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
These parties have been in power all these years, why have they not
settled the tariff and the currency and such other matters as make up
their platform pledges?
_Let Them Act Now._
While the Republican convention was in session at Chicago and while the
Democratic convention was in session at Baltimore, the Republican and
Democratic congress was also in session at Washington. These parties
already have the power to make good their promises, then why do they not
exercise that power to redeem their pledges and afford relief to the
people?
In other words, why do not the Republican and Democratic parties
perform at Washington instead of promising at Chicago and Baltimore? How
many more years of power do they require to demonstrate that they are
the parties of the capitalist class and that they never intend to
legislate in the interest of the working class, or provide relief for
the suffering people.
The Republican and Democratic platforms are filled with empty platitudes
and meaningless phrases, but they are discreetly silent about the
millions of unemployed, about the starvation wages of factory slaves,
about the women and children who are crushed, debased and slowly
tortured to death by the moloch of capitalism, about the white slave
traffic, about the bitter poverty of the masses and their hopeless
future, and about every other vital question which is worthy of an
instant's consideration by any intelligent human being.
_The Socialist Party._
In contrast with these impotent, corrupt and senile capitalist parties,
without principles and without ideals, stands the virile young working
class party, the international Socialist party of the world. The
convention which nominated its candidates and wrote its platform at
Indianapolis was a working class convention.
The Socialist party is the only party which honestly represents the
working class in this campaign and the only party that has a moral right
to appeal to the allegiance and support of the workers and producers of
the nation.
I am not asking you to give your votes to this party but only that you
read its platform, study its program, and satisfy yourselves as to what
its principles are, what it stands for, and what it expects to
accomplish.
The Socialist party being the political expression of the rising working
class stands for the absolute overthrow of the existing capitalist
system and for the reorganization of society into an industrial and
social democracy.
_Death to Wage-Slavery._
This will mean an end to the private ownership of the means of life; it
will mean an end to wage-slavery; it will mean an end to the army of the
unemployed; it will mean an end to the poverty of the masses, the
prostitution of womanhood, and the murder of childhood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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