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Friday, August 24, 2012

Abraham Lincoln on The Relationship Between Labor and Capital

Alan: Not one American conservative in a thousand will share Lincoln's view of "labor and capital."
And I doubt there is any conservative who would communicate Lincoln's view to everyone in his email directory.
Birtherism? Yes.
Make America Great Again? Yes.
Build a wall and make Mexico pay for it? Yes.
Repeal and replace Obamacare? Yes.
NO new taxes? Yes.

But not a word about Lincoln's core position on capitalism.

Abraham Lincoln: "In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life. Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless. Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."  Read more: State of the Union Address: Abraham Lincoln (December 3, 1861) 


Last photo of Lincoln in life?



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