Talk:Daniel De Leon

DeLeon

What reference is there for the accent over the o in DeLeon?

It's a Spanish surname, hence the accent. He was Western Sephardic. Not all Jews have Yiddish/German names, you know!JBDay 16:55, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but did he use that spelling - I've just checked Library of Congress Authorities and they have his name without the accent (but otehr DeLeon's with) - I propose we move the page. Also, use is inconsistent, it's in the article title, but not used throughout.--Red Deathy 08:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

It is common practise in the USAmerica, not so much other Anglo-centric countries, to ignore accent marks and related such as the tilde. For example, how often do you see the ship of Columbus spelled with the proper tilde "Niña" instead of the actually different word "Nina?" Perhaps more research is necessary.JBDay 19:34, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Iron Law of Wages

Would someone please explain how DeLeon was an advocate of Lasalle's Iron Law of Wages? if not, I'm going to remove that passage.Thank You.JBDay 21:01, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

DoneJBDay 18:17, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I've restored it, with citation, I think several authors on him make the same claim, it's not original, I'd have to read further.--Red Deathy 08:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

What is the basis for saying that DeLeon advocated LaSalle? I've read that before, reference 1, and I don't see any sort of thing that would even begin to prove that. So DeLeon was not a militant reformer such as Lenin, that didn't make him a LaSallean. I'll have to find something contradicting that suggestion myself and then post the link. I'll take out the scurrilous reference when I can find something specifically contradicting it.JBDay 20:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, in the context of the discussion, the argument that teh workers are going to be unable to raise their wages - in the long run - above an objective value amounts to Lassaleanism. Now, DeLeon was radical in that for him this meant that you had to abolish the wages system, there was little scope for struggling within it for higher wages. I think there are secondary sources that opinion, and they may be better to include. Have a look at girrard & Perry (if you can chase down a copy), I think they may cover it, I'll check out some of my books at home.--Red Deathy 14:58, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Iron law of wages??

DeLeon?? If DeLeon then Marx as well, right? Then we all advoate the iron law of wages, right? Just what is the specifc parameter that supposedly triggers this designation? Davesearles 22:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)davesearles

---

The statement that De Leon had Lassallean (as contrasted with Marxian) characteristics is incorrect. Marx, Lassalle and De Leon all agreed that capitalism features a recurrent tendency to push wages downward to a bare subsistence level, so that winning higher wages by means of union activity will not settle the issue once and for all. The attached quotations from Marx [1][2] and Engels [3] identify in capitalism the tendency for wages to gravitate downward toward bare living wages.

De Leon [4][5] agrees with Marx and Engels about that, and cites the role of the surplus labor supply in producing this effect.

However, it was Lassalle only, and not either Marx or De Leon, who held that this effect makes a labor union organization entirely useless, making the subsistence wage an "iron law", and therefore warranting only a political party mode of working class organization.

Besides participating in the struggle for higher wages, De Leon held [6] that the industrial union is necessary for the working class to "take and hold" the industries. See the similar view [7] held by Marx.

In addition, both Marx [8] and De Leon [9] held that the union and the strike are a necessary form of rebellion that must precede the expanded form of rebellion that building socialism will require.

Lassalle was an example of what De Leon called a "pure-and-simple political" socialist. Lassalle viewed union organization as pointless, and the political party as all-sufficient. De Leon and Marx are in agreement that Lassalle was wrong about that. The Wikipedia article's association of De Leon with Lassalle viewpoint is in error.

--

References:

[1] "Thus, the cost of production of simple labor-power amounts to the cost of the existence and propagation of the worker. The price of this cost of existence and propagation constitutes wages. The wages thus determined are called the minimum of wages. This minimum wage, like the determination of the price of commodities in general by cost of production, does not hold good for the single individual , but only for the race. Individual workers, indeed, millions of workers, do not receive enough to be able to exist and to propagate themselves; but the wages of the whole working class adjust themselves, within the limits of their fluctuations, to this minimum."

-- Karl Marx, from "Wage-Labor and Capital", 1849

[2] "Labor, being itself a commodity, is measured as such by the labor time needed to produce the labor-commodity. And what is needed to produce this labor-commodity? Just enough labor time to produce the objects indispensable to the constant maintenance of labor, that is, to keep the worker alive and in a condition to propagate his race. The natural price of labor is no other than the wage minimum."

-- Karl Marx, from "The Poverty of Philosophy", 1847

[3] "Now what does political economy call a fair day's wages and a fair day's work? Simply the rate of wages and the length and intensity of a day's work which are determined by competition of employer and employed in the open market. And what are they, when thus determined? A fair day's wages, under normal conditions, is the sum required to procure to the laborer the means of existence necessary, according to the standard of life of his station and country, to keep himself in working order and to propagate his race. The actual rate of wages, with the fluctuations of trade, may be sometimes above, sometimes below this rate; but, under fair conditions, that rate ought to be the average of all oscillations. A fair day's work is that length of working day and that intensity of actual work which expends one day's full working power of the workman without encroaching upon his capacity for the same amount of work for the next and following days."

-- Friedrich Engels, in the article "A Fair Day's Wages for a Fair Day's Work," published in 'The Labour Standard', London, 1881.

[4] "Under capitalism, the workingman being a merchandise, his price (wages) does not depend upon the quantity of good things in existence, but upon the quantity of him in the labor market. The same as, regardless of the quantity of money there may be in the money market, pork chops will fetch a smaller price if the pork chop market is overstocked, so will the merchandise labor fetch a smaller price, however much money there may be, if the labor market is overstocked. And capitalism does that very thing. Privately-owned improved machinery, and concentration of plants, ruthlessly displace labor and overstock the labor market."

-- Daniel De Leon, from "The Burning Question of Trades Unionism", 1904

[5] "Great as education is, it is no 'open sesame.' Under the present industrial system, where not the masses but the few control the means of production, it can lift up the fellow so long as his education is superior to his fellows'. As soon as all are equally well educated, all become again equally poor."

-- Daniel De Leon, in the Weekly People, February 11, 1911

[6] "The mission of unionism is not to act as rear guard to an army defeated, seasoned in defeat, habituated to defeat, and fit only for defeat. The mission of unionism is to organize and drill the working class for final victory - to 'take and hold' the machinery of production, which means the administration of the country."

-- Daniel De Leon, from "Socialist Reconstruction of Society", 1905

[7] "At the same time, and quite apart form the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the MATERIAL CONDITIONS and the SOCIAL FORMS necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the CONSERVATIVE motto, 'A FAIR DAY'S WAGE FOR A FAIR DAY'S WORK!' they ought to inscribe on their banner the REVOLUTIONARY watchword, 'ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM!'"

-- Karl Marx, from "Value, Price and Profit", 1865

[8] "These few hints will suffice to show that the very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the VALUE OF LABOUR more or less to its MINIMUM LIMIT. Such being the tendency of THINGS in this system, is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation. I think I have shown that their struggles for the standard of wages are incidents inseparable from the whole wages system, that in 99 cases out of 100 their efforts at raising wages are only efforts at maintaining the given value of labour, and that the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities. By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement."

-- Karl Marx, from "Value, Price and Profit", 1865

[9] "There is one thing about your conduct that enlists for and entitles you to the warm sympathy of the Socialist, and that is that, despite your persistent errors in fundamental principles, in aims and methods, despite the illusions that you are chasing after, despite the increasing poverty and cumulating failures that press upon you, despite all that you preserve manhood enough not to submit to oppression, but rise in the rebellion that is implied in a strike. The attitude of workingmen engaged in a bona fide strike is an inspiring one. It is an earnest that slavery will not prevail. The slave alone who will not rise against his master, who will meekly bend his back to the lash and turn his cheek to him who plucks his beard - that slave alone is hopeless. But the slave, who, as you of New Bedford, persists, despite failures and poverty, in rebelling, there is always hope for."

-- De Leon, from "What Means this Strike?", 1898

Mike Lepore, Stanfordville, New York 23:24, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

---

Under Wages an S.L.P. organiser on the stump is quoted as having said that rises in wages are offset by rises in prices; that a Kangaroo quoted against that a passage from Marx’s Value, Price and Profit; that the S.L.P. organiser airily brushed aside the objection; that, consequently, he probably knows of Marx nothing but the name, and that such a theory knocks the feet from under the S.T. & L.A. and renders it little else than a "ward-heeling club" for the S.L.P...The S.L.P. organiser was right on the matter of wages and prices... (DeLeon , reply to Connolly).

...A notion prevails in some quarters that, if, indeed, all increase of wages which a labour organisation may secure is nullified by a corresponding rise in price, then labour organisations have no purpose. The notion is false, and the false reasoning is overthrown by Marx himself in scores of passages.

For one thing, a Trades Union’s incapacity to actually raise wages does not imply incapacity in all other important wage respects. While the actual raising of wages is an ideal, and that ideal, cannot be enjoyed in the long run, there is a ‘next best’ thing – the preventing of wages from dropping to the point that they inevitably would in the total absence of organisation. That the trades union, even the pure-and-simplest, does that is not open to discussion. Wages are declining on the whole, relatively and absolutely, but long ago would we have reached the coolie stage if the union did not act as a brake on the decline... (Ibid).

...and that is why, even though prices rise in tempo with the alleged rise, of wages, and even though pure and simple unionism checks the decline in Labour’s earnings, the S.T. & L.A. form of unionism is a necessity. (Ibid).

He further quotes Marx: “As with all other commodities, so with labour, its market price will, in the long run, adapt itself to its value; ... despite all the ups and downs, and do what he may, the workingman will, on the average, ONLY RECEIVE THE VALUE OF HIS LABOUR, WHICH RESOLVES INTO THE VALUE OF HIS LABOURING POWER, WHICH IS DETERMINED BY THE VALUE OF THE NECESSARIES REQUIRED FOR ITS MAINTENANCE AND REPRODUCTION,” – in other words, higher wages, in the long run, without at least proportional higher prices of necessaries, would mean a market price for labour out of keeping with its value, which is determined by the value of the necessaries required for its maintenance – an economic absurdity. (Ibid).

Now, Marx did say this in Value Price and Profit but also stated: It is evident that between the two limits of the maximum rate of profit and immense scale of variations is possible. The fixation of its actual degree is only settled by the continuous struggle between capital and labour, the capitalist constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum, and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction.

Now, as it happens, there is a good Wikipedia answer to this, this interpretation could be considered original research unless a citable author has made the same inferrance from te text (Maybe Perry & Gerard?). I'm sure I've seen it made elseplace but here, so maybe the section could be removed per WP:OR but maybe not, editors, you decide - be bold!--Red Deathy 08:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

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I don't have a copy of Girard and Perry. I can do a nearly-complete keyword search of the last 12 years of the SLP's newspaper (I see there no mention of "iron law", and only a couple mentions of Lassalle regarding other and irrelevant subjects).

How about the balance between the fundamental and the trivial? So many thousands of words could be written about De Leon's positions on war, poverty, unemployment, marriage and the family, critique of Gompers et al, child labor, democracy, free speech, the state, labor laws, internationalism, etc., and while space in the article is not yet allocated to many such issues, space is being allocated to a relatively obscure point. Ask SLP members if they had ever heard of De Leon's debate with Connolly, and more than 99 percent will say no -- then almost as many will add that they have never heard of a man named Connolly. I'm not belittling the importance of Connolly, but I'm belittling the impact of that debate with Connolly on the historical development that became De Leonism. Shouldn't the article on De Leon be about the major facets that have become the basic and historical entity and memory of the guy, rather than an atypical and off-the-cuff remark that he once made? Mike Lepore, Stanfordville, New York 11:11, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Mike, I'd have thought that due balance would necessitate inclusion of that point, specifically as DeLeon's most significant feature is his attitude to trade unions (and I suspect that his debate with Connolly would be what most Deleonists would remember him for). I'll cogitate on a rewording--Red Deathy 11:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Red Deathy, sorry if I'm slow, but I don't see the exact place in your post dated 08:41, 5 March 2007 where De Leon have have moved toward the Lassallean. What I do see there is documentation that De Leon was a Marxist. Also: we are missing a reference to things that Lassalle said, so we can see what Lassalleanism is, otherwise we can't evaluate how Lassallean something may be. Mike Lepore, Stanfordville, New York 11:51, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Mike, I've bolded some key phrases - the thrust of DeLeon's argument is that price increases will off-set wage rises, and in the long run wages will be depressed to their value - what he leaves out is Marx' account of how the value of wages has a cultural element derived from the class struggle. Tehre is a wikilink in the article to the iron Law of Wages.--Red Deathy 13:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I know that Marxists of the late 20th century realized that a term such as "living wage" has a culturally determined meaning, and that it doesn't literally mean being down to one's very last crumb before starving to death. I'm not aware that any of the predecessors were either clear or consistent about the whole subject, least of all Marx, who wrote in the 'Communist Manifesto': "The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence." Mike Lepore, Stanfordville, New York 00:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Readdeathy wrote: "the thrust of DeLeon's argument is that price increases will off-set wage rises, and in the long run wages will be depressed to their value - what he leaves out is Marx' account of how the value of wages has a cultural element derived from the class struggle."

dave searles asks: Are you saying that Marx in every instance of his briefly describing the price of labor power that he always included what you describe as a "cultural element" in the description? For example two excepts the Manifesto on the level of wages:

"Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production."

and also:

"the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots."

"Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time."

So what is this here? are Marx and Engels proponents of the "Iron Law of Wages" as well?

dave searles

Karl Kautsky explained that the term "iron law of wages" refers to a particular hypothetical mechanism, where population size is the thing that produces the living wage effect: "... a rise in wages results in a rapid increase of the working population, and the augmented supply of labour depresses wages, while a fall in wages brings about greater poverty and higher mortality among the working class, which diminishes the supply of labour-power, and thus causes wages to rise again." (Kautsky, _The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx_, available in the MIA, Part III, section V(1), entitled "The 'Iron Law of Wages'") --- When Marx, Engels, and De Leon discuss the living wage effect, the size of the population isn't mentioned as a component. Mike Lepore, Stanfordville, New York 06:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Connolly

How the does disagreement with the above make DeLeon Lasallean? Connolly went back to Ireland as a nationalist, not a socialist who disagreed with DeLeon.JBDay 02:13, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

No, Connolly went back as a nationalist and a revolutionary socialist, a characterization that Lenin, among others, recognized. Tom Cod (talk) 05:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Controversy/Rivalry

In reading Ginger's bio of EV Debs, it is made clear that a huge portion of the American left considered him not only a competitor, but a positive threat.

I came here looking for some background, but to no avail.

Anyone with better sources wanna take a stab at it? 184.17.171.22 (talk) 15:49, 16 April 2013 (UTC)