Republicans were cooler back when Marx liked them
Republicans were cooler back when Marx liked them
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17294985
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." - Abraham Lincoln
"I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world." - Abraham Lincoln
"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." - Karl Marx
Party realignment happened, so the current republicans are not really “political descendants” of the party that ended slavery.
Still point taken lol
Republicans didn't end slavery. Slavery was enshrined in the 13th amendment to the constitution by Republicans. They did free black slaves as a punitive fuck you to the Confederate States. But it's not the same thing.
Also there was no realignment. Before civil rights both parties had deeply seeded bigots. Democrats with their Dixiecrats. And Republicans with their fascists. The fascists literaly plotted a Hitler style coup just a few years after his failed. In the early 1930s. Look up the walstreet putsch.
What there was, was a distillation. Democrats got to civil rights first. Winning outsized support from black Americans. And leaving Dixiecrats fleeing the party. Republicans having missed out on being the ones to pass civil rights, took the consolation prize. And for the last 50 years has been the party of bigotry, white grievance, and fascism.
Republicans didn’t end slavery. Slavery was enshrined in the 13th amendment to the constitution by Republicans. They did free black slaves as a punitive fuck you to the Confederate States. But it’s not the same thing.
The language and actions of the Radical Republicans in the 1860s and 70s show a sincere desire to abolish slavery in all of its forms. The 'exception' granted in the 13th Amendment was intended to retain punitive measures for criminals rather than reconstruct a form of slavery. It didn't work out as cleanly as was hoped.
*leaving dixiecrats to leave the party, except for Genocide Joe, architect of the crime bill with his famous quote about the racial jungle.
They claim to be, which is why it is important to remind them who they claim to be.
If they want to be the party of Lincoln, they'll need to do it more than just in name.
Hmm, makes you wonder what happened to make current republicans switch from the Democratic Party. Probably nothing significant.
More like "waaah people don't like me because my entire personality is hating and harassing everyone that isn't like me"
Party switch. The right opposed all of it.
Exactly. Back in those days, the Democrats were what Republicans are now, and vice versa. The people didn't change; just the names of the groups flipped.
To be entirely fair, it was a bit slower than that. The Republican Party was the party of urban folk and free farmers up until the late 1870s, and shifted to the urban elite and middle class by the 1890s; while the Democrats shifted to favor rural elites and (white) yeomen farmers. Teddy Roosevelt was really the last gasp of progressivism in the Republican Party, which had been steadily been souring on labor, while Wilson shifted the Democrat party to favor white wage laborers as well as farmers. Truman (a Democrat) had taken a firm pro-civil rights stance in the 1940s, and as late as Eisenhower in the 1950s there was broad anti-conservative support in the Republican Party.
The tumult of the 1960s really just set everything in stone - capital siding with conservative elements, and labor with liberal elements. And then, in the course of the 80s, aligning the racists and capital with the previously-apolitical evangelicals, which delivered a 'winning coalition' to a previously-struggling Republican Party.
For anyone who doesn't understand how it happened, after the civil war the Republican party slowly began to become a big business party after all the contracting that was done to supply the Union military brought party leadership into network with business leaders.
This relationship began to drag the party rightward on economics, while the reforming northern democrats began to drift left as the northern party's ranks became filled with working class voters.
By the time of the 1930s the northern democrats had a solid hold on black voters because they'd moved far enough to the left on class issues, even if they had to caucus with dixiecrats to ever do anything, and when the civil rights movement made their push, LBJ chose them over the dixiecrats, marking the beginning of the transition from a bigtop party generally to a more region locked coalition party like we see today.
Worth mentioning is that very few people actually "switched" parties, the "switch" took the form of new voters changing who they were registering with in the wake of the civil rights breakthroughs drawing the center and left towards the democrats and the war on abortion pulling the right to the republicans.
And that's how a party once lead by a quite possibly proto or para socialist who went to war to crush slavers becomes a party that threatens the fabric of democracy.
The lesson here is that autocracy anywhere is a threat to democracy anywhere. Big business leaders will always choose capitalism over democracy, we cannot allow them to have the power to make the decision. We must begin a transition to a more democratic economic model, to worker ownership.
Vote to save our democracy, and then organize to spread it to the dark corners where the autocrats go to hide in reserve for the next round.
We must purge them like parasitic slime they are.
It was much much after the civil war. Teddy Roosevelt was not a business friendly Republican. God he would be fun to have around today.
Interestingly Wilson also claimed to be a progressive like Teddy(and had some actual social justice initiatives to show for it despite being an awful white supremacist) and that three way election between Him, Taft, and Teddy was a big part of the switch. Harding to Hoover is what really cemented the switch to capital and conservatisim in the Republican party.
That election really was one where America still had some ideas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_United_States_presidential_election
Yes and no, Roosevelt was very anti big business, but that made him a step outside the trend. It's actually part of how he became president. He was doing too good a job fighting corrupt business in NY as governor, so they stuck him in as VP basically to lock him out of anything he could do but make noise about it all.
And then an Anarchist shot McKinley, and Teddy was off the leash.
Had it been up to party leadership Teddy would have gone down as another one of the also rans progressives hold up to insist that the fix is always in against "real progress"
time to punch some nazis
*northern republicans.
The slavery thing was always more north vs south, Southern republicans were very much in favor of slaves too
The Republican Party was explicitly founded as an abolitionist party, it's partly why the Confederate states shit their pants in a baby rage when Lincoln was elected.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/republican-party-founded
That doesn't mean there weren't pro-slavery Republicans, there were quite a few, it just means they were evil AND stupid if they were.
This is a more accurate criticism of the "helped end segregation" line. Yes, the Civil Rights Act was extremely bipartisan by modern standards, but the majority of the support was from the areas outside the South in general.
again.... the politics of abolitionism was more of a north vs south thing. not a party thing.
The republicans, as noted in the very source you linked, were founded in the north. The northern states generally did not rely on slave labor and their economy was not reliant on it, in the way that it was in the southern states.
as republican base's shifted south and they became more involved in southern industry... their attitudes towards slavery, civil rights, and all that began to change. The two parties flipped positions, with democrats becoming stronger in the north also becoming influenced there. Civil Rights and simply not being assholes has always been a north vs south issue, not one of parties.
The slavery thing was always more north vs south, Southern republicans were very much in favor of slaves too
The Republican Party was founded as an abolitionist party, man. The GOP didn't achieve any power of note in the South until slavery was dead.
Currently reading The Demon of Unrest and it's wild to see how different the party was prior to the electoral cleave. One nice thing, I bet the ghost of the Chivalry are very unhappy that "their people" are now Republicans.