[lbo-talk] the WSWS does The Nation

[Auguste Blanqui]

It makes a little more sense in context, though, when you consider The
Nation's abolitionist roots. A lot of the abolitionists at once supported
the end of slavery but were horrible labor exploiters at the same time, and
not many were really committed to a labor system other than "free" wage
labor.  One of the major puzzles of the antebellum era is why there was such
a huge disjuncture between abolitionism and the nascent labor movement.
David Brion Davis on the Quakers in Problem of Slavery in the Age of
Revolution is really good on this, also Foner in Free Soil, Free Labor, Free
Men, and Alan Dawley's Class and Community, though they've all got different
explanations for it.

On 6/22/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Jun 21, 2007, at 8:54 PM, Dennis Perrin wrote:
>
> > This is what WSWS does best. Think the Nation might run a condensed
> > version
> > of this?
>
> Not likely.
>
> I hadn't realized how reactionary The Nation was in the 19th century.
> Sven Beckert quotes it a lot in The Monied Metropolis. Its editor in
> the 1870s and 1880s, E.L. Godkin, was the New York bourgeoisie's
> "organic intellectual," as Beckert put it; he helped them formulate
> their Gilded Age social philosophy, which boiled down to social
> Darwisinism and shooting strikers. And he & his gang were fiercely
> antidemocratic: Godkin was at the center of a failed attempt to limit
> the franchise in New York state to the propertied.
>
> Doug
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