Friday, February 12, 2016

I got you Abe

Happy birthday to America's first socialist president, Abraham Lincoln, who wrote, in his 1847 "Fragments of a Tariff Discussion", the year before the publication of Marx's and Engels's Communist Manifesto,
...inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that [all] such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.

The Rail Splitter. Painting by J.L.G. Ferris, ca. 1909, via Honest Abe Blog.

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