Abraham Lincoln and Socialism

[Asmo]

@Crixus

....Is that a portrait of Lincoln in the background?

I had heard that American communists took inspiration from Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Paine, but this is the first time I've seen it explicitly.
Lincoln was the closest thing to a Socialist president the U.S. has ever had. He was sympathetic to the ideology, anyway, as were a number of the Republican Party at the time. The American Left used to have a crush on him. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War was probably the most famous example.

[Crixus]

@Crixus

....Is that a portrait of Lincoln in the background?

I had heard that American communists took inspiration from Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Paine, but this is the first time I've seen it explicitly.
Ya. It was a communist convention in Chicago I think. I don't know the history of using Lincoln I can only ignorantly assume it was to meld American and Soviet culture for propaganda purposes. An attempt to 'westernize' or Americanize communism. Someone else may have information on it.

[whichfinder]

Lincoln was the closest thing to a Socialist president the U.S. has ever had. He was sympathetic to the ideology, anyway, as were a number of the Republican Party at the time. The American Left used to have a crush on him. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War was probably the most famous example.

You really do have to be joking! What follows is just one account of the real Lincoln:

There is a popular belief that Lincoln was the champion of the movement to abolish slavery. This is not true. His declared aim was "to save the union" with or without slavery. In a debate with Steven A. Douglas he gave his views on the position concerning Negroes: "I am not in favour of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office . . . I am not in favour of Negro citizenship." (p.30) The Civil War by Henry Hansen, published by Mentor.

He was ready to see the fugitive slave law enforced. Under this law any slave who escaped from a plantation to free territory had to be sent back to the plantation. On November 30th 1860 he wrote to Alexander H. Stevens, a Georgia politician:

"Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would directly or indirectly interfere with their slaves or with them about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you… that there is no cause for such fears." (Hansen p.30)

Referring to Lincoln's Inaugural Address when he took office on the 4th March 1861, Hansen makes the following comments:

"Lincoln spoke calmly and without rancour. He repeated his declaration that he had no purpose to interfere with slavery in the States where it existed. He would execute the laws in all the - States, since he considered the Union unbroken." (p.47)

In common with many other American Presidents during this era Lincoln was himself a slave-holder.

[Le Socialiste]

This discussion originally started in this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/there-economic-collapsei-t178948/index.html), but I've decided to move it to 'History' seeing as it, well, belongs here. Have at it.

[Questionable]

In common with many other American Presidents during this era Lincoln was himself a slave-holder.

This is garbage. Total myth. Lincoln came from a poor family that owned no slaves.

That said, whatever Lincoln's own subjective values were, the abolition of slavery represented the last progressive act of the bourgeoisie, which Lincoln was a figurehead of at the time.

However, some respect must be paid to proper historical diligence. All of whichfinder's quotations are from Lincoln's very first days as president, when he was indeed more concerned with preserving the union than abolishing slavery. Marx and Engels criticized him several times for dragging his feet on the issue. But once the Civil War entered its full swing, Lincoln came under pressure from the masses and the radical sections of the bourgeoisie, and took a much harder stance against slavery.

He was a bourgeois president, to be sure. But to say he had no progressive qualities is posturing.

[#FF0000]

Well, regardless on his ideas on the slavery question, he was prone to saying shit like this:

"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."

[Per Levy]

well, i did read an essay about lincoln in wich it was laid out that lincon was by far the great liberator that he is presented as today. he was willing to let slavery exist as long as it would preserve the union and even after the civil war he wasnt fond of blacks, he was against black and white coming together in marriage and was also against voting rights for blacks and all that. on the other hand the same essay also said that frederick douglass had several meetings with lincoln and that douglass impressed lincoln a lot so that lincoln changed some of his views but he was shot soon after.

[The Douche]

Because "finish the civil war" is an awesome fucking slogan.

Because images of communist militants, decked out in union civil war reenactor uniforms, snatching rebel flags off of flag poles is tight as fuck. (even if they were sparts)


But yes, the republican party of that time did contain a lot of 48ers, sympathetic to Marxism.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Compared to Stevens, Sumner, Seward etc he wasn't really that radical. His views on racial issues were probably pretty bad. Ending slavery was obviously good and all, but of course when one takes history at any level above the 2nd grade they learn that suppressing the Confederacy really didn't have much to do with empathy...for example Zachary Taylor was a slave owner himself, but promised to lead the army & invade the South personally if they ever decided to secede while he was president (there were murmurs of this at the time).

Of course one might say that Lincoln was just a product of his time, but there were people in that era with good views on race and racial equality who were prominent in public life.

Other than the matter of his personal views, I suppose he deserves credit for finally pulling the trigger on the invasion of the South and putting the final nail in the coffin of chattel slavery in the USA. Which of course is far more important than what Lincoln's own prejudices were. In hindsight this proved to be woefully insufficient by itself as far as ending the issue of race and racial oppression went, as the descendants of slaves languished in the Southern apartheid system for another century. But he was killed in 1865, so I guess he can't be blamed for that.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Because "finish the civil war" is an awesome fucking slogan.

Because images of communist militants, decked out in union civil war reenactor uniforms, snatching rebel flags off of flag poles is tight as fuck. (even if they were sparts)


But yes, the republican party of that time did contain a lot of 48ers, sympathetic to Marxism.

do you have anything on the slogan and sparts on parade? that sounds completely awesome. info on the 48ers would be cool too.

[Sea]

People love to take Lincoln and make him their own. Lincoln held my views, he would've agreed with me! To call Lincoln a socialist, even to call him a socialist who loved to digress, flies in the face of the office he held. What better way is there to cement your class alliances than to be the president of the United States of America?

[Rusty Shackleford]

People love to take Lincoln and make him their own. Lincoln held my views, he would've agreed with me! To call Lincoln a socialist, even to call him a socialist who loved to digress, flies in the face of the office he held. What better way is there to cement your class alliances than to be the president of the United States of America?

Its like saying the Kaiser or King of France were socialists because land and production was state-owned for the most part, or at least sizable portions.

[Questionable]

People love to take Lincoln and make him their own. Lincoln held my views, he would've agreed with me! To call Lincoln a socialist, even to call him a socialist who loved to digress, flies in the face of the office he held. What better way is there to cement your class alliances than to be the president of the United States of America?

I, for one, never claimed that Lincoln was a socialist. I merely pointed out that he played a progressive role in history, in contrast to those who want to paint him out to be simply another bourgeois president.

Yes, he was most certainly bourgeois. But the abolition of slavery is the bourgeoisie's last progressive task, and we should view it as a positive thing.

[Rusty Shackleford]

I, for one, never claimed that Lincoln was a socialist. I merely pointed out that he played a progressive role in history, in contrast to those who want to paint him out to be simply another bourgeois president.

Yes, he was most certainly bourgeois. But the abolition of slavery is the bourgeoisie's last progressive task, and we should view it as a positive thing.

this i agree with. and even then the process that Lincoln 'finished' wasnt really finished until civil rights legislation went into effect. not that it is properly enforced or that racism is gone.


the civil war did solidify the capitalist mode of production in the US by finally removed the southern aristocracy and the slave system though.

[Rafiq]

You really do have to be joking! What follows is just one account of the real Lincoln:

There is a popular belief that Lincoln was the champion of the movement to abolish slavery. This is not true. His declared aim was "to save the union" with or without slavery. In a debate with Steven A. Douglas he gave his views on the position concerning Negroes: "I am not in favour of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office . . . I am not in favour of Negro citizenship." (p.30) The Civil War by Henry Hansen, published by Mentor.

He was ready to see the fugitive slave law enforced. Under this law any slave who escaped from a plantation to free territory had to be sent back to the plantation. On November 30th 1860 he wrote to Alexander H. Stevens, a Georgia politician:

"Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would directly or indirectly interfere with their slaves or with them about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you… that there is no cause for such fears." (Hansen p.30)

Referring to Lincoln's Inaugural Address when he took office on the 4th March 1861, Hansen makes the following comments:

"Lincoln spoke calmly and without rancour. He repeated his declaration that he had no purpose to interfere with slavery in the States where it existed. He would execute the laws in all the - States, since he considered the Union unbroken." (p.47)

In common with many other American Presidents during this era Lincoln was himself a slave-holder.

Marx noted that had Lincoln made his program anti slavery when he ran for election, he would have no chance of electoral victory. Marx and the first international vehemently supported Lincoln in his efforts. Marx also noted that whole Lincoln was bourgeois, he waged a revolutionary war against the slave owning class who's political power was waning with the rise of industrial capitalism (and thus sought expansion of slavery to the west, hence Lincoln's program initially stating opposition to slavery's expansion, which meant the liquidation of pro slavery political power as the slave owning class was already waning, and so on) and according to Marx, the end result of this war finally paved the way for a revolutionary proletariat and solidified the final revolutionary development of capitalism in the United States, as the proletariat in the south would no longer see themselves as "potential slave owners" (as they did in ancient rome).

Lincoln spouted whatever bullshit he needed to in order to secure office. But the primary goal of the industrial bourgeoisie was always the complete abolishment of slavery. Lincoln was a bourgeois revolutionary and any sane marxist would have given at least critical support for the union during the war for strategic reasons. Of course now such "strategic measures" are obsolete, there is only one war to fight and that is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. But back then, capitalism could not breed the necessary foundations of proletarian consciousness without the abolition of chattel slavery.

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[L.A.P.]

While the Civil War was going on, wasn't this also the time when the Gilded Age was in its beginning stages? I know that while the Civil War was going on, Irish immigrants were rioting in the North and the Republicans were suppressing some of the first labor unions to form in the US. The early Republicans were the most bourgeois political group on the scene at that time, there's nothing socialist about ending slave-labor in order to expand capital-labor.

[Red Commissar]

While the Civil War was going on, wasn't this also the time when the Gilded Age was in its beginning stages? I know that while the Civil War was going on, Irish immigrants were rioting in the North and the Republicans were suppressing some of the first labor unions to form in the US. The early Republicans were the most bourgeois political group on the scene at that time, there's nothing socialist about ending slave-labor in order to expand capital-labor.

The Gilded Age didn't start until the late 1870s after Reconstruction ended. The first labor unions were strongly supportive of the Republican Party but as that group got more influenced by the allure of corruption and personal enrichment it fell into its characteristic appearance in the Gilded Age.

I don't think anyone's saying that Lincoln was socialist but as far as the US political climate was concerned then he was definitely a progressive and not a reactionary, though of course there were Republicans who were more progressive than he was in Congress.

As for this use of Lincoln by the Communist Party, it was not uncommon for Communist Parties to try and appropriate figures from that country's history for their own purposes. As I understood it, if you are connecting lineage from a historical figure or event you are helping to present yourself as something that is natural to that country and not merely being maniuplated from outside, as the accusation towards pro-Soviet CPs often was.

If you look at the Soviet or Eastern Bloc nations it wasn't uncommon there for them to use historical figures, especially those who were involved to some extent in events like the French Revolution, 1848, or some other popular revolt who was not necessarily communist but to the party represented some form of a progressive force acting on behalf of the people. It's all nationalist manipulation in the end.




But yes, the republican party of that time did contain a lot of 48ers, sympathetic to Marxism.

A lot of them were involved in the war too, two of which became officers in the union army- August Willich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Willich) and Joseph Weydemeyer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weydemeyer). Both were 48ers and Communist of somesort (back then of course the term was more amorphous than it is now), Willich was viewed favorably by Marx, though by and Wedemeyer helped with getting some of Marx's writings, like the 18th Bruimaire, as well as the IWA stuff, published in German newspapers in the US. There was even a French guy, Gustave Paul Cluseret (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Paul_Cluseret), who started his career as being involved in the repression of French 1848 protests and later fighting for the British in the Crimean War, to joining Garibaldi's fighters and trying to help the Fenians in the UK. He comes on over to the United States to help the Union in the Civil War. He later returns to France, declares himself a socialist and joins the IWA, and ends up fighting with the Communards in 1871. Unfortunately as some socialists were prone to doing during this time he falls into xenophobia and anti-semitism...

While I'm here there were some other interesting figures like Albert Parsons, who goes from fighting for the Confederacy as a teen to a strong supporter of freed slaves' rights and later an early member of the Socialist Labor Party. He later ended up being executed during the Haymarket sham trials.

[Geiseric]

Lincoln didn't really care when General lee hung John Brown after Harper's ferry. He had to change his views according to what had to been done.

[whichfinder]

This is garbage. Total myth. Lincoln came from a poor family that owned no slaves.

True, Lincoln did indeed come from a poor family but acquired slaves when he married Mary Todd who was from a very wealthy slave-owning family in Lexington, Kentucky.

In addition, a contemporary of Lincoln, a John Bradford, lent a female slave named Ruth Burns (indentured) to Lincoln who paid her so little that she might as well have been a slave. The Illinois Supreme Court had ruled that indentured servants could be bought, sold, inherited, or otherwise alienated like other forms of property.

A new book, makes the case that Lincoln was even more committed to colonizing blacks than previously known. It even reveals that Lincoln himself owned slaves.

The book, "Colonization After Emancipation", is based in part on newly uncovered documents that authors Philip Magness and Sebastian Page found at the British National Archives outside London and in the U.S.National Archives.

[Questionable]

True, Lincoln did indeed come from a poor family but acquired slaves when he married Mary Todd who was from a very wealthy slave-owning family in Lexington, Kentucky.Do you have any evidence for this, aside from a singular book which contradicts everything else known about Lincoln by historians who have studied him?

I am unable to find any evidence for this claim beyond Weekly World News, which is a tabloid newspaper. All other credible sources I visited declared it to be a myth.

http://hnn.us/articles/did-lincoln-own-slaves

http://home.nas.com/lopresti/ps.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Did-Lincoln-Own-Slaves-Frequently/dp/0307279294


In addition, a contemporary of Lincoln, a John Bradford, lent a female slave named Ruth Burns (indentured) to Lincoln who paid her so little that she might as well have been a slave. The Illinois Supreme Court had ruled that indentured servants could be bought, sold, inherited, or otherwise alienated like other forms of property.It's a shame that happened, but to act as if this negates Lincoln's historically progressive role is, once again, complete posturing. It reminds me of people who decry Marx for his disparaging comments toward homosexuals.

[Jimmie Higgins]

People love to take Lincoln and make him their own. Lincoln held my views, he would've agreed with me!Ironically not a growing section of the Republican party. Growing up the Republicans always tried to dismiss criticisms of their race-baiting politics and the so-called "southern strategy" by saying, "No, we're the party of Lincoln!". Now the tea-party/libertarian leaning Republicans claim, "No, I'm not racist, MLK was a proto-libertarian who wanted a color-blind society and Lincoln was an authoritarian who used Federal powers to oppress people, slavery would have ended on its own because of the market!":rolleyes:

Anyway, the US CP during their "Communism is 20th Century Americanism" phase of trying to cozy to FDR and be cheerleaders for entry into WWII, claimed Lincoln as a symbol of American liberationist (is that a word?) history.

Marx wrote about the Civil War and wrote to Lincoln urging him that ending slavery would be the only way to end the war (something that most Abolitionists and even some of the Northern Generals realized too long before Lincoln did - not to mention all the slaves who knew immediately that this war could signal the end of the slave system). Marx said something to the effect that Lincoln was an idiot who stumbled into the position of being a great Liberator and that he did everything he could to avoid that historic role, but then eventually realized it was the only way to win the war. I think Lincoln was something like consciously moderate within the Republican Party, opposed to the conservatives who wanted to only appease the Slave-owners and opposed to the Abolitionist "red-republican" side.

The Republicans had a radical wing, but they were radical (or progressive) capitalists who wanted to sweep away archaic social rules and production methods. Their progressiveness ended when depression and recession struck in the late 1800s and class struggle stopped being just a rural black thing against the Southern Democrat political establishment and started to also be an urban industrial thing. Sort of like how the Northern Democrats were somewhat fine with social aspects of Civil Rights when it was directed at rural elites in the South, but it was another matter when suddenly people in the north wanted housing reform and job protections and welfare and started pointing out the racism of the police and the landlords and the bosses.

[Sea]

I, for one, never claimed that Lincoln was a socialist. I merely pointed out that he played a progressive role in history, in contrast to those who want to paint him out to be simply another bourgeois president.

Yes, he was most certainly bourgeois. But the abolition of slavery is the bourgeoisie's last progressive task, and we should view it as a positive thing.Perhaps I'm just stubborn, but I have a hard time seeing his opposition to slavery as progressive in light of how there was no real reason (from a proletarian outlook) to have slavery in the first place, not to mention the conditions of the working class in the North.

[Crixus]

I'm kinda curious as to why a communist convention would hoist a bust of Lincoln.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Bw0wfgYdmqs/UUyp-YMbwNI/AAAAAAAA43g/8CRCPGZtV88/s1600/PHOTO+-+CHICAGO+-+CHICAGO+STADIUM+-+20TH+ANNIVERSARY+MEETING+OF+COMMUNIST+PARTY+-+EARL+BROWDER+SPEAKING+-+PARTY+FOUNDED+IN+CHICAGO+-+1939.jpg

[Geiseric]

Guys the union army led by general robert lee killed John Brown and his buds, who were the closest thing to communists, and Lincoln didn't really give a care. He had to get rid of slavery so share cropping could eventually develop, he wanted amnesty to the south after the civil war.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Guys the union army led by general robert lee killed John Brown and his buds, who were the closest thing to communists, and Lincoln didn't really give a care. He had to get rid of slavery so share cropping could eventually develop, he wanted amnesty to the south after the civil war.


To be fair, historical figures have to be examined as a part of their historic period. Theres a reason why saying "Jesus was a socialist" is silly.



Note: i typed this same message in your post by accident. I just wanted to let you know why your post has a last edited portion. None of your content was altered, but i took out mine.

[Questionable]

Perhaps I'm just stubborn, but I have a hard time seeing his opposition to slavery as progressive in light of how there was no real reason (from a proletarian outlook) to have slavery in the first place, not to mention the conditions of the working class in the North.

If you don't see the abolition of slavery as progressive, I'm not sure what to tell you.

I don't really know what you mean about there being no reason for it "from a proletariat outlook."

[Dabrowski]

These articles from a recent issue of The Internationalist might be interesting:

The Emancipation Proclamation: Promise and Betrayal
The 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation went by with as little public acknowledgement as possible. Unlike the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1 January 1863 was never going to be a holiday in racist, imperialist America. In the U.S. rulers’ campaign of historical amnesia, the issue of how slavery was abolished tops the list of events to be mystified. The second American Revolution – the Civil War – went beyond political rights to pose questions of property. Karl Marx recognized from the outset that for the Southern Confederacy, this was “a war of conquest for the spread and perpetuation of slavery.” Slavery was not abolished by a stroke of Lincoln's pen but by victory on the battlefield, in which freed slaves played a fundamental role. But the northern bourgeoisie refused to turn over plantation land to the freedmen. As a result, the former chattel slaves were reduced to wage slavery or worse, sharecropping and debt peonage, setting the stage for KKK terror and Jim Crow segregation. The struggle for emancipation had run into the limits of a bourgeois revolution. Only a new, socialist revolution can achieve genuine black liberation and bury the heritage of slavery once and for all. The Emancipation Proclamation: Promise and Betrayal (http://www.internationalist.org/emancipationproclamation1304.html) (April 2013)

Lincoln, Lincoln, and the Abolition of Slavery
Lincoln has been called a history lesson in film. Dealing with the formal abolition of slavery, it was timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The problem is that history is a casualty of war in Lincoln. At bottom, the film is a political tract billing the United States as an eternal beacon of freedom, and hailing Obama-style liberalism and compromise. Works of art often take liberties with historical details in order to dramatize a point, but the important historical inaccuracies in Lincoln go to the heart of its message. Most striking is the near total absence of African Americans, except for a handful in peripheral roles, and in particular of black slaves fighting for freedom from bondage. Lincoln the movie deliberately excludes the role of blacks in the struggle to crush the slave system. Showing Frederick Douglass would have made it harder to ignore the 200,000 black soldiers who signed up to fight against the slavocracy – and whose contribution was termed “indispensable” to Union victory and emancipation by Lincoln the man – as well as the more than 50,000 among them who gave their lives on the battlefield or in Confederate captivity in this cause. Lincoln, Lincoln, and the Abolition of Slavery (http://www.internationalist.org/lincolnabolitionslavery1304.html) (April 2013)

[KurtFF8]

I believe it was last year that 2 separate books released by Verso came out about the relationship between Marxism and Lincoln, although they deal much more with Lincoln personally than with a "Marxist interpretation" of Lincoln.

Here's one of them at least http://www.versobooks.com/books/954-an-unfinished-revolution

I'm sure there was another (and I think it was by Verso at least) because there was an event at the Left Forum last year by the authors that was quite interesting.

[Sea]

If you don't see the abolition of slavery as progressive, I'm not sure what to tell you.Don't put words in my mouth. I said Lincoln wasn't the progressive that so many make him out to be. I never said that the abolition of slavery wasn't progressive.

I don't really know what you mean about there being no reason for it "from a proletariat outlook."Lincoln dragged his feet far too long for me to believe that his gradual drift towards abolitionism had anything to do with the horrors of slavery. He patronized slaveholders for as long as he could. If the abolition of ball-and-chain slavery in the south didn't make for an expansion of the Northern system of wage slavery, I highly doubt that Lincoln would've developed the anti-slavery sentiments that he held later in his life at all.

[Questionable]

Don't put words in my mouth. I said Lincoln wasn't the progressive that so many make him out to be. I never said that the abolition of slavery wasn't progressive.He played a key role in the progressive act of abolishing slavery. That, by definition, makes him a progressive, even if he wasn't as convicted in his beliefs as Radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens.


Lincoln dragged his feet far too long for me to believe that his gradual drift towards abolitionism had anything to do with the horrors of slavery. He patronized slaveholders for as long as he could. If the abolition of ball-and-chain slavery in the south didn't make for an expansion of the Northern system of wage slavery, I highly doubt that Lincoln would've developed the anti-slavery sentiments that he held later in his life at all.This just sounds like moralizing to me. Of course the bourgeois class interest in the abolition of slavery is expanding their own system of exploitation, but that doesn't make the act any less necessary or respectable. It is not proper for us to talk about whether the man was a saint, but what his objective role in history was.

I'm sorry that Lincoln wasn't as advanced in his views as people posting on an internet forum 150 years later.

[Turinbaar]

The following is Marx's letter to Abraham Lincoln upon his re-election:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm


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.

I recommend to everyone here that they buy "An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln" http://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Revolution-Karl-Abraham-Lincoln/dp/1844677222

The relationship between Marx and America is much stronger than anyone suspects (who here knows that Marx took serious measures to try to immigrate to Texas, of all places?). The word "emancipation" appears nowhere in his work until after his exposure to abolitionist literature. His fellow veteran revolutionaries of the forties emigrated to america and some became Generals in the Civil War. America in turn, was the only sympathizer of the Paris Commune. Also, the abolition of slavery is the single largest seizure and abolition of private property by any government ever.

There are dialectical complexities, such as the failure of Marx's goal of a real and powerful Labour party in the US, and the negation of the emancipation sewn into the Thirteenth amendment, which specifically reserves forced labor for convicts. These two shortcomings are today some of the most pressing issues facing the working class.

[goalkeeper]

Has anyone read the new book Freedom National by James Oakes? It attempts to put the abolition of slavery back at the heart of the Republican party's program and denies that "saving the union" and the abolition of slavery can even be considered separate, from what I understand (I have yet to read it).

[Rusty Shackleford]

I was just recommended "The Firey Trial (http://www.amazon.com/Fiery-Trial-Abraham-Lincoln-American/dp/039334066X)" on the issue of Lincolns vassilations.

[Sea]

He played a key role in the progressive act of abolishing slavery. That, by definition, makes him a progressive, even if he wasn't as convicted in his beliefs as Radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens.

This just sounds like moralizing to me. Of course the bourgeois class interest in the abolition of slavery is expanding their own system of exploitation, but that doesn't make the act any less necessary or respectable. It is not proper for us to talk about whether the man was a saint, but what his objective role in history was.You cannot remove Lincoln's role in history from his motivations when attempting to pass judgement on him as an individual. Lincoln was pushed by the same class interests that continue to motivate patriarchy, racism (oops), heterosexism, exploitation and all the other forms of oppression that capitalism fosters. How is it moralizing to call into question Lincoln's motivations? Your notion of a "bourgeois progressive" is absurd enough. He fought to keep the Union together, something that was threatened by the slavery of the South. The Civil War was, therefore, most certainly a historically progressive event. Hell, if North America was at the time a feudalist stronghold, I'd certianly say Linoln himself was a progressive in that context. But of course it wasn't, and he wasn't. He presided over a progressive chain of events, but was allied to a class most hostile to ours.


I'm sorry that Lincoln wasn't as advanced in his views as people posting on an internet forum 150 years later.As others have said, there were plenty of people at the time with very advanced politics. I'm sure you can think of at least two, but if you want I can give you some other names.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I may be completely mistaken here....

But I once heard that while Marx was supporting Lincoln, that Proudhoun was sympathetic to the Confederacy. Is that true?

[Crixus]

I'm of the opinion the abolition of slavery was partly to force more people into market property relations. The capitalists of the north had a financial interest in expanding 'proper' market relations. Not so much a moral crusade. The history books won't delve into these sort of angles although I'm sure there's been a couple books written siting letters written between statesmen/capitalists that support my opinion. I'm still curious as to why communists would have a convention with a bust of Lincoln next to Lenin and Stalin.

[Anti-White]

Before the Civil War, Lincoln proposed the Corwin Amendment to the US constitution that would have prevented the federal government from doing anything about slavery, so fuck Abraham Lincoln.

But for you Marxist-minded, Union General Franz Sigel had also commanded socialist troops in Germany in 1849. Senator John Sherman, brother of Gen. William T. Sherman, was for nationalizing much of industry. Union Gen. Charles A. Dana was a friend of Marx and Engels and was, essentially, a communist. Gen. August Willich was a member of the central committee of the Communist League.

But, Karl Marx referred to my people as "niggers" so, fuck him too.

[Rafiq]

Marx was on a personal level quite vulgar and vile when it came to race, like all men of his time. But if you can't recognize the fact that politically he upheld anti racism with utmost passion you're a moron.

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[Flying Purple People Eater]

Lol Lincoln was the christian equivalent of a pan-islamist. He was instrumental in the spreading of religious fundamentalism in early America.

[Martin Blank]

Before answering the comments below, I feel compelled to state the following for the sake of full disclosure:

I am currently in the middle of writing a book on the role of communists and the International Working Men's Association during the American Civil War and Reconstruction, with a final working title of More than Visionaries. I have been working on this book for close to a decade, so I have been able to review much of the evidence discussed in this thread first-hand (and a lot more that you've probably never seen).

Because of this, I am not going to argue the merits of a position that I consider to be based on revisionist history or willful distortion of the facts. I will merely condemn it and move on, since that is all of the attention it really deserves.

Long story short: I know what I'm talking about on this topic and most of you don't, so live with it.


You really do have to be joking! What follows is just one account of the real Lincoln:

(snip for length)

and


(snip for length)

A new book, makes the case that Lincoln was even more committed to colonizing blacks than previously known. It even reveals that Lincoln himself owned slaves.

The book, "Colonization After Emancipation", is based in part on newly uncovered documents that authors Philip Magness and Sebastian Page found at the British National Archives outside London and in the U.S. National Archives.

These books that whichfinder is recommending are part of a relatively recent trend of revisionist history that seeks to make Lincoln out to be little more than an Illinois version of Jefferson Davis, except more craven and opportunist. They are based almost completely on rumor and contemporary slander, but contain just enough "fact" (e.g., the pre-Civil War views of Lincoln) to be able to lend credence to their libel. Behind this revisionist trend is the growing neo-Confederate movement, fed by "mainstream" rightwing groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens (the successor to the segregationist White Citizens Councils), the "libertarian" fascist movement around Ron Paul, the Tea Party Nativists, etc. These "historians" are the equivalent of the "scientists" who appear on Fox News calling climate change or evolution a "hoax". Caveat emptor.


A lot of them were involved in the war too, two of which became officers in the union army- August Willich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Willich) and Joseph Weydemeyer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weydemeyer). Both were 48ers and Communist of somesort (back then of course the term was more amorphous than it is now), Willich was viewed favorably by Marx, though by and Wedemeyer helped with getting some of Marx's writings, like the 18th Bruimaire, as well as the IWA stuff, published in German newspapers in the US. There was even a French guy, Gustave Paul Cluseret (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Paul_Cluseret), who started his career as being involved in the repression of French 1848 protests and later fighting for the British in the Crimean War, to joining Garibaldi's fighters and trying to help the Fenians in the UK. He comes on over to the United States to help the Union in the Civil War. He later returns to France, declares himself a socialist and joins the IWA, and ends up fighting with the Communards in 1871. Unfortunately as some socialists were prone to doing during this time he falls into xenophobia and anti-semitism...

A small correction on Willich: It was not until near the end of the Civil War that Marx changed his opinion of Willich. Up until that point, Marx had a long-standing grudge against him because August wanted to woo Jenny (Marx's wife) away from him. Marx even went so far as to challenge Willich -- a Prussian-trained military officer -- to a duel. If it wasn't for Engels reminding Marx that he can't do everything (like, y'know, shooting a gun straight), the Old Moor might have died in 1849. It was not until Weydemeyer was able to re-establish communications with Marx (through Engels) and tell in detail what many of their old comrades were doing in the War that he changed his views, favorably calling his former rival "more than a visionary" (hence the name of my book).


While I'm here there were some other interesting figures like Albert Parsons, who goes from fighting for the Confederacy as a teen to a strong supporter of freed slaves' rights and later an early member of the Socialist Labor Party. He later ended up being executed during the Haymarket sham trials.

Parsons was a participant in the Great Uprising of 1877, which began as the Great Rail Strike but grew into a more generalized workers' uprising throughout the "Butternut Belt" of the U.S. The Great Uprising culminated in St. Louis, where the working class drove out the bosses and took control of the city for 15 days in July 1877 -- i.e., the St. Louis Commune. Parsons, like many members of the Workingmen's Party of Illinois, traveled to St. Louis to support the Commune and witnessed its brutal suppression by U.S. soldiers brought up the Mississippi during the dismantling of the occupation of the ex-Confederacy. Parsons and other WPI members helped to smuggle their comrades who were part of the Commune's Executive Committee -- most notably Albert Currlin, the Chairman of the E.C. -- into Illinois to avoid arrest and execution by the military.


The Republicans had a radical wing, but they were radical (or progressive) capitalists who wanted to sweep away archaic social rules and production methods. Their progressiveness ended when depression and recession struck in the late 1800s and class struggle stopped being just a rural black thing against the Southern Democrat political establishment and started to also be an urban industrial thing. Sort of like how the Northern Democrats were somewhat fine with social aspects of Civil Rights when it was directed at rural elites in the South, but it was another matter when suddenly people in the north wanted housing reform and job protections and welfare and started pointing out the racism of the police and the landlords and the bosses.

The Republican Party of the 1860s was an incredibly heterogeneous organization. There were Free Soilers (my ancestors were Free Soil Republicans who helped to found the party), Northern Whigs, Southern Whigs, Constitutionalists (sort of a mix of Southern Whig and northern Democratic "popular sovereignty" ideology), abolitionists, radicals, "Red '48ers" and bona fide communists in the party at the time of the Civil War. In 1859, in New York City, Red Republicans formed the Club of Communists as a quasi-faction in the Republican Party. By the time of the founding of the International Working Men's Association, the CoC had become something of a national organization, with contacts and correspondence groups in several northern states and each of the Union's armies. After the Civil War, the CoC became more of an independent organization, eventually morphing into the first affiliates of the IWMA in the U.S. The CoC was also responsible for signing up a large number of well-known Radical and Red Republicans for membership in the International, including Horace Greeley (owner of the New York World), renowned abolitionist Wendell Phillips and U.S. Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio (who almost became President of the United States in 1868).


I'm kinda curious as to why a communist convention would hoist a bust of Lincoln.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Bw0wfgYdmqs/UUyp-YMbwNI/AAAAAAAA43g/8CRCPGZtV88/s1600/PHOTO+-+CHICAGO+-+CHICAGO+STADIUM+-+20TH+ANNIVERSARY+MEETING+OF+COMMUNIST+PARTY+-+EARL+BROWDER+SPEAKING+-+PARTY+FOUNDED+IN+CHICAGO+-+1939.jpg

This is from a 1939 national conference commemorating the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party. It took place in Chicago, Illinois, hence the references to Lincoln (including the banner at the front of the dais, which reads, "The State of Lincoln Welcomes the Communist Party". The political reasons for laying claim to Lincoln actually had more to do with the "People's Front" program than any principled rationale. Believe me, however, when I say that lauding Lincoln was probably the most "principled" their "Americanism" got. It was about this time that International Publishers produced the book, From Bryan to Stalin, which attempted to link the populism of William Jennings Bryan to the "Marxism-Leninism" of Josef Stalin.


Guys the union army led by general robert lee killed John Brown and his buds, who were the closest thing to communists, and Lincoln didn't really give a care. He had to get rid of slavery so share cropping could eventually develop, he wanted amnesty to the south after the civil war.

Is there a click-through from revisionist history sites to here? To say that "Lincoln didn't really give a care" is a reckless assertion. At that time in American history, to not care about the effects of Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry would be like not caring about the effects of 9/11 in our time. The historical impact of the event had everyone's attention, and had everyone talking. Lincoln actually had a view of the raid itself that was common:

"John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini’s attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown’s attempt at Harper’s Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two things." (Speech at Cooper Union, February 27, 1860)


These articles from a recent issue of The Internationalist might be interesting:

(snip for length)

The articles are good (not perfect, but good). I would recommend them as decent overviews of the issues.

The piece on the Emancipation Proclamation reminded me of a comment made by historian Barbara Fields that I think is important to remember: The Emancipation Proclamation itself didn't free a single slave. Rather, what it did is say to Africans in America, both free and enslaved, that if they wanted freedom, they should join the fight for it, by joining the U.S. Armed Forces and/or by denying the slaveholders' regime their labor-power.


Before the Civil War, Lincoln proposed the Corwin Amendment to the US constitution that would have prevented the federal government from doing anything about slavery, so fuck Abraham Lincoln.

Umm, no. Thomas Corwin proposed the Corwin Amendment (hence the name). Lincoln had no role in its introduction or passage, since the Amendment was passed by Congress prior to Lincoln's inauguration and signed by President James Buchannan. The only reason Lincoln offered no objection to the Amendment was because he saw it as "implied constitutional law" (something even most abolitionists acknowledged). What Lincoln did do, however, was work behind the scenes in 1864 to get the Ohio state legislature to repeal its ratification of the Amendment.


But, Karl Marx referred to my people as "niggers" so, fuck him too.

I wonder what people will think of you 100 years from now when they read your personal correspondence and private notes. I can see a number of them saying, "fuck him", too.

[Rafiq]

Lol Lincoln was the christian equivalent of a pan-islamist. He was instrumental in the spreading of religious fundamentalism in early America.

What the hell are you talking about?

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[Anti-White]

Marx was on a personal level quite vulgar and vile when it came to race, like all men of his time. But if you can't recognize the fact that politically he upheld anti racism with utmost passion you're a moron.

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Oh so some cracker motherfucker can call me a nigger and I'm supposed to be grateful?

Pull your head out of your ass so you can fuck yourself.

[Rafiq]

Oh so some cracker motherfucker can call me a nigger and I'm supposed to be grateful?

Pull your head out of your ass so you can fuck yourself.

Listen you paramount assclown, nobody is asking you to be grateful. Marx didn't support anti racism out of some kind of white man's benevolence, you fuck. Nobody is justifying the usage of the word but Marx's politically incorrect usage of slang has fuck all to do with any sort of foundational political basis for race he held.

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[Martin Blank]

Listen you paramount assclown, nobody is asking you to be grateful. Marx didn't support anti racism out of some kind of white man's benevolence, you fuck. Nobody is justifying the usage of the word but Marx's politically incorrect usage of slang has fuck all to do with any sort of foundational political basis for race he held.

In the mid-19th century, the term did not have the connotations it has today. At that time, the word simply meant "dark-skinned" and was used more like the term "swarthy" was in the 20th century. Moreover, its usage was not specific to Africans. Among trappers and frontiersmen in North America, the word was a common self-description, encompassing everyone (including Europeans and white Americans); it was very much the same among the Appalachian "mountain men" as well. In Europe, the term was seen as interchangeable with Negro, Moor, Arab and Hindu -- i.e., anyone with skin darker than the average European. Even European Jews were often called that word. True, it was still an insult, but not in the way that it became during Jim Crow and after. It was not until "colored" became the more acceptable term in the late-19th and early-20th century that the word became seen as a pejorative (and, soon enough, THE pejorative).

Does this excuse Marx? No. It is worth noting that he only used that term in private correspondence and private notes; in all of his public writings, Marx used the more universally-accepted "Negro" or "Black". Nevertheless, he apparently knew there was an insulting element to the word in his time, which is why he didn't use it in public articles. He should have known better. (Then again, Marx was kind of a dick and really didn't care who he pissed off.)

[Klaatu]

Lincoln was the closest thing to a Socialist president the U.S. has ever had. He was sympathetic to the ideology, anyway, as were a number of the Republican Party at the time. The American Left used to have a crush on him. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War was probably the most famous example.
I don't know that you could call Lincoln a "Socialist" or "close to being Socialist," but it is probably true that he was anti-Capitalist. This is probably due to his disdain for those holders of great wealth (mostly Southern plantation slave-holders) that tried to (A) run the country (and the government) and (B) had eventually split the country in two (leading to the Civil War.)

[Anti-White]

Listen you paramount assclown, nobody is asking you to be grateful. Marx didn't support anti racism out of some kind of white man's benevolence, you fuck. Nobody is justifying the usage of the word but Marx's politically incorrect usage of slang has fuck all to do with any sort of foundational political basis for race he held.

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You obviously haven't read Marx's letters which reveal a deeper hostility toward my people than you are aware of (i.e. you are ignorant).

But you are welcome to your little white cocoon (only a little white sissy boy would use a pussy phrase like "assclown") where you can play revolutionary and study up on "foundational political basis."

Fuck your red cracker ass.

[Ismail]

The 1970's Great Soviet Encyclopedia article on Lincoln sums him up nicely:

Born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hodgenville, Ky.; died Apr. 15, 1865, in Washington, D.C. American statesman. The son of a farmer.

Lincoln was a descendant of the earliest American settlers. He worked during his youth as a day laborer on surrounding farms; he was also a flatboatman, rail-splitter, surveyor, and postal employee. At the same time he strove to educate himself. In 1836 he passed the bar examination and became a lawyer. Fairness and incorruptibility, a sharp mind, and brilliant oratorical abilities led to his rapid rise. From 1834 to 1841, Lincoln was a member of the legislative assembly of the state of Illinois. From 1847 to 1849 he was a member of the House of Representatives. During the annexationist US war against Mexico in 1846–48, Lincoln introduced into Congress a resolution calling for cessation of the war. In 1854 he was one of the organizers of the Republican Party. Lincoln’s activities reflected the interests of progressive circles of the bourgeoisie of the Northern states and of the petite bourgeoisie throughout the country. He advocated the broadening of the civil and political rights of the people and favored granting suffrage to women.

Lincoln was a resolute foe of slavery and advocated liberation of the slaves. He opposed efforts to spread slavery to the whole USA. However, Lincoln believed that the issue of slavery lay within the competence of the individual states and that the federal government had no right to control it. In 1860, Lincoln was elected president of the USA. Despite his moderate stand on slavery, his election was a signal for the slaveholding Southern states to secede from the Union; it set off the Civil War of 1861–65.

During the first stage of this war, Lincoln considered the goal to be the crushing of the rebel slaveholders and the restoration of a unified country. K. Marx and F. Engels criticized Lincoln for his foot-dragging and inconsistencies on the question of abolishing slavery, which reflected the hesitations of the bourgeoisie. They pointed to the need to conduct a revolutionary kind of war. Under pressure of the masses and of the Radical Republicans, who represented the most revolutionary part of the bourgeoisie, Lincoln changed his position in the course of the war and instituted a series of increasingly revolutionary measures. In May 1862 the Homestead Act was adopted. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation became law on Jan. 1, 1863. The proclamation signified the complete evolution of Lincoln’s political views. He had gone from a policy of territorial containment of slavery to the areas where it was already established to a new course involving the abolition of slavery. In 1864, Lincoln was elected to a second term. The shift by Lincoln’s government to revolutionary-style warfare led to the military destruction of the slaveholder forces and the abolition of slavery throughout the USA. On Apr. 14, 1865, Lincoln was mortally wounded by the actor J. Booth, who was an agent of the slaveholders and their allies in the Northern states. The murder of Lincoln was not only an act of vengeance on the part of reactionaries. It was also an attempt to deprive the opponents of slavery of their outstanding leader at a time when, with the war at an end, Reconstruction had become the leading political issue. This was to be a period of new and harsh exacerbation of the struggle for the rights of the Negroes.

Lincoln is a national hero of the American people, the bearer of the revolutionary traditions that are followed by all progressive people in the USA in the struggle against reaction and for the interests of the people.And for a detailed overview of Marx and Engels' views on the American Civil War see:
* http://mccaine.org/2010/03/26/marx-engels-and-the-american-civil-war-i/
* http://mccaine.org/2010/03/27/marx-engels-and-the-american-civil-war-ii/

There was a big tendency among many American leftists to "Americanize" Marxism. This didn't originate with the CPUSA during the Popular Front period, but with early socialists like De Leon who liked to "out-American" his capitalist opponents in debates by quoting the Founders constantly in order to draw comparisons between their struggle and the working-class movement of his time. Occasionally you get people nowadays who want to do the same thing, hoping it'll make Marxism "palatable" to American workers, which is pretty lame.

[Orange Juche]

To call Lincoln a socialist

Nobody did... "the closest thing to a socialist".

[Ismail]

Nobody did... "the closest thing to a socialist".Which doesn't mean anything at all.

Let's take this for example:

Well, regardless on his ideas on the slavery question, he was prone to saying shit like this:

"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."People omit what Lincoln says right after, that labor and capital must collaborate. His quote only sounds radical because US politics sucks so bad, but it wouldn't be too out-of-place in a West European social-democratic or Christian trade union speech. Early American Socialists had a tendency for quoting the Founders out of context like that as well in order to present them as more "left-wing" than they actually were.

Then again, the Founders could be pretty straightforward. Anna Louise Strong gave one example: "James Madison, the 'Father of the Constitution,' has given a masterly statement of economic determinism in politics, preceding Karl Marx by half a century. Madison's own preference was for limiting the vote to landowners, on the ground that 'the freeholders of the country would be the safest depositories of American liberty.' He made the remarkable prediction: 'In future times a great majority of the people will not only be without landed but without any sort of property. These will either combine under the influence of the common situation, in which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not be safe in their hands, or, which is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition, in which case there will be equal danger on another scale.' Madison might pass for the typical small-scale capitalist, decrying communism and fascism equally." (Strong, The New Soviet Constitution, 1937, pp. 7-8.)

Notice how she tries comparing it favorably to Marx's theories. It's an example of trying to identify "foreign" Marxism with American history and traditions. It's understandable, but still not a good phenomenon.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

True, Lincoln did indeed come from a poor family but acquired slaves when he married Mary Todd who was from a very wealthy slave-owning family in Lexington, Kentucky.

In addition, a contemporary of Lincoln, a John Bradford, lent a female slave named Ruth Burns (indentured) to Lincoln who paid her so little that she might as well have been a slave. The Illinois Supreme Court had ruled that indentured servants could be bought, sold, inherited, or otherwise alienated like other forms of property.

A new book, makes the case that Lincoln was even more committed to colonizing blacks than previously known. It even reveals that Lincoln himself owned slaves.

The book, "Colonization After Emancipation", is based in part on newly uncovered documents that authors Philip Magness and Sebastian Page found at the British National Archives outside London and in the U.S.National Archives.
Yeah, but all the personalist shit about whether or not Lincoln owned slaves is really beside the point. He led the fight that destroyed slavery. He did this rather effectively, and perhaps against some of his own personal prejudices. To miss that his fight was a profoundly progressive one is a big mistake. There is no big secret truth to be revealed here. Lincoln was the leader of the bourgeoisie -- a progressive class vis a vis the slaveholding southern gentry. Was he a socialist? Of course not. It's as if people are trying to determine whether or not Lincoln was, in some absolute sense, "good." That is idealistic and moralistic.

[Manar]

In the mid-19th century, the term did not have the connotations it has today. At that time, the word simply meant "dark-skinned" and was used more like the term "swarthy" was in the 20th century. Moreover, its usage was not specific to Africans. Among trappers and frontiersmen in North America, the word was a common self-description, encompassing everyone (including Europeans and white Americans); it was very much the same among the Appalachian "mountain men" as well. In Europe, the term was seen as interchangeable with Negro, Moor, Arab and Hindu -- i.e., anyone with skin darker than the average European. Even European Jews were often called that word. True, it was still an insult, but not in the way that it became during Jim Crow and after. It was not until "colored" became the more acceptable term in the late-19th and early-20th century that the word became seen as a pejorative (and, soon enough, THE pejorative).

Does this excuse Marx? No. It is worth noting that he only used that term in private correspondence and private notes; in all of his public writings, Marx used the more universally-accepted "Negro" or "Black". Nevertheless, he apparently knew there was an insulting element to the word in his time, which is why he didn't use it in public articles. He should have known better. (Then again, Marx was kind of a dick and really didn't care who he pissed off.)
That he used "negro" or "black" in public and "nigger" in private because he thought that "nigger" is insulting is one possible explanation. A more likely explanation is that he used "negro" in public because it was more formal.

Not that this is an important issue.

[Rafiq]

You obviously haven't read Marx's letters which reveal a deeper hostility toward my people than you are aware of (i.e. you are ignorant).

But you are welcome to your little white cocoon (only a little white sissy boy would use a pussy phrase like "assclown") where you can play revolutionary and study up on "foundational political basis."

Fuck your red cracker ass.

Well fuck you, you petite bourgeois pile of shit. Even if I was white that's no excuse to substitute Marxism and materialist analysis with gun ho up the ass third worldism. You don't have a people. You have a class. And you are clearly willing to fuck them for your setimental bullshit. I don't care about anti white rhetoric, I don't have a problem with it. But the minute you start pulling shit out of your ass and attacking Marxism (and this goes for attacks on its 'eurocentricism) you can go fuck yourself.

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[billydan]

licion killed more people than mao zedong

[Anti-White]

Well fuck you, you petite bourgeois pile of shit. Even if I was white that's no excuse to substitute Marxism and materialist analysis with gun ho up the ass third worldism. You don't have a people. You have a class. And you are clearly willing to fuck them for your setimental bullshit. I don't care about anti white rhetoric, I don't have a problem with it. But the minute you start pulling shit out of your ass and attacking Marxism (and this goes for attacks on its 'eurocentricism) you can go fuck yourself.

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Petite bourgeois? Come to my neighborhood, mutherfucker and I'll show you a petite bourgeois asswhippin'.

I have a PEOPLE, not a class because I am a BLACK MAN you pitiful nothing, piece of shit.

Put that in your SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2 and blow it, you no-dick sister-grabbing pile of puke.

[G4b3n]

Lincoln openly admitted that wage slavery was simply a better alternative to chattel slavery. He was quite sympathetic to the growing proletariat and the destruction of their freedom.

If a modern president, Obama for example, came out and said something of that sort the right would collectively shit a brick.