William Marina: Re: America’s Libertarian Revolution

Tom,

I notice the Reason piece you linked to, America’s Libertarian Revolution, has in its opening paragraph an editorial comment referring to another piece in the same issue by our late mutual old friend Bill Marina:

With the beginning of the American Revolutionary War at the outbreak of Lexington and Concord, two truths about the Revolution already stand out clearly. One is that the Revolution was genuinely and enthusiastically supported by the great majority of the American population. It was a true people’s war against British rule. The American rebels could certainly not have concluded the first successful war of national liberation in history, a war against the world’s greatest naval and military power, unless they had commanded the support of the American people. As David Ramsay, the first great historian of the American Revolution, put it in 1789: “The War was the people’s war…the exertions of the army would have been insufficient to effect the revolution, unless the great body of the people had been prepared for it, and also kept in a constant disposition to oppose Great Britain. “[For a discussion of the Revolution as a majority movement, see the article in this issue by William Marina —Ed.]

That article appears to be William Marina, “The American Revolution as a People’s War,” Reason (July 1976), which argues that the Revolution was a genuine social revolution and a majority-backed “people’s war,” not a narrow colonial rebellion or minority elite project. Now in my recent PFS post Down with the Fourth of July: Reprise, I had also linked to a post about Bill: Bill Marina (R.I.P.) on American Imperialism from the Beginning, which discusses a later article by him, “The Anti-War March on Washington: The Real Issue Is Empire,” LewRockwell.com (Jan. 31, 2007; archive). As the analysis below indicates, Bill seems to have shifted a bit in his views on this issue, between the Reason article in 1976 and the LRC article in 2006:

Marina appears to have deepened or shifted his emphasis over three decades from highlighting the Revolution’s libertarian achievements to underscoring how imperial centralization was contested but never fully defeated at the founding.

As I noted in my post Bill Marina (R.I.P.) on American Imperialism from the Beginning, Marina’s 2007 article contains some perceptive comments on the imperialist motives of George Washington at the founding of the American nation-state, to-wit:

“[T]he British Constitution is more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. . . . An empire is a despotism, and an emperor is a despot, bound by no law or limitation but his own will; it is a stretch of tyranny beyond absolute monarchy. For, although the will of an absolute monarch is law, yet his edicts must be registered by parliaments. Even this formality is not necessary in an empire.” ~ John Adams, Novanglus Papers, 1775….

… Empire has always meant, not only a collapse of the idea of Law, but an enormous centralization of power, not only in foreign and military affairs, but domestically as well, with huge unaccountable bureaucracies developed to administer the State.

An interesting question is when did America change from a Republic to an Empire?

… I would suggest, however, that the Empire issue was already evident at the time of the American Revolution and the birth of the Republic itself. The crucial differences within the Revolutionary Coalition, and the debates preceding the Revolution among Classical Republicans dating back to the English Revolution and earlier, are totally obscured by that sweet little phrase, “the Founding Fathers.”For want of space, let us discuss just one issue that concerned Classical Republican theorists; Standing Armies ….

The British proscription of Standing Armies in 1694 meant the Army to put down both the Americans and the Irish rebels must be stationed outside the British Isles. Halifax, Nova Scotia, was an ideal spot on the North Atlantic Triangle to station what Jimmy Carter would centuries later call, “a Rapid Deployment Force (RDF). The unpopularity of the War in America meant Hessian mercenaries as well.

Classical Republican theory’s alternative to a Standing Army that led to Empire, was the idea of a decentralized “People’s Militia.” General George Washington never liked the idea of a Militia because it never fitted into his kind of traditional 18^th century warfare, of lines on infantry firing at each other at close range with famously inaccurate muskets. No wonder the British Redcoats prayed for rain so they could fix bayonets for a charge against the less experienced Americans.

Yet, as military historians such as John Shy have noted, it was the Militia that was always the “sand in the gears” of the British military machine. Properly used, as by General Nathaniel Greene in the later campaign in the South, the Militia made a significant contribution. Because the British never controlled very much of North America outside of New York City for any length of time, there was very little of today’s “guerrilla warfare” possible, but in that one area the guerrilla Militia was formidable.

What has been obscured by historians is that one wing of the American Revolutionary Coalition was already into the idea of Empire, and that General George Washington was a prime mover in that view. Even during the crucial battles in the South in 1781, Washington sent General LaFayette to negotiate with the Militia of Vermont, Ethan Allen’s “Green Mountain Boys,” about launching another attack to take Canada. By that time, the Militia understood the game about as well as do our high-priced Halliburton and Blackwater contractors in Iraq today, and demanded “double pay, double rations and plunder,” the last certainly a give-away of the imperial nature of the proposed venture, and a perfect way of countering Washington’s proposed expedition. As a result, the “Boys” returned to Vermont.

Peace might have been had in 1777–78, after the victory at Saratoga, and before the alliance with France, had the War Party in the American Coalition been willing to negotiate with the Carlisle Peace Commission, leaving out its continued demand for Canada.

Washington’s dislike of the Militia carried over into his presidency in the 1790’s with his handling of the so-called “Whiskey Rebellion” by using Militia from distant states, because the local rebels themselves were apt to be Militia. What the historian Richard Kohn called the “Murder of the Militia System” was also related perhaps to the need to use regular army troops for “Indian Removal,” an action many veterans later described as the most despicable in their careers.

Much has been made by some opponents of Interventionism, in suggesting that we go back to Washington’s Farewell Address, of “no entangling alliances,” as a model for the country today. I believe this a misreading of the Washington-Alexander Hamilton view, that this really meant an open door to unilateral intervention.

As exhibit one, I would offer Washington’s aid to the French Creoles in Haiti in 1792, in an effort to thwart the Blacks revolting there. Here was America’s first effort at “foreign aid,” some $726,000 at a time when that was real money! As a southerner and slaveholder, Washington was concerned that Black revolt would carry over into the United States. How different, really, was his effort from the dozens of American efforts in the last decades to prop up despots and counter-revolutionaries with financial resources to keep them in power?

Noticing a bit of discrepancy in tone between the 1976 and 2007 Marina pieces, I asked Grok to compare them, with my previous post as context:

One-paragraph summary of the 1976 Reason article:

William Marina’s July 1976 Reason article, “The American Revolution as a People’s War,” argues that the Revolution was a genuine social revolution and a majority-backed “people’s war,” not a narrow colonial rebellion or minority elite project. Marina debunks the persistent “minority myth” (often traced to a misreading of John Adams), showing instead that a broad popular shift in legitimacy—from British monarchy and positive law to natural law, republicanism, and popular sovereignty—drove widespread participation through ideological conviction, economic boycotts, protests, Committees of Safety, and effective guerrilla/militia warfare that exhausted British forces. He highlights tactical innovations resembling later “protracted conflict” strategies, draws parallels to the English Revolution’s debates over equality versus hierarchy, and contrasts the Revolution’s emphasis on equality of opportunity (avoiding radical egalitarianism) with other upheavals. While celebrating its libertarian-radical character and success through mass support rather than conventional battles, Marina notes early tensions between republican ideals and imperial temptations, such as expansionist schemes (e.g., invasions of Canada) that contradicted the people’s-war ethos and foreshadowed later centralizing tendencies.

Comparison to the Kinsella commentary and Marina’s cited 2007 article:

Marina’s 1976 piece is largely celebratory of the Revolution as a popular, legitimacy-shifting struggle against empire that preserved key libertarian elements (limited government, militia-based resistance, and natural-law foundations). By contrast, his 2007 LewRockwell.com article “The Anti-War March on Washington: The Real Issue Is Empire” (the piece Kinsella highlights in his 2009 obituary/tribute to Marina) takes a sharper, more critical view: it portrays American imperialism as present from the founding itself, embedded in divisions within the Revolutionary coalition. One wing (associated especially with George Washington) favored standing armies over decentralized militias, pursued territorial expansion (repeated pushes for Canada even when peace was possible), and engaged in early interventions (e.g., aid to suppress revolts in Haiti in 1792). Marina quotes John Adams defining “empire” as unchecked despotism and centralization unbound by law, applying this framework to argue that the republic-to-empire shift began during the Revolution rather than later (e.g., 1898 or after).

Kinsella’s commentary frames Marina’s 2007 analysis as evidence that imperial ambitions were not a later deviation but an early feature of the founding, consistent with Kinsella’s own revisionist critiques of the Continental Army, standing armies, and the Revolution more broadly. Thus, while the 1976 article stresses the Revolution’s popular, anti-imperial character and treats empire as a contradiction or temptation to be resisted, the 2007 article (and Kinsella’s discussion of it) emphasizes imperial seeds already present in key founding figures and institutions—particularly the preference for centralized military power over the militia system that had proven effective in the war. Marina appears to have deepened or shifted his emphasis over three decades from highlighting the Revolution’s libertarian achievements to underscoring how imperial centralization was contested but never fully defeated at the founding. Both pieces ultimately warn against empire and advocate republican restoration, but they differ in how fundamentally they locate the imperial impulse in America’s origins.