What Eugene Debs and the Socialist Party Can Teach Us About Freedom
Jeff Bezos wants us to believe that allowing billionaires to wield enormous power makes us all better off. Eugene Debs and the Socialist Party, founded 120 years ago this summer, had a very different vision for society: one of empowered workers and freedom from domination.
Socialist Party of America leader and five-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs addresses a crowd. (Historica Graphica Collection / Heritage Images / Getty Images)
Just call it the summer of billionaires.
In July 2021, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson preened for the cameras before blasting off into space, beating fellow billionaire Elon Musk to the punch. In separate trips, the two peered down at the blue planet, suspended above us mere mortals, experiencing weightlessness for an ethereal few minutes. It was “the best day ever,” enthused Bezos, he of the $190 billion net worth. Musk, perhaps nursing a bruised ego, salvaged the summer by winning a $3 billion contract from NASA over the howls of Bezos’s space-exploration company, Blue Origin.
Workers, meanwhile, have been consumed by more prosaic concerns this summer: Fear of eviction. A deadly new coronavirus variant. Lethal heat waves, floods, and wildfires.
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