[lbo-talk] more...

C. G. Estabrook galliher at illinois.edu
Mon Apr 20 14:02:48 PDT 2009


The economic thought is fairly conventional, wouldn't you say? Here's a rejection of class struggle from a generation earlier:

"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."

--ABRAHAM LINCOLN, State of the Union Address, 1861 http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/lincoln-1.html

Doug Henwood wrote:
> more Rerum Novarum:
>
>> The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration
>> is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to
>> class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature
>> to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view
>> that the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the
>> human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different
>> parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these
>> two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain
>> the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot
>> do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results
>> in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily
>> produces confusion and savage barbarity. Now, in preventing such
>> strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian
>> institutions is marvellous and manifold. First of all, there is no
>> intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the
>> interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class
>> together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially
>> of the obligations of justice.
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