When Lincoln was an Illinois state legislator, there was a dispute over the state bank, wherein a couple of wealthy capitalists made outrageous claims of abuse by the state bank that resulted in ambiguity over ownership in their own property, but refused to go through the courts with their claims. The rich folk instead opted to ask the state legislature to perform an examination, which was estimated to cost the state of Illinois over ten-thousand dollars - a few million dollars by today’s standards.
Lincoln, himself a lawyer by trade, objected, noting that the usual route was to go through the courts, wherein the loser of the case would pay the costs, but that the rich folk disputing this case were trying to shift the cost of their dispute onto the public coffers, and to put it in the hands of a body which would have the power to shutter or cripple the state bank if they found the case favorable - conveniently leaving private capitalists as the only source of much-needed credit for the poor farmers of Illinois. Lincoln made a speech laying this out pretty clearly and telling them, basically, to fuck off, if they had an actual problem, they could go through the courts instead of trying to play games to eliminate public competition.
The state bank would be shut down by the legislature a few years later, under pressure from a hostile conservative party in the legislature (which piled impossible tasks and ever-restricted resources on the state bank in the meantime to ‘prove’ it couldn’t function), the governor of Illinois, and the Federal government of the period.
They [European workers] 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.
Lincoln’s presidential administration was, unfortunately, dominated by the ongoing issue of the US Civil War and race relations, but even in the midst of that, he still took occasional time and effort to defend the rights of labor unions and workers for basic protections against capitalist abuses. He was not quite an anti-capitalist, but he was also very far from pro-capitalist, regularly expressing distrust of the investor class and its ambitions, and emphasizing that it was labor which the government must support over owners of capital.
Lincoln had plenty of flaws, especially with the benefit of a modern worldview to examine him by, but on the vast majority of subjects, Lincoln was significantlymore correct than most of his peers.
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Holy based, but what’s the context?
When Lincoln was an Illinois state legislator, there was a dispute over the state bank, wherein a couple of wealthy capitalists made outrageous claims of abuse by the state bank that resulted in ambiguity over ownership in their own property, but refused to go through the courts with their claims. The rich folk instead opted to ask the state legislature to perform an examination, which was estimated to cost the state of Illinois over ten-thousand dollars - a few million dollars by today’s standards.
Lincoln, himself a lawyer by trade, objected, noting that the usual route was to go through the courts, wherein the loser of the case would pay the costs, but that the rich folk disputing this case were trying to shift the cost of their dispute onto the public coffers, and to put it in the hands of a body which would have the power to shutter or cripple the state bank if they found the case favorable - conveniently leaving private capitalists as the only source of much-needed credit for the poor farmers of Illinois. Lincoln made a speech laying this out pretty clearly and telling them, basically, to fuck off, if they had an actual problem, they could go through the courts instead of trying to play games to eliminate public competition.
The state bank would be shut down by the legislature a few years later, under pressure from a hostile conservative party in the legislature (which piled impossible tasks and ever-restricted resources on the state bank in the meantime to ‘prove’ it couldn’t function), the governor of Illinois, and the Federal government of the period.
Oh my God how can one man be this based?
As Marx once said,
Lincoln’s presidential administration was, unfortunately, dominated by the ongoing issue of the US Civil War and race relations, but even in the midst of that, he still took occasional time and effort to defend the rights of labor unions and workers for basic protections against capitalist abuses. He was not quite an anti-capitalist, but he was also very far from pro-capitalist, regularly expressing distrust of the investor class and its ambitions, and emphasizing that it was labor which the government must support over owners of capital.
Lincoln had plenty of flaws, especially with the benefit of a modern worldview to examine him by, but on the vast majority of subjects, Lincoln was significantly more correct than most of his peers.