A Materialist Analysis of US History: the American Revolution
Written by Abe Schechinger
When I learned that Marx held the American revolution in high regard, I was astounded. As an American boy, I was taught to hate those dirty, no good communists. And as a Marxist, I saw the United States as the greatest enemy to global socialism and liberation on the planet. How was it possible that 300 years ago, Marx was espousing the virtues of a nation that in my time would have nearly zero politicians left of center? This is the power of American mythology. We are all familiar with the phrase “History is written by the victors.” However, there is an equally important concept when speaking of the nation you live in: Victory is decided by the historians. This is what makes the American myth so powerful. When the US wins, that’s a war for the history books: Overthrowing the Tyrant King, Conquering the West from the Savages, Triumph over the Nazis, Stopping the spread of Communism. When the US loses, or rather doesn’t win, it’s easily explained away or forgotten entirely: the forgotten war in Korea, betrayal in Vietnam, or (the story of every war in my lifetime) “Islam is incompatible with Western Values™”.
Every American knows the story of our independence, yet that is all we know: the story. Whether you learned it from your middle school teacher, Liberty’s Kids, or Hamilton on Broadway the story beats are always the same. The colonists are maligned by the crown, and fight a war to liberate themselves, much in the way of the modern concept of a right to self determination. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson among others serve as our protagonists, against nameless, faceless bootlickers of King George, our principal antagonist. The real history of the revolution of 1776 is closer to that of a business deal gone sour than a nation rising against a tyrant.
There are many questions most people do not ask, and the education system certainly will not answer. What were the material differences between British, French and Spanish colonies? Why were the 13 original colonies the first to throw off their European masters? How can Jefferson write “all men are created equal” and continue to uphold slavery? Were the patriots a popular movement, as in representative of the population?
To answer these, we must consider how British colonialism was structured across the world, and what made it unique. When the Spanish expedition arrived in the new world in 1492, it set off a centuries long conflict between European governments, the native indigenous peoples, and European immigrants.
In the territories claimed by Spain, this conflict manifested as a strict, feudalistic class system, placing the natives at the bottom, and the European-born at the top. Spain acted as a conquering force, taking over pre-existing kingdoms like the Inca and Aztec. The men Isabella and Ferdinand sent across the Atlantic, called Conquistadors, were 2nd or 3rd sons of nobility in search of treasures and lands greater than that of their sub-par inheritances. Theocratic classist dynamics brought by the Spanish already existed within the cultures they colonized. As they conquered these nations, the people were evangelized and integrated into colonial society. This caste system was harsh and complex. A son born to a Spanish mother and father would be of a lower class if he was born in Mexico city instead of Madrid. Many in Latin America still self-identify as mestizo, a caste from the colonial system that refers to people of mixed spanish and native heritage. What made this caste system so pervasive at every level was Catholicism. It gave religious validity to the king of Spain, who passed royal validity to the nobility, each class justifying the existence of one below it. The aristocracy was recreated in the new world, equally unchallengeable as it was in Europe. So much so, after the fall of the Spanish royal family under Napoleon, the new spain aristocratic class made efforts to re-install monarchy with several European royals. This widespread religious authority was not present in the British colonies because the colonists and Britain contained many branches of christianity as Henry the 8th had broken away from the pope to form the Church of England.
Another deterrent of revolution England did not employ was in use by the French. Engels writes of the French monarchy in his introduction to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “France is the country where, more than anywhere else, the historical class struggles … have been stamped in the sharpest outlines. The centre of feudalism in the Middle Ages, the model country, since the Renaissance, of a unified monarchy” This shaped the French expansion into the Americas, in ways that can still be seen today. Despite several revolutions at home, France retains many of its overseas territories. Territories such as French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Reunion have been “fully integrated” into France, to the point soccer teams from these overseas territories can compete and hold home games in the Coupe de France. The territory France has lost, save Haiti, were spoils of wars with other European powers, or sold to finance these European wars. The answer to why these territories were easily kept or given away, again with the exception of Haiti which hangs as an asterisk over everything raised in this passage, lies in what purpose the French territory had. Notice that I have not used the word colonies, instead opting to call them French territories. The territories in North America did not serve as colonies, instead as natural resource banks, claimed by France for exclusive access but in many ways not controlled by France, simply temporarily inhabited by French fur traders. The indigenous population in North America, was not fully assimilated, or fully exterminated under French rule like it was with the British. Nor were there sizable populations of settlers who could revolt themselves. During the Seven Years’ War, the British on the continent outnumbered the French 20 to 1. However, nearly all indigenous nations allied themselves with the French. Crucially, France saw the First Nations as independent and sovereign nations to have allyship and trade with. Military action in the French territories simply could not be a revolution anywhere but Haiti, which was populous, subject to French governance, and oppressed.
Having established why neither Spanish nor French America was possessed of a revolutionary spirit, we move to understand why British America was. Britain has remained more feudalistic than most of Europe. They did not remove the last of the hereditary positions in parliament until 2026. In the years of the British empire, this feudalism mixed with nascent capitalism, causing the de facto government of business enterprise across the globe. The most well known example of this is the East India trading company, which was one among many like the English Levant Company and the Muscovy company. The East India Company held more power and territory than many nations. These companies were given some autonomy to maximise profit, and thus the king’s share. While less powerful, the 13 colonies of British America functioned with similar levels of autonomy. The lower classes of British America were not oppressed by the crown, but by the colonial government insomuch as it existed. However, the colonial government was not the ultimate power in every colony.
In southern colonies like Georgia and the Carolinas, the plantations rivaled the colonial governments. They possessed their own rulers, militias, police, and workers in the form of African slaves. The only role of the official state was to determine the trade relations between the slave owners and other regional powers like Indian tribes, French traders, and British merchants. Unlike the common man, who desired the restrictions on westward expansion lifted, the southern colonies needed these rules to maintain the hegemony of their plantations. The South was inclined to throw off the already weak hold of the crown for another reason. With independence they would gain unrestricted trade with other nations of the world. Most free workers were agnostic to this revolution as the slave-holding class would remain the ultimate power in their lives no matter what nation officially ruled them.
At this time in Europe, the two largest social classes were the proletariat and the peasantry. In the South, there was a limited proletariat, although we might call them professional managerial class today, and the peasantry was replaced with large slave populations imported from Africa. In the North, the classes were dissolved even further, to the point that many did not see any class difference between rich and poor. As Marxists, we know of the inherent contradictions in capitalism, of which there are many, but I draw to your attention this oft cited contradiction: The Growth Imperative. This idea that infinite growth is not possible on a finite world is what drives many of society’s richest capitalists of today to found private space companies, where they may make the world effectively infinite (Elon Musk and SpaceX, Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin, Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic). Following Columbus’s voyage in 1492, the paradox was solved temporarily. For several centuries, there was an infinite amount of resources to be found farther west. (It is important to remember that indigenous peoples lived across the continent, and this is not a land without a people, but the settlers of the time introduced a logic of extraction that made way for this seeming “infinite expansion”). It was this period in which the North and West parts of British America took shape. This infinite, fertile land to the west placed an absolute minimum on the class position a settler would accept. Why would a settler, who has left Britain not for an easier life but to escape control, accept working as a proletarian for the bourgeois class? The simple answer, he wouldn’t. This sentiment was so strong among American settlers, it was used to justify slavery. It was considered human nature to work for oneself, and since the African Americans worked for their masters, willingly or not, this made them sub-human, not possessed of human will. In New England, where the major cities of the new world resided, this transformed citizens who would have been the proletarians in Europe into the petty bourgeois. Every man was his own boss; if not, he could simply run west, claim land and begin farming, hunting and fur trapping. These petty bourgeois could range in wealth greatly, but did not become a big bourgeois class like that of Europe because there was minimal labour for them to exploit apart from slaves and indentured servants. Another dominant class in the North were the merchants, who had profited greatly from shipping the bounty of the new world back to the English bourgeoisie. The richest of these two classes would be the second constituent group of the revolution.
The Ohio river valley was a lawless country. It was populated by roving bandits, farmer-settlers, and the bottom classes of society driven out from the east to forge a better life for themselves. With the territory so vast, and partly claimed by France, there was little governing attempted by the British or their proxies, and even less accomplished. This group is an important part of American history, and will shape the expansion during the westward expansion of manifest destiny but during the revolution they were largely inconsequential, despite nominally supporting rebellion. It was of little import to a self-sufficient farmer on the frontier whose government claimed the right to tax him if these taxes could not be enforced.
It is under these economic conditions that the American Revolutionary War takes place. It is at this time our myth begins. Following the French and Indian War, the colonies had established their own standing armies, the first fracture in our story. We are regaled with tales of the minutemen, citizen soldiers who could be ready to face the British at a moment’s notice. While these men did exist, they were not the instigators of the war. Many fought not for the idealist cause, but for material reasons: they knew if this revolution won, the wealthy loyalists would have their wealth redistributed, and surely some would fall to the poor man. Along with the mercantile officers and the peasantry, the slave class was used to bolster forces. George Washington, like his eventual successor Abraham Lincoln, was not an abolitionist. Rather, he employed an offer of freedom to those slaves willing to fight for the patriots to serve a need for more men. This need for more soldiers exposes another hole in our story: This was not a popular revolution. In the wealthy classes, the patriots represented a loud, powerful minority. Among the working people, the revolution was limited. Officers in Washington’s continental army worked to maintain control and prevent the masses from hijacking the revolution for themselves. Another notable problem with offering freedom to the slaves in exchange for joining the army: it was conditional. At the same time that many founding fathers, most notably Thomas Jefferson, were writing abolitionist essays, they also owned slaves themselves. You may ask why they would act in such ways that contradicted their beliefs, and it is the same reason the modern politician does. Under capitalism, profit dominated decision making.
While this revolution was not socialist in nature, it was a step towards liberty and the necessary conditions for socialism. It brought the first independent, globally recognized, non-indigenous nation to the new world. It struck fear into the aristocracy everywhere, as it moved past hereditary or militarily taken power to a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” despite the people here being a subset of white land owning men. To quote Fredrich Engels once more “The American War of Independence sounded the tocsin for the European middle class.” Soon after, France had a republican revolution, and Haiti a slave revolt. This was the beginning of the end for the Monarchic capitalism of yesteryear, and the beginning of the Liberal capitalism of today, and one step closer to the communist society of tomorrow.
One of the many contradictions in modern US culture is how mythologized our wars are. The socialist system of public education in our country has been perverted to create great mythologies of historical conditions and events. As Marxists, we can be expected to derive the causes of conflict from the material conditions of the people, but the same can not be said of elementary school children. While the US government accuses any popular oppositional country of “brainwashing” the people, at home the sinister practice is referred to simply as history class. In school, students spend large swaths of multiple years on just the Revolutionary War. Despite this, students are discouraged from exploring more perspectives, instead simply repeating the same origin story like rereading a favorite book. This is the first of many wars in American mythology where material conditions are ignored in favor of ideological battles that are never as clear cut as school painted them to be.
Eventually, the United States becomes a powerful counter revolutionary nation despite its own origin. It often reverts back to its colonial styles of government and business merging. Political dynasties rivaling those of kings rise and fall (looking at you RFK jr.). It becomes the sole superpower on the globe, shapes the world to its whims, and becomes so paranoid it cannot even tolerate the presence of social democrats looking to placate the masses. Since the infamous golden escalator incident, the number of Americans who view the US as an imperialist and often negative force has skyrocketed. However, most of us have not deconstructed our history, and many still believe in returning to a mythical golden age. I hate to break it to you Mayor Mamdani, the New Deal era is not some city on the hill to aspire to, it was the calculated minimum capitulation leftward to prevent real socialist revolution.
This is the first in a series of articles I will be writing, covering the history of America from a dialectical materialist perspective. By the end, we will see the continuous thread of profiteering from the establishment of the colonies to the war in Iran. Hopefully, by the end of this series everyone will see the fork in the path between ‘progressive’ Democrats who wish to go back to FDR, and the rising tide of Socialists pushing for a real revolution.