Happy birthday, Eugene V. Debs

It is the birthday of Socialist activist Eugene V. Debs (1855), who ran unsuccessfully for President five times as the leader of the Socialist Party. In 1905, he helped organize the Industrial Workers of the World, the labor union bent on abolishing capitalism and wage labor. The radical group known as the Wobblies attracted anarchists and socialists as well as women, African Americans, Asians and immigrants at a time when those groups were not embraced by other labor movements. Here is a reenactment of a 1918 antiwar speech given by Debs for which he was imprisoned.

Happy birthday, Edward Carpenter

It is the birthday of English Socialist poet Edward Carpenter (1844), who is best remembered for his philosophical treatise Civilization, Its Cause and Cure (1891), in which he advances the idea that civilization is a disease that human societies go through before expiring. He proposed that humanity seek a closer association with the land and inner being to survive. He was instrumental in establishing the socialist Fabian Society in England. Carpenter also was an early gay activist. He wrote The Intermediate Sex (1908). He influenced D.H. Lawrence and inspired E.M. Forster's novel Maurice (1971).