Marx and Engels and Marxism

I. Marx and Engels


A. Karl Marx

1. Family--father was of Jewish ancestry, who apparently converted to Protestant Christianity--possibly to advance his career as a government official, since Jews were discriminated against even in the 1810s in Germany (and most of the rest of Europe).

2. Education--Germany was in the midst of forming the modern academy in the years before Marx began his education (which much of Europe and North America would soon copy). Received doctorate in Philosophy at 24.

3. Clashes with the Prussian government officials led to Marx being exiled to Paris by 1847, where he met Engels and other exiled German socialists.

B. Frederick Engels

1. Family--father was a prosperous manufacturer, with factories in Rhineland (western Germany) and Manchester (northern England).


2. Manchester--Engels was sent to Manchester by his father to manage the factory in Manchester, where Engels was introduced to the misery of the working-class first hand. As a result, Engels joined the Chartists and wrote The Condition of the English Working Class. Engels ended up in Paris by 1847, like Marx.

C. The Young Hegelians--Marx utilized the philosophy espoused by Georg Wilhem Hegel as the basis for his own new philosophy, particularly Hegel’s argument about the dialectic basis of history--but he also borrowed and adapted ideas from other Young Hegelians, who also reacted to the work of Hegel.

1. Bruno Bauer--turned Hegel’s notion that everything changes through contradiction into a liberal critique of the then-present German society.


2. Ludwig Feuerbach--developed the materialist philosophy (also known as Physicalism) that Marx and Engels relied upon to develop their own theory of historical materialism. Feuerbach argued that only physical objects possess reality, and in particular that spirituality was delusional. Feuerbach argued that man created god, rather than the other way around, and this resulted in man’s alienation. This philosophy goes hand-in-hand with atheism



D. The Communist Manifesto--became famous because of the events in the months after its publication (the various revolutions in 1848), but this work also laid out the work that Marx and Engels pursued the rest of their lives.

1. Alienation--the “market” was nothing more than the interaction or workers labor. A worker’s labor solidified into a thing, a product of that labor--but in capitalism, the object produced did not belong to the worker who produced it, but to the capitalist paying wages for the worker’s labor. The product of labor therefore became objectified, as Marx termed it, in exchange for a cash payment.

a) Alienation occurred because of the efforts of successive generations of people to wrest a livelihood from nature, and this led to differing relations between people, eventually forming into economic classes.

b) Marx and Engels argued that Feuerbach neglected the role of human agency in changing the physical world, which they set out to correct with their own arguments about alienation.

2. Historical materialism--Marx and Engels argued that every historical epoch was defined by the prevailing economic system (called the mode of production) determined the character of the social and political organization of that society.

a) Thesis--Antithesis--Synthesis--for Marx and Engels, society was continually undergoing a struggle for control, epitomized by the above formulation.


II. The Revolutions of 1848


A. The Specter Haunting Europe--Marx and Engels finished writing The Communist Manifesto in late 1847. In December of that year there was a brief civil war in Switzerland; that was followed by a brief uprising in Sicily in January. In February, there was an uprising by workers in Paris, forcing the king to flee and helping to create the establishment of the Second Republic.


B. Famine


1. Ireland and the Great Famine--the immiseration of the Irish peasant due to enclosure continued apace, and they were shunted to smaller and smaller plots and poorer land. This had resulted in the 1820s and 1830s in increased numbers of Irish leaving their homes to work in the factories of England and the United States, as well as building the transportation infrastructure.



a) Potato cultivation--despite increased emigration even before the advent of the potato blight, the population of Ireland increased exponentially during the early decades of the 19th century; according to the 1841 census, the population of the island was over 8 million people; in the 1851 census, the population dropped to about 6.5 million. An estimated million people died from starvation or disease during the Hunger; another million or so immigrated during those years.



b) The failure to counteract the Great Hunger--initially the British Prime Minister Robert Peel ordered that food be imported from the US and sold at market rates (which many of the poorest Irish could not afford); but under his successor, even these minimal efforts were abandoned, as the reliance upon the “invisible hand” of the market was going to deliver food to people who had no means to purchase it.

c) This same blight effected other areas of Europe, as well, but not with the same level of devastation and death. Other governments in Europe reacted in a similar fashion to that of Great Britain; this helped create a crisis of confidence in these governments, and to also create the political atmosphere that fostered support for the revolutions that followed.



C. Democratic reformers

1. Bourgeois protest--middle class protest stirred workers to take on the army and police in many cities in Europe in 1848.



2. Proletarian protest--just as in the earlier French revolution, when the lower class began to agitate for a voice in the forming government, the middle class (the bourgeois, in Marx’s term) allied with the upper class, and used armed force to crush the rebellion


Conclusion: From the results of the failed 1848 revolutions--the forces of reaction throughout Europe were largely able to regain political control, although feudalistic remnants of society were expunged, paving the road for capitalism to develop--the arguments of Marx and Engels and other socialists, that bourgeois democratic revolutions were a step on the way to control of governmental functions by the proletariat, gained a significant number of adherents.

The Industrial Revolution

I. Means of Production

A. Technology--the development of new technologies altered they way workers did their jobs, as Adam Smith had described the pin factory in Wealth of Nations.


1. Steam engine--this invention might be the best choice to epitomize the first Industrial Revolution, because it powered many of the other innovations. The “invention” of the steam engine has been credited to James Watt; in actuality, his machine was an incremental improvement on already existing steam engines. Steam engines began to be applied in a number of industries.


2. Coal mining--took on new importance with the refinement of the steam engine, because coal was the fuel of the new means of power. The earliest steam engines were used to pump water out of the ever-deepening coal mines. Within a relatively short time, steam engines were placed on vehicles called locomotives (which quickly became used for the distribution of coal); there also developed an increased production of steel, which was in part spurred by the expansion of railroads (rails, locomotives, rolling stock), and the fact that in England the need to find an alternative to charcoal (made from trees).

3. Steel manufacturing--made possible because much of England was denuded of trees by the turn of the 19th century--and peat (or “turf,” the source of heat for most of the rural poor) would not provide enough heat to make iron. Adding coal--and later, coke, a refined form of coal--not only transformed the iron into steel, but made the steel stronger and more flexible than was previously possible.



4. Textiles--steam engines quickly replaced water wheels to power machinery in the textile industry. At this early stage, the machinery in question was used to produce the yarn used to produce cloth--manufacturing cloth itself was at this early period was still left to handloomers in the countryside (although by the 1840s most of these workers would be replaced by the power loom.


B. The Transportation Revolution--contributed to the Industrial Revolution by facilitating access to raw materials, distributing manufactured goods, and providing the means to recruit workers.


1. Canals--not a new means of transportation, of course, but their development facilitated the distribution of goods and raw materials within in country. The disadvantage of canals in Northern Europe and North America was that they were out of operation for 3-5 months a year because of winter.



2. Railroads--had the advantage of the ability to operate all year long, which meant that railroads gradually replaced canals as the preferred means of moving goods and people.

3. Steam ships--the development of the steam ship with a screw propeller meant that the movement of goods and people across the oceans became both cheaper and faster. This facilitated the greatest movement of people across borders, and the transformation of colonies

II. Alienating labor


A. Enclosure of the Commons--the subsistence of peasants was fostered by their ability to use the commons to pasture livestock, collect firewood, gather nuts and berries.

1. With enclosure, activities that previously had been legal were made illegal--called “trespassing” and “theft.”

2. No pasture for livestock--enclosure prevented small farmers and their families from keeping their livestock, since they owned no property to pasture them.


B. New Landholding Patterns--before enclosure, peasant landholding was characterized by the ownership of several small strips of land. This pattern was changed by “rationalizing” landholding.


1. As peasants found it increasingly difficult to farm in this changing environment, many sold their parcels and moved to cities in the hope of being able to make a living.

2. Immiseration--economists and historians have long argued about the effect on the economic lives of those peasants who migrated from countryside to city (whether that was a short trip, or across an ocean). While conditions were less miserable in the city than in the countryside, conditions in the city were still miserable.

C. Early worker resistance



1. Luddism--workers attempted to resist industrialization by breaking the machines and burning down the factories that they concluded were making their lives more miserable. A nighttime visit from “Ned Ludd” to a factory owner’s house, or the mysterious breakage of machinery, were often “blamed” on this fictional character.




2. Chartist movement--after the repression of the Corresponding Societies, working people in the cities continued to agitate for political reforms that would create the opportunities to better their living conditions. Chartists organized huge demonstrations to agitate for the widening of suffrage rights (the “charter”), and annual parliamentary elections.

a) Chartists were strongest in the north and west of England, where industrialization had its earliest effects

b) British government responded by mobilizing the army to put down any further demonstrations (although there were none after the initial huge rallies)


D. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon--in France, the workers took to the streets for the first time since 1795 to protest similar conditions. In response, the restored Bourbon monarch, Charles X, abdicated the throne to the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and left the country.

Conclusion--the capitalist economic system is not some “natural” evolution, but a conscious choice made by humans. Many humans were not happy with this choice, and attempted to make reforms to change it. It was not until the latter 1840s, however, that these critiques gained a greater intellectual underpinning.

Ideas Shape the World

I. Revolution at the Point of a Bayonet

A. Initial Enthusiasm--In 1792, Jacques Pierre Brissot, a leader of one faction of the Jacobins, advocated extending the Revolution to other areas of Europe by using the French army to “liberate” them; Robespierre counseled against this action, arguing that any invading force would quickly begin behaving like--and be perceived as--an invading force and be resisted (Hello? Donald Rumsfield? Dick Cheney? George W. Bush?)

B. Napoleonic Wars--the French under Napoleon kept the guise, or appearance, of a revolutionary force as they invaded other countries, and stripped away the remnants of feudalism from these countries (setting the stage for the rise of capitalism) that they invaded and briefly controlled, but they had difficulty in finding clients they could control after the initial enthusiasm. The French were seen as an invading force.

II. Revolution at the Tip of a Pen

A. The Corresponding Societies

1. Thomas Paine and The Rights of Man--The Rights of Man was a response to the condemnation of the French Revolution found in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Paine sold 100,000 copies of his pamphlet, which argued that men had the right to engage in a popular political uprising if they felt that their present government was not acting in their best interests.


2. Formation of the Corresponding Societies--Paine’s work provoked much discussion among workers, who began meeting in taverns to discuss the matters raised--and developed societies to disseminate their ideas among workers in other locations, until the government crushed them.

3. Laid the groundwork for the Chartist movement of the 19th century (1815-1848).



B. The Green Revolution

1. Protestant Plantation--when the government in England put down the Irish resistance in the 1650s, they confiscated land from the leaders of the resistance and induced people to settle on this land; this is known at the Protestant Plantation, because people--principally Scottish Presbyterians--were “planted” on the land. Fearful of Catholic reprisals. the descendants of the Plantation became reliable and pliant British allies--until the 1770s.

2. Threat of French Invasion--when the French allied with the revolutionists in the United States, the British saw this as an act of hostility toward them (as the French undoubtedly was it, as well); in response, Britain granted greater rights to the Irish Parliament in return for funding an Irish militia to stave off any French attack. When that conflict ended, the British also ended the increased independence for Ireland.


3. Irish Reaction to French Revolution--Volunteers began to drill in military procedures, and some began making demands for a constitutional convention and the removal of political restrictions upon Catholics--Catholic emancipation. This movement was led by Wolfe Tone, who founded and recruited members for a group called United Irishmen.

4. Upper class Irish reaction--called on Parliament in London to outlaw the United Irishmen and also to outlaw the carrying of arms, meant to do away with military drilling.

5. Orange Order--group of middle and lower class Protestants who felt their position threatened by the Protestant/Catholic alliance.


C. Revolution in Haiti

1. Slavery in Haiti--the slave population was approximately 500,000, as opposed to about 30,000 whites and a similar number of mulattos. The number of slaves was only maintained with the constant importation of slaves, because of working conditions and the sugar plantations

2. Productivity--Haiti produced more sugar than all the other colonies combined



3. Revolution--influenced by events in France--and the rhetoric of revolution by the plantation owners--slaves in Haiti began their rebellion in 1791.

a) Divisions among whites--the so-called “small whites” were resentful of the mercantilist system that had enriched the “big whites”--the plantation owners; but their rhetoric about “liberty” had an entirely different meaning for slaves.


4. 1794 Declaration ending slavery--which was rescinded when the Directory assumed power

5. Capture of Toussaint l’Overture--but the battle continued in Haiti under the generalship of Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Dessalines’ defeat of the French at Vertieres forced Napoleon to abandon his bid for control of Louisiana in North American, and the sale of that claim to the United States.

D. Revolution in South America


1. Events in Spain--Napoleon’s attempt to install his brother on the Spanish throne after the abdication of Charles IV caused an uprising in Madrid in 1808, and continued guerilla activity in Spain from that date. This created favorable conditions for the British general Wellington to land an army in the country, and begin fighting the French forces occupying the country; this eventually helps bring down Napoleon.

2. Both Spain and New Spain were without an effective government for 6 years while events in Europe played themselves out; this created conditions ripe for colonies in Latin America to seek their independence.


3. Simon Bolivar--from a well-to-do slave owning family, yet he became a dedicated revolutionary. With assistance from forces from Haiti, he was able to defeat the forces of counter-revolution in Venezuela (temporarily). With other revolutionaries, he was able to win independence for a number of former colonies in South America--although the beneficiaries were large landowners, rather than the Indian peasants.



E. Revolution in the Middle East

1. Wahabism--founded byMuhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab an-Najdi (1703–1792), Wahabism is a fundamentalist sect of Sunni Islam. Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab believed that what he perceived to be the moral corruption around him was caused by the corruption of Islam, and sought to return the religion back to “first principles,” which he believed were to be found in the Q’ran and other material produced in the first three generations of the faith.

2. House of Saud--the Saud family were followers of Wahabism; when they gained control of the Arabian peninsula, Wahabism gained greater influence because of the two holiest shrines of Islam.

Age of Revolutions

Propaganda and Class

A. Propaganda


1. Thomas Paine and Common Sense--perhaps the only author to approach the popularity of Paine’s pamphlet in modern times is J.K. Rowling (Common Sense sold about 150,000 copies in a country of less then 3 million people, including slaves who were kept largely illiterate--the equivalent sale today, with a population of 300 million, would be 15 million copies). Paine’s irreverent, vigorous prose captured the mood of the times, and was probably responsible for giving voice to a great deal of dissatisfaction.



B. Class conflict


1. Worcester County Mass.--farmers closed down the county court system to prevent creditors from using the courts to collect debts; this same action after the victory over the British provoked a different action from the men known to us as the Founding Fathers.

2. Hudson Valley New York--small farmers at this location decided to support the loyalist side, because of the obscene rents they had to pay to Patriot Patroon landholders.



3. The Revolution and Slavery--the rhetoric of freedom and rights resonated with many slaves--and many whites in the northern colonies,who began to question the morality of holding other humans in bondage


a) Many slaves in the north fought for their freedom--and the freedom of whites--in the militias and in the Continental navy.

b) In the colonies of the south, on the other hand, many slaves fled their masters in the hope of gaining freedom promised by the British government (Thos. Jefferson’s reaction to this was excised from the final edition of the Declaration of Independence.


IV. The War

A. The Turning Points


1. American fighting capability--Washington and his army won few battles, but he was able to keep on Army in the field, because his soldiers believed in the cause they were fighting for.

2. British incompetence--British military generals were chosen for their connections to the British royal family, rather than their military experience.

3. French assistance--men (including slave soldiers from Haiti), material, and particularly ships that were able to harass British supply lines and most important cut off the avenue of retreat at the Battle of Yorktown.


B. The End of the Revolution


1. Battle of Yorktown

2. Treaty of Paris

3. Ratification of the United States Constitution

II. The Fall of Absolutism


A. Definition--a type of monarch not restrained by institutions, like a legislature or other social elites, the church, etc.

B. Calling the Estates General--during much of he mid-18th century, Great Britain and France were at war with one another. For most of this time, the French monarch had been able to rule without having to convene the Estates General, whose sole power over the king was the fact that the king needed the Estates General to approve levying new taxes on the French people


1. Chateau de Versailles--located about 10.5 miles from the center of Paris; built by Louis XIV to escape his distaste (and fear) for the common people of Paris.

2. Government during the reign of Louis XVI was on the edge of bankruptcy, a result of several decades of war, and the assistance the government had given the United States in their war against Great Britain.



C. The Structure of French Society--the Ancien Regime

1. Noblesse d’epee (nobility of the sword)--the traditional nobility

2. Noblesse de robe (nobility of the robe)--made up in part of successful merchant families who were able to buy sinecures from the king (which provided a stream of income independent of the Estates General); these men operated the court system as judges and court administrators. Another part of this Estate was the higher ranking clergy in the Roman Catholic Church--bishops and abbots for the monasteries (some of whom were not ordained ministers)

3. Third Estate--everyone else, although the only people who could vote for representatives to the third estate were relatively wealthy citizens, because there was a substantial property qualification.

D. Stress in French Society

1. Population boom--by 1700, France had a population of about 20 million people, easily making up 20% of the non-Russian European population. 80% of this population lived in the countryside or in villages with a population of less than 2,000. This in practice meant that a large portion of the population were landless peasants, and depended upon their labor for both shelter and food. Some of these people practiced a variety of trades, but never gained enough capital to open their own shop. A number of peasants would have also owned small plots of land, from which they might, in good times, be able to eek out a bare subsistence--or not. In bad times, they would have been exceedingly hungry.

2. Urban Populations--Paris was by far the largest city, with a population in 1780 well in excess of 600,000. Marseilles, Lyon, and Bordeaux were other important urban centers, with populations in excess of 100,000.

a) Living conditions--in these cities were usually even worse than those conditions found in the countryside, because sanitation problems and abject poverty many found themselves living in.

b) Urban artisans had little chance for economic advancement, in large part because of the shift to capitalist modes of production meant many never got the capital necessary to enlarge their operations.


III. Reformers, Revolutionaries, and the Sans Culottes


A. The Tennis Court Oath

1. The National Assembly--when Louis XVI called the Estates General into session to discuss ways of raising new revenue, the Third Estate refused to go along with the request until they procured a written constitution. Adjourned to the Tennis Courts at Versailles when they were locked out of the Estates General, where all present took an oath not to give in on this issue until the king promised to grant written constitution.

2. Members of the Third Estate were hoping to bring about the reform of the monarchy into something akin to the English model--a constitutional monarchy.

3. King’s response--attempted to dismiss the Estates General and called out 20,000 troops to intimidate--or remove--the Third Estate representatives.


B. Revolutionaries at The Bastille

1. Symbol of absolutist power--the Bastille was both a prison for nobles and religious dissenters, as well as an ammunition dump.

2. Rumors of the impending military coup by the King made people in Paris extremely anxious, and they sought weapons to defend the city--which they sought to obtain first by negotiation with the commanding officer of the Bastille; failing that, the opened fire on the fortress, and eventually force it to surrender.

3. Emboldening the National Assembly--in face of the King’s threats, the newly-named National Assembly had begun to waver; the actions of the poor people of Paris renewed its resolve, and the National Assembly passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which became the basis for the modern conception of human rights.

4. Women’s March on Versailles--much of the impetus for the Revolution from below was caused by the great hunger of the poor people in France. The poor women in Paris marched on Versailles in October of 1789 to force King Louis XVI to move back to Paris in order to “focus” his attention on this problem.


C. The Sans Culottes--much of the revolutionary momentum of the crowds in the cities (mainly in Paris, but in other cities as well) was driven by the hunger that many felt because of a succession of poor harvest in the countryside, which drove up the price of bread upon which they largely relied upon for subsistence. The crowd became personified by the sans culottes, so-called because they wore trousers rather than the knee-length breeches of the upper class.

1. Resistance from the aristocracy--both the king and the nobles attempted to cut off the drive to limit their power and privileges, and to begin making nobles pay some of the taxes the Third Estate was liable for. Each push-back on the part of the nobles (which often included collaboration with outside enemies of the revolution, like Prussians and Austrians) exacerbated the fears of the middle and lower classes that they would be victimized in a counter-revolution, and led to greater numbers of nobles being arrested.

2. Louis XVI’s attempted escape--in June 1791 the king attempted to sneak out of Paris and join forces with counter-revolutionaries. Louis XVI was captured, but not executed until January 1793.

3. Succession of political groups--attempted to lead the revolution, but failed to hold onto power for a variety of reasons.

a) Marquis de Lafayette--first leader of the National Assembly, largely because of his ties with the American Revolution; he attempted to retain a constitutional monarchy, but Louis’ attempted escape, the continual hunger of much of the population, and a series of military defeats caused by the defection of aristocratic military leaders (and the resultant wholesale slaughter of the troops they led) undermined his efforts.


b) Rise of the Girondins--in April 1792 a new political group succeeded Lafayette, named after the debating society that the members belonged to. The Girondins allied with Louis XVI to declare war on Austria and Prussia, who were threatening on the border they shared with France. Louis expected French forces to lose, and he would regain full control of the throne.


4. Rise of the Jacobins--another of the debating societies turned political party; the Jacobin’s dues were lower than the Girondin, so they had more lower and working-class members, although the Jacobins were still dominated by lawyers--in particular, one Maximillian Robespierre


a) Robespierre had counseled against the war

b) Duke of Brunswick promised retribution against revolutionists.

c) The National Assembly called for volunteers to fight the counter-revolutionary forces; got 15,000 volunteers from Paris alone

d) Large contingent of volunteers from Marseilles marched from the south of France to defend Paris.

e) National Assembly voted to suspend the monarchy, recognize a new revolutionary commune based upon the Paris section model, and to conduct elections based on universal manhood suffrage--also a first.



5. Ending the Counter-Revolution--the revolution was constantly under attack and undermined by the nobles--including the king--attempting to collaborate with external enemies.

a) King guillotined in January 1793

b) New volunteers recruited from the poor sections of Paris to reinforce the front lines

c) Killing collaborators--or suspected collaborators--the so-called “fifth column,” on the home front. The “September Massacres,” as they became known, did stifle dissent. This event also marks the beginning of the period known as The Terror, when supposed enemies of the Revolution were too often summarily executed without due process.

6. Declaration of the Republic--on 20 September, the Revolutionary forces turned back the combined armies of Austria and Prussia at Valmy; the next day the Republic was declared. For much of the next year, their was further radicalization of the revolution



a) “Ending” slavery--in February 1794, the Jacobins declared and end to slavery in French colonies--the first nation to do so. Slaves in Haiti had been in rebellion since 1791, and this proclamation did little to change that. When the Jacobins lost power later that year, attempts were made to reinstitute slavery, which the Haitians were able to resist after nine years of war.

D. The Demise of the Revolution--the struggle to sustain the Revolution contributed in part to its demise, particularly the continued use of the Terror


1. Guillotine--when it was first invented and used, it was seen as a more humane form of capital punishment. Previously, only nobles were beheaded, while common people under went long periods of torture (including disembowelment, breaking on the wheel, the rack, hanging by the neck, drawing and quartering, crushing to death). The guillotine was applied with discrimination to all classes.

2. Continued application of The Terror

3. The Thermidor--the execution of Robespierre

4. Establishment of the Directory--in September of 1795, a new constitution was passed, putting new limits on right of suffrage; the 5-man Directory was empowered to make most of the governing decisions.

5. Bonaparte seizes power--in November 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself “first counsel”



6. Emperor Napoleon--crowned himself Emperor (with the assistance of the Pope) in 1804.

The World Turned Upside Down

I. Levellers and Diggers

A. The Putney Debates and the Levelers--a radical democratic faction of the NMA, reacting against the Long Parliament’s seeming intention to deny them back-pay and send them off to Ireland to quell another disturbance, debated making demands on Parliament for the institution of more democratic measure--a wider granting of the franchise, etc.

B. The Diggers--any of a group of agrarian communists who flourished in England in 1649-50 and were led by Gerrard Winstanley (q.v.) and William Everard. In April 1649 about 20 poor men assembled at St. George's Hill, Surrey, and began to cultivate the common land. These Diggers held that the English Civil Wars had been fought against the king and the great landowners; now that Charles I had been executed, land should be made available for the very poor to cultivate. (Food prices had reached record heights in the late 1640s.) The numbers of the Diggers more than doubled during 1649. Their activities alarmed the Commonwealth government and roused the hostility of local landowners, who were rival claimants to the common lands. The Diggers were harassed by legal actions and mob violence, and by the end of March 1650 their colony was dispersed. The Diggers themselves abjured the use of force. The Diggers also called themselves True Levelers, but their communism was denounced by the leaders of the Levelers.

a) The Levelers--position frightened the “moderates” of the Presbyterian party, who saw this movement as a dangerous development--as people see most developments that they think will undermine their influence.

b) While excluding the most radical elements, the Presbyterians formed a “council of the Army” half made up of rank and file members, and half officers; they relied upon the practice of deference to persuade the rank and file to go along with the officers’ proposals



II. Colonization


A. The Virginia Model

1. Roanoke--the first attempted colonization by the British was at Roanoke Island, in what is now known as the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, it was meant to be a base for privateers (licensed pirates) to raid the Spanish treasure fleets sailing to Spain via the Gulf-stream.

2. Jamestown--the first successful English colony. Initial purpose was to be a self-sustaining military outpost. Finding little material wealth, efforts turned to agrarian products to turn a profit for the Virginia Company. John Rolf (married to one of Chief Powhattan’s daughters, Pocohantas’. Chief Powhattan was the chief of the Powhattan group) conceived of an idea to a noxious weed that the native s used for ceremonial purposes (tobacco). This necessitated importing labor to cultivate it--indentured servants and slaves.

3. Carolinas--settled initially be family members of Barbadian sugar plantations, the plantations in the Carolinas was responsible for growing food to feed the slave populations the sugar plantations, because all arable land on the sugar islands was used to grow sugar cane.




B. Massachusetts model

1. Plymouth colony--the Puritans’ “Citty on the Hill,” New England, where all the settlers with any political power would be right-thinking Puritans.

a) Town meeting--are seen as exemplars of democracy, but the right to vote was limited to church members, and church membership was limited to those people who had been saved.

b) Anne Hutchins--a woman who questioned control of religious doctrine by a select few men; she was eventually tricked into stating that she believed that God spoke directly to her, a serious deviation from Puritan doctrine, and she was banished from the colony.




2. Roger Smith--a true practitioner of religious freedom, for which he was banished from Plymouth. He fled to Providence and established his own settlement, where he allowed various denominations to worship as they wished; it was in nearby Newport that the first Jewish synagogue was built.


C. Middle Colonies

1. William Penn’s colony--the only colony besides Rhode Island to practice religious freedom--but the Society of Friends (the Quakers) held the dominant political positions.

2. New York

3. New Jersey--the Middle Colonies, like the Virginia model, used slaves and indentured servants for most of the labor that was carried out in the colony--although in far smaller numbers than in the southern colonies.





III. The Costs of Opportunity

A. “Possession” of Land

1. Common Cultural Trait Among Native Peoples--in North America was their conception that, as a people, they were granted the right to use the land that they occupied, but that individual members did not have any ownership rights to a particular plot of land. They were willing to share the land they had been granted with others, as long as they received “just” compensation for its use--and with the understanding that they could revoke the right to use the land at any time.

2. European cultural practice--on the other hand, Europeans utilized a different concept, which emphasized the rights of individuals to own a particular piece of land, with which they were allowed to use in anyway they chose--including selling it to someone else at a hefty profit.

a) Europeans also delighted in “sharp dealing,” meaning selling commodities at the highest possible price while buying commodities at the lowest possible price.



B. The Cost of the Conflict

1. The Frontier--is defined by the conflicts over possession of land between Europeans (or, as we might start calling them, whites) and native peoples. These conflicts necessitated that European powers found it necessary to have armies on the ground in the American colonies to keep the peace. All of this cost a great deal of money, and led to the European powers--England in particular--to seek ways of making the colonists bear a greater share of these costs.

2. Attempts to cut British costs--centered on limiting the contact between whites and native peoples by restricting the settlement of whites in frontier areas.

3. Increasing tax revenue streams--the British government attempted to get American colonists to pay an increased share of the cost of maintaining the colonies’ administrative and military costs.



C. Colonial Resistance


1. French and Indian War (Seven Year’s War)--ended in 1763, resulted in Great Britain obtaining European control of most of North American east of the Mississippi River. It was the attempt to administer this territory--and make it a paying proposition, particularly regarding the fur trade with native peoples--that led to a series of political moves that alienated the European population south of the St. Lawrence river, and led to the American Revolution.

2. North American smugglers--a number of merchants in North American circumvented restrictions on trading with non-English traders. Most of the taxes and duties passed by Parliament were attempts to enforce this restriction, but juries in the colonies refused to convict smugglers.


3. “No Taxation without Representation”

a) Sugar Act (1764)--like many of the laws passed during the decade leading up to the American Revolution, this law cut the tax rate, but also beefed up enforcement--and British sugar was more expensive than the which could be acquired from French plantations in Haiti.

b) Stamp Act (1765)--required the presence of a stamp from the government on any legal document--and also on newspapers, magazines

c) Quartering Act (1767)--required colonists to directly pay for the cost of troops in the colonies by housing and feeding them in their own homes.



d) Tea Act (1773)--required colonists to purchase tea from the British East India Tea Company. Even though the price of tea was slashed, colonists in Boston resisted the enforcement of this act by disguising themselves as Native Americans and tossing the tea into Boston Harbor.




4. Continental Congress--began as a body authorized by the individual colonial legislatures to petition for redress after Boston Harbor was closed down after the incident over the tea.



a) Sons of Liberty--one of the extra-legal bodies that sprang up as a result of these disagreements. Made up of the same kinds of people who were attracted to the New Model Army--small merchants, urban craftsmen, and small prosperous farmers.




b) Power of the Mobility--the “mob” had a long history of involvement in politics, characterized by taking protest to the streets and assaulting the property or person who was accused of putting their self-interest above that of the well-being to the community. The mob took to the streets because they had no other way of making their voice heard--they had no right to vote.




(1) The Boston Massacre




(2) The Boston Tea Party



IV. Propaganda and Class

A. Propaganda




1. Thomas Paine and Common Sense--perhaps the only author to approach the popularity of Paine’s pamphlet in modern times is J.K. Rowling (Common Sense sold about 150,000 copies in a country of less then 3 million people, including slaves who were kept largely illiterate--the equivalent sale today, with a population of 300 million, would be 15 million copies). Paine’s irreverent, vigorous prose captured the mood of the times, and was probably responsible for giving voice to a great deal of dissatisfaction.



B. Class conflict

1. Worcester County Mass.--farmers closed down the county court system to prevent creditors from using the courts to collect debts; this same action after the victory over the British provoked a different action from the men known to us as the Founding Fathers.

2. Hudson Valley New York--small farmers at this location decided to support the loyalist side, because of the obscene rents they had to pay to Patriot Patroon landholders.


3. The Revolution and Slavery--the rhetoric of freedom and rights resonated with many slaves--and many whites in the northern colonies,who began to question the morality of holding other humans in bondage


a) Many slaves in the north fought for their freedom--and the freedom of whites--in the militias and in the Continental navy.

b) In the colonies of the south, on the other hand, many slaves fled their masters in the hope of gaining freedom promised by the British government (Thos. Jefferson’s reaction to this was excised from the final edition of the Declaration of Independence.


IV. The War

A. The Turning Points

1. American fighting capability--Washington and his army won few battles, but he was able to keep on Army in the field, because his soldiers believed in the cause they were fighting for.

2. British incompetence--British military generals were chosen for their connections to the British royal family, rather than their military experience.

3. French assistance--men (including slave soldiers from Haiti), material, and particularly ships that were able to harass British supply lines and most important cut off the avenue of retreat at the Battle of Yorktown.


B. The End of the Revolution



1. Battle of Yorktown




2. Treaty of Paris




3. Ratification of the United States Constitution

Slavery and Racism

I. Slavery and Racism


A. The Market in Labor--the demand for labor was so great in the Americas that a variety of ways were attempted to fill it.


1. Slavery



2. Indentured servitude



3. Waged labor--the smallest portion of the labor force in the Americas. Workers at this time--even the portion who were not slaves or indentured servants--were not often paid weekly wages; the barter system, payments in kind were the usual form of payment. Cash money was often in short supply.



B. The Invention of Race


1. Indentured servants and slaves--the distinction without difference, because plantation owners made no distinctions in their treatment of the two kinds of workers.


a) Intermarriage--between slaves and indentured servants was not an unheard of phenomenon (as well as those familial relationships not sanctified by church or state)


2. Racial distinctions--Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonists tended to be largely male, and often took slave women and native women to cohabitate with; offspring from these relationships made up the largest portion of the “creole” population of the Americas. These “new Americans” were themselves often slave owners, or at least free members of society, inhabiting a place in the social hierarchy just below the Europeans.




a) Mestizo (Metis,in French)--of European and native descent.

b) Mulatto--of European and African descent.

c) Other racial distinctions were also made by ancestry (or “blood”).


3. Indentured servant/slave uprisings


a) Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)--although led by the cousin of the colonial governor, Nathaniel Bacon, most of the participants were indentured servants, slaves, and former members of both groups who had received their freedom and were now small property owners--all of whom now wanted access to the land held be the remaining native peoples in Virginia, which the colonial government had promised the natives they would be able to keep.


4. Aftermath


a) Distinctions began to be made in the treatment of servants and slaves--and the employment of indentured servants became less favored where slavery played on important role in the economy.


(1) Prohibition against any “negro or other slave” to resist any white person; i.e., to not follow their direction or to engage in any kind of physical confrontation, including self-defense (1680).

(2) In 1696 it was made lawful to kill “such negroes, mulattoes, and other slaves” who unlawfully absented themselves from the service of their master/mistress (runaways).

(3) This same law made it illegal for blacks, mulattoes, Indians, and whites to marry--a law that remained on the books in Virginia until 1967, when the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Loving v. Virginia.



C. Justifications for racism--all of these justifications were meant to make Africans (and, by extension, people of African descent) somehow inferior, and therefore it their condition of perpetual servitude a result of this inferiority.




1. Sons of Ham--Ham was allegedly a son of Noah who observed his father in an indelicate position while Noah was sleeping off a drunk, and for this Ham and his descendents had their skin blackened and were forever fated to be servants.

2. “Scientific” justifications--in the Age of Enlightenment, scientific methods were used to “prove” the racial inferiority of Africans; eventually, slavery would “improve” the Africans merely by exposure to European culture.




a) Native Americans by contrast were the “noble savages” because they were allegedly resistant to being enslaved (their mortality rate and diminishing numbers made them less attractive as slaves as the number of imports from Africa increased).

b) Because Africans were readily replenished by slave traders, and the role of the slave was subservient to the slave master, it became easy to believe that there was a link to this subservient role because of some “racial” difference.


II. Capitalism and the Enlightenment


A. Market relations--were a reflection that society was undergoing change. Market relations promoted new ideas about society--that in the marketplace, money was the only distinction that mattered, and the distinctions based on the old ideas of dominance and deference had less meaning.

B. Whither deference?--not really, because members of the “better sort” in society were also able to command more wealth, so their status really was not undermined so much as the status of the nouveau riche (the new rich) was legitimized


III. Free Labor v. Unfree Labor


A. Creating the “Wealth of Nations”


1. Wealth in land--the long-held traditional view of the font of wealth

2. Mercantilism--the accumulation of gold and silver, either through direct acquisition (mining) or by trading for it.

3. Capitalism and the Labor Theory of Value


a) Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations--Smith wrote that “The annual labor of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with the necessities and conveniences of life. Labor is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.” Smith argued that labor could be used in two ways: Productively, and unproductively.


(1) Productive labor--that labor used to make commodities to be consumed those engaged in other labor or as “capital” to be used in producing more goods. Labor’s output helps to produce more output.

(2) Unproductive labor--labor that was immediately consumed without helping to create a new commodity; among the unproductive labor is the labor of servants, as well as what Smith termed the “frivolous” professions--churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters (like Smith?) players, buffoons, musicians, and gentlemen. As well as those who made a living collecting rent on land without making any improvements.

(3) “Just” wages--if workers’ labor created most of the wealth, why didn’t workers receive most of the wealth they created?