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The America Revolution of 1776 was revolutionary, ushering in a whole new epoch of national liberation. Liberation is from whom, if not imperialism as military garrisons, economic and political relations designed to benefit the imperial power and reduce the non-imperial citizens to a status of second class citizenship? The Boston Massacre as a bookmark of the First American Revolution exploded over working men seeking employment and fights over British soldiers receiving preferential hiring. National liberation arises on the basis of the bourgeois property relation. This however does not say enough. The entire historical-social process of national liberation, begun in America, went on for another two hundred years. The Vietnamese Revolution closes out this juncture of history - more than less, with the capture of Saigon in April 1975 and the reunification of their country a year later. The Revolution of 1776 was a new thing in history. Unlike Europe, America was capitalist from its inception. The total destruction of the Native American communal life left no feudal or communal hangovers. There was a large and widespread class of small producers. Most importantly, from time to time, as much as one-quarter of the toilers were slaves. America was a colony, meaning it was owned by England and its purpose was to ship goods and resources back to the mother country. For the first time, a revolution for national liberation - against imperialism, was also bound up with revolution against feudal political restrains. To say that the revolution of 1776 was a national liberation movement or as it is called a democratic revolution or bourgeois democratic revolution is not enough. The American Revolution was an agrarian bourgeois revolution, in which the Slave Oligarchy also had a material interest in liberation from England. It is interesting to note that the paramount leader of the revolution, George Washington was the biggest slave holder and the richest man in America. When the Civil War began - 1861, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate states of America was the biggest slave holder and one of the richest men in America. This is interesting to note because the formation of the Confederate States of America, was a reactionary movement for self determination (national liberation), to preserve the political authority of an old ruling class and slavery. Was the American Revolution revolutionary? Yes. Was it progressive? Yes. Was the formation of the CSA revolutionary or progressive? No. National movements need be assessed on their own basis, within the environment they are a part of. The clearest thinking people in 1776 understood that unless the national liberation revolution emancipated the slaves, society would have to fight the revolution out all over again. As the goals of the revolution advanced it became understood that national liberation and the construction of America as a truly impendent and truly free bourgeois democratic state required building the foundation for an industrial bourgeoisie and their assumption of power. This understanding is expressed in the fights at the Constitutional Convention over slavery. To realize revolutionary goals requires more than clear thinking and understanding of historical necessity - social consequence, by advanced thinkers. It was not possible to abolish slavery in America in 1776, although moral, economic and political opposition to it existed. As the North evolved its production capacity and outran the consuming capacity of the South, the class demands on government by the political North, emerged as antagonistic to the political authority of the Slave Power. And Lincoln understood this with remarkable clarity. His program to end slavery, initially consisting of compromises to the Slave Power, meant he understood that slavery had to end, one way or another. Lincoln did not compromise over the historical necessity to end slavery. His daily actions and policy expressed the political contending of classes and conflicting economic layers of society, driving completion of the First American Revolution. The American Civil War was driven to complete the evolution of 1776 or complete what is called “the national democratic revolution,” as a curve of our history. In this sense every intense political struggle riveted to the North/South political axis was over slavery, as opposed to “black people.” The index or bookmark for determining whether or not the democratic revolution was “completed” was emancipating the slaves. The banner of “national unity” articulated by Lincoln was a nation - rather than a collection of states, conceived in liberty ad justice for all. II. In many respects the Chinese Revolution was not very different, although it evolved at another quantitative boundary of the industrial revolution and capital. Mao in history appears as a combination of George Washington, David Walker, Lincoln and Lenin. A new boundary of hsitory allowed the Chinese communists to fight as representatives of the advanced forms of classes, rising and falling with changes in the material power of productive forces. Thus, the Chinese communist sought to express and represent their proletariat as the advanced class, in its future evolution, under conditions of uniting the Chinese people and nation under an independent state. The goal of national unity articulated by the Chinese communists was ousting imperial foreigners as masters of China. At a certain stage in the evolution of the Chinese Revolution, the CCP superseded the KMT as the voice of the Chinese people and nation. What was fundamental in this period of history was not the distinction between classes as abstract formula, but the distinction between classes as this distinction expressed itself as imperial exploiting peoples and colonial exploited peoples. The former are called imperialist for a reason. The latter are colonials for a concrete material reason. History has confirmed that the colonials could liberate themselves from the closed colonial systems short of the overthrow of all capital, domestic and foreign. The proletariat cannot emancipate itself without emancipating all of society from bourgeois property. Finally, the world cannot be liberated from finance capital without the overthrow of the bourgeois state in the imperial countries. The colonials and former colonials cannot overthrow the American empire. Thus, the communist fight for the independence of the proletariat in the colonies of that period meant two things: the stubborn and consistent struggle to form a Leninist party based on the distinction between exploited peoples and oppressed peoples because the proletariat in the colonies are colonials first and foremost. This means emancipation from capital is inconceivable without first overthrowing imperialism as paramount. Second: winning the peasants from being a reserve of imperialism and reaction to the cause of the communist insurgency on a world scale. An abstract independence of the proletariat in China is just that, a hollow abstraction that denies the imperial state and people are the paramount problem. In this abstraction domestic capital is the primary enemy, toward which all the social forces should be focused. Realizing the goal of an emancipated China was a precondition for any goals of economic socialism, much less the emancipation of the colonial proletariat. This same dynamic existed for the revolution in Vietnam. The reality fact is that the inability of the workers and revolutionaries in the imperialist country to overthrow capital conditions the political scope of the actual contending of classes in the colonies. The historic question of the Chinese Revolution has never been and will never be subordination of the workers to the KMT - a huge distortion of reality, but converting the slaves of imperialism from being a reserve of the bourgeoisie to a reserve of the revolution at the weal link in the chain of imperial exploitation. In the colonies of the first half of the past century it was correct policy for communists to enter into alliance with all classes - including the patriotic bourgeoisie, to the degree it opposed imperialism. As a class sector and in its economic logic, the degree that the patriotic bourgeoisie opposes imperialism is bound up with its material relations as market relations in the domestic economy. This policy arises and exists as an expression of policy and economic relations of the imperialist bourgeoisie and their workers that stabilized the imperial relation in the first place. The question of the KMT, which a certain person continues to raise as a betrayal of “the revolution” by subordinating the workers to this organization, is posed incorrect factually and theoretically because it is posed from the framework of the internal class relations of the colonies rather than the internal class relations that made imperial conquest possible. The issue for me is simple. An emancipated China governed by Chinese - and even capitalist, was more important and desirable in the first half of the past century, than a thousand declaration about how communist betrayed the revolution. The Soviet communists and those in the Comintern did not betray the Chinese Revolution. In fact, these communist made it possible to form and stabilized the CCP, educated the Chinese communists in revolutionary Marxism and armed the revolution. Even if their were mistakes in judgement, these mistakes did not constitute betrayal of revolution. At one boundary of development of the revolution in China unity with the KMT - with the communist maintaining a separate organization, expressed the reality fact of social forces. At another stage of the evolution of the Chinese revolution domination of all social forces by the Chinese communists became possible and was carried out. Throughout the entire history of the revolution, the communist maintained links and alliances with domestic capital as part of their policy. Was this policy correct? The Chinese communists felt it correct and that is all that matters. Mistakes in judging the moments of transition and tempo and shifting relations between various organizations representing and expressing different classes characterize all revolutions. However the banner of national unity was absolutely correct for China and Vietnam. The banner of national unity in the Civil War, articulated as a nation conceived in liberty and equality for all was also appropriate as the banner. In respects to China and Vietnam what requires explanation is the behavior of the proletariat, and then the communists in America, France, England and Japan. The simple fact of history is that the Chinese and Vietnamese Revolutions triumphed under the banner of National Liberation or national unity against imperialism. WL. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
