Amid the modern-day capitalism vs. socialism political rhetoric, The Washington Post historian blogger Gillian Brockell notes the oft-praised former President Abraham Lincoln welcomed the support of famed socialist Karl Marx.
"It is indisputable that the Republican Party had at its founding a red streak," according to author John Nichols in "The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition...Socialism," per the Post.
The connection between Lincoln – the first Republican president who also helped bring down slavery – and Marx came as contemporaries, and it is based on the letters of support they shared and the writings of Marx in The New York Tribune that Lincoln was a professed reader of, according to the report.
"[Tribune founder Horace] Greeley welcomed the disapproval of those who championed free markets over the interests of the working class, a class he recognized as including both the oppressed slaves of the south and the degraded industrial laborers of the north," Nichols wrote, per the Post.
The connections of Lincoln and Marx were not lost on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who remarked the co-founder of the NAACP was a communist in his later years.
"It is worth noting, that Abraham Lincoln warmly welcomed the support of Karl Marx during the Civil War and corresponded with him freely," King once said, per the Post.
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