American Revolution.

[eric922]

I'm debating someone on another forum who is arguing against communism on the basis of all the executions and death caused during the October Revolution. Granted those things are bad, but I feel they are sometimes a tragic necessity, what I want to know is are there any examples of similar things happening during the U.S. Revolution and if you all could give me any sources, because I know that the American Revolution has likely been white-washed to get rid of any of the more unpleasant aspects of it.

[thesadmafioso]

The most vivid example that comes to mind are the instances wherein loyalists would be subjected to the embarrassing and exceedingly cruel treatment of tar and feathering, solely upon the political grounds of supporting the British or even of just being opposed to the concept of independence.

[Bardo]

Tell him not to judge an entire ideology based on the events of one revolution 100 years ago. Plus, that revolution changed Russia from a poor feudal society into a superpower despite two world wars, a civil war, several invasions and famine all within a couple decades.

The US killed 300,000+ Japanese civilians in two days and is the only country on the planet to have used atomic weapons. Ask him to recall the images of Vietnamese children running down the street with their skin falling off.

Why limit yourself to just the revolution?

[Sensible Socialist]

Why doesn't he blame capitalism for the death in any other war? :confused:

[Olentzero]

You want a bloody revolution at the dawn of capitalism? Don't limit yourself to just the US - capitalism is a world system, after all. The French Revolution of 1789 has got everything you need - the Terror, the Directorate, blood flowing in rivers down streets all so that the rising bourgeoisie could assume mastery of society. I'm sure there are serious leftist histories of this seminal event but I do rather like Mark Steel's Vive La Revolution (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Vive-la-Revolution-A-Stand-up-History-of-the-French-Revolution).

Or try the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871 - an excellent example of how capitalism will stop at nothing to deal with challenges to its rule. There's a new book just out that analyzed the events and politics of the Commune: Donny Gluckstein's The Paris Commune (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/The-Paris-Commune).

[Jimmie Higgins]

The civil war is also an example - Atlanta was burned to the ground (which is horrible) and after the war (during radical reconstruction) the plantation owners were disenfranchised (not so horrible:lol:) and the US military ran the south. Also a lot of "wealth" was redistributed by giving the slaves freedom (the opposite of horrible). The plantation class obviously thought all this was a crime and a terrible injustice - in fact there is a growing revisionist version of the civil war promoted by slavery aplogists and increasingly by libertarians that Lincoln was a tyrant because of what happened during the war. They claim slavery would have ended at some point eventually on its own. Maybe that could be true... except that racism and brutality far outlasted the end of slavery; the South in the years approaching the war were EXPANDING slavery; and one of the main reasons for the split between the northern and southern ruling classes was because they south wanted to move slavery westward and possibly into a taken-over Mexico!

Sure the north did brutal things during the war - and they even conscripted poor northerners to fight. But the result was freedom for a huge number of people who'd been under slavery. And when the North stopped their tyranny and made a truce with the South, the southern rulers unleashed horrible backlash against anti-slavery whites, black freemen, and re-disenfranchised black people and made life a repressive living hell at least as bad as the worst of repressive countries (maybe only surpassed by actual genocide by NAZIs or US cavalry) that still has effects on people today.

[Jose Gracchus]

See all those English speakers in that funny place to the North that say "eh" at the end of everything? Your ex-neighbors. They liked the King. We showed them the door...with a pitchfork and torch.

[Jimmie Higgins]

The American Revolution actually isn't the best comparison because there were only about 2 million Europeans in those colonies at that time and only about 20,000 active loyalists. I've read that about 1/3 of the population was against the Revolution - but generally that means they just ignored it or spoke against it without actually fighting. Some had their land taken and some were driven out, but it wasn't like the Civil War or more modern upheavals involving lots of actual civilians and large working class populations.

You might want to compare the Russian Revolution to WWI because, in terms of scale and brutality, complaining about that revolution but not WWI is like having someone crap on your face and then getting mad because someone else farted a minute later.

[Olentzero]

Crude, but effective analogy.

[A Marxist Historian]

Crude, but effective analogy.

In fact, the American Revolution was an extremely bloody affair, with huge massacres of Indians and revolting slaves in the South.

In terms of percentage of the population that died, if you don't restrict yourself to white people, the death percentage was *higher* than in either the French or Russian revolutions.

In the North, things weren't too bad, though you had quite a lot of tarring and feathering of Loyalists, and a quite sizeable percentage of the population fled to Canada.

The West and the South were another matter. Especially the Carolinas and Georgia, where mutual massacres were *not* restricted to nonwhite populations.

Historians deliberately ignored what went on in the South for generations, not wanting to put spots on the usual picture of the American Revolution as a nice polite civilized affair. In recent years however this has broken down and the truth has come out.

A particularly excellent book on the South during the Revolution, which I highly recommend, is "Water From The Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age," by Sylvia Frey.

Before the American Revolution, twenty percent of the population of the American colonies was black. So many blacks died in the course of the Revolution that that percentage has never been attained since.

As for what was going on among the whites, here is a quote from a Rebel major in the Carolinas:

"The two opposite principles of whiggism and toryism have set the people of this country to cutting each other’s throats, and scarce a day passes but some poor deluded tory is put to death at his door. For the want of civil government the bands of society are totally disunited, and the people, by copying the manners of the British, have become perfectly savage." (Frey, 133)

-M.H.-

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

Tell him not to judge an entire ideology based on the events of one revolution 100 years ago. Plus, that revolution changed Russia from a poor feudal society into a superpower despite two world wars, a civil war, several invasions and famine all within a couple decades.

The US killed 300,000+ Japanese civilians in two days and is the only country on the planet to have used atomic weapons. Ask him to recall the images of Vietnamese children running down the street with their skin falling off.

Why limit yourself to just the revolution?
hey none of that, that was a last resort, japan wouldn't stop

[Jose Gracchus]

Are you justifying the nuclear bombings of Japan? I think you should be restricted for that.

[KC]

I don't see how you can compare the October Revolution to the American like the OP is, that's pretty silly.

[B0LSHEVIK]

I'm debating someone on another forum who is arguing against communism on the basis of all the executions and death caused during the October Revolution. Granted those things are bad, but I feel they are sometimes a tragic necessity, what I want to know is are there any examples of similar things happening during the U.S. Revolution and if you all could give me any sources, because I know that the American Revolution has likely been white-washed to get rid of any of the more unpleasant aspects of it.

The French Revolution was very bloody, very much so. Today, France is one of a handful of European countries who have no monarchy what so ever. Ends justify the means!

Loyalists were maltreated and shot as well following the American war of independence (not a true revolution). Blacks were discharged from American militias and army units on orders from none other than G. W. Native Americans were decimated, to the point of genocide, by Americans. And dont forget federal forces smashing Shays Rebellion (working class/farmer movement against capitalist banks). There really is a lot of 'unknown' history in the US.

Besides, ask your debater to provided sourced accounts of how many were actually shot during the October revolution.

[Bardo]

Are you justifying the nuclear bombings of Japan? I think you should be restricted for that.

I'm pretty sure he's joking/trolling. At least I hope...

[A Marxist Historian]

I'm pretty sure he's joking/trolling. At least I hope...

I dont know if The Inform Candidate was joking or trolling or not, I'm sure he can speak for himself.

But yes, the poster he was answering should be asked to explain himself. If he *really* was justifying the racist terrorist mass-murderous nuking of Hiroshima, which killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in truly hideous ways, that sounds like about as good a reason for restricting somebody as one could find. If not outright banning.

Certainly much worse than merely, say, thinking Charles Manson was kool or something.

-M.H.-

[Barney Rodgers]

I agree, the American Revolution has definitely been whitewashed. For example, as elucidated by Howard Zinn, ‘independence’ wasn’t exactly a good thing for Native Indians. The British had demarcated Native Indian territory, and ruled that nobody could encroach upon it. With the end of the British rule, Native Indian lands were left unprotected. The tribes were then plundered, left homeless and pretty much vanquished.

[S.Artesian]

Atlanta was burned to the ground (which is horrible)

Nope. It wasn't.

What do you mean "horrible"? Horrible to the slaveholders? No doubt. Horrible to the Confederate merchants? Most certainly. Horrible to those who believed in "the Southern way of life"? We can only hope so.

Horrible to the emancipated slaves? I bet not.

Atlanta had been a major logistical and resupply center for the Confederate military It's warehouses were loaded with materiel, and cotton. Sherman burnt the warehouses, depots, railroad station, merchants' properties, etc of the city when he began his march to the sea in order to deprive the Confederacy of any supplies should it retake Atlanta while he moved on South Carolina.

Sounds like he did the right thing... at least to me.

[A Marxist Historian]

I don't see how you can compare the October Revolution to the American like the OP is, that's pretty silly.

Actually it isn't. There are a remarkable number of parallels.

They both were mostly urban affairs in overwhelmingly rural countries, whose support in the countryside was initially dubious.

The Bolsheviks got the support of the peasantry by supporting them in their struggle to seize the land from the noble lords. The American Revolutionaries in Boston and Philadelphia got the support of the farmers by supporting them in their struggle to seize the land from the Indians, and supporting white farmers in the South in keeping blacks enslaved.

The Bolsheviks alienated peasants through seizing food from the peasants to feed the cities, paying the peasants in worthless Bolshevik scrip. Washington did exactly the same thing with exactly the same results, creating the expression "not worth a continental." In both cases, after the war was won, the country people rose in rebellions, Kronstadt and Tambov etc. in the USSR, and Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion in the US, that had to be suppressed with armed force by the urban revolutionaries.

Big difference: the Bolsheviks were isolated in the world. The American Revolutionaries had the support of the French and Spanish Empires, without which they probably would never have defeated the British.

And a huge percentage of the population died in both situations, and a large percentage of the remaining population, opposing the revolution, fled elsewhere. Higher actually in the American Revolution than the Russian.

Big difference: the American Revolution successfully, as it was intended to by Tom Paine in particular, spark off bourgeois revolutions all over Europe and Latin America, so after a couple of decades of turmoil and a one-party Federalist state, it could settle down into a two-party democracy, until the issue of slavery meant a second and even bloodier revolution.

Whereas the Bolshevik Revolution unfortunately remained isolated, and therefore degenerated into Stalinism. If something similar had happened in America but the colonies nevertheless had maintained their independence, Washington would no doubt have become a totalitarian dictator, as some at the time feared.

-M.H.-

[ColonelCossack]

I don't see how you can compare the October Revolution to the American like the OP is, that's pretty silly.

It was probably to show that capitalism is far more bloody than communism in how it is installed.

[Misanthrope]

Don't stoop to his mudslinging and slanderous ways. You shouldn't judge a theory or ideology by historical atrocities. Blood shed happens in revolutions and wars, it's inevitable. For the record, America has had an extremely bloody history from it's "discovery"..

[mastershake16]

RED HERRING!

Instead of playing the childish game of "your ideology is worse than my ideology" by pointing out a bloody event in America's history, why don't you actually have a conversation about the October Revolution?

[Klaatu]

If this guy wants to use violence as a criterion as to WHY a certain system is bad, tell him that it is the PRIVATE CAPITALISTS that are making the violent movies and video-games. The government does NOT produce, nor purvey violent or sex movies. It is the CAPITALIST that does so.

The state does NOT sell unsafe, nefarious products. Capitalists do.
The state does NOT sell narcotics and poisonous substances. Capitalists do.
The state does NOT push women and children into prostitution Capitalists do.

(shall I go on?)

[mastershake16]

If this guy wants to use violence as a criterion as to WHY a certain system is bad, tell him that it is the PRIVATE CAPITALISTS that are making the violent movies and video-games. The government does NOT produce, nor purvey violent or sex movies. It is the CAPITALIST that does so.

The state does NOT sell unsafe, nefarious products. Capitalists do.
The state does NOT sell narcotics and poisonous substances. Capitalists do.
The state does NOT push women and children into prostitution Capitalists do.

(shall I go on?)

Haha and I suppose that the gun kills the man, not the person firing the gun, right?

[Klaatu]

Haha and I suppose that the gun kills the man, not the person firing the gun, right?

Much more efficiently so, yes.

[citizen of industry]

Colonel Goose Van Schaick's 1779 attack on the Onondagas in New York, and General John Sullivan's and Colonel Daniel Brodhead's 1779 campaigns against Iroquois in New York and Pennsylvania. Massacres. And they'd try to intimidate other tribes by going into one tribe, murdering and scalping everyone, nailing them to trees and shit, so when other tribes would come across the nastiness they would know not to mess with the continentals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_Expedition

the April 21, 1779 journal entry from 19 year old officer, Lt. Erkuries Beatty of the 4th Pennsylvania, who describes setting out from camp, probably around present day Cicero or North Syracuse:


21st. this morning set of about Day Break on the same line of march and went about 6 Miles when we halted, Capt. Graham with his Compy. was sent
forward as an advance party then proceeded on to the Onandaga lake about 8 Miles in length & 4 in Breath waded an arm of it about 4 foot deep and 200
yards wide and came to Onandaga creek, small but deep, had to cross it on a log.
Capt. Grahams Co Just as he had crossed the creek caught an Indian who was shooting Pidgeons & made him prisoner, And we got some Information from him, then proceeded on till we come within about one Mile of the Town when we Recd. word from Capt. Graham that he had caught one Squaw and killed one and had taken two or three Children and one White man and one or two made their escape and alarmed the town
The Col Immediately sent me forward to order him on as quick as possible and make as many prisoners as he could & he would support him with the main body. I overtook him at the first town and delivered my orders and he Immediately pushed on about two miles to the Next town where he made a small halt and took a great many prisoners, soon after Magor Cochran with Capt. Grays Compy. came up and ordered me to stay with the prisoners and their two Compys. to push on to the next town about one mile forward which they did and made more prisoners and killed some particularly a Negro who was their Dr. they then plundered the houses of the most valuable things and set fire to them and Returned to the middle town where I was.
Capt. Bleekers Compy. had come up by this time and left the main body at their first town we then collected all our prisoners plundered this town and sett fire to it then marched of to the main body which lay at the first town, we stayd there about 8 hours and killed some five horses and a Number of Hogs & plunderd their houses and set fire to them and Marched of about 4 o'clock in the same line of march as we came only the front changed and a Compy. to guard the prisrs. who was to march between they two Colums marched on about 2 Miles from the town down the Onand'ga creek when about 20 Indians who Lay concealed on the oppisite side of the Creek fird upon us, but the Rifle Men soon Dispersed them killing one of them, we then march'd on and crossd the Onandga Creek in two. places for fear the enemy should attack us but we met with no interruption, crossed the arm of the lake and encamped by the side of the lake about 8 Miles from the town-- We killed about 15 took 34 Prisoners, Burned about 30 or 40 Houses, took 2 stand of Coulors, and we had not one man killed or wounded--