Our Heritage from 1776/Uphold the Revolutionary Tradition
Uphold the Revolutionary Tradition
By William F. Dunne.
THE FOURTH OF JULY is the anniversary of the decision of the American colonists to secure by any and all means, at the price of war and death if need be, their freedom from the English monarchy and establish themselves as a nation.
The tradition of the United States of America in this respect is a revolutionary tradition. More than that, it is a revolutionary tradition of which the workers and farmers of America are the bearers because it was the oppressed, descendants of the English, Irish, Scotch and Dutch peasantry which had been beggared first by the breakdown of feudalism and on whose backs were laid the unbearable burdens of a rising capitalism, who made up the revolutionary armies, who fought, starved and died for American independence only to be thrown into debtors' prisons and have the felon's brand placed on them when the revolutionary war had ended.
The "founding fathers" were the early aristocrats who took to themselves the fruits of the revolutionary struggle and representatives of the landlord, trading and commercial groups who held and drove to labor from sunup to sundown black and white slaves—the nucleus of the modern American workingclass.
The farmers and workers got nothing from the war for independence. What progress they have made as a class since that time has been made in the face of the most determined resistance on the part of the exploiting class which seeks now to disguise and distort the history of the revolutionary struggle.
As in France, where the fall of the Bastile marked the rise of the third estate—the trading and commercial class to power—but was achieved by the bloody sacrifices which the young workingclass laid on the altar of freedom, so in America the revolutionary war, fought by workers and farmers, marks the opening of what appears as an endless lane of opportunity for the exploiters of the masses to consolidate and increase their wealth and power.
We are proud of the part our class played in the stern struggle for independence and we say that the truth about 1776, the truth about the revolutionary period, both before and after the war for independence was over, shall conquer the lies of the present American ruling class.
The United States, like all other capitalist nations, has been built by workers and farmers. It is theirs and they should take it.
Every Fourth of July celebration should be the occasion for strengthening the revolutionary tradition of this nation which the workers and farmers alone can carry out to its final and inevitable conclusion—a workers' and farmers' government.
(The above is an excerpt from an editorial in "The Daily Worker" of July 4, 1926.)
For Workingclass Students
| (AMERICAN HISTORY) | |
| Social Forces in American History, Simons | $1.60 |
| Industrial History of the United States, Coman | 3.00 |
| Short History of American Labor Movement, Beard | .50 |
| Workers in American History, O’Neal | .50 |
| Left Wing Unionism, Saposs | 1.60 |
| Are the Jews a Race? Karl Kautsky | 2.50 |
| Lenin on Organization | 1.50 |
| Education in Soviet Russia, Scott Nearing | 1.60 |
| Rosa Luxemburg Letters to Karl and Louise Kautsky | 1.00 |
| Lenin, by Trotsky | 1.00 |
| Dictatorship vs. Democracy, Trotsky | 1,00 |
| Whither England, Trotsky | 1.75 |
| Whither Russia, Trotsky | 1.50 |
| Ten Days That Shook the World, John Reed | 1.50 |
| Romance of New Russia, Madeline Marx | 2.00 |
| The Great Steel Strike, Foster | .85 |
| Selected Essays of Karl Marx | 1.75 |
| Dollar Diplomacy, Nearing and Freeman | 2.50 |
| Oil Imperialism, Louis Fisher | 2.00 |
| Marxian Economic Handbook, Emmett | 3.25 |
| Historical Materialism, Bukharin | 3.25 |
| Foundations of Christianity, Kautsky | 4.00 |
| A B C of Communism, Bukharin | 1.10 |
| (Add 5 per cent for Postage) | |
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