Marxist-Lincolnite

We all know that Marx thought very highly of Lincoln, writing him a letter congratulating on his reelection in 64, we also have Turtledove's view on Lincoln after the WoS.

My question is, is it plausible or likely that Lincoln could/would have slanted the Republican Party to the left, favoring, in the words of the 56 platform, Free Men, Free Soil and Fremont?
 
We all know that Marx thought very highly of Lincoln, writing him a letter congratulating on his reelection in 64, we also have Turtledove's view on Lincoln after the WoS.

My question is, is it plausible or likely that Lincoln could/would have slanted the Republican Party to the left, favoring, in the words of the 56 platform, Free Men, Free Soil and Fremont?


I think so. The GOP started out as the most progressive of the major parties. In 1860, Lincoln was on the left of his three major opponents.

I don't know they would have gone so far as to be quasi-Socialist (although I enjoyed the way Turtledove plotted it out), but with a stronger presence from Lincoln the GOP may not have become a captive to the robber baron types as they were under Grant (not that Grant meant for that to happen, but he was a weak President).
 
Well, there were those who tried to tar the Republicans with the socialist/communist brush in various works of propaganda. (One who's work is still around is R.L. Dabney.)
 
I think that had Lincoln lived, he would have kept the GOP the bastion of Progressivism and proto-Liberal ideals, yes. But I don't believe he would have led the party toward a Socialist ideology.

What I think Turtledove was getting at is that due to his defeat and the failures of the GOP and all that junk, the Lincoln of his universe became disillusioned and went toward far more radical an ideology than he would have otherwise.
 
I'd say that, had Lincoln survived, the party in the north would have continued to occupy the left throughout most of his lifetime. Yet I think that Turtledove's communist revolutions during the great war might be realitivly accurate in the fact that I believe souther blacks would have pulled the party further to the left.

You see with a stronger Republican party, which would have undoubtably continued throughout Lincoln's lifetime there may be no Great Compromise. Thus with the party already remaining firmly left African-Americans and northern workers during industrialization may have pulled the party into socialism.
 
Gotta call ASB on this one. Lincoln had a pretty solid and entrenched background in the prevailing individualist and (possibly) proto-social-darwinist thought of his day. His economics, when he had them, were not all that different from the conservative Whigs: a modestly protective tariff (Morill Tariff). internal improvements, and a centralized lending system. Abberations included the giveaway of Federal land to those who would take, keep, and work it, and a war expedentiary income tax. Marx and his friends at the time (the thread title says "Marxist-Lincolnite", so it should be changed if the OP wants Lincoln compared with Proudhon or Bakunin) would have advocated the following had they been living in the United States at the time. A much more progressive income tax than Lincoln's, a removal of the exceptions to the draft by those who could pay or hire a substitute, and the lowering of tariff barriers (who here knew Marx was a free trader?). The centralization of credit and Homesteading would probably have won their support, though I'm not at all sure about the latter.
 
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