ANTI-GREED AND ANTI-OLIGARCHIC ROOTS
The republican tradition has long opposed certain forms of economic domination and greed, and some 19ᵗʰ century figures who later became associated with socialism participated in that critique. No one argues against this. The oppositional tone of late is a concern with priorities and the decline of civic education, which side missions like the rehabilitation of the word socialism does not help. “Marx, Lincoln and Anti-Capitalistic Roots in Republican Tradition” makes a historical-affinity argument that (1) certain anti-capitalist or anti-greed strands can be read as continuous with older republican concerns about dependence, luxury, and the common good. I am aggressive in this assertion, because the vested interests that discourage this fact are obvious kleptocrats; (2) classical and early-modern republicanism already contained strong critiques of excessive individualism, commercial greed, and the corruption of civic virtue by private wealth; (3) Lincoln criticized capitalist greed and the coercive machinery of concentrated capital and framed free labor in terms that European radicals (including Marx) could praise; (4) Marx and some of his circle saw the American Civil War and Lincoln as advancing working-class interests against a form of domination.
Classical and early-modern republican writers repeatedly attacked luxury and the corruption of civic virtue by private wealth; oligarchy and plutocracy (rule by the rich) economic dependence that turns citizens into clients or servants of others; and the elevation of private interest and commercial greed over the common good (res publica).
Liberty, in this tradition required a degree of material independence. A citizen who was economically dependent on another could not be fully free or trustworthy in public life. Excessive concentration of wealth and the pursuit of gain without limit were seen as threats to the republic. This is constantly stressed.
“Capitalism” as a full system (wage labor, industrial capital, self-expanding value, etc.) did not exist in the same form for most of the classical and early-modern republican tradition. Most republican thinkers accepted private property and commerce within limits. Their ideal was usually a broad class of independent proprietors (farmers, artisans, small holders), not the abolition of private ownership or markets.
Later 19ᵗʰ century labor republicans and some radical republicans did push the critique further. They argued that wage labor itself created a new form of dependence incompatible with free citizenship, and they developed stronger language against concentrated capital. That is the point at which republican language begins to overlap with early socialist or anti-capitalist critiques. Even then, the premises and goals often remained distinct from Marxism. I advocate for us to pick up this republican language once more and overtake the left’s capture and the right’s selective memory. It should not be misunderstood as saying, that the entire republican tradition was simply “anti-capitalistic.”
So, this is not an endorsement of Marxist theory, historical materialism, class war as the motor of history, or the later Leninist-Bolshevik tradition. I argue that the republican tradition has long opposed certain forms of economic domination and greed, and some 19ᵗʰ century figures who later became associated with socialism participated in that critique. The recent article titled “Civic Republicanism as the Enemy: Marxist, Leninist, and Related Hostility – A Catalogue and Refutation,” “The Forgotten Anthropology of Freedom: Republicanism Against Socialism” and other recent articles treat Marxism and socialism as hostile forces that attacked or replaced the civic republican tradition. This is history, and it assumes a more adversarial posture.
Even clearer, my arguments have consistently maintained that the critique of greed, usury, oligarchic concentration of wealth, and economic dependence is an old republican theme (Roman, Machiavellian, English Commonwealth, early American, Mazzinian). It does not require Marxist premises. “Marx, Lincoln and Anti-Capitalistic Roots in Republican Tradition” documents that shared surface concern in the 19ᵗʰ century without absorbing Marx’s full system. Once Marxism developed its own anthropology, theory of history, and political practice, it became incompatible with (or actively hostile to) civic republicanism and sought to supersede it as the mockery and hostility of “bourgeois republicanism” reveals.
There is a separation of “critique of economic domination” from “Marxist doctrine” in this, and Marx is not presented as a straightforward republican thinker, since he abandons it. The argument about anti-greed roots remains compatible with the republican tradition, but no American politician needs Marxist theory or socialism to understand these and express it. The difference is that no matter what you do, the socialist will critique you in a number of ways, for which there is a historical example of their rhetoric and tactic.
ANTI-OLIGARCHY DOES NOT REQUIRE SOCIALISM
An anti-oligarchy politics is fully available within the republican tradition and within classical liberalism. The founders feared concentrated wealth turning into political domination, corruption of institutions, and the creation of dependent classes. Harrington and Jeffersonian ideals of independent citizens, and later republican critiques of Gilded Age plutocracy all aimed at preventing oligarchy without socializing the means of production. Think, only Marx or contemporary left thinkers had a critique of power? The older critiques provided the tools that include antitrust, campaign-finance limits, inheritance policies that prevent dynastic concentrations, education aimed at independence and virtue, and a preference for broadly distributed property ownership; while retaining private property, markets, and the moral anthropology that treats character as primary rather than determined by economic structure.
You do not need democratic socialism or Marxism to make that case to the American public. The fact that the socialist side has successfully occupied much of the anti-oligarchy and “common good” language, while any other competing or opposing side has largely failed to reclaim or revitalize the republican alternative is a large part of why socialist gaslighting lands and why many people do not notice or care about the distinctions. However, the anthropological and historical differences become painstakingly obvious no matter the branding.
