The two principal popular actions of the French Revolution were the taking of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 and the taking of the Tuileries on August 10, 1792.  In both cases, the people were armed (Ianni 2011:37-38, 67-71; Soboul 1975:139, 250-51). 

     The formation of popular militias has been a continuing dimension of revolutionary processes.  Following the February Revolution, marchers in mass demonstrations were armed in order to protect themselves from possible violence from the troops of the Provisional Government.  During the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks were able to take power as a result of the organization of worker’s militias and the placing of army battalions under the authority of the popular councils.  Following the October Revolution, the Red Army was formed for defense against foreign armies and foreign-supported armed forces.  In Vietnam, nationalist forces used both guerrilla strategies and regular army troops in its long struggles against French colonialism and US neocolonial intentions.  In Cuba, the revolutionary movement took power using a guerrilla strategy in the countryside combined with urban sabotage.  After the triumph of the revolution, popular militias were formed that successfully defended the nation against a US-backed invasion.  In Venezuela, after the taking of power through non-violent electoral means, the government of Hugo Chávez, himself a former career military officer, was able to effectively place the armed forces under the authority of the civil government.

      Force has been a central component of human economic and social development for 10,000 years.  We have seen that conquest has been central to the formation of empires and civilizations, and that the existing world-system has been established on a foundation of the conquest of vast regions of the world (see various posts in the section on world history and the section on the world-system.  And we have seen that the neocolonial world-system is maintained through the application of military force in those situations that require it (see “The characteristics of neocolonialism” 9/16/2013). 

      Since a popular revolution involves the taking of power by the political representatives of the popular sectors, its triumph generates a counterrevolution led by the deposed elite, which uses any and all means, including the organization of violence and force.  In such a situation, it would be idealist and irresponsible for a revolutionary project to not have a program for the organization of force to protect the people and defend the revolution.

      Therefore, revolutionary governments have the right and the duty to development a plan for the responsible use of force.  But a revolutionary government should not violate the rights of due process in order to attain political objectives, nor should it use force in order to terrorize the people into compliance with the revolutionary project.  In accordance with this understanding, my view is that the revolutionary terror of the French Revolution was a great historic error and historic crime, the consequences of which are present in our time.  This will be the subject of the next post.

     The social movements of the United States could learn some lessons from revolutionary processes in other lands.  The social movements of the United States have an honorable tradition of protest against violence and war.  However, they have not developed an alternative program for the responsible organization of force, either with respect to the military forces of the nation or the domestic criminal justice system.  The movements protest illegitimate violence; they “speak truth to power.”  At most, they hope to obtain concessions from those in power.  But they have not sought to take power with the intention of exercising power in a responsible way.  This limited approach undermines the influence of the progressive social movements among the people.  With their idealist discourse, progressive social movements are not taken seriously by the people as a political force that could govern the nation in a responsible and practical manner.  The governing of the nation thus is left to those who govern in defense of particular interests, a project that necessarily requires the illegitimate use of violence and force, both at home and abroad.


References

Ianni, Valera.  2011.  La Revolución Francesa.  México: Ocean Sur.

Soboul, Albert.  1975.  The French Revolution 1787-1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, French Revolution, popular militias, violence

      During the breakout of French Revolution in 1789, the 407 Parisian eligible voters in the elections for the General Estates met in a public plaza and formed an alternative municipal government.  It consisted of a committee, composed of municipal officials and elected representatives to the General Estates, which was given the charge of leading the popular insurrection.  And a mayor was elected.  The alternative government was called the Paris Commune, a name that would be given to various subsequent similar efforts (Ianni 2011:35; Soboul 1975:135-36, 140).

      With the radicalization of the revolution, the Paris Commune was replaced by the Insurrectionary Commune in 1792.  Under the leadership of artisans, shopkeepers, small merchants, and workers who comprised the so-called sans-culottes, a central committee was established and a new mayor was elected, replacing the mayor elected in 1789, who had since his election authorized a violent repression of a popular protest.  The central committee of the reconstituted Paris Commune coordinated 48 sections.  The most radical sections admitted men who did not qualify to vote under the established income and residence restrictions.  The most active sections met every day at the end of the workday (Ianni 2011:68-69; Soboul 1975:250, 309-11, 407, 411-12, 470).

     The formation of popular assemblies as an alternative to representative democracy has a sustained history in revolutionary processes: the Paris Commune of 1871; the soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers of the Russian Revolution of 1917; the worker’s councils of the Vietnamese Revolution; and the popular power and mass organizations of the Cuban Revolution.  They reflect direct democracy by the people, a more advanced form of political participation than is possible under the structures of representative democracy developed by the bourgeoisie.

      But in the seeing the possibilities of “power to the people,” the people should not be idealized.  The majority of people tend to think in concrete and particular terms, not understanding problems in their larger historical and social context.  Most tend to be orientated to the protection of particular interests rather than the good of the society as a whole in the long run.  And the majority is prone to vengeance and violence, which in their most extreme manifestations include executions with minimal regard for the right of due process.

      The correction to these popular tendencies is found through the vanguard.  The members of the vanguard are of the people and come from the people.  The have the best qualities of the people.  They are disciplined and committed to the values of the revolution and to universal human values.  As a result, they have become theoretically, politically, and historically informed.  Their role is to educate the people, and they play this role through discourses in the popular assemblies and informal discussions among the people.  Their challenge is to persuade the people of the best courses of action for the good of the revolution and the good of society in the long term.

      Although the vanguard educates, the people decide.  Decisions are made through consensus among the people.  If the vanguard fails to persuade, the people may take courses of action that could undermine the revolutionary process and its quest to create a more just and democratic society.  It therefore is necessary for the sustainability of the revolutionary project that the vanguard maintains the confidence and trust of the people.

     The vanguard is not infallible, and it particularly may be vulnerable to limitations in understanding that are established by social and historical context (see “What is personal encounter?” 7-25-2013).  But due to the personal characteristics of the members of the vanguard, it is in the best position to understand the best courses of action.  

      The relation between the vanguard and the people plays out in the popular assemblies.  And in the assemblies, elections to government offices are held.  In these elections, the people are choosing from among nominated candidates whose qualities they have come to know in the popular assemblies.  This is a process different from and superior to representative democracy, where the people do not assemble, and they chose from competing images, and not from among persons that they have come to know and respect.  Choosing from among images, the people under structures of representative democracy are subject to manipulation by the wealthy, which control the media of communication.

 
References

Ianni, Valera.  2011.  La Revolución Francesa.  México: Ocean Sur.

Soboul, Albert.  1975.  The French Revolution 1787-1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, French Revolution, popular assemblies, popular councils      

     The principal actors in the French Revolution were the bourgeoisie, the King, the nobility, and the people.

      As we have seen (“The French Revolution in Global Context” 11/26/2013), the bourgeoisie consisted of the great merchants, the financiers, the owners of the industrial factories, and professionals tied to the state bureaucracy.  They had emerged from an incipient merchant class that had been taking shape since the tenth century, as a result of the expansion of commerce.  They had an interest in pushing the process of modernization that had emerged as a consequence of historic human tendencies toward conquest and centralization of political structures.  Of particular relevance here were: the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula; the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of America; and the formation of nation-states in Spain, England, and France.  In its pursuit of modernization, the French bourgeoisie abolished the feudal privileges of the nobility and the Church and established, as the hegemonic world view, the concept of a society composed of free and equal individuals with natural rights.

     The monarchy emerged as a political force as a consequence of dynamics that had been emerging since the tenth century.  From the fifth to the tenth centuries, following the invasions by Germanic tribes and the collapse of the Roman Empire, political fragmentation and particularism reigned, since the conquering tribes did not have the capacity to impose a centralized order.  Feudal monarchs were weak, exercising little control over the nobility; most state functions were carried out in the local manor.  But from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, re-urbanization occurred, made possible by greater political stability and a growth in commerce.  In three zones (that would become England, France and Spain), the monarchs in alliance with the rising merchant class took decisive political action that led to the formation of modern nation-states.  They used taxes to raise a professional army that imposed monarchial political will on neighboring territories, forging centralized political structures that overcame the local power of the nobility.  This process was tied to nationality formation, which had been continually evolving as a consequence of invasions and conquests.  With the centralization of power attained by the three monarchs, and aided by wars with other states (between England and France and between Spain and the Islamic Empires), a degree of national identity emerged that coincided with the political territories controlled by the centralized state, giving rise to the modern nation-state.  By the fifteenth century, England, France, and Spain had become modern nation-states (Cristóbal 2008).

     In France during the second half of the eighteenth century, noble reaction to monarchical centralization reversed the earlier centralization of power, such that by the time of Luis XVI, little remained of absolute power.  This made the King dependent on the bourgeoisie, which also had an interest in centralization, but it also had an interest in political power in the centralized state.  The constitutional monarchy of 1791 was the practical consequence of this common interest and political alliance (Ianni 2011:11, 18, 20).

     Although they comprised less than 2% of the French population, the nobility owned 20% of the land.  It had regained power that had been lost in the prior centralization of power.  Since the decisions of the Crown had to be registered by the nobles, they exercised a de facto veto.  They had monopoly rights on the production of wheat, bread, wine, and oil.  They controlled the criminal justice system in the rural towns.  They exploited the peasantry through rents and taxes (Ianni 2011:10-12).  They had an interest in the preservation of the old order in opposition to the tendencies of centralization, modernization, and secularization (see “The French Revolution in Global Context” 11/26/2013).  They were allied with the Church, which also enjoyed feudal privileges, although there was a distinction between the higher and lower clergy, the former pertaining to the nobility (Ianni 2011:12-13).

     The people included peasants, workers, craftsmen, and lower members of the professional class.  Peasants comprised 80% of the French population.  The majority of peasants were sharecroppers, obligated to surrender half of their crop in exchange for land, tools, and livestock.  One-quarter to one-third of peasants were proprietors, but their situation was difficult as a result of high payments for taxes and services.  The best-off peasants were tenants, who paid rent for land, but they were able to exploit the day-laborers, who were the worst-off among the peasantry.  The class structure of the peasantry shows how much the countryside had been transformed by modernization; peasants were no longer serfs.  Those peasants who participated in revolutionary action were driven by high taxes and the high cost of bread and other necessary items, which sometimes were hoarded by merchants for purposes of financial speculation (Ianni 2011:13-15).

    Since the modernization of agriculture had occurred earlier, there were no longer significant numbers of serfs.  But the modernization of industry, involving the transformation of craftsmen into salaried workers, was still in process, so there were significant numbers of guild craftsmen.  The guild system was characterized by high-quality production of luxury items.  With its unchanging rules of production, its prohibitions on innovation, and its long years of training to master the craft, the guild system was an obstacle to the advancement of the industrial factory.  Threatened by the force of modernization, the craftsmen envisioned a return to the past rather than an alternative future.  Craftsmen were active participants in the revolution, driven by hatred of the aristocracy, a sentiment shared by other popular sectors (Ianni 2011:15-16).

     The most politically active of the popular sectors were the “sans-culottes,” so named because of their style of dress.  They consisted of shopkeepers, small property owners, workers, and craftsmen.  They had an interest in pushing the bourgeois proclamation of democratic rights to its fullest realization.  They were the most radical element of the revolution, demanding universal male suffrage, the dethronement of the King, and wage and price controls.  The popular movement was ultimately contained by the bourgeois revolution, which replaced a society jointly ruled by nobles and kings with a society ruled by the bourgeoisie, characterized by the formalities and the appearance of democracy, but not the substance.

      The differing class interests created various possibilities for political alliances.  The nobility and the craftsmen were in the weakest position, since the social order from which they emerged was being swept away by the forces of centralization, modernization, and secularization.  In this dynamic situation, there was the possibility of a bourgeois-popular alliance in opposition to the nobility and the monarchy.  But this was undermined by tendencies toward a bourgeois alliance with the monarch vis-à-vis centralization and with the nobility in relation to property rights.  Ultimately what occurred was a bourgeois alliance with first the Napoleonic Empire and later with the restored and reconstituted monarchy.  During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concessions would be made to popular movements and demands, but the people would not rule.  The struggle for popular democratic nation-states would be renewed during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and it would the neocolonized peoples of the Third World who would take the lead in the struggle.


References

Cristóbal Pérez, Armando.  2008.  El Estado-Nación: Su Origen y Construcción.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Ianni, Valera.  2011.  La Revolución Francesa.  México: Ocean Sur.

Soboul, Albert.  1975.  The French Revolution 1787-1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, French Revolution

      Anatomically modern humans evolved from earlier species of the genus Homo roughly 130,000 years ago in Africa.  During the period of 130,000-10,000 B.P., human societies were characterized by continuous economic and cultural development in the context of a foraging (hunting and gathering) economic foundation.  The period was characterized by continuous migration and settlement in new areas as a result of population growth, such that by 10,000 B.P. humans had settled on all of the continents.

       As human migrations reached the geographic limits of the earth, migration as a solution to population growth was no longer possible.  Thus in seven different regions of the world, human societies independently utilized the accumulated knowledge to develop food production (the cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals).  This agricultural revolution established both conquest and political centralization as tendencies integrally tied to economic and cultural development.  Societies that turned to food production had the capacity to sustain specialists, including soldiers and state administrators, who were not directly involved in food production.  This capacity enabled them to conquer neighboring societies and incorporate the conquered peoples and lands into a single political territory, providing a foundation for empire and advanced civilization, characterized by specialists who forged significant achievements in technology, science, the arts and literature.  The empires were ruled by a political-religious elite, and they were systems of social stratification that legitimated inequality with religious concepts.

       In North Africa, the human tendency toward development through domination led to the formation of Islamic Empires and to the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.  Spanish and Portuguese resistance to the conquest accelerated their tendencies toward centralization.  As a result, Spain and Portugal emerged from the reconquest as centralized states with advanced military capacities, establishing the basis for the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of America.

      The Spanish and Portuguese conquest of vast regions of America in the sixteenth century established the foundation for the modern world-system.  The precious metals obtained (through forced labor imposed on the indigenous populations) stimulated the further economic and commercial development of Western Europe, most notably England and France, which also had formed modern nation-states.  The force of the expansion was so great that the traditional forms of production constituted a fetter, leading to the modernization of production.  Modernization first occurred in agriculture, with the enclosure of common lands, the transformation of feudal obligations into rent, and the centralization of land ownership.  Thus serfs were converted into tenants, sharecroppers, and day laborers.  Subsequently, modernization occurred in manufacturing, with the transformation of the craft workshop into the industrial factory, creating the highly specialized form of labor that destroyed work as a craft and that Marx would famously describe as alienation. 

     The bourgeois class in France in the second half of the eighteenth century was formed by these dynamics.  The bourgeoisie consisted of the owners of the emerging industrial factories, the big merchants who profited from the expanding commerce in goods, the financiers who profited from loans to factories owners and merchants, and the professionals who were tied to the expanding state bureaucracy that was necessary for the efficient regulation and administration of the expanding commerce and manufacturing.  The bourgeoisie emerged in the context of a feudal society ruled jointly: by nobles, who had an interest in preserving decentralization and traditional forms of production; and by the monarch, who had an interest in centralization and in breaking the power of the nobility, even though the monarchy itself evolved from feudal structures and dynamics.  The bourgeoisie had an interest in taking power away from the nobility and in establishing an alliance with a state that would adopt measures designed to accelerate the modernization of production.  Thus the bourgeoisie formed a revolution that abolished feudalism and that established a constitutional monarchy, a monarchy recast in accordance with modern institutions.

     Because of the integral relation of the Church with feudal institutions and its intimate ties with the nobility, the further modernization of the society required a reduction of the Church’s power.  Thus the French Revolution was characterized by an attack on the Church, not only with respect to its property and its feudal privileges, but also by the formulation of an alternative to its hierarchical theocentric vision of society.   The bourgeois revolution formulated an alternative vision of society based on free and equal individuals who have natural rights, including the rights of suffrage and property, important components of the struggle with the nobility.  Under bourgeois class rule, legitimation of inequality would be attained not through religious concepts but through democratic values, interpreted in a limited way in accordance with bourgeois interests.  With the power of the Church reduced, the separation of Church and state and religious tolerance emerged as integral components of the new bourgeois-ruled democratic society.

     But the bourgeoisie would not have been victorious had it not been for the direct action of the popular sectors, which themselves for the most part were formed by the process of modernization.  The popular sectors included peasants, who were no longer a class as such, divided as they were among tenants, sharecroppers, and day laborers.  And they included craftsmen, shopkeepers, small property owners, and workers, who had their own organizations and leaders.  These popular sectors embraced the modern concept of democracy, interpreting it in a more radical form than the bourgeoisie, seeing in it the possibilities for not only political participation but also for social liberation.  Thus they pushed the revolution to take more drastic and deeply democratic measures.  Many of the leaders of the radical and populist wing of the revolution were members of the emerging professional class, which was both a lower part of the bourgeoisie as well as a relatively privileged part of the popular sectors.  Radical leaders from the professional ranks interpreted the destiny of their class as tied to the fate of the popular sectors. 

        Thus the French Revolution, seen in a panoramic context, was established by historic human tendencies toward conquest and centralization and by the more recent tendency toward modernization.  In its drive to complete the process of modernization, the revolution stimulated another tendency, namely, secularization.  At the same time, the French Revolution provided a foundation for popular movements throughout the world that would embrace its democratic world view and the implications of secularization in order to proclaim the universal human values that ought to guide humanity, such as protection of the social and economic rights of all persons and respect for the self-determination and sovereignty of nations.  The world-wide popular movements also would come to recognize that the historic human pattern of development through conquest and domination is no longer sustainable, inasmuch as the world-system has reached the geographical and ecological limits of the earth.  Just as humans invented food production when foraging societies reached their geographical limits, humans today must embrace a fundamental change from development through domination to development through cooperation and international solidarity.  The French Revolution did not challenge the historic human pattern of domination, seeking only to exchange domination by the nobility with an alternative form of domination by the bourgeoisie.  The global popular movements today seek to complete the French Revolution, carrying out the democratic revolution in a manner that ends domination in all of its forms.  The movement today proclaims that a just, democratic and sustainable world is necessary and possible.

       The French Revolution stimulates questions that must be addressed by the popular movements today.  These issues for our reflection include:  class structures and dynamics in revolutionary processes; the role of popular assemblies and popular militias; and the issues of violence and of religion and spirituality.  We will be discussing these themes in subsequent posts.


     The reader is invited to take a look at previous posts that have explored themes relevant to today’s post: “The origin of the modern world-economy,” 8/6/2013; “Conquest, gold, and Western development,” 8/8/2013; “What enables conquest?” 8/9/2013; “Food production and conquest,” 8/12/2013; “European feudalism,” 8/13/2013; “The modern nation-state,” 8/14/2013; “Dialectic of domination and development,” 10/30/2013; “Bourgeois revolution in France, 1787-1799,” 11/25/2013.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, French Revolution

     Like the American Revolution of 1763-1789, the French Revolution of 1787-1799 was a bourgeois revolution that was made possible by the political action of the masses.  In both cases, the popular sectors challenged the bourgeoisie and for a time took partial control of the revolution, but the revolution ultimately was contained by the scope of bourgeois interests, thus postponing to another day the democratic revolutions of the popular sectors. 

     The French Revolution was based on and succeeded in establishing a new concept of society, according to which society consists fundamentally of individuals, each of whom have natural rights.  According to this view, the organization of society should be based on voluntary contract among legally and politically equal individuals; any inequality that emerges should be based on differences in capacities, talents, initiative, or work.  This bourgeois concept of society was fundamentally different from the feudal, which assumed that society is divided into different ranks and statuses, each with its own rights, privileges, and duties (Ianni 2011:32-33).

     The bourgeois concept of society was expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, adopted on August 26, 1789.  It proclaimed that “men are born and remain free and equal in their rights,” and these include the rights to liberty, property, personal safety, and resistance to oppression (Soboul 1975:176-82). 

     The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen also expressed fear of mobilization from below; it sought to end domination by the nobility, but not domination of one class by another.  This perspective can be seen in its proclamation of the right of property, without placing limits to this right on the basis of the needs of society as a whole.  In effect, the Declaration promoted the transformation of feudal property into bourgeois property (Ianni 2011:48-50; Soboul 1975:332).

     The bourgeois character of the revolution is reflected in the Constitution of 1791.  In opposition to the interests of the nobility, it abolished feudal rights and privileges and established a constitutional monarchy.  In opposition to the interests of the popular classes, it restricted the right to vote on the basis of income and permanency of residence (Ianni 2011: 53-54).

     The bourgeois program was characterized by economic liberalism.  It sought to remove taxes and other obstacles to the free circulation of merchandize.  These measures, however, had negative consequences for the people, the protection of whose interests would have required government intervention in the economy with the intention of controlling prices and wages (Ianni 2011:81-82).

      Thus, in spite of the active participation of the popular sectors, the revolution had not established a government that protected popular interests.  This contradiction led to a radicalization of the revolution.  By 1792, the popular sectors had taken control of the revolutionary process, leading to the adoption of more radical measures, including universal male suffrage.  The new Constitution of 1793 proclaimed certain social and economic rights, such as the rights to work, public assistance, and education.  But even the new Constitution did not subordinate property rights to human rights and to the needs of the society as a whole, and it implicitly sanctioned the exploitation of labor (Ianni 2011:71, 87, 94-98; Soboul 1975:315-16).

     By 1794, popular control of the revolutionary process had come to end, and by 1796 the popular movement dissipated, a victim of the powerful forces operating against it as well as its own internal contradictions and errors, a theme that we will be discussing in subsequent posts.  For its part, the bourgeoisie would find its interests consolidated in the Napoleonic Empire (Ianni 2011:119-47).

       All revolutionary processes should be understood in global and historical context, and this theme will be the subject of the next post.


References

Ianni, Valera.  2011.  La Revolución Francesa.  Ocean Sur: México.

Soboul, Albert.  1975.  The French Revolution 1787-1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, French Revolution

Posted November 1, 2013
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     Beginning in 1763, the British Parliament enacted a series of measures designed to raise revenue for the British government in order to pay debts accumulated during the Seven Years’ War (known in the United States as the French and Indian War).  The measures involved taxes and duties on trade with the North American colonies, favoring British over American merchants and undermining the commercial and political power of the American elite.  They included the Proclamation Line of 1763, the Currency Act of 1764, the Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, the Quartering Act of 1765, the Declaratory Act of 1766, and the Townsend Duties of 1767 (Shalhope 1990:27-31; Zinn 59-60).
 
      The measures stimulated a movement in opposition to British commercial policies and ultimately in opposition to British control of the North American colonies of British settlers.  It was led by the American elite, a wealthy educated class consisting primarily of merchants and large planters.  Lawyers, editors, and merchants of the upper class mobilized popular energy through writings and speeches that used the language of liberty and equality.  Utilizing newspaper editorials, pamphlets, and mass meetings, the educated elite rallied the mass of ordinary citizens from the urban middle class (small merchants, lawyers, ship captains, and clergy) as well as the urban working class (artisans, seamen, laborers) and small farmers.  The use of writing and publication to reach the popular classes was a new step for the educated elite, who had previously confined themselves to writing solely to an audience of fellow gentlemen (Shalhope 1990:27-31; Zinn 58-61).

     The conflict between the British government and the American movement came to a head from 1773 to 1776.  The Tea Act of 1773 led to the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, which led to the Coercive Acts of 1774, leading to the summoning of a Continental Congress and to confrontation in Lexington and Concord in 1775.  The Continental Congress turned increasingly to the question of declaring independence from Britain, leading to the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 (Shalhope 1990:28, 83-84).   Written principally by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence formulated a vision of a society composed of equal individuals, in which each individual has inalienable rights:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

      But the mobilization of the popular sectors involved risks for the American elite.  The energy of the people was rooted in anger provoked by accumulated grievances against the upper class itself.  In order to avoid that popular energy would turn against the upper class, the elite sought to channel popular rage toward Britain and the pro-British sector of the American elite.  The key was the rhetoric of Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine, who used language that provoked anger at the British and was vague on class issues (Zinn 61-65).

        In spite of the success of the rhetoric of liberty and equality in unifying the colony and in obscuring class divisions, popular aspirations could not be contained.  By 1775-77, the nationalist movement had evolved into a popular democratic movement in which small farmers, artisans, and workers played an important role.  During this time, all of the constitutions of the thirteen colonies were rewritten or substantially modified.  Setting aside property and educational requirements, they granted the right to vote to ordinary men of European descent.  They vested power in the legislative assemblies established by this broadly-based vote, giving the assemblies authority over the executive and legislative branches of the government.  They had many other democratic provisions, including programs of aid for farmers and artisans, systems of taxation that were more egalitarian, programs for the redistribution of land, and limitations on the accumulation of property by one individual (Foner 1998:17-21; Shalhope 1990: 83-91).

     The popular democratic movement of 1775 to 1777 was in important respects limited.  The British settlers in North America were accumulating capital through the sale of food and animal products to slaveholders in the Caribbean.  They had no economic interest in the abolition of slavery or in the rights of slaves, and the popular movement did not address these rights.  Nor did the movement address the rights of women.  But the popular democratic movement was very progressive for its time, and it provoked a conflict with the large landholders and the emerging commercial bourgeoisie, which began to resist the popular movement.  We will discuss this reaction of the elite in the next post.


References

Foner, Eric.  1998.  The Story of American Freedom.  New York: W.W. Norton.

Shalhope, Robert E.  1990.  The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Culture, 1760-1800.  Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Zinn, Howard.  2005.  A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Harper Perennial Modern Classics

 
Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, American Revolution, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Eric Foner, Robert Shalhope, Howard Zinn

 

Posted November 4, 2013

     The Articles of Confederation of 1777 established a federation of states that essentially preserved the self-government of the thirteen states and the democratic structures established by their recently written or modified constitutions (Shalhope 1990:84-85; see “The US popular movement of 1775-77” 11/1/2013).    But the democratic structures established by the state constitutions were a threat to the privileges of the educated gentry, a class of large landholders and educated men.  As Shalhope explains:  

​     The elite responded to the threat from below with a reactionary movement that sought to reverse some of the gains of the revolutionary movement.  They sought to revise state constitutions, and they ultimately were able to replace the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution of 1787.  The Constitution transferred significant powers to the federal government.  It also established much larger voting districts for the House of Representatives, thus making it much more difficult for ordinary men to be elected, and tilting the playing field in favor of educated and wealthy men, or men of modest means who could obtain the support of the wealthy.  In addition, the new constitution transformed the separation of powers into the balance of powers, facilitating that the executive and judicial branches and the upper house could check the action of the lower house, should the lower house fall under the control of the popular classes (Shalhope 1990:97-101).

     The Constitution provoked a reaction from the popular democratic movement.  Ordinary farmers, traders, artisans, and workers formed associations and published pamphlets and newspapers.  These popular organizations were developed to promote the interests of the popular classes, and their participants were generally referred to as anti-Federalists.  In reaction to repression by the government, the popular organizations advocated freedom of speech, press, and association.  They were able to force the adoption of ten amendments to the Constitution that came to be known as the Bill of Rights, although even this apparent guardian of the people’s liberties contained ambiguities.  And they were able to elect Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800.  As the most radical member of the upper class ruling elite and the author of the stirring words of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was identified with the popular cause (Foner 1998:42-43; Shalhope 1990:105, 150, 164; Zinn 2005:90-102).  

    But the Constitution had established the legal and political foundation for a political process that favors elite control.  It represented the victory of an elite counterrevolution that reversed the gains of the popular democratic revolution of 1775-77, a phenomenon that is nearly erased from our national consciousness.

      In addition to recognizing that the Constitution was the product of a victorious elite counterrevolution, we also should be aware that the theory and practice of American democracy were formed in a particular historical and social context. The structures of competing political parties emerged in the context of a social conflict between the elite and the popular classes.  And the emphasis on freedom of speech and association emerged in the context of repression of the popular movement.  And we should understand that the American historical and social context is not universal.  Revolutionary processes developing in different historical and social contexts will forge different understandings and practices of democracy, appropriate for their particular situations.  We should avoid the ethnocentric error of assuming that the American theory and practice of democracy is the universal standard for humanity.

References
 
Foner, Eric.  1998.  The Story of American Freedom.  New York: W.W. Norton.
 
Shalhope, Robert E.  1990.  The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Culture, 1760-1800.  Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Zinn, Howard.  2005.  A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Harper Perennial Modern Classics
 
 
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Posted November 5, 2013

     The Articles of Confederation of 1777 were in opposition to the interests of the American elite.  The document gave limited power to the federal government and concentrated power in the state governments, which were controlled by the popular classes.  The elite were particularly concerned that limitations on property rights would be established by state governments under popular control.  So the upper class formed a successful movement for a new Constitution that expanded the power of the federal government and that went beyond the separation of power to the balance of power, creating a situation where one of the three branches (legislative, executive and judicial) is able to check the power of the other two (see “American Counterrevolution 1777-1787” 11/3/2013).

      The balance of power is generally presented in US culture as a wise mechanism designed to ensure that no one group has too much power.  What this widely-accepted view fails to mention is that it was designed by the elite to ensure that the representatives of the people did not have too much power vis-à-vis the elite.   The representatives of the popular classes were concentrated in the legislative branch, whereas the executive and judicial branches of that era were selected through processes much less democratic.  So the balance of power constituted a mechanism to enable elite representatives to check the power of the representatives of the popular classes.  In addition, the new Constitution expanded the size of voting districts, which facilitated that ordinary and common people would have less possibility of winning elections, since the larger voting districts required candidates to have more resources.  Thus key components of the Constitution were established with the explicit intention of frustrating the popular will (Beard 1960:154-63; Miller 1991:18, 97, 105-9; Foner 1998:24; Shalhope 1990: 99-107; Edelman 1984:16). 

     Some commentators have observed that the writers of the Constitution established the form of democracy without the substance.  Their mechanism for doing so was the concept of popular sovereignty, which is the idea that the government exercises power in the name of the people and with the consent of the people.  Although this seems like a democratic concept, the exercising of power by the government in the name of the people is something fundamentally different from the exercising of power directly by the people themselves.  The concept of popular sovereignty gives power to the people, but converts the people into an abstraction, into “a mythic entity that never meets, never discusses, and never takes any action” (Miller 1991:113).  The concept of popular sovereignty makes it possible for political leaders who distrust democracy to invoke the rhetoric of democracy (Miller 1991: 105-28; Shalhope 1990: 102, 106).

      The legacy of the balance of power remains with us. Proposed projects of law or national action must make their way in a system of checks and balances in which elite representatives are everywhere present to guarantee the protection of elite interests, generating ideologies that obscure their true intentions.  At the same time, with the destruction of fledging efforts at local popular assemblies at the end of the eighteenth century, our people have not developed the practice of popular discourse.  We are a divided and confused people, manipulated by the mass media, which are owned by the elite. 

     The system of checks and balances that we have inherited is a contentious process, and proposals that become law are based on compromise rather than consensus, and for this reason rarely enjoy the unqualified support of the majority.  We lack the capacity to develop a reasonable national project on the basis of national consensus.  We have seen the fall of worthy and necessary national projects: LBJ’s War on Poverty, Jimmy Carter’s proposal for the protection of the environment, and the health insurance proposal of the Clintons in the 1990s.  Obama’s health insurance proposal was passed only after significant modifications that may have undermined its intention, and its initial steps at implementation are full of contention and discord.  The exceptions to this pattern of contentious discord are those proposals that have overwhelming popular support on the basis of manipulation of popular fear of a supposed internal or external enemy or threat. 

      I have seen firsthand an alternative political process, and I can affirm that it need not be this way.  But first we must rediscover our history, and particularly our history of popular struggle, which from time to time has lifted a bright star in the American political landscape, as a result of the heroic efforts at different historic moments of farmers, artisans, workers, African-Americans, women, Native Americans, Latinos, defenders of the earth, and intellectuals committed to defense of the true and the right.  And we must come to appreciate the popular movements formed by the peoples of the Third World, whose anti-imperialist struggles must be tied to our own struggles for a true fulfillment of the American promise of democracy.


References

Beard, Charles A.  1960 (1913).  An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.  New York:  Macmillan.

Edelman, Martin.  1984.  Democratic Theories and the Constitution.  Albany:  State University of New York Press.

Foner, Eric.  1998.  The Story of American Freedom.  New York: W.W. Norton.

Miller, Joshua.  1991.  The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Early America, 1630-1789: The Legacy for Contemporary Politics.  University Park:  The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Shalhope, Robert E.  1990.  The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Culture, 1760-1800.  Boston: Twayne Publishers.


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Posted November 6, 2013

      In 1976, the people of Cuba overwhelmingly approved a Constitution that established a political system based on popular participation.  The Constitution established structures of “Popular Power,” where the highest authority resides in the National Assembly of Popular Power.  The deputies of the National Assembly are elected by the delegates of the 169 Municipal Assemblies in the country, who are elected in elections with two to six candidates in voting districts of 1000 to 1500 voters.  The candidates are nominated in a series of nomination meetings held in each voting district.  They are not nominated by any political party, and focus at the nomination meetings is on the leadership qualities of the candidates.  The deputies of the National Assembly are elected to five-year terms.  As the highest political authority in the nation, the National Assembly enacts legislation, and it elects the 31 members of the Council of State and Ministers, including the President of the Council of State and Ministers, who is the chief of state. 

     The Cuban Constitution of 1976 also established requirements for consultation by the national, provincial, and municipal assemblies with mass organizations.  The mass organizations are organizations of workers, women, students, peasants and cooperative members, and neighborhoods.  They meet on a regular basis to discuss concerns of their members, and the discussions range from concrete problems to major global issues.  The mass organizations have a participation rate of 85%. 

     There are other examples of revolutions and movements forming popular assemblies and popular councils: the Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian Revolution of 1917, the German Revolution of 1918, the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, the General Strike in Great Britain in 1926, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (Grant 1997:61).  Popular councils also have been developed in Vietnam (Ho 2007:162-76), and they are being developed today in Latin America, particularly in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. 

     Popular assemblies and popular councils are structures of popular democracy.  They are fundamentally different from bourgeois structures of representative democracy.  Popular democracy is characterized by regular face to face meetings of small groups in places of work and study and in neighborhoods, where the people meet to discuss the challenges and issues that they confront.  In such settings, if someone has a confused or distorted conception, those persons with a more informed and comprehensive understanding of the issue can explain further, thus reducing the tendency to distortion and confusion, helping the people to understand the issues.  In this process, those with a capacity to explain and with a commitment to fundamental human values earn the respect, trust, and confidence of their neighbors, co-workers, and/or fellow students.  It is an environment that gives space to natural and indigenous leadership, and many leaders are able to develop their leadership capacities in the various mass organizations, serving from the local to national level.  In Cuba, for example, it is not uncommon to find informed, committed, and articulate persons serving as president of the neighborhood organization for a city block, or as president of a municipal assembly in a small rural town. 

     In contrast, representative democracy is an impersonal and anonymous process.  The people vote, or they select from predetermined answers for an opinion survey, but they do not meet to discuss and to inform themselves.  They respond not to arguments, reasons, and evidence presented in face to face conversations, but to slogans and sound bites presented in the mass media, sometimes in the form of political advertising.  Representative democracy is a process in which organizations compete, vying to see which political party or particular interest can generate the most support in elections or opinion polls, or better said, to see which party or interest can more effectively manipulate the people, who never meet to argue, debate, and discuss.  In such a context, with competing particular interests presenting different and opposed spins and manipulations, the development of a consensus that could be the basis of a constructive national project is no more than an idealistic and naïve hope.

      The formation of popular councils is an integral and necessary dimension of a social transformation that seeks a just and democratic world.


Bibliography

August, Arnold.  1999.  Democracy in Cuba and the 1997-98 Elections.  Havana:  Editorial José Martí. 

Grant, Ted.  1997.  Rusia—De la revolución a la contrarrevolución: Un análisis marxista.  Prólogo de Alan Woods.  Traducción de Jordi Martorell.  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels.

Ho Chi Minh.  2007.  Down with Colonialism.  Introduction by Walden Bello.  London: Verso.

Lezcano Pérez, Jorge.  2003.  Elecciones, Parlamento y Democracia en Cuba.  Brasilia: Casa Editora de la Embajada de Cuba en Brasil.


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Posted November 7, 2013

      The American Constitution did not include provisions for the protection of social and economic rights, such as the right to an adequate wage and adequate nutrition as well as equal access to education and health care.  In response to this situation, there emerged popular democratic movements that sought to expand the scope of democratic rights to include the right to the social and economic conditions that are a necessary for a decent human life.  

     An important example is the labor movement.  In the United States, the labor movement developed primarily trade unionism as against working-class consciousness (Cohen 1970).  Trade unionism focuses on the attainment of better wages and working conditions for the organized workers of the higher paid trades, and it tends to lead to a division of the working class and the incorporation of higher paid workers into the consumer society.  In contrast, working-class consciousness stresses the unity of all workers, and it seeks the protection of the social and economic rights of all.

      But working-class consciousness did exist as a secondary tendency in the US labor movement.  From 1905 to 1920, the International Workers of the World (IWW, or Wobblies) sought to form one big union that included workers of all trades, skilled and unskilled workers, women workers, and black workers; in contrast to the American Federation of Labor, which was an exclusive federation consisting overwhelmingly of white male workers who were organized in the higher-wage trades.  But government repression of the IWW beginning in 1919 led to its destruction.  In the 1930s, communists played an active role in organizing textile workers and tenant farmers in the South and urban workers in the North, and they sought to educate workers into working-class consciousness.  But their influence in the labor movement was eliminated by repression during Cold War of the post-World War II era (Zinn 2005:328-54, 381-86). 

     In 1935 and 1936, there were sit-down strikes, not organized by union leadership but by rank-and-file workers, thus constituting a serious threat to the stability of the system.  In response to these threats, the National Labor Relations Board was established.  It controlled labor rebellions by granting legal status to unions, making concessions to union demands for improvements in living and working conditions, and channeling labor energy into contracts, negotiations, and union meetings.  Such reforms as a minimum wage, the forty-hour work week, and retirement and unemployment benefits were established.  These were concrete and important gains, but the new labor-management system undermined the possibility of a working-class alliance with other popular sectors that could take control of political institutions from the capitalist class and its political representatives (Zinn 2005:393-402).

      The African-American movement also provides an important example of the demand for social and economic rights in the United States.  Its expression can be found in the Reconstruction and populist movements of the South in the period of 1865 to 1895, the declarations of the NAACP in the 1920s, the concept of black community control formulated by Malcolm X and the black nationalist strain from 1964 to 1972, the Poor People’s Campaign of Martin Luther King in 1968, and the Rainbow Coalition of Jesse Jackson in the 1980s (McKelvey 1994).

     In Western Europe, working-class consciousness was more fully developed than in the United States, and the social democratic movement had a greater impact on Western European political culture.  There emerged a broadening of the definition of democracy to include the social and economic rights, such as the right of all citizens to a decent wages and adequate working condition as well as to nutrition, housing, education, and health care (Miller and Potthoff 1986; Paterson and Thomas 1986).  Nonetheless, the reversals of the gains in Western Europe since 1980 suggest fundamental limitations in the reformist strategy that has been adopted by the Western European working-class organizations and parties, as distinct from a revolutionary strategy that would seek to take control of national political structures through an alliance of workers with other popular sectors (Regalado 2007:43-47).

     Partly as a result of the influence of the social democratic movements of Western Europe, and partly as a result of the participation of the communist governments of Eastern Europe in the United Nations, the deepening of the meaning of democracy to include social and economic rights has occurred in the world as a whole.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emitted by the United Nations in 1948, includes articles that proclaim protection of social and economic rights, including the right to a decent standard of living and to food, housing, and medical care.  

      In addition, the protection of social and economic rights has been an integral component of the anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial revolutions of the Third World, commonly expressed as a dimension of the right to development, viewed as the most fundamental of all human rights.  The demand for the protection of social and economic rights can be found in the declarations of the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization of the governments of the Third World.  And it is a fundamental dimension of the renewed popular movements of Latin America today.  We will discuss these movements in future posts. 

     Although the US government conducts its foreign policy on the premise that the United States is more democratic than any other nation, most of the nations and peoples of the earth have a more advanced understanding of democracy with respect to the protection of social and economic rights.


References

Cohen, Sanford.  1970.  Labor in the United States, 3rd edition.  Columbus, Ohio:  Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co.

McKelvey, Charles.  1994.  The African-American Movement:  From Pan-Africanism to the Rainbow Coalition. Bayside, New York: General Hall.

Miller, Susanne, and Heinrich Potthoff.  1986.  A History of German Social Democracy from 1848 to the present.  Translated from the German by J.A. Underwood.  New York:  St. Martin’s Press.

Paterson, William E., and Alastair H. Thomas, Eds.  1986.  The Future of Social Democracy.  Oxford:  Clarendon Press.

Regalado, Roberto.  2007.  Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements, and Political Alternatives.  New York: Ocean Press.

Zinn, Howard.  2005.  A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Harper Perennial Modern Classics


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