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| The Regulators: A catalyst for the war of Independence? |
This committee drew up a bill of rights that included, "an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness of mankind; and therefore every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property."
Zinn, Peoples History of the US P 62.
" I fear New York will not assist us with good grace. but she may perhaps be ashamed to desert us; at least, if her merchants offer to sell us, her mechanics will forbid the auction." Revolutionary leader, Dr. Joseph Warren warning of the dangers of the New York merchants not holding to non-importation agreements and boycotts of English goods and looking to the working class, the mechanics, to defend the revolutionary cause. Foner: History of the Labor Movement in the US Vol 1 p.35
In the struggle between the colonial capitalist class and the rising working class for political influence in the developing nation state, one worker wrote: "Nothing can be more flagrantly wrong than the assertion of some of our mercantile Dons that the mechanics have no right to give their sentiments about the importation of British Commodities." Foner Vol 1 p 38
In 1770, the patriotic society of Philadelphia was formed to preserve, "our just rights and privileges to us and our Posterity against every attempt to violate and infringe same, either here or on the other side of the Atlantic". Foner, p 39 My added emphasis. Foner points out that the Philadelphia Patriotic Society changed its name to the Mechanics Association of Philadelphia and joined forces with the rural small farmers.
The governor of Georgia said of the committees that they "are parcel of the Lowest People, Chiefly carpenters, Shoemakers, Blacksmiths etc..."
Five revolutionary workers shot on Boston Commons, March 3 1770. Crispus Attucks, an escaped slave, Samuel Gray, a ropewalk worker, James Caldwell, seaman, Patrick Carr, artisan, Sam Maverick, joiner's apprentice.
"The period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resort, must decide the contest." Thomas Paine,
Common Sense.
Paine also wrote that independence from Britain would create in America, "an asylum for mankind" a "haven of refuge for the oppressed people's of the world"
"We don't want to be independent. We want no revolution" says one North Carolina merchant. (Foner p42
With the onset of war, profiteers went to work as their counterparts, the Cheney's and other profiteers have today. Of the merchants and manufacturers that were supplying the revolutionary army Washington wrote: "Speculators, various types of money makers and stock jobbers, were the murderers of our cause."
Abigail Adams wrote in 1776 that there was "as great cry against the merchants, against the monopolizers etc. who 'tis said have created a partial scarcity." Like today, the richest made more money and paid to send a substitute to fight.
"The American people have a revolutionary tradition which has been adopted by the best representatives of the American proletariat....that tradition is the war of liberation against the British in the eighteenth century and the Civil War in the nineteenth century." (Lenin, Col. works Vol 28 p69)
Comparing the Revolutionary war of Independence to previous wars Lenin wrote that the US war of independence was "one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which there have been so few compared to the vast number of wars of conquest."
"The American constitution, the first to recognize the rights of man, in the same breadth confirms the slavery of the colored races existing in America: class privileges are proscribed, race privileges sanctioned" Engels, Anti-Duhring.
"Brethren we conjure you...not to believe a word of what is being said about your interests and those of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in a nature of things, hostile and irreconcilable. Then do not look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come from ourselves. It is useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich."
1840's appeal from New England laborers to their fellows to abandon the idea that the employers/capitalists would solve working people's problems. Philip Foner History of the Labor Movement Vol. 1 p192
A warning to the capitalist class form James Madison.
"The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. (We can see that Marx read Madison)
Madison goes on:
"From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results.; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of society into different interests and parties.....
The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society, Those who are creditors and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests grow up of necessity in civilized nations and divide them in to different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principle tasks of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government." Federalist #10 Quoted in Beard: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States
Madison was the a huge landowner, the son of tobacco merchants from Virginia. When he talks of the the "lesser interests" he was talking of the property less masses and rising working class. When Madison wrote of the need for separate powers in order to protect the right of the individual from the majority, he was writing of individuals in his own class. We must remember that slaves, women, and the vast majority of men were not eligible to vote. In some centers where the working class was stronger, like Philadelphia, some workers without property could vote, needing only residence requirements. But Madison recognized the dangers ahead warning his class brethren about the rising working class when he wrote on the issue of the right to vote (suffrage):
"Viewing the subject in tits merits alone, the freeholders of the country would be the safest depositories of Republican liberty. In future times, a great majority of the people will not only be without landed but any other sort of property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation,; in which case, the rights of property and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands, or, which is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition; in which case there will be equal danger on another side."
The US constitution is the oldest written constitution in the world and was a great historical step forward. Although capitalists, landowners and slave owners (the score with the latter would be settled a hundred years later) led the revolution, wrote and framed the constitution, not to mention that they were pretty much the only people that voted on it; it advanced the interests of the working class historically. But we can see from Madison's writings above that he had a very clear grasp on the situation and sweeps aside all the nonsense we hear today about there being no classes in the US or that we are all "middle class".
It might be close to the truth to say that US society has become somewhat of a different "asylum" than Tom Paine expected it to be. But history is history; we can't go back but we can go forward. Madison's fear of the working classes is justified; he is in no way paranoid. In the century or more since the revolutionary war, the US working class has shaken the system severely in our struggle for control over our own destiny. From the great uprising in 1877, the battles in the coalfields, textile factories and agricultural communities of California to the wars in auto, steel and the revolution in the South in the 50's and 60's against apartheid and for equal rights.
I just thought I'd write something for today and it isn't something I though deeply about, just thoughts. But I will end with perhaps one of the more revolutionary statements from those who fought for a Republic and against an imperial power. The Declaration of Independence is probably the more radical document and they don't generally promote one particular aspect of it. It says with regards to what it describes as "inalienable rights", those rights being "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
The declaration adds that in the event of a "long train of abuses and usurpation's, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security"
Aren't we there yet?
1 comment:
Good history lesson, Richard. Lots of sources. Madison seemed to foresee the advent of urbanism and a property-less majority. My strong impression about those times has to do with a phrase "Jack of office". How a well connected person became an officer in the royal navy while the average bloke was kidnapped and made to serve as a seaman. That sort of thing happened everyday walking down a street in a port city.
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