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Exactly so. I haven't weighed in on this because I find the idea that a bourgeois revolution would be shaped by the bourgeoisie is not very brilliant. Or that the slaveholders were, in fact, as bourgeois as any other cog in the productive machinery of the mercantile economy. So, yes, the slaveholders obviously had their self-interest behind the revolution, but the notion that the crowned power which introduced slavery into North America was progressive in any historical sense would have surprised much of Africa a century later when Cecil Rhodes and that lot moved into the interior. Then, too, the self-interest of the indebted cash poor slaveholders of 1776 wasn't the same as that of the later cotton planters, who rode high thanks to the profits earned through trade with their business partners--Britain. Nor did an interest in slaveholding--or even its acceptance--enjoy anything like hegemony within the revolutionary coalition. The generation of the American Revolution ended slavery in half the former colonies and one of its first acts banned slavery forever form the Northwest Territory. It is certainly not as simple as has been presented here. Beyond the flawed and simplistic assertions, I frankly don't what to make of Gerald Horne. He writes for _Political Affairs_ but also contributed a remarkable piece on Obama and the Communist Party in the hyperconservative _American Thinker_. Alongside the anti-Communist nostalgic Cold Warrior intelligence community propagandaists, Horne's piece is full of much of the simplistic and simple-minded references to Moscow gold, "front" groups, and the description of Communist interest in African Americans as rooted in the notion that they "were more likely to serve Soviet interests." http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/what_barack_obama_learned_from.html. As an aside, if people want to talk about a rather clear cut reactionary dimension of the American Revolution that was almost never challenged within the revolutionary coalition, it'd make more sense to look at its treatment of native peoples. Indeed, you can talk about the underlying tensions behind the American Revolution as the British agreement with the Indians not to permit white settlement beyond the Proclamation Line of 1763. That, however, is a different matter than slavery. ML ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
