Daniel
de Leon was born in the Dutch colony
of Curacao on 14th December, 1852. His parents sent him to Germany
and the Netherlands to be educated and he arrived in the United
States in 1874. Soon afterwards he found work as a teacher of
Latin, Greek and Mathematics.
De Leon settled in New York and became
a student and later a teacher at Columbia University. Converted to
socialism by the writings of Edward
Bellamy, De Leon joined the Knights of
Labor and worked for Henry George in
his campaign to become mayor of the city.
In
1890 De Leon joined the Socialist Labor
Party (SLP) and the following year became the editor of its newspaper,
The People. In 1891 he ran as SLP candidate for governor of New
York and won 13,000 votes.
Over
the next few years De Leon, Laurence Gronlund,
Morris Hillquit and Abraham
Cahan emerged as the main leaders of the party. De Leon, a Marxist,
began arguing for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. He claimed
that as United States was the most developed capitalist country in
the world it was "ripe for the execution of Marxian revolutionary
tactics."
In
1892 the SLP Simon Wing ran for President, with Charles H. Matchett
as Vice President. They received 21,173 votes. In 1896 the SLP's vote
increased to 36,367 and in 1898 reached a peak of 82,204. At that
time the party had 10,000 members.
De
Leon was highly critical of the trade union
movement in America. Originally a member of the Knights
of Labor, In 1895 he helped form the Socialist Trade and Labor
Alliance (STLA) as a revolutionary alternative to the conservative
American Federation of Labour. The move was
not very successful and after several years only had 20,000 members.
In the 1900 presidential election the Socialist
Labor Party candidates received only 33,382. The other major left-wing
party, the Social Democratic Party
(SDP), led by Eugene Debs and Victor
Berger, did better winning 97,000 votes.
On the 27th June, 1905, De Leon and a group of radical trade unionists
held a convention in Chicago. Those who
attended the proceedings included Eugene Debs,
Bill Haywood, Mother
Jones, Lucy Parsons and Charles
Moyer. At the meeting it was decided to form the radical labour
organization, the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW).
In
1908 the Wobblies, as they became known, split into two factions.
The group headed by De Leon and Eugene V. Debs
advocated political action through the Socialist
Party and the trade union movement,
to attain its goals. The other faction, led by Bill
Haywood, believed that general strikes, boycotts and even sabotage
were justified in order to achieve its objectives. Haywood's views
prevailed and De Leon left the organization.
De Leon then went on to form the Workers' International Union in opposition
to the Industrial Workers of the World. Daniel
de Leon died in New York on 11th May,
1914.
(1)
Daniel De Leon, speech in New York (October 1886)
We
have hitherto been ruled in this city by a small minority that have
no interest whatever in our welfare. They are professional politicians
whose headquarters are in the rum and grog shops, with points of vantage
in the slums of our city, recruiting their strength from the criminal
classes and in time swelling the ranks of those classes. These fellows
do not care who is the nominee so long as he has money, and they await
the result of all elections as the hungry wolves await carrion, for
that is the time when their riotous carnival comes. It is not what
brains or what commonsense or what capacity for government a man has,
but what boodle he has.
(2)
When Daniel De Leon became editor of The People in 1891 he
explained the functions of a socialist newspaper.
A
daily Socialist paper in the English language must start with the
knowledge that, in point of what is called news, it cannot think of
competing with the capitalist contemporaries. An English Socialist
daily may not trim its sails to attract 'new readers'; in that field
it is hors de combat from the start; it must furnish a specialized
kind of news that the capitalist press either does not care for, or
does not want - legitimate, labor and social news; it must thus create
a field from which capitalist competition is, ipso facto, excluded.
With such a news policy, supplemented by a news policy that illustrates
Socialist principles by the light of the events of the day, and watching
its opportunity to enlarge, a daily socialist paper must begin with
modest aspirations. It must realise that ninety-nine out of every
hundred of its readers will stick to the Egyptian fleshpots of the
capitalist 'news' papers. It must aim at getting these readers to
acquire a taste for its own bill of fare, without expecting them to
drop their own favorite capitalist news menu, at least not immediately.
It must thus slowly build up its own audience, upon its own ground.
It must, in short, follow the tactics, not of attempting to dispute
their field with the capitalist 'news' contemporaries, but, first,
of seeking to share their readers; and then, as an ultimate aim, to
strip them of their proletarian dupe-audience, together with those
in sympathy with these. Even such a course will encounter serious
financial obstacles. But these obstacles it is possible to overcome.
(3)
Daniel De Leon, speech at the Industrial Workers
of the World convention in Chicago
(27th June, 1905)
The
aspiration to unite the workers upon the political field is an aspiration
in line and in step with civilization. Civilized man, when he argues
with an adversary, does not start with clenching his fist and telling
him, 'smell this bunch of bones'. He does not start by telling him,
'feel my biceps'. He begins by arguing; physical force by arms is
the last resort. That is the method of the civilized man, and the
method of civilized man is the method of civilized organization. The
barbarian begins with physical force; the civilized man ends with
that, when physical force is necessary. Civilized man will always
here in America give a chance to peace; he will, accordingly, proceed
along the lines that make peace possible. But civilized man, unless
he is a visionary, will know that unless there is Might behind your
Right, your Right is something to laugh at. And the thing to do, consequently,
is to gather behind the ballot, behind that united political movement,
the Might which is alone able, when necessary, to 'take and hold'.
Without the working people are united on the political field; without
the delusion has been removed from their minds that any of the issues
of the capitalist class can do for them permanently, or even temporarily;
without the working people have been removed altogether from the mental
thralldom of the capitalist class, from its insidious influence, there
is no possibility of your having those conditions under which they
can really organize themselves economically in such a way as to 'take
and hold'. And after those mental conditions are generally established,
there needs something more than the statement to 'take and hold';
something more than a political declaration, something more than the
capitalist political inspectors to allow this or that candidate to
filter through. You then need the industrial organization of the working
class, so that if the capitalist should be foolish enough in America
to defeat, to thwart the will of the workers expressed by the ballot
- I do not say 'the will of the workers, as returned by the capitalist
election inspectors', but the will of the people as expressed at the
ballot box - then there will be a condition of things by which the
working class can absolutely cease production, and thereby starve
out the capitalist class, and render their present economic means
and all their preparations for war absolutely useless.
(4)
Daniel De Leon, speech at the Socialist Trade and Labor
Alliance conference in 1905.
The
Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was the first labor organization
in this country, since the early labor organizations who also began
soundly, that frankly and fully stated to the working class of America
that they had to capture the public powers. Their belief is this:
That you could not first take the men into the union under the false
pretense that you were going to raise their wages, and afterwards
indoctrinate them. No, you had to indoctrinate them first, and then
bring them in. If the ST & LA has made any mistakes at all, it
would be to imagine ten years ago that there were then enough such
men in existence to join our ranks.
(5)
Daniel De Leon, The People (8th January, 1893)
Private
ownership in the instruments of production - in the land, tools, machinery
etc. — was at one time the basis of industry and of freedom;
concentration of these instruments of production in the hands of a
few, and the introduction of machinery establish a system of production
upon so gigantic a scale that the individual small producer cannot
hold his own; he is stripped of his instruments of production, and
becomes a proletarian, a wage slave, dependent for his existence upon
the capitalist, who has concentrated in his own hands the things that
are necessary for a living; this system fills the land with paupers,
breeds crime, prostitution and sickness; freedom under such a system
tends to disappear.
(6)
Daniel De Leon, The People (25th October, 1903)
Why
should a truly Socialist organization of whites not take in Negro
members, but organize these in separate bodies? On account of outside
prejudice? Then the body is not truly Socialist. A Socialist body
that will trim its sails to 'outside prejudices' had better quit.
A truly Socialist body is nothing if not a sort of 'Rough on Prejudices'.
Ten to one, however, where the 'issue' arises in such a body it is
catering, not to outside, but to inside prejudices, to the prejudices
of the members themselves.
(7)
Daniel De Leon, speech (1904)
It
is not likely that all the countries of civilization will leap into
Socialism abreast of one another, consequently, if there could be
no Socialist country without all the others being Socialist at the
same time, Socialism would have a poor show. One Socialist country,
if powerful, would have the effect of rendering Capitalism untenable
in the others, if it is a weak country, the others would crush it.
Hence we can see no prospect of the Socialist Republic starting anywhere
except here in America. America alone, of all the nations, has both
the inherent strength and the no less necessary strength of location.
(8)
Daniel De Leon, The People (2nd November, 1908)
Socialism
means but one thing, and that is the abolition of capital in private
hands, and the turning over of the industries into the direct control
of the workmen employed in them. Anything else is not socialism, and
has no right to sail under that name. Socialism is not the establishment
of an eight-hour day, not die abolition of child labor, not the enforcement
of pure food laws, not the putting down of die Night Riders, or the
enforcement of the 80-cent gas law. None of these, nor all of them
together, are socialism. They might all be done by the government
tomorrow, and still we would not have socialism. They are merely reforms
on the present system, mere patches on the worn out garment of industrial
servitude, and are no more socialism than the steam from a locomotive
is the locomotive.
(9)
Daniel De Leon, The People (15th June, 1909)
What
is 'reform'? For that we must go to the reformer himself. He is perfectly
explicit in what he is not. The reformer firmly objects to revolution.
He holds the thing to be harmful in theory, still more harmful in
practice. He holds tenaciously to the essence of what is without upsetting
the essence, the reformer seeks to improve details.
(10)
Henry Kuhn, The Socialist Labor Party
(1931)
The
life of the Party organization was dominated by the necessity of maintaining
a daily paper, a terrible task. Part of the membership worked like
Trojans and almost bled themselves white to give support. Not a few
militants broke under the strain and withdrew from the fray. The SLP
of those days used up a good deal of human material.
(11)
Arnold Peterson, Daniel De Leon - Orator (1942)
He
would lay down his major premise, and then support it with a battery
of facts, and a logic so all-compelling that one had the extraordinary
sensation of having had one's previous views and conceptions completely
clarified and confirmed, though in all probability what had really
happened was that De Leon, with that mastery of simple and direct
statement and overwhelming logic that was his, had succeeded in planting
one or more new ideas in the minds of his listeners.
(12)
Stephen Coleman, Daniel De Leon (1990)
In
February 1906 the states of Colorado and Idaho conspired to frame
'Big Bill Haywood, Charles Moyer and George Pettibone on a charge
of murdering the notoriously reactionary Governor of Idaho, Frank
Stennenberg. The three men were imprisoned unconstitutionally for
eighteen months before the trial in which the prosecution's evidence
collapsed. The arrest and prosecution was clearly an attempt to break
the WFM by depriving it of its leaders. The IWW was also the target
of this vicious frame-up. The persecution spurred a wave of protest.
Factional divisions counted for nothing: indignantly united, the workers'
watchword of the campaign was 'Shall Our Brothers Be Murdered?'. Mass
meetings convened almost spontaneously: 50,000 workers marched through
Chicago and 20,000 assembled on Boston Common on May Day 1907. De
Leon threw his full weight behind the campaign to release the framed
men.
In November
1906 Haywood, from his prison cell, ran for governor of Colorado.
In an unprecedented gesture of non-sectarian solidarity, the Colorado
Section of the SLP was urged by De Leon to support the Haywood ticket.
This is the only time ever that De Leon counselled the SLP members
to vote for a non- SLP candidate; at any other time such compromising
behaviour would have been regarded as a serious disciplinary offence.
In July
1907 Haywood was released. The clumsy capitalist state had, contrary
to all its Machiavellian intentions, created a working-class hero.
De Leon was greatly impressed by the respect which Haywood had won.
He realised that such charismatic appeal resulted not only from Haywood's
near martyrdom and experience-backed oratorical talent but also from
the fact that he was untainted by weighty ideological convictions.
Haywood was the antithesis of De Leon, not because the two men's principles
were very different but because De Leon had a reputation as a fiercely
principled revolutionary ideologue, whereas Haywood was known as a
revolutionary with no time for ideology. De Leon thought that it was
a man like Haywood rather than himself who could build a mass socialist
movement in the USA.
(13)
William Haywood wrote about Daniel De
Leon and the Socialist Labor Party
in his his autobiography published in 1929.
De
Leon always insisted he was right. He made it impossible for any except
his devotees to work with him. The Socialist Labor Party dominated
by De Leon's prejudices could not lend strength to any movement with
which it became associated.
(14)
Morris Hillquit, Daniel De Leon obituary,
New Yorker Volkszeitung (13th May 1914)
He,
who expired on Monday evening, fared as did so many before him, he
died a few decades too late; he outlived himself. True to his maxim
to destroy what he could not rule, he concentrated, during the last
fifteen years, his vitality and will-power upon tearing down what
he, personally, had helped to create. And therein he was great, far
greater than in construction and erection. De Leon was, indeed, a
destructive genius, i.e. he was great in demolishing, in tearing down.
With an hatred that was insatiable and unstable, he fought since his
entrance into die American labor movement against every movement of
the working class of this country that showed success and that seemed
to be in die ascendancy.
(15)
Daniel De Leon obituary, People (16th May 1914)
In
losing him we lose a man whose very life was dedicated to the emancipation
of the working class from wage slavery. When the history of the labor
movement and the Social Revolution will be written by future historians,
his name will be mentioned with reverence as one who gave of the fullness
of his truly wonderful mind and heart that the Disinherited of the
earth might come into their own.
(16)
Daniel De Leon obituary, New York Call
(May 1914)
In
a movement which recognizes the mockery of hero worship his name is
great. No eulogy was ever stronger than this. There are few orators
in America who can sway an audience as Daniel De Leon could. There
are fewer who would refuse the temptations to do so as Daniel De Leon
often did. To get the exact idea in is mind to as many in the audience
or among his readers who were capable of getting all seemed to be
his dominant ambitions; through it all there stands out very clearly
the memory of a great educator and a truly great man.
(17)
Henry Kuhn, Reminiscences of Daniel De Leon (1919)
De Leon's
vast knowledge, made mobile and available by a virile mentality, the
purity of his motives engendering a flawless devotion to the movement,
his absolute fearlessness and steadfastness in die face of whatever
might befall, never wavering, never faltering never perturbed. He
was, indeed, a tower of strength. It was as though Providence had
first shaped and then selected him as an instrument to hold aloft
the banner of the Social Revolution at a time and during a period
when, seemingly, no one else could have so held it.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
