Marxists
see history is a series of disguised class struggles. Evidence of
this is can be found in the story of America’s independence where
its landed elite saw in the new government and constitution a
protection against
democracy
and a means of safeguarding their privilege despite pretensions of
being 'enlightened' by sweeping aside the king and his aristocrats.
The
American colonists fought to separate from Britain yet the War of
Independence was not merely about 'home rule' but also about who
should rule at home. The new republic was never designed to be
anything other than an oligarchic state which we see today. The War
of Independence did not establish a truly democratic government, nor
significantly change the structure of American society. It reinforced
class division.
Alexander
Hamilton, presently subject to a hit musical, at the Constitutional
Convention said:
'All
communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first
are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. … The
people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine
right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share
in the government.'
The
War of Independence may have advocated the abstract principles that
'all men are created equal' and that power is derived from 'the will
of the people' but the definition of 'the people' excluded women,
non-landowners, and slaves. The signatories of the Declaration of
Independence were the land and property owners intent on building a
system of government based on the division of power that would guard
against what they saw as the excesses of democracy – 'mobocracy'.
The colonial 'country gentlemen' were afraid that, as they were not
themselves in the majority, the less well-off would vote to take away
their property and arrangements.
Having
two different houses of Congress, a Senate and a House of
Representatives, places an obvious obstacle in the way of simple
majority rule. There are 435 Representatives and 100 Senators. 51
Senators can block the majority rule. Moreover, Senators are elected
for six years while Representatives are elected for two. The
electoral college to elect the president operates intentionally in
opposition to majority rule in this same way. In a system of electing
the President by mere simple majority, a candidate or party could win
by appealing to 51 percent of the voters. The electoral college,
however, serves as a partial safeguard against those who might be
able to find and win over a majority. The national popular vote is
not the basis for electing a President, it is delegates elected
locally (Clinton received almost 3 million votes more than Trump yet
he won by achieving 306 delegates out of the 538 available in the
electoral college that chooses the President.)
Those
so-called American supporters of 'liberty' did not abolish slavery
and continued to permit slavery to flourish. At the time of America’s
founding, a full 20 percent of the US population was enslaved. By
1776, the number of slaves in the colonies had reached 500,000.
Slavery in 18th
century America was not confined to the South and could be found in
each of the 13 colonies, and was especially numerous in New Jersey
and in New York's Hudson River Valley. The slave-owning class from
the South insisted as a condition of their participation in the Union
that their interests be protected in the very fabric of the
Constitution itself.
Consequently,
the slaveholders would control the presidency of the new republic for
41 of its first 50
years, and 18 of 31 Supreme Court justices would
be slaveholders. Slaves gained their freedom by entering the British
army. This was especially true in Georgia, where over 10,000 slaves
flocked to freedom behind British lines, one of the largest mass
escapes in the history of American slavery. Eventually, more than
65,000 from across the South joined them. Wherever the British
marched, slaves followed. Non-slave states now stood obligated to
defend slave states against slave rebellion.
Nevertheless,
there was also the revolutionary side of the American War of
Independence as in all class struggles. There were a number of
radicals seeking what the now household names of 'revolutionary'
leaders feared and who are now relegated to footnotes in scholarly
textbooks. Soon after the War of Independence there grew among the
common people the feeling that the revolution against the British had
been fought for nothing and there were popular uprisings such as
Shays’ Rebellion (1787), put down by a mercenary army paid for by
the well-to-do who feared a threat to their property rights, and the
Whisky Rebellion (1791) was similarly suppressed by the wealthy.
ALJO
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