A few weeks ago, the former Boston University economics major and Democrat member of Congress from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, once again channeled her inner Karl Marx, this time to declare that someone cannot “earn” a billion dollars, at least not legitimately and morally. On receiving much well-deserved scorn in response, she sought to cloak herself in the mantle of patriotism by channeling a Howard Zinn-full historical revisionism straight from the nearest faculty lounge. Speaking at the University of Chicago, the Sage of the Bronx revealed, “The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time.” Her source was, “you look at Thomas Jefferson writing to Madison in revolt of British aristocracy.”
Where to begin with this display of wrapping herself in a flag of red and white stripes and a hammer and sickle? Let’s leave aside for now the economic fact that such reviled “billionaires” each day contribute more to the well-being of more people than AOC (as she is colloquially known) can hope to do in her entire life. First, a compliment of sorts. For once, a leftist, while referring to Jefferson, Madison, and their fellow-revolutionaries, did not focus on their slave-holding. A temporary dispensation from that original sin is warranted in the fight against the evil empire of billionaires, one supposes.
I carry no water for billionaires. They have wealth represented by several 0s to the left of the decimal point more than I have. Also, most billionaires lean to the left politically and culturally. But, to borrow from Pastor Martin Niemöller, “First they came for the billionaires, and I did not speak out….”
Now for another heaping of scorn. Looking at the matter from economic power, the American Revolution was not against the British aristocracy. By 1776, the British aristocracy was a shadow of what it had been before the Tudor monarchs three centuries earlier. Dependent on royal patronage and restrained by entrenched custom from certain careers, the aristocracy had long been outclassed economically by the bourgeoisie. From that perspective, it was an uprising by one economic elite, colonial planters and merchants, against another, British merchants and bankers.
Obviously, that perspective itself is simplistic and emits the odor of Marxist historicism. It ignores the significance of philosophical and religious influences which, for example, infuse the Declaration of Independence with its reference to “unalienable rights” with their source in the Creator. It ignores the debates over the nature of republicanism, which were an integral aspect of the Revolutionary War era and thereafter. It ignores the fundamental and irreconcilable differences between the Americans and the British about political theories of representation that had emerged over a century of colonial practice. It ignores the inevitability of the political tensions that arose in the 1760s after the Seven Years’ War (known in the U.S. as the French and Indian War) between an emerging world empire saddled with significant debt and led by a dynamic young monarch, and a local population which was happy to accept the benefit of such an empire but not eager to pay a far-away imperial capital their share of its cost. It ignores, finally, the simply irksome practice of having British bureaucrats oversee local affairs with an unaccustomed efficiency, such as going after smugglers, after generations of “benign neglect” by the home country.
Meeting AOC’s speculation on its own terms, then, many of the leaders of the revolution themselves were “billionaires,” any number of whom were frustrated by economic restrictions imposed by the “billionaires” in London. Among those restrictions were strict limits on westward expansion negotiated by the British with the Indian tribes, much to the frustration of ordinary Americans and of the syndicates of wealthy land speculators. That legal obstacle was quickly reversed by the Articles of Confederation government. Another restriction was the prohibition of colonial financial institutions, which sharply curtailed development of American industry and commerce by limiting access to credit and creating a shortage of specie money. Then there were outright trade restrictions such as the long series of Navigation Acts (a version of which was promptly enacted by the first Congress under the Constitution, but now to favor American shippers against foreigners).
Among the most prominent of American “billionaires” was Robert Morris, Jr., dubbed the “Financier of the Revolution,” a financial wizard. Morris was a wealthy merchant, mentor of Alexander Hamilton, and prominent state and national politician in the Second Continental Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, and after the adoption of the Constitution. He was one of only two men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. He would give any of the current billionaires a run for their money, and, yes, AOC, he earned it. He also eventually lost his fortune. A few years ago, I wrote a brief piece for an educational website about Morris and his contributions to the American cause during and after the Revolution. A truly remarkable man.
Morris was not even the wealthiest man in the colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence. That would have been Maryland’s Charles Carroll of Carrollton, another signer. Among the other signers also were a number who, while not billionaires in today’s money, would have possessed 9-figure wealth. One, John Hancock, was the wealthiest man in New England. Had George Washington signed the Declaration, he would have rivaled Morris and Carroll in wealth. Unlike AOC, who risks nothing but ridicule for spouting ahistorical gibberish, these men, as well as the other signers, risked their lives and their fortunes in support of their cause. As the Declaration concludes, “…with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
That is not to say that only wealthy men signed the Declaration. There were a number of what might be considered middle- or upper-middle class farmers, merchants, artisans, and lawyers. John Adams and his cousin Samuel come to mind, the former as part of the professional upper-middle class and the latter in the middle class, at best. Some suffered severe economic hardship from their unpaid service in the Congress, quite unlike AOC, Ilhan Omar, and so many others, whose wealth magically increases from their “public service.”
It can hardly be said that those financially less well-endowed were stirred by sentiments of fighting British, but not American, “billionaires” over their wealth, instead of by concerns about natural rights, political liberty, and a voracious Parliament extracting taxes. One of those natural rights was the security one had in one’s property against grasping and avaricious politicians. That security requires protections against the very confiscation of wealth by government that AOC and her fellow Marxists seek, but which those American Revolutionaries believed was contrary to the social compact on which the legitimacy of government rested.
In challenging the absurdities spouted by AOC, Bernie Sanders, and their fellow-travelers, some today claim that the Declaration and, subsequently, the Constitution enshrine capitalism. They note that Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776 and circulated quickly. However, the book appeared after independence was inevitable, and it became popular early only among a small elite. It was not widely read and did not begin to influence public policy until a couple of decades later. Indeed, Hamilton’s program of state capitalism in the 1790s and the debates it triggered might be considered early policy discussions linked to Smith’s work.
While it may be a stretch to claim these foundational 18th-century documents were intended to press capitalism into the country’s national identity, it is clear that the Declaration and the Constitution are founded on individual rights and do not embrace or even promote socialism or another favorite nostrum of the left, social justice. Rather, capitalism, in the sense of free enterprise, as the basis of political economy best reflects the value of each person being endowed with natural rights against government. It embraces and, indeed, is grounded in the right to acquire, possess, and control property. The danger from AOC’s fabulist account of the American Revolution is that the many people, especially younger ones, who also have been left generally ignorant of American history by a deficient and ideologically toxic educational system, will accept it as true.