Uniting the Ends Against The Middle

Republicans like to claim that the American Revolution was a "conservative revolution."

They forget that the great dialectical conflict between left and right did not yet exist. So, the claim makes very little sense. It is better to describe the American revolution in context of the social structure of 1776, and not the social structure of our day.

The United States inherited the class structure of feudal Europe. This feudal class structure had an entrenched ruling class that dictated the decisions, a small but growing middle class composed of merchants and other property owners. There was also a sizeable working class that subsisted by selling labor and begging favors.

The ruling class is people who get their income from ruling. The middle class secured their living through property ownership and the produce of their own creation. The lower class got income by selling wage labor.

The US colonies had only a small ineffectual ruling class and a much larger middle class. There was a great deal of social mobility between the working and middle class.

The American Revolution was a rebellion of this property owing middle class against the entrenched and corrupt ruling class.

The US Revolution led to an international reactionary movement. The reactionary movement sought to unite the ruling class with the lower class in a rebellion against the middle.

The first great reactionary leader was the emperor Napoleon. The German philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1830) and Karl Marx (1818-1883) demonstrate aspects of the new reactionary movement.

Names for the new reactionary movement include Socialism, Communism, Progressivism and Modern Liberalism.

The American Revolution was a revolution of the middle against the entrenched ruling elite. This revolution of the middle against the ends pulled a large number of people out of the lower class into the middle class and led to a widespread prosperity.

Marxism used a perverse dialectical process to unite the ends against the middle. The intelligentsia would agitate and raise the proletariat in revolution against the growing middle class.

The United States has been in an operating mode with the ends united against the middle since FDR. Not surprisingly, with the ends united against the middle, the middle class is waning while a detached ruling class thrives and dependency grows in the lower class.

(NOTE, one of the dialectical tricks of the modern age has been to redefine the middle class. Traditionally one defined the classes as follows: If you secured your income through ruling then you were part of the ruling class. If you secured your income through the ownership of productive property such as a farm, store or manufacturing concern you were middle class. The middle class also included professionals who owned productive knowledge. If you secured your living through wage labor (or begging) you were considered working class.

Progressives changed the definition of middle class to mean distribution of income. This allows them to claim that the swelling population of government workers is middle class and that any merchant who succeeds is ruling class.

If we held to the traditional definition of middle class, we would find that the American middle class is all but completely vanguished, and that the progressive left is the one that did the vanguishing.)