Materialist Critique

During a student’s years in high school, one learns the rudimentary information of basic American History. This necessary history usually involves the American Civil War, which started when the South seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy. Tensions in the South over economic reasons (slavery being essential to tobacco farming which was the main source of economy in the South) eventually led to the American Civil War. The American Civil War lasted four years and near the end of the battle the amount of voluntary soldiers decreased. The Federal Government resorted to adopting several laws in order to persuade men to enlist in the army in order to meet the quota for battle. Although the intentions of the federal government was for the whole, the laws that were being adopted were biased to the rich.

A materialistic critique tries to explain how our ideologies relate to specific social relationships of money status and power. When the voluntary enlistment numbers we dwindling, Congress adopted several laws to possibly increase the number of soldiers to join the army. The first of the laws was if a man whose number was drawn for drafting could pay a $300 commutation fee and get excused from service. This would excuse him from service until the next time his name was to get drawn. Essentially, this means that a rich man could buy his way out of service whereas a poor man couldn’t because $300 is a large portion of their yearly income. This shows that a man who is well to do has the power to get out of doing service because he has the money to spend. It is unfair for the poor man because he can not afford losing money. We are taught, as a society, that “every element of our existence from birth to burial, relies on the exchange of money of capital.” If our existence is about money, and the poor have very little of it, they can’t risk paying the $300 of their income.

Another law that was featured in the draft act was a man was permitted to hire a substitute to replace them in service. The draftee could find a man who was willing to fight if paid and pay him the market rate in order to fill in for his obligations to service. The American Civil War quickly became a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” According to Marx and Engels in the The Communist Manifesto, the Proletarian conscience is that the ideologies of the dominant class becomes the ideology of society as a whole. And if the ideology was, for the most part, work being how we accumulate the money necessary to support ourselves and our families. This give the poor man the belief that they must take the opportunity