Tribulation’s End

Words can never express
How grateful I am
That you were there for me

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My experience with writing books and finding publishers is extremely limited, but a few early insights might make it easier for others interested in doing the same. The following, it should be noted, relates to nonfiction works — the only world I know — but most of it could probably be applied to novels.

First, write your book. Take as much or as little time as needed. I cranked out the first draft of Racism in Kansas City in four months and promptly began sending it out to publishers (April 2014). Why America Needs Socialism I wrote off and on for six years, at the end throwing everything out (300 pages) and starting over (though making much use of old material), finishing a new version in five months. Just make your work the absolute best it can be, in terms of content and proper grammar. But you can reach out to certain publishers before your manuscript is wholly finished. Pay attention to the submission guidelines, but for most publishers it’s not a big deal (many ask you to explain how much of the work is complete and how long it will take you to finish). I feel safest having the manuscript done, and it would likely be risky to reach out if you didn’t have over half the piece written — your proposal to publishers will include sample chapters, and if they like those they will ask for more: the whole manuscript thus far.

You’ll scour the internet for publishers who print books like yours and who accept unsolicited materials, meaning you can contact them instead of a literary agent. If you want the big houses like Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, or HarperCollins, you’ll need an agent, and I have no experience with that and thus have no advice. But a million small- and medium-sized publishers exist that will accept unsolicited queries from you, including significant places like Harvard University Press or Oxford University Press.

Following the firm’s guidelines on its website, you’ll generally email a book proposal, which offers an overview, target audience, table of contents, analysis of competing titles, author information, timeline, and sample chapter. If there’s no interest you won’t usually get a reply, but if there is you’ll be asked for the manuscript. It’s an easy process, there’s simply much competition and varying editor interests and needs, so you have to do it in volume. Keep finding houses and sending emails until you’re successful. From March to May 2018, I sent a proposal for Why America Needs Socialism to 91 publishers. Eight (about 9%) requested the full manuscript, and two (about 2%) wanted to publish it. The terms of the first offer were unfavorable (walk away if you have to), but by September, after seven months of searching, a home for the book was secured, Ig Publishing in New York City.

The same technique and persistence is required when seeking blurbs of praise for the back cover and promotional materials. You simply find ways to call or email a dozen or so other authors and prominent people, explain your book and publisher, and then four of them accept your manuscript and agree to write a sentence of praise if they like it (or write a foreword, or peer review it, or whatever you seek). It is very convenient for nonfiction authors that so many of the folks you’d want to review your book are university professors. You simply find Cornel West’s email address on Harvard’s faculty page. Similarly, you shotgun emails to publications when the book comes out and ask them to review it. I sent a query to 58 magazines, papers, journals, and websites I thought would be interested in reviewing Why America Needs Socialism, offering to send a copy. Seven (12%) asked for the book to do a review; two others invited me to write a piece on the work myself for their publications.

I didn’t keep such careful records of my Racism in Kansas City journey, but after I began submitting proposals it took three months to find a publisher who agreed to publish the work — temporarily. I made the mistake of working for 10 months with a publisher without a contract. At times, publishers will ask you to made revisions before signing a contract, a big gamble (that I wasn’t even really aware of at the time). This publisher backed out due to the national conversation on race sparked by Mike Brown’s death and subsequent events through late 2014 and early 2015, which was seemingly counter-intuitive for a publisher, but they were more used to tame local histories than what I had produced, a history of extreme violence and subjugation. So the search continued.

Writing a local story, at least a nonfiction work, certainly limits your house options. There are some, like the above, that are out-of-state that will take interest, but generally your best bet lies with the local presses. And unfortunately, there aren’t many of them where I reside. The University of Missouri Press was shutting down, the University Press of Kansas (KU) wanted me to make revisions before they would decide — and I wasn’t looking to repeat a mistake. I didn’t approach every Kansas City-area publisher, but rather, feeling the pressure of much wasted time, decided to stop looking for a house and instead to self-publish (with Mission Point Press, run by the former head of Kansas City Star Books).

A traditional publisher pays all the costs associated with the book and you get an advance and a small royalty from each copy sold. (With Ig Publishing, I gave up an advance for a larger royalty — a worthwhile option if the book sells well.) With self-publishing, everything is in reverse: you pay a “nontraditional publisher” to birth the book — editing, cover design, maybe marketing and distribution — and you keep most of the profit from each copy sold (not all, as someone is printing it). There’s also the option of skipping a nontraditional publisher altogether and doing everything yourself, working only with a printer. A traditional house is the big prize for a writer, because it offers that coveted validation — a firm accepted your piece instead of rejecting it, like it rejected all those other authors. It’s about prestige and pride, and not having to say “Well…” after someone calls you a published author. But self-publishing can give you more control over the final product, in some circumstances more money over time, and it works well for a local book (it’s Kansas City readers and bookstores that want a book on Kansas City, so I don’t have to worry about marketing and distribution in other cities).

The whole process is an incredible adventure: the intense learning process of researching and writing, the obsession, the hunt for and exhilaration over a publisher, the dance and give-and-take with editors who see needed changes (“murder your darlings”), the thousands of footnotes you format (kidding, it’s hell), finding key individuals to write a foreword or advanced praise, getting that first proof in the mail, releasing and marketing your work, winning coverage and reviews in the press, giving book talks and interviews, hearing a reader say how much what you created meant to him, learning your book is a classroom text, being cited by other authors or asked to give advanced praise yourself, being recognized by strangers, seeing your work in libraries and bookstores across the city, and the country, and even the world.

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The Taiping Revolution was a devastating conflict, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of people, between a growing Christian sect under Hong Xiuquan and the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) government. While the political forces within Hong’s “God Worshipers” wanted to solve the internal turmoil in China, and certainly influenced events, the Taiping Rebellion was a religious war. It was more the influence of the West, not the problems at home, that prompted the violence. While many revolutions had occurred before this with no Christian influence, examining the viewpoint of God’s Worshipers and the viewpoint of Qing militia leader Zeng Guofan will make it exceedingly clear that without the influence of Western religion, the Taiping Rebellion never would have occurred. 

From the point of view of Hong Xiuquan, religion was at the heart of everything he did. The origins of his faith and his individual actions immediately after his conversion explain his later choices and those of his followers during the rebellion. According to Schoppa, Hong had a vision he was vanquishing demons throughout the universe, under orders from men whom Hong later determined to be God and Jesus Christ. Hong believed that Christ was his older brother and Hong was thus “God’s Chinese son” (71). Hong studied Liang Fa’s “Good Works to Exhort the Age,” which we examined during our discussion. Liang Fa emphasized that his conversion stemmed partly from the need to be pardoned of sin and partly from a desire to do good deeds to combat evil and eradicate it from his life (Cheng, Lestz 135). Reading Liang’s writings after the life-changing vision brought Hong to Christianity. It is essential to note that, as Schoppa puts it, “In his comprehension of the vision, Hong did not immediately see any political import” (71). All Hong was concerned about at this point was faith, not the Manchu overlords. He was so impassioned he would “antagonize his community by destroying statues of gods in the local temple” (Schoppa 71). What Hong would have done with his life had he not become a Christian is impossible to say. He had repeatedly failed the civil service examination; perhaps he would have had to take up farming like his father (Schoppa 71).

Instead, he formed the God Worshipping Society. According to Schoppa, certain groups that joined declared the demons in Hong’s vision were the Manchu, and had to be vanquished (72). It was outside influences that politicized Hong’s beliefs. Yet even through the politicization one will see that at the heart of the matter is religion. The very society Hong wished to create was based on Christian ideals. Equality of men and women led to both sexes receiving equal land in Hong’s 1853 land system, the faith’s sense of community led to family units with shared treasuries, and church was required on the Sabbath day and for wedding ceremonies (Schoppa 73). Christianity brought about the outlawing of much urban vice as well, such as drinking or adultery. One might argue that behind all these Christian ideological policies were long-held Confucian beliefs. As we saw in “Qian Yong on Popular Religion,” eradicating gambling, prostitution, drugs, etc. was just as important to the elites and literati (those who have passed the examination) as it was to Hong (Cheng, Lestz 129-131). While there were heavy indeed Confucian influences on Hong’s teachings (evidenced by their Ten Commandments and the proceeding odes found in “The Crisis Within”), Schoppa makes it clear that “the Taiping Revolution was a potent threat to the traditional Chinese Confucian system” because it provided people with a personal God rather than simply the force of nature, Heaven (75). The social policies that emerged from Hong’s Christian ideals, like family units and laws governing morality led Schoppa to declare, “It is little wonder that some Chinese…might have begun to feel their cultural identity and that of China threatened by the Heavenly Kingdom” (76). The point is, Hong never would have become a leader of the God Worshippers had Western Christianity not entered his life, and even after his growing group decided to overthrow the Manchu, the system of life they were fighting for and hoping to establish was founded on Christian beliefs. Just as Hong smashed down idols in his hometown after his conversion, so everywhere the God Worshippers advanced they destroyed Confucian relics, temples, and alters (Cheng, Lestz 148). The passion of Hong became the passion of all. 

It was also the opinion of the Manchu government that this was a religious war. As the God Worshippers grew in number, Schoppa writes, “The Qing government recognized the threat as serious: A Christian cult had militarized and was now forming an army” (72). Right away, the Manchu identified this as a religious rebellion. “It was the Taiping ideology and its political, social, and economic systems making up the Taiping Revolution that posed the most serious threat to the regime” (Schoppa 73). This new threat prompted the Qing to order Zeng Guofan to create militia and destroy the Taipings. “The Crisis Within” contains his “Proclamation Against the Bandits of Guangdong and Guangxi” from 1854. Aside from calling attention to the barbarism of the rebels, Zeng writes with disgust about Christianity and its “bogus” ruler and chief ministers. He mocks their sense of brotherhood, the teachings of Christ, and the New Testament (Cheng, Lestz 147). Zeng declares, “This is not just a crisis for our [Qing] dynasty, but the most extraordinary crisis of all time for the Confucian teachings, which is why our Confucius and Mencius are weeping bitterly in the nether world.” Then, in regards to the destruction of Confucian temples and statues, Zeng proclaims that the ghosts and spirits have been insulted and want revenge, and it is imperative that the Qing government enacts it (Cheng, Lestz 148). This rhetoric is not concerning politics and government, Manchu or anti-Manchu. Zeng makes it obvious what he aims to destroy and why. He views the rebellion as an affront to Confucianism. The Christians, he believes, must be struck down. 

With the leader’s life defined by Christianity, with a rebellious sect’s social structure based heavily on Christianity, with the continued destruction of Confucian works in the name of Christianity, and with the government’s aim to crush the rebellion in the name of Confucius and Mencius, can anyone rationally argue that the Taiping Rebellion was not a religious war? A consensus should now be reached! The rebellion’s brutality and devastation is a tragedy when one considers the similar teachings of both sides of the conflict, the Confucian call for peaceful mediation of conflicts and the Christian commandment not to kill. 

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Reference List

Pei-kai Cheng and Michael Lestz, and Jonathan D. Spence, eds., The Search for Modern China, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 128-149.

R. Keith Schoppa, Revolution and its Past (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2011), 71-76.

What gives art value? That is, inherent value, not mere monetary value. Perhaps it is actually quite similar for artist and spectator. The artist may impart value on her work based upon how much joy and fulfillment the process of its creation gave her, how satisfied she is with the final product if it matched or came close to her vision, how much pleasure others experience when viewing (or listening to) it, or how much attention, respect, and fame (and wealth) is directed her way because of it. Likewise, the spectator may see value in the work because he knows, perceives, or assumes the joy and satisfaction it might give the artist, he’s interested in and enjoys experiencing it, or because he respects a successful, famous individual.

There are various forces that impart value, but a significant one must be effort required. This is, after all, what is meant by the ever-present “My kid could do that” muttered before canvases splattered with paint or adorned with a single monochrome square in art museums across the world — pieces sometimes worth huge sums. People see less value in a work of art that takes (on average between human beings) less effort, less skill. Likewise, most artists would likely be less crushed were a fire to consume a piece they’d spent a day to complete versus one they’d spent a year to complete. To most people, effort imparts value.

I’d be remiss, and haunted, if I didn’t mention here that this demonstrates how most people think in Marxian ways about value. (If you thought, dear reader, that in an article on art you’d find respite from socialist theory, you were wrong.) Marx wrote that “the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour” needed to create it (Value, Price, and Profit). Again, not mere monetary value. This doesn’t mean “the lazier a man, or the clumsier a man, the more valuable his commodity, because the greater the time of labour required for finishing the commodity.” Rather, Marx was speaking about the average labor needed to create something: “social average conditions of production, with a given social average intensity, and average skill of the labour employed.” Labor, effort, imparts value on all human creations, whether it’s art, whether it’s for sale, and so forth. Doesn’t it follow, then, that what takes less effort has less inherent value?

This train of thought — how the effort put into paintings, drawings, writings, photographs, sculptures, music, etc. affects their value — arose during an interesting conversation on how much respect should be awarded to each of these forms. Respect was based on effort-value. In other words, does a “good” photograph deserve the same respect as a “good” painting? Does a “great” piece of writing, like a book, deserve the same admiration — does it have the same value — as a “great” sculpture? One may feel at first that they shouldn’t be compared. But all forms have value because they require effort, and thus if we can determine how much effort, on average between human beings, is required for two compared art forms and then decide one takes more effort we will have also found a difference in value. (One need not worry about “great” being subjective, because we are only talking about how each individual personally views the value of different art forms; perceived effort will also be subjective, which is the whole point, as it determines one’s view on value.)

If it helps make this clearer, we might start with a comparison within a single form. Which takes more effort on average: to record a single or an album? Cartooning or hyperrealist drawing? Most people would say the latter finished products have more value because of the greater effort typically required (work may be a breeze for some hyperrealist artists, as easy as cartooning for cartoonists, but remember we are speaking of averages).

Now what about the average effort to create a “good” photograph versus, say, a “good” (let’s say realist) painting? It seems like it would certainly take more effort to make a good painting! The technology of photography always advances, making tasks easier and more accessible, and thus grows more widespread. After film yielded to digitalization and computerization, it became much easier to take a nice photograph — it’s easier to do and easier to do well. Exposure, shutter speed, aperture, ISO sensitivity, focus, white balance, metering, flash, and so on can now be manipulated faster and with greater ease, or automatically, requiring no effort at all. Recently it’s become possible to edit photographs after the fact, fixing and improving them. You just need a program and know how to use it. Because the form has never existed without technology, the average effort to create a great photograph has probably never rivaled the average effort to create a great painting, but the gap was smaller in the past. Today anyone with the right technology can produce a great photo; true, it requires know-how, but surely the journey from knowing nothing to mastery is shorter and easier than the same journey for realist painting. (Film — now digital video — production is a similar story.) Because the effort needed for the same result — a good photo — has declined over time, the value of the form overall has also decreased. (This does not mean some photographers aren’t more creative, skilled, or knowledgeable than others, nor that there doesn’t remain more value in the work of hardline traditionalists who refuse to use this or that new technology.) But painting — the technology of painting — hasn’t really changed much through the ages; it still requires about the same effort to produce the same quality work, therefore its value holds steady. If “painters” start having robots paint incredible works for them, or aid them, there would obviously be a reduction of value. No one is as impressed by robot paintings or machine-assisted paintings.

Music is facing a smaller-scale attack on the value of the form with digitally created instrumentals, autotune, and so forth. Perhaps the value of writing declined slightly as we shifted from penmanship to typewriting to computer-based writing (with backspace and spell-check!). It will decline again as voice transcription programs are perfected and grow in popularity.

Sculpting, painting, and drawing — the forms least infected by technology — still essentially require the same effort to do, and same effort to do well, as they have throughout human history. The tools and equipment have changed some, yes, but not nearly as much as those of other forms. Their value will remain the same as long as this state of affairs persists. If music, writing, film, and photography continually grow easier to do well, their value, by this metric, will decrease, slowed only by those who valiantly resist the technological changes. This does not mean a splatter painting automatically has more value than a beautiful photo — remember we’re each personally comparing the value of what we subjectively see as “good” paintings versus “good” photographs; you may not see a splatter painting as good. Rather, it may simply mean that what you see as a good painting takes more effort on average to create, and thus has more value, than what you see as a good photo. Perhaps also more than a good book, song, or video, depending on the size and scope of the projects being compared (it may surpass a good video but not a good film, or a good short book but not a good tome; up to you).

It could be that effort required is somewhat rule-based, too, rather than just technology-based. Music, writing, film, and photography rely on more rules. That’s probably why technology is encroaching quicker on such forms. In music, keys, pitches, quarter-notes, half-notes and so forth are rules. Build a program that knows and follows them and you don’t need human players or singers anymore at all. Writing has spelling, grammar, and punctuation rules. So spell-check and A.I. can help you or do it all for you. Film has frames per second, photography f-stops, and together a thousand other rules. Devices can handle them. Artists break the rules all the time, but that doesn’t mean their form doesn’t rely more heavily on them than other forms.

Sculpting marble or clay into something recognizable, adorning a canvas with life, or sketching a convincing face perhaps are not activities that rely as much on rules. This does not mean there are none; for instance there are drawing guidelines to make a face proportional and grids to help you transfer reality to the paper. Again, the rules may or may not be followed. And this does not mean an A.I. couldn’t do such activities, because it could. It’s just hard to define what rule you’d use to draw something so perfectly it looks like a photograph; but you know you have to hit certain notes to sing something perfectly. You have to be talented to do either — but maybe one has more foundational rules to get you there.

I’ve sometimes wondered if closing the “effort gap” or “talent gap” between novices and incredible artists is easier in some art forms than others. Meaning, is the gulf between an inexperienced writer and an incredible writer smaller than the gulf between an inexperienced painter and an incredible painter? What about the gap between a new photographer and masterful one compared to the gap between a new sculptor and a highly advanced one? On average, that is. I would suppose the art forms that in any given era take more effort would have the largest chasm to cross. So it would be harder to become a master painter than a master photographer. Perhaps harder, also, than becoming a master cinematographer, writer, or even singer. (I think this view explains why I personally respect and admire the best works of sculpting, painting, and drawing more than the best works of other forms, though music is high up there too. And that’s coming from a writer. The hyperrealist painter and the musician who can sight-read or play hundreds of songs by memory will always inspire more awe than the most beautiful wordsmith, photographer, or filmmaker.)

If so, perhaps rules have something to do with it. We know that practice makes perfect. Some are born with unique gifts, no question, but others go from zero to hero through practice. Might more rules make it easier? Do human beings learn better, faster, with those defined rules? If you stripped away the aforementioned technology of singing, music, and writing (it’s impossible to do this with photography and film), would the rules of the forms alone make these things easier to master than art forms with fewer rules? It’s interesting to consider.

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Extremely wealthy landowners, merchants, and slave-owners held political power both long before and long after independence from Britain.[1] As we have already seen, many of the founding fathers battled to keep religious power out of government,[2] but they saw not the need for separation of State and business interests. Most of these wealthy men opposed democracy, and designed the Constitution to ensure the aristocracy would continue to rule society.

Historian Howard Zinn wrote, “The Continental Congress, which governed the colonies throughout the war, was dominated by rich men, linked together in faction and compacts by business and family connections”[3] and that the Constitution

illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law—all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity…

When economic interest is seen behind the political clauses of the Constitution, then the document becomes not simply the work of wise men trying to establish a decent and orderly society, but the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support.[4]

The aristocrats made their desire for political power quite clear, in their pre- and post-Revolution repression of poor people’s revolts (Bacon’s Rebellion, Shay’s Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion) and democratic movements aimed at redistributing property or abolishing debts. (Shay’s Rebellion, an uprising against debts and taxes, took place at the time the new Constitution was being written, in 1787, and certainly influenced its formation; see Zinn, Truth Has a Power of Its Own.) Further, Anti-Federalists (the Federalists wrote the Constitution) were enthusiastic about the seizing of Loyalist property and screwing over British creditors to benefit American borrowers. Dangerous ideas were on the loose. The wealthy would seek to contain them. Nathaniel Bacon said, “The poverty of the country is such that all the power and sway is got into the hands of the rich, who by extortious advantages, having the common people in their debt, have always curbed and oppressed them in all manner of ways.”[5] The rich also structured their new government in a very specific way. Most of them believed the wealthy, the “well-born,” deserved decision-making power, not the common man. Alexander Hamilton revealed the common sentiment of class hostility and prejudice against the poor when he wrote:

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people… The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government… Can a democratic assembly who annually revolve in the mass of the people be supposed steadily to pursue the common good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy…[6]

So only rich representatives could determine what was best for the common American people, not the common American people themselves. As Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin wrote, a “representative system, far from being a guarantee for the people, on the contrary, creates and safeguards the continued existence of a governmental aristocracy against the people.”[7] Many other founders echoed Hamilton, as is to be expected from those in the same socioeconomic stratum. John Jay, who helped write the Constitution and later served as the first Chief Justice of the United States, often said, “The people who own the country ought to govern it.”[8] James Madison argued senators should “come from, and represent, the wealth of the Nation.” He wrote the “turbulence and contention” of pure democracy (the people voting on public policy) threatened “the rights of property,” and sneered at politicians who supported giving all men “perfect equality in their political rights.”[9] He worried a growing population of laborers would “secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of [life’s] blessings.”[10] “The danger to the holders of property can not be disguised, if they be undefended against a majority without property,” dangers including “agrarian laws” and “leveling schemes” and “the cancelling or evading of debts.” It was important to “secure the rights of property agst. the danger from an equality & universality of suffrage, vesting compleat power over property in hands without a share in it.”[11]

He warned that in a democracy,

When the number of landowners shall be comparatively small…will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.[12]

In other words, if you give democratic decision-making power to the landless, to the poor, to the majority, they might come for the wealth of the opulent (“agrarian law” is explained further below). John Adams believed, writes David McCullough, that

inequalities of wealth, education, family position, and such differences were true of all people in all times. There was inevitably a “natural aristocracy among mankind,” those people of virtue and ability who were “the brightest ornaments and the glory” of a nation, “and may always be made the greatest blessings of society, if it be judiciously managed in the constitution.” These were the people who had the capacity to acquire great wealth and make use of political power…[13]

To his credit (not really), Adams believed these men should serve in the Senate but the executive branch should be protected against their interests.

These men wrote of the need to protect the minority against the tyranny of the majority, but saw no threat in a minority of wealthy men withholding political and economic power from the majority. No great surprise, as they themselves were the rich, enlightened few. Though the Constitution and Bill of Rights granted unprecedented individual rights, the common citizen had little political power. Popular vote had almost no place in the government they designed. The popular vote did not appoint judges (it still does not), nor the president (it still does not, as the Electoral College has yet to be dismantled), nor Senators (until 1913; Madison himself said that “the Senate, therefore, ought to be this body” that protects “the minority of the opulent against the majority”[14]). The people only directly elected members of the House, yet only property owners were allowed to vote, further disenfranchising the poor and keeping power in the hands of the better off. Only in 1856 did the last state, North Carolina, do away with property requirements to vote. And of course, most aristocrats had few qualms about failing to protect the groups they were personally subjugating, such as black slaves, free colonists of color, and women. In fact, with Britain beginning to dismantle slavery, its preservation was a motivating factor for independence among the colonial elite — another instance protecting their wealth.

Granting decision-making power to the masses was out of the question. The founding fathers had interests to protect, their own minority interests. Thomas Jefferson noted that

Where not suppressed by the rod of despotism, men, according to their constitutions, and the circumstances in which they are placed, differ honestly in opinion. Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats etc. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, & wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competents. This is the division of sentiment now existing in the US.[15]

Jefferson, perhaps the most democratic of the founders, also denounced “the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country”; the aristocrats wanted to create for themselves a “government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed incorporations.”

As James Madison wrote, “Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.”[16] He wanted “representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice” to check the “rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project” the rabble might think up.[17] For Madison and others, it was vital for presidents, congressmen, and justices to come from the upper class, which was and is overwhelmingly the case.[18] The most dangerous ideas circulating in the poor majority were those of redistributing property and wealth, forgiving debts, and so on, to end poverty and suffering—the “agrarian law” Madison feared. Thomas Paine supported such redistribution—he wrote in 1795 in Agrarian Justice:

To understand what the state of society ought to be, it is necessary to have some idea of the natural and primitive state of man; such as it is at this day among the Indians of North America. There is not, in that state, any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and want present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe. Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state. On the other hand, the natural state is without those advantages which flow from agriculture, arts, science and manufactures…

Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched, than would have been the lot of either in a natural state…. The first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period…

It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal…. Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.

In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for…. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds…[19]

Paine then suggested the creation of a national fund that would grant each person, man or woman, 15 pounds sterling at the age of 21, to compensate for his or her loss of a share in the common property of the earth. He also called for social security, suggesting 10 pounds be granted to each individual per year after the age of 50. Paine envisioned a one-time guaranteed income payment, social security, taxes on the rich, free public schooling, child welfare programs, public housing, and public works programs. His thoughts later inspired many socialists, like Charles Fourier and Robert Owen.[20]

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Notes

[1] See Zinn, The Politics of History, p. 57-71, for a discussion on the rule of the rich in pre-Revolution America

[2] See Kramnick and Moore, The Godless Constitution

[3] Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 81

[4] Zinn, People’s, 99, 97

[5] Zinn, Politics of History, 61

[6] Zinn, People’s, 96

[7] Geurin, Anarchism, 17

[8] Frank Monaghan, John Jay, chapter 15, p. 323 (1935)

[9] James Madison, Federalist No. 10, “The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection (continued),”  Daily Advertiser, November 22, 1787

[10] Chomsky, Common Good, 7

[11] http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s26.html

[12] Yates, Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787

[13] McCullough, John Adams

[14] Yates, Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787

[15] http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/mss/mtj.old/mtj1/054/054_1139_1141.pdf

[16] Federalist 10

[17] Federalist 10

[18] See Zinn, People’s, 260-261 for information on how class interests affected Supreme Court decisions

[19] Paine, Agrarian Justice

[20] Nichols, The “S” Word, 33, 46, 53; https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/thomas-paine-american-revolution-common-sense/