Posted on 04/01/2020 4:02:14 PM PDT by babylon_times
In 1848, revolution swept across Europe and the world. The “February Revolution” in Paris lit the flame as the current world order was crumbling. In the days leading up to the overthrow of the French King Louis-Phillippe, the historian Alexis de Tocqueville commented on the state of Paris:
“One thing was.. really ominous and terrible; and that was the appearance of Paris on my return. I found in the capital a hundred thousand armed workmen formed into regiments, out of work, dying of hunger, but with their minds crammed with vain theories and visionary hopes. I saw society cut into two: those who possessed nothing, united in a common greed; those who possessed something, united in a common terror. There were no bonds, no sympathy between these two great sections; everywhere the idea of an inevitable and immediate struggle seemed at hand. Already the bourgeois and the people had come to blows, with varying fortunes… not a day passed but the owners of property were attacked or menaced in either their capital or income…”
With the overthrow of the monarch, came the beginnings of the Second French Empire, and the dictatorship of Napoleon III. Kindled in part by the utopian socialist philosophies espoused by ...
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
Dostoevsky is indeed one of the great conservative novelists.
Absolutely.
Those failed European revolutionaries are known as ‘48ers.
A lot of them fled to America where they played a big part in the formation of the Republican Party. Abe Lincoln even purchased a 48er German language newspaper in order to gain their support in his bid for the Republican nomination. ‘48er Karl Marx was a cheerleader for the war that his American comrades helped set in motion.
Yes. Karl Marx managed to hijack republican anti-aristocracy doctrine and turn it into anti-capitalist doctrine. His opening sentences in the Communist Manifesto claimed that the specter haunting Europe was the specter of overproduction”, precisely the factor that makes “surplus value” or profit which then creates a middle class and an educated workforce and the modern, anti-feudalist world. So now we have a neo-aristocracy running the banking houses of Europe and America as well as the GOP “Never Trump” movement. If conservatives were smart, they would be seeking out the organizers of the Occupy Wall St. movement for a head to head session. But they are not smart, which is why we find ourselves with our backs against the wall, hanging on to a miracle President like it was our last chance. Well it is.
This president can accomplish a hell of a lot and will. The big problem is his successors. If we do not have a really good follow through then all we have attained is a several year hiatus before momentum is regained and we hit the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.
Actually, I’m not even sure if Lincoln actually had any direct interaction with Marx or was even familiar with him. Not to mention the most we got with Marx’s “support” of Lincoln was more trying to take credit for supporting the North’s cause (ie, his “support” for Lincoln was purely-self-serving for the sole purpose of propaganda for Socialists), and if anything, his true personal views had him viewing Lincoln as a bumble and being far more sympathetic to the Southern cause. You can read up on it here: https://www.aier.org/article/was-lincoln-really-into-marx/
There’s no reason to think that Lincoln had any idea of who Karl Marx was. Marx wrote the letter of support that The International Working Men’s Association sent to Lincoln
But Karl Marx was certainly an enthusiatic supporter of Lincoln and the Union Army as a vanguard for his class warfare revolution whether they were aware of it or not.
As were the large number of Marx’s fellow ‘48er German revolutionaries who had come the U.S. and helped found the Republican Party and imbued it with its now forgetton radical wing. Some estimates of the Union Army put their contribution to it at as much as 25%.
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. [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.
Yeah, going by Marx’s private papers, particularly commentary such as the following, it’s unlikely that Marx had any actual enthusiasm for the North’s effort other than to generate conditions for a worker’s revolt. Same goes with Engels (and a bit of warning, it DOES have harsh language):
“The way in which the North is waging the war is none other than might be expected of a bourgeois republic, where humbug has reigned supreme for so long. The South, an oligarchy, is better suited to the purpose, especially an oligarchy where all productive labour devolves on the n—s and where the 4 million ‘white trash’ are flibustiers by calling. For all that, I’m prepared to bet my life on it that these fellows will come off worst, ‘Stonewall Jackson’ notwithstanding. It is, of course, possible that some sort of revolution will occur beforehand in the North itself.”
That was on September 10, 1962. And Engels commentary wasn’t much better, saying with mocking derision, and I quote, “the only apparent effect of Lincoln’s emancipation so far is that the North-West has voted Democrat for fear of being overrun by Negroes.”
And in September 1964, nearing the climax of the Civil War, Marx said the following:
“Lincoln has at his disposal considerable means for achieving election. (Needless to say, the peace proposals made by him are mere humbug.) The election of an opposition candidate would probably lead to a genuine revolution. Nevertheless, there is no mistaking the fact that during the next 8 weeks, in the course of which the matter will be decided pro tem, much will depend on military eventualities. This is undoubtedly the most critical moment since the beginning of the war. Once this has been shifted, Old Lincoln can blunder on to his heart’s content.”
Heck, if anything, Marx had far more genuine enthusiasm for Lincoln’s VP, Andrew Jackson, as did Engels, thinking he was far more viable for instigating a proletariat revolution in their terms.
Sure, they may have publicly acted enthusiastic towards Lincoln, but that was strictly for PR purposes. Going by their own private thoughts, they thought Lincoln and the North could rot in a ditch for all they care.
And if Marx and Engels were to act like that, more likely than not the International Working Men’s Association 48ers held similar views to Lincoln.
Marx is not as dismissive of Lincoln as your quote from the Marx’s September 7 1864 letter makes it sound. The paragraph ends with this:
” Should Lincoln succeed this time — as is highly probable — it will be on a far more radical platform and in completely changed circumstances. Then the old man will, lawyer-fashion, find that more radical methods are compatible with his conscience.”
Marx is hoping that once Lincoln wins re-election he will embrace radicalism.
https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1864/letters/64_09_07.htm
Not a stretch because the Radical Republican faction was then the power bloc ruling Congress and had members like Stanton in Lincoln’s own Cabinet. They had been the driving force wanting war. Thaddeus Stevens. Charles Sumner. Edwin Stanton. Ben Butler. Even newspaper editor Horace Greeley who was publishing Marx. If they had gotten their way after the war there would have been mass executions, but fortunately the moderate and conservative wings of the GOP pushed back against the hate mongers.
President Andrew Johnson wasn’t living up to Engels hopes witness this Engels letter to Marx July 15 1865:
“Mr Johnson’s policy is less and less to my liking, too. Nigger[1]-hatred is coming out more and more violently, and he is relinquishing all his power vis-à-vis the old lords in the South.
If this should continue, all the old secessionist scoundrels will be in Congress in Washington in 6 months time. Without coloured suffrage nothing can be done, and Johnson is leaving it up to the defeated, the ex-slaveowners, to decide on that. It is absurd.
Nevertheless, one must still reckon on things turning out differently from what these barons imagined. After all, the majority of them have been completely ruined and will be glad to sell land to immigrants and speculators from the North. The latter will arrive soon enough and make a good number of changes.
I think the mean whites will gradually die out. Nothing more will become of this race; those who are left after 2 generations will merge with the immigrants to make a completely different race.”
It’s amusing to see the archivists of marxists.org explain away Engel’s use of the N-word in a footnote instead of beating him for it:
“1.: “Nigger” did not have quite the pejorative meaning in 19th Century England that use of the word later acquired. Note that all the words in bold were in English in the original.”
https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1865/letters/65_07_15.htm#n1
It’s always interesting how the hatred of those two OG commies for the South sounds similar to what we can hear even today. Sometimes on this very site.
Anyone who is curious about what’s in their letters can find them here:
https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/letters/date/1860s.htm
Yeah, well, tell that to the author of the article I had linked, because he came out with a far different impression of those quotes. And I don’t think Marx would have said that the South’s oligarchy “was far more suited for [the Marxists]” if they hated it.
Besides, Thomas Jefferson, the guy who the South admired most, was the same guy who fanboyed the Jacobins during the worst excesses of the French Revolution, even being present during Bastille Day. And considering Karl Marx ALSO was a huge Jacobin fanboy precisely BECAUSE of their bloodlust, it’s pretty obvious he if anything would find more common ground with Jefferson (and I don’t mean that in a good way).
“Yeah, well, tell that to the author of the article I had linked, because he came out with a far different impression of those quotes. And I don’t think Marx would have said that the South’s oligarchy “was far more suited for [the Marxists]” if they hated it.”
There’s no need for me to tell Phillip Magness anything. I picked up a copy of Marx and Engel’s “The American Civil War” back in the 1980s and I’m very familiar with what those two wrote.
If you think that they admired the South you seriously misunderstand them. They were very explicit in their hatred of the South. And I don’t know where you got that idea that Marx liked the South’s oligarchy since I didn’t spot it in the Magness’ article.
All of Marx and Engel’s Civil War writings are now online. No need for you to buy a book or rely on one AIER article with quotes from two letters. You might want to try going to the original sources before opining on what’s in them.
Magness never mentions the ‘48ers in his piece. These were Marx’s fellow expatriot revolutionaries and Lincoln knew a good number of them personally. They were part of his government and held important positions in the Union Army. Lincoln knew what that crowd believed and he valued their support, going so far as having purchased a German language ‘48er newspaper to get his message to them.
If you really must know why I’m not fond of that statement you’re giving, it’s because that makes Lincoln and his party out to be not much different from or better than Jefferson when he was openly rooting for the Jacobins to commence their slaughters, and thus makes America ITSELF rotten, especially knowing the French Revolution and the 48ers history. Heck, it makes humanity itself rotten to the core, to the extent that I’m just barely holding back from begging God to just flat out exterminate us all, no holding back. Do you REALLY want me thinking those thoughts? Because if what you said about Lincoln is true, that means I MUST engage in misanthropy as a result.
The Radical Republican faction are easily the closest thing that we have ever had to Jacobin France. The main difference between the two is that the Radicals would have used nooses instead of guillotines to carry out the mass executions that they wanted.
Lincoln’s goal for the Civil War was to crush the attempt of the southern states to leave the union and form their own nation. The same goal King George III once had, an irony not lost on outside observers. Other than forcing them to give up their plan for independence Lincoln was willing to let things return to the status quo ante.
By contrast the Radicals saw the Civil War as a war of civilizational conquest, as the chance to exterminate southern culture and replace it with their own ideology. And that’s where you see the affinity and influence of the ‘48ers.
You know, Dinesh D’Souza’s Death of a Nation pointed out that it was the Democrats who came closer to espousing Karl Marx’s ideologies, even citing that the slaveholders were espousing Socialist adherence. Just something to keep note of.
And while I WAS born in Connecticut, I spent most of my formative years in the South.
Besides, it was Jefferson who advocated for the radicalism of the Jacobins, and in fact, during his time as President, he rivaled Obama as a big government ogre. Don’t believe me? Read this: https://distributistreview.com/archive/liberty-god-that-failed
And here’s the bit about Democrats in the South adhering to socialism as well:
And just as an FYI, if Jefferson were in Lincoln’s shoes, he’d forbid ANY state other than Virginia from leaving the Union.
And no, actually, the closest WE ever had to Jacobin France was in fact Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans, who did effigy burnings of John Jay’s Treaty, sided constantly with the Jacobins, and even tried to make America more like Jacobin France.
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