The misuse of the word "revolution" when people talk about the "American Revolution" has done a great disservice to overall understanding of the term.

Bourgeois revolutions are still revolutions. They put the old regime and the old aristocratic order to rest, which allowed capitalism to evolve into what it is today. We also don't really need to reclaim the term at all, it's already ours, since the bourgeoisie have (for the most part) disowned their own revolutionary past. They now speak of figures like Robespierre as if they were crazy, bloodthirsty murderers, even though they have the power that they have now because of figures like him.

Bourgeois revolution is still revolution. I don't know how you can use violent conflict to go from colonial territory to independent state and not call it a revolution.

In every revolution the class that takes power is one of the most powerful classes from before the revolution. In the USA the gentry took power from the monarch, in Russia the workers took power from the tsar and the church, in China the workers and the national bourgeoisie took power from whatever the previous ruling class was. Are you saying that the the cpc's revolution was not a revolution because it was not only workers that benefited? Do not repeat the ideological mistakes of the sino-soviet split, comrade.

You think George Washington fell out of a coconut tree? The American revolution existed in the context of everything around it. The late 18th century was a time of tremendous upheaval in Europe where monarchies were being removed violently in favor of the installation of liberalism. It's hard to grasp the magnitude of these changes bc liberalism is what we have lived under for 200 years, but at the time these were pretty radical left wing ideas, and represented an evolutionary leap in governance.

The American Revolution was politically progressive. It was the revolution of the colonial middle classes against the feudal ruling classes which would lead to the creation of the world's first liberal capitalist democracy that had greatly expanded suffrage than what had existed during the colonial period.

This does not necessarily make it a socially progressive one even though in greater contrast to the world the American Revolution occurred in, one could say it was the most socially progressive event to occur until the more radical and doomed French Revolution occured.

Think of it akin to the abolishment of serfdom. A historically progressive step in the right direction but most certainly not the end of the road to progressive development.

From what I have understood from my limited reading Marx, Engels and Lenin did not ascribe any value judgement to the term not does it seem like the involvement of the working class as a key player was important in its definition. Revolution just means a violent process in which the old ruling class is dispossessed and replaced by a new ruling class. In that sense calling whatever happened in the USA a revolution is fine, as is calling the French Revolution a revolution and as is calling the October Revolution a revolution.

Gerald Horne's Counter-Revolution of 1776, once I really wrapped my head around the implications of what he was covering, kinda blew my mind. The idea that we've largely erased an ongoing and advancing uprising of enslaved folks by wallpapering over it with a counter-revolution of rich people convincing poor people to fight for freedom and liberty was a big moment for me. Following that up with Charles Beard's Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States really cemented it in, when I learned about the agrarian uprisings and how the constitutional convention was basically a coup to secure the investments of those rich people and institutionalize their position.

Revolution is not when you exchange one group of landlords for a different set.

It kind of is tho? Revolution doesn't necessarily entail destroying class society, it's just any rapid and significant change in governmental structures.

well revolution literally means a 360° rotation where everything ends up in the same place, so maybe it's time for a new term

Revolutions that overthrew communist states in Eastern Europe were still genuine revolutions, just a politically regressive one.

I mean the US starting out as a colony and becoming independent and turning into the largest colonial power itself certainly isn't the natural way of history, as it certainly hasn't happened anywhere else.

Now if you really want to talk about an inflationary and wrong use of the term look at the "peaceful revolution" in east germany, which literally only happened the way it did because some failson bullshitted his way through a press conference and mistakenly told the press that travel restrictions had been lifted immediately.

I appreciate all your answers. You've given me a lot to consider and a lot to read.

My Roman Empire

Wealthy capitalists saw Monarchies being overthrown by peasants and thought "Damn, that's just like me, fr" So they did a "revolution" as well. But yes, it was just so they could replace Monarchs and exchange the fief for a liberal state. Unfortunately, the science of revolution had not been invented at that point and there was no adequate framework to analyze and critique this. That didn't come until almost 100 years later. Ironically, the science of revolution was a product of this happening, the shift from monarchy to liberal industrial capitalism. People did eventually catch on that these revolutions were not by the exploited, but by the ruling class.

Really, if you think about it, it's like a defense mechanism for the ruling class. Peasants rise up and start toppling their rule, they co-opt the violence and shift to a new abstraction of the exploitation. This is something to watch out for in any worker's revolution. Make sure that the ruling class doesn't try to stand with us and just make a new deal to keep their heads.