The American Path of Bourgeois Development Revisited

Abstract

Charles post's recent collection of essays, The American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class-Structure, Economic Development and Political Conflict, 1620-1877, was greeted with enthusiasm in Marxist circles. post's essays are an attempt to apply the so-called "Brenner thesis" (according to which the transition from feudalism to capitalism was the result of the self-transformation of the English landowners) to american historical development. Since in the United States there was no class of feudal landlords to act as prime movers of an "agrarian" capitalist development, post makes the merchant-turned-land speculator the demiurge of american capitalism, asserting, against all historical evidence, that this class was able to "impose a social monopoly on land" shortly after the american revolution. The rest of post's theses are just elaborations of this fundamentally mistaken interpretation. However, The American Road to Capitalism does provide a welcome opportunity to discuss the classical Marxist analysis of "the american path of bourgeois development," which remains the foundation of any materialist analysis of american history.

‘Traditions of American “Democracy”’ by Fedor Kapelusz

“…We do not wade into the analytically more-interesting debate between Gaido(Gaido 2013) and Post(Post 2014) on the development of American capitalism. 2 See Bolkhovitinov 1969 for an informative overview.…”

Karl Kautsky and the Russian Revolution of 1905: A Debate on the Driving Forces and the Prospects of the Russian Revolution in the Second International

“…Rejecting a compromise with the liberal bourgeoisie, Lenin encouraged a rapprochement between proletariat and peasantry. Their victorious revolution would be consolidated with the establishment of a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, that would sweep away all the feudal remains, crush the resistance of landowners, the big bourgeoisie and autocracy, and put Russia on the path of "American" capitalist development through land nationalization (Gaido 2013).…”