‘Messiah of the Masses and Prophet of the Proletariat’: Reexamining Eugene Debs in the Framework of Spiritual Socialism

The following paper is concerned with the role that Christianity played in the discourse, life, and campaign of the prominent American socialist, Eugene Debs. Considering that socialism in the United States is often deemed impossible due to a myriad of factors—a prominent one being the underlying Protestant ethos of the state—Debs’ campaigns earned unprecedented support for the presidency in 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. I contend that Debs’ presidential campaigns offer a unique case for exploring the reconciliation of a secular socialist program with the Protestant and individualistic ethos of American society. Though an avowed secularist, it is well documented that Debs’ admired the historical Jesus, and he notably challenged the alignment of the Protestant Churches with industrial capitalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Using first and secondhand documentation on Debs’ campaigns, this paper proposes that Debs’ presentation of socialism as a necessary and logical expression of Christianity was important for overcoming the ideational barrier that Protestant Christianity poses for socialist candidates in the US. Where scholars like Jacob Dorn contend that Debs was effective at overcoming the “either-or” thinking that often plagues orthodox socialism, I contend that Debs’ appeal to a Jesus-centered Christianity importantly presented a new “either-or” maxim, where Christians were faced with choosing between capitalist Churchianity, or true Christianity. &nbsp

The General Strike and the Specter of Anarchism in the German “Mass Strike Debate”

In the quarter century before the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, German Social Democrats engaged in strenuous disputes about the most effective forms of political action. Central to this debate was the question of the utility of the “political mass strike,” a widespread work stoppage intended to achieve a political rather than an economic end, and potentially also to heighten workers’ consciousness of their political power. An aspect of the mass strike debate that has received less systematic attention is the role of anti-anarchist rhetoric, in particular regarding the “general strike,” in shaping the development of this intra-party conflict. Throughout the mass strike debate, German Social Democrats frequently came to explain their own ideology through the prism of their antipathy to anarchism. In associating the political mass strike with the anarchist general strike, Social Democratic reformists stigmatized the radicals in their own ranks who advocated the cultivation of workers’ revolutionary sentiments. On the other side, proponents of the political mass strike, such as Rosa Luxemburg, accused party moderates of succumbing, like anarchists, to a bourgeois mindset. Thus, throughout the Social Democrats’ mass strike debate, the accusation that one’s opponents adhered to an anarchist deviation from correct Marxist thought served as a tool to delegitimize their perspective. Insisting on the complete irrationality and folly of anarchists, and attributing to Socialist opponents those same failures, made the conflict sharper and more acrimonious, and less amenable to resolution, as it went to core issues of socialist identity

Agrarian Reforms, Modes of Production and Farm Bills 2020 in Punjab

In the light of historical developments and the nature of Punjab’s agrarian milieu, this paper examines the latest agrarian intervention proposed by the State- ’Farm Bills 2020’. The paper begins with an analysis current mode of production in Punjab by investigating factors like institutional credit market, land prices, accumulation of capital, input-output ratio, commodification, commercialization, labor functions, and technological modernity. This is followed by a discussion on the historical background of agrarian reforms in Punjab. This discussion attempts to identify causes of proliferation and impacts of Arhtiya class of Intermediaries. In this way, the present paper seeks to study the nature of the intervention purported by the Farm Bills in terms of its interaction with the transforming social contradictions, and possible implications on the socio-economic framework, rural sociology, and existing agrarian relations in Punjab

Rachel Emma Rothschild, Poisonous Skies: Acid Rain and the Globalization of Pollution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019)

Book Review of Rachel Emma Rothschild, Poisonous Skies: Acid Rain and the Globalization of Pollution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019

Emma Goldman and the United States: The History of a Love-Hate Relationship

Emma Goldman had a love-hate relationship with the United States. While she was radicalized there after her arrival as an immigrant who had left Czarist Russia in her teens, the female anarchist spent years fighting the state and its government for more freedom and equality. The First World War witnessed the climax of this struggle, and Goldman’s support for the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution turned her into a prominent target of new laws that would be used to expel her from the US. Afterward, she experienced the “Soviet utopia” and lived in many European countries. Goldman lectured there about the American anarchist movement, US capitalism, and the failure of the workers to challenge capitalism. The present article follows the history and the development of this special love-hate relationship and thereby not only provides a detailed evaluation of Goldman’s genesis as a radical anarchist in its American context, but also highlights the overlap between biographical history, the history of anarchism in the United States, and global migration experiences in the first third of the 20th century, as they were brought together and influenced by transnational events, i.e. the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and its consequences