Eugene V. Debs

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.

— Eugene V. Debs speaking at his own trial, 1918.

Eugene Victor "Gene" Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American socialist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and a five-time candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. Early in his life he was a member of the Democratic Party, helping to found the American Railway Union which he became the leader of. He was sent to prison for participating in a strike, reading socialist theory during his six-month stay there and from then on orienting himself towards socialism. He was a founding member of the Socialist Party of America, a precursor to the Communist Party USA, where he belonged to and represented its left-wing. He was its candidate for president five times; in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920, getting between 0.6% to 6.0% of the vote in these attempts. Debs was a vocal opponent of America's involvement in World War I and was imprisoned for 10 years under the Sedition Act of 1918, though President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence in 1921. He defended the October Revolution, and the CPUSA put out a biography of him in 1948.

Membership in the Socialist Party of America

Debs represented the left-wing of the Socialist Party and found himself at odds with the centrists and right-wingers who made up the leadership. The leaders allowed all sorts of petty bourgeois elements into the party, allowing it to become increasingly influenced by Christian socialism and other non-Marxist trends. These same leaders also adopted opportunist positions on a host of other issues, from blacks, to trade unions, to World War I, and to immigration, which Debs firmly rebuked.