Have famous socialists/anarchists/communists discussed the American Revolution?

[Shinigami]

Marx, Bakunin, et al., what, if anything, have they said about the American Revolution and people like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, et al.?

[manic expression]

Here's a quick mention from Marx in his letter to Lincoln (as part of the First International):

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm


It's not much, but I'll try to find more.

[Drace]

Here's his letter to Lincoln.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm

Are you looking only for the classic socialists? Else there's a number of them. I'm sure Chomsky commented on the American Revolution before.

[Shinigami]

I'm pretty much looking for socialists in the 19th century, but I'd love to read Chomsky's view on it.

[bailey_187]

I think Bob Avakian has written about it

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Duped

[New Tet]

Arnold Petersen was by no means as well-known and "infamous" as the 19th Century socialists, but he offered up a nice little pamphlet on a commonly shared view among American socialists about Benjamin Franklin:

http://www.slp.org/pdf/others/bfranklin_ap.pdf

[RED DAVE]

Very 20th Century, but try this:

Marxism and Freedom From 1776 to Today by Raya Dunayevskaya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism_and_Freedom:_From_1776_Until_Today)

RED DAVE

[Robespierre2.0]

I'm interested in this, because we simply have to face the fact that whether we like it or not, most political discourse in the United States revolves around different interpretations of 'The Founding Fathers'. On the one hand, the U.S. revolution could be considered progressive, as the first major anti-colonial struggle of the modern era. On the other hand, despite the all the Enlightenment era talk of 'reason' and 'liberty', the colonial state still justified the genocide of the native americans and enslavement of the blacks. Anybody have a good historical materialist analysis of this? Even though the United States was a vicious settler state, it brought technological progress and the industrial basis that makes a transition to socialism possible.

[RHIZOMES]

"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn is excellent if you want a class-based analysis of American history.

[redwinter]

As bailey_187 mentioned earlier, a main recent work to check out is Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy by Bob Avakian
http://www.revcom.us/Comm_JeffDem/Jeffersonian_Democracy.html
(also on audio: http://www.bobavakian.net/talk2.html).

There's also the pamphlet "U.S. Constitution: An Exploiter's Vision of Freedom" he wrote. In this excerpt online there's a specific critique of Madison's line:
http://rwor.org/a/035/avakian-us-constitution-exploiter.htm

Also, I thought this was pretty interesting in terms of contributing towards a new understanding of the legal framework and "bourgeois rights" under socialism and how they all transform through the transition to communism -- and might be interesting if someone were to be studying some of the "founding fathers" and their political philosophy in comparison with communism:

Audio from Q&A of Avakian's "7 talks", question 21:
"Could you speak to the question that under socialism, the constitution will be a moving target, but apparently one of the principles is that socialist society would be set up along the lines of democratic centralism. I want to understand that in terms of solid core with a lot of elasticity."
http://www.bobavakian.net/sound/new/21-question_and_answer_session-question_21.mp3

[mikelepore]

Arnold Petersen was by no means as well-known and "infamous" as the 19th Century socialists, but he offered up a nice little pamphlet on a commonly shared view among American socialists about Benjamin Franklin:

http://www.slp.org/pdf/others/bfranklin_ap.pdf

More by Petersen:

"The Constitution of the United States"
http://slp.org/pdf/others/const_ap.pdf

"Democracy: Past, Present and Future"
http://slp.org/pdf/others/democ_ppf.pdf

See the chapter on Thomas Jefferson in:
"Reviling of the Great"
http://slp.org/pdf/others/reviling_great.pdf

For those who don't know him, Petersen was the national secretary of the Socialist Labor Party of America before he retired in 1969.

By Eric Hass, a former SLP press editor and 1950s-1960s presidential candidate:
"The Americanism of Socialism"
http://slp.org/pdf/others/am_of_soc.pdf