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Eugene Debs – Socialism was the way of the future in 1908.

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Opening his electrifying victory speech on Tuesday night in Brooklyn – Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani quoted the name Eugene Debs, one of the outspoken leaders of the Socialist Movement in America during the early years of the 20th century as a source of inspiration.

To most people tuning in, the name Eugene Debs rang no bells – quickly leading pundits to paint Eugene Debs as a staunch Communist/left-wing radical bent on destroying American democracy. Truth was, Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and five-time candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. Through his presidential candidacies as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States.

Debs was the Socialist Party of America candidate for president in 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920 (the final time from prison). Though he received increasing numbers of popular votes in each subsequent election, he never won any votes in the Electoral College. In both 1904 and 1908, Debs ran with running-mate Ben Hanford. They received 402,810 votes in 1904, for 3.0 percent of the popular vote and an overall third-place finish. In the 1908 election, they received a slightly higher number of votes (420,852) than in their previous run, but at 2.8 percent, a smaller percentage of the total votes cast. In 1912, Debs ran with Milwaukee mayor Emil Seidel as a running mate and received 901,551 votes, which was 6.0 percent of the popular vote, which remains the all-time highest percentage of the vote for a Socialist Party candidate in a U.S. presidential election. Though Debs won no state’s electoral votes, in Florida, he came in second behind Wilson and ahead of President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt. Finally, in 1920, running with Seymour Stedman, Debs won 914,191 votes (3.4%), which remains the all-time high number of votes for a Socialist Party candidate in a U.S. presidential election. Notably, the Nineteenth Amendment passed in 1920, granting women the federal right to vote across the country, and with the expanded voting pool, his vote total accounted for only 3.4 percent of the total number of votes cast.^[31][32] The size of the vote is nevertheless remarkable since Debs was at the time a federal prisoner in jail for sedition, though he promised to pardon himself if elected.

Although he received some success as a third-party candidate, Eugene Debs was largely dismissive of the electoral process as he distrusted the political bargains that Victor Berger and other “sewer socialists” had made in winning local offices. He put much more value on organizing workers into unions, favoring unions that brought together all workers in a given industry over those organized by the craft skills workers practiced.

Here is one of the speeches Eugene Debs gave during his run for the 1908 Presidency. It was long thought to be the actual voice of Eugene Debs, but closer inspection and considerable sleuthing revealed the speaker was actually the actor Leonard Spencer, who was well known for his voice imitation of several important figures in politics.

Here is the text of that complete speech.

Eugene Debs (Voice of Leonard Spencer): “Fellow workers and comrades. The Socialist movement is as wide as the world and its mission is to win the world, the whole world, from animalism, and consecrate it to humanity. What a tremendous task, and what a royal privilege to share in it. To win a world is worthy of a race of gods, and in the winning, men develop god-like attributes since all men are potential gods. What a madhouse the earth would seem today in the frenzied revelry of Capitalism before the light the Socialistic philosophy sheds upon it. What Alpine peaks of wealth and what desert wastes of poverty, despair, and death. What man, unless his heart be adamant, can contemplate this awful scheme and be content? What man, unless his brain be atrophied and his vision blinded, can fail to perceive the impending crisis?

In the presence of this vast and terrible phenomenon how satisfying to be enlisted in the Socialist movement, to understand this doubt-dispelling social philosophy, and to interpret passing events in the clear light of its science. The productive mechanism in modern industry—vast, complex, marvelous beyond expression—burns the impotent touch of the individual hand but leaps as if in joy to its task when caressed by the myriad fingered collective hand of modern toil.

The mute message of the machine—could but the worker understand, and would he but heed it—child of his brain, the machine has come to free and not to enslave, to save and not to destroy the author of its being. Potent and imperious as the command of the industrial Jehovah, the machine compels the grand army of toil to rally to its tenders, to recognize its power, to surrender body breaking and soul devouring tasks, to join hands in sacred fellowship, to sub-divide labor, to equalize burden, to demand joy and leisure for all. And emancipated from the fetters of the flesh, rise to the sublimest heights of intellectual, moral, and spiritual exaltation.

To realize this great social ideal is a work of education, and organization. The working classes must be aroused. They must be made to hear the trumpet call of solidarity: economic solidarity and political solidarity. One great all-embracing industrial union and one great all-embracing political party, and both revolutionary to the core: two hearts, with but a single soul. The modern tool of production must belong to those who make use of it, whose freedoms, yea, whose very lives depend upon it.

A hundred years ago, the collective ownership of the individual tool would have been absurd. Today, the private ownership of the collective tool is a crime. This crime is at the foundation of every other that disfigures society and from its shop cellars exudes the festering stenches of all sweat-shop civilizations. Educate the working class. Spread Wilshire’s Magazine, and the weekly Socialist papers, the pamphlets, [inaudible], and leaflets among the people. The middle-class see their doom in Capitalism, and must soon turn to Socialism. The handwriting is on all the billboards of the universe. The worst in Socialism will be better than the best in Capitalism.

The historic mission of Capitalism has been to exploit the forces of nature, place them at the service of man, augmenting his productive capacity a thousand-fold, to turn as if by magic, the shallow, sluggish dreams into rushing, roaring Niagaras of wealth, leaving to the toilers who produced it, a greater poverty, insecurity, and anguish than before. The mission of Socialism is to release these imprisoned productive forces from the vandal horde that has seized them, that they may be operated, not spasmodically, and in the interests of a favored class, as at present, but freely, and in the common interest of all. Then the world—the world the Socialist movement is to win from Capitalism—will be filled with wealth for all to have and to enjoy in its abundance.

When enough have become Socialists and each day is augmenting the number and making them more staunch and resolute, they will sweep the country on the only vital issue before the nation. A new power will be in control: the people. For the first time in all history, man at last will be free!”

Here is that recording, as recorded by Victor Talking Machine Company, circa 1908.

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