Eugene V. Debs Explained

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So the primary midterm strategy for the Republican Party in order to try to stave off a major blue wave has been to sound the alarm about socialism or even communism.
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You hear from Trump, you hear from all kinds of negative ads.
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And of course, this comes as a number of Democratic Socialist candidates have been elected in offices across the country, are making a major impact on American politics.
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They're joining us now to talk about that.
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And the legacy that they draw from is the former editor of Jacobin Magazine, who is out with a fantastic new book, American Socialists: The Life and Legacy of Eugene V.
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Debs.
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Sean Goody, that author, joins us now.
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Great to have you, Sean.
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Hey, thanks so much for having me on.
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Appreciate it.
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Yeah, of course.
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So we were chatting before you came on that the book ends up being uh very timely, and I do want to get into the some of those modern day connections.
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But just for people who may be really ignorant about who Eugene Debs is, why did you decide to profile him?
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Why do you think that he's an important figure in American politics people should know about?
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Sure.
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I mean, I think people's ignorance that they have it is quite excusable given his legacy and really the hit the really rich history of democratic socialism in America has been um sort of whitewashed from American history in a lot of ways.
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And that's kind of what pushed me to write this book.
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Um, the socialist movement in the early 20th century during the Gilded Age.
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And I think certainly we're in our own Gilded Age now, and so I think that that history is quite relevant.
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You know, it's interesting.
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Uh, I think we have F3 here, Sean.
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We could put this up here on the screen, uh, which is about socialism has its first positive reading for the first time uh at 40% in some recent Gallup polling.
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Um, how similar is today's socialism to the Eugene Debs prairie periods, which you talk about?
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Yeah, it's a great question.
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I mean, there's both similarities and some obvious differences.
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I think what you point to, there is a real geographic difference right now in terms of where socialism is strong, because as you mentioned, socialism, and I'm I'm actually from Iowa, I'm you know, I'm proud Midwesterner, so this sort of history speaks very much to me.
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Um, and so the Socialist Party was extremely strong in places like Oklahoma, um, Kansas, Milwaukee.
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Businesses have extraordinary power over workers and over the course of society.
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You really do have to push something, a kind of more radical transformation of society to make sure that wealth and power isn't concentrated in the hands of just a few people.
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And so that's when he he sort of becomes a socialist later on.
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And I think that that um that transformation does mirror the transformation of a lot of other people at the time, because it is uh a time of upheaval, of of labor strikes, of extraordinary wealth being created and opulence.
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This is the Gilded Age, but also um people you know don't even have unemployment insurance and and they're thrown out of work willy-nilly, and they um you know are working in conditions where you know they could lose an arm or something on the railroad.
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And you know, tough luck.
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You don't have any sort of you don't get compensation for that.
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You and then if you you know go out and protest that with your with your fellow workers, you might get beaten down and have judicial injunctions called in to uh to block you from striking.
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Um, so it's uh it's that kind of those kind of conditions that produce the radicalization of Debs and produce the kind of radicalization to some extent of the country, lead to the rise of the of the Socialist Party.
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Sean, how do you assess Debs's historical legacy in terms of his influence, but also the reality of, I mean, the guy only won 6% of the vote, like at his peak.
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I mean, don't get me wrong, he literally ran from a jail cell.
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I think the government threw him in prison for correctly speaking out against intervention in the war.
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And if you think censorship and propaganda and all that are bad today, you have no idea what life is like in 1915, right?
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So, you know, with all that said, the deck was genuinely stacked against him.
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That said he only won 6% of the vote.
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He does seem to have been tremendously influential on a lot of the other people around FDR or people who would assess his legacy, Huey Long and all that, etc.
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So talk talk me through a little bit of that.
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Yeah, it's a fair question.
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I mean, the Socialist Party was able to have these really strong pockets of support.
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I mentioned places like Oklahoma, and I haven't mentioned out west, but they were very strong in mining camps, um, and you know, mining towns.
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So they had these pockets of support where they were quite strong.
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Also, the upper Midwest, they were very strong in kind of industrial cities, not only um Milwaukee, but kind of mid-sized industrial cities where steelworkers um kind of voted the socialist ticket too.
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Um, but they weren't ever able to translate that that support into a national level support.
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Um, and it really was, I mean, I don't want to go too much down a kind of scholarly rabbit hole, but it if you kind of compare the US to other countries, because the US really is an outlier in terms of uh the socialist, its socialist party not taking off, because every other advanced capitalist country has um a social democratic party, a labor party.
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Um that court sort of built the welfare state in the and built um what we think of today as social democracy.
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Um and the US never didn't have that because um, you know, the US was was uh the business class was so strong, um, and because the labor movement wasn't as as large in in other countries.
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And so the Socialist Party was sort of wasn't able to link up with the strong labor movement, essentially, um is kind of what it comes down to.
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Um but you're totally right that um I I do think its legacy is uh is very relevant today and also has had, I think it's fair to say that the the points in American history where ordinary people have won more freedom and more democratic rights.
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The labor movement of the 1930s, the civil rights movement of the 1960s, democratic socialists have been really central to those movements.
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Um, you think of people like A.
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Philip Randolph during the Civil Rights Movement, was very good friends with Debs, drew a lot of his kind of inspiration in politics from people like Debs.
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And, you know, I could I could name other examples, but it's that kind of that kind of impact that um democratic socialism, democratic socialism has had in the US.
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Um and I, you know, I think uh that's a that's a pretty proud legacy too.
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Well, and the legacy obviously is very clear today.
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Debs specifically, Bernie Sanders is a big admirer of Eugene Debs, and Zoran actually shouted out uh Eugene Debs and quoted him in his victory speech.
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Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of that.
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But as Eugene Debs wanted to be done with the better danger for doing it.
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Knuckles card with kitchen burnt.
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These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power.
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And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater.
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And Chad, one thing I was reflecting on is, you know, the the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs' era really was a sort of ground-up, you know, they're able to elect if it was 1,200 officials across the country at the peak.
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But to your point, you know, his highest watermark in terms of presidential campaign is 6%.
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So he's not able to grab a sort of national foothold.
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The modern movement is almost the reverse, you know, splashes into being with Bernie Sanders coming very close, actually, to winning the Democratic nomination and potentially the presidency.
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Um Zoran is become this massive national sensation, uh, is extremely popular and mayor of the largest and uh arguably most important city in the entire country.
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So, what do you think about the differences in the way that the movement has grown and whether that represents a strength, a weakness, whether, you know, it's it doesn't matter which way it goes.
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Like, how do you think about those pieces?
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Yeah, no, it's a really astute point.
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I hadn't really even thought about that that before necessarily.
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But yeah, I think it's I think it's a weakness on some level, but it's also just kind of a challenge because it was, you know, the having a having a party that had that level of support locally, as you mentioned, 1,200 elected officials at its peak.
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They had about 120,000 members, um, something like 80 mayors in 36 states.
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So they had a real um real strength in in a lot of places.
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Um, but but also, yeah, they didn't, they were never actually able to acquire national level national level of political power.
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And right now, at least we do have the the opportunity, um, you know, as as democratic socialists, to really see something different.
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Um, because we do have national level standard bearers that are among the most popular uh politicians in the in the US.
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And so that that provides extraordinary power too.
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Um it comes with dangers.
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Like obviously, you don't just want um you need us, at the end of the day, you really do need a really strong labor movement to transform the country.
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And if if that doesn't come about, then you know we're gonna be in trouble.
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Um, but certainly the having having Bernie Sanders is one of the most popular politicians in the US, now having Zorang and AOC, um, very effective politicians and kind of communicators of democratic socialist ideas, I think really good at bringing uh democratic socialism down to human level and making it um not just uh a kind of like wonky sort of policy alternative or something, but like really speaking to people's needs for solidarity and human connection and joy in this in this world.
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Um that's really important too.
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And so there are there are real strengths to the movement right now.
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Um and so uh I I think we have some real opportunities.
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But Sean, depress you a bit here.
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Um you know, you you you talked about Eugene Debs and his legacy and largely of the socialist connection to the heartland um and away really from the kind of cosmopolitan elite.
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You know, today modern-day DSA socialism is a literal product of the cosmopolitan elite at a cultural level from New York City, Los Angeles.
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Uh, the higher educated, the more likely you are to be, you know, kind of a card-carrying member of DSA.
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That you might be downwardly economically mobile.
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I mean, you know, that it's a little bit separately different.
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But how do you square that?
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You know, the everyday working man doesn't really seem to be a DSA card-carrying member.
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They may like Sauron, but they may not identify themselves as part of the so-called socialist movement.
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Kind of the beating heart of modern-day DSA, you know, leftism reminds me a little bit more of like the affinity for international communism in the cultural elite of the United States.
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I don't say this in any aspersion, I'm just saying in terms of kind of the parallel.
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So how do you work through that?
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Or do you challenge, want to challenge some of the things I'm saying?
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No, I mean, I think I I wouldn't agree entirely with what you're saying, but I do think it's fair that um that so far DSA has only has a slice of of um the working class, and it's it's the college-educated working class, it's nurses and teachers um rather than um you know Amazon workers, and that's a huge problem.
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Um you can't have uh you can't have um just like one small slice of, you know, you can't just have white-collared workers and um win democratic socialism.
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So I I agree that it's uh that it's a problem.
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Um I I have some um I have some optimism about this because I think um you know Zoran in particular is very good at breaking that kind of divide.
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And and I also think um, you know, the socialist movement in the US is still fairly young.
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Um and this is really only a recent development.
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And it's true that the the people that it's attracted so far um have been disproportionately college-educated workers, but I don't think that's um I don't think that's something that's inherent to uh where we're at.
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I mean, I I think someone like Bernie is very good at at talking to people um across uh across the divides within within the working class.
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And I think um, you know, we should take a page from that, certainly.
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Um but I but I'm not so pessimistic that that that's not gonna change.
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And Sean, uh my last question for you on that note is I wonder if we don't need to reconceptualize the the working class, especially in the age of AI, where you've got a bunch of tech oligarchs saying they're gonna put all white-collar workers out of work.
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I mean, it's a very different economy than it was during Deb's time.
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Um, the there's uh the the blue-collar workforce has been decimated.
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You have a lot of service workers now, and you have a lot of um white-collar knowledge workers, college educated with a lot of debt, who are facing a lot of economic precarity themselves.
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So I wonder how you think about how the left may need to adjust and look different in an age of AI where they are trying to make all of human labor irrelevant.
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And in that way, you know, there should be a lot of solidarity between all human beings about what's going on and what's gonna come next.
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Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more.
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I mean, you can you can take the point too far and say that only, you know, that it's fine.
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The composition of DSA currently is okay, but but certainly I I totally agree that um the economy of today is extremely different from the economy of Debs' period.
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I mean, there aren't as there just aren't as many railroad workers in the US.
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There aren't as many steel workers.
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And and rail workers and steel workers, and um, those people very much should be part of the the socialist movement, and the socialist movement should be speaking to them.
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Um, but it but you know, nurses and teachers are also very much part of the of part of the working class, too.
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And I think they're they're very central to socialist politics today.
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And yeah, even even um even tech workers too.
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Um they're not the classically defined working class.
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And certainly if all of DSA was just tech workers, that would be a problem.
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But we also shouldn't, we shouldn't make the mistake of saying that, you know, only people who didn't go to college are um are in the working class.
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Uh I think that that's fair too.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I know I think that's entirely fair.
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Uh, where does culture play into this?
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So, you know, it's been interesting to me.
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Uh, Eugene Debs, you could correct me if I'm wrong, uh, from what I was looking into, was a genuine like class-first egalitarian.
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Um he was like, look, I'm here, you know, he he opposed, I believe, like racial quotas in the 19, I forget the year of the 1919, I think, Immigration and Nationality Act, which eventually uh was passed.
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I know he was a strong supporter of civil rights, but he often took an approach of saying, look, like this is about class first, which I believe actually put him at odds, I think, with some of the you know more racial leaders at the time.
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Uh, what did you find in some of your research on that?
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I'm curious.
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Uh I think it's I think it's more complicated than that.
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He certainly thought that, um, he he certainly thought that um the best way to fight, you can say the best way to fight for racial equality was through building a mass movement of which um black workers would be a part of.
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And he certainly came to the view, too, that the socialist party and socialists had to be um on the front lines of fighting Jim Crow because you know, other other people in society weren't going to do it.
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So he was very much on uh on board with that, but he also he did reject um the idea that um you could fight racism without you know um fighting the kind of uh without fighting economic exploitation because he thought that was really central to how racism um actually operates in in American society.
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So he he kind of linked the two, I would say.
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And um that that you know that was a a pretty interesting part of researching the book, and I think that's that's part of his legacy too.
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The book is American Socialist, the life and legacy of Eugene Debs, and you know, fascinating character, incredibly impactful, very much understudied and under-discussed, is the type of thing that is very likely left down of your public school education, and obviously with a lot of implications for today.
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Um, I think people will see a lot of parallels with Eugene Debs' era and today, while also dating there are profound differences, of course.
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Um, Sean, thank you so much.
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It's great to have you.
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Thank you so much, I appreciate it.