The "Amerikan" Revolution

Gerald Horne's book "The Counter-Revolution of 1776" is a kind of prequel to his previous study of the early United States, "Negro Comrades of the Crown". Horne, a maverick Marxist historian and African-American activist, argues that the issues of slavery and slave resistance are central to an understanding of U.S. origins. The 13 colonies, or rather their White settlers, rebelled against the British motherland when abolitionism became a political force in Britain and slave resistance threatened to engulf the Caribbean. Thus, the American "revolution" was really a counter-revolution, a conservative reaction in defense of Black chattel slavery. White settler colonization of Native American land was another factor. Small wonder most Blacks and Natives supported the British during the War of Independence! Conceived in sin, the American republic have never been able to mend its terrible "race relations", forcing Blacks to seek support from alien powers, including Britain, Japan, China or the Soviet Union. Despite being a Marxist, Horne doesn't believe in "workers' unity" across racial barriers. Rather, he wants Blacks to form an independent *international* movement against the United States. It's not clear what foreign power Brother Horne wants to lobby for support this time around, but China is implied.

I don't deny that "The Counter-Revolution of 1776" is interesting. Horne paints a picture of a slave system which, despite its seeming "success" (for the slave-owners, slave-traders and consumers of tropical brands in Britain), was nevertheless inherently unstable. In a very real sense, the slavocracy was creating its own grave-diggers. At a certain point, slave resistance made abolitionism inevitable. The geopolitical picture is also interesting. Both France and Spain, especially Spain, encroached on the British possessions by promising freedom to Black slaves who absconded from British-owned plantations. Able-bodied Black men had to serve in the Spanish Army to gain their freedom, something they probably didn't mind doing! Black freedmen guarded the borders of Spanish Florida against British punitive expeditions. When the Anglo settlers became strong enough, they challenged Britain with the aid of their erstwhile enemies France and Spain. In return, the British played the abolitionist card, arming Blacks who fled from "Patriot" slave-owners. This created the (seemingly anomalous) situation that Loyalist Canada moved faster towards abolition (and had more Native rights) than the United States, that supposed beacon of freedom and enlightenment, where many of the Founding Fathers were actually slave-owners themselves. To Horne, the real beacon of freedom in the Western hemisphere was the Haitian revolution!

Horne's tack is, presumably, unusual among Marxists, who support the American Revolution, although they tend to emphasize the more radical Civil War and Reconstruction ("the Second American Revolution"). I first encountered the anti-"Amerikan" position in a very obscure work, J Sakai's "Settlers: The Myth of the White Proletariat". The otherwise unknown Sakai is an ultra-left Maoist, while Horne (a history professor of some standing) works with the more "main line" CPUSA. It would be interesting to know how common his complete alienation from the United States is among Black activists today? Yes, the United States may have been conceived in sin, but don't Reconstruction and desegregation prove that integration eventually became possible even in "Amerikkka"? Indeed, doesn't Loyalist Canada (hardly a paragon of Afro-centricity and ebonics) prove that Blacks can win their freedom in a Western nation?

Final complaint. While the subject matter of this book is interesting, Horne is - quite frankly - a terrible writer. I actually stopped reading about half-way through, and started skimming instead. I had the same problem with his previous book on the Loyalist-Black interface (which I *did* read very carefully, including the notes). I have decided to give "The Counter-Revolution of 1776" three stars because of its contents, and despite of its style.