All Roads Lead to Revolution: Daniel De Leon, the People, and Marxist Classical Reception

Description

Born in 1852 to a Sephardic Jewish Dutch family in Dutch-controlled Curaçao, Daniel De Leon would become one of the most well-known and influential Marxist figures in American history. De Leon was the preeminent source of information, education, and Marxist theory for working-class Americans and, often, De Leon utilised ancient history, classical authors and their texts to help explain contemporary capitalist exploitation to working-class Americans. While the most well-known example of De Leon’s classical reception comes from his published lecture, Two Pages from Roman History, this paper will explore De Leon’s more frequent uses of antiquity in his articles for the Socialist Labor Party of America's (SLP) official newspaper, The People.

The People was the longest-running socialist newspaper in American history (1891 to 2011). De Leon became the editor of the People in 1892 and contributed over 4,200 editorials during his tenure and a significant portion of these articles utilise classical antiquity as a didactic tool to teach his audience about the corrupt world of contemporary capitalism. De Leon takes a Marxist approach to classical antiquity and uses key moments, figures, and texts from the ancient Mediterranean to warn, explain, and teach the proletariat about contemporary society under capitalism.

This paper builds on the previous discussion of De Leon’s classical reception and analyse how and why De Leon uses antiquity as a didactic tool to teach his audience about contemporary society and the ancient world. A small but not insignificant portion will be devoted to analysing the potential impact that De Leon’s interpretation of classical culture had on his audience and their view of the ancient Mediterranean. On a broader level, this paper is a small step towards the necessary research on the Marxist reception of classics. It works to uncover the possibility of a left-wing liberatory/revolutionary interpretation of the ancient world to counter the popular and oft-researched right-wing appropriations of classics.