SOURCE: "Orestes Brownson: An American Marxist Before Marx," in The Sewanee Review, Vol. XL VII, No. 3, Summer, 1939, pp. 317-23.

[Schlesinger is a prominent American historian and leading intellectual figure whose historical and political studies have won him both critical and popular acclaim. He was an influential figure in liberal politics, serving as a special assistant to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. In addition, Schlesinger is considered one of the foremost scholars of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies. In the essay that follows, Schlesinger argues that Brownson's theories on political economy presaged those of Karl Marx.

Conservatives, it has been earnestly pointed out, always confront change with the same war-cries. Throughout American history they have unfailingly demonstrated that every strange proposal, from inoculation to the TVA, is economically unsound, politically dangerous and morally calamitous. The species of novelty may vary, but the arguments against it rarely...