Topic > Labor and the American Revolution by Philip S. Foner

Labor and the American Revolution is just one of dozens by one of the most well-known and controversial Marxist historians of the last century, Philip S. Foner. To say that he was a prolific writer is a bit of an understatement. His obituary credits him with writing more than one hundred volumes, but Worldcat.org shows more than double that number written or co-authored by him. In 1941, his political views led to control of a Communist witch hunt conducted by the state legislature's Rapp-Coudert Committee, which led to his subsequent dismissal from the faculty of the City College of New York, along with dozens of others, including his three brothers. In 1967 he finally returned to academia, joining the faculty of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. One wonders, however, whether this was a step taken out of necessity, or rather out of a desire to teach again, and perhaps to show a sort of symbolic solidarity with the oppressed of our society, to which he dedicated much of his time. his life. writing about. Foner retired in 1979, and in 1981 City College finally apologized to all those who had been fired forty years earlier, for what it called grievous violations of academic freedom. The American Revolution was not a revolution in the true sense of the word at all. It is a class struggle, aimed at leveling the playing field of democracy in the country, or simply a political dispute between England and its American colonies. He concludes that the revolution was certainly a class struggle of this kind; one to determine “who will rule at home,” as noted progressive historian Carl Becker quoted in the preface. He states... in the middle of the paper... suggesting the possible fabrication of some original material. Perhaps the most disturbing accusation of all is that he actually destroyed some original documents belonging to trade unions. While none of this was directed specifically at this book, a diligent scholar would do well to keep this information in mind. Despite the stated flaws of this work and the obvious concern one must logically have about the integrity of the writer's scholastic management, this reviewer like many of Foner's fiercest critics in the past, still praises this as a very useful piece of scholarship, which really gives the reader a fairly complete picture of the role the urban working classes played in bringing about the American Revolution. Phillip S. Labor and the American Revolution. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 1976.