This year, as every year, I plan to light off fireworks and take part in
a family cook out with my family.
I do like to remind people that there are a
few good things about the US
revolution, as well as some not-so-good things. We are talking about a
revolution that concluded with the Declaration of Independence
on July 4, 1776, by the Continental Congress declaring that the
thirteen American colonies were to become an independent nation.
The most important thing about
the US
revolution was that it served as a turning point from Feudalism to capitalism,
according to the Marxisttheory of historical materialism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels claimed to have identified five
successive stages of the development of material conditions in Western Europe .[1] One of the shifts that Marx and Engels believed was
important in his stages of human economic and political development: From
feudalism to capitalism, from capitalism to socialism.
Of our founding fathers, the
Republicans (anti-aristocrats at that time) included both Thomas Paine and
Thomas Jefferson. They differed from George Hamilton and his Federalists who
wanted to create some kind of aristocracy. In his later writings, Paine condemned
the Federalists for trying to reverse the US revolution and what it stood
for.
I’ve
often enjoyed reading Jefferson . His best
writings were from his letters where he could write honestly about the people
he had to deal with in the late 1700s, both before and after his presidency.
There are many Marxists who hate the idea of “liking Jefferson "
for any reason, because he was a racist and some conservatives still take his
capitalist ideas seriously today. I like the fact that he was not religious; he
had an almost Epicurean
view, as did Paine.
Jefferson was well educated.
I’ll
never forget what he wrote comparing Hamilton
to John Adams in his letters:
“Another incident took place on the same occasion, which
will further delineate Mr. Hamilton’s political principles. The room being hung
around with a collection of the portraits of remarkable men, among them where
those of (Francis) Bacon, (Isaac) Newton
and (John) Locke, Hamilton asked me who they were. I told him
they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever produced,
naming them. He paused for some time: “the greatest man,” said he, “that ever
lived, was Julius Caesar.” Mr. Adams was honest as a politician, as well as a
man; Hamilton honest a man, but, as a politician, believing in the necessity of
either force or corruption to govern men.”[2]
I
would have drawn about the same conclusion about Hamilton , accept I would have been harsher on
him. He seemed a bit of a dolt, to believe the Caesar was the greatest man who
ever lived. Caesar was a tyrant and an imperialist. He had some good qualities,
but comparing Jefferson’s favorites to Hamilton ’s
was like comparing a Harley Davidson Sportster to a tricycle. Hamilton
was clueless as a revolutionary. I don’t share Jefferson ’s
enthusiasm for all of those theoreticians, but at least they are people with
theoretical modern ideas for their time and scientific views as opposed to a
political brute.
As
for the judgment of Jefferson based on his
1700s writings, I can point to the writings of Antonio Gramsci in his
writings on “Judgment of Past Philosophies;”
“The superficial criticism of subjectivism in the
“Popular Study” leads into a more general question, that of the standpoint
taken regarding past philosophies and philosophers. To judge the whole
philosophical past as madness and folly is not only an anti-historical error,
since it contains the anachronistic pretence that in the past they should have
thought like today, but it is a truly genuine hangover of metaphysics, since it
supposes a dogmatic thought valid at all times and in all countries, by whose
standard one should judge all the past. Anti-historical method is nothing but
metaphysics. The fact that philosophical systems have been suspended does not
exclude the fact that they were historically valid and carried out a necessary
function:
Their short-livedness should be considered from the point
of view of the entire historical development and of the real dialectic; that
they deserved to perish is neither a moral judgment nor sound thinking emerging
from an “objective” point of view, but a dialectical-historical judgment. One
can compare this with Engels’ presentation of the Hegelian proposition that
“all that is rational is real and all that is real is rational”, a proposition
which will be valid for the past as well.
In the Study the past is judged as “irrational” and
“monstrous” and the history of philosophy becomes the historical treatment of
teratology, since he starts from a metaphysical point of view. (In fact the
Communist Manifesto contains the highest praise of the dying world.) If this
way of judging the past is a theoretical error and a deviation from Marxism,
can it have any educational significance, will it generate activity? It does
not appear so, because the question would reduce itself to presuming that one
is a special person simply because one was born in the present time and not in
a past century. But at every time there has been a past and a present and being
“up to date” is praise only for jokes.”[3]
Gramsci
also had examples of past writers who influenced modern history:
“It appears that in Giordano Bruno, for example, there
are many examples of such a new conception; Marx and Engels knew about Bruno.
They knew about him and there remain traces of Bruno’s works in their notes.
Conversely, Bruno was not without influence on classical German philosophy,
etc.”[4]
Paine went to France to take part in the French Revolution,
for which he wrote The Rights of Man.
He fell out of favor of France ’s
first non-aristocratic leader, Maximilien Robespierre (also anti-aristocratic
and considered an ally of the Republican movement). Paine remained in France until 1802, when he returned to America on an
invitation from Thomas Jefferson,
after he was elected president.
Pain condemned Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d' état, overthrowing the French Directory, calling him "the completest charlatan that ever existed."
Pain condemned Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d' état, overthrowing the French Directory, calling him "the completest charlatan that ever existed."
Now fast forward almost 230
years and there is only a skeleton of the original revolution. The now, not-so-young
country, United States of America ,
has condemned most attempts at modern revolutions in India ,
Philippines , Nepal , Turkey ,
Kurdistan and Peru .
In the past 30 or so years, such progressive revolutions as the Sandinistas
against the dictator Anastasio
"Tacho" Somoza
was under attach by US leadership, under the reactionary president; Ronald
Reagan. The US supports
regressive feudal states such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain . The US is now the closest thing to the ancient
Roman Empire , controlling almost ALL of the
modern world.
Today our country has just a skeleton left of what was a quasi democracy (actually an oligarchy). We have a president, barely elected by people. Today this country takes part in torture, drone assassinations and concentration camps, inGuantanamo Bay .
Today our country has just a skeleton left of what was a quasi democracy (actually an oligarchy). We have a president, barely elected by people. Today this country takes part in torture, drone assassinations and concentration camps, in
So there was
some good that came out of the US Revolution, even if that revolution has far
less modern significance than it had 200 years ago. But after 200 years our
revolution morphed into brutal stagnation. It’s
time for the next move—a new revolution from capitalism to socialism.
-សតិវ អតុ
Tracy
Chapman - Talkin' bout a Revolution
[1] Those stages are primitive communism, slave society,
feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism. For more information click here to see more details at Wikipedia.
[3] Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince & other writings, (International Publishers)
2000, pp. 109-110.
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