The Helios Biblios Hour : pt3 Death of A NATION

Eugene V. Debs, an organizer of workers in the railroad industry, emerged as a charismatic figure, the party’s political candidate and a public spokesperson for the socialist movement.Debs had described him as "the Lincoln of Labor".African-American figures like W.E.B. DuBois, Hubert Harrison, Chandler Owens, A. Philip Randolph and W.A. Domingo joined the Socialist Party after its founding in 1901.Within the Socialist Party there were two main currents of thought about the role of African Americans in the working-class struggle. One tendency thought it could broaden the socialist movement by downplaying the racism and national oppression suffered by the African-American people. But a more left-wing position spoke directly to the race terror faced by African Americans and demanded that the socialist movement condemn racism and commit to the fight for its eradication.In this essay, entitled “The Negro in the Class Struggle,” Debs described these racists as “the foul product of the capitalist system and held in the lowest contempt by the master class,”Debs went on to proclaim: “The whole world is under obligation to the Negro, and that the white heel is still upon the black neck is simply proof that the world is not yet civilized. The history of the Negro in the United States is a history of crime without parallel.”while to the left of other white socialists who wanted to ignore racism, failed to acknowledge the importance of the Black struggle for national self-determination. He fell far short of revolutionaries like Karl Marx who, much earlier during the U.S. Civil War, wrote that white workers could never emancipate themselves from wage slavery as long as Black workers were held in bondage.The rise the African-American community drew the attention of the communists. In 1920 the Second Congress of the Communist International developed its thesis on the right of oppressed nations to self-determination.