1. Marxism and Charles Beard

1. Marxism and Charles Beard

April 1954

An evaluation of the extent of Marxist ideas in the work of Charles A. Beard is an extraordinarily difficult task. Due to his remarkably prolific output over the years, and the changes that took place in his ideas, I can do no more here than indicate some of the points that would be significant in any full-scale attempt to evaluate Beard’s writings and influence as a whole.

In the first place, it cannot be denied that Beard was an out-and-out socialist. His socialism was of the nationalist variety, garbed in the trappings of complete central planning. Beard was one of the major and more extreme prophets of the New Deal, at least in its “domestic” sphere. A glance, for example, at chapter 13 of his Open Door at Home (New York, 1935) indicates clearly and definitely his collectivist proposals. Probably his chief difference from other rabid New Dealers was his consistency in advocating tariffs and exchange control.

Beard’s political views are not at issue here, however, but rather his view of history as related to the Marxian view. Perhaps the best way of approaching his views of history is to consider his famous An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913) and his new introduction to the revised edition of 1935. Beard states in these pages that when he approached American history in 1913 there were three dominant interpretative schools in American history. One, which he rather sneeringly referred to as the belief in divine guidance peculiarly granted to America, was, he asserted, typified by George Bancroft; the second was the “Teutonic” belief in the peculiar genius of the Anglo-Saxon race, typified by the Englishman [William] Stubbs; and the third were those pure fact-grubbers who merely presented a series of facts, without explanation.

He was particularly disgusted with the consequently prevailing view of the Constitution among historians as a quasi-divine instrument. Beard claims that his famous economic interpretation was inspired not by Marx, as many historians had charged, but by James Madison’s famous Federalist No. 10. Beard quotes a passage from Madison which more or less sums up his new orientation:

So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that... the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation....

This concept of clashes of economic interest was applied to the struggle over the Constitution by Beard, and later to other problems, including the whole sweep of American history in the Rise of American Civilization (1927). In his works, his use of economic interest was on a class basis, as has been indicated, and stressing the distinction between the propertied and the nonpropertied, although like Marx before him, he was forced to use various subdivisions, such as the “capitalist” (money and securities) interest as opposed to the “landed” interest, and, particularly, the creditors as against the debtors.

In defending himself against the charge of Marxism, he agreed that his position was similar to Marx in the matter of class conflict and history, but asserted that Marx, in this case, was also following in the Madison tradition. In particular, Beard cited as in this “economic interpretation” tradition the seventeenth-century English political philosopher [James] Harrington; Madison; the Federalists, including Chief Justice Marshall; and the historian Richard Hildreth. All of these antedated Marx.

In this claim to be the inheritor of the Federalist Party interpretation of American history, Beard was correct. The Federalist view of the struggle over the Constitution was that it represented a class conflict between wealthy commercial capitalist creditors on the one hand and poor agrarian debtors on the other. This Federalist interpretation was carried on and applied throughout early-nineteenth-century American politics to the agitation over paper money, over stay laws for debts, over land policies, over the tariff, etc. It was carried on by Whig historians (National Republicans) such as Hildreth.

The difference between the attitude taken by the Federalists and Whigs to these struggles, as against later twentieth-century socialists, was that the former favored the allegedly “capitalist” side, while the latter favored the allegedly “agrarian” or “anticapitalist” side. But despite the vast political differences, the economic and class interpretations of history were the same by both camps. Both the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Federalists and Whigs, and the latter-day socialists believed that the poor debtor farmers were anti-tariff, pro-paper money, anti-Central Bank, anti-Constitution, etc.; while the rich capitalist creditors were pro-tariff, anti-paper money, pro-Central Bank, pro-Constitution.

Beard could not bring himself to believe that any of the contenders actually believed in such vague abstractions as states’ rights, national unity, general welfare, etc. He believed it much more likely that they were really motivated by their immediate economic class interest. Thus, manufacturers would tend to be pro-tariff, farmers opposed, creditors for hard money, debtors for paper money, etc.

In answering the charges of Marxism leveled by Professor T.C. Smith, who dealt with clashes of ideas in political history, Beard objects that Smith “does not say how those (ideas)... got into American heads” and does not show that they may [not] have been “conditioned if not determined by economic interests and activities.” Beard told historians that when we see people advocating or resisting political changes in terms of abstract theories such as states’ rights or national power, we should ask the question, what interests are behind them—to whose advantage will changes, or maintenance of status quo, accrue?

Accepting the Federalist-Whig tradition, Beard termed the Constitution the instrument of the propertied class to protect itself from the nonpropertied. In general, government itself is based on the making of rules and the defense of property relations. Beard also cited [Rudolf von] Jhering and [Ferdinand] Lassalle as predecessors in this type of analysis. In sum, he declared that party doctrines and so-called political principles “originate in the sentiments and views which the possession of various kinds of property creates in the minds of the possessors.”

Baldly, his class-interest doctrine is sheer nonsense, both methodologically and for American history. There are no homogeneous classes on the market, only individual interests. Indeed, the alleged “classes” on the market are usually the ones in strongest competition with each other. There is no basic conflict of interest between the propertied and the nonpropertied; in the first place, they are not rigid “classes” on the free market; secondly, it is one of the great truths of economics that the nonpropertied as well as, if not even more than, the propertied benefit from the free market economy based on the defense of the rights of private property. On the free market, therefore, there are no clashing class interests.

As Professor Mises has pointed out, the basic difference almost never explained is between “class” and “caste.” The class-conflict theorists, from Madison to Beard through Marx, use analysis appropriate only to the latter applied to the former. Where certain groups are specially privileged or specially disabled through the coercive power of the state, they become castes, and these castes are definitely in conflict. While on the free market, one man’s gain is another man’s gain, wherever government intervenes and establishes favored and unfavored castes, one man’s or one caste’s gain is another caste’s loss. Where government intervenes, there is inevitable “caste conflict.” Thus, if wool manufacturers ask for a tariff on wool and fail to get it from the State, they remain diverse individuals competing on the market; but if they do get it from the State, they become a privileged caste with a common interest against other castes.

Here it should be pointed out that Professor Richard Hofstadter, a Beard disciple, has applied the class-struggle theories to Calhoun, making Calhoun to appear an ancestor of Marx. On the contrary, Calhoun in essence had the caste theory, although he used the term class. Calhoun defined the ruling caste as being the caste that receives more in government subsidy than it pays in taxes, while the ruled caste are the people who pay more in taxes than they receive from the government.

Furthermore, it is nonsense to assert that men will always follow their immediate monetary interest, that all other ideals are pure sham. This is flagrant error. Rather than being motivated by objective monetary interest, in fact, man is motivated by all sorts of ideas, including ideas about his monetary advancement. But even there, the latter are not necessarily controlling. This notion of so-called purely “economic” motivation is not specifically Marxism, which concentrates more on the productive forces, but Marx himself made much use of this technique, which verges closely on polylogism. When abstract ideas are written off and reduced to their alleged “economic” motives, this is a Marxist polylogism, and something I am sure the Federalists never committed. A particularly flagrant use of polylogism by Beard is his dismissal of Bancroft’s religious view by calling it “his deference to the susceptibilities of the social class from which he sprung.”

Beard’s specific class analysis was completely erroneous as well. Thus, as [Joseph] Dorfman and others have shown, in all of the early American controversies cited above, there were capitalists, merchants, manufacturers, farmers, etc. on both sides of each issue. It is obvious theoretically, and illustrated historically, that various “capitalists” will favor, as well as oppose, paper money in any given period. It is absurd to consider debtors as confined to poor, or to farmers. There were, even in those days, a great many wealthy debtors. Furthermore, it is impossible without minute investigation of a man’s financial record to say whether or not any given merchant was a “debtor” or “creditor” at any given time. The so-called “class lines” of this favorite class of the historians were almost ludicrously fluid.

Despite these overwhelming defects, Beard did make an important contribution to historiography. If material motives are not the whole story, they are certainly part of it, and in the time that Beard began his work, this area was almost completely neglected by American historians. Furthermore, it is precisely these pecuniary motives that the various figures on the historical stage will be most inclined to conceal. If people hold certain political views from a mixture of motives, they will almost always proclaim their “idealistic” motives and hide their “personal interest” in the matter. Beard performed a great service in impelling historians to devote their attention to uncovering the latter factors.

This is particularly true in the historiography of the Constitution, where an almost ludicrous myth had been created about the Founding Fathers. Beard pointed out that there were excellent caste reasons why holders of government securities, for example, were anxious to create a strong central government with tax powers to greatly increase the value of their bonds, which had been heavily in arrears of interest; why speculators in western lands wished to create a strong government to crush the Indian tribes in the West so that their lands would rise in value; why the politically powerful society of army officers agitated for a central-taxing government both for increase in the value of their old bonds and to spur the creation of a larger army, etc. Certainly it is no more than common sense for the historian to take such motives into account when evaluating the historical role of people, provided of course that this is not taken as eliminating the need for examining the validity of their ideas on their own grounds.

It is probable that Beard deliberately overstated his Marxian position because of the general neglect of the monetary motives. In later works he toned down his position considerably until in the Open Door at Home he declared that ideas and interests were equally determining and mutually interacting.