One of the most important and aspects of Murray Rothbard’s work on the American Revolution is his framing of the Constitutional Convention as a counterrevolution against the radicalism of the 1770s. In bringing this interpretation of the Revolution to his audience, Rothbard drew upon the work of several historians, especially those of the 1960s and 1970s who challenged older narratives about the allegedly non-radical nature of the Revolution.
Throughout much of the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth, the American Revolution had often been framed according to the “neo-whig” narrative in which the American Revolution was very non-radical, and represented a sort of conservative revolution which, because of its lack of radicalism, differed from virtually every other revolution in the past several centuries.
This narrative was revived and promoted by conservatives in the 1950s who sought, as a Cold War measure, to discourage revolution of all types, and to foster greater support for the American regime.
Yet, some historians have argued otherwise, including Rothbard. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, a common thread in Rothbard history of the American Revolution, Conceived in Liberty, is his portrayal of the American Revolution as both highly radical and revolutionary. Moreover, Rothbard emphasizes the democratic nature of the Revolution.
For example, Rothbard repeatedly speaks with excitement about the overthrow of the old royalist oligarchy and its replacement with hyper-local democratic rule. Rothbard emphasizes that in many places throughout the new United States in the 1770s, the states were governed by democratically elected legislatures—which expanded the franchise. More importantly much of the governance that occurred was controlled by localized councils of middle-class and working-class farmers and workers. A typical section on this topic can be found in chapter 46, titled “Radicalism Triumphs in Pennsylvania. Rothbard’s approval of the move toward radical democracy can be sensed in this section:
In the Pennsylvania constitution, the radical leadership and their new mass base created a remarkably democratic instrument which quickly became the object of hate and alarm among conservatives of every stamp throughout the country. Its essence was the radicals’ realization that the inevitable thrust of despotism comes from entrenched oligarchy, and that therefore liberty is best assured by checking and scotching that oligarchy before it has a chance to grow. Conservative urgings of bicameralism were swept aside, and a single-house legislature created with no oligarchical upper house allowed. Executive tyranny was checked in advance by creating a plural executive, a council elected in rotation and removable at any time by the elected assembly. The president of this council, elected by joint vote of council and assembly, was only the presiding officer of the council with no real executive power. Furthermore, the council itself was strictly subordinate to the assembly and had no veto power over legislation. Plural officeholding was totally forbidden. Judicial despotism was prevented by making the Supreme Court judges not life judges guaranteed tenure on good behavior, but elected by the council for seven-year terms and removable by the assembly at any time for misbehavior. Military despotism was checked by allowing the state militia to select its own officers of colonel and below, higher officers to be selected by the assembly. Cannon and his Philadelphia Committee of Privates lost their fight, however, to make all militia officers electable by their men.
Also found in this passage is Rothbardian commentary on the conservatives during the American Revolution. Throughout Conceived in Liberty, Rothbard presents the Revolutionary period in America as a contest between the true libertarian (and democratic) radicals on the one hand, and the conservative supporters of authoritarian oligarchy on the other.
This brings us back to the issue of viewing the Constitutional Convention of 1787 as the triumph of the forces of conservatism in America after the end of the war. For those interested in the details, I recommend volume IV of Conceived in Liberty, and especially volume V.
But Rothbard was certainly not alone in this assessment. In an interesting review essay, written at about the same time as Conceived in Liberty, Russian historian Aleksandr Fursenko explored the debate over whether or not the new Constitution of 1787 was in line with “the Spirit of ‘76” or if it represented a counterrevolution against the ideology behind the Declaration of Independence. In the essay, Fursenko suggests that we are right to be skeptical that the Constitution was a seamless development that came out of the constitution. Rather, he tellingly refers to the Constitutional Convention as a “little Thermidor.” That is, the French revolution had its “Thermidorian reaction,” in which the old forces of conservatism reasserted themselves against the radicalism of the Revolution, imposing the order of conservative oligarchs. In Fursenko’s view, the American Constitutional Convention served a similar role.
Indeed, Fursenko’s analysis is quite useful, so I publish here several hundred works taken from his review essay The American and French Revolutions Compared: The View from the U.S.S.R.1 In some cases, Fursenko uses the same sources as Rothbard, such as Charles Beard, R.R. Palmer, and Merrill Jensen. But Fursenko also adds some additional commentary from contemporary observers, such as the French envoy the Comte de Moustier.
Fursenko writes:
The Jacobin dictatorship in France was followed by the Thermidorian reaction. The American Revolution had nothing on that scale, although it had its little Thermidor, the Constitution of 1787. French cour officials accredited to the United States government commented with great satisfaction that this event was, in their view “extremely propitious to the interests of the [French] kingdom.” In the opinion of the enjoy Moustier, the new constitution was so significant that he term it “a second revolution.” “The illusion of democracy, to which the mob was becoming attracted, has now vanished,” he wrote. Later, in appraising the trend of political development in the United States, another French diplomat remarked that the American system was more and more coming to resemble an “elective aristocracy or even a variant of monarchy.” The new system of law and order ignored the interests of the “lower classes.” In contrast to the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed the right of “all men” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the Constitution of 1787 passed over in silence the question of basic civil liberties. Only several years later, under pressure of the actions of the masses and under the influence of the revolution then beginning in France, was it expanded by a bill of rights that proclaimed the freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, religion, the right of personal immunity, or property, and so forth. The Constitution of 1787 was a step backward: it went against the practice of years of revolution when the majority of political decisions had been widely debated in advance. The Constitutional Convention met behind closed doors, and the speeches of the participants were not made public. In analyzing the composition of the convention, C.A. Beard showed that it consisted entirely of representatives of the “upper classes.” They had a personal interest in the way the new system of power was organized, and they derived economic advantage from it. As for the propertyless masses, they were barred from participating in the framing of the Constitution.
For several decades the Constitution has been the subject of fierce battles among historians. Their arguments occupy a central place in discussions about the character of the American Revolution, its role, and its place in world history. At the present time the dominant view in American bourgeois historiography is that of the neo-whigs. Historians of this school attempt to prove that in actual fact there was no revolution in America. Actually, they represent a variation on the theme of the “uniqueness” of American capitalism. Supporters of the viewpoint challenge the significant of Beard’s conclusions. They claim that, in contrast to Europe, American history has been characterized by “continuity” and “consensus,” and that the Americans never knew the class and social contradictions that were peculiar to the Old World and thus did not experience social “clashes.” In smoothing over the class conflicts of the period of the American Revolution, the neo-whigs claim that it did not have “social goals.” And since that is the case, they conclude that there could not have been a Thermidor either.
In characterizing the revolutions of the eighteenth century, Marx noted that they tended to gather momentum. In France this was possible because of the increasingly active participation of the “lower classes” in the political struggle. The American Revolution also gathered momentum thanks to the efforts of the people. Thus Marx’s comment can likewise be applied to the American Revolution. Although it developed within the framework of a war of liberation for independence, it did not come to a halt with the end of the was against England. The postwar period (up to the adoption of the Constitution in 1788) was marked by an intensification of class conflicts and of efforts to extend the Revolution. These efforts found expression in the social protests of the lower classes, in the demands of the masses for equality, and in armed insurrections, the most significant of which was Shays’s Rebellion. One of the chief goals of the Constitution was to put an end to those developments. The claims of the neo-whigs to the contrary notwithstanding, the Constitution was conditioned by class conflicts and catered to the interests of the propertied class. In that sense it was in fact a “Thermidor.” Jenson is correct in stating that the members of the Constitutional Convention unanimously perceived democracy as “the root of all evil” and that it was their goal to halt the development of democratic movement.
In discussing the importance of studying the events connected with the adoption of the Constitution the French historian A. Kaspi remarks that the basic question was “would the United States remain true to the ‘spirit of ‘76?’” He answers this question in the affirmative, since those who took part in the adoption of the Constitution represented, in his words, “a new generation” aware of their responsibility for America’s future, where as the opponents of the Constitution were “supporters of the old order.” In Kaspi’s view, the Constitution met the aspirations of Americans for a democracy “based on property and the defense of liberties” and “in no sense ran counter to the ‘spirit of’76.’”
But by arguing in this fashion the French scholar practically subscribed to the claims of the neo-whigs that the slogan of the American Revolution was “liberty and property” and not “liberty and democracy.” Nevertheless, it was precisely the struggle for democracy that was one of the most important components of the War of Independence. As W.Z. Foster notes, the American Revolution “was a bourgeois revolution, in which the democratic element was very powerful.” This point is convincingly made in the works of Jensen, who demonstrated on the basis of an immense amount of factual evidence the role and place of the democratic element in the Revolution. By discounting the significance of this movement as one of the chief forces of the Revolution, and by portraying the political development of the United States from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution as a generally harmonious process, Kaspi plays in the hand of those who deny the presence of classes and class contradictions in American society. Whether or not this is his intention, he lends support to the theory of “continuity” and “consensus” whose adherents claim that the Constitution reflected on the interests not just of the propertied classes, but of the nation as a whole. In fact, the aim of the Constitution was quite the opposite. It was intended to consolidate the power of the bourgeoisie and the planter class, get rid of “the horrors of unchecked democracy,” and “find some refuge from democracy.”
S. Lynd, a presentative of the “new left” in contemporary American historiography, states that the American Revolution did not implement the most important social and economic reforms. In this sense America, in his words, “did not have a bourgeois revolution comparable with the French revolution.” Lynd correctly notes that the basic question of the Revolution was the abolition of slavery. After pressure from representatives of the southern colonies this paragraph was deleted. However, the proposition that every American had the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” applied to all without exception. Thus at a later period abolitionist leader calling for an end to slavery cited the Declaration of Independence. Meanwhile, the Constitution gave legal confirmation to the institution of slavery. In this respect it was fundamentally different from the Declaration.
In all this we find Fursenko’s text to be a helpful complement to Rothbard work on these topics. Rothbard, of course, would never suffer himself a “neo-whig” and his position on the Revolution fits nicely with this instinct. Moreover, Rothbard was always acutely aware of the realities of so-called “class conflict” and this shows clearly in his work on the Constitution of 1787 and on the Revolution in general. Rothbard sided with the traditional radical liberal view that there is indeed class conflict between the productive classes of the truly private sector on the one hand, and the parasitical classes of the oligarchy on the other. Rothbard did not subscribe the modern conservative or whiggish view that the idea of class conflict was an invention of the Marxists. (As historian Ralph Raico has shown, the Marxists actually stole the idea of class conflict from the old classical liberals.)
In any case, Rothbard understood the essential role played by class conflict in the years following the revolution, and how this conflict led, for instance to conservative efforts to sow hysteria throughout the American states over minor uprisings such as Shays’s Rebellion.
Moreover, Rothbard was well aware of the role that the planter class played in using its political leverage to expand federal protections of slavery. While the old constitution, the Articles of Confederation, had been silent on the topic, the wealthy planters, especially in South Carolina and Georgia, had managed to insert oligarchic protections for their interests into the new conservative constitution.
On this Fursenko continues:
Although the northern bourgeoisie, which had played a leading role in the Revolution, was opposed to slavery, it was forced by political considerations to compromise with the southern plantation owners. A deal of this sort had the vital support of the wealthy propertied groups, which significantly included those counterrevolutionary loyalists who had managed to avoid reprisals and had emerged unscathed from the War of Independence. The reactionary political bloc that developed in this manner strove to create a strongly centralized system that could serve as an obstacle to the development of a democratic movement.
Rothbard, too, was well aware of the role that the planter class played in using its political leverage to expand federal protections of slavery. While the old constitution, the Articles of Confederation, had been silent on the topic, the wealthy planters, especially in South Carolina and Georgia, had managed to insert oligarchic protections for their interests into the new conservative constitution. Rothbard, of course, views this as a great fly in the ointment of the American revolution, and a lost opportunity.
In an additional section, Fursenko provides some insight into the adoption of the Bill of Rights, and the failure of democratic forces in France—in contrast to the United States—had failed to force similar concessions on the post-Revolutionary French oligarchs. He writes:
Of decisive importance is the fact that it was the members of the propertied class who took it upon themselves to carry out this mission [i.e., writing the new constitution]. They conferred upon themselves the right to draw up new legislation that adjusted class interests in a manner quite difference from that of the years of the War of Independence. The policy of the ruling class now changed markedly from what it had been during the war. This change was noted by Otto, the French chargé d’affaires. In describing the policy of the war years he wrote that “in those stormy times one had to agree that all power should emanate only from the people, that everything was to its supreme will, and that the magistrates were merely its servant” However, after the war had ended, “the class of men known as gentlemen” began, according to Otto, to “lay claim to ruling—which the people did not wish to agree to ... Almost all of them fear the efforts of the people to strip them of the possessions and moreover they are creditors and consequently have an interest in strengthening the Government and ensuring the laws are executed.”
Thus the adoption of the Constitution was dictated by the desire of the upper-middle class and the landed aristocracy to strengthen their power. In an overall appraisal of it as a political document one must admit that for its time it was an advanced constitution, especially after the adoption of the Bill of Rights , which must also be viewed as particular stage in the class struggle. It was precisely because it did not initially include a bill of rights that the Constitution met with mass opposition. Opponents of the Constitution, representing the poor class of the population, vigorously demanded that amendments to it be adopted and criticized its lack of guarantees of basic political liberties. According to the testimony of Moustier, the framers of the Constitution were “totally opposed to considering any amendment until the government is fully organized.” In the end, however, they were forced to give way. After learning that “their opponents were preparing a long list of amendments which would weaken or even subvert the whole new system, they decided that they would themselves offer such changes as would not damage them, and that they would take the initiative in the debate so that i would be propitious for their interests.” In this fashion the backers of the Constitution achieved two points. On the one hand, they took the trump card from the hands of the opposition, and, on the other, they formulated additions to the Constitution in a manner agreeable to themselves. Moustier wrote that “these amendments were drawn up by the ruling party in a such a manner that they did not affect the spirit of the Constitution at all, and quieted down excessive uneasiness.” At the same time, the adoption of the Bill of Rights was a major victory for the democratic forces.
In the United States the ruling classes had to make concessions, which was not the case with the French bourgeoisie. France did not gain similar democratic liberties either under Napoleon or during the Restoration. This can be explained by the different conditions under which the two revolutions took place. The French Revolution evoked incomparable greater efforts to get rid of the old order and yet gave the people a more limited freedom. This is true not only of political reforms but also with regard to such important problems as the agrarian situation. The United States Constitution did not abolish slavery, abut a solution the agrarian problem proceeded in a more democratic manner in America. In France the process of democratizing land relationships turned out to be much more difficult.
In this view, endorsed by Raico, the French Revolution was little more than a change in who controlled the French state, without any truly fundamental change in the relationship between ordinary people and an enormous state apparatus. The French revolution simply transferred the French state over to the grip of the bourgeoisie. In Rothbard’s view, the American Revolution was not like this at all, but was a true change in the power dynamic between the state and the individual. This was especially true in some northern states like Pennsylvania. As he shows in the final chapters of volume IV of Conceived in Liberty, a counterrevolution was indeed required to rein in the threats posed to older notions of conservatism that survived the Revolution. In Rothbard’s view, this was unfortunate. But some legacies of the Revolution were not so easily forgotten, including, for example, the “agrarian problem” mentioned by Fursenko. As Rothbard shows, in the new United States, the mega-estates of the old ruling class were broken up and auctioned off, with an eye toward a “democratic” distribution of property. In France, the old land-based oligarchy of the nobles was simply replaced with some very similar, but controlled by the bourgeoisie, instead.
In all this, we gain new details and insights into Rothbard’s fundamental position on the new constitution of 1787: it was conservative, oligarchic, counterrevolutionary, and thoroughly opposed to the “spirit of ‘76.”
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See A.A. Fursenko, “The American and French Revolutions Compared: The View from the U.S.S.R.,” trans Gilbert McArthur, The William and Mary Quarterly 33, No. 3, (Jul., 1976): 491-497.
