The publication of this volume is not of Comrade Debs’ seeking. When
approached upon the subject several months ago he stated that he did not
suppose that he had accomplished enough to make a book, and it was only
after much persistent urging that he snatched the time from his busy
labors to correct and revise the original proofs of his Writings and
Speeches, and the argument he finally yielded to was that this work
would multiply his usefulness to the Socialist movement by as many
copies as may be distributed.
The _First American Revolution_ accomplished the overthrow of the rule
of the English King in the Colonies, the extinction of all rule by
inheritance, and the abolition of the proprietary charters to privileges
in America which had been granted to favorites and legatees of the
British Crown. The movement very early established the precedent of the
“boycott” of “unfair” products when the Boston Tea Party by strategy
boarded the ships of the English merchants and dumped their cargoes into
the sea. Nor was the period without its “undesirable” citizens, whose
memories loyal Americans delight to revere.
The Civil War, or the _Second American Revolution_, accomplished the
overthrow of a fundamental principle in the Federal constitution as
interpreted by our highest judicial authority, in the Dred Scott
decision, and the abolition of a special form of slavery or property in
black human beings.
The Socialist Movement, or the _Third American Revolution_, has for its
accomplishment the overthrow of private property in social wealth,
machinery and land, and the abolition of the Wage System, a form of
general slavery whereby men profit and grow fat out of the
hunger-enforced labor, and hence out of the _lives_ of others.
It is no strain of words to say that in the extinction of Wage Slavery a
modified state of war even now obtains, and not so very modified at
that. We need not the tinsel and glitter of soldiery, nor the clash and
clangor of arms to constitute war, but if we did, was it not but
yesterday we heard the tread of troops in Colorado? And today, what is
it we hear from the South but a fusilade upon the striking miners of
Alabama? And tomorrow may we not hear the ripping, whirring sound the
Gatlings and Maxims make?
But aside from the open battle, a struggle far more brutal and inhuman,
wages bitterly. The poor are warred upon, plundered and ravished. Our
children famish and die at the machines of the Capitalist Class, and our
wives, our widows and our daughters are torn from us and prostituted to
uses abject and unmentionable. What more do we wish to make it war, and
what more must we suffer?
This book, every line of which is a labor of love, is the property of
The Third Revolution, and as such is dedicated to the Wage Slaves of the
world who smart under the crack of the Hunger Whip.