America Before 1787 by Jon Elster;

America Before 1787 by Jon Elster;

Author:Jon Elster;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2022-12-28T00:00:00+00:00


Home Rule versus Rule at Home

Consider a four-step branching scenario. (1) An actor A fights an actor B. (2) To win, A enlists the help of actor C. (3) After their joint victory over B, C turns against A. (4a) C defeats A. (4b) A defeats C. In stage 2, A may anticipate stage 3 and the possibility of stage 4a, but is pushed on by C.

In his theory of English politics in the mid-nineteenth century, Karl Marx posited A = the aristocratic landowners, B = the industrial bourgeoisie, and C = the working class. In the New York Daily Tribune of August 25, 1852, he wrote that “in every violent movement [the bourgeoisie] are obliged to appeal to the working class. And if the aristocracy is their vanishing opponent the working class is their rising enemy. They prefer to compromise with the vanishing opponent rather than to strengthen the arising enemy, to whom the future belongs, by concession of a more than apparent importance. Therefore, they strive to avoid every forcible collision with the aristocracy; but historical necessity and the Tories press them onwards.”168 Obviously, Marx predicted 4a as the outcome of the struggle.

In the American Revolution, we can posit A = the American seaboard elite of planters, merchants, lawyers, shipowners, and financiers; B = the British government; and C = the American farmers and urban workers. The outcome of the struggle was 4b. Having in 1781 defeated the British, in 1787 the American elite defeated the democratic forces that had helped them win.

The sorcerer’s apprentice. In the cited passage Marx obviously engages in the wishful, teleological thinking that vitiated much of his work. Yet his scenario of a two-front war, with the implied idea of the dangers of victory, is a useful conceptual tool. Equally obviously, my punchline for the American scenario is controversial. I shall devote much of volume 3 to discussing, modifying, and defending it. Here I focus on a less contested issue, the worry of the American elites before 1781 that independence might be bought at an unacceptably high price. As also happened in Paris in the fall of 1789 (see volume 3), the bourgeoisie realized that they could not easily get rid of the spirits they had called up, except by a retrograde effort (one step forward, two steps backward). In 1766, Cadwallader Colden wrote that “now the poor People [in New York City] attempt to do themselves justice by Riots & mobs. Some of the chief promoters of the licentious Spirit in the City suffer by the Riots in the country. The Governor at their desire has applied to the General for Military Assistance. If they find themselves unable to subdue the licentious riotous spirit which they themselves have raised, they will with all humility submit to the authority of Parliament.”169

Merrill Jensen traces the process back to the revolt against the Stamp Act, whose nullification

was brought about by mob action or the threat of it. Even the most conservative colonial leaders realized that



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