Saturday, July 16, 2011
The unfinished American Revolution and a proposal for a new political party
The United States of America needs a new political party born of the unfinished business of the American Revolution -- much like Horace Greeley said of the Republican Party when it was created back in the mid 1850s. The Republican Party was originally created to resolve the issue of slavery versus free labor, free land, free speech and free people. The Whig and Democratic Parties failed to resolve the issue and both shattered over internal divisions. The Republican Party that arose in their stead was originally pro-tariff and anti-slavery. The two great American political issues of the Nineteenth Century were slavery and banking. The slavery issue -- at least chattel slavery -- was solved, but the issue of wage-slavery and banking exploitation was never resolved. In fact, I would argue that the bank monopolies prevailed. Study the debates that surrounded creation of Hamilton's first Bank of the United States. The Congress of the United States farmed out its constitutional currency creating powers to a private banking corporation, setting off a two-hundred year struggle that still threatens to collapse the remains of the republic. Unless we mobilize the citizenry, the international banking/financial interests will extinguish the U. S. before the U. S. can begin to extinguish the banking cartels.
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I am in full agreement with you, Mr. Burchell. I must think that Paine would look upon the wage-slavery of today and the capture of government by financial interests and be both aghast and not entirely surprised, knowing this to be the intention of the Federalists of the 1790s.
ReplyDeleteOf course we always have it in our power to begin the world anew, so to speak. The question is what shall we create? I think we need a strong democratic socialist model. Regardless, you've hit the most important point - unless the citizenry of wage-laborers can be rallied, the likelihood of change is small.
Mr. Gwaltney (Mike, if I may) like you, I often think in historical terms ... in terms of historical process and progressive (or regressive/reactionary) change. While it may be anachronism to call the founders socialists (and I realize that your use of the term "democratic socialism" was in the present framework), it is nonetheless easy to draw a case that their sense of social relationship, obligation and reciprocity was stronger than the American Right would have us believe. The federally subsidized Marine Hospitals -- est. 1798 and signed into law by and during the administration of arch-federalist John Adams -- have recently been pointed to as examples of a broad federal interest in what the constitution calls "the general welfare," not to mention federally subsidize insurance. This is the reason I am resistant to the label "socialist," even though I admit that it can be fairly applied to the interests of those constitutionalists like myself -- and you, I suspect -- who believe in the government's mandate to "promote the general welfare."
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the opening statement on your website at http://www.mikegwaltney.net/ is spot on. I share many of your goals and ideals and you have, friend Mike, my sincere respect and admiration.
Kenneth, you flatter me with your comments, thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you for reminding me about the Marine Hospitals, that's an excellent point. Certainly it shows the importance of promoting "the general welfare", and I should think it's an important precedent.
Please keep up the good work here on your blog. I return to it frequently and never fail to gain inspiration from Paine's words and your scholarship. Kind regards.