The
19th century had been a period of rapid industrial expansion in America.
Between 1800 and 1900 the per capita wealth of the country had increased
from $200 to $1,200. However, the distribution of this wealth was
extremely uneven. A report published in Arena
in 1901 revealed that 1 per cent of the population owned 54 per cent
of the wealth. That two-hundredth of a per cent (4,000 millionaires)
had 20 per cent of the total wealth.
In 1872
Victoria
Woodhull, he leader of the International Workingman's Association
in New York City published The Communist
Manifesto by Karl
Marx and
Frederick
Engels.
Later that year Woodhull was nominated as the presidential candidate
of the Equal Rights Party. Although laws prohibited women from voting,
there was nothing stopping women from running for office. Woodhull
suggested that Frederick
Douglass should
become her running partner but he declined the offer.
During
the campaign Woodhull called for the "reform of political and
social abuses; the emancipation of labor, and the enfranchisement
of women". Woodhull also argued in favour of improved civil rights
and the abolition of capital punishment. These policies gained her
the support of socialists, trade
unionists and women suffragists. However,
her name did not appear on the ballot because she was one year short
of the Constitutionally mandated age of thirty-five.
It
was this economic situation that stimulated a growth in socialist
ideas in the United States. In 1874 a group of socialists formed the
Workingmen's Party. Three years later it was renamed the Socialist
Labor Party. Some members of the party came under the influence
of the anarchist ideas of the German
revolutionary, Johann Most.
In 1886 the party became involved in helping organize the campaign
for the eight-hour day. At one meeting on 4th May, in Chicago, the
Haymarket Bombing took place and several
former members of the party, including August
Spies, Albert Parson, Adolph
Fisher and George Engel, were found
guilty of conspiracy to murder and executed.
Daniel De Leon and Laurence
Gronlund emerged as leader of the Socialist
Labor Party in the 1890s. De Leon, a Marxist,
favoured the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. However, Gronlund,
in books such as Cooperative Commonwealth
(1884), Our Destiny (1891), The
New Economy (1898) and Socializing
a State (1898) advocated a reformist approach to socialism.
The Social Democratic Party (SDP)
was founded in 1897 by a group of left-wing journalists and trade
union activists. Leading figures included Eugene
Debs, Victor Berger and Ella
Reeve Bloor. In 1901 the SDP merged with Socialist
Labor Party to form the Socialist
Party of America.
The new Socialist Party of America
claimed a membership of 10,000 and over the next few years leading
figures in the party included Daniel De Leon,
Philip Randolph, Emil
Seidel, Julius Wayland, Fred
Warren, Chandler Owen, William
Z. Foster, Abraham Cahan, Sidney
Hillman, Morris Hillquit, Walter
Reuther, Bill Haywood, Margaret
Sanger, Kate Richards O'Hare, Florence
Kelley, Rose Pastor Stokes, Mary
White Ovington, Helen Keller, Inez
Milholland, Floyd Dell, William
Du Bois, Hubert Harrison, Upton
Sinclair, Mary Lease, Victor
Berger, Daniel Hoan, Frank
Zeidler, Robert Hunter, George
Herron, Claude McKay, Sinclair
Lewis, Max Eastman, William
Walling and Jack London .
Between 1901 and 1912 membership of the Socialist
Party of America grew from 10,000 to 150,000. In 1913 the socialist
journal, Appeal to Reason
reached a circulation of over 760,000.
On the outbreak of the First World War most
socialists in the United States were opposed
to the conflict. They claimed that the war had been caused by the
imperialist competitive system and argued that the America should
remain neutral. This was also the view expressed in the three main
socialist journals, Appeal to Reason,
The Masses and The
Call.
After the USA declared war on the Central
Powers in 1917, the government passed the Espionage
Act. Under this act it was an offence to make speeches that undermined
the war effort. Criticised as unconstitutional, the act resulted in
the imprisonment of many members of the anti-war movement including
450 conscientious objectors. During the First World
War several Socialist Party members, including Eugene
Debs, Kate Richards O'Hare, Victor
Berger and Rose Pastor Stokes were
imprisoned for their anti-war activities.
People working for The Masses were
also prosecuted and the magazine was forced to close. The
Call was also prosecuted but the Appeal
to Reason decided to support the war effort to remain
in business.
After the First World War, the attorney general,
A. Mitchell Palmer, became convinced
that communist and socialists were planning to overthrow the American
government. Palmer recruited John Edgar Hoover
as his special assistant and together they used the Espionage
Act (1917) and the Sedition Act
(1918) to launch a campaign against radicals and left-wing organizations.
On 7th November, 1919, the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution,
over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists were arrested in what
became known as the Palmer Raids. Palmer
and Hoover found no evidence of a proposed revolution but large number
of these suspects were held without trial for a long time. The vast
majority were eventually released but Emma
Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Mollie
Steimer, and 245 other people, were deported to Russia.
In 1920 Eugene Debs, the Socialist
Party of America presidential candidate, received 919,799 votes
while still in Atlanta Penitentiary. His program included proposals
for improved labour conditions, housing and welfare legislation and
an increase in the number of people who could vote in elections.
As a result of this Red Scare people
became worried about subscribing to left-wing journals and the Appeal
to Reason, which was selling 760,000 copies a week
before the First World War, was forced to close
in November, 1922. The following year The
Call ceased publication.
After the death of Eugene Debs in 1926 Norman
Thomas became the leader of the party and was its presidential
candidate in 1928, 1932 and 1936. As a result of Franklin
D. Roosevelt and his successful New
Deal policies, some members of the party such as David
Dubinsky, called for socialists to vote for the Democratic
Party, in 1936. As a result the Socialist Party vote dropped to
185,000, less than 20 per cent of that achieved in 1932. However the
party continued to do well in certain cities such as Milwaukee,
where Daniel Hoan was mayor of the city
between 1916 and 1940.
During the McCarthy Era membership
of the party fell to below 2,000 members. A large number of socialists
including Walter Reuther, Philip
Randolph and Bayard Rustin, left the
party with the view that you had more chance of achieving progressive
reform by being active in the Democratic
Party.
Under the leadership of Michael Harrington,
the Socialist Party Conference in 1968 passed a resolution endorsing
Hubert Humphrey for president. In 1972
the party supported George McGovern.
In 1976 the Socialist Party ran a presidential campaign for the first
time in twenty years. Frank Zeidler,
the former mayor of Milwaukee (1948-60),
was nominated as president. Other presidential candidates have included
David McReynolds (1980), Willa Kenoyer (1988), Quinn Brisben (1992)
and Mary Cal Hollis (1996).
(1)
Victoria
Woodhull, Lecture on Constitutional Equality (20th February,
1872)
That the framers of the Constitution had Woman's Rights clearly in
their minds is borne out by its whole structure. Nowhere is the word
man used in contradistinction to woman. They avoided both terms and
used the word "persons" for the same reason as they avoided
the word "slavery," namely, to prevent an untimely contest
over rights which might prematurely be discussed to the injury of
the infant republic.
The issue
upon the question of female suffrage being thus definitely settled,
and its rights inalienably secured to woman, a brighter future dawns
upon the country. Woman can now unite in purifying the elements of
political strife in restoring the government to pristine integrity,
strength and vigor. To do this, many reforms become of absolute necessity.
Prominent in these are:
A complete
reform in the Congressional and Legislative work, by which all political
discussion shall be banished from legislative halls, and debate be
limited to the actual business of the people.
A complete
reform in Executive and Departmental conduct, by which the President
and the Secretaries of the United States, and the Governors and State
officers, shall be forced to recognize that they are the servants
of the people, appointed to attend to the business of the people,
and not for the purpose of perpetuating their official positions,
or of securing the plunder of public trusts for the enrichment of
their political adherents and supporters.
A reform
in the tenure of office, by which the Presidency shall be limited
to one term, with a retiring life pension, and a permanent seat in
the Federal Senate, where his Presidential experience may become serviceable
to the nation, and on the dignity and life emolument of Presidential
Senator he shall be placed above all other political positions, and
be excluded from all professional pursuits.
A reform
between the relations of the employer and employed, by which shall
be secured the practice of the great natural law, of one-third of
time to labor, one-third to recreation and one-third to rest, that
by this intellectual improvement and physical development may go on
to that perfection which the Almighty Creator designed.
A reform
in the system of crime punishment, by which the death penalty shall
no longer be inflicted - by which the hardened criminal shall have
no human chance of being let loose to harass society until the term
of the sentence, whatever that may be, shall have expired, and by
which, during that term, the entire prison employment shall be for
- and the product thereof be faithfully paid over to - the support
of the criminal's family, instead of being absorbed by the legal thieves
to whom, in most cases, the administration of prison discipline has
been entrusted, and by whom atrocities are perpetrated in the secrecy
of the prison enclosure, which, were they revealed, would shock the
moral sense of all mankind.
In the
broadest sense, I claim to be the friend of equal rights, a faithful
worker in the cause of human advancement; and more especially the
friend, supporter, co-laborer with those who strive to encourage the
poor and the friendless.
If I obtain
the position of President of the United States, I promise that woman's
strength and woman's will with God's support, if he vouchsafe it,
shall open to them, and to this country, a new career of greatness
in the race of nations.
In accordance
with the above, we shall assume the new position that the rights of
women under the Constitution are complete, and hereafter we shall
contend, I not for a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, but
that the Constitution already recognizes women as citizens, and that
they are justly entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens.
It will
therefore be our duty to call on women everywhere to come boldly forward
and exercise the right they are thus
guaranteed. It is not to be expected that men who assume that they
alone, as citizens of the United States, are entitled
to all the immunities and privileges guaranteed by the Constitution,
will consent that women may exercise the right of
suffrage until they are compelled. We will never cease the struggle
until they are recognized, and we see women established in their true
position of equality with the rest of the citizens of the United States.
(2)
Victoria
Woodhull, speech, (February, 1872)
These privileged classes of the people have an enduring hatred for
me, and I am glad they have. I am a friend not only of freedom in
all things, and in every form, but also for equality and justice as
well. These cannot be inaugurated except through revolution. I am
denounced as desiring to precipitate revolution. I acknowledge it.
I am for revolution, if to get equality and justice it is required.
(3)
Cincinnati Commercial, May 11, 1872
Last night I stepped into Apollo Hall, one of the noblest and most
picturesque halls in the city, where the National Convention of the
Woodhull and Claflin, Male and Female Labor Party are holding a two
days’ session. As I approached the place, I heard the voice of
Mrs. Woodhull resounding through the hall, and when I entered I found
her standing in front of the platform, which was filled with people
of both sexes, and declaiming in the most impassioned style, before
a crowded audience of men and women who had been wrought up to a very
high state of excitement. The scene was really dramatic, and to those
who were in sympathy with it, it was, doubtless "thrilling,"
"glorious," "sublime." Somehow or other, Mrs.
Woodhull, as she stood there, dressed in plain black, with flushed
face, gleaming eye, locks partly disheveled, upraised arm and quivering
under the fire of her own rhapsody, reminded me of the great Rachel
in some of those tragic or fervid passages in which the dominating
powers of her nature and genius were displayed in their highest effect.
She seemed at moments like one possessed, and the eloquence which
poured from her lips in reckless torrents swept through the souls
of the multitude in a way which caused them to burst, every now and
then, with uproarious enthusiasm. A moment after I entered there was
one of these spiritual explosions, which brought her to a brief pause,
and the first sentence I heard was her exclamation, in loud, clear
tone: "Who will dare to attempt to unlock the luminous portals
of the future with the rusty key of the past?" Age, indeed who
will? was the thought which involuntary came to one’s mind while
looking at the extraordinary spectacle displayed in Apollo Hall.
When her
declamation ended, the audience, masculine and feminine, sprang to
their feet and cheered till their wind was exhausted, cheered with
a frenzy and force that must have startled the multitudinous promenaders
who swept along Broadway. The heroine of the moment disappeared from
the platform, but the multitude encored till she returned, stepped
to the front, and bowed once and again her acknowledgments for the
applause.
Then a
stout and hearty personage, who was recognized by the Chair as Judge
Carter of Cincinnati, stepped quickly to the front, and in stentorian
tones nominated Mrs. Victoria C. Woodhull as a candidate for the Presidency
of the United States. "All who are in favor of the nomination,
say aye" were the words from the Chair, and instantly the shouts
of the Convention, delegates and outsiders, burst forth in a roar,
thunderous and continuous, which might have blown the roof of the
building to the skies. Again Mrs. Woodhull appeared on the platform,
and accepted the nomination in a few words.
Then followed
an hour’s wrangle, with countless speeches as to the candidate
for the Vice Presidency. The first nomination made was that of Frederick
Douglass, who was eulogized by half a dozen speakers in succession,
and opposed by two or three, on various grounds. We had the oppressed
sex represented by Woodhull; we must have the oppressed race represented
by Douglass. Other names followed: Ben Wade, Theodore Tilton, Spotted
Tail, Ben Butler, Henry Ward Beecher, Robert Dale Owen, Governor Campbell,
Wendell Phillips, Richard Trevithick, and others.
Frederick Douglass, however, at last got the vote of the Convention.
And was thus nominated for the second place on the Woodhull Presidential
ticket - the Executive Committee being empowered to substitute another
name in case of his refusal to accept.
The platform
of the party, which demands a new National Constitution, and numerous
other things in the revolutionary line, was subsequently adopted.
I forgot
to say that throughout the entertainment, the audience were excessively
merry and were as wildly enthusiastic. She left the place pretty well
exhausted with cheering. The audience were highly respectable, as
well as large and strikingly American in physiognomy and appearance.
There were large numbers of fashionable dressed ladies, and most of
the gentlemen evidently belonged to the business and professional
classes. There were also plenty of "Reformers," and in fact,
it was they who contributed the real genius of the assemblage.
At the
close of the session, Mrs. Woodhull, the nominee for the Presidency,
passed into an ante-room, where her friends crowded to congratulate
her. She was in ecstasy, and so was her sister, Miss Claflin. Her
face beamed under her high-crowned Neapolitan black hat. She shook
hands with the gentlemen enthusiastically. The ladies kissed her and
embraced her, kissed each other, and kissed her again. I never before
saw so much kissing and hugging in public, nor, for that matter, in
private either. Men were not afraid to pass hands round women who
were not their wives, and women indulged in political osculation till
they were tired.
(4)
Mary Lease, speech
at Cooper Union Hall (12th August, 1896)
I accept
this splendid greeting from this splendid audience in evidence that
there is no Mason and Dixon's line between the East and the West.
I accept it as an evidence of the fact that the people of the East
and West are battling for a common cause against a common foe. Not
since the bleeding years of the war have party lines been so nearly
obliterated, and the obedience to party leaders so refused as at the
present time. The heart of the nation is aroused, and Principle and
not Self is the watchword. The great heart of the nation beats response
to patriotism, and the nation is safe.
We stand
today at the beginning of one of those revolutionary periods that
mark an advance of the race. We stand at a period that marks a reformation.
All history is illustrated by the fact that new liberties cannot exist
with old tyrannies. New ideals ever seek new manifestations. The ideals
of Christ could not live under the tyrannies of the Roman government.
The ideals of the founders of this Government could not exist under
the tyrannies of royal rule.
The grand
principles of Socialism and the brotherhood of man cannot live under
old forms of tyranny - neither under the forms of Old-World tyranny
nor of British gold.
Yet today
our splendid theory of government is confronted by a great peril.
We have become blind to evils that menace us. We are confronted with
glutted markets and idle labor. It is a condition that makes it possible
for a few men to become landlords of a proud city like this while
God's poor are packed in the slums. Such a condition is not only a
menace to Republican institutions, but a travesty upon the gospel
of Jesus Christ.
It makes
it possible, too, for an American to pay $10,000,000 for the cast-off,
disreputable rags of old world royalty, for the scion of a house that
boasts the blood of a Jeffreys and a Marlborough. It is a disgrace
to our nation.
A condition
by which the wealth accumulated by the common people is poured into
lard tubs and oil wells, to enable Mr. Rockefeller to found a college
and Mr. Whitney to buy a diamond tiara for his daughter is a disgrace
to the country.
Once we
made it our boast that this nation was not founded upon any class
distinction. But now we are not only buying diamonds for their wives
and daughters and selling our children to titled debauchees, but we
are setting aside our Constitution and establishing a gold standard
to help the fortunes of our hereditary foe.
Today,
a determined and systematic effort is being made by our financiers
to perpetuate a gold standard. Every influence that moulds public
opinion has been bought up, and the great dailies in the employ of
the gold syndicate have fallen into line. The whole power of the government
administration is being used to deceive the people. We hear sound
money and honest dollar applied to the most dishonest money that ever
cursed a nation or enslaved a people. What right has McKinley or Whitney
to delegate our constitutional right to coin money to England or any
other nation?"
An organized
effort is making to deceive the people. There are two great enemies
of thought and progress, the aristocracy of royalty and the aristocracy
of gold. Long ago, the aristocracy of royalty came to a common plane
with the common people by the discovery of gunpowder, and the two
met on a common field. Where is the respect of old for royalty? Even
the English speak of their sovereign, Queen Victoria as being made
not of common clay, but of common mud. The aristocracy of royalty
is dying out.
But here
in this country we find in place of an aristocracy of royalty an aristocracy
of wealth. Far more dangerous to the race is it than the aristocracy
of royalty. It is the aristocracy of gold that disintegrates society,
destroys individuals and has ruined the proudest nations. It has called
Rothschild's agent here to make the platform of the Republican party.
(5)
New York Herald Tribune
(13th August, 1896)
Charmed by the seductive oratory of Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease, the
free silver mass-meeting at Cooper Union last night nursed itself
into all the semblance of a Socialistic gathering. From the beginning
to the end, from the first sentence of introduction until the Kansas
woman had concluded in a sonorous period, Socialism predominated.
Every mention of gold or wealth was greeted with shouts and jeers,
and the names of Whitney and Cleveland, of Vanderbilt and Rothschild
were hailed with hisses and cat-calls.
As advertised,
the meeting was under the guidance of the Social Reform Club, an organization
that has the worthy object of bettering the fortunes of the worker.
As advertised, the meeting was in the cause of free silver. But the
predominance of the Socialists more than once overcame this, and the
currency question was forgotten while the orators spoke at length
upon Socialistic beliefs.
It does
not necessarily follow because Mrs. Lease somewhat unsexed herself
by her indulgence in turbulent and inflammatory discourse at Cooper
Union that all women are unfitted by Nature to participate in the
excitement of political contests or to have a voice in the calm and
deliberate discussions which ought always to attend upon the settlement
of grave and serious governmental problems. We might as well say that
the similarly wild and reckless outgivings of the Tillmans and Altgelds
demonstrated the unfitness of the sterner sex for self-government.
But there is this to be said, of which there can be no denial, that
Mrs. Lease upon the political platform or stump, uttering invectives
more than masculine, and appealing to the brutal passions of the mob
rather than to the calm sense of reasoning men and women, must be
treated the same as any other mob leader, male or female. She cannot
shelter herself behind her sex while appealing to bloodthirsty passions
and inciting lawless riot.
Mrs. Lease
is representative of the party - we will not call it Democratic -
which presents Mr. Bryan as a candidate. In the principles she avows,
and the policies she advocates, in the coarse vigor of her speech
and the startling aggressiveness of her manner, she is in the highest
degree the best and truest exponent of the Bryan platform and party.
In the extravagance of her language, the wantonness and recklessness
with which she appealed to class hatred, pointing out by name as the
proper objects of popular vengeance good and honorable citizens whose
only offence is the possession of property accumulated honestly under
the laws, she may have seemed to be in advance of her party. But only
a step; just enough to bring out with clearness and distinctness the
real spirit and purpose of the revolutionists and Anarchists who are
bent on the destruction of public credit and the overthrow of social
order. A step behind this raging virago, foaming with fury and blazing
with wrath, is the wild mob of levellers eager for the general distribution
of spoils; behind them the Terror, with its bloody bacchanals and
merciless savagery.
(6)
Julius Wayland, Appeal
to Reason (18th November, 1899)
A great many people believe that they know what socialism means, but
they do not. They vainly imagine that it refers to bursting bombs,
burning buildings, rapine and plunder. But those folks have never
looked for the definition in Webster's dictionary which says that
socialism is: "A theory of society that advocates a more precise,
orderly and harmonious arrangement of the social relations of mankind
than that which has hitherto prevailed."
Of course that does not sound so very bad. Still for fear that Noah
Webster may have been out of his head when defining socialism, let
us go to some other authority and read carefully the definition in
the Standard dictionary, which says that socialism is: "A theory
of policy that aims to secure the reconstruction of society, increase
of wealth, and a more equal distribution of the products of labor
through the public collective ownership of labor and capital (as distinguished
from property) and the public collective management of all industries."
Maybe things have changed since Noah Webster died. We have it here.
The Century dictionary defines socialism as: "Any theory or system
of local organization which would abolish entirely, or in a greater
part, the individual effort and competition on which modern society
rests, and substitute co-operation; would introduce a more perfect
and equal distribution of the products of labor; and would make land
and capital, as the instruments of production, the joint possessions
of the community."
Then, again, there are our religious friends who have vaguely, but
wrongly, believed that socialism was the enemy of religion. What have
you to say of this statement made by the Encyclopedia Britannica?
"The ethics of socialism are identical with the ethics of Christianity."
(7)
Samuel Jones, the successful businessman
and four-term mayor of Toledo, Ohio, was one of the first to try and
introduce socialist ideas to local government. He explained his views
in his article, The New Patriotism: A Golden-Rule Government for
Cities (1899)
The ethics of the wild beast, the survival of the strongest, shrewdest,
and meanest, have been the inspiration of our materialistic lives
during the last quarter or half century. The fact in our national
history has brought us today face to face with the inevitable result.
We have cities in which a few are wealthy, a few are in what may be
called comfortable circumstances, vast numbers are propertyless, and
thousands are in pauperism and crime. Certainly, no reasonable person
will contend that this is the goal that we have been struggling for;
that the inequalities that characterize our rich and poor represent
the idea that the founders of this republic saw when they wrote that
"All men are created equal."
The new patriotism is the love of the millions that is already planning
for and opening the way to better things, to a condition of life under
this government when every child born in it will have an equal opportunity
with every other child to live the best possible kind of life that
he or she can live. This is the new patriotism - that feeling within
one's breast that tells us that there can be no prosperity for some
without there is a possibility for some prosperity for all, and that
there can be no peace for some without opportunity for some peace
for all; that man is a social being, society is a unit, an organism,
not a heap of separate grains of sand, each one struggling for its
own welfare. We are all so inextricably bound together that there
is no possibility of finding the individual good except in the good
of all.
The competitive idea at present dominant is most of our political
and business life is, of course, the seed root of all the trouble.
The people are beginning to understand that we have been pursuing
a policy of plundering ourselves, that in the foolish scramble to
make individuals rich we have been making all poor. "For a hundred
years or so," says Henry Demarest Lloyd, "our economic theory
has been one of industrial government by the self-interest of the
individual; political government by the self-interest of the individual
we call anarchy." It is one of the paradoxes of public opinion
that the people of America, least tolerant of this theory of anarchy
in political government, lead in practicing it in industry. We are
coming to see that the true philosophy of government is to let the
individual do what the individual can do best, and let the government
do what the government can do best.
Our cities are to be saved by the development of the collective idea.
We are coming to understand that every public utility and necessity
to the public welfare should be publicly owned, publicly operated,
and publicly paid for. Among the properties that according to any
scientific conception of the purpose of government should be so owned
are waterworks, heating and lighting plants, street railways, telephones,
fire alarms, telegraphs, parks, playgrounds, baths, wash-houses, municipal
printing establishments, and many other industries necessary to the
welfare of the whole family that can only be successfully operated
by the family in the interests of the whole family.
(8)
The Supreme Court judge, David
Brewer, was one of the country's leading opponents of socialism.
This was reflected in his speech to the New York State Bar Association
in January, 1893.
It is the unvarying law that the wealth of a community will be
in the hands of a few; and the greater the general wealth, the greater
the individual accumulations. The large majority of men are unwilling
to endure the long self-denial and saving which makes accumulation
possible; they have not the business tact and sagacity which brings
about large combinations and great financial results; and hence it
always has been, and until human nature is remodeled always will be,
true that the wealth of a nation is in the hands of a few, while the
many subsist upon the proceeds of their daily toil. But security is
the chief end of government; and other things being equal, that government
is best which protects to the fullest extent each individual, rich
or poor, high or low, in the possession of his property and the pursuit
of his business.
It was the boast of our ancestors in the Old Country that they were
able to wrest from the power of the king so much security for life,
liberty and property. Here, there is no monarch threatening trespass
upon the individual. The danger is from the multitudes - the majority,
with whom is the power. The common rule as to strikes is this: Not
merely do the employees quit the employment, and thus handicap the
employer in the use of his property, and perhaps in the discharge
of duties which he owes to the public; but they also forcibly prevent
others from taking their places.
(9)
Florence Kelley, letter to Friedrich
Engels about her success in converted people to socialism
(27th November, 1892)
The increased discussion of socialism here is very marked, though
the study of books and requests for lectures come almost exclusively
from people of the prosperous middle classes. Thus I have been asked
to speak twice before the Secular Union and five times in churches
in Chicago and its suburbs, and the more radically I speak the more
vigorous the discussion in all these meetings.
(10)
Mark Hanna, Socialism and the Labour
Unions (1904)
The menace of today, as I view it, is the spread of a spirit of
socialism, one of those things which is only half understood and is
more or less used to inflame the popular mind against all individual
initiative and personal energy, which has been the very essence of
American progress. While this spirit of socialism has caused apprehension
in some quarters, it has been joyfully received by a certain class
of people who do not desire to acquire competence in the ordinary
and honest manner and gladly seize any excuse for agitating the public
mind on the chance of putting money in their own pockets.
(11)
Charles Edward Russell, Why I
am a Socialist (1910)
Suppose each of the stockholders of the United States Steel Corporation
to be a most kind-hearted, compassionate man. If you could by any
means make him understand the hell that this company maintains, he
would be powerless to change it. Let the officers be wholly unselfish
philanthropists, and they shall be equally impotent. Let the managers
be moved to tears by every accident, they can do nothing that shall
prevent accidents. The whole organization is utterly impersonal; it
is hard, mechanical, inhuman, relentless, and must be so, and cannot
possibly be otherwise. To make profits, to declare dividends, to meet
the interest on the outstanding securities, to produce steel, to produce
it with the least possible expenditure of money: these are the only
considerations that can be entertained everywhere, at any time, by
any person in the organization.
Little children in the process of being first robbed and then murdered
in the sacred cause of profits. If you like the system of which this
is the certain fruit, come here and like the fruit also. You should
not like the one without the other. And if you accept both, let me
ask you one question. How if this robbed and tortured child were your
daughter, or your little sister? How would you like that? And if it
would be bad for your daughter, or your sister, do you think it can
be good for another man's daughter and another man's sister?
This is the offer of Socialism: the righting of the centuries of wrong
the producers have suffered, the dawn of a genuine democracy, peace
instead of war, sufficiency instead of suffering, life raised above
the level of appetite, a chance at last for the good in people to
attain their normal development.
(12)
Eugene Debs was the Socialist
Party candidate for president in 1912. He wrote about his views
in the article Why You Should Vote for Socialism (31st August,
1912)
You must either vote for or against your own material interests
as a wealth producer; there is no political purgatory in this nation
of ours, despite the desperate efforts of so-called Progressive capitalists
politicians to establish one. socialism alone represents the material
heaven of plenty for those who toil and the Socialist Party alone
offers the political means for attaining that heaven of economic plenty
which the toil of the workers of the world provides in unceasing and
measureless flow.
Capitalism represents the material hell of want and pinching poverty
of degradation and prostitution for those who toil and in which you
now exist, and each and every political party, other than the Socialist
Party, stands for the perpetuation of the economic hell of capitalism.
For the first time in all history you who toil possess the power to
peacefully better your own condition. The little slip of paper which
you hold in your hand on election day is more potent than all the
armies of all the kings of earth.
(13)
Socialist
Party of America leaflet, The
Gold Brick Twins (1916)
The Democratic platform
does not differ from the Republican platform fundamentally at all.
Of course, the Democratic convention was held a week later than the
Republican, and this gave the Democrats a chance to see what the Republicans
had done. Naturally they decided to go the Republicans one better
in bidding for the labor vote. Like the Republican Party, the Democratic
Party stands for the interests of the capitalist class, and it will
do just as little for the working class as it can and get by. The
labor planks were frightened out of the Democratic
Party by the rising Socialist vote. Therefore
the Socialist Party, not the Democratic
Party, is entitled to the credit for them.
They also straddle the
suffrage question, leaving
it to the states. Like the Republicans,
they dodged this issue altogether until it
became popular.
These scanty labor and
suffrage planks are
minor matters to the Democratic Party. Their
purpose is merely to catch votes.
The great body of the
platform is devoted
to boasting about the alleged achievements
of the Democratic administration, and
boosting for nationalism, so-called preparedness,
and foreign markets.
The platform says that
the life, health, and
strength of the men, women, and children
of the nation are its greatest asset.
This is true.
If the platform stood
for principles which would
give the utmost life, health, and strength
to the men, women, and children of
the nation, it would be all right.
But it does not.
On the contrary, after
boasting about the achievements of the administration - of which all
the good ones were frightened
out of it by the rising Socialist vote - they proceed to say that
they must now remove, as far as possible, every remaining element
of unrest and uncertainty from the path of the business of America
and secure for them a continued period of quiet, assured, and confident
prosperity.
Do you get that?
If the Democratic Party
had ever been anything else than a political representative of capitalism,
one could say that this plank is a complete surrender to the capitalist
class. But how can a party surrender to those who already own and
control it?
This plank merely shows
distinctly who does own and control the party. It shows that the party
is body and soul the property of the capitalist class. It stands for
the continuation of capitalism, with its long and hideous train of
woes.
In order to abolish evils,
it is entirely necessary to cause unrest and uncertainty among the
big businessmen who profit by the continuance of these evils.
But the Democratic Party
says we must not disturb their serenity. In other words, it stands
for the continuation of the great existing
social evils.
The Republican and Democratic
platforms are more remarkable for what they do not say than for what
they do say.
The Republicans and Democrats
are fully aware of the fact that hundreds of Americans die of starvation
each year. They know that millions of Americans are underfed all the
time. They know that hundreds of thousands of Americans are compelled
to accept degrading charity. They know that every little while millions
of Americans tramp the streets in a vain attempt to find an opportunity
to earn a living. They know that thousands of Americans are killed
and hundreds of
thousands injured by preventable accidents. They know that thousands
of Americans are driven to suicide. They know that thousands of Americans
are driven to insanity. They know that hundreds of thousands of Americans
are driven to crime. They know that hundreds of thousands of American
women and girls are driven to prostitution. They know that the masses
of the American people are in poverty. They know that the masses of
the people are compelled to starve themselves mentally, morally, and
spiritually in order to keep from starving physically. They know that
the private ownership of the industries enables a comparatively few
capitalists to get for themselves the bulk of the earnings of the
rest of the people.
(14)
Agnes
Smedley,
Daughters of the Earth, (1929)
About me
at that time (1916) were small Socialist groups who knew little more
than I did. We often met in a little dark room to discuss the war
and to study various problems and Socialist ideas. The room was over
a pool room and led into a larger square room with a splintery floor;
in the, corner stood a sad looking piano. In the little hall leading
to it was a rack holding various Socialist or radical newspapers,
tracts, and pamphlets in very small print and on very bad paper. The
subjects treated were technical Marxist theories. Now and then some
Party member would announce a study circle, and I would join it, along
with some ten or twelve working men and women.
I joined
another circle and the leader gave us a little leaflet in very small
print, asking us to read it carefully and then come prepared to ask
questions. It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand
it nor did I know what questions to ask.
Once or
twice a month our Socialist local would announce a dance and try to
draw young workers into it. Twenty or thirty of us would gather in
the square, dingy room with splintery floor. The Socialist lawyer
of the city came, with his wife and daughter. They were very intelligent
and kindly people upon whose shoulders most of the Socialist work
in town rested. The wife had baked a cake for the occasion and her
daughter, a student, played a cornet. While the piano rattled away
and the cornet blared, we circled about the room, trying to be gay.
(15)
Howard Zinn, A People's
History of the United States (1980)
Eugene Debs had become a Socialist while in jail in the Pullman
strike. Now he was the spokesman of a party that made him its presidential
candidate five times. The party at one time had 100,000 members, and
1,200 office holders in 340 municipalities. Its main newspaper, Appeal
to Reason, for which Debs wrote, had half a million subscribers, and
there were many other Socialist newspapers around the country, so
that, all together, perhaps a million people read the Socialist press.
Socialism
moved out of the small circles of city immigrants - Jewish and German
socialists speaking their own languages - and became American. The
strongest Socialist state organization was in Oklahoma, which in 1914
had twelve thousand dues-paying members (more than New York State),
and elected over a hundred Socialists to local office, including six
to the Oklahoma state legislature. There were fifty-five weekly Socialist
newspapers in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and summer encampments
that drew thousands of people.
In 1910,
Victor Berger became the first member of the Socialist party elected
to Congress; in 1911, seventy-three Socialist mayors were elected,
and twelve hundred lesser officials in 340 cities and towns. The press
spoke of "The Rising Tide of Socialism."
A privately
circulated memorandum suggested to one of the departments of the National
Civic Federation: "In view of the rapid spread in the United
States of socialistic doctrines," what was needed was "a
carefully planned and wisely directed effort to instruct public opinion
as to the real meaning of socialism." The memorandum suggested
that the campaign "must be very skillfully and tactfully carried
out," that it "should not violently attack socialism and
anarchism as such" but should be "patient and persuasive"
and defend three ideas: "individual liberty; private property;
and inviolability of contract."
(16)
James Green, Grassroots Socialism (1978)
The Socialist movement was painstakingly organized by scores
of former Populists, militant miners, and blacklisted railroad workers,
who were assisted by a remarkable cadre of professional agitators
and educators and inspired by occasional visits from national figures
like Eugene V. Debs and Mother Jones. This core of organizers grew
to include indigenous dissenters. A much larger group of amateur agitators
who canvassed the region selling newspapers. forming reading groups,
organizing locals, and making smallpox speeches.
(17)
Norman Thomas, The Profit System and
Unemployment, The Unemployed
(December, 1930)
Power driven
machinery makes it possible to support great populations in plenty.
It has changed the basis of our civilization from one of enforced
frugality to abundance. In spite of its mismanagement it has shortened
hours and in many cases lightened the burden of monotonous and back-breaking
toil. Yet under the the profit system the story of the progress of
machinery is literally written in tears and blood. And for every advance
step in technological progress the under dog has paid in the loss
of his job.
This is true because we have never asked: how can we use machinery
to provide more abundant goods and increase leisure for everybody?
Instead the profit seeking owners of factories have said: how can
we increase profits? It is easy to how that in the long run machinery
by making it possible to have more things makes possible more jobs
as well as shorter hours of labor. But men eat in the short run, and
in the short run the boss introduces a new machine in the hope of
making an immediately greater profit, which profit is very often realized
only by cutting down his payroll. The employer who does this is not
a villain. Under the profit system his business is to make profit.
He can't help it if that means giving some men the bitter leisure
of unemployment and speeding up others.
Only planned production for use, the abolition of parasitic ownership
and the increase of spending power in the hands of the masses of the
workers will end unemployment. I do not say that this way to end unemployment
is easy. In the long run it will have to take account of the whole
world and not merely just the United States. The final answer to unemployment
and to poverty is intelligent international Socialism. There is no
other way. Immediate remedies for some of the suffering of unemployment
will be good not only in themselves but because they help our progress
toward this goal.
(18)
Upton Sinclair, letter to Norman
Thomas (25th September, 1951)
The American People will take
Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in
the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes,
and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000.
I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have
succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by
a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.
Last
updated: 16th December, 2001
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