Daniel De Leon Quotes
Between the working class and the capitalist class, there is an irrepressible conflict, a class struggle for life. No glib-tongued politician can vault over it, no capitalist professor or official statistician can argue it away; no capitalist parson can veil it; no labor faker can straddle it; no “reform” architect can bridge it over. It crops up in all manner of ways
Daniel DeLeon, 1852-1914, Author and Socialist leader, An address delivered to the strikers at he City Hall, New Bedford, Massachusetts, February 11, 1898
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Sinclair had written an expose of the meat packing industry – the Jungle – which used as its setting the Armour meat packing factory. It changed the way the public thought about the industry, the role of government and regulation. President Roosevelt took up the reform role, and got Congress to Regulate the quality and cleanliness of the meat packing industry. Sinclair, however not only wanted that reform, but also wanted the labor wages and conditions reformed. He referred to the Armour plant as the fortress.
Commenting on the 1886 Knights of Labor strike.
This quotation and other material were so radical and inflammatory that Calhoun wrote and published this anonymously.
What the Supreme Leader did not understand was that the very books that he recommended to see the faults of America were the very instruments that influenced the American reformers to change and improve America. And the lesson he missed is that he would not allow authors to heavily criticize the current Iran and have a wide audience so that Iran could improve. His examples were very well chosen. The lesson is the wrong one however.
Ideologues often use the tactic of opposing everything the government does—even if they would support it intellectually. The main issue for them was to win the class warfare, and the move to that end by never giving the government credit for anything or sharing power or cooperating in any way. This is not just a tactic of the left. The Tea Party Conservative Republicans adopted the same tactics with the Barack Obama Democratic Administration.
Daniel De Leon (/də ˈliːɒn/; December 14, 1852 – May 11, 1914), alternatively spelt Daniel de León, was a Curaçaoan-American socialist newspaper editor, politician, Marxist theoretician, and trade union organizer. He is regarded as the forefather of the idea of revolutionary industrial unionism and was the leading figure in the Socialist Labor Party of America from 1890 until the time of his death.[2] De Leon was a co-founder of the Industrial Workers of the World and much of his ideas and philosophy contributed to the creations of Socialist Labor parties across the world, including: Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.
