Land or Money? An Interpretation of American History
Of all things, a recent musical based on the life of Alexander Hamilton became one of the biggest hits ever on Broadway. Surely we have now seen everything.
Hamilton was the foremost champion of making money the seat of real power in this nation. His most famous opponent was Thomas Jefferson, whose side favored having land as the foundation of power. That was the Great Debate that charged the political atmosphere in this nation from its inception until the matter was settled by the Civil War. The Founding Fathers were realistic enough to understand that economic power, wealth, will always translate into political power.
To make ownership of land so valuable that it could stand against money itself as the seat of real power required slavery. Slavery — or its close sibling, serfdom — had been the economic foundation of civilization for its entire history.
So it was indeed revolutionary of the money men to want to change that. Capitalism, which was coming into existence in England during the 1700’s, was making that revolution possible. (Recall that Adam Smith’s famous book that touted capitalism was published in the year of our revolution.)
Politically, slavery was a huge gift given to the ‘money men’ by the ‘land men’. It was clearly morally reprehensible, especially in a nation dedicated to liberty based on equality. The only recourse for the land men was to assert that the beings living in Africa who were being enslaved were not ‘really’ or ‘fully’ human (thereby limiting slavery to those beings and their descendents). [Unsurprisingly, for purposes of representation in Congress slave owners did want to count their slaves as human beings; in the ‘Great Compromise’ it was decided that they were 3/5ths human.]
The land men turned half-heartedly towards Karl Marx. They did especially like his idea of “wage slavery:” anyone working in a for-profit enterprise for wages — or a salary — is being used as a machine (or a draft animal) to the benefit of the owners of the enterprise, the same as a field slave. Of course, Marx was against ownership of land, which rather limited the potential for their relations with his ideas.
The only hard target that was available to the land men was the issue of a central bank. The money men kept getting central banks established and the land men kept getting them disestablished. (Actually, that process was repeated but twice before the Civil War.) While a central bank is a ‘real’ target that also has larger representations about money and power associated with it, the fact is that its essential economic functions can be carried out without a central bank formally in existence. [The central bank we now have was established in 1913, eighty years after President Jackson had presided over the demise of the last one.]
As noted, the Civil War settled the issue. The land men were destroyed. Bondage slavery was abolished. Money was made the seat of real power in this nation. Capitalism — wage slavery — flourished. So did racism.