Marx and Lincoln: An Unfi nished Revolution Marx and Lincoln: An Unfi nished Revolution Robin Blackburn London • New York First published by Verso 2011 © the collection Verso 2011 Introduction © Robin Blackburn 2011 All rights reserved Th e moral rights of the author have been asserted 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-722-1 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset by MJ Gavan, Truro, Cornwall Printed in the US by Maple Vail Contents Introduction 1 Abraham Lincoln First Inaugural Address 105 Emancipation Proclamation 115 Gettysburg Address 119 Second Inaugural Address 121 Karl Marx Th e North American Civil War 127 Th e American Question in England 139 Th e Civil War in the United States 151 Th e American Civil War 161 A Criticism of American Aff airs 173 Abolitionist Demonstrations in America 177 Letters Letter from Marx to Annenkov 185 Letters between Marx and Engels 189 Letters between Marx and Lincoln 211 Articles Woodhull & Clafl in 219 Independence vs. Dependence! Which? 219 Th e Rights of Children 222 Interview with Karl Marx 225 Conclusion to Black and White 233 Th omas Fortune Preface to the American Edition of Th e Condition 239 of the Working-Class in England Frederick Engels Speeches at the Founding of the Industrial 251 Workers of the World Lucy Parsons Acknowledgments 259 Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln: An Unfi nished Revolution In photographs Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln both look the part of the respectable Victorian gentleman. But they were almost diametrically opposed in their attitude toward what was called at the time the social question. Lincoln happily represented railroad corporations as a lawyer. As a politician he was a champion of free wage labor. Karl Marx, on the other hand, was a declared foe of capitalism who insisted that wage labor was in fact wage slavery, since the worker was compelled by economic necessity to sell his defi ning human attribute—his labor power—because if he did not, his family would soon face hunger and homelessness. Of course Marx’s critique of capitalism did not deny that it had progressive features, and Lincoln’s championing of the world of business did not extend to those whose profi ts stemmed directly from slaveholding. Each man placed a concept of unrewarded labor at the center of his political philosophy, and both opposed slavery on the grounds that it was intensively exploitative. Lincoln believed it to be his duty to defend the Union, which he saw as the momentous American experiment in representative democracy, by whatever means should prove necessary. Marx saw the democratic republic as the political form that would allow the working class to develop its capacity to lead society as a whole. He regarded US political institutions as a fl awed early version of the republican ideal. With their “corruption” and “humbug,” US political institutions did not off er a faithful representation of US society. Indeed, too often they supplied a popular veneer to the rule of the wealthy—with a 2 an unfinished revolution bonus for slaveholders. But Marx’s conclusion was that they should become more democratic, broadening the scope of freedom of asso- ciation, removing all forms of privilege, and extending free public education.1 As a young man Marx had seriously considered moving to the United States, perhaps to Texas. He went so far as to write to the mayor of Trier, the town where he had been born, to request an Auswanderungschein, or emigration certifi cate. In the following year he wrote an article considering the ideas of the “American National Reformers,” whose comparatively modest original aims—the dis- tribution of 160 acres of public land to anyone willing to cultivate it—he recognized as justifi ed and promising: “We know that this movement strives for a result that, to be sure, would further the industrialism of modern bourgeois society, but that … as an attack on land ownership … especially under the existing conditions … must drive it towards communism.”2 (Th e idea of distributing public land in this way did indeed have explosive implications, as we will see, and the new smallholders did often lack the resources needed to fl ourish, as Marx predicted, but his idea that they would therefore embrace “communism” was more than a stretch.) In 1849, writing as editor of Germany’s leading revolutionary democratic journal, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx praised the frugal budget and republican institutions of the United States in comparison with the bloated bureaucracy and unaccountability of the Prussian monarchy. 3 Subsequently Marx remained fascinated by events in the US, and for ten years—1852 to 1861—he became the London correspond- ent of one of its leading newspapers, the New York Daily Tribune. Th e invitation to write for the Tribune came from Charles Dana, its editor, who had met Marx in Cologne in 1848 when Marx was in charge of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Marx accepted Dana’s 1 August Nimtz, Marx and Engels: Th eir Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough, Albany 2000. 2 Karl Marx, “American Soil and Communism,” in Karl Marx on America and the Civil War, Saul Padover, ed., New York 1971, pp. 3–6. 3 Karl Marx, “Th e American Budget and the Christian-German One,” in Karl Marx on America and the Civil War, pp. 9–12. For Marx’s emigration plans, see Padover’s Introduction.