Eugene V. Debs Quotes about War

The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose -

The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose - especially their lives.

Eugene V. Debs

War, Class, Battle

Eugene V. Debs' anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio (June 16, 1918), as quoted in The Call Magazine, www.marxists.org. 1918.

I am not a capitalist soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of the plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight from the ruling class, but I will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.

Eugene V. Debs

War, Heart, Fighting

"In What War Shall I Take Up Arms and Fight?" by Eugene V. Debs, www.marxists.org. September 1915.

They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. ... Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.

Eugene V. Debs

Freedom, War, Self

Every one of the aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These... tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims - they are [called] the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight.

Eugene V. Debs

War, Fighting, Men

Eugene V. Debs' speech he gave across the street from a jail, where he had just visited three socialists who were in prison for opposing the draft, June 1918.

No war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.

Eugene V. Debs

Peace, War, People

Eugene V. Debs' anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio (June 16, 1918), as quoted in The Call Magazine, www.marxists.org. 1918.

They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.

Eugene V. Debs

Peace, Military, War

Eugene V. Debs' anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio (June 16, 1918), as quoted in The Call Magazine, www.marxists.org. 1918.

I am guilty of believing that the human race can be humanized and enriched in every spiritual inference through the saner and more beneficent processes of peaceful persuasion applied to material problems rather than through wars, riots and bloodshed.

Eugene V. Debs

Spiritual, War, Believe