12. Honest Abe, a Borderline Marxist?
The GOP has traditionally been pro-business, and Republicans have usually been reliable allies of employers in disputes with labor unions and employees. A little known fact that might seem nutty but is all too true is that the first Republican president had some outright Marxist views about labor. In his first speech as an Illinois state legislator in 1837, Abraham Lincoln stated: “These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people“. In his first Annual Message to Congress, on December 3rd, 1861, he wrote: “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“.
Lincoln continued: “Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them“.