Marxism as an economic theory failed most as soon as the mewling babe was out of the crib. In a piece reprinted in the Epoch Times by permission from The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation – “The Coup in Search of a Philosophy” -- Surse Pierpoint tells us: “In 1925, John Maynard Keynes dismissed Marx’s ‘Capital’ as an obsolete economic textbook that no serious economist would still assign. He was not being contrarian. By the time he wrote that, the marginal revolution of the 1870s had already done the intellectual work: Jevons, Menger, Walras, and later Wicksteed, Marshall, and Böhm-Bawerk had dismantled the labor theory of value that Marx’s entire economic system rested on. Among economists, the argument was over, and Marx had lost it.”
Henry Ford is reported to have said about history, “History
is bunk.” Shortly after Das Capital
had been loosed on the world, economic “experts” pronounced Marx’s theory of
value -- bunk. In years following, history would prove Marx’s critics right.
Under Marx’s theory of value, anything produced independently of state orders
withers and becomes valueless on empty shelves.
Most Americans are not familiar with the historical interaction
between Marx and Abraham Lincoln. Marx wrote columns that were picked up by New
York newspapers. Marx and Engels wrote a
book on the American Civil War, heavy with economic discursions, and sent it to
Lincoln, who referred it to one of his cabinet members, possibly as a form of
intellectual punishment. In one of his speeches, Lincoln later presented his
own non-Marxian theory of labor.
The indirect interaction between Marx and Lincoln is
mentioned in Connecticut Commentary here in: “Lincoln Alive: His Relevance To Modern
Politics.”
Here is Lincoln on the real relation of labor to capital: “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. A
large majority belong to neither class--neither work for others nor have others
working for them. In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people
of all colors are neither slaves nor masters, while in the Northern a large
majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their families--wives, sons,
and daughters--work for themselves on their farms, in their houses, and in
their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of
capital on the one hand nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not
forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with
capital; that is, they labor with their own hands and also buy or hire others
to labor for them; but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle
stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class… Again, as has already been said, there is
not of necessity any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that
condition for life. Many independent men everywhere in these States a few years
back in their lives were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the
world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land
for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires
another new beginner to help him. This is the just and generous and prosperous
system which opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent energy and
progress and improvement of condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from
poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly
earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already
possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to close the door of
advancement against such as they and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon
them till all of liberty shall be lost (emphasis mine).”
In his brief essay, Pierpoint asks precisely the right
question: “Before 1917, Marx was known
among rival socialist faction economists who had already rejected him. After
1917, the Russian state needed a founding philosophy for what was, in plain
terms, a seizure of power. It got one, retroactively, by making Marx a
household name... What the data supports is narrower and more interesting: a
discontinuous jump in mainstream legitimacy, arriving exactly when a regime
needed intellectual cover, not when a new argument appeared to justify one. Here is the part economists tend to miss and
sociologists tend to bury. If the economic argument was already lost by 1917,
and the Soviet revolution supplied prestige rather than proof, what explains the durability of Marxist
categories in Western universities, long after the calculation debate was
settled and the planned economies it inspired had produced the most devastating
body counts of the 20th century (emphasis mine)?”
A similar question perplexed Antonio Gramsci, an Italian
communist imprisoned by the fascists in the 1920 s: Why did the communist
revolution “emerge in backward, agrarian Russia rather than in the advanced
industrial economies [as] Marx had predicted? His answer was that Western
societies are governed as much by cultural consent—manufactured through
schools, churches, and media—as by direct economic control. A frontal seizure of
the state, as in the Bolshevik model, would not work in the West. What would
work was a slower ‘war of position’: a patient occupation of the institutions
that manufacture consent.”
Connecticut Commentary mentioned Gramsci here five years ago
in Connecting The Dots: Critical Race Theory
And Gramsci Marxism:
Communism could
succeed in highly developed states, Gramsci theorized, if it were first to
infiltrate and overcome cultural institutions: the family, the school, the
artistic community, the church, political parties, media outlets, independent
court systems, and most especially, a Western prophylactic that would prevent
the rise to power of new Caesars such as Hitler in Germany and Stalin in Russia
– constitutional government and the division of political power into three co-equal and separate branches of
government. These stubborn, organic modalities of Western civilization are what
G.K. Chesterton and others used to call “the little platoons of democracy.”
Once undermined, the resistance to the communist state among developed nations
would collapse. The phrase most often associated with this process was later called
“the long march through the institutions.” Critical Race Theory has replaced
class with race in its slow march through our post-modern pedagogical
wilderness, but its end point is Gramscian Marxism. The Critical Race Theorist
sees race everywhere. It lies at the root of all social disorders. It is the
noose with which the theorist may hang the whole of western history; for the
principal mission of Critical Race Theory is to change history by a quiet
revolution in which the march of boots into the future is heard only as
pleasant applause.
Despite its longstanding economic buffoonery – socialism always
runs out of other people’s money because it is a frontal attack on free market
creativity. But communism never-the-less can succeed in a war on culture by
patiently sapping and undermining what Chesterton called “the little platoons
of democracy.” To put it bluntly, modern, reinvented Marxism of a kind actively
supported by the American Democratic Socialists (ADS) is profoundly
anti-democratic, anti-religious and anti-cultural. It relies upon anarchism to
sow the ground for a future cloud-coo-coo-land utopia.
Pierpont notes: “The
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) did not arrive at their current position
by accident. In August 2025, DSA delegates voted to remove a long-standing
constitutional provision barring Leninists from entry, ratifying what internal
factions had already been calling a ‘big tent’ strategy: build numbers first,
sort out doctrine later (emphasis mine). The numbers came. By the summer of 2026, DSA-aligned
candidates had unseated sitting Democratic incumbents in New York and Colorado,
captured a Senate nomination in Maine over a sitting governor, and pushed a
mayoral runoff in Los Angeles—a run of primary victories serious enough that
Third Way’s Jon Cowan and Matt Bennett, hardly outside agitators, warned in The
Washington Post on July 1 that the party needed to confront the movement rather
than continue appeasing it.”
____________________________
ADDENDA
The piece above incorrectly states “Marx and Engels wrote a
book on the American Civil War, heavy with economic discursions, and sent it to
Lincoln…”
Lincoln could not have seen the “book” written by Marx and Engels on the Civil War since the book -- The Civil War in the United States, a compilation of articles that addresses the conflict written between 1861-1862, was not published in Lincoln’s lifetime. The articles appeared for publications in the New-York Tribune and Die Presse in Vienna. Lincoln, we know, frequently read the Tribune. Lincoln did receive a letter written by Marx on behalf of International Working Men's Association. The letter (see below) was referred to members of Lincoln’s cabinet. Charles Francis Adams answered the letter on behalf of Lincoln.
The International Workingmen's Association 1864
Address of the International Working Men's Association to
Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America
Presented to U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams
January 28, 1865 [A]
Written: by Marx between November 22 & 29, 1864, and
included in the Minutes of the General Council on 29th November 1864;
First Published: The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 169, January 7,
1865, and in German translation in Der Social Demokrat, 30 Dezember 1864;
Source: The General Council of the First International
1864-1866, Progress Publishers;
Transcription/Markup: Zodiac/Brian Baggins;
Online Version: Marx & Engels Internet Archive
(marxists.org) 2000.
Sir:
We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by
a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword
of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to
Slavery.
From the commencement of the titanic American strife the
workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried
the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the
dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts
should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of
the slave driver?
When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe,
for the first time in the annals of the world, "slavery" on the
banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the
idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first
Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the
European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots
counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding "the
ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution",
and maintained slavery to be "a beneficent institution", indeed, the
old solution of the great problem of "the relation of capital to
labor", and cynically proclaimed property in man "the cornerstone of
the new edifice" — then the working classes of Europe understood at once,
even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate
gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders' rebellion was to
sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that
for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past
conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the
Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon
them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention
of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of
blood to the good cause.
While the workingmen, the true political powers of the
North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro,
mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest
prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own
master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labor, or to support
their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to
progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war.
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. [B]
Signed on behalf of the International Workingmen's
Association, the Central Council:
Longmaid, Worley, Whitlock, Fox, Blackmore, Hartwell,
Pidgeon, Lucraft, Weston, Dell, Nieass, Shaw, Lake, Buckley, Osbourne, Howell,
Carter, Wheeler, Stainsby, Morgan, Grossmith, Dick, Denoual, Jourdain,
Morrissot, Leroux, Bordage, Bocquet, Talandier, Dupont, L.Wolff, Aldovrandi,
Lama, Solustri, Nusperli, Eccarius, Wolff, Lessner, Pfander, Lochner, Kaub,
Bolleter, Rybczinski, Hansen, Schantzenbach, Smales, Cornelius, Petersen, Otto,
Bagnagatti, Setacci;
George Odger, President of the Council; P.V. Lubez,
Corresponding Secretary for France; Karl Marx, Corresponding Secretary for
Germany; G.P. Fontana, Corresponding Secretary for Italy; J.E. Holtorp,
Corresponding Secretary for Poland; H.F. Jung, Corresponding Secretary for
Switzerland; William R. Cremer, Honorary General Secretary.
18 Greek Street, Soho.
[A] From the minutes of the Central (General) Council of the
International — November 19, 1864:
"Dr. Marx then brought up the report of the
subcommittee, also a draft of the address which had been drawn up for presentation
to the people of America congratulating them on their having re-elected Abraham
Lincoln as President. The address is as follows and was unanimously agreed
to."
[B] The minutes of the meeting continue:
"A long discussion then took place as to the mode of
presenting the address and the propriety of having a M.P. with the deputation;
this was strongly opposed by many members, who said workingmen should rely on
themselves and not seek for extraneous aid.... It was then proposed... and
carried unanimously. The secretary correspond with the United States Minister
asking to appoint a time for receiving the deputation, such deputation to
consist of the members of the Central Council."
Ambassador Adams
replied as follows:
Legation of the United States
London, 28th January, 1865
Sir:
I am directed to inform you that the address of the Central
Council of your Association, which was duly transmitted through this Legation
to the President of the United [States], has been received by him.
So far as the sentiments expressed by it are personal, they
are accepted by him with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to
prove himself not unworthy of the confidence which has been recently extended
to him by his fellow citizens and by so many of the friends of humanity and
progress throughout the world.
The Government of the United States has a clear
consciousness that its policy neither is nor could be reactionary, but at the
same time it adheres to the course which it adopted at the beginning, of
abstaining everywhere from propagandism and unlawful intervention. It strives
to do equal and exact justice to all states and to all men and it relies upon
the beneficial results of that effort for support at home and for respect and
good will throughout the world.
Nations do not exist for themselves alone, but to promote
the welfare and happiness of mankind by benevolent intercourse and example. It
is in this relation that the United States regard their cause in the present
conflict with slavery, maintaining insurgence as the cause of human nature, and
they derive new encouragements to persevere from the testimony of the
workingmen of Europe that the national attitude is favored with their
enlightened approval and earnest sympathies.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams
Both Charles Francis Adams and his son, Charles Francis
Adam’s Jr. were fairly prolific writers.
The pieces I wrote focus on the differences between Marx and
Lincoln’s appreciation of the role played by labor and capital in the economy.
Incidentally, as a sidebar, I may mention that Marx did not
like Lincoln or, one supposes, his economic views. There is also evidence that Marx disliked
Lincoln and the Union's cause because they met Marx's objective of fomenting a
communist revolution.
“The way in which the North is waging the war,” Marx wrote,
“is none other than might be expected of a bourgeois republic, where humbug has
reigned supreme for so long. The South, an oligarchy, is better suited to the
purpose, especially an oligarchy where all productive labour devolves on the
niggers and where the 4 million 'white trash' are flibustiers by calling. For
all that, I'm prepared to bet my life on it that these fellows will come off
worst, 'Stonewall Jackson' notwithstanding. It is, of course, possible that
some sort of revolution will occur beforehand in the North itself.”
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