The issues first raised in the transition to an industrial capitalist society are not yet resolved. But his life and those of his comrades in the labor and Socialist movements have a far broader significance. His talents were unsuited to such an approach and to that extent limited him. Neither in his time nor in ours would Debs stand as an architect of a specific program for the future. I have stressed each aspect of Debs's story in order to present both the importance of the man and a more complete picture of the political and cultural struggles his society engaged in during his lifetime. But the book is also a piece of social history that assumes individuals do not stand outside the culture and society they grew in and from. It is a traditional biography in that it emphasizes this one individual's personal and public life as far as the evidence allows. This is a social biography of Eugene Victor Debs.
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