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THE decision, narrowly reached by Labours national executive committee, to take for itself the power to change the rules by which it is constituted, is a demonstration, as if we needed one, that the character of the movements leadership is critically important.

The closely fought elections to Momentums newly empowered central body, which resulted in the victory of one slate over others, reveals to the wider world divisions which Jeremy Corbyns characteristically inclusive style and moral authority allowed to remain hidden.

Elements among the victorious and defeated tendencies in Momentums elections will find reasons for both unbounded optimism and deep pessimism.

They shouldnt. And nor should the NEC minority who thought constitutional changes which determine the leadership of the party should be made by conference.

To borrow a phrase these things are of the moment, and the constantly changing balance of forces in the eternal tug-of-war between class struggle and class collaboration in the working class movement.

The irruption of social forces grounded in anti-austerity campaigning and the long maturing of the anti-war movement that resulted in Corbyns election, and re-election, and Labours transformative policy changes which made elections themselves more fully democratic have transformed the political landscape of Britain.

It is the recurring crises of capitalism, and the peculiar corruptions of Britains parasitic financialised economy combined with an obscene imperial alliance with US imperialism and the lesser imperial powers gathered in the EU, which move these powerful social forces into action.

There may not be a Labour policy-making assembly this year and there are forces inside Labour who would prefer policy to be the sole prerogative of the parliamentary leadership but the collective will of the hundreds of thousands of people who revived Labour is a force that cannot be ignored.

And neither can the expectations raised among millions of working people by the example of a Labour Party committed to policies which put people before profit.

Labour is to remain the biggest political organisation in Europe although perhaps not as big as the French and Italian communist parties in their heyday, or nowadays, as deeply rooted in working-class communities .

There is always a churn in political parties and some people disappointed at the actions of the present leadership over one question or another will decide to leave, hopefully to continue the struggle in other ways. Manywill find campaigns, trade union activity or political projects where they assess thatthey can make more of a difference.

Some will leap aboard the merry-go-round in which the unresolvable question of whether a new mass party of the left can be created while the Labour Party exists is periodically tested to destruction.

The battle for policy, office and position in Labour is important but pointless unless it arises from mass activity in the working class and reflects progressive changes in the minds of millions.

This newspaper is absolutely committed to the political and organisational unity of the working-class movement, to the unity of the trade union and co-operative movements with socialism.

It is loyal to socialism as the practical expression of working-class political power. It is the tribune of the working class and the platform for every legitimate trend in the working and socialist movement.

Its columns are open to debate questions which are important to the working class and which can be resolved in argument and practice. And it is equally open to some important controversies for which no immediate resolution seems possible but where principled debate is necessary.

The immediate priority is for Labour to renew its connection with the lives and struggles of Britain's working people where they live and work.

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The battle for socialist ideas must be fought across the whole working-class movement, and not just the Labour Party - Morning Star Online

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In 2016, the Communist Party of China declared President Xi Jinping to be the core of the Chinese leadership. In 2018, his ideas were enshrined in the Constitution as Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Until that point, Mao Zedong, the founder of the Peoples Republic of China, the man who had created a Party and an army that had fought Chiang Kai-Shek and the Japanese, who had seized power in 1949, and who had subsequently taken on the United States and the Soviet Union, was the only leader whose thinking had been elevated to the level of Thought. Xi had reached where none of his predecessors had gone before. He had achieved parity with Chairman Mao. It was presumed that he had nowhere else to go.

It now appears that such a presumption is misplaced. Xi is now being equated to Karl MarxZeus himself, on the Communist Mount Olympus.

On the 15th of June this year, the Study Times ran an article titled Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era is 21st Century Marxism. Its author is He Yiting. If the name does not immediately ring a bell, it is because he is not a Member of the elite Central Committee or its Political Bureau, nor is he a Minister. But, he is the Executive Vice President of the Central Party School, and is considered to be within the inner circle. Agnes Andresy, who studies the Chinese leadership, in her book, Xi Jinping: Red China, The Next Generation, calls him the pen of Xi Jinping.

He Yiting describes Xi Jinping Thought as contemporary 21st Century Marxism. According to him, Xi has given many new theories for the New Era, such as the theory of supply side structural reform, the economic New Normal theory, the theory of the Strong Army in a New Era, the New Type of Great Power Relations theory, and the idea of a Community for the Shared Future of Mankind. All these, according to He Yiting, are important symbols of a new leap in the modernization of Marxism in China and an important symbol of Marxism in the 21st Century. Along the way to declaring Xi Jinping as the true heir of Karl Marx, the author subsumes the ideological thoughts of all of Xis predecessors Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, The Three Represents of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintaos Scientific Concept of Development into Xi Jinping Thought, declaring that President Xi stands on the shoulders of giants and sages.

Xis Thought is credited with bringing new and profound changes in the power balance between capitalism and socialism in the world, reshaping its political and economic map, and taking China towards the centre of the world stage. Praise is heaped upon him; he is the master strategist who will fight chaos in the world; the long term visionary who will provide Chinese solutions to global issues; the seer who saw the worlds peace deficit and development deficit and proposed the establishment of a Community for the Shared Future of Mankind. It seems that Marxism can be understood in the 21st century only through a deep study of Xi Jinping Thought.

For Xi Jinping, this caps a remarkable first half of 2020, which has seen him tightening his grip on power everywhere. He has subordinated the Party by telling leading cadres at a special Democratic Life Meeting in May that leading cadres should, dust their hearts and clear their minds and souls of ideological debris and waste. He has insisted that public security organs should be absolutely loyal to the core, absolutely pure and absolutely reliable, and, just last week, has also taken personal control over Chinas military reserve forces. Ideological controls over film, TV, and publicationsincluding online literature publishinghave been enhanced; and Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook accounts of Chinese university students and faculty will now be monitored more rigorously. He has tightened the grip over Hong Kong through the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong SAR. It has prompted a retired senior Central Party School Professor, Cai Xia, to say that all this is tantamount to turning the Party into a political zombie. She accuses this one person, a central leader who has grasped the knife handle, the gun barrel and faults within the system itself to turn 90 million Party Members into slaves. She predicts that in the next five years, China will go through another period of major chaos.

Despite its opening up, China remains, to quote Churchill out of context, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Whether President Xi is making haste because he sees the domestic and global flux as an opportunity or as a threat cannot be said with any degree of confidence. But it takes chutzpah to equate oneself with Marx, and he appears to be a gambling man. The rest of the world needs to note that.

Read the original here:
The Deification of Xi Jinping - Observer Research Foundation

As a junior doctor working in the coronavirus wards, I have witnessed socialism in action. Health workers of every grade have worked to exhaustion to save other people. The workers of the National Health Service, whether in crisis or in times of greater calm, were not motivated by profit or individual gain, but for the highest human principle the fight for life.

This historic crisis has also exposed the dark side of our system. From Boris Johnsons dishonesty to our health systems reliance on grubby corporate profiteers to deliver life-saving equipment, it couldnt be clearer that things should not go on like this. Our country has the second-highest coronavirus death toll in the world. That is a result of not only our governments appalling decisions, but the neoliberal political system that has been the norm for all my life.

Working in the NHS, I have been desperate for Labour to expose the full extent of the crisis our health system is under a systemic failure that has left my colleagues doing their best to save lives with decaying infrastructure and out-of-date PPE. Our party has been far too willing to go along with government policy, and not willing enough to present a courageous alternative.

Many young members are disappointed and angry. I have been persuading them with all my heart to stay in the Labour Party, but we have to prove that were worth sticking with. Tony Benn spoke of the two flames in every person: the flame of anger against injustice, and the flame of hope in a better world. I feel both of those flames burning in me, and this is why I am once again standing to represent young members on our partys national executive committee (NEC).

In the midst of a global crisis, nobody should be too keen on discussing internal elections. But the two things are closely linked. Soon, well be entering one of the greatest recessions in history. When that crisis will be handled by a hard-right Tory government propped up by billionaires and corporate conmen, we need a party that wont accept their plans to reshape society in their interests but will resist with all its might. All too often, it feels like Sir Keir Starmers leadership is doing quite the opposite.

When asked by angry members about why they should stay, I remind them of the socialist heritage in our party. The left-wingers who ignored Labours leadership and confronted the Blackshirts during the struggles of the Thirties. The stalwarts like Bernie Grant and Diane Abbott, who fought racism and sexism when these issues were embarrassing to the party establishment. The Tribune group and union-sponsored MPs who resisted attempts to water down our commitment to workers rights when we were in power, and figures like Jeremy Corbyn and Dennis Skinner who spoke out against the War on Terror and the demonisation of Britains Muslim community.

This is the red thread of Labour I proudly identify with. And organising with the oppressed must remain at the heart of our path to victory. When a young, multiracial movement in Bristol tears down the statue of a slave trader, Young Labour should be on their side, proudly and loudly saying that Black Lives Matter. From the oppression of the Kashmiris and the annexation of the West Bank to the murderous counter-offensive against socialists and social democrats in Latin America, Young Labour must stand with them.

When trans people face horrific levels of discrimination for simply existing, Young Labour should stand in solidarity with them, whether that bigotry comes from street harassment or government legislation. When Boris Johnson tries to force teachers and carers to work in potentially lethal conditions during a pandemic, Young Labour must be unconditionally with those workers and their unions, not invested in petty parliamentary games.

This is the Young Labour Ive helped to build over the past two years, and one we must keep on building. As our generation faces Tory rule, a resurgent far-right, living and working at the mercy of bosses and landlords, and a looming climate breakdown, we need an organised, fighting youth movement.

I am proud of the last two years. At Labours 2019 party conference, Young Labour wrote and passed a comprehensive housing crisis policy. It demanded rent controls, the end of Right to Buy on day one of a Labour government, and for legal powers regarding the public ownership of land, so that Britain can finally build genuinely affordable housing on a mass scale.

I organised a National Political School, which brought together young members with council leaders, trade union militants, Windrush justice campaigners, socialist economists and veterans of the underground struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Our conference Youth Days have also seen similarly fascinating discussions between young people from all over the world, coupled with inviting socials that strengthen the bonds and friendship of the whole movement.

And after the era of New Labour contempt for our unions, Ive used my time as an NEC member to maximise the voice and role of organised workers. I lobbied successfully for all Labour Party employees to be paid at least a living wage of 10 an hour. After years of what seemed like a hopeless struggle, I was delighted to begin the process by which Young Labour members have the open, democratic student wing they deserve. All student members can now elect their representatives for the first time.

All these things and more met with organised resistance. Looking at the relationships we built with the Norwegian Labour Party, the Austrian Social Democrats, and the Workers Party of Lula who we made our honorary president in a gesture of international defiance and solidarity we saw that Young Labour lags far behind our sister organisations elsewhere. Unlike in other countries, young democratic socialists in Britain lack the institutional resources and autonomy to run mass campaigns that speak directly to young peoples concerns and hopes.

Under the previous leadership, even the democracy review proved to be a huge disappointment, despite Young Labours best efforts. Given the ugly internal culture of unaccountable power and prejudice unmasked by the leaked Labour report, greater transparency and democracy is still the watchword.

Labour frustrates us all sometimes. I campaign to make it better because I love this party and desperately want a Labour government. We cannot win with young people alone, but we cannot win without my generation either. From Jeremy Corbyns leadership to the Black Lives Matter protests, we certainly wont win by delegitimising visions of a better world that galvanise the youth. They are movements, not moments, and our party cant afford to ignore them.

We cant forget that this Tory government went hard and won big on false promises of radical change to left-behind communities. There cant be any real return to the false comfort of business-as-usual politics. We need a Labour Party that is serious about a socialist alternative that takes us from anger to hope and victory. I desperately want Keir Starmer to be the next Prime Minister, but we have to be honest that wont happen unless Labour goes into the next election staying true to the radical principles on which he was elected to lead our party.

These are my truths, and if you lend me your vote to send me back to the NEC, I will fight for them with determination. I will do all I can to build a Young Labour that leads the way. I dont take no for an answer, and I dont stop until we win.

Original post:
Lara McNeill: Why Im standing again to be Labours NEC youth rep - LabourList

4 July 2020

Today marks the 244th anniversary of the public proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, on July 4, 1776, which established the United States of America. By the time the Declaration was issued, the American colonistsand especially those of Massachusettshad already been at war with the immensely powerful military forces of Great Britain for 15 months. Though the final decision for independence had not yet been taken, the drafting of a Declaration was assigned on June 11 by the Continental Congress, assembled in Philadelphia, to a Committee of Five. It consisted of Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, John Adams of Massachusetts, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut.

After agreeing on an outline of the document, the Committee decided that the first draft should be written by the 33-year-old Tom Jefferson, whose exceptional intellect and remarkable literary gifts were already widely recognized. On June 28, he completed his draft, which was then reviewed by members of the Congress. Various changes were made in the course of the editing process. The most substantial change was the removal of Jeffersons indictment of Great Britain for having imposed slavery on the colonies. On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted a resolution that authorized the break with Great Britain. Two days later, on July 4, it approved the final draft of the Declaration of Independence.

The immediate political consequence of the documentthe formal break with Britain and the initiation of a full-scale war to secure the independence of the United Stateswas, in itself, sufficient to impart to the Declaration immense and enduring historical significance. But it is not only the direct political impact of the document but, rather, the principles it proclaimed that determined the world historical stature of the Declaration.

The document begins with the words, When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another What these words meant was that governments, and the political and social relations upon which they were based and which they defended, were not timeless and unalterable. They were the creation of men, not God. This assertion exploded the essential justification, sanctified by religion, for monarchy, aristocracy, i.e., for all forms of political power based on obscurantist veneration of bloodlines. What was created by man could be changed by man.

The Declaration then proceeded to a remarkable assertion: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In a strictly empirical sense, there was nothing self-evidentthat is, so obviously true that it hardly required further argumentabout any of these truths. Reality, as it was to be observed in every part of the world, including the colonies, contradicted what the Declaration claimed to be self-evident.

In the world of the late eighteenth century, most human beings were treated like beasts of burden, if not worse. Where in the world did existing conditions substantiate the claim that all of humanity had been created equal? The monarchies and aristocracies were based on the unchallengeable legitimacy of inherent inequality. The place of people in society, even where there had been a slow erosion of feudal relations, was a manifestation of a divine design.

Where was Life, for the great mass of people, honored and protected? In advanced Britain, children as young as six could be hanged for pick-pocketing a wealthy persons handkerchief. The great mass of people lived in wretched poverty, enforced by strict relations of feudal and semi-feudal hierarchy. There was little Happiness in the lives of the general population, let alone for the millions throughout the world and in the Americas who were enslaved and hardly considered to be human.

The truths invoked by Jefferson were not self-evident in a crudely empirical sense. They were, rather, truths that were obtained through the application of scientific thought, i.e., Reason, as it had developed under the influence of the physicist Isaac Newton, materialist thinkers such as John Locke, and the great French philosophes of the Enlightenment, to the study of history and human society. It was the application of Reason that determined what was, and was not, politically legitimate. It was science, not the irrational and unsubstantiated invocations of a divine order, that determined what must be. It was in this profound sense that the equality of man and the unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness were self-evident.

Jefferson and his comrades in arms were well aware that empirically existing political and social conditions did not conform to the self-evident Truths asserted in the Declaration. From this fact, the following conclusion was drawn: Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Therefore, whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Thus, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed revolution to be a legitimate and even necessary means of removing from power governments that had become oppressive and injurious to the Happiness of the people. Jefferson adhered to this principle and displayed not the slightest squeamishness when the masses of France, inspired by American Revolution, took bloody vengeance against King Louis XVI and the aristocracy. Louis, declared Jefferson, ought to be punished like other criminals. Rather than witness the defeat of the French Revolution, Jefferson wrote to a friend, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it is now. He expressed unmitigated joy at the prospect of the revolutions victory, which would bring at length kings, nobles and priests to the scaffolds which they have been so long deluging with human blood.

It is, of course, an undeniable historical fact that Jeffersons personal ownership of slaves and his compromises with slavery represent the great irony and even tragedy of his life. They were the expression in his personal biography of the existing social conditions and contradictions of the world into which he was borna world in which slavery, serfdom, and numerous forms of indentured servitude flourished and whose legitimacy was hardly questioned. No doubt, the moralizing philistines of academia will continue to condemn Jefferson. But their condemnations do not alter by one iota the revolutionary impact of the Declaration of the Independence.

The American Revolution of 177583 did not solve the problem of slavery. This is not because the solution was blocked by Jefferson or other revolutionary leaders, like Washington, who owned slaves. The incomplete character of the first stage of the American bourgeois democratic revolution was determined by the existing objective conditionsand not simply those that existed in North America. Mankind, as Marx was later to explain, always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. The conditions for a decisive settlement with slavery did not yet exist. That still required several decades of industrial development and the emergence of an economically powerful capitalist class in the North. Moreover, that class had to develop a democratic political movement capable of mobilizing masses and sustaining a long and bitter civil war.

This essential social and economic process unfolded rapidly in the decades that followed the American Revolution. The capitalist development of the North became increasingly incompatible with the political domination of the United States by the Slave Power. This objective incompatibility found its ideological expression in the ever more intense awareness that the ideals of human equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence could not be reconciled with the horrifying reality of slavery.

However, it must be stressed that the process of historical causation that led up to the Civil War was not driven in a one-sided manner by socioeconomic factors, with the ideological conflicts a mere reflection of the former. The influence exerted by the principles articulated in the Declaration played an immense, almost independent, role in influencing mass political consciousness in the North and preparing it for an intransigent struggle against the Slave Power.

Abraham Lincolns intellectual and political development epitomized the influence exerted by Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration that he authored. Again and again, in numerous speeches, Lincoln invoked the political legacy of Jefferson. For example, in a letter written in 1859, Lincoln stated:

All honor to Jeffersonto the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, and so to embalm it there, that today and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.

Following his election to the presidency in 1860, Lincoln declared: I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

And on his way to Washington to assume the presidency, Lincoln explained:

It [the Revolution] was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland, but [of] that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence, which gave liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson was the author of the great revolutionary manifesto that provided the ideological inspiration for the Civil War. Under Lincolns leadership, the Union armieswhich ultimately mobilized and armed tens of thousands of slaves in struggle against the Confederacydestroyed slavery.

Of course, the United States that emerged from the Civil War soon betrayed the promises of democracy and equality that Lincoln had made. The new birth of freedom gave way to the imperatives of modern capitalism. A new form of social struggle, between an emerging working class and an industrial bourgeoisie, came to dominate the political and social landscape. In this new class struggle, the northern bourgeoisie saw the benefit of an alliance with the remnants of the old slave-owning class. Reconstruction was brought to an end. Racism was incited and utilized as a potent weapon against the unity of the working class.

Intransigent opposition to this specific form of political reaction became a central task of the working class in the fight for socialism. Only though the establishment of workers' power, the ending of capitalism, and the building of a socialist society on a world scale can the scourge of racism and all forms of social oppression be overcome. And in this fight, the words and deeds of both Jefferson and Lincoln will continue to inspire. All that was historically progressive in their lifework lives on in the modern socialist movement.

David North

Here is the original post:
The two American Revolutions in world history - World Socialist Web Site

By 1920, the name Eugene Debs represented different things to different groups. For some, he was a visionary union leader and politician who rose to the national stage to unite American workers under the banner of socialism. To others, he was a dangerous traitor who sought to discredit the nations war effort and undo the tremendous progress the countrys economy had made in the beginning of the 20th century. And to the employees at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, he was inmate number 9653.

The first two viewpoints depend solely on a person's political leanings, but the third was an indisputable fact. Debs was indeed an imprisoned manwho also happened to be running for President of the United States from his cell.

Eugene Victor Debs was born on November 5, 1855, in Terre Haute, Indiana, to Marguerite Bettrich and Jean Daniel Debs, two immigrants from Alsace, France.They came to the U.S. in1849and worked in the grocery business. At age 14, Eugenetook a jobas a paint scraper at Vandalia Railroad, where he earned just $.50 a day. He soon moved up to become a railroad fireman, shoveling piles of coal into the locomotives firebox for more than $1 each night [PDF]. This was at a time when workers toiled for16 hoursa day, six days a week.

In 1875, Debs was elected secretary of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and was an editor for the organizations monthly magazine. Seeing the dangers firemen faced firsthand, Debs said his brotherhood would fight to provide for the widows and orphans who are daily left penniless and at the mercy of public charity by the death of a brother.His growing interest in social and economic issues also led to a two-term stint as Terre Haute City Clerk from 1879 to 1883, and a term serving as a Democrat in the Indiana General Assembly in 1884.

On June 20, 1893, Debs's ambitions grew when he founded the American Railway Union (ARU) to protect all workers throughout the railroad industry, not just firemen. The union was soon one of the countrys largest, with 125 local chapters nationwide; at one point, enrollments hit 2000 a day.

In May 1894, after suffering a series of salary cuts,workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company walked off the job. In response,Debs and the ARU organized a massive sympathy boycott of any trains and railroads using Pullman cars, and by June,125,000 ARU workershadjoined the cause.A nation that thrived on cross-country train commerce was now being stopped in its tracks.

The workers'defiance soon turned to anger. After Debs made a speech to workers on June 29 in Blue Island, Illinois, some in the crowd broke off and began a riot. By day's end, buildings had been burned to the ground and a locomotive with a mail train attached to it lay topped over.

With the U.S. mail system affected by the strike, andvital rail service crippled,President Grover Clevelandnow considered the unruliness to be a federal matter. In early July, Attorney General Richard Olney issued an injunction against Debs and other ARU leaders that forbid them from communicating with their union members. The press at the time turned on Debs, too, claiming the strike he organized around the Pullman situation was a power grab. One political cartoon in the Chicago Tribune portrayed Dictator Debsas a cigar-chomping would-be king who liked to rest his feet on the U.S. Constitution [PDF].

President Cleveland deployed troops to Chicago to quell the ongoing demonstrations, but on July 7, the conflicts turned violent. Members of the National Guard killed anywhere from four to 30 strikers in the clash.Debs, who was no longer legallyallowed to communicate with his members, could do nothing to calm tensions.

That same month, Debs was arrested and charged with contempt of court and conspiracy to interfere with U.S. mail,and spent six months behind bars. The ARU crumbled soon after, and while many Pullman workers were eventually rehired, they had to agree in writing to never form a union.

Behind bars, Debs read Karl Marxs Das Kapitaland convertedto socialism.In 1897, two years after leaving prison, he established the Social Democratic Party of America.

Under this banner, Debs made his first run for president in 1900 on a platform revolving around workers equality and better wages. William McKinleywon the race with a total of 7,207,923 votes, while Debs garnered just86,935.Still, it was a start.

Debs ran again in 1904, this time as a member of the next political party he helped establish: the Socialist Party of America. His totals jumped to around 402,000 votes; in 1908, he returned with 420,000 votes, losing to Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, respectively.

Debs's peak came in the election of 1912one of the great wild cards in U.S. history. It featured the incumbent, Taft, running against Democrat Woodrow Wilson; former president Roosevelt, who was running as a member of the Progressive Party; and Debs, running again as a Socialist on a platform that put an emphasis on workers, women's suffrage, and ending child labor.

Debs fell short once again, but his total ballooned to more than900,000 votes6 percent of the popular vote. It's still the highest percentage of the vote a Socialist candidate has ever received in a presidential election, and its more than double the amount he earned in 1908. It would be another eight years before his fifth and final presidential campaignarguably one of the strangest the country has seen.

By 1914, Debs was expressing his ardent opposition to Americas seemingly inevitable involvement in World War I in a series of anti-war editorials in the National Rip-Saw, where he stuck to one main message: Capitalist nations not only exploit their workers, but ruthlessly invade, plunder, and ravage one another. The profit system is responsible for it all.

Written words gave way to public rallies. Debs traveled across the Northeast to speak to his base of frustrated workers looking for a unifying voice against war. During one memorable stop in Boston, he asked a packed crowd of workers: Must we send the workers of one country against those of another because a citizen has been torpedoed on the high seas, while we do nothing about the 600,000 workingmen that are crushed each year needlessly under our industrial machinery?

Socialist opposition to the military action had little real effect. On April 6, 1917, the United States officially declared war against Germany. Just a few months later, Congress passed the Espionage Act, which targeted disloyal citizens who attempted to interfere with military progress during the war. This was followed by thecomplementary Sedition Act of 1918, giving federal authorities the power to punish anyone using disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language toward the Constitution, the military, or the country.

Debs knew the risks he was taking with his anti-war crusade, but hecontinued throughout the Midwest, culminating in a speech at a Socialist Party gathering in Canton, Ohio, on June 16, 1918. For two hours, the impassioned orator made his case, criticizing everything from the war to the Sedition Act to the military draft.

The master class has always declared the wars, the 62-year-old told the crowd. The subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to loseespecially their lives.

Days later, Debs was arrested while heading to another party event in Cleveland. The jury found him guilty onthree counts of violating the Espionage and Sedition acts. On September 18, 1918, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Even prison couldnt quiet Debs. In fact, by 1920, he was again nominated to be the Socialist Party's candidate for president, his fifth run overall. While he was accustomed to campaigning by train and speaking in front of thousands, in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Debs was allowed [PDF] to give one political statement every week, which was then handed over to news wires. Supporters did the campaigning for him on the ground, making posters featuring the slogan From Atlanta Prison to the White House, 1920 and campaign buttons that showed Debs in a prison jumpsuit with the words For President: Convict No. 9653 splashed across them. It wasn't so much a campaign as it was a protest against what many thought was Debs's unconstitutional imprisonment.

Amazingly, Debs still captured 3.4 percent of the popular vote, meaning more than 910,000 people chose a socialist in prisonover Warren G. Harding or his opponent, James M. Cox.

By December 1921, with the war over, President Harding pardoned Debsand invited him to the White House. I have heard so damned much about you, Mr. Debs, that I am now very glad to meet you personally, Harding said upon meeting him. Indeed, Debs had left prison almost as a mythic figure to his followers50,000 of whom lined up to watch his train pull in upon his return to Terra Haute.

Though the meeting with Harding was as close as he ever got to the White House, Debs proved he didn't need to win an election to make his voice heard.

Link:
Eugene V. Debs, the Five-Time Socialist Candidate for President Who Once Campaigned From Prison - Mental Floss