Eugene Debs and the Socialist Republic

• Author: Tom O’Shea
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221095084
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221095084

Political Theory

2022, Vol. 50(6) 861 –888

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00905917221095084

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Article

Eugene Debs and the

Socialist Republic

Tom O’Shea1

Abstract

I reconstruct the civic republican foundations of Eugene Debs’s socialist

critique of capitalism, demonstrating how he uses a neo-roman conception of

freedom to condemn waged labour. Debs is also shown to build upon this neo-

roman liberty in his socialist republican objections to the plutocratic capture

of the law and threats of violence faced by the labour movement. This Debsian

socialist republicanism can be seen to rest on an ambitious understanding of the

demands of citizen sovereignty and civic solidarity. While Debs shares some of

the commitments of earlier American labour republican critics of capitalism, he

departs from them in his thoroughgoing commitment to common democratic

ownership of productive property. His socialist republicanism remains valuable

today for its ability to illuminate features of plutocratic control, judicial

autocracy, and the regime of property best suited to suppressing economic

domination. I conclude that Debs not only deserves a prominent place in an

emerging radical republican canon but presents a distinctive contrast with

many of his Marxist contemporaries and offers a compelling challenge to recent

liberal, plebeian, and socialist forms of republicanism.

Keywords

Eugene Debs, socialist republicanism, socialism, republicanism, republican

liberty, domination

1Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Roehampton, London

Corresponding Author:

Tom O’Shea, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Roehampton,

Roehampton Lane, London, SW15 5PU, UK.

Email: tom.james.oshea@gmail.com

1095084PTXXXX10.1177/00905917221095084Political TheoryO’Shea

research-article2022

862 Political Theory 50(6)

Eugene Debs is best known as a labour organiser, stirring orator, and pris-

oner of conscience. But rarely has he been taken seriously as a political

thinker, and even less so as a political theorist.1 The story of Debs’s contri-

bution to concrete socialist politics is so incandescent—taking in the drama

of strikes, elections, and incarcerations—that it has often outshone the

details of his account of unfreedom in capitalist societies.2 My goal is not

only to provide the first sustained philosophical reconstruction of this

account but to show how Debs advances the civic republican tradition in

particular through his intertwined reflections on citizenship, law, liberty, and

property. Although his debt to American republicanism stretching back to

the Revolutionary War has long been noted (Salvatore 1982, 1992; Burns

2008), including significant affinities with labour republican ideology, little

scholarly attention is devoted to Debs’s place within broader civic republi-

can political philosophy. That has been an unfortunate omission—limiting

our understanding of both republican and socialist thought.

Debs had a tremendous influence on socialist politics in the United

States—setting up the American Railway Union, leading the famous Pullman

rail strike, cofounding the Industrial Workers of the World, and running for

president five times, including while imprisoned for opposing American par-

ticipation in World War I. But he did not present his thinking in a highly

systematic fashion, with much of Debs’s writings consisting of speeches and

short contributions to newspapers and labour magazines. Likewise, his politi-

cal thought developed in piecemeal fashion over the course of his life, often

in response to problems encountered by the labour movement, without

receiving a definitive formulation. This presents some obstacles to recon-

structing a Debsian political theory. So too, it can be tempting to dismiss him

as a mere populariser, drawing from a mishmash of assorted tropes, while

failing to advance a coherent theoretical interpretation of economic, social,

and political life. But this conclusion overlooks the philosophical kernel of

Debs’s thought, which I argue can be found in an incisive neo-roman concep-

tion of freedom that shapes his ambitious socialist republicanism.

My aim in recovering Debsian political theory is partly exegetical:

demonstrating that civic republicanism is integral to his articulation of

socialism rather than being a superficial remnant of popular American

1. For exceptions, see Kann (1980) and Levy (1988).

2. For major biographical accounts of Debs’s role in the American labour move-

ment, see Ginger (2007 [1947]) and Salvatore (1982). See also Brommel (1978).