Eugene Debs
Shawn Fain’s Christian radicalism
Earlier this week I wondered why people were not talking and writing more about UAW president Shawn Fain’s Christian faith. Church historian Heath Carter has published the piece I was hoping for. Here is a taste of his Jacobin article […]
What would early 20th century Tampa cigar workers think about Ron DeSantis’s “working class roots”?
As Shawn Gude writes at Jacobin: “May Day is not a holiday for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, much as he might pose as a working-class champion. For a more robust vision of freedom, we can look to the Florida Socialists […]
In 1920, Eugene Debs got 1 million votes for president of the United States. He was in jail.
Today someone asked me if Donald Trump could still run for president if he is in jail. I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs received over 900,000 votes while […]
Abraham Lincoln: Working class hero?
Everyone wants to claim Lincoln. Even socialists. Here is University of Arkansas history professor Matthew Stanley at Jacobin: Would Lincoln’s sincere hatred of the Slave Power have translated after the war to a critique of the Money Power and other […]
“Socialism has been as impossible to separate from the narrative of the nation’s history as the capitalist economy itself”
Over at Literary Hub, Georgetown historian Michael Kazin offers a “Brief History of American Socialism.” Here is a taste: “America will never be a socialist country,” declared Donald Trump in his 2019 State of the Union Address, given to a […]
Eugene Debs: “We never hear of Capital Day, not because Capital has no day, but because every day is Capital Day.”
OK–I realize I am a day late here, but if you read Eugene Debs‘s 1903 Labor Day message you will understand why that is OK. According to Debs, “The struggle in which we are now engaged will end only when […]
Bruce Springsteen’s embrace of liberalism
Yesterday we published Tony Norman’s piece on Renegades: Born in the U.S.A., the much acclaimed Obama-Springsteen podcast. Check it out here. Read Norman’s piece alongside Dennis M. Hogan’s essay at The Baffler. In “Runaway American Dreams,” Hogan traces Springsteen’s move […]