Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. DebsDebs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
History
Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. Debs
Debs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
Labor -- United States; Socialism -- United States; Socialist Party (U.S.); Working class -- United States
Workingmen in their organized capacity must recognize the necessity for
both economic and political action. I would not have you declare in
favor of any particular political party. That would be another mistake
which would have disastrous results. If I could have you pass a
resolution to support the Socialist party I would not do it. You can't
make Socialists by passing resolutions. Men have to become Socialists by
study and experience, and they are getting the experience every day.
There is one fact, and a very important one, that I would impress upon
you, and that is the necessity for revolutionary working class political
action.
No one will attempt to dispute the fact that our interests as workers
are identical. If our interests are identical, then we ought to unite.
We ought to unite within the same organization, and if there is a strike
we should all strike, and if there is a boycott all of us ought to
engage in it. If our interests are identical, it follows that we ought
to belong to the same party as well as to the same economic
organization. What is politics? It is simply the reflex of economics.
What is a party? It is the expression politically of certain material
class interests. You belong to that party that you believe will promote
your material welfare. Is not that a fact? If you find yourself in a
party that attacks your pocket do you not quit that party?
Now, if you are in a party that opposes your interests it is because you
don't have intelligence enough to understand your interests. That is
where the capitalists have the better of you. As a rule, they are
intelligent, and shrewd. They understand their material interests and
how to protect them. You find the capitalists as a rule belonging only
to capitalist parties. They don't join a working-class party and they
don't vote the Socialist ticket. They know enough to know that Socialism
is opposed to their economic interests. Now, both republican and
democratic parties are capitalist parties. There is not the slightest
doubt about it. It can be proved in a hundred different ways. You know
how the republican party treated the demands of labor in its recent
national convention. You know, or ought to know, what has taken place
under the present administration. You know, or ought to know, something
about the democratic party, national, state and municipal. If there are
those who say that the democratic party is more favorable to labor than
the republican party it is only necessary to point to the southern
states where it has ruled for a century. In no other part of the nation
are workingmen in so wretched a condition. In no other part are working
people so miserably housed, so wretchedly treated as they are in the
southern states where the democratic party rules supreme.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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