[peter_co]

According to most polls Abraham Lincoln is considered the greatest American president by numerous scholar panels. Politicians frequently mention him in the light of a great eloquent uniter, the man who saved the United States during its time of greatest crisis, etc, etc.

However, what exactly did he achieve that was so great? His oratory skills I will not deny but he's not unique in that respect, multiple US presidents were able public speakers, and with mixed levels of success as chief executives. As for being a uniter, there were few political figures during that era that were more polarizing than he was. In fact, his very election sparked the secession of the South! Furthermore, it's not as though he used his oratorical skills in order to convince the Southern states to return to the Union. No, instead he waged a bloody war in order to force states that previously though that the Union was a voluntary compact to be forcefully reintegrated into the country, thus unalterably changing the nature of the United States.

Newsweek recently ran a profile comparing him and Darwin and concluding that of the two he was the most important person . The criteria they used was to attempt to imagine what would have happened if that person wasn't born. According to them Darwin wasn't that crucial because when he published his theory, another one had already come up with it too; and here I somewhat agree with them. However, when it comes to Lincoln, I simply can't imagine a worse outcome than the one the one involving him. Perhaps a moderate Northern Democrat instead of the self-righteous and hypocritical zealot that Lincoln was might have been able to avert Southern secession altogether, or at the very least not to start the bloody fratricidal war.

[Oxymoron]

He was President before Youtube, Daily Show and CNN, if they were around Lincoln would be a constitution trampling, war criminal with a 20% Approval rating.

[Dave]

If we ignore the questionable morality of waging an incredibly brutal war to collect a tariff, the greatest thing about Lincoln was that it was under his political leadership the Henry Clay's American System was finally implemented:

• High tariff permanently established
• Land freely given to railroads, encouraging rapid railroad construction implemented
• Canal construction and improvement accelerated, paid for by tariff revenues
• Seed colleges established, spurring higher agricultural productivity
• National Banking System stabilized the money supply and ended wild price swings
• Homestead Act used to open the West to much faster settlement, creating massive expansion in the harvesting of natural resources

Taken together, this industrial policy launched a massive expansion of industry in the Gilded Age, allowing America to become a formidable industrial superpower in astonishingly short time.

This, of course, has nothing to do with why Lincoln is considered our greatest President, especially in light of the fact that journalists and historians typically despise economic development. Like most courtiers, they worship power, and Lincoln, by waging a savage war against the South, jailing opponents, and crushing all opposition massively increased both his own immediate power and permanently increased the power of the federal government. This is why they love him, and they endlessly beat this into children in schools (using the false claim that Lincoln fought the war to end slavery, as well as the subsequently false claim that he did end slavery), who then grow up professing to believe Lincoln our greatest President.

[Potemkin]

^^ Dave pretty much says it all. Lincoln was a progressive president, but not in the sense usually thought - he was ultra-authoritarian and basically trampled all over the Constitution during the Civil War. Neither did he end slavery, and if you read what he actually said at the time, it's clear that he was a racist fuck (like everybody else at that time). What he did accomplish, however, was to accelerate America's industrial development and forcibly incorporate the South into that industrial development. This, and this alone, makes him a progressive figure, in the Marxist sense. Americans are right to think highly of him, but they do so for the wrong reasons.

[peter_co]

Dave and Potemin, I agree with both of you. The only thing I might not fully agree with is his role in preparing the economic boom of the Guilded Age that followed the war. The American System was well underway when Lincoln came to power and he was only interested in the issue peripherally. This was due to the fact that the secession of the South immediatly followed his election, so of course he had more immediate concerns. His main contribution was to start the war which destroyed the agricultural system of the South, making the industrialization of the region and its integration with the North inevitable. However, again, I don't think there is evidence that this was a priority with him (although it certainly was for many in his party).

However, as both of you said: what he is mostly remembered by is the fairy tale that he fought the war to liberate the slaves due to his profound belief in the ideals on which the country was founded: liberty and equality, blablabla. He did support the 13th amendment Congress passed that ended slavery, but again that was pretty much inevitable at that point. But to counter all that, he tried suspending habeas corpus, proclaimed the superiority of whites and told of his disgust at the prospect of racial equality, etc, etc. So while I can understand why he might still be seen as somewhat of a popular hero (a la Jackson), I simply can't understand how historians who supposedly have a deeper understanding of his presidency still sing his glory en masse.

[Dave]

^^ Dave pretty much says it all. Lincoln was a progressive president, but not in the sense usually thought - he was ultra-authoritarian and basically trampled all over the Constitution during the Civil War. Neither did he end slavery, and if you read what he actually said at the time, it's clear that he was a racist fuck (like everybody else at that time). What he did accomplish, however, was to accelerate America's industrial development and forcibly incorporate the South into that industrial development. This, and this alone, makes him a progressive figure, in the Marxist sense. Americans are right to think highly of him, but they do so for the wrong reasons.

I don't think the label "progressive" is appropriate in the sense you're using it. While I obviously realize where you're coming from, America has no tradition of Marxist social science and the word progressive either applies to American Progressivism in the early 20th century or modern day left liberalism.

And personally I can in no way justify the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to implement and economic system, so I certainly do not endorse the man as a great President--he was a butcher.

It should also be noted that the South was not incorporated into that industrial development per se, rather, the South was exploited to finance that development. The South paid the vast majority of tariff revenues, which were used principally to finance industrial improvements in the North. The land ownership structure which emerged in the South (largely due to the tidewater lowlands originally being settled by colonists from class-ridden Southern England) along with its cultural mores were simply not conducive to industrialization.

Dave and Potemin, I agree with both of you. The only thing I might not fully agree with is his role in preparing the economic boom of the Guilded Age that followed the war. The American System was well underway when Lincoln came to power and he was only interested in the issue peripherally.

Disagree. The Federalists and later the Whigs consistently tried to implement their vision, but their political achievements were usually short lived and never far reaching. During the antebellum period the average weighted tariff changed frequently with swings in political power, and its weighted rate was averaged at 28%. Seed colleges, railroad land subsidies, the National Banking System, and other key features and Lincoln's policy were never implemented. And oddly, the strong influence of New England meant that a large amount of revenues earmarked for "internal improvements" actually went to subsidize the fishing industry in the antebellum period.

After the Republicans came to power, the Morril tariff, with an average weighted rate of 45%, came into force. This is what prompted southern secession. By the time Lincoln was through, it has risen to 54% and did not drop below that level until the second Cleveland administration.

This was due to the fact that the secession of the South immediatly followed his election, so of course he had more immediate concerns. His main contribution was to start the war which destroyed the agricultural system of the South, making the industrialization of the region and its integration with the North inevitable. However, again, I don't think there is evidence that this was a priority with him (although it certainly was for many in his party).

Lincoln won the Republican nomination primarily on his protectionist credentials, which caused the New York and Pennsylvania delegations to cast their delegates for him. Otherwise Salmon P. Chase would've been the Republican candidate. This was Lincoln's number one issue. And if it wasn't, he certainly wouldn't have waged the bloodiest war in our history for it--a war against our own people.

However, as both of you said: what he is mostly remembered by is the fairy tale that he fought the war to liberate the slaves due to his profound belief in the ideals on which the country was founded: liberty and equality, blablabla. He did support the 13th amendment Congress passed that ended slavery, but again that was pretty much inevitable at that point. But to counter all that, he tried suspending habeas corpus, proclaimed the superiority of whites and told of his disgust at the prospect of racial equality, etc, etc.

I should add that I don't think anyone from this time period should be condemned for racism.

So while I can understand why he might still be seen as somewhat of a popular hero (a la Jackson), I simply can't understand how historians who supposedly have a deeper understanding of his presidency still sing his glory en masse.

Simple. Historians are courtiers. They worship power. Historians always claim that Lincoln and FDR are America's best Presidents.

For Lincoln one can at least make the economic argument (as is being discussed in this thread), but historians, with the notable exception of Michael Lind, rarely make that argument, probably because they find economic history boring and hard. More common are fawning hagiographic biographies like Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, which basically babbles on for hundreds of pages of how "courageous" Lincoln was to invade the South, jail thousands of American citizens without charge, suspend habeas corpus, etc.

For FDR there is really no argument whatsoever. His economic record was an abject failure. A typical cause célèbre of historians, civil rights, he is for whatever reason given credit for despite doing nothing in that regard since he needed the support of the South. He certainly had no respect for the Constitution, which he more or less destroyed. Then it all comes down to World War 2, where FDR managed provoke an attack on America, proceeded to half-ass the war effort, and finished by selling half of Europe into Soviet slavery. Apparently this constitutes greatness!

And who do historians consider the worst President in American history? Warren G. Harding. And what was so bad about Harding? Certainly nothing in his record indicates that, in fact he was arguably a great President.

Harding pushed for the biggest tax cut in American history up to that point, refused to renew the Red Scare, freed Wilson's political prisoners, ended wage & price controls, returned illegally confiscated property to rightful owners, provided strong veterans benefits to our brave combat veterans, fought corruption in the budget process and got the GAO established, and presided over the first strategic arms limitation agreement in history. The country entered into a massive economic boom. All this in two years.

Harding was also perhaps the first prominent post-Reconstruction politician in favor of civil rights. He lobbied hard for an anti-lynching bill (which unfortunately failed in the Senate), and he made numerous speeches in favor of full legal equality for blacks, including one in Birmingham, Alabama and another in Florida--for which the Florida state legislature condemned him for (Herbert Hoover would later receive a similar treatment). Unfortunately, nothing came of his civil rights advocacy.

His administration was only marred by the Teapot Dome Scandal and some more minor corruption issues, which he had no personal knowledge of, had no negative impact on the nation, and which pales into comparison to many other corruption scandals in American history (or compared to government accounting today, which is a disgrace to the human race).

And this fine statesman many historians call the worst President in history. Disgraceful.

[Potemkin]

I don't think the label "progressive" is appropriate in the sense you're using it. While I obviously realize where you're coming from, America has no tradition of Marxist social science and the word progressive either applies to American Progressivism in the early 20th century or modern day left liberalism.

I was using the word 'progressive' in its Marxist sense, of course. I certainly did not mean it in its bourgeois liberal, moralistic sense. Such 'progressivism' is worthless.

And personally I can in no way justify the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to implement and economic system, so I certainly do not endorse the man as a great President--he was a butcher.

Meh. Small price to pay. In Britain during the 19th century, millions of working people were brought to a premature end by industrialisation, not to mention the millions of natives and 'fuzzy-wuzzies' the Brits slaughtered while building their Empire. In Marxist terms, these were progressive events, and the millions of deaths and blighted lives were a price well worth paying. The same logic applies to the Soviet Union of course - the industrial development of the Soviet Union is an end which justifies the means used to attain it.

It should also be noted that the South was not incorporated into that industrial development per se, rather, the South was exploited to finance that development. The South paid the vast majority of tariff revenues, which were used principally to finance industrial improvements in the North. The land ownership structure which emerged in the South (largely due to the tidewater lowlands originally being settled by colonists from class-ridden Southern England) along with its cultural mores were simply not conducive to industrialization.

Granted. It is significant that industrialisation occurred first in the North of England rather than in the agrarian, class-bound South. Unfortunately, the balance of power shifted back to the South again from the late 19th century onwards, with the rise of finance capitalism and the service sector and the decline of industrial production.

Lincoln won the Republican nomination primarily on his protectionist credentials, which caused the New York and Pennsylvania delegations to cast their delegates for him. Otherwise Salmon P. Chase would've been the Republican candidate. This was Lincoln's number one issue. And if it wasn't, he certainly wouldn't have waged the bloodiest war in our history for it--a war against our own people.

What's wrong with waging a war against your own people? The British ruling class waged a war against the British working people in the 19th century, and the Bolsheviks waged a war against their own people in the 20th. This is the price which must be paid for progress - it is, at least in its beginning, an all-out assault against the people. There is a legend that when the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam first heard the word 'progress' as a child, he burst into tears. He was a wise child, but an unwise adult.

I should add that I don't think anyone from this time period should be condemned for racism.

Agreed. Lincoln was a man of his time, of his class, and of his race. Any American politician at that time who wanted to be elected President had no choice but to publically support racism, just as any American politician who wants to be elected President now has no choice but to publically support Israel.

Simple. Historians are courtiers. They worship power. Historians always claim that Lincoln and FDR are America's best Presidents.

Correction: bourgeois historians are courtiers. There is another type of historian who are rather more serious; people like Eric Hobsbawm, for example. In other words, Marxist historians.

For Lincoln one can at least make the economic argument (as is being discussed in this thread), but historians, with the notable exception of Michael Lind, rarely make that argument, probably because they find economic history boring and hard.

America needs more Marxist historians.

More common are fawning hagiographic biographies like Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, which basically babbles on for hundreds of pages of how "courageous" Lincoln was to invade the South, jail thousands of American citizens without charge, suspend habeas corpus, etc.

Similar hagiographies will be written about George W. Bush once he leaves office, and especially after he dies.

For FDR there is really no argument whatsoever. His economic record was an abject failure. A typical cause célèbre of historians, civil rights, he is for whatever reason given credit for despite doing nothing in that regard since he needed the support of the South. He certainly had no respect for the Constitution, which he more or less destroyed. Then it all comes down to World War 2, where FDR managed provoke an attack on America, proceeded to half-ass the war effort, and finished by selling half of Europe into Soviet slavery. Apparently this constitutes greatness!

While FDR was a far worse President than Nixon, for example, I still wouldn't categorise him as a total clusterfuck. During the Great Depression, he was able to co-opt most of the left-wing groups into his 'New Deal' charade, thereby heading off the biggest crisis capitalism had faced up to that time and preventing a potential revolution. Even Stalin acknowledged that FDR was a clever bourgeois politician who had extended the lifespan of capitalism.

And who do historians consider the worst President in American history? Warren G. Harding. And what was so bad about Harding? Certainly nothing in his record indicates that, in fact he was arguably a great President.

[...]

And this fine statesman many historians call the worst President in history. Disgraceful.

I agree. I've never understood the criteria by which bourgeois American historians have selected the 'best' and the 'worst' US Presidents. It's probably down to their ignorance of economic history. Because of this ignorance, the only criteria they use seem to be whether they look good in a photo-op and have good speech-writers. This makes JFK a 'great' President and Nixon a 'bad' President. Absurd.

[Dave]

I don't think the label "progressive" is appropriate in the sense you're using it. While I obviously realize where you're coming from, America has no tradition of Marxist social science and the word progressive either applies to American Progressivism in the early 20th century or modern day left liberalism.

I was using the word 'progressive' in its Marxist sense, of course. I certainly did not mean it in its bourgeois liberal, moralistic sense. Such 'progressivism' is worthless.

Right, I was trying to prevent the usage of Marxist language in the discussion of my country's history.

And personally I can in no way justify the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to implement and economic system, so I certainly do not endorse the man as a great President--he was a butcher.

Meh. Small price to pay. In Britain during the 19th century, millions of working people were brought to a premature end by industrialisation, not to mention the millions of natives and 'fuzzy-wuzzies' the Brits slaughtered while building their Empire. In Marxist terms, these were progressive events, and the millions of deaths and blighted lives were a price well worth paying. The same logic applies to the Soviet Union of course - the industrial development of the Soviet Union is an end which justifies the means used to attain it.

Small price for you perhaps. Definitely not a small price to pay for the mothers who lost their children, the communities destroyed, families who had their homes burned down by invading armies. You can't use the tantalizing promise of economic prosperity tomorrow to justify shattering the lives, hopes, and dreams of people today.

The premature deaths in Britain during industrialization are also a bit different. Rural life expectancy was also very low, but diseases were more common in cities as modern sanitation wasn't around yet. No one was going around and slaughtering people.

It should also be noted that the South was not incorporated into that industrial development per se, rather, the South was exploited to finance that development. The South paid the vast majority of tariff revenues, which were used principally to finance industrial improvements in the North. The land ownership structure which emerged in the South (largely due to the tidewater lowlands originally being settled by colonists from class-ridden Southern England) along with its cultural mores were simply not conducive to industrialization.

Granted. It is significant that industrialisation occurred first in the North of England rather than in the agrarian, class-bound South. Unfortunately, the balance of power shifted back to the South again from the late 19th century onwards, with the rise of finance capitalism and the service sector and the decline of industrial production.

What caused this in Britain? I'm an expert on the chicanery of financiers in America, but I'm not familiar with how this took place in Britain.

Lincoln won the Republican nomination primarily on his protectionist credentials, which caused the New York and Pennsylvania delegations to cast their delegates for him. Otherwise Salmon P. Chase would've been the Republican candidate. This was Lincoln's number one issue. And if it wasn't, he certainly wouldn't have waged the bloodiest war in our history for it--a war against our own people.

What's wrong with waging a war against your own people? The British ruling class waged a war against the British working people in the 19th century, and the Bolsheviks waged a war against their own people in the 20th. This is the price which must be paid for progress - it is, at least in its beginning, an all-out assault against the people. There is a legend that when the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam first heard the word 'progress' as a child, he burst into tears. He was a wise child, but an unwise adult.

What's wrong with waging a war against your own people? I don't know about you, but I respect and value all people. Even from countries I hate and think suck. For any people to be subjected to the horrors of war is a tragedy. But I especially love and treasure my people. This is where I come from, this is the land that shaped me, and these are the people who cradled me. I want to see no harm befall them.

I should add that I don't think anyone from this time period should be condemned for racism.

Agreed. Lincoln was a man of his time, of his class, and of his race. Any American politician at that time who wanted to be elected President had no choice but to publically support racism, just as any American politician who wants to be elected President now has no choice but to publically support Israel.

The Israel thing is different in that it is a matter of political expediency, whereas in Lincoln's time people were quite simply racist.

Simple. Historians are courtiers. They worship power. Historians always claim that Lincoln and FDR are America's best Presidents.

Correction: bourgeois historians are courtiers. There is another type of historian who are rather more serious; people like Eric Hobsbawm, for example. In other words, Marxist historians. Wink

Eric Hobsbawm is pretty good, I agree. He tries very hard to integrate economic history, although his lack of understanding of money and banking limits his ability somewhat.

For Lincoln one can at least make the economic argument (as is being discussed in this thread), but historians, with the notable exception of Michael Lind, rarely make that argument, probably because they find economic history boring and hard.

America needs more Marxist historians. Wink

Michael Lind is not a Marxist. There are a very large numbers of historians on the right who are good at economic history, but they are not considered mainsteam. Tom DiLorenzo in particular, an Austrian economist by training, has made a career out of attacking the Lincoln cult.

More common are fawning hagiographic biographies like Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, which basically babbles on for hundreds of pages of how "courageous" Lincoln was to invade the South, jail thousands of American citizens without charge, suspend habeas corpus, etc.

Similar hagiographies will be written about George W. Bush once he leaves office, and especially after he dies.

I doubt it. Academia hates George W. Bush with a passion.

For FDR there is really no argument whatsoever. His economic record was an abject failure. A typical cause célèbre of historians, civil rights, he is for whatever reason given credit for despite doing nothing in that regard since he needed the support of the South. He certainly had no respect for the Constitution, which he more or less destroyed. Then it all comes down to World War 2, where FDR managed provoke an attack on America, proceeded to half-ass the war effort, and finished by selling half of Europe into Soviet slavery. Apparently this constitutes greatness!

While FDR was a far worse President than Nixon, for example, I still wouldn't categorise him as a total clusterfuck. During the Great Depression, he was able to co-opt most of the left-wing groups into his 'New Deal' charade, thereby heading off the biggest crisis capitalism had faced up to that time and preventing a potential revolution. Even Stalin acknowledged that FDR was a clever bourgeois politician who had extended the lifespan of capitalism.

FDR was a very clever politician, but a very bad President. The potential for revolution was never too high to begin with, even when things were at their worst in 1933. His economic policies also prolonged the Depression, so if there WERE a potential for revolution he didn't help things too much. America simply has no tradition of class struggle. Even the high point of working class struggle in this country, from roughly 1893-1919, was likely the result of mass immigration and many good Americans losing their jobs to foreigners. After immigration was mostly closed in 1924, this dwindled rapidly.

And who do historians consider the worst President in American history? Warren G. Harding. And what was so bad about Harding? Certainly nothing in his record indicates that, in fact he was arguably a great President.

[...]

And this fine statesman many historians call the worst President in history. Disgraceful.

I agree. I've never understood the criteria by which bourgeois American historians have selected the 'best' and the 'worst' US Presidents. It's probably down to their ignorance of economic history. Because of this ignorance, the only criteria they use seem to be whether they look good in a photo-op and have good speech-writers. This makes JFK a 'great' President and Nixon a 'bad' President. Absurd. Roll eyes

Historians worship power, and they also think that great Presidents are supposed to as active as possible. So a great President like Calvin Coolidge or Grover Cleveland is mostly ignored by historians.

Historians, being academics, tend to be liberals as well. This means that they hate people with traditional values and they especially hate Middle America. Richard Nixon fulfills most liberal criteria for being a great President. He was activist, he greatly enhanced the power of the Presidency, he was an internationalist, and he frankly accomplished a great deal. However, historians despise Richard Nixon. They can't stand his anti-communism. They hate that he came from humble origins, born to Quakers in a tiny farmhouse his father built in Yorba Linda, California. They disdain the fact that he went to Whittier College instead of an Ivy League univeristy. And what really made their blood boil was that Nixon called into question their legitimacy as a class, by building his silent majority (almost 70% of the people) over their shrill claims. Fortunately, the liberal democratic coup d'etat more commonly known Watergate gives them a veneer they can use to justify their hatred of an actual man of the people.

[Paradigm]

Although Lincoln did not originally set out to free the slaves, that was ultimately the result of his efforts. I realize the Emancipation Proclamation did not free all the slaves(only those in Confederate states), but it set the stage for full abolition(and whatever his views on race, he was an abolitionist when he came to office). The 14th amendment simply would not have been possible without him. I'm not so sure this excuses his Constitutional abuses, but he was the right person at the right time to help correct the issue of slavery which had haunted the nation since its founding.

[Potemkin]

Right, I was trying to prevent the usage of Marxist language in the discussion of my country's history.

Fair enough.

Small price for you perhaps. Definitely not a small price to pay for the mothers who lost their children, the communities destroyed, families who had their homes burned down by invading armies. You can't use the tantalizing promise of economic prosperity tomorrow to justify shattering the lives, hopes, and dreams of people today.

Here we have the difference between a scientific socialist and a bourgeois liberal. Lenin was right when he talked about "the saccharine-sweet sentimentality of our bourgeoisie". I could go on to talk about omelettes and eggs, but I think you get the idea.

The premature deaths in Britain during industrialization are also a bit different. Rural life expectancy was also very low, but diseases were more common in cities as modern sanitation wasn't around yet. No one was going around and slaughtering people.

Actually, they were. The Irish Potato Famine, for example, was regarded by many in positions of power in England as an ideal opportunity to rid themselves of these backward Irish peasants and their inefficient subsistence agriculture in favour of modern, efficient farming methods. The result was the depopulation of Ireland and the transformation of the Irish economy. Likewise with the Highland Clearances of the same period - the Scottish Highlands were once bustling with people, now they are a desolate wilderness. And how many people did the British Empire destroy? 100 million? 200 million? A damn sight more than even Robert Conquest or Solzhenitsyn claim were killed by Communism. But so what? A great Empire was built which advanced human progress. It was worth it in the end. Besides, all those people would have died anyway, just somewhat later than they did.

What caused this in Britain? I'm an expert on the chicanery of financiers in America, but I'm not familiar with how this took place in Britain.

Basically, it was a result of the dynamics of the class hierarchy in England. The aristocracy did not oppose the rising bourgeois class in the 18th and 19th centuries, but co-operated with them. This meant that Britain avoided the social revolutions which plagued the rest of Europe during this period, and the combined strength of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie was able to easily crush any workers' movement. However, it also meant that the bourgeoisie identified themselves with the values and the class interests of the aristocracy, rather than developing their own class values. As soon as they had made their money from trade or industry, they hastened to buy a country estate and live like the aristos they had gone to school with. They got out of industry as fast as they could. The result was that British manufacturing peaked just before the Great War, then went into a long-term decline which culminated in Thatcher's annihilation of the British manufacturing base in the 1980s. Investment shifted from industry to finance capitalism, which was considered more aristocratic and more 'gentlemanly' than industry or trade. The end result of all this was a nation dominated by finance capitalism, with almost no manufacturing base, a rigid semi-feudal class hierarchy and a middle-class which thinks and behaves like disdainful aristocrats. Oh, and a vast army of disaffected petty-bourgeois malcontents like me.

What's wrong with waging a war against your own people?

Yes, that was my question. Do you have an answer?

The Israel thing is different in that it is a matter of political expediency, whereas in Lincoln's time people were quite simply racist.

Good point, but most American politicians believe in the Israel thing just as passionately as their predecessors believed in racism.

Eric Hobsbawm is pretty good, I agree. He tries very hard to integrate economic history, although his lack of understanding of money and banking limits his ability somewhat.

True, but he's a Marxist, so what do you expect? Most British Marxists despise finance capitalism, for the reasons I've outlined above.

Michael Lind is not a Marxist. There are a very large numbers of historians on the right who are good at economic history, but they are not considered mainsteam. Tom DiLorenzo in particular, an Austrian economist by training, has made a career out of attacking the Lincoln cult.

I'm starting to like DiLorenzo already.

I doubt it. Academia hates George W. Bush with a passion.

Lincoln wasn't exactly beloved by large swathes of the American public or academia when he died either.

FDR was a very clever politician, but a very bad President. The potential for revolution was never too high to begin with, even when things were at there worst in 1933. America simply has no tradition of class struggle. Even the high point of working class struggle in this country, from roughly 1893-1919, was likely the result of mass immigration and many good Americans losing their jobs to foreigners. After immigration was mostly closed in 1924, this dwindled rapidly.

Good point. However, he made it easier for the bourgeoisie to continue governing America by co-opting the leftist groups into his 'New Deal' nonsense. In this respect, he headed off the potential radicalisation of American politics.

Historians worship power, and they also think that great Presidents are supposed to as active as possible. So a great President like Calvin Coolidge or Grover Cleveland is mostly ignored by historians.

Agreed. Masterful inaction is the highest form of leadership.

Historians, being academics, tend to be liberals as well. This means that they hate people with traditional values and they especially hate Middle America. Richard Nixon fulfills most liberal criteria for being a great President. He was activist, he greatly enhanced the power of the Presidency, he was an internationalist, and he frankly accomplished a great deal. However, historians despise Richard Nixon. They can't stand his anti-communism. They hate that he came from humble origins, born to Quakers in a tiny farmhouse his father built in Yorba Linda, California. They disdain the fact that he went to Whittier College instead of an Ivy League univeristy. And what really made their blood boil was that Nixon called into question their legitimacy as a class, by building his silent majority (almost 70% of the people) over their shrill claims. Fortunately, the liberal democratic coup d'etat more commonly known Watergate gives them a veneer they can use to justify their hatred of an actual man of the people.

I basically agree with that. It's astonishing how in America class hatred has the opposite political polarity to the one it has elsewhere in the world. In Britain, a man with Nixon's background would have been a Communist firebrand who hated the ruling class. In America, he was an anti-Communist firebrand who hated the ruling class. But yeah, I've always secretly admired Nixon. As Mao told him when he went to China: "We are both men of the people, from humble backgrounds". If I were running a Communist nation, I would have no difficulty in promoting Nixon to high office. His ideas may have been wrong, but he had the right class origin, and most importantly he hated the upper classes. He could be trusted to do what had to be done. Ultimately, what matters are not subjective ideas but objective class identity.

[Dave]

Small price for you perhaps. Definitely not a small price to pay for the mothers who lost their children, the communities destroyed, families who had their homes burned down by invading armies. You can't use the tantalizing promise of economic prosperity tomorrow to justify shattering the lives, hopes, and dreams of people today.

Here we have the difference between a scientific socialist and a bourgeois liberal. Lenin was right when he talked about "the saccharine-sweet sentimentality of our bourgeoisie". I could go on to talk about omelettes and eggs, but I think you get the idea.

Machiavellianism is not science, and such statements lay bare the fallacy of socialism's claim of being an ideology of the people. You're not going to help the people by destroying the people.

The premature deaths in Britain during industrialization are also a bit different. Rural life expectancy was also very low, but diseases were more common in cities as modern sanitation wasn't around yet. No one was going around and slaughtering people.

Actually, they were. The Irish Potato Famine, for example, was regarded by many in positions of power in England as an ideal opportunity to rid themselves of these backward Irish peasants and their inefficient subsistence agriculture in favour of modern, efficient farming methods.

The debates in Parliament certainly don't reflect this. It seems to many that many MPs were greatly agitated and distressed, but ultimately decided they had no moral, lawful authority to prevent the private property owners from exporting their crops, despite the famine. I don't agree with the view that won the day, but the point is that, at least in Parliament, this was not cynically exploited. I'm sure some Englishmen welcomed the potato famine, but not for the reasons you state. Just out of simple hatred of the Irish. "Sorry about the potatoes, Mr. McMurphy."

The result was the depopulation of Ireland and the transformation of the Irish economy. Likewise with the Highland Clearances of the same period - the Scottish Highlands were once bustling with people, now they are a desolate wilderness. And how many people did the British Empire destroy? 100 million? 200 million? A damn sight more than even Robert Conquest or Solzhenitsyn claim were killed by Communism. But so what? A great Empire was built which advanced human progress. It was worth it in the end. Besides, all those people would have died anyway, just somewhat later than they did.

Aside from Ulster, home of Harland and Wolff, the Irish economy remained agrarian until the 1970s.

I agree with you on the Highland Clearances, which were an extension of Robert Walpole's policy many years earlier of deliberately creating a surplus pool of pauperized labor to be organized into the factory system. I consider this policy to have been grossly immoral and could have been accomplished without resorting to such. We did not have to resort to that in America.

What caused this in Britain? I'm an expert on the chicanery of financiers in America, but I'm not familiar with how this took place in Britain.

Basically, it was a result of the dynamics of the class hierarchy in England. The aristocracy did not oppose the rising bourgeois class in the 18th and 19th centuries, but co-operated with them. This meant that Britain avoided the social revolutions which plagued the rest of Europe during this period, and the combined strength of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie was able to easily crush any workers' movement. However, it also meant that the bourgeoisie identified themselves with the values and the class interests of the aristocracy, rather than developing their own class values. As soon as they had made their money from trade or industry, they hastened to buy a country estate and live like the aristos they had gone to school with. They got out of industry as fast as they could. The result was that British manufacturing peaked just before the Great War, then went into a long-term decline which culminated in Thatcher's annihilation of the British manufacturing base in the 1980s. Investment shifted from industry to finance capitalism, which was considered more aristocratic and more 'gentlemanly' than industry or trade. The end result of all this was a nation dominated by finance capitalism, with almost no manufacturing base, a rigid semi-feudal class hierarchy and a middle-class which thinks and behaves like disdainful aristocrats. Oh, and a vast army of disaffected petty-bourgeois malcontents like me. Wink

Okay, thanks.

What's wrong with waging a war against your own people?

Yes, that was my question. Do you have an answer?

See my edit.

The Israel thing is different in that it is a matter of political expediency, whereas in Lincoln's time people were quite simply racist.

Good point, but most American politicians believe in the Israel thing just as passionately as their predecessors believed in racism.

You may enjoy seeing the private quotes of John Foster Dulles and Richard Nixon on the subject.

"It was impossible to hold the line against Israel. All we got was a battering from the jews." -John Foster Dulles

"Why the hell can't these damn jews care about America for once instead of Israel?" -Richard Nixon

It's about money and votes.

Eric Hobsbawm is pretty good, I agree. He tries very hard to integrate economic history, although his lack of understanding of money and banking limits his ability somewhat.

True, but he's a Marxist, so what do you expect? Most British Marxists despise finance capitalism, for the reasons I've outlined above.

Ideological affiliation doesn't have to blind you.
Quote:

Michael Lind is not a Marxist. There are a very large numbers of historians on the right who are good at economic history, but they are not considered mainsteam. Tom DiLorenzo in particular, an Austrian economist by training, has made a career out of attacking the Lincoln cult.

I'm starting to like DiLorenzo already.

Our tradition of economic scholarship almost always comes from the Right.

I doubt it. Academia hates George W. Bush with a passion.

Lincoln wasn't exactly beloved by large swathes of the American public or academia when he died either.

Lincoln was a very popular figure in much of the North, and his championing of the Homestead Act made him extremely popular with frontier settlers, many of whom hung a portrait of him in their simple homes.

FDR was a very clever politician, but a very bad President. The potential for revolution was never too high to begin with, even when things were at there worst in 1933. America simply has no tradition of class struggle. Even the high point of working class struggle in this country, from roughly 1893-1919, was likely the result of mass immigration and many good Americans losing their jobs to foreigners. After immigration was mostly closed in 1924, this dwindled rapidly.

Good point. However, he made it easier for the bourgeoisie to continue governing America by co-opting the leftist groups into his 'New Deal' nonsense. In this respect, he headed off the potential radicalisation of American politics.

Certainly, but this could've been handled more directly: with economic recovery.

Historians worship power, and they also think that great Presidents are supposed to as active as possible. So a great President like Calvin Coolidge or Grover Cleveland is mostly ignored by historians.

Agreed. Masterful inaction is the highest form of leadership.

It takes real courage to avoid fucking something up that works beautifully when you're the most powerful man in the land.

Historians, being academics, tend to be liberals as well. This means that they hate people with traditional values and they especially hate Middle America. Richard Nixon fulfills most liberal criteria for being a great President. He was activist, he greatly enhanced the power of the Presidency, he was an internationalist, and he frankly accomplished a great deal. However, historians despise Richard Nixon. They can't stand his anti-communism. They hate that he came from humble origins, born to Quakers in a tiny farmhouse his father built in Yorba Linda, California. They disdain the fact that he went to Whittier College instead of an Ivy League univeristy. And what really made their blood boil was that Nixon called into question their legitimacy as a class, by building his silent majority (almost 70% of the people) over their shrill claims. Fortunately, the liberal democratic coup d'etat more commonly known Watergate gives them a veneer they can use to justify their hatred of an actual man of the people.

I basically agree with that. It's astonishing how in America class hatred has the opposite political polarity to the one it has elsewhere in the world. In Britain, a man with Nixon's background would have been a Communist firebrand who hated the ruling class. In America, he was an anti-Communist firebrand who hated the ruling class. Laugh out loud But yeah, I've always secretly admired Nixon. As Mao told him when he went to China: "We are both men of the people, from humble backgrounds". If I were running a Communist nation, I would have no difficulty in promoting Nixon to high office. His ideas may have been wrong, but he had the right class origin, and most importantly he hated the upper classes. He could be trusted to do what had to be done. Ultimately, what matters are not subjective ideas but objective class identity.

Classes don't exist here quite in the same way as Europe. We have no feudal history whatsoever, and America is a middle class nation (despite our wealth polarization) in which values and culture are broadly shared. I come from a high income background but identify with Middle America, which would be quite uncommon in Europe. The specific target of Nixon's animosity is snobbish liberalism. Most liberal snobs come from the upper middle class, and not the upper class per se. This phenomenon is also the origin of American anti-intellectual. Anyone can enter the liberal chattering class at any level of income, it merely takes disdain for the common people and a willingness to see everyone as a victim. Communism in the USA was in Nixon's time broadly affiliated with this, leading the common man to hate it. During the Vietnam War there was something known as "the hardhat movement", in which construction workers roughed up America-hating protesters.

[Potemkin]

Machiavellianism is not science, and such statements lay bare the fallacy of socialism's claim of being an ideology of the people. You're not going to help the people by destroying the people.

It's not Machiavellianism, it's the recognition of objective necessity. And it doesn't destroy the people, it merely disciplines them, in the same way that the Irish Potato Famine disciplined the Irish peasant as a class and the Highland Clearances disciplined the Scottish crofters as a class. They still existed, but in reduced numbers and in a more pliant form. The viewpoint of the British ruling class is that the people are raw material, upon which capital can work to generate money. The material must first be disciplined and shaped before it is fit for purpose. British Marxists tend to adopt a similar attitude, since we are brought up in that society and have absorbed some of its values. Progress can only be achieved by waging a war against inertia, against stupidity and against self-interest. The Russian Bolsheviks thought in exactly the same way. It seems to be an alien attitude in America, however, for historical reasons.

The debates in Parliament certainly don't reflect this. It seems to many that many MPs were greatly agitated and distressed, but ultimately decided they had no moral, lawful authority to prevent the private property owners from exporting their crops, despite the famine. I don't agree with the view that won the day, but the point is that, at least in Parliament, this was not cynically exploited. I'm sure some Englishmen welcomed the potato famine, but not for the reasons you state. Just out of simple hatred of the Irish. "Sorry about the potatoes, Mr. McMurphy."

I don't think it was merely simple racial and/or religious hatred. There was a widespread belief that for Ireland to be 'improved', the Irish peasant would have to be liquidated as a class. This was objectively correct, and the Potato Famine was therefore seen at the time as an opportunity to achieve just that. The famine in the Ukraine in 1932-3 can be regarded in the same light – the Soviet government exploited it as an opportunity to rid themselves of a recalcitrant and superfluous social class.

Aside from Ulster, home of Harland and Wolff, the Irish economy remained agrarian until the 1970s.

Granted. It just shows that they weren't quite ruthless enough, doesn't it?

I agree with you on the Highland Clearances, which were an extension of Robert Walpole's policy many years earlier of deliberately creating a surplus pool of pauperized labor to be organized into the factory system. I consider this policy to have been grossly immoral and could have been accomplished without resorting to such. We did not have to resort to that in America.

How fortunate for you. However, here in the real world, we did resort to that. Far from being 'immoral', it was actually absolutely necessary. Even David Ricardo, who I imagine is one of your heroes, recognised this process as being a necessary precursor to the development of capitalism. When a course of action or a policy is objectively necessary for economic progress, then issues of 'morality' are irrelevant. You do what must objectively be done. Walpole recognised this, Ricardo recognised it, and Lenin and Stalin recognised it. Why can't you?

What's wrong with waging a war against your own people? I don't know about you, but I respect and value all people. Even from countries I hate and think suck. For any people to be subjected to the horrors of war is a tragedy. But I especially love and treasure my people. This is where I come from, this is the land that shaped me, and these are the people who cradled me. I want to see no harm befall them.

Interesting. Americans often pretend to be hardheaded and cynical, but if you scratch them you find a big softy inside. I find this both amusing and rather touching – there is a certain big-hearted generosity about Americans which is difficult to find anywhere else in the world. It's probably a result of the lack of overt class conflict in American society – it is a society fundamentally at ease with itself in a way that, say, British society is not. British society is a house divided against itself; the different social classes regard each other with contempt and disdain. From early childhood, we are inculcated with this social malaise until it becomes second nature. Whenever I see a member of the upper classes, or hear their stupid upper-class accent, my trigger finger itches. I genuinely loathe and despise them, and I genuinely would like to see them liquidated from our society. I want to see a great deal of harm befall them. This video sums up my feelings towards the British upper classes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSqkdcT25ss

Ideological affiliation doesn't have to blind you.

True, but this applies to the Right as well as the Left.

Lincoln was a very popular figure in much of the North, and his championing of the Homestead Act made him extremely popular with frontier settlers, many of whom hung a portrait of him in their simple homes.

It's amazing how easily the American people can be fooled. Didn't somebody or other say something about “fooling the people”?

Certainly, but this could've been handled more directly: with economic recovery.

Easier said than done. It took WWII to kickstart the economy (and that fact is clear evidence that the Depression was a crisis of overproduction).

It takes real courage to avoid fucking something up that works beautifully when you're the most powerful man in the land.

The 'Tao Te Ching' should be required reading for all American Presidents. Alongside Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War'.

Classes don't exist here quite in the same way as Europe. We have no feudal history whatsoever, and America is a middle class nation (despite our wealth polarization) in which values and culture are broadly shared. I come from a high income background but identify with Middle America, which would be quite uncommon in Europe. The specific target of Nixon's animosity is snobbish liberalism. Most liberal snobs come from the upper middle class, and not the upper class per se. This phenomenon is also the origin of American anti-intellectual.

Interesting. It is astonishing the way in which bourgeois values have pervaded the whole of American society, overriding class identity. Nothing like this has happened in Britain, where each social class has its own well-defined set of moral and social values, which are mutually exclusive. Bourgeois values are still restricted to a tiny minority of the population, despite Thatcher's attempt to universalise them in the 1980s.

Anyone can enter the liberal chattering class at any level of income, it merely takes disdain for the common people and a willingness to see everyone as a victim.

This is another fundamental difference between Britain and America – the class system here is very much a closed shop. Either you are born into the ruling elite or you are not. It is almost impossible to join them from a lower social class. This (from a Marxist perspective) has the advantage of keeping us honest – petty-bourgeois malcontents like me are not tempted to join the upper classes and adopt their values; we are forever excluded from their ranks.

Communism in the USA was in Nixon's time broadly affiliated with this, leading the common man to hate it. During the Vietnam War there was something known as "the hardhat movement", in which construction workers roughed up America-hating protesters.

Hilarious! In reality, of course, the liberal elite hate Communism just as much as the hardhatters do. Some of the most hawkish Cold Warriors in the 1950s were liberals. Ironically, just as they had turned on the Communists in the 1950s, the Right turned on the liberals in the 1980s and 1990s and denounced them in the same shrill terms that the liberals had denounced Communism. Hilarious!