It’s a blog - at least it was a blog until a few weeks back.
At the time of the blog’s creation in December 2010, I was reading a bit of Freud. I guess you can say I had a ‘Freudian Complex’: an obsessive notion about his work and his ideas. One thing led to another and I named my blog ‘Freudian Complex’. I thought it was pretty funny; I think some others did, too.
So it turns out my most re-blogged item is a photo of Lindsay Lohan. Just my luck.
If Nietzsche was alive today, and discovered, after eleven months, that this blog would meet a premature end, he might have said something along these lines:
“Freudian Complex is dead. Freudian Complex remains dead. And we have killed it. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become bloggers simply to appear worthy of it?
But that assumes Nietzsche would be interested in the sporadic rants of an undergraduate student. Mind you, stranger things have happened: for instance, Socialist Alternative opportunistically defending workers rights, and Kim Kardashian’s 2007 sex tape, lasting longer than her 2011 marriage among other things.
Anyhow, I feel as though the time is right to pull the pin on the Complex. Since I last wrote - a date I can’t even recall - a lot has happened away from the sphere of sporadic rants. In turn, this has, for better and for worse, impeded on the writing process.
I am humbled by the amount of support the Complex received during its marvelous 11 month run. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Never did I expect rants about sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and Freud would bring occasional joy to the boys and girls of Tumblrworld, even my social circle on Facebook.
I leave with Dr. Strangelove’s concluding remarks. If the end of Freudian Complex can be half as beautiful and hilarious as the juxtaposition of nuclear annihilation and Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again”, I’ll be very, very happy.
“Sir, I have a plan. Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!”
In the words of Vera Lynn, we’ll meet again. Don’t know where, don’t know when. But I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day.
Your comrade,
Freudian Complex
Michael Malthouse shirtfronts Nathan Buckley after quitting the Magpies.
I’m still not sure if I like Jack Keroauc. I have a love-hate relationship with his style of writing. At the best of times it’spoetic bliss; at the worst of times it’s prolonged banality of the seemingly insignificant. Needless to say, I did find this interesting: his literary approach.
I mimic this every time before I smoke. Unfortunately, hardly anyone gets the joke.
(Source: spiceweasel)
Only Stalinists wear white suits.
it’s funny because it’s true.
I have discovered lately Scene never dies..
(Source: 365daysinthelifeofmyself, via jesusdoesthedishes-deactivated2)
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Devo, 1977.
When intense political debate was raging in the corridors of Trades Hall, Devo deprived my mind of any worthwhile contribution.
(Source: youtube.com)
Almost a week ago to the day, I made a speech at the Melbourne branch of the Socialist Party on the life of American socialist Eugene Debs. To those that missed it, or have the time to check it, here’s what I had to say. To entice those who are daunted by the length, it does include jokes at the expense of Kerensky and the Mensheviks.
Introduction
Good evening comrades, one and all, and thank you for joining me tonight as I will explore the life of a prominent American socialist, who once said in 1898:
“Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of exploitation, there will Socialism, fertilized by misery, watered by tears, and vitalized by agitation be also found, unfurling its class-struggle banner and proclaiming its mission of emancipation”.
Vladimir Lenin, shortly after the October Revolution in 1917 described Eugene Debs, as “one of the best loved leaders of the American proletariat”. Lenin went further, and called Debs “a real representative of the revolutionary proletariat”.
Debs was held in high esteem by those within the socialist movement throughout the world.
He was America’s most prominent socialist; running for the Presidency of the United States, under the banner of the Socialist Party five times in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920 - the last, ran entirely from his prison cell in Atlanta, Georgia – imprisoned on the grounds of “treason” for speaking out against American involvement in World War I.
He was America’s most prominent trade unionist; involved in several brotherhoods, he quickly rose through the ranks, and he quickly became convinced that solidarity was vital among unions; confrontational tactics necessary to advance the needs of the American working class.
He was instrumental in the establishment of the first industrial union in the United States: the American Railway Union (ARU) in 1893. Debs, as leader of the ARU led numerous rebellions against the bourgeois industrial giants of the United States in the 1890s, and was successful; winning the demands of many. “Striking workers in trouble”, in the words of James P. Cannon on the 100th anniversary of Debs’ birth in 1955, “could always depend on Gene. He responded to every call, and wherever there was action he was apt to turn up in the thick of it”.
But in 1894 he was jailed for leading what was to be known as the ‘Debs Rebellion’; a strike action, led by the ARU against the Pullman Palace Car Company over a 25, even 50 per cent cut in worker’s wages. The United States Government intervened, and the strike was broken; Debs imprisoned for six months for his role as strike leader.
Over the course of six months, it was there, in Woodstock prison, some 55 miles outside of Chicago, Illinois – under the guidance of leading Marxist theoretician Karl Kautsky - where Debs learnt the basic essentials of Marxism. Debs was, in his own words, “baptized in socialism”. He describes in his 1902 publication ‘How I became a Socialist’ that:
“Socialism gradually laid hold of me in its own irresistible fashion. I began to read and think and dissect the anatomy of the system in which workingmen, however organised, could be shattered and battered and splintered at every stroke”.
Debs’ newfound political beliefs led to the foundation of the first truly “Americanised” socialist movement under the banner of the Socialist Party in 1901.
And combined with his renowned oratory – noted for “denouncing Capitalism with a tongue of fire”; his ability to stir up the people and sow the seed of socialism far and wide – Eugene Debs was able “to shake them loose from the habits of conformity and resignation, to show them a new road” and subsequently help make the Socialist Party a formidable force in American politics in the early 20th century.
Comrades, we can therefore learn from both the successes and failures of Eugene Debs and his profound impact upon the American socialist movement.
We can learn how to improve the creation of class consciousness through the trade union movement, but also that of the general public through participation in bourgeois elections – taking inspiration from the 1,000 Socialist Party members – who by 1912 were elected to public office in 337 towns and cities across America; including 56 mayors, 305 alderman and councilmen, 22 police officials, 155 school officials and four pound-keepers – from a dues-paying membership base of 117,984 people.
Yet we can also learn from the many failings.
Debs’ failure to play an active part in the factional struggle between revolutionaries and reformists – in which the reformists eventually prevailed in the 1919 split; Debs’ failure to assert leadership on the National Executive – limiting his own role in organisation and implementation of Socialist Party policy; and Debs’ belief of ‘the all-inclusive party’ collectively undermined potential revolutionary sentiment in the United States, while those in Russia and Germany flourished.
Early Life
When Eugene Victor Debs was born on November 5, 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana, the world was undergoing an era of political and social upheaval.
Several years prior to his birth, the Revolutions of 1848 swept throughout Europe. Despite the defeat of the revolutionaries (who sought to bring an end to royal and feudal absolutism), at the hands of the reactionary powers, desperate to cling onto archaic power structures; the deaths of countless, thousands of people fighting for a better life instilled a greater, more violent desire for social and political change.
The United States at the time of Debs’ birth was an emerging capitalist and imperial power. Rapid industrialisation from the 1830s onwards, led to economic expansion; creating jobs that attracted thousands of migrants. The American working class expanded, often living in crowded slums in the cities. By the 1850s, 45 percent of revenue, generated by American economic activity, was controlled by a mere 10 percent of the population. For that reason, successive administrations, from Andrew Jackson to James Buchanan, were able to finance successful military campaigns in Texas and Mexico, under the mystical guise of ‘Manifest Destiny’ and gradually expand its imperial power in the Americas.
Debs’ parents Jean Daniel and Marguerite were French petty-bourgeois migrants from Colmar, Alsace. Despite the prosperity of the Debs’ family – (the family owned a textile mill and meat market prior to his flight to the United States) - Jean Daniel defied his father and his family’s petty-bourgeois life in northern France and left for the United States, eventually settling in the tiny, industrial Midwestern town of Terre Haute, Indiana.
Until the age of 14, Debs attended Terre Haute public schools. He dropped out of high school in 1869 to become a painter in the local railway yards. Working continuously on the railroads until 1875, while putting himself through business school at night, it was during this time – in the aftermath of the Depression of 1873 - when Debs took interest in the rights of the working class and the organisation of labour.
Early Union Activism
“(Debs’) tissue was saturated by the spirit of the working class…(he) had fired an engine and been stung by the exposure and hardship of the rail”. It is of no surprise comrades, when the local lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (BLF) was organised in Terre Haute on February 27, 1875, Debs was admitted as a charter member and at once was chosen as security.
Day and night, Debs worked tirelessly for the fledgling union; horrified by the conservative nature of railway brotherhoods; focused more on providing fellowship and services rather than collective bargaining. Debs became convinced that solidarity was vital among unions; confrontational tactics necessary to advance the needs of the American working class. Debs was able to put into practice his newfound unionist beliefs; he went onto help organise various transportation brotherhoods, each developing militant attitudes.
He steadily built up a reputation as an organiser within the community through his involvement with the BFL, rising to associate editor in 1878 and by 1880 the BFL grand-security and treasurer and began a successful political career, winning election in 1879 and 1881 as the city clerk of Terre Haute as a member of the Democratic Party. Debs was to be elected into the Indiana General Assembly in 1884; however he detested political processes and chose not to seek another term. Preoccupied with increase union activity, Debs came to the belief that only the working class, not the bourgeois in elected offices could affect political change.
Debs’ ideas on the union movement underwent further change after he sought not to seek re-election in 1886. Already convinced of militancy to advance the needs of the working classes, he began to believe that organising unions along trade or craft lines, rather than on an industrial basis made it more difficult for workers to join together in common struggle against industrial giants.
Debs acted upon his new convictions with resolve and resigned his $4,000 a year post as grand secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in February 1893. Four months later in June, Debs, with the assistance of a few others organised the American Railway Union in Chicago; the first industrial union in the United States open to all railway worker regardless of craft or skill. By 1894, the ARU boasted membership base of 150,000 people from across the country, drawing much of its membership from craft unions.
Comrades, if you have managed to keep up with the developments in the life of Eugene Debs until 1894, I commend you for your efforts. I’ll admit until 1894, the life of Debs is rather uneventful – like the political prospects of Martov and Plekhanov after the 1903 split. However, if you did you lose interest; you’ll be as thrilled as a Bolshevik upon Kerensky’s flight to Paris to learn that Debs’ foundation of the American Railway Union was to have a profound impact – not only upon his life, but also that of the socialist movement in the United States.
Shortly after its foundation in June 1893, the ARU, under the leadership of Debs, defeated the Great Northern Railway Company - which over a period of five months cut workers wages from 30 to 70 percent, by March bringing wage levels to an average $40 a month. The union agreed to a strike motion and for 18 days not a pound of freight was moved and not a wheel turned. Great Northern capitulated 18 days later, and the 9,000 employees gained an astonishing 97.5 percent of what they claimed as their rights.
The Pullman Strike
Comrades, to understand the transformation of Eugene Debs from progressive unionist to socialist, the Pullman strike, and corresponding events, were the turning points of his life.
Upon learning that Pullman Palace Car Company workers were being subjected to wholesale dismissals, and wage cuts ranging from 25 to 50 percent, the ARU began to mobilise branches in Pullman in March and April 1894. And they were successful with 19 local branches formed and 4,000 members joining within 2 months. At noon on May 11, the 4,000 workers left their jobs with the full support of Debs and the ARU. A month later, after attempts at arbitration were blocked, Debs organised a boycott of Pullman cars coming into effect on June 26. In solidarity, other unions supported the Pullman workers; railroads were paralysed from California to New York as more than 150,000 joined the fight.
President Grover Cleveland – who ran in the 1892 presidential election under the banner of “friend of the working man”, sought to intervene, for it was “their duty to take this matter in hand”. With mail routes disrupted as a result of the strike, President Cleveland used this as an excuse to intervene.
The government mobilised marshals in Chicago to protect the mail; lawyers sent to conduct cases against the strikers. On July 2, Congress implemented the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, first introduced in 1890 – preventing the right to strike. The troops stormed into Pullman on Independence Day 1894, with the backing of government and the press to use force against the strikers. 25 were killed; 60 wounded.
The strike action was destabilised, with leaders arrested and local branches sabotaged, conceding defeat on August 2.
In the aftermath of the strike, the injunction orders were finally exercised and Eugene Debs, along with other strike leaders were jailed for a sentence of 6 months on the grounds of mail obstruction. However, the actions of Debs and the ARU demonstrated that the class struggle had reached a new level, both determination of the working class and development of class consciousness.
Woodstock Jail
For six months, Eugene Debs was incarcerated in Woodstock jail.
It was in prison, where his union activism and genuine concern for the American working class finally culminated for Debs to acknowledge his hatred for capitalism. Fellow strike and ARU leader, Martin J. Elliot mentored Debs on socialism, as did Karl Kautsky on the basics of Marxism. Debs read widely, reading, most notably Marx’s Capital. Debs ultimately came to the conclusion that
“Socialism is very properly recognized by the capitalist class as the one cloud upon the horizon which portends an end to the system in which they have waxed fat, insolent and despotic through the exploitation of their countless wage-working slaves”.
When released on November 22, 1895, Debs was a new man who sought not only to educate himself, but all Americans on the horrors of capitalism and build a socialist movement that spoke the “American language”.
Release: “Baptised in Socialism”
When released from jail, Debs recognised that only the working class could achieve political change and sought to transform the American Railway Union into a political movement. He openly declared for the first time “I am for socialism because I am for humanity”. By June 1897, the ARU was no more, and out of the ashes the Social Democracy of America was founded; a conclave of left-wing groups – ranging from Marxists to populists; trade unionists to unaffiliated radicals.
Despite Debs’ initial hopes for the movement, he broke with the Social Democracy, as did other non-utopians, after a 52/37 motion was carried to adopt a colonisation motion. Debs believed this action was to be of no benefit of the working class and was a mere communal fantasy.
In spite of this, he accepted the Social Democratic nomination to seek the Presidency of the United States in 1900. At time when the McKinley Administration was engaged in imperial conflict in Cuba, the Philippines and Hawaii;, despite being largely ignored by the capitalist press finished third behind the Republican President McKinley and Democratic opponent William Jennings Bryan won 0.6% of the total vote – some 87,945 votes.
The Socialist Party
After the presidential campaign, he accordingly along with non-utopians – including both revolutionaries and reformists went onto form the Socialist Party of America at the “Unity Convention” on August 1, 1901.
The new organization made room for a wide variety of people who believed in socialism in general and had all kinds of ideas as to what it really meant and how it was to be achieved. Each party speaker, writer, editor and organizer, and – in actual practice – each individual, promoted his own kind of socialism in his own way. Many thousands of people heard about it for the first time, and accepted it as a desirable goal.
The Socialist Party promoted class consciousness through the power of speech. Speeches educated the proletariat on the nature of capitalism and its subsequent impact; and how the working class could change the horrors before them. Eugene Debs was successful in this regard for he looked at the class struggle, not as a theoretician but one as directly involved. “I look into your faces,” he told a gathering in Philadelphia. “I catch your spirit. I am simply the tongue of the working class, making this appeal from the working class”. People were convinced and people began to join.
Running for President in 1904, the Debs vote leaped to 402,283, a sensational four-fold increase. His four-fold increase was followed by the formation of the Industrial Workers’ of the World (IWW), which he helped create in 1905. Promoting worker solidarity in revolutionary struggle, the IWW united unionists, socialists and anarchists convinced the AFL had effectively failed to organise the American working class. With the support of the IWW, the Socialist Party and Debs were bolstered by increased support.
Comrades, by 1908 the presidential vote remained stationary at 420,713 in spite of a magnificent nation-wide campaign, largely ignored by the capitalist press in spite of Debs’ cross-country ‘Red Train’ campaign. In the intervening four years the party membership had doubled, going from 20,763 in 1904 to 41,751 in 1908.
Four years later in 1912, Debs’ campaign was widely recognised. The socialist cause was promoted by 323 papers, 262 weeklies and 10 monthlies, plus 46 publications in foreign languages. The Appeal to Reason, always the most widely read socialist paper, reached a circulation of over 600,000 contributing to Debs’ incredible fourth-place finish. The Socialist Party won an astonishing 901,551 votes; that’s 6 percent of the popular vote! In six states, mainly in the West Debs received more than 10 percent of the popular vote – his highest result in Nevada, an amazing 16.47%!
Break Up of the Socialist Party
Needless to say comrades, at the height of the Socialist Party it was being torn apart by internal conflict between the revolutionaries and reformists.
The rift began in 1910 when Victor Berger, a right-wing member of SP was elected as the party’s first representative in the US Congress by promoting the respectable reformist brand of socialism. Berger’s election strengthened reformist influence within the party; enticing droves of office-hunting opportunists. The revolutionary workers were repelled and gradually left amidst a steady political shift from the class struggle to reformist gradualism.
Debs, while leader of the party’s left-wing was convinced that if socialism was to be successful, unity was needed; it was more important than ideological difference. Whenever the opportunity arose to defeat the rising reformist sentiment, Debs shied away and kept to his sole role as agitator of the capitalist system despite his standing within the party.
Moreover comrades, he saw membership on the National Executive as bureaucracy gone wrong; and this, in turn allowed the reformists to prevail for Debs was unable to cement his position and political beliefs in the construction of the hopeful vanguard of the revolution.
He remained a loyal member of the capitulating organisation until its inevitable demise in 1919. He chose not to run for the Presidency in 1916 on the grounds of health concerns, but he did run for Congress – and lost. Debs remained an ever present force in American politics championing the successful Russian Revolution and continuously defended the Bolsheviks under the constant threat of anti-war agitation and condemnation from the reformists of the Socialist Party; declaring “the successes of the Bolshevik movement in Russia was something on which to model and base the ideas for this country”.
Most notoriously in this period however, was his famous Canton Speech delivered in 1918. A damning critique of the First World War, Debs was arrested on the grounds of treason and sentenced for 10 years. Even after the 1919 split of the reformists and revolutionaries, Debs sought the Presidency of the United States a fifth time from his prison cell in Atlanta, Georgia. Though allowed only one press release per week, Debs still received 913,693 votes. He would be released, but not pardoned in 1921. Welcomed home by a crowd of 50,000 people, accompanied by band music, Debs retired from politics; though not without controversy, opting to endorse the bourgeois opportunist ‘progressive’ Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette over Communist Party candidate William Z. Foster, citing his endorsement “as the best result for labour” in the 1924 presidential election. In late 1926, Debs was admitted to an Illinois sanatorium and died months later on October 26, 1926 of heart failure. He was 70 years old.
Conclusions
Eugene Debs was a true revolutionary; ever hopeful that America, one day, would follow the lead of the Bolsheviks and rise up and overturn the capitalist system and embrace socialism. And though sincere in his love of his comrades; his party and his people, his attempts of solidarity undermined the revolutionary force he was seeking to create. As Cannon wrote in 1955: “Nine-tenths of the struggle for socialism is the struggle against bourgeois influences in the workers organisations, including the party”. It was recognised by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, yet not by Debs, ultimately hindering not only revolutionary sentiment, but also that of the socialist movement in the United States.
In spite of this comrades, we cannot condemn Debs’ legacy to the dustbin of history. He recognised that change could only be achieved by the working class, not by bourgeoisie; he recognised that if strike actions were to be successful, solidarity among all members of the working class, not some; and he recognised that revolution could only happen by force – and the party was merely designed to spread class consciousness and ideas of revolution.
If we can learn from the mistakes of Eugene Debs, we are more than likely not to make them again. If we don’t, then we are one step closer “in partnership and have stopped clutching each other’s throats, when we have stopped enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends. We will be comrades, we will be brothers, and we will begin the march to the grandest civilization the human race has ever known”.
Comrades, thank you.
