Background
De Leon was born in the Carribean island of Curasao, which was first colonized by the Dutch and had a long-established Jewish community. His father, Salomon, was a surgeon with the Dutch colonial army and a prominent colonial government official. In appreciation for his heroic stance in both treating the sailors of a typhus- infested ship and protecting the population, Salomon was made a knight of the Order of Saint Danneborg by the Danish government. He died when Daniel De Leon was twelve years old, and was the first person to be buried in the new Jewish cemetery ol Curacao.
Education
Upon the death of his father, De Leon went to Europe to continue his education. He received the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy from the Universify of Leyden.
Career
Upon going to the United States in 1872, had a distinguished career at the Columbia Law School.
He was lecturer at Columbia on Latin American diplomacy (1883-1889).While still at Columbia, he was drawn to the labor movement. He joined the Knights of Labor in 1888 during a period of intense strikes and struggles in labor organization, and emerged as the strong leader the labor movement needed. His active involvement in the labor movement was not looked upon very favorably by the Columbia University administration.
After not being appointed to a promised professorship, De Leon left Columbia and dedicated himself to the labor movement. In 1890, he became a member of the Socialist Labor party, upon which he had a dominating influence for the following two decades in his various capacities as nationwide public speaker and, especially, through his editorship of its newspaper. The Weekly People (later, Daily People). As editor of the journal from 1892 until his death, he stamped his personality on the party.
He also ran for public office as socialist candidate on several occasions; in 1891 he ran for the governorship of New York State. He wanted to create a labor movement that would include unskilled workers and would constitute a political revolutionary force. To this end he founded, in 1895, the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance as an alternative to the established unions. However, his inflexibility and doctrinaire Marxism brought him to loggerheads with many other leaders. In 1895, a group of leading Jewish socialists left the party in reaction to his policies and in 1899 Morris Hillquit and his colleagues withdrew in protest against his radicalism. De Leon has been blamed for his attempts to establish an authoritarian rule over his party through personal invective, the expulsion of opponents, and control of the press.
Religion
De Leon was always reluctant to admit his Jewish origins in the midst of a widespread anti-Semitism among his opponents.
Politics
De Leon was one of the chief advocates of socialism in the United States, seeking to put an end to the capitalist system, but his uncompromising positions served to fragment the movement. He wrote a considerable body of polemic literature.
Views
Having been brought up in Curacao, where slavery was the main source of income until it was abolished in 1863 (when De Leon was eleven), De Leon, even as a child, was acutely aware of the social injustices surrounding him.
It was said that when news came of the escape of one of their slaves, his family members reacted with shock at the slave’s ingratitude, whereas. Daniel demanded “But did anyone ever offer to give him his liberty?”