Eugene V. Debs: Work

Eugene V. Debs was American labor and political leader. Explore interesting quotes on work.
Eugene V. Debs: 216   quotes 29   likes

“Child labor must be abolished by the working class.”

Eugene V. Debs

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)
Context: The working class must be emancipated by the working class.
Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class.
Child labor must be abolished by the working class.
Society must be reconstructed by the working class.
The working class must be employed by the working class.
The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class.
War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class.

“The working class must be emancipated by the working class.”

Eugene V. Debs

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)
Variant: War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class.
Context: The working class must be emancipated by the working class.
Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class.
Child labor must be abolished by the working class.
Society must be reconstructed by the working class.
The working class must be employed by the working class.
The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class.
War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class.

“To speak for labor; to plead the cause of the men and women and children who toil; to serve the working class, has always been to me a high privilege; a duty of love.”

Eugene V. Debs

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Love , Women , Men , Children

“In due time the hour will strike and this great cause triumphant — the greatest in history — will proclaim the emancipation of the working class and the brotherhood of all mankind.”

Eugene V. Debs

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

History , Time

“The capitalist class is represented by the Republican, Democratic, Populist and Prohibition parties, all of which stand for private ownership of the means of production, and the triumph of any one of which will mean continued wage-slavery to the working class.”

Eugene V. Debs

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”

Eugene V. Debs

"Statement to the Court Upon Being Convicted of Violating the Sedition Act" (18 September 1918) http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1918/court.htm
Federal Court statement (1918)

Women , Men

“The political solidarity of the working class means the death of despotism, the birth of freedom, the sunrise of civilization.”

Eugene V. Debs

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

Death , Birth , Freedom

“We live in the capitalist system, so-called because its dominated b the capitalist class. In this system the capitalists are the rulers and the workers the subjects. The capitalists are in a decided minority and yet they rule because of the ignorance of the working class.”

Eugene V. Debs

Working Class Politics (1910)

“As a revolutionist I can have no respect for capitalist property laws, nor the least scruple about violating them. I hold all such laws to have been enacted through chicanry, fraud and corruption, with the sole end in view of dispossessing, robbing and enslaving the working class.”

Eugene V. Debs

Sound Socialist Tactics (1912)

Law , Fraud

“The vain attempt persisted in through twenty centuries of ruling class interpolation, interpretation and falsification to make Jesus appear the divinely commissioned conservator of the peace and soother of the oppressed, instead of the master proletarian revolutionist and sower of the social whirlwind—the vain attempt to prostitute the name and teachings and example of the martyred Christ to the power of Mammon, the very power which had murdered him in cold blood, vindicates his transcendent genius and proclaims the immortality of his work.”

Eugene V. Debs

Jesus, the Supreme Leader (1914)

Peace , Appearance , Christ

“They who have been reading the capitalist newspapers realize what a capacity they have for lying. We have been reading them lately. They know all about the Socialist Party—the Socialist movement, except what is true. Only the other day they took an article that I had written—and most of you have read it—most of you members of the party, at least—and they made it appear that I had undergone a marvelous transformation. I had suddenly become changed—had in fact come to my senses; I had ceased to be a wicked Socialist, and had become a respectable Socialist, a patriotic Socialist—as if I had ever been anything else. What was the purpose of this deliberate misrepresentation? It is so self-evident that it suggests itself. The purpose was to sow the seeds of dissension in our ranks; to have it appear that we were divided among ourselves; that we were pitted against each other, to our mutual undoing. But Socialists were not born yesterday. They know how to read capitalist newspapers; and to believe exactly the opposite of what they read.
Why should a Socialist be discouraged on the eve of the greatest triumph in all the history of the Socialist movement? It is true that these are anxious, trying days for us all — testing days for the women and men who are upholding the banner of labor in the struggle of the working class of all the world against the exploiters of all the world; a time in which the weak and cowardly will falter and fail and desert. They lack the fiber to endure the revolutionary test; they fall away; they disappear as if they had never been. On the other hand, they who are animated by the unconquerable spirit of the social revolution; they who have the moral courage to stand erect and assert their convictions; stand by them; fight for them; go to jail or to hell for them, if need be — they are writing their names, in this crucial hour — they are writing their names in faceless letters in the history of mankind.”

Eugene V. Debs

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Women , Men , World , History

“Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most — that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.”

Eugene V. Debs

Walls and Bars (1927)

“With faith and hope and courage we hold our heads erect and with dauntless spirit marshal the working class for the march from Capitalism to Socialism, from Slavery to Freedom, from Barbarism to Civilization.”

Eugene V. Debs

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

Faith , Hope , Courage , Freedom

“Of course, Socialism is violently denounced by the capitalist press and by all the brood of subsidized contributors to magazine literature, but this only confirms the view that the advance of 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.”

Eugene V. Debs

Outlook for Socialism in the United States (1900)

Literature