The Revolution was fought against Corporations! The FFs were anti-corporatists
Last edited Wed May 25, 2016, 09:43 AM - Edit history (1)
One of the best kept not-really-a-secret(s) (things-which-are-true-but-which-we-never-ever-talk-about-as-a-culture) is that the American Revolution was a struggle against Corporate Control.
The East India Company was a British corporation that had control of the British government when it came to how to run the colonies, and the British government just lay down and let the EIC squeeze the hell out of the colonists. The colonists protested, both peacefully and with vandalism and violence, but the British government stupidly would not consider their complaints against the EIC. They were, one presumes, both bought and paid for.
And so this country was born in the bloodletting of an anti-corporation rebellion. Fighting against the control of these paper machines, which care only to create more wealth for their owners and the rest of humanity be damned, is in our very birth story as a country.
The irony of first one, and then both (you aren't fooling anybody, Democratic leaders), of our major political parties becoming paid stooges for corporate power, so that these paper machines can once again make our lives miserable and extract our wealth, should not be missed, either by our (coincidentally also corporate owned) media or the average American.
I wish we could once again smash these metal motherfuckers (ok, paper motherfuckers) to junk and regain control of our political and economic destinies. It will happen, inexorably, but how much damage will be done before then?
FIGHT CORPORATE CONTOL. It is what the founding fathers both wanted and fought for themselves. It is as American as apple pie.
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No love for our anti-corporation founding fathers? 
For successful businessmen like Franklin and Washington, the revolution was about sovereignty and the community's right to control taxation through the ballot box. The breaking point was the Coercive Acts (aka the Intolerable Acts)
--so this was a sovereignty issue too
So of the Intolerable Acts, really only the first two were consequences of an anti-corporation struggle. But all were about the right of the colonies to self govern as they had been for the century prior to the French and Indian War (which George Washington personally started by the way) and were led by and motivated by the interests of wealthy Americans.
The real difference is the way the wealthy saw themselves--as local leading citizens of their own community who should league together to pursue common interests. This was known as Whiggism at the time. The notion that the wealthy had a class interest separate from the yeoman farmers and city artisans and laborers was a political view supported by the Tory factions. Those were the capitalist investors of London who were growing in power at the time. The American Revolution was a Whigs-vs-Tories conflict.
Only part of the Whig assertiveness involved a sort of local Toryism. That is, the Founding Fathers fully supported the notion of forming corporations for specific commercial purposes and wanted the states to license and protect them. The canal projects along the James and Potomac Rivers are typical examples. And once they had established Federal authority in the 1780s & 1790s, the Founders became very much pro-corporationist.
So it's complicated. I don't think you can summarize the conflicts of back then strictly into the corruptions and abuses of corporations today.
