Lincoln the Socialist

[Onedotman]

A scenario I've been brewing for a while: Lincoln escapes his assassination unscathed and proceeds to serve his second term. His proto-socialist views IOTL would be even more radicalized as he get to witness the plight of white laborers and freedmen alike. After finishing his presidency, Lincoln isolated himself from the Republican Party to continue exchanging letters with Marx and look into his works. After several years, the former President is back into politics again, this time as a labor organizer and socialist agitator.

The effects of this would be massive for the US socialist movement. Having the man who saved the Union on their side would lend the socialists a great deal of legitimacy (Imagine federal troops/Pinkerton agents being mobilized to disperse a strike only to be met with Lincoln himself joining the strikers). What I'm wondering about are the implications of a more powerful leftist force on late 19th century US politics, as well as how would Lincoln's own brand of Marxism would look like.

 

[Prince di Corsica]

Ok so I find this idea quite intriguing. Normally people take the whole "socialist Lincoln" scenario as a way to have a socialist President or turn the Republicans socialist, which is... difficult to accomplish, to say the least. But your proposal - of Lincoln, as an individual, and retired from public office - being drawn to socialist work, is not impossible, since it would only have to be justified by individual whims.

Now there's a question of whether, without his martyrdom, Lincoln would be as much of a legend to the US public. But I think it's quite possible that, just from being the President who led the country during the war, he would be seen with some reverence.

Now, something that immediately came to my head was the Haymarket Affair, and how controversial it could be if an old (77 years old I believe) Lincoln would return to national attention as the attorney for the defendants. This could have very interesting consequences in the public's perspective of such events.

Some other ideas could be Lincoln becoming a steadfast defender of the taxes he passed during the war - both the income tax and the inheritance tax - and maybe even of the greenbacks. Someone more knowledgeable than myself could shed better light on this, but I find these ideas intriguing.

 

[raharris1973]

How would one code the greeback issue on a right to left spectrum?

and maybe even of the greenbacks.

A Socialist Lincoln would be more fun and all.

But I would guess that a speakers honorarium collecting and railroad, steel, and coal lawyering post-Presidential Lincoln would be just as plausible, if not more so.

 

[TrashMammal2019]

Could Lincoln possibly be forming the Socialist Party earlier by uniting with the existing left-wing political parties and Labor Unions?

 

[Comte de Geneve]

TL191 - How Few Remain

 

[dcharles]

TL191 - How Few Remain

It's an old trope, but a good one.

For story purposes, I like the idea of Socialist Lincoln getting assassinated twenty years later. It just seems like what the story would demand and deserve.

 

[David T]

A scenario I've been brewing for a while: Lincoln escapes his assassination unscathed and proceeds to serve his second term. His proto-socialist views IOTL would be even more radicalized as he get to witness the plight of white laborers and freedmen alike.

What "proto-socialist" views? Lincoln was a firm beleiver in the free-labor ideology.

To be sure, he said some things that taken out of context could be given a "socialist" flavor: "Inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has so happened, in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and others have without labor enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government." But as Richard Hofstafter noted, "But its context is significant ; the statement was neither a preface to an attack upon private property nor an argument for redistributing the world's goods — it was part of a firm defense of the protective tariff!" https://books.google.com/books?id=GF8YDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA13

 

[Onedotman]

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but I've just found out about the Workingmen's Party of Illinois, a socialist organization based in Lincoln's home state. It would be ineresting if a radicalized Lincoln attended the party's founding convention and addressed the assembly. His reputation as well as oratory skills would be a godsend to the American socialist/labor movement as a whole.

But ironically, Lincoln would also be damaging his reputation by siding with "communistic anarchy" carried over by alien immigrants to America. Naysayers are gonna tell Old Abe that he lost his mind due to senility or something like that.

 

[Historylover7583]

Depends he could encounter

Union general August willich a former Prussian aristocrats turned to Communist Revolutionary.
(Who threatened Marx to fight in a duel for him being to conservative about Communism.)

Also could Have encountered owenism.

 

[CHKeeley]

What "proto-socialist" views? Lincoln was a firm beleiver in the free-labor ideology.

Yeah, I believe the prevailing view for decades was that labor and capital were compatible and there is no reason they cannot work together to improve conditions for all. The view that labor should indeed triumph over capital did not truly emerge in American political discourse until the big labor battles of the Gilded Age and the spread of overtly socialist ideas. For men like Lincoln, free labor was something to be celebrated and it was inextricably linked to the system of capitalism and private enterprise as it existed in his day. The southern planters, interestingly enough, were harsher social critics of the conditions of northern laborers than men like Lincoln were. Obviously this was completely self serving as a justification of the slave economy, but still.

The pro-labor statements made by Lincoln and likeminded men were said through a worldview in which labor and capital were inextricably linked and were in no way opposed to one another. They only look proto-socialist if you read back with a view that they are opposed, and even then you have to ignore all his statements about the benefits of capital too. As you say, context is key.