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
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.
Kind of ironic that Republicans now would accuse Lincoln of being a RINO.
They’d say he’s a woke lib.
It’s strange. They claim to be the party of Lincoln while also claiming confederate heritage.
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.
If it exists it wasn’t ended or abolished. Definitionally. I agree that there were some Republicans that felt that way. Not enough and not all. The fact that they held on to it for punitive reasons only proves my point.
I would argue that forced labor without profit motive or ownership of a person is so far removed from slavery as to not warrant the term. Community service is slavery under that definition (and, in fact, challenges on the basis of the 13th have been [unsuccessfully] leveled against community service), yet I think few of us would view some rich twat getting a hundred hours of community service for a DUI to be slavery in any form, even on a purely technical level.
Labor as punishment is not effective or worth keeping as a tool for ensuring the compliance of a free citizenry by its government, but I also don’t think that it is inherently slavery. My point thus is that the 13th Amendment was not meant simply as a punishment, but as a genuine attempt (emphasis on ‘attempt’) to end slavery as an institution.
that forced labor without profit motive or ownership of a person is so far removed from slavery as to not warrant the term.
Take a step back. We’re talking about prison labor. That labor is worth capital that the laborer will see none of. They are in state custody, potentially for the rest of their life.
There is a profit motive. The prisons make money selling slave labor. Corporations make money sourcing cheap labor from prisons. Many of those prisons are privately owned for-profit businesses.
The laborer is owned by the state and is not free to leave or cease laboring, and and is subject to other forms of cruelty including psychological torture if they refuse.
How you couldn’t conclude that this laborer is a slave is beyond me. “It’s okay if you’re not profiting off of it” is a terrible rational for stripping a person of their rights completely and using them like cattle with the threat of torture as a punishment for disobedience. Furthermore, it’s not true, prison labor is quite profitable for everyone involved except for the slaves.
Take a step back. We’re talking about prison labor. That labor is worth capital that the laborer will see none of. They are in state custody, potentially for the rest of their life.
There is a profit motive. The prisons make money selling slave labor.
My point is not to defend modern prison labor, which is pretty indefensible, my point is that the exception carved out for punishment was not meant as slavery-by-other-means, even if that’s what it turned into. See: ‘grinding the wind’ in contemporary prisons of the time.
It’s dumb and pointless, but was not meant to have a profit motive. It was meant as punishment, in the delusion that work was ‘reformative’.
my point is that the exception carved out for punishment was not meant as slavery-by-other-means
Well, that’s exactly what the 13th amendment says:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
It’s pretty easy to conclude that using convicts as slaves was a part of the plan. Remember, this was 1865, 99 years before the civil rights act. Black people may have been freed from obligate slavery, but the completely unequal laws made it quite easy to funnel black Americans into chain gangs.
Just because some white people were also slaves now doesn’t really make a difference.
*leaving dixiecrats to leave the party, except for Genocide Joe, architect of the crime bill with his famous quote about the racial jungle.
Slavery didn’t actually end either thanks to the thirteenth amendment, which was later further developed by Genocide Joe’s crime bill. The Confederacy lost the battle but won the war.
Please read the comment chain before rehashing a discussion that’s already happened.
Where does the comment chain mention Genocide Joe’s many contributions to slavery in amerikkka?
More like “waaah people don’t like me because my entire personality is hating and harassing everyone that isn’t like me”
time to punch some nazis
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.
*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.
This is not correct. The Republican party was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party. In fact, when Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, he wasn’t even on some of the southern ballots. There were Northern democrats who were pro-slavery. I would imagine any southern Republicans were anti-slavery.
lol. Like most populations, there’s variations.
For example, Texas today. It’s dominated by republican politics; despite the cities being fairly liberal.
Or Minnesota- mostly dominated by democratic politics, despite the outstate being very MAGA.
But read your statement again:
In fact, when Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, he wasn’t even on some of the southern ballots.
Also not that the Republican Party stated in Wisconsin, (in the north.)
Also, check out this electoral map of the 1860 election:
Looks familiar, doesn’t it? Aside from most the western states not being, ah, states, that is.
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.
