By Marc Wutschke
On Tuesday night, November 4, the mayor-elect of New York City, Zohan Mamdani, greeted cheering supporters at a Brooklyn victory rally and said, “The sun may have set over our city this evening. But, as Eugene Debs once said, ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.’”
It was curious that a Democratic politician would invoke socialist Eugene Debs. A big reason is that Debs considered the Democratic Party one of the two greatest enemies of workers in the United States—the other being the Republican Party. Debs argued that the Republicans and Democrats were “one in fact” as instruments of capital, differing only over the “spoils of office,” not over principle.
Debs’s Case Against the Major Parties (and For Socialism)
Eugene Debs most strongly criticized the Democratic Party in his speech “But Two Parties and But One Issue,” delivered in Chicago on June 16, 1912: “The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are opposed to each other on no question of principle, but purely in a contest for the spoils of office. To the workers of the country these two parties in name are one in fact. They, or rather it, stand for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation of the workers, and for wage-slavery.”
Debs’s statements were made in the context of his socialist campaigns and speeches, where he argued that both major parties were fundamentally committed to defending the interests of capital, not ordinary working people. He advocated instead for independent political organization by the working class and believed that true change would come only through socialism, not through the Democratic (or Republican) Party.
But kudos to Mamdani for presenting the exact quote; many do not. Eugene Debs made the statement in his 1918 “Statement to the Court” following his conviction under the Sedition Act. He told the court, “I can see the dawn of the better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due time they will and must come to their own.” He was talking about the day when working people would replace capitalism with socialism. He told the court of his sweeping view of what socialism meant:
I believe, Your Honor, in common with all socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all… There are today upwards of sixty millions of socialists… they know, indeed—that the time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when this emancipating gospel will spread among all the peoples, and when this minority will become the triumphant majority and, sweeping into power, inaugurate the greatest social and economic change in history.
War Dissident and Union Leader
The sedition charge was pursued vigorously by President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, because of Debs’s outspoken opposition to World War I. Debs viewed the war as an imperialist struggle among the industrialists of the world in a contest for economic domination, using working people as fodder. Instead of fighting for the imperialists, Debs advocated that the world’s workers unite to defeat their capitalist masters.
Wilson’s administration ruthlessly pursued so-called radicals and dissidents in the wake of the seismic Russian Revolution of 1917, and amid the growing organizing efforts of workers. Debs, as president of the American Railway Union, helped organize the national Pullman Strike of 1894, which was brutally broken by federal troops at the behest of President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat. Many strikers were killed by the troops, and Debs was subsequently imprisoned for six months for his role in the strike.
Imprisonment and Enlightenment
While in prison after the Pullman strike, a visiting friend gave Debs a copy of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Reading it changed Debs profoundly. He renounced both major political parties as inherently opposed to the interests of working people and severed all ties he once had with the Democratic Party, under whose banner he had been elected to several offices.
Debs then helped build the Socialist Party of America and ran as its presidential candidate five times. The last time he ran was in 1920, while in prison on the sedition charge. From prison, Debs received over one million votes.
“Democratic Socialism” Seeks Reform of Capitalism
Mamdani, in stark contrast to Debs, has both feet in the Democratic Party. While he refers to himself as a socialist, he does not, as Debs did, speak of the proletariat taking control of the means of production and thus retaking control of their labor. Instead, Mamdani’s socialist vision is vague: “I’m a democratic socialist,” he explained in a video made during his 2020 run for the New York state assembly, “and what socialism means to me is a commitment to dignity—a state that provides whatever is necessary for its people to live a dignified life.”
“Democratic socialism” is a political ideology common in many European countries advocating a broad social safety net—such as universal health care, subsidized housing, guaranteed pensions, and free college. It leaves in place capitalism’s inherent exploitative characteristics that ultimately create an inordinate transfer of wealth to the few through the exploitation of workers. “Democratic socialism” serves to make capitalism more palatable to workers and to prevent the rapid radicalization that occurred in the 1920s, when socialists were on the verge of toppling European governments.
Democratic Socialists and Capitalism
The Democratic Party in the United States serves this same purpose. Franklin Roosevelt created his sweeping New Deal reforms not out of concern for the working class but to save capitalism from the radicalization and worker organization that were on fire in the 1920s and early 1930s and threatened open rebellion. He said in 1933, “It was this administration which saved the system of private profit and free enterprise after it had been dragged to the brink of ruin.” In 1935 he was more explicit: “I am fighting Communism… I want to save our system, the capitalist system…”
It is within this capitalist system that social democrats operate. Far from aiming to overthrow capitalism, social democrats seek reforms to cushion the more destructive hammer blows that capitalism regularly delivers to the working class. This promises to be a never-ending task as capitalism heads into its final stages, in which the wealthy ruling class gains greater wealth and power to use against workers.
The Revolutionary Solution
Instead of the piecemeal approach of social democrats, the source of the problem needs to be rooted out. Capitalism needs to be replaced by socialism, with workers in charge of ensuring that the wealth of their labor is used for the benefit of all and not just a few. This will come not with reforms here and there, well-meaning as they are, but by a revolutionary approach that aims to topple the capitalist ruling class before it takes humankind to destruction. As Rosa Luxemburg, the great German revolutionary socialist, said, humanity’s choice is “either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” With capitalism’s ravages on the environment, its endless imperialist wars alongside the development of ever more lethal weapons, and its massive transfer of wealth that has left millions in poverty, we have little time to waste on endless reforms. It is time to be serious. It is time to be revolutionary. The time to enter humanity’s next phase is long overdue.
Marc Wutschke, a member of Socialist Action, is a former reporter and editor and a retired educator in Los Angeles. He attended the University of California and the University of Missouri Graduate School of Journalism. He writes on social movements, artificial intelligence and society, and Palestinian issues.
