Was Lincoln A Socialist?

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union Address: December 3, 1861

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.
—Abraham Lincoln, from his first speech as an Illinois state legislator, 1837

Everyone now is more or less a Socialist.
—Charles Dana, managing editor of the New York Tribune, and Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war, 1848

Was Abraham Lincoln a socialist? By today’s Tea Party standards, he most certainly was. Today’s Tea Party conservatives are utterly appalled at any such suggestion, and insist that Lincoln was somehow foggy, that he couldn’t possibly have meant what he said concerning labor and capital, and that he surely must have been speaking about something else. Let’s clear this up —- Lincoln was NOT a laissez faire capitalist, as the Tea Party/Republican/conservative/GOP is today. He was, what we would call, a socialist.

“… that labor is the superior—greatly the superior—of capital.”

This line comes from Lincoln’s address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society September 30, 1859. Lincoln would use variations of this theme throughout the campaign for the Republican nomination, and during his administrations. One year later, Lincoln signed the bill establishing the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

On August 5, 1861 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Revenue Act, imposing the first federal income tax in U.S. history. Then in 1862 we had free land for the masses! The Homestead Act, signed by Lincoln on May 20, 1862, gave free land to poor people in order to offset the land monopoly that had been developing. The Homestead Act was a modification of ideas articulated in Thomas Paine’s Agrarian Justice. In his last pamphlet, Thomas Paine outlined a social insurance plan for old folks and young people who were just starting out in life. The government was to pay seed money to young people! The money was to be paid from a national government fund accumulated for this purpose. The fund was to be financed by a 10% tax on inherited property. Yes, a plan for wealth redistribution. By today’s Tea Party standards, Lincoln would surely be considered a socialist.

Looking to Carl Sandburg’s six volume life of Lincoln, (pages 84-85) Sandburg mentions Robert Owen. Robert Owen attempted a socialist experiment in New Harmony, Indiana. Owen stated that “…he and his companions were going to find a new way for people to live their lives together, without fighting, cheating, or exploiting one another…they would share and share alike, each for all and all for each.” According to Sandburg, Owen’s endeavor “lighted up Abe Lincoln’s heart.”

Henry Clay could easily be characterized as a supporter of National Socialism by today’s Tea Party standards. He is the architect of the ‘American System,’ which called for high tariffs, federal support for “internal improvements” such as road building and railroads, corporate welfare, and a national banking system based on fiat money. As is well known, Lincoln was a huge admirer of Henry Clay his “American Way.”

Lincoln’s Socialism:

1. Taxed wealth creators
2. Exploded deficit spending
3. Federal takeover of banking
4. Government land giveaway
5. Public education

Horace Greeley’s Tribune was the leading Republican paper of the day, and Lincoln’s favorite paper to read. Marx was a contributor to the paper for years, and Charles Dana was the editor of Marx’s European correspondence that would regularly appear in the New York Daily Tribune. As Marx biographer Francis Wheen notes:

“The Tribune was by far the largest publisher of Marx’s (and to a lesser extent, Engels’s) work…. The Tribune articles take up nearly seven volumes of the fifty-volume collected works of Marx and Engels—more than Capital, more than any work published by Marx, alive or posthumously, in book form.” The first major series by Marx that appeared in the paper in nineteen installments, was titled : Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany.”

Charles Dana was a socialist who participated in a utopian experiment in communal living (as did Ralph Waldo Emerson) called the Brook Farm Association for Industry and Education in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Dana was not only a good friend of Lincoln, he served as Assistant Secretary of War from 1863 to 1865 under his administration. These are just a few of the interesting facts on the fascinating history of social movements, and the relationship between socialism and the early Republican party under Lincoln. Greeley, Dana, and Lincoln would have a hard time recognizing the Republican Party of today whose policies are driven by absolute free markets, trickle down theory, and corporate CEOs.

An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln

httpv://youtu.be/7qcg6HyaMDQ

Comparison with Marx

According to many historians, such as John Nichols, Abraham Lincoln had not only immersed himself in the ideas of Socialism, but included Socialistic thought in public addresses. Reading through Abraham Lincoln’s December 3, 1861 Annual Message to Congress, one can’t help but notice the Socialistic language and philosophy:

It is not needed, nor fitting here [in discussing the Civil War] that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effect to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Marx’s letter to Abraham Lincoln:

The International Workingmen’s Association 1864

Address of the International Working Men’s Association to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America

Presented to U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams
January 28, 1865 [A]

Written: by Marx between November 22 & 29, 1864
First Published: The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 169, November 7, 1865;
Transcription/Markup: Zodiac/Brian Baggins;
Online Version: Marx & Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000.

Sir:

We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.

From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?

When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, “slavery” on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding “the ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution”, and maintained slavery to be “a beneficent institution”, indeed, the old solution of the great problem of “the relation of capital to labor”, and cynically proclaimed property in man “the cornerstone of the new edifice” — then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders’ rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.

While the workingmen, the true political powers of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war.

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world. [B]

Signed on behalf of the International Workingmen’s Association, the Central Council:

Longmaid, Worley, Whitlock, Fox, Blackmore, Hartwell, Pidgeon, Lucraft, Weston, Dell, Nieass, Shaw, Lake, Buckley, Osbourne, Howell, Carter, Wheeler, Stainsby, Morgan, Grossmith, Dick, Denoual, Jourdain, Morrissot, Leroux, Bordage, Bocquet, Talandier, Dupont, L.Wolff, Aldovrandi, Lama, Solustri, Nusperli, Eccarius, Wolff, Lessner, Pfander, Lochner, Kaub, Bolleter, Rybczinski, Hansen, Schantzenbach, Smales, Cornelius, Petersen, Otto, Bagnagatti, Setacci;

George Odger, President of the Council; P.V. Lubez, Corresponding Secretary for France; Karl Marx, Corresponding Secretary for Germany; G.P. Fontana, Corresponding Secretary for Italy; J.E. Holtorp, Corresponding Secretary for Poland; H.F. Jung, Corresponding Secretary for Switzerland; William R. Cremer, Honorary General Secretary.

18 Greek Street, Soho.

[A] From the minutes of the Central (General) Council of the International — November 19, 1864:

“Dr. Marx then brought up the report of the subcommittee, also a draft of the address which had been drawn up for presentation to the people of America congratulating them on their having re-elected Abraham Lincoln as President. The address is as follows and was unanimously agreed to.”

[B] The minutes of the meeting continue:

“A long discussion then took place as to the mode of presenting the address and the propriety of having a M.P. with the deputation; this was strongly opposed by many members, who said workingmen should rely on themselves and not seek for extraneous aid…. It was then proposed… and carried unanimously. The secretary correspond with the United States Minister asking to appoint a time for receiving the deputation, such deputation to consist of the members of the Central Council.”

Ambassador Adams Replies

Legation of the United States
London, 28th January, 1865

Reply from Charles Francis Adams:

Sir:

I am directed to inform you that the address of the Central Council of your Association, which was duly transmitted through this Legation to the President of the United [States], has been received by him.

So far as the sentiments expressed by it are personal, they are accepted by him with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to prove himself not unworthy of the confidence which has been recently extended to him by his fellow citizens and by so many of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the world.

The Government of the United States has a clear consciousness that its policy neither is nor could be reactionary, but at the same time it adheres to the course which it adopted at the beginning, of abstaining everywhere from propagandism and unlawful intervention. It strives to do equal and exact justice to all states and to all men and it relies upon the beneficial results of that effort for support at home and for respect and good will throughout the world.

Nations do not exist for themselves alone, but to promote the welfare and happiness of mankind by benevolent intercourse and example. It is in this relation that the United States regard their cause in the present conflict with slavery, maintaining insurgence as the cause of human nature, and they derive new encouragements to persevere from the testimony of the workingmen of Europe that the national attitude is favored with their enlightened approval and earnest sympathies.

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,

Charles Francis Adams

Additional points of fact:

First income tax: In July 1861, the Congress passed a 3% tax on all net income above $600 a year. The Civil War income tax was the first tax paid on individual incomes by residents of the United States. This was under the Lincoln administration. In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed a bill that imposed a 3% tax on incomes between $600 and $10,000 and a 5% tax on higher incomes. The bill was amended in 1864 to levy a tax of 5% on incomes between $600 and $5,000, a 7.5% tax on incomes in the $5,000-$10,000 range and a 10% tax on everything higher. This bill was repealed in 1872 and declared to be unconstitutional.