>From m.lepore@genie.geis.com Wed Aug 11 21:27:26 1993
Subject: Information about De Leon

 
 
 
I am now about ready (starting tomorrow?) to distribute the electronic
versions of several speeches and writings of Daniel De Leon, the
socialist writer and orator from the turn of the century.  I will
forward them to private mailing lists, and also post them (or attempt
to post them), to newsgroup "soc.history".
 
If you lose some of these files, I will ask you to wait until the
tentative FTP site has archived them.  E-mail costs me too much money
for me to mail the files more than once.  Let me know if you want to
be notified by e-mail when the FTP archive is installed.
 
Copied below is my first draft of a README file to go along with this
collection of files.  My README is work-in-progress, so please notify
me of errors and omissions.  Although I have been studying De Leonism
for about 25 years, I cannot "guarantee" the accuracy of my commentary
or the associated files.  You may use this information "as is" if you
choose.
 
If you are interested in this subject, you may contact me about
receiving "ORGANIZED THOUGHTS".  This is an electronic magazine which
discusses theoretical issues related to syndicalism and libertarian
socialism.  It is distributed by e-mail about six times per year.
 
                  Mike Lepore    mlepore@mcimail.com
 
 ___________________________________________________________________
 
 
     A Short Review of the Life and Work of Daniel De Leon
 
     Commentary by Mike Lepore         First Draft
     < mlepore@mcimail.com >
                                       This article may be freely
                                       distributed in electronic or
                                       printed form
Introduction
____________
 
 
The electronic publication of several works by Daniel De Leon
(1852-1914) fills a void in the gradually growing library of
literature now available in the form of computer files from many
sources.
 
De Leon was a scholar, a journalist, and a labor activist who made a
social theory based on Marxism, but, unlike most theorists who claim
to be Marxist, derived a goal and a program which is entirely
non-vanguardist.  There is no role for a socialist political party to
govern industry "for" the workers, because the workers are urged to
exercise immediate and instantaneous democracy in all economic
matters, through our own workplace organization.
 
Several countries which have tried the vanguardist approach to
collectivization, with the "workers'" political party ruling as a
supposedly benevolent dictator, have now abandoned those adventures in
pseudo-socialism.  At the same time, capitalism is no alternative
either.  Capitalism is suffering from ever-deepening world crises.  It
is incapable of providing full employment even in the best of times,
and, at its worst, leaves no one safe from economic disaster.  It is
also becoming increasingly clear that Marx was right about the "iron
law of wages", i.e., that one of the laws of economics which operates
under capitalism is that wages and prices will continually adjust
themselves to leave most workers with a mere "living wage", no matter
how greatly our productivity rises through automation.
 
It is at such a critical juncture in human history that the world
needs to hear the details of a democratic and non-vanguardist
interpretation of socialism.  That is my purpose in republishing the
De Leon documents at this time.
 
 
                  *       *       *       *       *
 
 
Please notify < mlepore@mcimail.com > if you see what appear to be
factual or typographical errors in these files.
 
I am always looking for a volunteer who has an optical scanner and OCR
software, to help me produce more of these text files.  If you can
help, please contact me.  I'll send you the paper documents, you can
send me the resultant text files (e-mail or diskette), you won't
charge me any money, and I'll take care of all the proofreading and
typographical corrections.
 
If you are sending me theoretical criticism of socialism, your
criticism should address what has actually been proposed, not some
stereotype "socialism" that is different from the specific goal and
program that is here investigated.  According to the De Leonist
definition of the word, no country on earth has ever attempted to
establish socialism.  No critique of the theory should ignore this
fact.
 
 
 
What theory did De Leon add to Marxism?
_______________________________________
 
 
De Leon died three years before the Russian Revolution.  De Leonism is
an interpretation of Marxism which is extremely different from the one
put forth by Lenin and his successors in various countries.
 
There is no advocacy of state ownership of the industries.  There is
no belief that political government should nationalize the industries,
under the leadership of a supposed working class party.  The goal,
rather, is direct democratic control of all industries and services by
the workers united in an industrial union.  Rather than governing in
the name of the working class, as in the Leninist countries, De Leon
asserted that a socialist political party has but one thing to do upon
winning control of the political offices, and that is to transfer all
management authority to the workers' councils, and, in so doing,
abolish all political forms of power, including abolition of the
socialist political party itself, without delay.
 
De Leonism calls for a complete change in the structure of government,
abandoning the use of geographical constituencies (towns, counties,
provinces, etc.).  The local and national economic congresses would
consist of delegates elected by the workers in the various
occupational functions - manufacturing, transportation, agriculture,
education, health, recreation, etc.
 
The "industrial form of government" which is to replace the political
form would have only economic responsibilities.  Thus De Leon, as did
Marx, agreed partially with the anarchists, insofar as to say that a
truly classless society must also be stateless, and have no coercive
power that is distinct from and ruling over the populace.
 
De Leon's philosophy differed from most anarchists and
anarcho-syndicalists in his insistence that the working class can only
abolish the state by first capturing control of it.  The working class
must come to control the offices of political government (i.e., the
coercive and geographically-based form of government) in order to
dismantle it.  Therefore, the working class requires organization on
the political field.  The ballot, he said, "raises the labor movement
above the category of a conspiracy."  Without use of the present
constitutional method, he argued, the social transformation would have
to be violent, involve a "massacre" of labor by the state, and even
that sort of transformation would be indefinitely postponed by the
"secrecy" which would be required of a non-political syndicalism,
which would be forced underground.
 
However, the ballot is considered purely "destructive", in that it
seeks to attain control of the state only for the purpose of
dismantling it.  The sole "constructive" power of the working class
is considered to be the industrial union.
 
The "socialist industrial union" is conceived as an association of
labor which organizes much as trade unions do, however it unites
workers of all occupations as the integral departments of a single
union of the entire working class.  Furthermore, the union openly
declares that, in putting forth momentary demands involving wages or
working conditions, it is only biding its time.  Once the degree of
working class organization on both the political and industrial fields
becomes sufficient, the union will "take and hold" the means of
production.  At that point, the union will no longer be a means, but
an end, its integral connection of all economic branches being put
into place as the new system of management.
 
Years before, Marx had written that "socialism casts off the political
cloak", and Engels had written that, with socialism, "the government
of persons is replaced by the administration of things."  Such
comments on the stateless characteristic of socialism were vague
enough to require that a Marxian thinker of a later generation would
have to make something specific of them.  To some extent, that
historical role was given to De Leon.
 
 
 
Early formation of the Socialist Labor Party
____________________________________________
 
 
Daniel De Leon was an American Marxist, and the editor of _The People_
and _The Daily People_, the journals of the Socialist Labor Party of
America.  De Leon was born on Dec. 14, 1852 on the island of Curacao,
and died on May 11, 1914 in New York City.
 
Of all organizations still in existence today, throughout the world,
the Socialist Labor Party of America is the one which is the most
direct extension of the International Working Men's Association (the
IWMA, or 'the International'), which was founded by Karl Marx and his
collaborators in 1864.  The International moved its headquarters to
New York in 1872, in response to the increasing influence of
Bakunin-style anarchists.  Whether the effect was planned or not, this
move to New York resulted in a loss of many European members and a
gain of many North American members.  The IWMA was formally dissolved
in 1876, and, in its place, that same year, the former IWMA membership
created the Workingmen's Party of the United States.  In 1877, the
members of the Workingmen's Party voted to change its name to the
Socialistic Labor Party (Note the suffix "-ic" in the name).
 
>From 1877 to 1890, the SLP platform was an unclear combination of
revolutionary goals and demands for gradual reforms.  The modern SLP
prefers to consider 1890 as the year of its creation, because it was
then that it removed the reformist goals from its revolutionary
program, and simultaneously dropped the suffix "-ic" from the name
"Socialist".
 
The SLP got an influx of new members after Bismarck decreed the
Anti-Socialist Laws in Germany in 1878.  At that time, some German
workers, to avoid persecution for their advocacy of socialism,
emigrated to the United States and joined the SLP.
 
In 1886, when Daniel De Leon first became an ally of the labor
movement, he was a lecturer of constitutional and international law at
Columbia University in New York City.  At this time, he came to
support the Single Tax movement of Henry George, which explained class
divided society primarily in terms of private ownership of land.
De Leon had not yet adopted the perspective of Marxism, which
considers class rule to based primarily on private ownership of the
means of production.
 
De Leon joined the SLP in 1889.
 
In 1891, the party's newspaper, _The People_, was established.  It
became the first socialist periodical published in the western
hemisphere.  De Leon was elected to the office of editor.  For the
remainder of his life, he wrote editorials which today provide us with
a more complete understanding of the development of the labor movement
and socialist theory during that period.
 
With the U.S. presidential election of 1892, the SLP nominated
Simon Wing, the first socialist national candidate in the western
hemisphere.
 
 
 
The struggle to form unions with socialist goals
________________________________________________
 
 
De Leon was instrumental in the formation, in 1895, of the Socialist
Trade and Labor Alliance.  The short-lived S.T. & L.A. was the first
labor union in the U.S. to declare the necessity of replacing
capitalism by social ownership of the industries.  It's open
recognition of the class struggle placed the union in opposition to
those so-called labor unions which endorsed capitalist ownership of
industry, including the American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.).
and the Knights of Labor (K. of L.)
 
To satirize the acceptance of capitalist rule by so-called organized
labor, De Leon called the union bosses "labor fakirs" (fakirs, are
snake-charmers and other magicians of the Eastern world), and
intentionally modified the spelling to be "labor fakers" .  He also
called the union leaders "labor lieutenants of the capitalist class".
 
 
 
The break with the IWW
______________________
 
 
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was organized in 1905.  Like
the earlier S.T. & L.A., the IWW is a union which openly recognizes
the necessity of replacing capitalism by social ownership of industry.
The SLP was allied with the IWW only from 1905 to 1908.
 
The 1905 version of the IWW constitution proposed that the working
class should "come together on the political as well as the industrial
field." Conflict between the SLP and the IWW started to appear in
1906, when a growing number of IWW members supported the idea of
deleting the political aspect of the program.  In 1908, this proposal
was realized by an amendment to the IWW preamble, the newer form of
which does not mention any need for political organization.
 
The SLP insisted that an attempt to establish social ownership of
the means of production through industrial organization alone would
amount to "physical forcism".  It would invite a "massacre" of
workers by the state, whereas the ballot box permits a "peaceful trial
of strength".  The IWW insisted that the process of industrial
organization can occur only if the union considers the worker's choice
of whom to vote for to be a personal one, and, therefore, the union
must avoid making political party endorsements.  The two organizations
also accused each other of disruptive actions.  Following some
name-calling episodes in 1908, all connection between the SLP and the
IWW came to an end.
 
The SLP then rejected the original IWW, describing it as
having been "captured by physical forcists."  The SLP called the
original IWW the "Chicago IWW" because of the location of its
headquarters, while the SLP formed another "Detroit IWW" based on
the SLP's dual political/industrial program.  In 1915 the Detroit
organization was renamed the Workers International Industrial Union.
The WIIU was dissolved in 1925, and since then there has been
virtually no De Leonist tendency operating on the industrial field.
 
Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, there has been very
little communication and cooperation between the De Leonists and the
IWW.  Some of those who hope for an eventual reconciliation continue
to try to promote improved communication between the two small
movements.
 
 
 
Organizational splits in the De Leonist movement
________________________________________________
 
 
In 1901, those who believed that socialism can be achieved by
incremental and legislated improvements in the capitalist system
resigned from the SLP and formed the Socialist Party of America.  The
SLP continued to insist that modifications to the surface forms of the
social system cannot bring about structural change, but would, rather,
"sweet-scent" class rule, and distract the workers with "palliatives".
When, in 1911, the SP candidate Victor Berger was elected to Congress,
and each of Berger's proposals in Congress implied a continuation of
capitalism, De Leon's editorials said Berger's brand of socialism was
fraudulent.  Todays Socialist Party USA (SPUSA) is an extension of the
original Socialist Party of America.
 
In the 1970s and 1980s several organization that were strongly
influenced by De Leonist principles, but independent of the Socialist
Labor Party, came to be established.
 
The Industrial Union Party, a De Leonist group, formed in the U.S.
largely in response to SLP practices which the IUP views as
undemocratic or bureaucratic.  The IUP cites the SLP's expulsion of
members over tactical disagreements, or in response to individuals'
comments which SLP elected officers called "insults", although the
individuals who were expelled had not abandoned their basic belief in
De Leonism.  A critical point seems to have been the resignation of
many SLP member in 1969.  Among those who resigned was Eric Hass,
formerly the editor of the SLP's newspaper for about thirty years, and
four times an SLP presidential candidate.  Both Hass, then, and the
IUP, today, have sharply criticized the policies of Arnold Petersen,
who was for 55 consecutive years (1914 to 1968) elected by the SLP
membership to the office of national secretary.  Another critical
point in the creation of the IUP was the SLP's expulsion of the entire
Bronx, New York section, which had consisted of 63 members, and had
been the SLP's largest section.  Several of these individuals became
IUP members.  The IUP publishes a quarterly newsletter called "The New
System".
 
The De Leonist Society has formed in Canada and the U.S. in response
to the SLP's increasing involvement in several less-than-revolutionary
causes, such as abortion rights, opposition to nuclear power, anti-war
demonstrations, demands for the independence of Puerto Rico, and
others.  The De Leonist Society regards the newer SLP course as
reformist tinkering, and an abandonment of its original uncompromising
and revolutionary focus.  The DS consists largely of members who
resigned from the SLP around 1977, after an SLP national convention
adopted the newer policy of "intervention in issue-oriented
movements".  The actual level of SLP involvement in those extraneous
causes has diminished much, relative to its level around 1980, but the
De Leonist Society and the SLP have not reunited.  In the months prior
to their resignation from the SLP in the late 1970s, several of the
DS founders tried to convince the SLP to retract a recent editorial in
_The People_.  In that article the SLP had, after the fact, judged the
now-ended Vietnam war to be primarily a struggle for national
independence on the part of the Vietnamese people, deserving the
support of international workers.  When the war was actually in
progress, the SLP had always portrayed it as a competition between
different forms of imperialism and class rule, with the international
working class having no reason to support any side.  The SLP retained
the viewpoint of the new article, and a number of members who resigned
soon afterward joined the De Leonist Society.
 
The New Union Party has formed in order to promote its goal and
program of New Unionism.  I'm unclear about many of the details, so
what I say about the NUP is just a personal impression.  The program
described by the NUP is very similar to De Leon's dual
political/industrial program for bringing about collective ownership
and democratic control of industry.  The NUP version is described in
terms which are much less packed with traditional Marxian terminology.
Although I would hesitate to label the NUP as formally Marxist -
De Leonist, since I haven't seen the party label itself, I see no
fundamental differences between New Unionism and the goal and program
which the De Leonists developed in the first decade of the 20th
century.  Perhaps the main difference is the seeking of clarity
through a new means of communication, and an avoidance of ideological
buzzwords appears to be a part of this new approach.
 
(This is not intended to be a complete list of all De Leonist
organizations now in existence.)
 
These last-mentioned organizations do not have complete publishing
departments.  The SLP's publishing department remains virtually the
only source of the writings and addresses of De Leon (that is, up
until my very recent efforts to have De Leon's works scanned into
computer files for electronic distribution).
 
 
 
Significant pamphlets and speeches in the development of De Leonism
___________________________________________________________________
 
 
The list of titles given here is incomplete.  Because they are
fundamental, these are the works I chose for the first pass at
optical scanning.
 
 
                      THE FOUR "BASIC" ADDRESSES
 
 
Most De Leonists believe that four in particular of the many speeches
delivered by De Leon were the most fundamental in putting forth the
De Leonist program.  Transcripts of these addresses were published
in the form of pamphlets, with these titles:
 
   "Reform or Revolution?"
         Wells' Memorial Hall, Boston, Mass., January 26, 1896
 
   "What Means This Strike?"
         City Hall, New Bedford, Mass., February 11, 1898
 
   "The Burning Question of Trades Unionism"
         New Auditorium Hall, Newark, N.J., April 21, 1904
 
   "Socialist Reconstruction of Society"
         Union Temple, Minneapolis, Minn., July 10, 1905
 
 
 
"Reform or Revolution?" (1896) is considered by many to be first
detailed socialist analysis which proposes a great incompatibility
between two goals, that of adjusting the forms of a social system
(reform), and that of changing the basic structure of the social
system (revolution).
 
Some apparent inconsistencies should be pointed out at this time.
 
---  In "Reform of Revolution?", De Leon refers to "the State or
government that the Socialist revolution carries in its womb." He also
says, "Guess you do want to nationalize the railroads, but only as a
reform; we want nationalization as a revolution." In later editorials
and addresses, De Leon never describes socialism as a type of "state",
and never proposes nationalization as the method to achieve socialism.
This is because, as of 1896, De Leon had not yet developed his
"socialist industrial union" program, which rejects nationalization,
and leads to stateless society.  The nearly complete development of
that program took place in 1904.
 
---  De Leon here described the political party as the "sword" and the
industrial union as the "shield" of labor, a viewpoint which was to be
exactly reversed by De Leon in 1904.  After 1904, his position was
that the socialist transformation of society must be performed
principally by the industrial organization, but with the assistance of
a political party.
 
 
 
"What Means This Strike?" (1898) was delivered on the occasion of a
strike, but the subject extends far beyond the matter of strikes.  The
speaker focuses on the basic division of labor's product into a paid
portion (wages) and an unpaid portion (profits).  He disposes of the
popular myth that the capitalist receives profit as a compensation for
having invested an "original accumulation."
 
There are known arithmetic errors in the examples which make use of
dollar figures.  The reader may ignore the actual numbers and instead
observe what sort of use the speaker makes of numbers.  The point is
that, if we consider the "value added" after the workers have acted
upon the tools, materials, etc., and compare it to the total wages
paid to those same workers, we find it to be a plain fact of
arithmetic that the worker's get back a mere fraction of what they
produce.  Therefore, it is not known "theoretically" that the workers
are exploited; rather, it is a direct observation.
 
 
 
"The Burning Question of Trades Unionism" (1904) was delivered about
nine months before industrial unionists' convention of January 1905,
which in turn was about five months before the first convention of the
IWW (June of 1905).  The concept of unionism presented in this address
influenced the later developments.
 
Union leaders who claim that capital and labor have common interests
are severely criticized, and the true purpose of unionism is described
as nothing short of the "dethronement of the capitalist class."  Also
criticized is that sort of unionism which divides the workers into
craft-based jurisdictions, rather than uniting the entire working
class into one economic force.
 
 
 
"Socialist Reconstruction of Society" (1905) was the occasion on which
De Leon proposed that to "take and hold" the industries is the
"function of unionism".  It is remarked here that future social
administration ought to be based, not on "geographic constituencies",
but, rather, on "industrial constituencies."
 
This occasion of the address is a line-by-line analysis of the
original (1905) version of the Preamble of the Industrial Workers of
the World, that is, prior to the 1908 amendment.  It's important to
remember that the original Preamble urged the working class to "come
together on the political, as well as the industrial field", whereas
the later version makes no reference to political organization.  This
address includes several arguments for the necessity of the ballot.
 
Here, too, some points about capitalist exploitation are made by
citing dollar figures which now obsolete.  The reader would do better
to follow the line of reasoning, rather than to concentrate on the
actual numbers.
 
 
 
New York Labor News, the publishing department of the Socialist Labor
Party, has published the four addresses mentioned in the preceding,
with added prefaces and appendices, under the title _Socialist
Landmarks_.  A free catalog of all available titles is available from
NYLN.
 
       New York Labor News
       914 Industrial Ave.
       Palo Alto, CA 94303 USA
 
 
                          THE SLP-IWW DEBATE
 
 
"As To Politics" documents the period of growing disagreement between
the Socialist Labor Party and the Industrial Workers of the World.
 
>From November of 1906 to February of 1907, De Leon and several IWW
members debated whether the ballot box is necessary, or whether the
industrial union can be self-sufficient.  The debate took the form of
an exchange of letters which were printed in the SLP newspaper.  These
letters were published by the SLP in 1907 as a pamphlet entitled "As
To Politics".
 
A printed form of "As To Politics" is also available from New York
Labor News.
 
 
  -- end of document -- last revision 08/11/93 -- mlepore@mcimail.com