Let us go on to listen to one of the leaders of the American Revolution, Tom Paine. Incidentally, we should remark that Tom Paine has been much underestimated by the bourgeois historians and has been much neglected. These classic words of Tom Paine mean very much to American workers today. We should think very seriously of what Tom Paine meant when he said:
"By referring the matter (the grievances against the British ruling class) from arguments to arms, a new point for politics is struck. All plans, preparations, etc., prior to the 19th of April (the battle of Lexington), are like almanacs of last year."
Let the American workers think of Ludlow, Calumet, the Bisbee deportations, the slavery in the mining sections, the tyranny in the steel regions, in the light of thsee meaningful words of Paine.
The Form of Government
We can understand why the American capitalists today are shuddering at the word dictatorship. When they hear the word dictatorship uttered by workers they know that it means the dictatorship of the workers to supplant the present dictatorship of exploiters. When the bourgeois apologists speak of the holiness of the present form of government they try to make us believe that the people living in America have always had the same form of government, that this present form of government is immutable, that it has eternal blessings for the masses.
Our revolutionary forefathers, when they decided to destroy the domination of the British ruling class, did not put much faith in the then existing governmental institutions under which they were living. Our forefathers decided to set up their own governmental apparatus. The first thing they did was to clean out the courts, which then, as now, were the bulwark of the reactionaries, the Tories (those who were loyal to the existing government).
In a letter which Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, wrote to Lord Dartmouth, dated December 24, 1774, he gave a description of the governmental apparatus set up by the revolutionists to displace the existing government. He said:
