MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell

When 1 Million Americans Voted Socialist

Just in time to celebrate the triumph of Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a New York primary, along with our annual July 4th holiday commemorating the 1776 Revolution, viewers can watch American Socialist, The Life & Times of Eugene Victor Debs. As Yale Strom’s timely documentary reminds us, Debs was big. He ran for US president as the Socialist Party candidate five times — including once from prison — and received around 1 million votes in the 1920 election.

According to Strom’s engrossing film, Debs was the only presidential candidate ever arrested for his campaign platform. Charged with 10 counts of sedition under the Espionage Act, Debs was convicted for publicly opposing the draft and US participation in World War I.

At his sentencing, Debs (in the film voiced by actor Nick Cagle), poetically declared:

“Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Strom’s 97-minute nonfiction film features historical photos, archival footage, and news clips intercut with contemporary interviews with talking heads, including Frances Fox Piven, Richard Schneirov, Richard Wolff, and New Yorker senior editor and staff writer Rick Hertzberg.

Early in the documentary, demonstrators wearing “Bernie” and “Tom Morello” t-shirts and carrying picket signs are asked to define what socialism means to them. Americans have been subjected to enormous disinformation about socialism, and on the rare occasions when leftists do appear in the mass media, they’re rarely asked to explain their conception of what socialism is.

As portrayed in American Socialist, Debs viewed socialism as “Christianity in action,” and a “secularized gospel.” The son of French immigrants, Debs was born in 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and named after two French lefty novelists, Eugène Sue (who was elected to the Legislative Assembly after the 1848 French Revolution) and the author Victor Hugo, who wrote Debs’s favorite book, Les Miserables. The salt-of-the-earth Indiana upbringing of young Eugene greatly impacted his conception of socialism, which was rooted in the industrial and agricultural experiences of ordinary workers. The film also emphasizes the popularity of the Socialist Party in the west and the midwest, especially Wisconsin.

Debs, who left school at 14, rose through organized labor’s ranks, co-founding the American Railway Union and co-leading 1894’s Pullman Strike, for which Debs served his first prison sentence, a six month term for obstruction of mail. After co-founding the Socialist Party, Debs threw his hat into the presidential ring in 1900, the first of his five bids for the White House. In 1905, Debs joined with other labor leaders in Chicago to create the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Also known as the Wobblies, the IWW militantly agitated for “one big union.” American Socialist details the execution by a Utah firing squad of IWW balladeer Joe Hill on dubious murder charges, despite mass protests.

Other historical figures featured in the film include Wisconsin Senator and Progressive magazine founder Robert La Follette; Big Bill Haywood; Emma Goldman; Helen Keller; attorney Clarence Darrow; poet Carl Sandburg; novelists Jack London and Upton Sinclair; and a number of people who ran on socialist platforms.

As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—who may become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress — emerges as a fresh new face of socialism, American Socialist is must-see viewing for anyone interested in taking power for the workers. As this well-made film illustrates, the organizing and candidacy of Eugene V. Debs has much to teach us.

Following a limited theatrical release, American Socialist, The Life & Times of Eugene Victor Debs is available July 3 on DVD and iTunes.

The third edition of The Hawaii Movie and Television Book co-authored by L.A.-based reviewer/historian Ed Rampell is now available. Rampell is writing/co-presenting a Dr. King Commemoration at the Left Coast Forum.

From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2018

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