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davesearles
Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 358
Location: Vermont
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 Posted: 07 May 2007 10:58 am Post subject:
Deleon/Debs
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I
have been reading some of Deb's speeches. Unfortunately I have never read
them before. Now I am asking myself, just what if any difference was
there as to the specifics of what they were proposing? The workers taking
ownership and administering in the name of society of the means of
production. Taking this one step further, I don't see anything of the
major points by either that would necessarily be anathema to the major
points of the other. Such as neither was positing the necessity of a
vanguard party.
I went to a SP party meeting down in Brattleboro
yesterday and was very well received. talked about the possibility of me
running for US House in 08 under the SP party designation on a straight
SIU platform. They all seemed supportive of the idea.
So I have been mulling this over.
I am telling people that in historical perspective
there is very little difference in what Debs and DeLeon advocated. How
wrong am I?
dave
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davesearles
Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 358
Location: Vermont
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mikelepore
Site
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Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 484
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Posted: 08 May 2007 08:05 pm Post subject:
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If you had asked me what as wrong with Morris Hillquit
or Victor Berger, I'd could answer. I don't know enough about Eugene
Debs. For all I know, maybe he went SP instead of SLP mainly because of
De Leon's personality, which apparently wasn't all warm'n'fuzzy.
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The workers taking ownership and
administering in the name of society of the means of production.
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The argument was about whether what you just said
could be done (1) by many small degrees over the course of many years,
instead of abruptly; (2) by having government take over the shops, while
the workers take over the government.
Today, may cities own transportation systems. To
Berger and Hillquit, if the city, county, state or the federal
government, it doesn't matter which one, owns a railroad or something
other shop or service, that _is_ "some" socialism, and the
difference between "some" socialism and "still more"
socialism is a matter of degree.
I don't know the positions of Debs. I know he
radicalized real fast when he was sent to prison for supporting the 1894
railroad strike in Chicago, the one in which federal soldiers killed
twenty workers. He was a tinkering reformist as of the late 1880s, when
he was in the Social Democratic Party with Berger, but did 1894 or some
other incident later cause him to grow out if it? It would be interesting
to find an answer to that.
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davesearles
Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 358
Location: Vermont
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Posted: 09 May 2007 12:08 am Post subject:
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Oh,
did I tell you that while I was at the meeting a rabbi came in and
blessed the socialist meeting, that we were fulfilling one of god's
objectives for us, to cure the world. We all felt much better after that
and had a very productive meeting.
dave
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The Greenman
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Posts: 146
Location: Western New York
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Posted: 12 May 2007 06:16 am Post subject:
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A
rabbi came in to bless the meeting--this is interesting since he who
saves one person saves the entire world. Dave, I have the highest respect
for what you are doing and yes, Debs and De Leon were on the same page in
many ways. De Leon was a bit spicy. Could it have been Latino blood?
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allhailtuna
Joined: 28 Sep 2008
Posts: 9
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Posted: 30 Sep 2008 04:15 pm Post subject:
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mikelepore
wrote:
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He was a tinkering reformist as of the
late 1880s, when he was in the Social Democratic Party with Berger, but
did 1894 or some other incident later cause him to grow out if it? It
would be interesting to find an answer to that.
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Reading Marx's works while in jail, apparently.
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mikelepore
Site
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Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 484
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Posted: 30 Sep 2008 08:01 pm Post subject:
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Unfortunately,
a lot of people read Marx and they still fail to come away with the
message "when someone asks you what you want, tell them a new
system." Instead, a lot of people think you have to take it real
easy, just tell people you want more poor houses or something. God forbid
you should shock anybody into having a heart attack by saying that you
want a whole new system.
But Debs did focus quite a bit on the new system. I
just don't know what he saw in a "multi-tendency" movement --
meaning that you can stand up for principles, while simultaneously
slapping fellows on the back when they abandon principles. It goes
against my grain. Maybe it's just my obsessive personality type.
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davesearles
Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 358
Location: Vermont
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Posted: 30 Sep 2008 10:32 pm Post subject:
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ml:
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I just don't know what he saw in a
"multi-tendency" movement
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ds:
Do you have a cite for that?
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mikelepore
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Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 484
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Posted: 30 Sep 2008 11:22 pm Post subject:
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You
want a citation for the fact that Debs was in the Socialist Party? Any
encyclopedia or U.S. history book.
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davesearles
Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 358
Location: Vermont
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Posted: 01 Oct 2008 01:04 am Post subject:
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When
Debs was in, in the hayday of Debs, what was the multi-tendency?
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mikelepore
Site
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Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 484
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Posted: 01 Oct 2008 03:13 am Post subject:
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There
was always a "left wing of the SP" and a "right wing of
the SP", from the first day it was founded. The whole membership of
the Social Democratic Party, which had left and right wings, was taken
into the SP by merger on the day that the SP was founded. The left wanted
industrial unions, and more drastic changes like workers' control, and
used the phrase "class struggle". The right wanted craft
unions, and less drastic changes, mostly at the municipal level, like
municipally owned water works and sewers and streetcars. Some of the big
names in the SP left were Eugene Debs and the marxist Louis Boudin. Some
of the big names in the SP right were Morris Hillquit and the Call
newspaper editor Algernon Lee. The right usually got it's way due to
greater numbers, but one notable time that the left got it's way was when
Hillquit attempted to get the SP to endorse the government's World War I
policy but instead the SP took a stand against the war. Even Victor
Berger, "the first Socialist congressman", usually part of
Hillquit's right wing, got a prison sentence for speaking out against the
War.
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