Oceans of ink have been spilled in describing the mounting conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton—and, in the process, the fundamentals have tended to become drowned.
Most confusing to the record has been the Marxist interpretation that arose in the 1930’s, which envisions the controversy as an example of “class warfare” waged between Hamilton as a champion of privilege, and Jefferson, who desired laws that would help the underprivileged. This attributes twentieth-century issues to the eighteenth. Those who wished through government action to support the poor in opposition to the rich were in those days known as “levelers.” Far from being a leveler, Jefferson boasted that the nation’s “mass of weight and wealth” supported his ideas. Had a welfare state been thought of during Washington’s Presidency, it would surely have been less sympathetic to Jefferson than Hamilton, since it involved so great an increase in governmental power. The controversy which embroiled the two champions was not basically concerned with the haves and the have-nots. It was between rival economic systems, each of which was aimed at generating its own men of property.
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