Like almost every civilised person on the planet I am quietly praying for an Obama victory in the US elections. I am so nervous about his chances that I have been unable to admit even to myself how much I want him to win. So imagine my disappointment when in Raleigh North Carolina he ridiculed McCain’s accusation that he was a socialist.
Partly I can understand him doing this when you consider what has happened to socialists in the United States. But part of me wanted him to say, “so what”?
I suppose my dream is for a Eugene Victor Debbs.
He was the Socialist Party of America candidate for the presidency between 1904 and 1920, the final time from prison. In a speech in Utah in 1910, he said,
“I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition.”
In the 1912 election he received almost a million votes, and in 1920 from prison over 400,000. Debs was arrested for violating the Espionage Act 1917 which led to socialists being arrested for sedition for opposing the First World War. Deb's speeches against Woodrow Wilson’s administration and the war really got under Wilson’s skin and Wilson lead a vendetta against him.
Partly I can understand him doing this when you consider what has happened to socialists in the United States. But part of me wanted him to say, “so what”?
I suppose my dream is for a Eugene Victor Debbs.
He was the Socialist Party of America candidate for the presidency between 1904 and 1920, the final time from prison. In a speech in Utah in 1910, he said,
“I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition.”
In the 1912 election he received almost a million votes, and in 1920 from prison over 400,000. Debs was arrested for violating the Espionage Act 1917 which led to socialists being arrested for sedition for opposing the First World War. Deb's speeches against Woodrow Wilson’s administration and the war really got under Wilson’s skin and Wilson lead a vendetta against him.
Debs was convicted and sentenced to serve ten years in prison. He was also disenfranchised for life. (Something that cripples the black vote in America to this day).
From the dock he made his most famous speech which contained the following:
“Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free”.
Now that is the sound of a socialist and roll on the day when someone saying that can get elected not just in America but everywhere.
p.s. We had a sparklers and parkin party on Sunday sort of bonfire nite lite. Anyway that was my excuse to mark the fact that Debbs was born on November 5th 1855!
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