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Karl Marx, Communists and the Civil War


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2019 Mar 23, 1:13am   1,448 views  29 comments

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Did Marx and Lincoln share a perspective on slavery?

Both rejected it quite strongly. Lincoln talked about the slave’s unrequited labor, and Marx talked about the super-exploitation of the slave. Both men found the racialization at the heart of the slave system repugnant. But it was really both strands—exploited labor and racial disregard.

You note that Lincoln himself experienced forced labor.

Up until the age of 21 he was working without payment for his father. On some occasions his father would hire out his son’s services, and even then didn’t hand over the wages.

Tell us about Marx’s work for the New York Daily Tribune.

Marx himself was only 30 when he was caught up in the 1848 revolution, and he edited one of Germany’s main revolutionary newspapers. At that time, he was visited by Charles Dana, an American journalist and managing editor of the New York Daily Tribune. Dana later hired him as the Tribune’s European correspondent, and Marx wrote about 450 articles, including features about, for example, factory conditions in England. A lot of his research for the Tribune ended up in his famous book Das Capital, published in 1867.

Was Marx well known in America at the time? Would Lincoln have read him?

Lincoln probably read the Tribune, the main newspaper for Republicans. The Tribune did not put Marx’s name on all his articles, as some were published as editorials. At least 300 were published under his name. He had a characteristic writing style, sometimes very sarcastic and sometimes very lyrical.

Marx published analyses of the Civil War for the Viennese paper Die Presse. Where did he gain his insight?

From 1848-49, Germans had gone through their own civil war—the revolution of 1848 that was eventually crushed by the military power of the Prussian king and the other monarchs of the principalities of Germany, which frustrated the unification of Germany—one goal the revolutionaries were trying to achieve. And then many thousands of them sought refuge in the United States. Marx kept in contact with those people and wrote for the German-language U.S. papers too. There was also the German war against Napoleon, with new tactics and strategies, and the great military thinker Carl von Clausewitz.

Explain the influx of Germans to America and their prominence in the Union Army.

Notwithstanding their very radical politics, large numbers of German-Americans who came to the United States volunteered and soon got quite senior posts in the Union Army. There were about 200,0000 German-Americans who fought for the Union, and about 40,000 were in units that had the German language as the medium of command. What may have helped increase the importance of these German-Americans was that Charles Dana, who had been responsible for inviting Marx to write for the Tribune,became assistant secretary of war in 1862. He was in contact with close friends of Marx like Joseph Weydemeyer, who was made first colonel in defense of the forts at St. Louis and was later promoted to the rank of general.

Another member of the Communist League in Germany in the 1840s was August Willich, who became a Union general.

Marx seems to have had a deep grasp of military strategy.

In March 1862, he writes that the Anaconda strategy of encircling the Confederacy and trying to squeeze it to death is not going to work. What the Union Army needs to do is cut them in two and that will gravely weaken them. That’s an interpretation of Clausewitz’s doctrine. The remarkable thing is that it looks like he was still corresponding with Dana, and he might well have sent him a copy of the article. Dana was at this time in the camp of General Grant; he had been sent to look at the various generals and send his appreciation of them to Lincoln. Of course Grant helps to bring about the cutting of the Confederacy in two by his victory at Vicksburg.

Do you think Marx influenced Lincoln’s direction of the war?

Not directly, but Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation was influenced by knowing it would strengthen the hand of the Union’s supporters in Europe. Worth noting, too, that Marx and Lincoln were both influenced by German philosophy—in Lincoln’s case, as transmitted by such writers as Theodore Parker.

Did Marx and Lincoln ever correspond?

In 1864, following Lincoln’s reelection, Marx was asked to draft an address to him from the International Workingmen’s Association, which included many British trade unions, French trade unions, German socialists and other progressive people. Lincoln’s reply, via his ambassador, acknowledged their support and said that nations don’t exist for themselves alone.

Did the war turn out as Marx predicted?

When the war started, the common liberal and radical reaction was that this is really a struggle in which the South is trying to assert its identity as a separate nation, and the North is denying this principle of self-determination. Marx from the beginning was a strong supporter of the Union and the North and saw slavery as the underlying issue. And he was quite sure that to win the war the Yankees would perhaps reluctantly be driven to emancipate the slaves and even enroll them in the Union Army.

What impact did Marx have on American labor movements after the war?

A lot of American trade unions have the name international in them. I think that’s because many of the IWAs established sections in the U.S. There were about 50, and they helped found early unions. A final point is that Marx was tremendously moved by the revolt of the Paris Commune at the end of the war between Prussia and France, the defeat of the Communard in Paris and the slaughter of about 30,000- 40,000 people. The IWA in New York City organized a big demonstration in 1871. In a drawing of this very large gathering, you can see the Skidmore Guard, a black militia; you can see the marching bands; you can see the women—some of the earliest feminists joined the International—walking in the demonstration. There’s an Irish band and trade unionists and banners and the Cuban flag carried by followers of a leader of the Cuban struggle against Spain. I reproduce it in my book, showing the spectrum of U.S. opinion that organized just for a moment under the International banner in response to these events in Europe. I think Marx learned from America, and America learned a little bit from Marx.

https://www.historynet.com/karl-marx-communists-civil-war-interview-robin-blackburn.htm

#AmericanCivilWar #Marx #Lincoln #Union #Communists

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2   anonymous   2019 Mar 24, 7:26am  

Red Republicans and Lincoln's Marxists: Marxism in the Civil War

Was Abraham Lincoln influenced by communism when the Union condemned the rights of Southern states to express their independence? It's shocking to think so. But that's precisely what Walter D. Kennedy and Al Benson Jr. assert in Red Republicans and Lincoln's Marxists. The pair completely reassess this tumultuous time in American history, exposing the "politically correct" view of the War for Southern Independence as nothing less than the same observation announced by Marx himself.

During the American Civil War, Marx wrote about his support of the Union Army, the Republican Party, and Lincoln himself. In fact, he named the president as "the single-minded son of the working class."In addition to shedding light on this little-known part of our history, Kennedy and Benson also ask pertinent questions about the validity of today's federal government and why its role seems so much larger than the liberty found in the states it represents.

Red Republicans and Lincoln's Marxists is a bold undertaking, but it's one that needs our immediate and absolute attention.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2166753.Red_Republicans_and_Lincoln_s_Marxists
3   anonymous   2019 Mar 24, 7:29am  

Karl Marx and the American Civil War

During the war, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contributed dozens of insightful articles for the New York Tribune and, later, for the Viennese Die Presse on political and military issues. Engels specialized on the military strategy of the Lincoln administration and that of the Confederate Jefferson Davis rebel government. Karl Marx had a more sweeping look at the conflict, from the economic development of the nation to the actions of the political and military leaders. Overall, Marx had a better grasp on the whole war. Both men saw the war as an extension of the American Revolution of 1776. Marx and Engels argued that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the North’s arming of Black soldiers transformed the Civil War from a purely constitutional war to preserve the country with slavery intact, into a revolutionary war.

They did not characterize the Civil War as a socialist revolutionary war, but they believed that it advanced the cause of all workers, both white and Black, by destroying chattel slavery. The revolution armed former slaves, destroyed the horrendous institution of slavery without compensation to the slave-owners, and opened the way for a struggle between the working class and the capitalist class. As a result, our next revolution in this country will be a working-class revolution.

During the American Civil War, Marx and Engels resided in England, having fled their German homeland following the failed 1848 democratic revolutions in Europe. Marx wrote for two newspapers, the New York Daily Tribune and the Viennese Die Presse, with Engels also contributing under Marx’s name. Marx began writing for the Tribune in 1852, publishing 350 articles, with Engels supplying another 125, and their jointly writing twelve, until the paper terminated Marx’s employment in 1862. As the European correspondent for the paper, Marx wrote on diverse topics from Tory election corruption to the increase of mental illness in Great Britain. Meanwhile, he was conducting his research for Capital. Due to the increased Civil War coverage, the Tribune pruned its European contributors to Karl Marx alone, until firing him in March 1862.

Karl Marx recognized that the core reason for the war was chattel slavery, an economic system in which people are kept in bondage and not compensated for their labor. As today, apologists for the secession of the Southern states argued that other issues, such as state’s rights or tariffs, rather than slavery, explained the insurrection. Marx shattered these arguments in his October 20, 1861, Die Presse article, “The North American Civil War.” He took Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, at his word when Stephens proclaimed what Southern secession was really all about

Much much more, long read - https://isreview.org/issue/80/karl-marx-and-american-civil-war
4   marcus   2019 Mar 24, 10:31am  

I knew it !

Republicans are communists !
5   anonymous   2019 Mar 24, 12:18pm  

6   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2019 Mar 24, 12:21pm  

You know nothing about Lincoln Kaki.

Way off on many statements. I actually studied Lincoln for years, and know a lot about him and his life. You misrepresent him.
7   Reality   2019 Mar 24, 1:47pm  

Kakistocracy says
which frustrated the unification of Germany—one goal the revolutionaries were trying to achieve.


With the benefit of hindsight about what happened after German unification (World War I and World War II, German imperialism and Nazism), it's amazing anyone would still believe "the unification of Germany" would have been a good thing.

Kakistocracy says
During the American Civil War, Marx wrote about his support of the Union Army, the Republican Party, and Lincoln himself. In fact, he named the president as "the single-minded son of the working class."


LOL! Just like Marx himself was entirely financed by international crony "capitalists"/banksters, becoming wealthy enough to keep housemaid, whom he impregnated through either rape or sexual harassment, Lincoln had long become a corporate lawyer for the railroad industry for decades before running for POTUS. In fact, it was rather curious that the top two contenders for the Election of 1860 were both top lawyers for the railroad industry, which at the time were the biggest investment for banksters. By the late 1850's, the US economy was in a post-bubble (that started in 1849 gold rush) crunch . . . a massive war was the recipe to bail out the banksters' bad loans via massively profitable lending to munition / war industry (i.e. loans to be paid back by enslaving the rest of the population on both sides, with interest! plus manipulation of bond market: buying government bonds at huge discount during propagandized "reversals" then force post-war government to redeem at full face value).

Lincoln having a humble beginning/birth just made it cheaper to buy him, much like Bill Clinton.

Both Communism and American Civil War were results of international banksters' conspiracy. It's no co-incidence that Trotsky lived a luxurious life in NYC with no visible income from work before being sent to Russia to start the revolution. Karl Marx was similarly financed by international banksters, as was John Brown, among other warmongers and collectivist revolutionaries.
8   anonymous   2019 Mar 24, 2:52pm  

FortWayneIndiana says
You know nothing about Lincoln Kaki.


I thought it was inventory - one of the Fort Wayne trio accused me of that a few weeks back but never got back to me with their dissertation on inventory and exactly what it is I do not know - that was when I said inventory is a form of waste in the world of Continuous Improvement otherwise known as Kaizen.

Going to guess none of the trio took the time to read anything referenced above since it is rather long reading. Pretty much the same as getting versed in C.I. - I am a qualified facilitator/trainer in three of the most common tools - yourself ?
9   anonymous   2019 Mar 24, 2:53pm  

FortWayneIndiana says
Way off on many statements.


I patiently await the elaboration and clarification as well as the refuting of the referenced sources - hope it shows up faster than the dissertation on inventory.
10   anonymous   2019 Mar 24, 3:00pm  

FortWayneIndiana says
I actually studied Lincoln for years, and know a lot about him and his life


Grade school and high school ? Me too but the material referenced above is all new

Maybe better off staying with those revelations about HIV from the church and the local gin mill
11   Reality   2019 Mar 24, 3:10pm  

Kakistocracy says
that was when I said inventory is a form of waste in the world of Continuous Improvement otherwise known as Kaizen.


Kaizen does not dictate inventory management one way or the other dogmatically. What you are thinking of is Just-in-Time manufacturing method, which is a way of reducing capital cost (in the form of inventory). The 2011 Japanese Tsunami showed that Just-in-Time manufacturing method may not be the be-all and end-call approach, as many factories in Japan were idled due to lacking inventory of particular parts; "Kaizen" (improvement) in response to that event would be a newly revised approach of having some inventory of critical parts.
12   anonymous   2019 Mar 25, 5:31am  

Reality says
What you are thinking of is Just-in-Time manufacturing method,


I am ?

Not talking "dogmatically" here or "just in time", nor do I require assistance to tell me what I am thinking.

Inventory is a manufacturing waste because it is value that is being held at a cost. In the most literal sense, Inventory is valuable product or material that is waiting either to be sold to the customer or further transformed into something of greater value. The entire time a product sits in Inventory, its profit margin is reduced because overhead must be paid to maintain the product in Inventory. Maintaining Inventory requires the addition of Motion and Transportation wastes.

Regardless of CI or no CI - something sitting on a shelf somewhere or in a warehouse that costs time and money to maintain is not producing profits and to that end...it that inventory indicated below doesn't start moving pretty soon, the shit will roll back down hill to the creators of the inventory.

Worsening Inventory Pileup Rattles Goods-Based Economy

https://wolfstreet.com/2019/03/22/worsening-inventory-pileup-rattles-goods-based-economy/

Now - can we get a response from one of the FW "trio" or do we now have designated commenters to fill in for those willing to attack but not able to respond
13   anonymous   2019 Mar 25, 5:32am  

As for the Lincoln and GOP fans out there - reading up on the links I gave (there are many many more out there) would be well worth your time instead of going into dissertations on how Marx was supported in life.
14   anonymous   2019 Mar 25, 5:34am  

Here is another link concerning Lincoln and Marx from an economist's perspective - not that anyone will read it.

https://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2014/02/lincoln-and-marx.html
15   Reality   2019 Mar 25, 6:43am  

Kakistocracy says
Not talking "dogmatically" here or "just in time", nor do I require assistance to tell me what I am thinking.

Inventory is a manufacturing waste because it is value that is being held at a cost. In the most literal sense, Inventory is valuable product or material that is waiting either to be sold to the customer or further transformed into something of greater value. The entire time a product sits in Inventory, its profit margin is reduced because overhead must be paid to maintain the product in Inventory. Maintaining Inventory requires the addition of Motion and Transportation wastes.


That is a very dogmatic and idealistic view of inventory and business process (symptomatic of people who have little first-hand experience with running a business). What's missing is that inventory of critical parts and some semi-finished and finished products can be a hedge against supply / distribution disruption and unexpected / hard-to-anticipate instant demand. By your logic, buying insurance and having cash reserve would be impediment to profit margin as well.
16   Reality   2019 Mar 25, 6:59am  

Kakistocracy says
Here is another link concerning Lincoln and Marx from an economist's perspective - not that anyone will read it.

https://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2014/02/lincoln-and-marx.html


That's another piece of bought-and-paid-for communist propaganda. It's laughable to claim either Marx or Lincoln as champions of the working men against big business. Marx was entirely funded by international banksters, just as Lincoln was for decades a top lawyer for the biggest railroad companies (which at the time were the biggest investment for the international banksters) as was his "controlled opposition" in the 1860 election.

Both Marx and Lincoln were agents of the international banksters to impoverish the "Bourgeoisie" middle-class smaller businesses, so as to reduce competition to big businesses and the international bankster interest backing the big businesses. To the extent that the general public is then left with less choices, that's enslavement of the entire population. What Marx called "liberation of the working class" was in practice enslavement of the entire population under Lenin's "State Capitalism"; i.e. a particularly pernicious/extreme form of Fascism. Communism is in reality an extremely violent and destructive form of Fascism.
17   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2019 Mar 25, 7:12am  

No I wrote papers about him in college. Was fascinated with his life story. His life was harsh, his wife was a bitch, and he still made it.

I’ll reply with more detail when I’m near a computer, on phone it’s hard to type a lot.

Kakistocracy says
FortWayneIndiana says
I actually studied Lincoln for years, and know a lot about him and his life


Grade school and high school ? Me too but the material referenced above is all new

Maybe better off staying with those revelations about HIV from the church and the local gin mill
18   anonymous   2019 Mar 25, 7:31am  

Reality says
By your logic, buying insurance and having cash reserve would be impediment to profit margin as well.


Thanks you ever so much for thinking for me again and putting words in my mouth that I did not type or say. Anyway...guessing you are not a fan of Six Sigma etc.



Here is a cheat sheet for you - https://www.dummies.com/business/management/lean-for-dummies-cheat-sheet/

Actually was more involved with multi-million dollar facilities, maintaining adequate spares and eliminating things that did not add value and the like but what the hell...can't compete with someone who wants to explain your thoughts to everyone, your experience and most likely no real working basis in C.I.
19   anonymous   2019 Mar 25, 7:32am  

Reality says
What's missing is that inventory of critical parts and some semi-finished and finished products can be a hedge against supply / distribution disruption and unexpected / hard-to-anticipate instant demand


Kindly show me exactly where I stated that - please. Not having a good grasp of C.I. leads to faulty conclusions.
20   anonymous   2019 Mar 25, 7:34am  

Reality says
That's another piece of bought-and-paid-for communist propaganda.


This allegation is based on what?

Other than an almost repeat diatribe from a few days ago can perhaps something new be brought in about Marx and Lincoln other than personal assumptions.
21   anonymous   2019 Mar 25, 7:41am  

By the way C.I. tools work equally well at home and around the house as they do in businesses of all sizes.

Like everything else in life you can either run a business smart and efficiently or run a business and watch your competitors eat you alive.

Work smart, run the business smart...beat the competition
22   anonymous   2019 Mar 25, 8:33am  

@Reality - didn't need to wait for the Tsunami in Japan to see the weak link in Just In Time - auto production has been disrupted numerous times by a strike at a supplier, nature, work "slowdowns" at any point in the supply chain.

Does not mean JIT is bad, just need to appreciate the problem areas.

As for the critical spares etc. that is a key component of C.I. - knowing what to keep and what not to keep on hand, what can be express shipped in if need be etc - doing a cost benefit analysis.
23   Reality   2019 Mar 25, 10:03am  

Kakistocracy says
guessing you are not a fan of Six Sigma


LOL! "Six-Sigma" is so 1990's. It was all the rage in MBA programs in the early 1990's, before internet took off. If you pay attention to what you cited, you'd have noticed that "Six-Sigma" is about quality control, not about inventory management.

A decade after "Six-Sigma" quality control of the early 1990's, the early 2000's "sigma" issue was about disaster preparedness: the new hero was not the Japanese 1980's tight quality control and Just-in-Time (two separate issues) "salariman" executives, but Shackleton (captain of the Antarctica expedition that saved his entire crew despite ship wreck and being stranded for a year down there, in the early 20th century); the focus of "sigma" topic became the "two-sigma" or "multi-sigma" tail risks, aka "black swan events." In other words, having some inventory on hand to ward off tail-risks would be a good idea.

"Sigma" is simply a symbol for standard deviation in statistics. "Six-sigma" denotes a manufacturing quality control goal of having defect happening only as a six standard-deviation-out event; "Six-sigma" has little to do with inventory management in preparation for external events.
24   Reality   2019 Mar 25, 10:08am  

Kakistocracy says
Reality says
What's missing is that inventory of critical parts and some semi-finished and finished products can be a hedge against supply / distribution disruption and unexpected / hard-to-anticipate instant demand


Kindly show me exactly where I stated that - please. Not having a good grasp of C.I. leads to faulty conclusions.


You claimed inventory by itself was a detriment to profit, as it reduces return on capital. That attitude is typical of the ivory-tower MBA's fresh out school getting into management trying to squeeze the last bit of profit margin in good times then have the company dying in his hands the first multi-sigma black-swan event takes place.
25   Reality   2019 Mar 25, 10:10am  

Kakistocracy says
That's another piece of bought-and-paid-for communist propaganda.


This allegation is based on what?


Based on the article's breathless praising of German unification (which any thinking brain with rudimentary knowledge of the 20th century history would have recognized to be a disaster) and praising of Marx writing letters on behalf of IWA (a communist organization) to the sitting presidents of the US. It's like praising Osama Bin Laden (communist organizations were considered terrorist organizations back then, and factually were!) writing letters to Bush and Obama when the latters were in the White House!
26   Reality   2019 Mar 25, 10:14am  

Kakistocracy says
@Reality - didn't need to wait for the Tsunami in Japan to see the weak link in Just In Time - auto production has been disrupted numerous times by a strike at a supplier, nature, work "slowdowns" at any point in the supply chain.

Does not mean JIT is bad, just need to appreciate the problem areas.

As for the critical spares etc. that is a key component of C.I. - knowing what to keep and what not to keep on hand, what can be express shipped in if need be etc - doing a cost benefit analysis.


The real issue is that the economy and running a business are not steady-state phenomena (which is the way they are typically conceptualized in the academia). There are black-swan events. Running any company as a JIT theocracy would quickly kill the company when the first statistical tail-risk (which are often non-convergent, quite unlike the theoretical Gaussian model; most real life market price behaviors are not Gaussian) event comes along.
27   anonymous   2019 Mar 25, 2:21pm  

Reality says
If you pay attention to what you cited, you'd have noticed that "Six-Sigma" is about quality control, not about inventory management.


And the return - LOL - Continuous Improvement can be used in any setting including inventory control of which we did a lot of work in that arena. Huge monetary savings across the company worldwide and that was just one area of focus.

The chart from Six Sigma was the first one I found and more people are aware of Six Sigma than Lean etc. - the areas of waste stay the same regardless.

By the way Sig Sigma masters (black belts) are still in demand - as are practitioners of C.I. tools especially in Lean.

Also by the way so far nothing has been written in rebuttal to refute inventory unneeded is not waste.

Run the business smart and work smart - do not dwell 24 x 7 on black swan events.

Reality says
"Sigma" is simply a symbol for standard deviation in statistics. "Six-sigma" denotes a manufacturing quality control goal of having defect happening only as a six standard-deviation-out event; "Six-sigma" has little to do with inventory management in preparation for external events.


fascinating....simply fascinating....

Reality says

The real issue is that the economy and running a business are not steady-state phenomena


Really ? Neither is running a production facility. There will always be black swan events - you prepare for and manage them.

Knowing reliable vendors is critical, same for repair services and tradesmen. Some can deliver - some can't. Those than can't are gone in short order.

Business, inventory etc. are managed using whatever tools are out there to give you the best edge possible and reduce operating costs the most.

People are led, not managed

As for the latest diatribe on Marx and Lincoln - just that - another meaningless diatribe unable to reinforce the claim of paid propaganda and now trying a deflection to the Obama era.

Nice veiled/disguised personal attacks though - creative ability B, execution C, quality of rebuttal D-
28   anonymous   2019 Mar 25, 2:31pm  

Reality says
In other words, having some inventory on hand to ward off tail-risks would be a good idea.


Never said it wasn't - some but only those items that are deemed critical and those with high consumption rates.

If it can be sourced locally, couriered in or air shipped, why buy and maintain it when the someone else will do it on their dime?

Some inventory also has a high theft value - the less on hand - the less the possible monetary loss.

Some things just do not pay to have on hand just in the event of that elusive black swan event. Claim Force Majuere.
29   anonymous   2019 Mar 28, 4:11am  

How The Russian Navy Saved The Union In The Civil War

In A Nutshell

A little-known alliance between the US and Tsarist Russia led to the Russian fleet showing up in force in New York and San Francisco. It arrived at a crucial time in 1863 when Britain and France were on the verge of intervening in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. An actual world war was on the horizon that would “wrap the world in flames” as Secretary of State William Seward put it. The mighty Russian presence deterred the Anglo-French from invading, and the Union was saved.

The Whole Bushel - Access in link below

Show Me The Proof - Access in link below

https://knowledgenuts.com/2015/02/01/how-the-russian-navy-saved-the-union-in-the-civil-war/?ref=patrick.net

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