DEBS FOR PRESIDENT RE-EMERGES
Just the other day on this blog discussing how I matched up with Democratic Party candidates on issues, I had this to say about supporters of Dennis Kucinich: “They really yearn for a Debsian socialist party, but can’t figure out how to create one that will fly. Hey, don’t we all.”
Now over at Wobblies, the LiveJournal on line community for members and supporters of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW,) Kadath posted the image above. It put a smile on my lips.
For those of you unfamiliar with labor history-or American political history for that matter-1908 was the third of five Presidential campaigns by Eugne V. Debs, founder and leader of the Socialist Party(SP). Debs rose to fame as the leader of the American Railway Union’s strike and boycot of the Pulman Palace Car Company in 1894. The strike was smashed by Federal troops and Debs was sentenced to jail. He served his sentence in the McHenry County Jail in Woodstock. While there he studied Marx and became a committed Socialist.
Besides founding and leading the SP, Debs was also one of the founders of the IWW in 1905. Later his oppostition to World War I landed him in the Federal Prison in Atlanta. He ran for president for the last time from behind bars in 1920. But his health was broken in prison and he died after he was released on orders of Warren G. Harding.
Eventually almost all of the planks of the SP platforms on which Debs ran were adopted-the minimum wage, child labor laws, unemployment insurance, and Social Security. Only universal health care has remained unachieved.
I know a lot of my old Fellow Workers in the IWW-and certainly almost all of the young ones who know me only as a name on an old book (THE IWW: ITS FIRST SEVENTYY YEARS,which I co-authored with Fred W. Thompson)-regard me as something of a sellout for becoming a Democrat. I understand. The twenty year-old me would have despised the 58 year old version. I can live with that.
I am happy to support Barack Obama for President. But I will always have a soft spot for Gene Debs and the party he built.