I've always considered the American Revolution a textbook example of a bougie revolution, in that a fuedal aristocrat's rule was overthrown by landowning capitalists not of the old fuedal nobility. IIRC Marx said something similar about it.

But last night a friend challenged that idea by pointing out that the fuedal base of society was de facto maintained via slavery, even if de jure there was no longer a king. In their interpretation, the war for independence wasn't actually a revolution, as the old divisions of nobility/serfs were maintained and simply rebranded along racial lines of white/Black, with indigenous peoples being considered almost completely outside the polity, similar to how many Jewish and Roma communities were regarded in Europe.

Thoughts?

Also wasn't sure if this went in history or askchapo

    • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I don't if I'd say the U.S. isn't fully capitalist, but I've heard the argument put forth that the farm work system in Califronia and the southwest, largely built on the backs od exploited migrant workers, constitutes a modern-day semi-fuedal system. Is that the kind of thing you're thinking about?

      • CrimsonSage [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Serfdom isn't just a form of slavery. It is a reciprocal three way relationship between a lord a worker and the land. Now this relationship can be abused and pushed and twisted, and at times be similar to slavery in appearance, but fundamentally serfs are not legally property and are entitled to reciprocal rights from their lord.

        • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          That's true, and something neither of us really considered when he had our discussion the other night. And here we were thinking we were Very Smart Marxists.

          • CrimsonSage [any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            I might as well put my Medieval history degree to some use! For me fine distinctions of the fundamental material relationships of society are critically important, because even though any given individuals life may potentially take any given shape, the ultimate shape of society at large depends on these individual social relations. Both slaves and sharecroppers differ from serfs in that they did not have this three way relationship, slaves had no rights over their lord or over the land or their own labor, while sharecroppers have rights to land and their labor but no rights over their debt holder.

    • Dimmer06 [he/him,comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Yes and the poverty the sharecroppers were kept in was absurd. I've seen photos that looked like they were straight out of some war ravaged country but it was actually just rural Mississippi or Alabama. Starving kids. Shacks with dirt floors, no running water, no doors nor windows. Easily treatable diseases maiming and killing people. Unfortunately blacks in this country still face a lot of this even if it's urban rather than rural.

      Your take isn't galaxy brained. Capitalism emerged out of feudalism and it emerged unequally across the globe. Those different, unequal developments are the contradictions which drive history. Idk if you've read Hammer and Hoe (you should if you haven't) but some of those sharecroppers organized with the CPUSA in the 30 and 40s. They would go on be crucial advisors for the civil rights/black activists of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The semi-feudal system of the south, distinct from its marginally better counterpart in the north, would be the locus of civil rights organizing for decades.