Eugene V. Debs: “How I Became a Socialist”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In his article “How I Became a Socialist,” Debs does his best to convey that he had always been a kind of Socialist, even though he had explicitly rejected that label for his political ideas before his imprisonment in 1895. His goal in this piece is to suggest that people like him who saw aspects of class conflict all around them but did not understand Socialism would come to embrace the movement once Socialists like Debs taught them to understand the world. Here he describes his own education in the hope that others might follow along his same path.

In the early sections of the essay, Debs conveys his enthusiasm for organizing his fellow members of the working class as a sign of his growing class consciousness. At that point in his life, he thought organization alone was enough to redress the many wrongs that management inflicted upon labor. Debs explains that unlike other labor leaders of that era, he helped organize the ARU because he thought that all railroad men would do best standing together rather than separated into unions organized by skill. This is an implied contrast to the American Federation of Labor, an umbrella organization for unions that was just getting started around the time that Debs first gained prominence in the labor movement. Despite his comparatively broad view of organized labor's potential base, Debs's vision remained limited to what he could do in support of the trade union movement.

Then came the Pullman strike. “In the gleam of every bayonet and the flash of every rifle,” Debs writes, “the class struggle was revealed.” This justifiably famous line not only supports the idea that the Pullman strike converted Debs to Socialism but also helps explain his reasons for supporting Socialism. Since the federal army kept the exploitation of Pullman workers going, ordinary people had to be able to control the state so that it could support their cause rather than the goals of giant corporations. To Debs, then, labor and politics were inseparable. He could not help the working class without entering politics.

This philosophy is in sharp contrast to the predominant labor union philosophy of that era. The American Federation of Labor, led by Samuel Gompers, believed in what Gompers called “pure and simple unionism.” This meant that trade unions should worry about raising the wages and improving the working conditions of their members, and absolutely nothing else. Unions that followed this philosophy ignored politics because politics took time and resources away from their core purpose—helping their members. This debate was sometimes referred to as the “political question” within union circles. However, by the time of his death in 1924, Gompers came around to Debs's point of view on this issue even if he never adopted Debs's radical positions.