"A Century After Debs" (4/11/26 panel)

On April 11th, 2026 at the University of Chicago, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel titled "A Century After Debs" as a panel at its 18th International Convention. Description: “Thomas Jefferson would scorn to enter a modern Democratic convention. He would have as little business there as Abraham Lincoln would have in a latter-day Republican convention. If they were living today they would be delegates to this [Socialist] convention!” - Eugene Debs Eugene Debs stood at the centre of the socialist movement in the United States during the era of the Second International. Like many socialists of the time, he understood the struggle for socialism as both continuous with, and an overcoming of, the wider legacy of the bourgeois revolution. The Socialist Party of America (SPA) rose contemporaneously with other movements which claimed America’s revolutionary legacy, such as Populism and Progressivism, yet Debs and socialists like him understood these movements to be fundamentally opposed to the goals of the proletarian socialist party. Yet this Marxist orthodoxy would enter a dual crisis, both from the international "Revisionist Dispute" of the early 1900s and the success of the October Revolution in 1917. The Bolshevik Revolution and the international revolutionary wave of the post-war years appeared to many socialists, including Debs, as a moment of revolutionary possibility for the socialist movement, yet the subsequent history of socialism in the United States and globally raises the question of whether the split of the SPA, and of the global socialist movement, was a step forward or step backward for socialism. What did Debs mean when he said “from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet I am Bolshevik, and proud of it”? What is the relationship between the crisis of the SPA, the rise of Progressivism, and the wider crisis of the American Revolution experienced in the aftermath of World War I? How did Debs understand the role of the socialist party in the struggle for socialism? What lessons does the life and legacy of Eugene Debs hold for emancipatory politics today? Speakers: Andrea Bauer (Freedom Socialist Party) Mark Burrows (Railway Workers United)] Carlos Garrido (American Communist Party) Ed Remus (Platypus Affiliated Society) Moderator: Conaugh Dwyer ___________________________________ Curious to learn more about Platypus? E-mail [email protected] to be connected with a chapter in your area. The Platypus Affiliated Society organizes reading groups, public fora, research, and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the "Old" (1920s-30s), "New" (1960s-70s), and post-political (1980s-90s) Left, for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today. http://www.platypus1917.org