Socialist Progressives
Related: About this forumNot Our Independence Day
Not Our Independence Day
by William Hogeland 7-4-15
The American Revolution is celebrated by many as liberal democracys inaugural triumph, a conflict that, in Lincolns words, brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. This romantic narrative of the revolution still enjoys tremendous political currency, as the Right continues to deploy the memory of the Revolutionary War in the service of its agendas, from Tea Party tax paranoia to accusations of bureaucratic tyranny.
More than anything, the American Revolution is celebrated as confirmation of American exceptionalism a moral, political, and military victory so absolute that it justifies (and indeed mandates) two hundred years of American expansion across the globe.
On the Left, as well, there is the temptation to claim the tradition of the American Revolution; the story of beleaguered colonists standing firm against the British monarchys economic tyranny makes for a convenient political allegory.
Even Eugene V. Debs saw in the Revolution something of a historical precedent for the socialist transformation he envisioned when he said in 1912, I like the Fourth of July. It breathes the spirit of revolution. Today we affirm the ultimate triumph of Socialism.
But the actual politics of the American Revolution are too often obscured by these kinds of self-serving reinterpretations, argues author William Hogeland. The American Revolution was not a noble war fought in the service of progressive democracy, destined to irrigate the entire planet with its ideology of inalienable freedoms. Nor was it a social revolution from below. Rather, it was the first chapter in an inter-imperial war between Great Britain and its dissident elites in North America. And the American state, even in its earliest incarnations, was more concerned with limiting popular democracy than securing and expanding it ...
More here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/hogeland-independence-day-american-revolution-socialist/
HassleCat
(6,409 posts)Sure, the real motives did not match the flowery rhetoric and exposition of Enlightenment thinking, but rebellions are messy things. We came out of it with this great constitution, even if we don't always respect it enough.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)WDIM
(1,662 posts)Multi-national corporations. The East Indian company was using its influence through the king of England to attempt to control trade in the colonies. When they threw out the tea in Boston they were refusing being ruled by a multi-national.
Response to WDIM (Reply #3)
TBF This message was self-deleted by its author.