William A. Pelz

As one of the iconic figures of the American left, Eugene Debs’s words have been anthologized several times since his death in 1926. Indeed, in his preface, the editor of this collection, William Pelz, even references these collections to point out how they reflected the efforts by people from across the ideological spectrum – from New Deal liberals to Trotskyites – to adopt Debs posthumously for the benefit of their own causes. While an informative reflection of his historical stature, such efforts can get in the way of Debs’s own words, which is always the real value of these collections.

Of course, what matters more with such efforts is not the arguments advanced by the editors and other contributing writers to claim Debs for themselves, but what they select from the body of Debs’s articles, speeches, and other works to represent Debs’s thinking. The surprising thing about Pelz’s collection in this respect is how similar it is to Arthur Schlesinger’s older Writings and Speeches of Eugene V. Debs, as all but one of the thirty-five readings in this book were included in Schlesinger’s more comprehensive collection. Moreover, their presentation suffers by comparison, as the level of editing in this book is disappointing. Minor errors such as missing italicizations and quotation marks are scattered throughout the text, while the one additional reading – a lengthy 1923 speech on “The Negro Workers” – is tacked on at the end rather than organized chronologically along with the other selections.

All of this makes for a disappointingly limited reader that doesn’t do full justice to its subject. For all of the value of the introductory essays by Pelz, Mark Lause, and the late Howard Zinn, these are no substitute for the pared-down nature of the selections or the indifferent editing they received. While the book provides a serviceable enough sampling of Debs's writings, anyone seeking a more comprehensive selection of his work that better reflects the range of his activism would be better off turning either to the new multi-volume Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs currently being edited by Tim Davenport and David Walters or to Schlesinger’s older compilation.… (meer)