apparently, aocia claimed american war of independence was against rich people
*found it https://nitter.net/MarcoFoster_/status/2053273753401143399
AOC: “America was founded in revolt of British aristocracy. The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time. It’s actually the most American thing in the world for us to be fighting for the working class. It’s actually patently un-American to transform our country into a place of kings and landed gentry”
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It was against rich people, it just so happened the revolutionary side was also headed by rich people who wanted more land for themselves.
but was it tho? it was against the state, which rich people got expropriated money/land/slaves in the war?
one group of colonial rich people vs aristocratic rich people on a bog island, nothing to celebrate really
It was the rich people mad that the extremely rich people weren’t letting them become extremely rich
That isn’t true either though. The motivations were war taxes levied as a response to a war they started, being unable to compete with British tea exports, and the potential enforcement of British laws like “Don’t fucking invade another country without asking you fucking numbskull”. American rich people were not kept down or prevented from competing or in any way inconvenienced. They still paid less tax than the British did and still had access to free land they stole.
Really it’s an object lesson that the bourgeoisie will never be happy
Don’t forget the crown setting limits on westward genocidal expansion (casue it cost money to defend the settlers for little gain).
I’m speaking vaguely but I’m just saying the fabulously wealthy King wouldnt let the overstuffed rich colonial aristocrats suck up quite as much gold and real estate as they wanted. That doesn’t imply that they were behind the rest of the British empire, just behind one guy
Hamilton has done irreparable harm to the minds of the USAan people
In this house we believe that 1776 was a counterrevolution
:horne-shining:
It’s actually patently un-American to transform our country into a place of kings and landed gentry”
But the local landed gentry are exactly the ones who revolted against the king though. ☝️ 🤓
Anyways, my main joke is she could be the headliner of CPUSA and ACP with that kind of rhetoric
TBF I think AOC meant “billionaires of the time” to mean the ruling class of the era, not literal billionaires. Whether or not that “lineage” connects to a future socialism in America, I’ll leave that up to future historians.
That being said, arguing that this has anything to do with “wokeness” is kind of cringe. Like, saying that gives way more weight to the right wing antiwoke culture war than AOC’s superficial rhetoric.
It was a revolution driven by the richest landowners on the continent because too much of their wealth was being taxed to the crown and they wanted to do the taxing instead. It was against the aristocracy, by the bourgeoisie. Even if she’s technically less wrong she’s still extremely wrong in spirit.
In an absolute sense, yes the American Revolution was by and for the bourgeoisie. I highly doubt any of the Founding Fathers would be on board with socialism (Thomas Paine, maybe).
That being said, the typical American sees the Founding Fathers as plucky rebels against the stodgy old white dude(s) in charge and they project whatever politics they want onto them. So politicians of all stripes play the “tortured analogy for their politics being the continuation of the Founding Fathers” game. I’m not defending AOC as a whole here, no “hiding her power levels” argument. I just don’t think there’s a deeper meaning here, it’s just vacuous blathering.
Whether or not that “lineage” connects to a future socialism in America, I’ll leave that up to future historians.
I mean, the best I can come up with is that American Independence exacerbated, and failed to resolve, the contradictions of chattel slavery, which ich led to the Civil War, and Reconstruction. And I think, despite their shortcomings, did represent genuine social Revolution, and a has a lineage that American Socialists ought to claim.
But claiming the American War of Independence, in a vacuum, just… Does not make sense, when you look at the class composition of the people who led it.
To try and steel man the argument, there definitely were popular sentiments in support of Independence from the nascent working class, slaves, etc. They burned down the homes of British officials for reasons beyond just bourgeois whining about taxes.
The Boston Massacre was a massacre of working-class sailors. The first of which to die, Crispus Attucks, was a runaway slave.
And that’s not to mention all of the concurrent slave revolts, and some of the proto-radical ideas but forward by Thomas Paine.
So there’s not nothing there for modern Socialists to look at. But taking the standard American history narrative, which ignores the fact the the energy of the lower classes was utterly captured or put down by the ‘founding fathers’, just ain’t it.
Also all the killing of indigenous peoples that it eventually helped facilitate is hard to ignore
It’s so irritating to watch the hogs win and cry about it in real time because their victory isn’t sufficiently hoggish so they don’t realize they won. Their endless persecution complex getting endlessly rewarded and we just watch it in real time.
Profoundly alienating experience
It was a war between the interest of different types of rich people, so it was against some rich people.
When liberals say “No Kings,” they mean it literally. They are anti-monarchist. Except for the monarchies they support around the world. Those are fine.
It was started as a working-class uprising in 1775, with riots in many cities. The Continental Congress was formed by the bourgeoisie to co-opt the revolutionary fervor.
Shays rebellion might be cast in that light, but independence war was kinda bougie/landed gentry from the jump, no?
Like land speculation was rampant for all the involved *(and there was a lot of fomenting involved)
*but honestly never was very interested in american independence war, aside from half remembered revolutions podcast, so i might be very wrong
Leopold Trebitch is a good source on this, I caught one of his book tours.
As soon as the frontier “closed”, the social pressures started to creep back in. It makes sense that after more than a century of colonial development, a population of free Africans, “later” immigrants in cities, and others that could not secure land came to constitute a minority underclass that had the ability to pull off minor revolts.
“No taxation without representation in which issues?” Is a fun question to ask people who think the american revolution was good
I know nothing. What were the issues?
If I’m remembering correctly endless wars the British were waging to grow or continue the empire (ie protection against French).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act_1765
Which is extra funny now as that’s about the only thing Americans are fine paying taxes for now, the bloated military.
Slavery was a major contributing factor
Yeah, it was against the rich ruling class (monarchy & co), but it was to get some of that wealth generating production factors under new management bcs the time was opportune to actually successfully fight for independence from the empire.
What “Wealth generating production factors” were even transferred to new management? I’m sure there were some land transfers from loyalists to patriots, but not enough for that to be the motivation. I think people here are gonna have to reckon with the fact that there was a sincere wish for a government run by and for Americans as opposed to the British, rather than it being just greed. If only because these people were already filthy rich and did not pay their taxes.
Wdm…? All of them.
Large plantations & established trade routes/businesses, slaves & their labour, the untaxed land & it’s natural resources (now paywalled to the British & co), the war industry was just being going, etc.Basically everything that gave the colonies so much power that it could literally rival the British empire - and everything that was the reason why the USA had such a high GDP growth after.
What more could there even have been?I think people here are gonna have to reckon with the fact that there was a sincere wish for a government run by and for Americans as opposed to the British, rather than it being just greed.
All the colonies at all times want more local autonomy (even now under USA empire).
And at what time were the USA politics not governed by greed?
And how much did the British crown affect the average settler (not the wealthy)? They didn’t do much outside their local village/municipality.… it’s the rich folk that didn’t want to have bosses that can affect their wealth & power at any point.
The idea that the people wanted to vote in a complicated & not that democratic system is just propaganda to not follow the money & clearly see who had the financial motives.
Same as the land grabs afterwards.
Large plantations & established trade routes/businesses, slaves & their labour, the untaxed land & it’s natural resources
They already had that. The only thing they were barred from after the French and Indian wars was doing unsupervised landgrabs westward. I mean they actually lost access to trade as a result of their war, which was also part of the plan (American traders could not compete with Indian tea)
And how much did the British crown affect the average settler (not the wealthy)? They didn’t do much outside their local village/municipality.
That is if anything a point in the favor of what I’m saying. The Americans could not solely be interested in lucre, because they were already in an extremely advantageous position.
In this I would recommend “The Many Headed Hydra” as to the ground-up analysis of working class discontent going into the American War of Independence (really it talks about the development of the working class of the Atlantic Basin from the 1600s to the late 1700s, but the end cap there is the Age of Revolutions). I read it some years ago, but as I recall, the urban poor that made up part of the revolutionary armies were marshalled into service by the local bourgeoisie and slaver aristocrats after simmering discontent against Imperial authority had been building for centuries of indentured service, press ganging, work houses, enclosure of the commons, and other things I’m forgetting rn. The yoeman farmers who took up the patriot cause had their own materialistic reasons for revolting (namely, cheap land they could steal from the natives), as did the Loyalist farmers (tired of getting raided by aforementioned natives).
So, like, rebellion had been happening intermittently for a long time, it just took some young, plucky, genocidal fuckers to channel that working class anger into a focused attack on the British Crown.
The only thing they were barred from after the French and Indian wars was doing unsupervised landgrabs westward
this was a very big deal to the yankees, mostly the ruling class but also poorer folks looking for cheap/free land. the other outrageous part of the quebec act was it pre-empted the expropriation of quebecois land, something else the 13 colonies had expected after fighting the 7 years war. and while yankees temporarily lost access to (part) of atlantic trade during the war, the end result was that british interests were squeezed out of US ports–good deal for new england. settler-colonialism produces outrageously, irrationally entitled ideology. look at israel if you want a sense of how yankee colonials could feel slighted and keep pushing no matter how much free land and resources they heaped together
Who is this Edgar Momentum guy and what is his deal? I feel like he’s been a guest on some podcast or something. I can’t tell if he’s being ironic here or not.
discount nate bronze orbiting chapo (also
literally highschoolervery young)I follow him but I only fully understand maybe 15% of his posts, between the deadpan and the often incredibly obscure references to American political lore.
He’s another future attempted Trump assassin.
Read a fucking book Jesus
Is it really?
I don’t there was ever really a risk of anyone speaking against the founding “revolution” of the country running for any serious office here, even at “peak woke” (whenever the fuck that was). Anti-Woke hasn’t really affected that.
Yeah, I didn’t understand what they meant by that. The follow up tweet clarifies the position a little more;
This is a full-on white flag waving unconditional surrender for the entire effort to re-conceptualize America and American history that wokeness was all about
but Ill be honest, I never saw much push back against US civic mythology. Let alone a re-conceptualization of our history. I guess the 1619 project? But even that (as best I understand it) kinda centered the English controlled/speaking colonies. Any project that treats the histories of South and Central America as different from the US and Canada is kinda doomed to failure. Can’t do a paradigm shift while staying inside the prescribed box.
