Similarities between slavery and socialism, and indeed the aggressive anti-capitalist rhetoric of proslavery ideology, are seldom examined in the “New History of Capitalism” literature.

The 1619 Project sacrifices scholarly standards in the service of the ideological agenda.

The reputation of the 1619 project’s other essays, many of them entirely unobjectionable adaptations of scholarly insights for a popular audience, has suffered because of the NY Times’ inflexible refusal to address erroneous historical claims in the essays by Hannah-Jones and Desmond.

While Lincoln’s colonization remarks grate the modern ear, and evince a patronizing paternalism toward the program’s intended participants, they also reflect the sincerity of his anti-slavery beliefs and an accompanying recognition that white-supremacist violence would not end with the formal abolition of the institution.

A short yet hard-hitting indictment of the economic and political repression that so often follows from attempts to structure a society around Marxist ideology and centralized economic planning.

Was the American Revolution fought in defense of slavery? Was Abraham Lincoln a racial colonizationist or exaggerated egalitarian? Did slavery drive America’s economic growth and the emergence of American Capitalism? Did the 1619 Project seek adequate scholarly guidance in preparing its work?

Interest in the history of American capitalism is on the rise, although curiously this line of study is being advanced for anticapitalistic ideological reasons.