Marxist analysis of American Revolution?

[A.R.Amistad]

Are there any good books by Marxists, such as the ones on the French Revolution, that discuss the American revolution from 1776-1864? I have read very great biography on Samuel Adams by American Trotskyist Harry Frankel that got me into the work of Samuel Adams. Also, why do Marxists downplay the role of the American Revolution comparitive to the French Revolution? I hardly her Marxists discuss it except when specifically addressing American workers.

[mykittyhasaboner]

You could read this (http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj73/trudell.htm).


Also, why do Marxists downplay the role of the American Revolution comparitive to the French Revolution?Because the French had more style.

[Barry Lyndon]

Are there any good books by Marxists, such as the ones on the French Revolution, that discuss the American revolution from 1776-1864? I have read very great biography on Samuel Adams by American Trotskyist Harry Frankel that got me into the work of Samuel Adams. Also, why do Marxists downplay the role of the American Revolution comparitive to the French Revolution? I hardly her Marxists discuss it except when specifically addressing American workers.

Probably because the American Revolution was barely a revolution at all in the Marxist sense, there was very little actual class struggle, it being a primarily a contest between the American colonial bourgeoisie and the British bourgeoisie, the former wanting economic independence from the latter. The French Revolution, by contrast, involved a lot of class struggle not only between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, but as the revolution progressed increasingly between the bourgeoisie and the emerging French proletariat who wanted the revolution to go even farther then even most Jacobins were willing to take it.
In my view the big revolution in US history was the Civil War and Reconstruction, because that was what smashed the neo-feudal Southern slave society and ensured the total dominance of modern industrial monopoly capitalism in its place.

[bailey_187]

I would like to get some recommendations of these books too.

Marxist history in America seems to more dominated by the idea of history "from the POV of the oppressed/those on the margins etc" rather than studying how production takes place, the relations of this production and how the surpluses are distributed. Am i right in saying this? (its just an observation, correct me if i am wrong)

[S.Artesian]

There's Zinn's books [trying saying that fast 10X]. But, in all seriousness, we should write our own. By which I mean I think you're probably better off reading non-Marxist history and developing your own analysis based on several accurate, non-ideological inquiries into US history .

For example, Rinehart & Co. published a 9 volume [I]Economic History of the United States [Colonial period; 1775-1815; Agriculture 1815-1860; Industry 1815-1860; The Farmer's Last Frontier 1860-1897; Industry 1860-1897; 1897-1917; 1917-1929; 1929-1941] that has valuable information.

The area of course that really holds the key to US history, IMO, is the Civil War, and Radical Reconstruction-- so I recommend you read everything you can on Reconstruction-- there are great studies out there.

[Bonobo1917]

There are interesting chapters on th American Revolution in a book of essays edited (and partly written) by Trotskyist George Novack: America's Revolutionary Heritage.

[CartCollector]

There's a book by Bertell Ollman on the US Constitution. The intro is here: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/us_constitution.php but if you want the whole book you have to pay for it.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Probably because the American Revolution was barely a revolution at all in the Marxist sense, there was very little actual class struggle, it being a primarily a contest between the American colonial bourgeoisie and the British bourgeoisie, the former wanting economic independence from the latter. The French Revolution, by contrast, involved a lot of class struggle not only between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, but as the revolution progressed increasingly between the bourgeoisie and the emerging French proletariat who wanted the revolution to go even farther then even most Jacobins were willing to take it.
In my view the big revolution in US history was the Civil War and Reconstruction, because that was what smashed the neo-feudal Southern slave society and ensured the total dominance of modern industrial monopoly capitalism in its place.

There was actually quite a bit of struggle by rank-and-file citizens during and prior to the American Revolution. Mobs of people routinely sacked/raided stores and there was a whole segment of the revolutionaries who railed against the merchantile class for being exploiters. While the American "Terror" pales in comparison to the French "Terror", it did exist to a certain extent.

This discussion has actually been had quite a bit before on this website*, and it seems pretty apparent to me that yes, the American Revolution was a revolution in the Marxist sense...a revolution of the bourgeoisie. It actually compliments the French Revolution quite well, seeing as they were both influenced by a similar ideological foundation and they both used the nascent petite-bourgeoisie to their advantage.

*In fact yours truly (http://www.revleft.com/vb/american-revolution-t78079/index.html?t=78079&highlight=american+revolution)even created a thread on it at one point.

[Killer Enigma]

About three years ago, I became incredibly interested in this same question. The first, and still most-readable, single-volume account of the American Revolution of 1776 that I read was Brown University History Professor Gordon S. Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution (http://www.amazon.com/Radicalism-American-Revolution-Gordon-Wood/dp/0679736883). The book examines the class struggle and ideological conflicts that the revolution grew out of and uses a lot of the historical materialist terminology that is familiar to Marxists.

Of course, it should be mentioned that Wood comes out of the neo-Beardian tradition of economic analysis of the Revolution of 1776. Charles A. Beard, Professor of History at Columbia University at the time, wrote the ground-breaking An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Interpretation-Constitution-United-States/dp/1150024275/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273792217&sr=1-1) in 1913, which went on to be one of the most controversial accounts of the revolution ever released. Beard is a highly acclaimed historian and though American Revolution scholars have found new evidence in the field that his magnus opus didn't take into account, it remains incredibly influential. It's more or less a straight historical materialist interpretation of the revolution but it's difficult to acquire and not the easiest book to read. For starters, try out Wood's book and if you want to read where Wood gets most of his ideas, check out Beard.

However, I agree with previous posters in saying that the American Civil War and Reconstruction are the more pertinent "American Revolutions" for leftists to study. Karl Marx himself considered the Civil War to be one of the most revolutionary events of the 1800s and his writings on the subject (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/us-civil-war/index.htm) are essential reading for any American leftist, even though they were written from afar in England. Not included in the aforementioned link, but incredibly important and revealing nonetheless, is Marx's letter to President Abraham Lincoln (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm) following his re-election in 1864.

That said, Marx's writings are of limited academic value for people wanting to gain a big-picture analysis of the American Civil War/Reconstruction. It's hardly coincidental that the best class-based analysis of the American Civil War is also considered the best single-volume historical account--The Battle Cry of Freedom (http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Civil-War/dp/0345359429), written by James McPherson, Professor of History at Princeton University, is critically-acclaimed both in academic and mainstream circles. I've found it at most used book stores for no more than $5.00 and I know it's available online for dirt cheap. It's one of the ten most important books to my political development that I ever read.

Similarly on Reconstruction, the best class-based analysis is also the top volume in the field. Professor of History at Columbia University Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (http://www.amazon.com/Reconstruction-Americas-Unfinished-Revolution-1863-1877/dp/0060937165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273793302&sr=1-1) quite literally changed the academic and mainstream interpretations of Reconstruction. Before Foner's book was released in 1988, almost all academic work on Reconstruction was written by Southern historians with barely-veiled racist, neo-Confederate leanings, who cast 1863-1877 as a time of corruption, anarchy, "reverse racism", political chaos, repression from the North, etc. Foner's Reconstruction represented a total revision of the period, focusing on the empowerment of Freedmen after the end of the Civil War, the radical egalitarian political programme pursued by Radical Republicans like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, and the revolutionary social changes that swept the North and the South--particularly for Blacks--and the revolution's eventual betrayal by President Andrew Johnson. Along with The Battle Cry of Freedom, Reconstruction seriously influenced me politically and I think every American leftist ought to get a hold of it to understand our tremendous revolutionary past.

The other book on Reconstruction I would recommend is W.E.B. DeBois' Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880 (http://www.amazon.com/Black-Reconstruction-America-1860-1880-Burghardt/dp/0684856573). Before Foner, DeBois' account was the only non-Confederate widely-read book on the subject. It focuses primarily on the experience of Freedmen during and after the Civil War, and so its subject matter is more specific than Foner's Reconstruction. Nevertheless, it's one of the two most important works on the subject and no study of Reconstruction is complete without it.

[Killer Enigma]

Probably because the American Revolution was barely a revolution at all in the Marxist sense, there was very little actual class struggle, it being a primarily a contest between the American colonial bourgeoisie and the British bourgeoisie, the former wanting economic independence from the latter. The French Revolution, by contrast, involved a lot of class struggle not only between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, but as the revolution progressed increasingly between the bourgeoisie and the emerging French proletariat who wanted the revolution to go even farther then even most Jacobins were willing to take it.
In my view the big revolution in US history was the Civil War and Reconstruction, because that was what smashed the neo-feudal Southern slave society and ensured the total dominance of modern industrial monopoly capitalism in its place.
I don't think calling the Revolution of 1776 "barely a revolution" is fair, but I agree with the bulk of your analysis. If you want to look at Colonial North America from the lens of Mao's concept of primary and secondary contradiction, you could easily argue that casting off British colonialism was the "primary contradiction" of society. Of course 1776 changed social conditions for slaves, women, and yeomen very little, but by solving the primary contradiction of colonialism, the base contradictions between the liberal rights of equality brought by capitalism and the Southern institution of slavery intensified.

On the whole, I agree that 1776 is of little significance to American leftists. Conversely, I think that we ought to appropriate the Civil War and Reconstruction as two of the most, if not the most, revolutionary events in our history. Simon Bolivar may have been a bourgeois revolutionary fighting a different class conflict than the modern day people of Venezuela--against colonialism and against imperialism, respectively--but that doesn't stop Chavez from appropriating Bolivar as a figure of revolutionary struggle. Maybe American leftists should do the same for Lincoln...

[BAM]

There's a chapter on the American revolution in Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker's The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-Rtlbx15EVcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=rediker+linebaugh&hl=en&ei=IRntS8-2Ic_W-QafmMXsBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false) (2000).

The notion that it wasn't a revolution is nonsensical. In fact, the American revolution is probably modern history's most successful revolution of all (after being completed, as it were, by the Civil War).

[anticap]

Chris Harman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Harman)'s A People's History of the World has a chapter on it.

[RED DAVE]

Raya Dunayevskaya's Marxism and Freedom is worth reading on the American revolution.

RED DAVE

[worldrambler]

I don't think calling the Revolution of 1776 "barely a revolution" is fair, but I agree with the bulk of your analysis. If you want to look at Colonial North America from the lens of Mao's concept of primary and secondary contradiction, you could easily argue that casting off British colonialism was the "primary contradiction" of society. Of course 1776 changed social conditions for slaves, women, and yeomen very little, but by solving the primary contradiction of colonialism, the base contradictions between the liberal rights of equality brought by capitalism and the Southern institution of slavery intensified.

On the whole, I agree that 1776 is of little significance to American leftists. Conversely, I think that we ought to appropriate the Civil War and Reconstruction as two of the most, if not the most, revolutionary events in our history. Simon Bolivar may have been a bourgeois revolutionary fighting a different class conflict than the modern day people of Venezuela--against colonialism and against imperialism, respectively--but that doesn't stop Chavez from appropriating Bolivar as a figure of revolutionary struggle. Maybe American leftists should do the same for Lincoln...
While it is obvious that not all rights were given to all, in spite of the Declaration of Independence's wording. However, history does not always move in the right direction all at once. Humanity gradually evolves, and so I think that it is worth noting the good aspects of the American Revolution, despite falling short of our modern ideals.

[Turinbaar]

Marx's letter to Abraham Lincoln about the Civil War mentions the revolution in passing as a major historical step in advancing the middle class into power against feudalism. If you read his section on democracy in his critique to hegel's philosophy of right you get a good idea of how he would view america, both as a republican system claiming to be a democracy as well as a social system that stood in stark contrast to the monarchies of Europe.

[mikelepore]

Arnold Petersen, former national secretary of the Socialist Labor Party of America,
"Constitution of the United States: Founding of the Bourgeois Republic"
http://slp.org/pdf/others/const_ap.pdf

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

Arnold Petersen, "Benjamin Franklin"
http://slp.org/pdf/others/bfranklin_ap.pdf

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