3/ of man; and that the government of reason, the Contrat Social of Rousseau, came into being, and only could come into being, as a democratic bourgeois republic." 'Anti-Duhring': Introduction

3/ of man; and that the government of reason, the Contrat Social of Rousseau came into being, and only could come into being, as a democratic bourgeois republic." 'Anti-Duhring': Introduction

2/ this kingdom of reason was nothing more than the idealised kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this eternal Right found its realisation in bourgeois justice; that this equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed as one of the essential rights

2/ this kingdom of reason was nothing more than the idealised kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this eternal Right found its realisation in bourgeois justice; that this equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed as one of the essential rights

1/ Engels on the philosophical ideas, the 'kingdom of reason', that inspired and prepared the French Revolution: "superstition, injustice, privilege, oppression, were to be superseded by eternal truth, eternal Right, equality based on Nature and the inalienable rights of man. We know today that

3/ distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. Vulgar socialism has taken over from the bourgeois economists the treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution."

2/ "The capitalist mode of production rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of non-workers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day

2/ producers, rationally regulating their interchange with nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature."

2/ "The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong--into the museum of antiquities." 'The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State'

6/ Once the barrier of capitalist private property is abolished, a socialist economic plan on a world basis will establish the conditions necessary to provide cooperative humanity with economic abundance: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' That's socialist equality.

5/ Mackaman confuses bourgeois political equality (all that is meant by the 'radical claim' that 'all Men are created equal') with socialist equality, which presupposes the abolition of private property in the conditions of economic production and the establishment of a world-wide economic plan.

4/ Mackaman instead praises the "world-transforming ideas that animated the [American] Revolution" and expects these same bourgeois ideas to be "more explosive in 2026." No mention of the Marxist criticism of these ideas. No mention of the world-historic difference between capitalism and socialism.

3/ As Marx said: " One cannot judge a period of [revolutionary] transformation by its consciousness, but this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the [property] relations of production."

2/ urban merchants, artisans, journeymen, apprentices, and so on, to a fully bourgeois consciousness in line with the interests of a nascent American capitalist class. This is historical materialism. None of this is mentioned in Mackaman's idealist review.

1/ The elevation of the consciousness of the 'colonial masses', on the basis of experience with British restrictions on colonial economic development, and agitation in terms of John Locke's social-contract doctrine, resulted in a shift from the petty-bourgeois consciousness of small farmers,

2/ which presuppose bourgeois property; bourgeois 'democracy', which presupposes bourgeois dictatorship; and bourgeois formal/legal/political equality, which presupposes economic inequality. Mackaman's review is in-no-sense Marxist. It's an embarrassment.

1/ Mackaman's WSWS name-dropping review of Ken Burns' documentary on the American Revolution is an exercise in petty-bourgeois historical idealism ('ideas determine history'), that would not be out-of-place in any liberal publication, and a naive, uncritical defense of abstract bourgeois 'rights',

"Only in this way can the immense productive capacities of modern society be freed from the parasitic grip of the capitalist class and used to abolish poverty, inequality and war."--Damon, WSWS