A socialist in Rome

“Two Pages from Roman History” is a small book by American Marxist Daniel De Leon, first published in 1903. I've already reviewed it at another product page, so here we go again! ;-)

De Leon's book consist of two lectures, titled “Plebs Leaders and Labor Leaders” and “The Warning of the Gracchi”. The first is an indictment of the trade union leadership and apparatus. The second is a criticism of what later generations of socialists would call reformism, populism and popular frontism. The political positions expressed are those of the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), of which De Leon was the de facto leader and chief theoretician.

What makes the book curious is that De Leon illustrates his political points by references to Roman history, specifically the Roman Republic. Thus, he compares “the labor leaders” (such as AFL president Samuel Gompers) with the plebeian leaders of Rome. De Leon views the patricians and the upper layer of the plebeians as essentially the same class in socio-economic terms. However, since the patricians had more political rights, the rich plebeians had to use middling and poor plebeians as cannon fodder to wrest reforms from the patriciate. These reforms invariably benefitted the rich plebeians at the expense of the poorer layers whose “representatives” the plebs leaders supposedly were. De Leon's point, of course, is that the relationship between labor leaders and workers is similar. If taken to its logical conclusion, De Leon is suggesting that the union leaders and the capitalists are part of the same class, at least in economic terms. His lecture does contain a long list of union leaders who have personal (and lucrative) connections to Big Business or Big Government. Like the plebs leaders, the union apparat nevertheless feels that it isn't getting a fair shake from the “patricians” and therefore occasionally upsets the apple carts, using the union members (the workers) as pawns. De Leon warns that the end result will be the same as in ancient Rome, where the poor and middling plebs didn't get anything substantial, while the plebs leaders moved ever closer to its patrician peers. De Leon's parallel between Rome and modern America is, of course, reflected in the actual politics of the SLP. De Leon and his supporters attempted to create dual unions on a full socialist program, rather than joining the AFL. Since most workers weren't socialists, SLP's unions became ineffectual, consisting only of SLP members and close supporters.

De Leon's strongly sectarian politics shines through even better in the second and concluding article, “The Warning of the Gracchi”. The brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus attempted to reform Rome, break the power of the rich land-owners and distribute land to the poor plebeians. Both failed, Tiberius being murdered, while Gaius committed suicide rather than being slain by his enemies. De Leon criticizes the Gracchi for piecemeal reforms, overreliance on the old establishment, too much respect for traditional institutions and “forms”, and populist demagoguery. By treating the plebeian mass as a herd or common mob, to be deployed or demobilized at the whim of the great leaders, they only succeeded in alienating it from their cause. It can hardly be denied that De Leon's criticism of the Gracchus brothers does fit a certain breed of populist politicians, for instance in Latin America. However, his point is to argue in favor of the SLP's perspective, according to which socialists should renounce all reform demands and all cooperation with non-socialists, in favor of demanding “the unconditional surrender of capitalism” (no less!).

Finally, it's somewhat curious to see a dogmatic Marxist make comparisons between American capitalism and the class struggles in the Roman Republic, both because of the obvious differences and because Marx never thought that the “proletarians” of ancient Rome could overthrow the system anyway. If Marx identified with anybody in Rome, I suppose it was Spartacus, but he didn't really think the slaves could create a socialist commonwealth either! I don't know why De Leon chose Rome as an illustration for the SLP's politics. Perhaps it was common in the United States at this time to obsess about all things Roman? I know people did it during the War of Independence, but this was written when Teddy Roosevelt was president...

In the end, I will only give this rather tedious tract two stars, but it's probably necessary reading if you for some reason decided to study the ideas of Daniel De Leon and the Socialist Labor Party.