I realize I’m cutting it a bit close on Sunday night with this week’s This Week in Capitalism, but I had shit to do. Better late than never. Enjoy.

Eugene Debs was a progressive and prominent figure in his community, and a founding member of the International Labor Union. In 1884 he was elected to the Indiana state legislature as a Democrat. However, Debs became frustrated with certain conservative unions, and disillusioned with the unproductive legislature of his political party, as many Democrats are today. His dedication to the labor movement and willingness to enact change made Debs adopt a more confrontational approach than his fellow Democrats.

In 1894 Debs was an organizer of railroad workers in the American Railway Union and led a nationwide boycott in support of Pullman Palace Car Company workers, who were striking against a 28 percent wage cut. The entire railway system came grinding to a halt, and the capitalist state reacted with full force. The federal government obtained an injunction, and President Cleveland sent the United States Army on the grounds that the strike was hindering the delivery of mail. US troops fired into a crowd of five thousand strike sympathizers in Chicago, killing thirteen and arresting seven hundred. Debs was one of those who was arrested, violating a court injunction which prohibited him from doing or saying anything to assist in a strike.

During his six months in prison Debs read socialist literature such as the works of Karl Marx. It was then that the reality of an American class struggle became clear to him. Debs switched from being a Democrat to being a Socialist. He was released from prison in 1895 and started his socialist political career, devoting the rest of his life to the cause of the working people.

He ran as a socialist for the presidency in 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1912. The 1912 election won Debs 6 percent of the country’s vote, which is an all-time high for any Socialist Party candidate. In 1914, Europe was involved in World War I, and propaganda was beginning to turn Americans against the Germans. In 1917, President Wilson and Congress brought the nation into the war. The Espionage Act was quickly passed.

The Espionage Act was an unconstitutional federal law which made it a crime to say anything discouraging the armed forces. However, Debs was undeterred by the fact that he may serve time for his anti-war message. He knew that the war was a direct result of economic interest, and that the ideological differences between opposing parties were just topics of convenience to rally the public.

During this week in capitalism, Eugene Debs was imprisoned for opposing US entry into WWI after he gave an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio. During the speech, Debs told listeners; “Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder…. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.”

Mr. Debs’ constitutional rights were violated in the interest of capitalism, as many others were and still are to this day. He was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison. Before sentencing, Debs told the judge, “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.”

Debs appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld his conviction under the Espionage Act. This act would later be extended by the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it illegal to speak out against the government at all.

In 1920, while in prison, Debs ran one last time for the presidency. He received nearly one million votes as a convict. On Christmas Day in 1921, President Warren G. Harding released Debs from prison, commuting his sentence to time served. Debs had fought for the rights of prisoners in the penitentiary, and on the day of his release, the warden ignored prison regulations and opened every cellblock to allow over two thousand inmates to say goodbye to Eugene Debs. A roar went up as Debs left the prison. He died five years later at the age of 70 in Elmhurst, Illinois. In 1924, Eugene Debs was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Finnish Socialist Karl H. Wiik on the ground that “Debs started to work actively for peace during World War I, mainly because he considered the war to be in the interest of capitalism.”

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