Monday, March 9, 2020

Presidents – The Law, and the Critique of the Social Democrats


The Declaration of Independence states the reasons and the goals for the formation of the United States of America.  The Constitution dictates the legal structure for the U.S. and is subject to amendment.  The founding fathers chose to form a democratic society of citizens as opposed to a society of subjects to a King.

Karl Marx in his essay ‘On the Jewish Question’ pointed out that the rights designated in the Constitution established property rights for individuals, but not the basic rights of all as equal citizens in political discussion.(Rupert)  Lincoln dramatically changed the structure of the country with his Gettysburg Address and passage of the 13th Amendment eliminating slavery.

Abraham Lincoln
  The 14th Amendment passed after Lincoln’s assassination established that all born in the U.S. were citizens.  This meant the potential for political involvement of those not permitted previously.

In the name of ‘We the People’ Lincoln did expand executive power by suspending the rule of habeus corpus to prevent Confederate sympathizers the right of a trial.  Other Presidents also expanded executive power but not in the name of ‘We the People’ but in the name of ‘some of the people.’  An example would be Theodore Roosevelt in his battle with labor and Democratic Socialist Eugene Debs.  Roosevelt was considered a progressive for attempting to reign in large corporations so as to protect the property rights of others, but he was reluctant to give labor an equal footing in law and politics. Eugene Debs saw politics and society differently.  Debs was a Socialist.  His conversion to the party was largely because of Victor Berger of Milwaukee, the first Socialist elected to Congress.  Frank Zeidler the last Socialist Mayor of Milwaukee defined Socialism with the following comment in an introduction to a two volume work on Wisconsin Socialism:

“The socialist movement was inspired by the hope of a brotherhood of workers, the Cooperative Commonwealth; by a fierce opposition to war; by a belief in the rights of people; by a passion for orderly government ; and a contempt for graft and boodling.” (Beck) 

(Boodling is a term used by Lincoln Steffens of McClure’s Magazine in an article published in 1902 exposing corruption in municipal governments.   He defined ‘boodling’ as a form of corruption that ‘involves not thieves, gamblers, and common women, but influential citizens, capitalists and great corporations.  The stock in trade of the boodler is the rights, privileges, franchises, and real property of the city… (Beck) 

Frank Zeidler
Zeidler used the appellation ‘social democrat’ in his essay.  A Socialist Party pamphlet offers an explanation:
“The Socialist Party strives to establish a radical democracy that places people’s lives under their own control …The economy is democratically managed for the benefit of all humanity, not for the profit of the few.” (Socialist Party USA)

Eugene Debs was nominated as the Social Democrat candidate for president in 1900 along with Job Harriman of the Socialist Labor Party for vice president.  Debs received 100,000 votes in the year 1900, 402,283 in 1904, and 420,713 in 1908. 
   
Trial of Labor Leaders:  Theodore Roosevelt vs. Eugene Debs

Three leaders of the Western Federation of Miners were spirited out of Colorado without a warrant to face murder charges in Idaho.  The three were Secretary-Treasurer, William Haywood, President Charles H. Moyer, and former union activist and business man, George Pettibone.

The former governor of Idaho Frank Steunenberg was murdered by Harry Orchard in 1905.  Orchard claimed that the defendants paid him to kill the governor. Orchard testified that the Union officials had paid him to murder Steunenberg as a payback for the governor’s active and illegal opposition to them in a mine strike at Coeur d’Alene in Northern Idaho in 1899.  The strike became violent and Steunenberg asked President McKinley for Federal troops.  Every union man in the area was arrested.  The men were herded into a bull pen with poor sanitary conditions.  Steunenberg dictated that all members of the union were guilty and no man could work in an Idaho mine unless he renounced his allegiance to the Western Federation of Miners.

Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt was adamant in his defense of Capitalist property rights.  In a speech during a ceremony laying a cornerstone, Roosevelt implied that Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone were guilty of murder.  Democratic Socialist Eugene Debs responded in an open letter.

“Permit me to ask you, Mr. President, how you know that these men are implicated in murder?  Have they been tried and found guilty by due process of law? (Debs)

Eugene Debs
Roosevelt made public a letter he wrote to a congressman in which he describes Debs, Moyer and Haywood as ‘undesirables.’  Thousands marched in the 1907 New York City May Day parade with buttons inscribed ‘I am an undesirable.’(Lukas)   Roosevelt had a personal issue with the Western Federation of Miners because a fellow Rough-rider, Sherman Bell, was named General of the Colorado National Guard by Governor Peabody.  General Bell was involved in the violent and illegal suppression of a strike in Cripple Creek Colorado.  Bell was Roosevelt’s body guard in his campaign for vice president in 1900.  J. Anthony Lukas quotes General Bell in his book Big Trouble:

“When asked how he planned to proceed against the Western Federation of Miners, he said, ‘I came to do up this damned anarchistic federation.’  ‘My orders were to wipe ‘em off the face of the earth.’”

In the summer of 1907 Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone were found not guilty; Clarence Darrow was their lawyer.

The Sewer Socialists

Lincoln recognized that the time for slavery was over but he also knew that the equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence was in the future.  At Gettysburg he said, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”  His interference with the law was based on the ‘We the People’ phrase of the Constitution.  He saw his duty to protect the Union as established by the people of the United States.  The renunciation of some States was not a legitimate Constitutional right.  
The Democratic Socialists mirror Lincoln’s view on the tension between the practical and the ideal.  Milwaukee Democratic Socialist Mayor Frank Zeidler wrote:

“The application of political theory to the practical problems of government always presents problems for both party theoreticians and party practitioners.  The socialist movement in Wisconsin did not escape the anguish of trying to participate in government and yet to reconcile political necessity with democratic socialist theory.” (Beck)

Zeidler continues by noting the Milwaukee Socialists did not mind being called Sewer Socialists by the theoreticians because they achieved many benefits for the city and state such as labor laws which eventually became national policies with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  During a shortage of moderate priced housing Socialist Mayor Hoan started the first low income housing project in the nation; it was called Garden Homes and completed in 1923.  

Emil Seidel

The houses still exist, however, the neighborhood has experienced years of disinvestment.  In recent times the neighborhood association has been working to restore this historic district.  Former and first Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, Emil Seidel (1910 - 1912 ), was one of the occupants of the housing project.


Milwaukee 2020

The Democratic Convention in Milwaukee in 2020 couldn’t be more important.  A candidate must be chosen who can win against an autocratic president who has proven to be an effective demagogue.   Also the immediate existential threats of climate change and nuclear war must be addressed without hesitation.  Related problems of refugees and migration need to be looked at with a perspective that - all are created equal.  Concerning the economy, have workers once again become expendable in a new technological society?  Are workers expendable as consumers in a society split into the ‘haves’ and the ‘have not’s’?  Isn’t the need for single payer health care more obvious with the coronavirus looming?  What about gun control?  Should the power of the Presidency be used to help solve these problems?

References

Elmer A. Beck, The Sewer Socialists, (Vols I&II) Westberg Associates Publishers, Fennimore, Wisconsin, 1982
Eugene V. Debs Speaks, edited by Jean Y. Tussey, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1970
John Gurda, The Making of Milwaukee, Milwaukee County Historical Society, Milwaukee, 1999
J. Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997
Mark Rupert, Producing Hegemony, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1995.
Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow For the Defense, Doubleday Duran & Co. 1941
Socialist Party USA, “Socialism As Radical Democracy,” New York City, N.Y.
Gary Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1992

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