The poor will always be with you

Daniel De Leon was the de facto leader of the U.S. Socialist Labor Party (SLP) from 1890 to 1914. The SLP was relatively well known, but its influence on the left and in the unions was much smaller than that of the Socialist Party of America (SPA). During the 1920's, the SLP was also eclipsed by the Communists. The group still exists, but probably mostly on the web. They call their ideology “Marxism-DeLeonism” as a tribute to De Leon.

“Abolition of Poverty” was originally published in 1911 or 1912 (my copy says 1912) and has been reprinted by the SLP several times since. It contains De Leon's comments on an anti-socialist speech given in Boston by Jesuit father Thomas Gasson, the president of Boston College. The material was originally serialized in the SLP's paper, “Daily People”. Like many main line Americans, De Leon considered the Catholic Church to be a dangerous, anti-democratic and anti-American political machine. He regarded the Church as a kind of third force, opposing capitalism from the right in “reactionary-revolutionary” fashion. This analysis sounds distinctly un-Marxist, since Marxists (as far as I know) regard the Catholic Church as pro-capitalist pure and simple, “feudal socialism” being very much a thing of the past. Be that as it may, De Leon's strong stance against “Ultramontanism” forms the backdrop to “Abolition of Poverty”.

The pamphlet is socialism 101, and I don't think it's particularly interesting, expect maybe as a sneak peek into the Zeitgeist of 1911 (or was it 1912). Writing before the disasters of really existing socialism, before the New Deal and the post-war boom, and before the complete failure of the SLP, De Leon eloquently argues that socialism will make the individual flourish, that the state will wither away, that capitalism can never eradicate widespread poverty in the advanced industrial nations, that the victory of socialism is inevitable, and that it will be introduced in the highly advanced American economy before the rest of the world. His main point is that socialism, and socialism only, can abolish (not simply diminish) poverty.

Writing before our time, when the future of civilization hangs in the balance (or in the wrong scale entirely!) due to resource depletion and climate change, De Leon tacitly assumes that material and technological progress will last forever, and that the abundance created by such an economy will make it possible to abolish poverty, provided collective ownership is introduced. Today, such a vision sounds utopian, naïve or even contra-productive. Back in the days, most people believed in some version of the idea of Progress. In a sense, De Leon's attack on capitalism is that it isn't progressive enough, while “Ultramontanism” (politically activist Catholicism) even wants to turn the clock back a few centuries!

In his articles against Gasson, De Leon attacks utopian schemes, mentioning Isaiah's dreams of a Millennium and Plato's dialogue “Republic”. Those who raise materially impossible demands will eventually end up as cynical reactionaries, warns De Leon. He sees the Jesuit state in Paraguay and the American Rappites as more benevolent, but ultimately rejects them, too, since socialism cannot mean shared poverty, but simply must be based on shared abundance. Perhaps he rejected them to soon?

The poor might yet inherit the Earth, but perhaps not in the sense dreamt up by Daniel De Leon and other socialists…