YEAR: 1776Independence, but for whom?
The American Revolution was led by slave-owning and merchant elites to secure their independent power to exploit land and labor. Figures like Jefferson and Madison propagated revolutionary ideas of “equality”, “liberty”, and “citizenship”, but in reality, these concepts were reserved for the benefit of the nascent capitalist class alone. Nevertheless, they had a deep impact on the consciousness of oppressed people here in the United States.
The American Revolution helped kickstart the era of revolutions against absolute monarchism which spanned both sides of the Atlantic, from France to Haiti to the republics of South America. It was led by the bourgeois and slaveholding classes in order to secure their 'independent' power to more fully exploit the land and labor of the Americas. At the same time, in order to wage this war, they propagated ideas that were revolutionary for their time: the equality of man, individual liberty, citizenship rights. These ideas, however, mean one thing for the ruling class and another for the oppressed. For the elite, they were hollow and hypocritical -- freedom for themselves alone. The oppressed classes fought to make these high-sounding concepts real, and immediately faced repression and violence from the ruling class. That is our revolutionary legacy.
