Thomas Jefferson

[Zodiac <zodiac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Since there are a lot of Americans on this list, I thought maybe a couple
of you could comment on the class perspective of Thomas Jefferson -- all
the more fitting considering the domain of the list itself
"@jefferson.villiage.virginia.edu" :).

The usual spiel I've heard from mainstream US culture all my life is this
Noble Father of Liberty etc etc. Libertarians (big-L Libertarians,
that is) have accorded him sainthood.

Marxists often refer to the US Revolution as a "bourgeois revolution."
>From what I've been reading of late, it seems Jefferson was more a radical
"kulak", if you will -- a rich (slave-owning) land lord who saw his
primary constituency (class interest) in the independent small peasants.

The fledgling American bourgeois (and proletariat) did exist in the US
revolution, up north. Jefferson's Virginia didn't contribute much in
manpower to the Revolution, having to stay home to keep the slave economy
stable, I believe. At some point, Jefferson allied with New York banks and
the southern-based Democratic party came to the presidency.

Is it even historically accurate to call him a peasant? Feudal lord?

Ken.


~~~~~

ObMarx: From the Aug 1866 "Instructions for the Delegates of the
        Provisional General Council" (First International), written by
        Marx:

        "We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and
        juvenile persons of both sexes cooperate in the great work of
        social production as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency,
        although under capital it was distorted into an abomination."



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