Here is the first class in this four part series, complete with video clips and reading suggestions. I will do the third class tomorrow and later post it
Norman Markowitz
The American Revolution
A revolution is a long historical process, economic-political and social-, not simply winning a few
battles, ousting a government and establishing a new one
a. Explanation of a capitalist revolution when the capitalist class was young. The English Puritan revolution, the first major bourgeois revolution. It followed a period of perhaps two centuries in which the merchant class of the towns had been growing in importance, fighting against the aristocratic landlords, the feudal ruling class, and their economy based on production for their use, with peasants working the land for them and artisans providing them with luxury goods, special food, etc.
b. The English revolution of the 1640s resulted in the establishment of a revolutionary army, the new Model Army, led by the capitalist gentry and merchant classes, defeating the aristocrats and their armies, executing the King, and, after putting down radical bourgeois democratic movement, called levelers, and also the first “communists in Modern history,” the religious based “digger” movement and its leader, Gerard Winstanley, established a Bourgeois dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell. This was a revolutionary dictatorship, which collapsed after Cromwell’s death and the Monarchy was restored, but it was never to be an absolutist divine right monarchy again. The language of the revolution itself, the mobilizing language, had been religious. Now, as Karl Marx would write, it became political, as the bourgeois revolutionary John Locke wrote about representative government and rights, life, liberty and property, and the House of Commons of the British Parliament ousted the last autocratic king, and established its supremacy over both the Monarchy and the House of Lords.
c. Meanwhile, there were echoes of this revolution through the North American colonies, which had been formed in a variety of ways, by powerful merchants and gentry investing in colonial settlements, by royal colonies. While the monarchy and the aristocracy were restored in Britain, there was in the North American colonies, the symbol of the crown and royal authority, not a King as such in power. There were various assemblies and councils, not chosen by all of the people, but chosen by property owners. And there were three major classes, merchant capitalists, wealthy landowners, and slave-owners, among a population of small farmers, skilled self –employed artisans, large numbers of contract agricultural laborers, called indentured servants, and increasing number of slaves from Africa, along with the native population
d. The North American colonies found themselves under the control of the Board of Trade in London, itself an expression of the bourgeois triumph. . The Empire compelled each colony to negotiate before t he board of trade separately, to lobby separately, to keep them divided; this was the basis of the later states rights doctrine used by both progressives and reactionaries, but mostly by reactionaries, slaveholders, segregationists, champions of state “right to work laws” etc. Benjamin Franklin for example was initially the lobbyist for Pennsylvania before the Board of Trade who was so successful that he was hired by other colonies to represent them
e. The empire’s policies toward the colonies was to keep them capital poor—make them produce and sell raw materials at low prices and purchase finished goods at high prices; the purpose of the Colonies, as the Board of Trade said frankly, was to produce wealth for metropolitan Britain which would benefit everyone. While the colonies had no representation in Parliament (no taxation without representation had been an idea of the English revolution) the Empire asserted a doctrine of virtual representation, in which Parliament represented in a paternalistic way all areas of the empire.
f. In the first half of the 18th century, the North American colonies found themselves, as colonies would be in the future used as, pawns in a series of wars between the two great empires in the world, the British and French empires. These wars were fought in Europe, on the sea, in India, and in North America. The colonies got nothing of any value from them. Meanwhile, the development of the colonies produced larger and more and more interconnected merchant, gentry and slaveholder classes, classes that sought to gain “freedom” for themselves, the freedom to produce and sell whatever goods they wanted in a developing world market, to expand territory as they saw fit, not as the empire saw fit; to use contemporary slang, the more conservative elements wished a “piece of t he action” the more radical “the whole enchilada.” These classes also feared the popular masses, the poor farmers, urban laborers, and of course the slaves and the indigenous people called Indians, who might rise and seize control of a revolutionary process. And there were also the specially privileged elements of these classes, the empire loyalists who benefitted from imperial subsidies, positions in the royal colonies, special grants. But events of the 1750s and 1760s would set the stage for a revolutionary crisis and a great bourgeois revolution that would create the first major bourgeois republic in history.
g. To boil this down as much as I can, the British Empire defeated the French empire in the Seven Years War and gained control of all of North America and also eliminated the French threat to its position in India. A Conservative, called Tory Government, under the leadership of George Grenville, raised taxes very sharply on the colonies to pay for the overhead of this greatly expanded empire. It began to strictly enforce the restrictions on the colonial elites accumulation of wealth through trade which had previous been lax
h. The conservative government, finally restricted Westward settlements, sponsored by investment companies in the colonies the colonies, in order to prevent new Indian wars which might be used to restore the French.
i. Fearful also of the growing power of the merchant capitalist class, the Tory government instituted a crippling tax on all commercial documents the Stamp Act.(1765) The merchant capitalist class engaged in massive resistance to this, forming groups called the “Sons of Liberty,’ who made violent attacks on empire officials, sacked empire offices, and forced repeal of the stamp act. But this was only the beginning,
A series of taxes and other restriction of colonial enterprises in the late 1760s produced further widespread resistance and the establishment of “committees of correspondence” between the colonies to coordinate resistance activities.
Boston became the most important center of the revolution, its merchant capitalist class with great influence against an intransigent Royal governor. The Boston Massacre of laborers by British troops escalated the conflict, (1770) although John Adams, a conservative representative of the merchant capitalist class, a centrist between the empire loyalists and radicals, increasingly calling themselves patriots, represented the troops who carried out the massacre in Court, attacking in his defense the urban laborers who were the massacre’s victims
1. Most of these taxes were repealed except the Tea Tax, for the benefit of the East India Company, the first great corporation in history, which controlled all of India, and like corporations up to today, was run by speculators and swindlers whose policies brought it to the brink of bankruptcy many times. Actually, the tea was cheaper but it was a matter of principle, it was being dumped, as goods are often dumped on colonies, but it was a matter of principle
2. Leaders of the merchant capitalist class more radical then John Adams, Sam Adams, no relation, John Hancock, and others, led a group disguised as Indians to board the tea ships which were moored in Boston harbor, where t merchant capitalist class opposition and the mobilizing of the urban masses had prevented their unloading, and dumped large quantities of tea in Boston harbor as thousands of protestors drawn from the urban laborers cheered from the docks. This was no “tea party,” as history would call it, using the sarcastic name given it by the revolutionaries
3. The empire responded by a series of acts the revolutionaries called the intolerable acts;the Port of Boston was closed; the government of Massachusetts was placed directly into the hands of London; trials or empire officials were to be moved out of the colony. disbursing the colonial legislature and putting Massachusetts had a military governor, Thomas Gage. A continental congress was called at Philadelphia and sought a settlement, boycotting all British goodsunder martial law and Boston under military occupation.(1775) Militia forces loyal to the colonial legislature, these were duly constituted militias who had nothing to do with the fascistic paramilitary groups who call themselves militias in the U.S. today, no more than the “tea party” Republicans have anything to do with the revolutionaries who dumped the tea in Boston Harbor, began arming and drilling outside of Boston. When General Thomas Gage learned of this, he sent out forces to seize arms being stored at Concord Massachusetts. T
They were met by militia forces at Lexington and then suffered a major defeat at Concord as snipers using guerilla tactics inflicted heavy casualties. Gage order every farmhouse between Boston and Concord to be burned down but in effect, a revolutionary war had commenced. A second Continental Congress then assembled, now to manage the war which was going on leading role in bringing about a continental Congress to respond to the escalation. George Washington, wealthy Virginia slaveholder and veteran of the Seven years war in North America, offered his services in the establishment of a continental army to defend the Congress and the colonies Fighting at Bunker and Brees Hill commenced in June 1775. The Second Congress sought still to find some formula for negotiation, some plan of autonomy within the empire In January, 1776, the empire had decided to use military force rather than any negotiation to crush the uprising. Revolutionaries/patriots were gaining the upper hand over conservatives as the continental Congress deliberated.
The revolutionary democrat Tom Paine, similar in his thinking to the most militant levelers in the English revolution of the 1640s, had written an agitational pamphlet Common Sense which reached the popular masses as no other document ever had, being read out loud by agitators to the illiterate farmers and labors, called mechanics at this time. Paine repudiated the entire colonial system, along with monarchy and aristocracy, in cogent “un-nuanced “ language, reviving the most revolutionary concepts of the English revolution for both masses and ruling groups who were ready to listen to them. A Committee of the Continental Congress was appointed in the spring of 1776 as the military conflict escalated to Draft a Declaration of Independence. The slaveholder Thomas Jefferson, who applied the ideals of the 18th century enlightenment to all people except slaves, joined with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin on the Committee. Jefferson , then 33 years old was the principle author of the document and the most radical member of the committee, and the document incorporated major concepts from Paine, although as all of us should understand from our own political experiences in a watered down way.
The revolution now became what would be called a war of independence—in the second half of the twentieth century, a war of national liberation, and here against the most powerful empire in the world. Just as in many wars of national liberation, the support of outside forces, foreign powers, was crucial. Here, using a combination of guerrilla warfare tactics, the main army under Washington engaging in strategic retreats and staying the course in the face of defeats, a and taking advantage of imperial blunders to win the strategically important battle of Saratoga, the revolutionaries gained the economic and military support of the French empire, Without that support the war of national liberation could not be won The victory at Saratoga, where Benedict Arnold, a revolutionary general who had three years early been a leader in the seizing of Fort Tycondoroga, brought the French empire into the war in North America as it declared war on its British enemies
. Faced with defeats at the hands of its French enemies that threatened its global empire, a “liberal” called Whig government Under Lord Rockingham replaced the Tory government of Lord North and eventually negotiated a cold peace that led to the withdrawal of empire forces.
What had the revolution accomplished by 1783, when the withdrawal took place? Slavery in the Northern colonies had been abolished and there was general sympathy for their was general although unorganized anti-slavery sentiment
. Feudal vestiges like primogeniture and entail in the few places they existed were abolished. Substantial amounts of property had been confiscated from empire loyalists, many of whom had fled to British Canada, and like Cubans in Florida in our lifetime, worked for decades for the restoration of the empire.
But the victory of the political Revolution did not end the struggle, no more than the Cuban revolution’s victory in 1959 meant the establishment of peace with the U.S. backers of the Batista regime, or the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949 ended the struggle. British Empire policy against the capital poor colonies, governed by the continental congress under weak articles of confederation was to massively dump surpluses into the colonies, creating huge economic instabilty, inflation and depression. Farmers and mechanics who had fought the battles found themselves faced with crippling debts that threatened their existence. The merchant capitalist, landlord, and slaveholder classes who had led the revolution now turned against these forces that had fought their battles for them in the field
A rebellion of debtors led by a soldier of the revolution Daniel Shays in Massachusetts was crushed. It was now clear that a serious central government was needed to save both the revolution and the interests of the classes who had provided its leadership. Merchant capitalists once more played the leading role in the writing and passage of the Constitution of the United States, establishing the first major bourgeois Republic in history. The landlords and slaveholders were much more divided over the new constitutional government although the slaveholder James Madison, later an ally of Thomas Jefferson, who was not, involved in the process, played a major role as the ally of Alexander Hamilton, an adjutant to Washington during the war and the most important political representative of urban capital.
1. Now we come to a major turning point in world history. In the year that George Washington became the first president of the republic, 1789, the French revolution began and it would take the heat of the American Revolution, enabling the revolution to survive and grow as Europe and especially Britain were embroiled in the wars of the French revolution.
2. But what was surviving. In the first term of the slaveholder president, George Washington, free blacks were barred from serving in the United States army, the constitutional while I would see it as a necessity in terms of consolidating the revolution, was certainly a major setback for anti-slavery forces, writing slavery directly into the constitution.
As the leader of a newly independent nation, Washington pursued a policy of non-alignment, no foreign entanglements, as twentieth century leaders would in India and other nations. But the wars of the French revolution had their impact. Thomas Jefferson combining the philosophy of the 18th century enlightenment with the interests of the slaveholder class looked favorably toward the French revolution and became the leader of the opposition to those who favored a merchant capitalist based strong central government and called themselves federalists. Jefferson appealed rhetorically to the yeoman farmers and hard working mechanics against the forces of wealth and privilege, praised the rights of man over property rights (while he excluded the slave population from any rights). Alexander Hamilton, aide de camp to Washngon who openly opposed the French revolution, secretly provided information to the British government about U.S. actions, and supported a central government tied directly to the rich of all classes, a government which would use its power to foster economic development and expand through the Western Hemisphere.
Hamilton was hostile to slavery, not so much out of sympathy for the slaves but because of its economic inefficiency. Hamilton also knew of manufacturing in Britain which was becoming the first country of the industrial revolution, and unlike Jefferson was much more likely to have advanced policies for more rapid industrialization, abolishing slavery, strengthening bank capital (he as Secretary of the Treasury had established the private, state supported bank of the United States) providing high interest rates for foreign investors, etc. Of all American leaders, Hamilton had the capacity to become what Oliver Cromwell would be in England, Napoleon Bonaparte in France and later, Joseph Stalin in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a revolutionary dictator, consolidating and expanding the revolution while repressing its egalitarian and democratic elements.
In the conflict with France in the late 1790s, Hamilton’s followers enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, launched the first Red Scare of the Republic, arresting newspaper editors who were supporters of Jefferson for attacking the government, seeking to expand the time that foreigners could apply for citizenship from five to fourteen years, seeking to deport under those criteria one of Jefferson’s most important followers and advocating war with France(which Hamilton privately said would permit the Republic to destroy the French controlled Spanish empire through the Western Hemisphere and gain economic control of the Western Hemisphere. Hamilton received a military commission to lead an army against the French and Spanish in North America I 1798, the year before Napoleon launched his coup that made him first counsel. While Hamilton and Napoleon were on very different sides in the wars of the French revolution, they both had a similar attitude toward the masses. Hamilton was quoted by his enemies as saying “your people sir is a great beast.” Napoleon said of the rioting poor of Paris, the only way to deal with a mob is to eterminate it.”
3. President John Adams refused to support Hamilton’s war policy and then lost the presidency to Thomas Jefferson, who in a compromise with the Hamiltonian forces, accepted Hamilton’s Bank of the United States while in effect abandoning the Alien and Sedition Acts.
4. Jefferson’s victory and Hamilton’s downfall was soon complete as Hamilton was killed in a duel with Jefferson’s Vice President, the political adventurer Aaron Burr, and the influence of slaveholders and landowners in the new Republic as against merchant capitalists grew. Jefferson’s slogan was “the government that governs least governs best.” Jefferson touted the glories of farm life and also spoke of an “empire for liberty,” based on Westward expansion, which would enable the white masses to gain land for themselves without threatening the interests of the slaveholders or large estate owners. Although Jefferson was associated with “Liberty” and the “rights of the people,” it is interesting to note that the small numbers of free blacks in New York and other states who had the property that enabled to vote voted for Hamilton and his party almost to a man and that Jefferson’s followers, who advanced general white male suffrage and later took up as a slogan “democracy,” also, as they gave votes to whites without property fought to disenfranchise all free blacks. In that more than anything else we see the tragic contradiction of the American revolution, a revolution in the name of liberty and rights in which the power of slaveholders greatly increased as the raw materials produced by slaves, particularly cotton but also sugar, tobacco, became far more valuable with economic development.
5. The American Revolution would in effect end with the Second Anglo-American War, a very important war often slighted in the history books, the war of 1812. Jefferson had handed the presidency over to his protégée and fellow slaveholder, James Madison, an architect of the Constitution. Jefferson, as the Napoleonic wars waged and the Atlantic became a battleground, had continued Washington policy of non –alignment, instituting a general trade embargo which had produced a huge economic crisis. Ironically, Jefferson the slaveholder and the Republic itself had profited tremendously from a slave rebellion in Haiti the French Revolution had initially abolished slavery but Napoleon had restored it. Toussaint Loverture had led a rebellion of the slaves which triumphed when Napoleon, embattled in Europe and suffering major losses in Haiti, withdrew. Napoleon also withdrew entirely from the Western Hemisphere, selling French New Orleans and all of France’s North American land claims to the U.S/, the Louisiana Purchase, the lands that would become the material basis of Jefferson’s empire for liberty, although revolutionary Haiti was encircled by the slave states of the Spanish empire and the American Republic treated as a step nation through the hemisphere, discriminated against by virtually everyone.
6. The Second Anglo American War broke out over the Atlantic trade, which the U.S. had resumed and also over North American territory. Expansionists dreamed of driving the British Empire from Canada and adding it to the Republic. U.S. forces suffered major defeats in what is now Michigan, saw the British burn the new capital at Washington as the President and the Congress fled, and, with Napoleon retreating in Europe the U.S. was in grave danger of being reconquered.
7. But the war also stirred patriotic fervor and people rallying to join the military, American ships defeated British ships on the Great Lakes, thwarting a British invasion; the U.S. navy successfully defended Baltimore. The instability in Europe and the widespread opposition that they faced among the American people led the British to negotiate an end to the war based on the territorial status quo.
a. Although the peace treaty had been signed, the lack of telegraph meant that a planned British invasion of New Orleans, which Napoleon had sold to the Republic was carried out after the treaty was signed, turning into a disastrous defeat for the British as an army led by Andrew Jackson, wealthy Tennessee slaveholder, land speculator and politician known also for leading state and local militia forces in attacks against Indians, emerged as the wars great hero.
b. In the aftermath of the war, Britain and the U.S. would in negotiate in 1817 the Rush Bagot agreement, demilitarizing the entire Northern border of the United States. For the indigenous people, this destroyed their last opportunity to survive as they had earlier by supporting the various colonial powers against the American setltlers.
c. The US for the next two centuries, unlike any other major power, would never face any military threat to its borders. In the post Napoleonic period, with counter-revolutionary forces on the ascendancy throughout Europe, the American Republic with all of its deformations, was the leading center for bourgeois revolution and the first nation in modern history to call itself a democracy, advancing both advanced progressive and brutal reactionary policies, inspiring radicals, and earning the contempt of reactionaries through the world.
There are important questions here and insights drawn from the writings of Marx and Engels and Lenin on the United States
1.
2. First, Marx and Engels never through the baby out with the bathwater and denounced the American revolution either because it was a bourgeois revolution, which was all that it could be, or because of the role of the slaveholder class in that revolution. Marx and Engels saw a revolution for an independent national bourgeoisie under colonial settler conditions where their was no feudal aristocracy, traditions, institutions in place as a great step forward, leading to the rapid development of a working class under conditions of Republican government, a working class that would learn from the capitalist class and advance to socialism more not less rapidly than the European countries Lenin also made his an
3. Marx and Engels also recognized the specific role of the slaveholders in
retarding all forms of social advance in the United States. They did not see
the slaveholders as representing a separate “slave mode of
production” but as a class operating in and profiting hugely from overall c
capitalist development not only buying and selling human beings but
using those human beings as captive labor forces to produce raw materials
cotton, tobacco, sugar, primarily for developing world capitalist markets.
We might conclude by looking in a little more depth at Tom Paine and Benjamin Rush as examples of the most advanced elements of the revolutionary processs
Below are clips and suggested readings sent to the students
Here are five video clips on the background to the political revolution. The second and the third,
dealing with revolutionary democratis Thomas Paine and Benjamin Rush are especially valuable.
The last one is a cartoon of Sarah Palin meeting Thomas Jefferson.
P.S. I also put the clip on the theme outline that
