A Fresh Look at a Pioneer

A fascinating thesis that Daniel DeLeon’s immersion in the novels of Eugene Sue—many of which he translated into English—had left him deeply influenced by The Wandering Jew, a Sue novel he did translate, is explored in Glen Seretan’s informed book on this contentious pioneer of American socialism. In the Sue context the Wandering Jew is pictured as less identified with his own people and more “as a champion of the proletariat against…its oppressors.”...