitation, ignorance, and victimization. Debs's position on race and racism was also problematic. He was a stalwart champion of equal rights, but it was the class-based war against capitalism that governed and propelled his views on race relations. "The class struggle is colorless," he asserted; socialism, for the Black worker, "will strike the economic fetters from his body, and he himself will do the rest" (pp. 516, 546). On nearly every page of this collection, Debs contends that workers are "slaves," and, furthermore, that wage slavery is worse than the chattel slavery that the Civil War had terminated. This feature of his rhetoric comes too often and too easily. The common identity of all workers as "slaves," in a nation permeated and disfigured by anti-Black racism and racist violence, is a graphic and attention-seizing claim, but a reductive one as well. There is much to learn, much to debate and argue with here. The 160 primary texts that Davenport and Walters have selected, the excellent introduction, incisive and illuminating notes, and cogent illustrations—this is an important book, superbly done. William E. Cain Wellesley College Copyright © 2022 Trustees of Indiana University