1Dime Radio The American Revolution: The Marxist Position (Part 1)
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Apr 24, 2024 Marxist historian James Vaughn discusses the American Revolution, contrasting the progressive narrative with the classical Marxist view. They explore perspectives on bourgeois revolutions, global impact, revolutionary connections, social contract theory, evolution of revolutionary thought, emergence of bourgeois society, and Marxist insights on plantation labor and slavery. The conversation delves into American expansionism, contradictions in free labor and capitalism, and the feasibility of socialism in the US.
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America As The Bourgeois Revolution's Apex
- The American Revolution is a peak expression of the bourgeois revolution that made civil society master of the state.
- It created a uniquely philosophical country rooted in political ideas rather than blood and soil.
What Civil Society Really Means
- Civil society (bourgeois society) is the public realm of free, voluntary cooperation distinct from state coercion.
- It arose as commodity production and free labor generalized, creating independent yet interdependent individuals.
Society As An Abstraction Emerged With Commerce
- The modern concept of 'society' emerged as people recognized commercial society's new abstract social order.
- That order made individuals more independent while making their lives more socially interdependent.