- What is Socialism?
- What is Marxism?
- The Healthcare Fallout
- Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement
- Alabama Communist Party
- Hiroshima & Nagasaki
- Immigration Enforcement
- School Privatization
- DC Budget 101
- Reconstruction & Democracy
- Uber & the Gig Economy
- Ecosocialism
- US-China ‘Cold War’
- The Anticommunist Crusades
- Police Abolition
- Responding to COVID
- Repression of Dissent
- Right-to-Work: Virginia
- Neoliberalism
- The Labor Movement
- Rent Strike
- Social Reproduction
- Sanctions As War
- A Radical History of the Young Lords
Eugene Debs and American Socialism
As a five-time presidential candidate, and founding member of both the Socialist Party and Industrial Workers of World, Eugene Debs’s legacy has loomed large over the American socialist movement for over a decade. Jailed for his role in the 1894 Pullman Strike and again for his opposition to US entry into World War I, Debs’s fight for working-class power was not without risk. In a conversation with Jacobin’s Shawn Gude, this Socialist Night School session explored the life of Debs, his vision of socialism, how it was tied to his commitments to democracy and internationalism, and why it still matters today. Shawn Gude is a senior editor at Jacobin. He is currently writing a book on Eugene Debs, and he also runs the Debs Dispatch, a Substack about all things Eugene Debs.
Recommended readings:
The Canton Speech by Eugene Debs
How I Became a Socialist by Eugene Debs
Free Speech Is a Left-Wing Value by Chip Gibbons
Repressing Radicalism by Chip Gibbons
Eugene Debs Believed in Socialism Because He Believed in Democracy by Shawn Gude