You can always follow up when someone says “states rights” with “to do what?”… because the answer was “have slaves”.
Another interesting note I bring into the states rights argument is that the south wanted to force the north to send back escaped people and were actually sending people into the north to kidnap black people, many of whom were never born slaves.
So yeah the north wanted the right to gives rights to the people in it, and the south thought that didn’t apply to black people.
So yeah the north wanted the right to gives rights to the people in it, and the south thought that didn’t apply to black people.
I think that gives a bit too much credit to the vast majority of Union citizens. Yes there were some groups of Quakers who actually believed in freeing slaves and protecting their rights, but that was a minority opinion .
The majority of people in the union disagreed with slavery for economic and political reasons that were unattached to the morality of slavery. Even progressive politicians like Abe Lincoln who wanted to free slaves, also wanted them to be shipped to the Dominican Republic or Africa afterwards.
Abolitionist v radical abolitionist and emacipationist v radical emancipationist.
History is fun like that…
And to radicals, there is no greater foe
And “limited government”. Limited to do what?
Sorta, the valid but shitty argument is that it was an interstate trade dispute the South was mad at the federal government about.
What commodity was the federal government interfering with that got them so angry?
Agrarian South vs. Industrialized North made for an unfair trade balance. You can hardly trade a bale of cotton for a steam engine, that kinda idea I believe. Been 30+ since college American History, forgot the exact gripes.
We could probably find these disputes in the various Letters of Secession. They almost all start with slavery, but there were other complaints.
EDIT: I was wrong. The letters are almost 100% “bla, bla, bla, we’re being treated unfairly and we’re leaving.” Surprisingly little mention of slavery, but get a load of Mississippi’s letter! LOL my god, y’all just gonna have to read that one yourself. (I had always assumed that letter was typical and I was wrong.)
EDIT: Oh fuck me, I’m wrong again. The linked are merely the official ordinances, not Letters of Succession. Hence why they’re all dry legalese. But I did arouse your curiosity about Mississippi, so here go their letter.
That’s an easy one.
It means “disassemble all checks and balances, strip the people of all power and authority, and concentrate the power and authority into the hands of a chosen party-aligned dictator or oligarchy.”
Small government doesn’t get any smaller than a totalitarian dictatorship.
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Ok, I know Marx was a contemporary of the civil war and wrote about it but every time I see him with a sensible take on it I’m just like “aren’t you in Germany then and it’s a massive pain in the ass to cross the ocean at the time. Why are your takes so sensible”
Marx sent a letter to Lincoln, and Lincoln’s staff responded via Ambassador Adams. It’s a really interesting moment in history that’s been buried by US Red Scare ideology.
from wiki on Adams:
Part of his duties included corresponding with British civilians, including Karl Marx and the International Workingmen’s Association.[7] Adams and his son, Henry Adams, who served as his private secretary
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm
Oh man that would be a fun tidbit for conservatives when they try the old “accckshully Lincoln was a Republican who fought to free slaves so it’s the Democrats that are the racists!”
“Ok, so how do you feel about Lincoln working with Karl Marx, you know, Mr.Communisim?”
I wouldn’t say common, more that a broken clock is right twice a day
Aight, I’ll call your bluff, give me 22 things he was wrong about. I’ll wait.
lmao his biggest critics have never read anything he wrote.
nice rhetoric, I’ll remember that
Jordan Peterson said he’s bad so checkmate
That would require reading Marx lol. These hot takes usually come from reactionaries mimicking what they hear from other reactionaries/charlatans/media towing the stateline. Marx was wrong about some things of course, like the revolutions to a democratically worker owned economy would come from the industrialized centres. But knowing about the ideas which are critical of our current economic system is dangerous to a few, and freeing to the majority.
I’m not that well read up on his stuff. What was he so wrong about?
In his book, he charts the course of human history and tries to predict where it will end up. He comes to the conclusion that a violent revolution will soon come to pass as the workers overthrow their bosses and start sharing resources.
“Soon come to pass” was 150 years ago, the Revolution hasn’t happened. Marxist scholars since then have been recreating the letters between early Christians asking why He hadn’t returned yet as promised and pushing the date of the Second Coming back.
In my opinion, Marx wrote his conclusion first, then cherry picked the points in history that supported his conclusion.
There hasn’t been any anti-capitalist revolutions in the last 150 year.
Maybe read a history book?
I seems to recall the US losing a war to communists in the 1970s for instance.
any
I don’t think their point was that no revolution has happened but the revolution to change it all didn’t happen like he assumed
Marx didn’t consider capitalists holding the world hostage with nuclear weapons
plenty of successful revolutions did occur though, just not in places under the control of the ‘west’
very chauvinistic view to hold IMO
In my opinion, Marx wrote his conclusion first, then cherry picked the points in history that supported his conclusion.
I can’t fathom the arrogance of people who say “Marx just didn’t think of x, y or z”. He invariably did, and a quote is easily found to prove them wrong. Yet they continue to say this bollocks. “Marx didn’t consider human nature, Marx didn’t know about x obscure economic theory,” on and on until the cows come home. Capital has 3 volumes, and each is thick and heavy enough to make a decent murder weapon. They are so long precisely because he did do the thinking you accuse him of not doing.
The one single thing we can legitimately say he didn’t anticipate was the computer revolution, and it in fact only strengthens his theories, as digital technology has gone on to strengthen the hold of capital, and laid bare its incestuous relationship with the State.
But muh heritage… /s
state’s rights
wanted the federal government to override the rights of free states
made slavery mandatory rather than leaving it up to the states
tried to flat-out steal entire states using violence
Like every conservative, when they talk about freedom they’re only talking about their freedom to do what they want, and their freedom to make you do what they want using violence.
I may be an anarchist, but I can admit Marx has some banger quotes.
I tend to consider him right in basically all his criticisms, misguided in formulating the solutions.
Presumably he ran into the trouble a lot of generous, intelligent, and honest people have, they assume everyone is basically like them other than circumstance and stress.
And, obviously you can trust a fellow socialist to run the vanguard states, right?
They get it. Heirarchy bad, racism bad, sexism bad, he’s been over this!
Or perhaps he was simply, like everyone, merely a product of his time. The workers of his day were barely literate, every state other than America and France (depending on what exact year we’re talking) were absolute monarchies, etc etc etc.
Under no pretense
IMHO the bigger gotcha on the “states’ rights” lie is that the Confederate constitution gave states no more rights than the US constitution, while specifically denying one: the right to abolish slavery within their borders.
