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The other revolution – Greetings on the 4th of July July 4, 2017

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
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As always let’s consider that other revolution that shaped modern times and greetings to those in the US who visit here.

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1. Lamentreat - July 4, 2017

A lot of people would say there were *three* world-historical revolutions in that time, not two: American, French, Haitian.

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WorldbyStorm - July 4, 2017

Surely. It had profound effects.

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Starkadder - July 5, 2017

As a teenager, I always saw the 1798 Rising as the Third Revolution of the period, except that it failed.

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2. bjg - July 4, 2017

There is a revised version of a paper “Why not representation and taxation?” here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2846776. I’ve only just started reading it, but here’s a sentence from a review [of the October version]:

The authors define an economic behavioral model to assert that internal British politics prevented any real compromise with Colonial America

https://geneprock.com/2016/10/31/a-review-why-not-taxation-and-representation-a-note-on-the-american-revolution/

Internal British politics preventing compromise? Well I never.

bjg

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3. yourcousin - July 4, 2017

‘Merica!

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yourcousin - July 5, 2017

Although it should noted that in the spirit of internationalism I argued the “ror” was an Irish word and “Quito” was Spanish for 30 when helping out my 94 year old Volga Deutsch who has dementia when playing scrabble. So there you go, made up words and threatening to buy my mom a hat that says, “proud deplorable” was all it took to bring a little bit of made up internationalism to America’s day.

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yourcousin - July 5, 2017

“Volga Deutsch grandma”

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4. Jolly Red Giant - July 4, 2017

Yes indeed – a great revolution if you were white, male and wealthy – not so much if you were black, a woman or poor. And let’s not forget the native Americans who were simply slaughtered.

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yourcousin - July 5, 2017

Just imagine the “Jesus wept” emoji here. No one here is arguing that America and its founding revolution are/were perfect. That being said I think that the ideas outlined in say, “Common Sense” are still ideas that many would get behind. It’s easy to sling mud from a high horse, but it is worth remembering that those very groups that were disenfranchised also emulated the rhetorical arguments posited by the founding fathers.

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gendjinn - July 5, 2017

“…all men are created equal…. but some are only worth 3/5ths of a human…”

Yeah. We don’t even have to look further than their words to see them for the rank hypocrites they are. Their deeds condemn to the same hell as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Churchill, and many, many more.

But feel free to go ahead and celebrate the first american fascists, you sure have the right president for it these days 🙂

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WorldbyStorm - July 5, 2017

Marx had some interesting thoughts on the Revolution…

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm

Writing to Lincoln in 1865 he said…

When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, “slavery” on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding “the ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution”, and maintained slavery to be “a beneficent institution”, indeed, the old solution of the great problem of “the relation of capital to labor”, and cynically proclaimed property in man “the cornerstone of the new edifice” — then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders’ rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.

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gendjinn - July 5, 2017

Engels commentary on the civil war is another fascinating (and incisively prescient) read.

Reading of Fredrick Douglas’ visit to Ireland sparked a binge on the African American canon.

What happened to Columbus day over the last 40 years is happening to July 4th. There will be a lot more “White People’s Independence Day” in the years to come. White people’s blithe lionisation and mythologising of the sponsors of slavery, genocide and the holocaust of the native peoples just because they said some nice things they never bothered to implement, except for the oligarchs. Rich, white and male.

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5. pvnevin - July 5, 2020

The place of the two American revolutions:past, present and future:
https://www.wsws.org/en/special/feature/americas-revolutions.html

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