On the socialist origins of the Republican Party

[Meursault]

The reason I've returned is largely for this one thread. It's a subject I intend to publish on when I get around to it; I've not found a single peer-reviewed article on the subject. If I'm reliant on Wikipedia, it's because it's actually the best-sourced repository for this information.

It is taken as an article of faith today that, whatever the Republican Party's initial social liberalism in the Civil War era (as defined by its hostility to the institution of slavery and begrudging acceptance of blacks as, if not co-equals with whites, then at least deserving of their protection), it was always a pro-business organization, always fiscally 'conservative' even if the definition of fiscal conservatism has changed with time.

To an extent, this is true. Partisans of this viewpoint can point back to the populist campaign of William Jennings Bryan and his Democratic Party, and even further back to the granger movement of the 1870s, to show that there has always been a 'workerist' element within the Democratic Party. The assumption naturally follows that, if the Democrats were always economically populist, the Republicans must have been the antitheses of populists - to wit, conservatives.

But this is simply not so. From its very foundation, and for a long time thereafter, there was a socialist element in the GOP - not, as in the case of Bryan and the grangers, populists who would morph into liberals in the early 20th century, but outright socialists who imported their ideologies from their German-language homelands.

A brief look at the histories of some of the early Republicans will suffice to demonstrate this.


Carl Schurz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Joseph Weydemeyer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You must be logged in to read this quote.

August Willich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Thee three don't seem to have been involved in the GOP's formation or to have had a critical impact on the party. Do you have any figures of greater stature to use?

[Randy Bobandy]

Thee three don't seem to have been involved in the GOP's formation or to have had a critical impact on the party. Do you have any figures of greater stature to use?

Try Horace Greeley.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Thee three don't seem to have been involved in the GOP's formation or to have had a critical impact on the party. Do you have any figures of greater stature to use?

Try Horace Greeley.

That's an actually good example. While the above listed are interesting, Greeley's the first name I've seen in this thread that seems to have been of real significance to the GOP.

Meursault, you referred to your return. Who are you? Einzige?

In any case, this thread's title is misleading as it seems to imply a much larger socialist involvement than has been displayed thus far.

EDIT: Gerrit Smith might be another good example. However, both he and Greeley fail to prove a thesis that the Republican Party was some big proto-Marxist circle jerk in its first few years.

[H. Ross Peron]

I've heard this before primarily from neo-Confederates who think the Civil War was caused by a conspiracy of Jacobin Red Republican refugees from the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe.

[Randy Bobandy]

Wasn't Lincoln pen pals with Karl Marx?

[Rockefeller GOP]

Haha, what an epically misleading thread title.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

The socialist origins of the GOP began with Eisenhower and will end with the election of Theodore Penguin Cruz as President of the United States, of course.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Anti-Slavery coalition building, is probably the best way to describe the presence of Socialists in the GOP during that period. But it is hard to describe the party as being anything other then the handmaided of business, particularly those that wanted to sink their groper nasties into the Federal treasury, which is exactly what they did both during and after the Civil War.

The Democrats were at war with themselves over just what the legacy of Andrew Jackson was for the party. Was it the anti-bank, pro-common man populist who tore at the centers of wealth and power or the laissez faire land speculator who cleared the way for bourgeoisie entrepreneurs and middle class professionals to thrive by denying gov't to the elites as a tool for their own enrichment. A large number of business interests, particular those aopposed to the tariffs and subsidies desired by their counterparts in the GOP and found myself supporting the Democrats thusly.

[The Mikado]

Wasn't Lincoln pen pals with Karl Marx?

Marx wrote a letter congratulating Lincoln on his reelection and received a very polite form letter in response.

[Meursault]

Anti-Slavery coalition building, is probably the best way to describe the presence of Socialists in the GOP during that period. But it is hard to describe the party as being anything other then the handmaided of business, particularly those that wanted to sink their groper nasties into the Federal treasury, which is exactly what they did both during and after the Civil War.

The problem is that what makes for convenient historical shorthand, like the above, simply isn't accurate.

This isn't a case of a handful of socialists voting Republican in the era. This is a matter of Republicans like Carl Schurz, an open and active socialist and former confederate of Karl Marx's, being elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in 1868.

This is important: a socialist, who personally knew Karl Marx in Germany and shared much of the man's habits of thought and weltanschauung, actively campaigning for a Senatorial position - and winning - under the Republican banner.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Anti-Slavery coalition building, is probably the best way to describe the presence of Socialists in the GOP during that period. But it is hard to describe the party as being anything other then the handmaided of business, particularly those that wanted to sink their groper nasties into the Federal treasury, which is exactly what they did both during and after the Civil War.

The problem is that what makes for convenient historical shorthand, like the above, simply isn't accurate.

This isn't a case of a handful of socialists voting Republican in the era. This is a matter of Republicans like Carl Schurz, an open and active socialist and former confederate of Karl Marx's, being elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in 1868.

This is important: a socialist, who personally knew Karl Marx in Germany and shared much of the man's habits of thought and weltanschauung, actively campaigning for a Senatorial position - and winning - under the Republican banner.

I honestly didn't investigate that much into the three people you presented as examples, assuming that you'd presented all that was relevant of them. From my memory, at least, I don't remember seeing a mention of Schurz as a Senator. Referring to the all-knowing Wikipedia, Schurz, during his time as a Senatorial candidate and in the Senate itself, stood for "fiscal responsibility" and "sound money", indicating that he may not have been as revolutionary a socialist as one might think. Further reading on his career seems to reveal him, at least in his post-Civil War political life, as a fiscal conservative opposed to imperialism. He supported civil service reform, which isn't a really ideological stance, and in doing so supported Grover Cleveland in 1884. He supported McKinley in the name of, again, "sound money"--something that was emphasized in his support of Hayes twenty years earlier, according to Wikipedia--and broke with the GOP in 1900 due to anti-imperialism. Thus, you spotlighting Schurz as an example of socialism in the early Republican party is still suspect.

EDIT: As a follow-up, he was elected in '68, well past the "origins of the Republican Party", and, as such, the argument you have yet presented is still invalid.

[Meursault]

Anti-Slavery coalition building, is probably the best way to describe the presence of Socialists in the GOP during that period. But it is hard to describe the party as being anything other then the handmaided of business, particularly those that wanted to sink their groper nasties into the Federal treasury, which is exactly what they did both during and after the Civil War.

The problem is that what makes for convenient historical shorthand, like the above, simply isn't accurate.

This isn't a case of a handful of socialists voting Republican in the era. This is a matter of Republicans like Carl Schurz, an open and active socialist and former confederate of Karl Marx's, being elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in 1868.

This is important: a socialist, who personally knew Karl Marx in Germany and shared much of the man's habits of thought and weltanschauung, actively campaigning for a Senatorial position - and winning - under the Republican banner.

I honestly didn't investigate that much into the three people you presented as examples, assuming that you'd presented all that was relevant of them. From my memory, at least, I don't remember seeing a mention of Schurz as a Senator. Referring to the all-knowing Wikipedia, Schurz, during his time as a Senatorial candidate and in the Senate itself, stood for "fiscal responsibility" and "sound money", indicating that he may not have been as revolutionary a socialist as one might think. Further reading on his career seems to reveal him, at least in his post-Civil War political life, as a fiscal conservative opposed to imperialism. He supported civil service reform, which isn't a really ideological stance, and in doing so supported Grover Cleveland in 1884. He supported McKinley in the name of, again, "sound money"--something that was emphasized in his support of Hayes twenty years earlier, according to Wikipedia--and broke with the GOP in 1900 due to anti-imperialism. Thus, you spotlighting Schurz as an example of socialism in the early Republican party is still suspect.

This is simply a matter of 'sound money' not being incompatible with socialism as it was understood and practiced by German 'scientific socialists' (and one would expect these socialists to favor restrictions on the money supply more generally due to opposition to business subsidies). In fact, Friedrich Engels wrote favorably about the gold standard (Google 'Engels' 'bimetallism') even before Marx's death - among other stupidities and quirks of character that have long been forgotten that emerged in that time.

The idea of an economic redistributionist State more or less didn't exist in the 1880s, and what little experience the West had with State-driven monetary redistribution was largely the product of government subsidies of emerging capitalist industries like railroads. And if 'sound money' is 'scientific' in character, then of course positivist faddists with socialist ideas will support it.

To be fair, the thread title is probably too strong. I do not mean to claim that the Republican Party was a socialist party, and obviously capitalists were much more strongly represented. But at the same time it is also fair to say that socialists were represented in it, named and nominated candidates for election. They were a wing of the Party, though not dominant in it; one might compare their presence in the Republican Party of the Civil War era to the DLC Democrats of our own, though obviously serving very different functions.

(And of course Schurz wasn't particularly radical by the time he became Senator. But he was a socialist when he joined the GOP; my point is to trace socialist attraction to Republicanism to its very origins. One expects long years of association with the elite to wear out one's initial loyalties.)

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Basically what you seem to be saying is, in effect, numbing the socialist character of certain individuals who did attain high Republican office. What this results in, is, in fact, diluting your thesis. If you make irrelevant their socialist stances by claiming that such were irrelevant or happened to line up with more laissez-faire economic stances of the time, then does that not make the fact that they were socialist a moot point and thus not really worth focus on?

[Meursault]

Basically what you seem to be saying is, in effect, numbing the socialist character of certain individuals who did attain high Republican office. What this results in, is, in fact, diluting your thesis. If you make irrelevant their socialist stances by claiming that such were irrelevant or happened to line up with more laissez-faire economic stances of the time, then does that not make the fact that they were socialist a moot point and thus not really worth focus on?

What it actually suggests is that there was continuity and congruity between the capitalist-liberal economics of the generic Republican leadership and the scientific socialist economics of the "Ohio Hegelians" and German emigrees who found themselves together in the same Party - and that perhaps this tradition can be revived at the expense of the duopoly we have today.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

That didn't seem communicated in your original post. While I would find it very interesting to read a full, academic work on the subject of socialist presence in the early Republican party (as opposed to the misleading title), what you have presented doesn't seem to indicate a "socialist origin" to it. It's still very interesting to see that there were a few German socialist activists in the Republican party in the 1850's and 1860's (not a real surprise if you consider that certain left-wing movements of the time might be attracted to it, thought certainly a surprise to the random person on the street, I assume).

[Meursault]

From what I've found - and again there is practically no literature on the subject outside of the aforementioned neo-Confederate revisionist nonsense that makes hay out of the matter - socialist identification directly correlated with Republicanism anywhere there was a large German immigrant community, and, though I have no hard numbers, the impression I get is that most German-American Republicans in the first generation of immigrants during the Civil War period had socialist leanings.

Now, this holds good for Ohio and the upper Midwest. I've been curious about self-identified socialist immigrants to New York City, many of whom may have been Fenians and as such much more sympathetic to the Democratic Party. But the Fenians were not strict socialists, and what socialists were among them likely would not have been 'scientific'.

[Mechaman]

From what I've found - and again there is practically no literature on the subject outside of the aforementioned neo-Confederate revisionist nonsense that makes hay out of the matter - socialist identification directly correlated with Republicanism anywhere there was a large German immigrant community, and, though I have no hard numbers, the impression I get is that most German-American Republicans in the first generation of immigrants during the Civil War period had socialist leanings.

Now, this holds good for Ohio and the upper Midwest. I've been curious about self-identified socialist immigrants to New York City, many of whom may have been Fenians and as such much more sympathetic to the Democratic Party. But the Fenians were not strict socialists, and what socialists were among them likely would not have been 'scientific'.

First off, welcome!

Second, yeah Fenian revolutionaries, Land Leaguers, and other Irish Nationalists were strongly Democratic.  This had a long political tradition that went to long before the Civil War Era to the First Party System when many Irish immigrants strongly identified with the Democratic Republican cause due to natural opposition to the Federalist cause.  The Alien and Sedition Acts along with the Naturalization Acts passed in the late 1790s contained not only strong restrictions against French aliens, but Irish ones as well.  Harrison Gray Otis, a well known MA Federalist, cited his not wanting "wild Irishmen roaming the country" as a chief reason why the Congress at the time should pass the Acts.  The Irish (both protestant and catholic) responded in kind by strongly backing Jefferson and his ideological successors.  I should also note that many of the survivors of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 were also adamant Jeffersonians once in America, often advancing the case for voter suffrage and other liberal causes of the time.

So yes, even before Andrew Jackson (emphasis) there was a strong Democratic tendency among the Irish in America.  The Alien and Sedition Acts were arguably the "Original Sin", if you will.  Opposing popular suffrage and supporting moral regulation like Temperance also didn't help National Republicans and Whigs with the group.  By the time the GOP came around, it would've been easier to convince many an Irishman that he could walk on water than to disavow his Democratic allegiances.  There was one Irish Republican who had links with Nationalism, John Conness, who started out as a "War Democrat" from California who was later kicked out of his own party due to his extremism on Civil Rights and rights for immigrants, including the Chinese who were very unpopular in California.

By and large though, a vast majority of them were on the opposite fringe of the Democratic Party from white landowners in the South.  For obvious reasons.  The two groups didn't have much in common except a distrust of Republicans and non-whites, for similar yet different reasons.  What a white Democrat from the South saw as a threat to his monopoly an Irish one would see a threat to his survival, if that makes sense.  This explains a lot of the unfortunate racism in the early labor unions, as many of the Irish laborers saw minorities like blacks and the Chinese essentially being "scabs" for the Robber Barons who they and other European ethnic groups involved in labor were at war with.  If you want to go even further, many of the working class Irish (but not the lace curtain classes that were prominent businessmen who controlled machines like Tammany in the late 19th century) viewed themselves in a sort of centuries long cultural war with all things English and were convinced that the economic troubles they faced in the New World was the result of an ingrained Brahmin elite that was deadset to make sure they stayed second class for another hundred years (I can't say I disagree too much with that sentiment).  Though Industrialists were split up between both parties at the time (depending on whether or not they benefitted from tariffs mostly, though there were some Industrialists who voted Democratic out of laissez faire principle), Democrats got large majorities of the Fenian vote by tactics such as "twisting the lion's tail" by occasionally attacking the imperialism of various Republicans and comparing them to Great Britain, a surefire vote winner among the growing immigrant populations in northern cities.  THough, there were candidates like Henry George, who ran for Mayor of New York City in 1886 as an Independent Democrat, who gained large working class support due to a wide alliance with the Land League, several Irish unions, and even some of the Priesthood in the city running off of a land tax platform.

Irish American leftism was a lot more based out of an attack on the idea of "landed" interests than off of the specific philosophy of Karl Marx and others that the German American left subscribed to.  The history of the landed largely Anglican elites in Ireland is fundamental to understanding the leftism of the the poor in the late 19th century.  Many of the elites charged confiscatory rates for many of the tenant farmers and the like who worked and lived on the land.  It was therefore easier for many Irish in America to make a direct link between land ownership and capitalist abuse than to the detailed critique of capital found in the works of Marx that goes further in analysis on the entirety of the social hegemony in place.  A lot of left wing sympathy among the group was rooted mostly in a long history of being second class and impoverished and subjected to foreign rule.  Naturally, they and other ethnic groups (especially the Polish) felt targeted by the "Americanism" of the Republican Party, which is how you get such a division among certain groups that leaned left.  Meanwhile, many German Americans had settled further inland and were suspect to a great deal of "Plains Republicanism" that also had a deal of populist intrigue and was more removed from the class divisions that existed further east.  Though, as issues like Prohibition popped up as a Republican issue from the 1870's-1890's, German Catholics had a brief period of flirtation with the Democratic Party.  And then Bryan and other Dry Democrats became more prominent which allowed the GOP to get back a window of opportunity among the group.  German Catholics briefly (again) returned to the Democratic fold off of the anti-imperialism of Bryan and the supposed "neutrality" promised by Wilson only to become strongly anti-Democratic after the Wilson campaign used the opportunity of World War I to begin an anti-German campaign throughout the nation that helped nativist and Prohibitionist forces lead a crusade against all things German American.

In 1920 the Democratic Party managed to piss off both the German and Irish votes in the North, leading to a certifiable landslide by any definition of the term.  With the Irish Free State being established and the immediate Civil War that followed many Americans who had a strong investment in the movement felt a measure of disillusionment.  This, along with the rapid economic ladder climbing of the 1940's and 1950's and feelings of Americanism instilled in the community from the experience of World War II, would weaken what was once a solid Irish labor wing that aligned strongly with the Democratic Party.  Further developments, like the Red Scare, integration, busing, and abortion, would only further divide a demographic that were once considered unparalleled in their devotion to the Democratic cause.

The tl;dr version of this: They were Democrats.

[Meursault]

http://www.worker-communist.org/2014/02/01/notes-on-the-early-history-of-american-communism/#more-75

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Meursault]

Also, leading GOP officials like Charles Sumner and Wendell Phillips were open members of Marx's own International Working Men's Association.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Trolling.  Did you ever consider that Wikipedia is not a good source for info?

That being said, the GOP was definitely the more "socialist" party early on.

[Franzl]

Trolling.  Did you ever consider that Wikipedia is not a good source for info?

That being said, the GOP was definitely the more "socialist" party early on.

You're not exactly the best person to give others advice on sources.

[windjammer]

Trolling.  Did you ever consider that Wikipedia is not a good source for info?

That being said, the GOP was definitely the more "socialist" party early on.

You're not exactly the best person to give others advice on sources.

Franzl, I don't understand you, Oldiesfreak is great and is well known for his fight against the PPP, whose polls were obviously flawed, time to stop the Liberal brigade's lies!

[Cassius]

I don't think you can really say that the GOP had a 'socialist' wing at the time, as socialism wasn't really very prominent in the public discourse of the day. I'd argue that the Republicans and the Democrats basically represented two competing strands of liberalism back in the mid 19th century; many Democrats stood for a kind of classical liberal vision, embracing immigrants, free trade and smaller government, whilst the Republicans (in some cases) were for a kind of 'moralistic' liberalism, focused upon societal improvement and development (as was the case with the advocacy by many Republicans of abolitionism, temperance, education and the like, which chimes to a certain extent with similar values advanced by some British Liberals). However, whilst those were two broad currents, it would be foolish to argue that they were dominant in either party; after all, neither was really created to advance a coherent ideology. So you had a number of southern Democrats (like John C. Calhoun) who represented a conservative, almost reactionary ideology, one which rejected a number of the principles advocated by both the above groups (but especially the latter, due to their diametrically opposed viewpoints on what the central government was supposed to be for), and, on the other hand, a number of Republicans and Democrats who espoused a rather radical (if not neccessarily socialist) ideology; men like William Jennings Bryan were a case in point.

[Maistre]

That being said, the GOP was definitely the more "socialist" party early on.

How so?