Willravel

I think the best way to frame this is that I was lied to as a schoolboy about the Boston Tea Party. 'Conventional wisdom' about the incident is that it was about unfair taxes being levied against the American colonists by the British government, in which they had no representation. It was framed the same as 'no taxation without representation', and then we were allowed to go to recess. This, it turns out, is a very dishonest way of framing the historical protest.

The following is a 15 minute video done by radio host Thom Hartman explaining in great detail and with direct citation of relevant historical documents what the Boston Tea Party was all about.

TL;DW: the East India Trading Company (henceforth EIC for brevity) was trying to corner the tea market, which was a huge market in the colonies. Tea had previously been brought in by American entrepreneurs (smugglers), but the EIC decided the best way to beat them was to undercut their prices significantly. The colonists, wanting to support private American workers and not support an attempted monopoly, widely boycotted EIC tea, which led to massive stockpiles. In response the EIC petitioned the king to pass legislation to basically end all taxes for importing tea. This meant the end of private, small tea importing. The smugglers, merchants and Sons of Liberty all decided to fight back with pamphlets and less 2-dimensional methods, and the colonists were on board. EIC ships were turned back at the ports. The EIC, in the eyes of the people, were guilty of monopoly, bribery, and corruption, and the British government impotent to stop them and complicit.

Three small groups of men dressed as Native Americans, symbolically and to hide identity, boarded ships in the Boston Harbor, took them (with strict instructions not to harm anyone or the ships), and threw overboard all the tea (worth about $1,000,000 when adjusted for inflation). After about 3 hours, it was done and everyone went home. The British Parliament immediately passed the Boston Ports Act in response, which closed the port until the EIC was reimbursed by the city of Boston for the destroyed tea. The answer was no.

The Boston Tea Party was, at it's very center, a revolt against corporate corruption and corporate tax cuts.

There's a lot to discuss here, but one point jumps out right away: the original Tea Party aligns politically much more closely with the modern American far-left than it does to anyone on the right, in fact I feel it's totally fair to say that the modern Tea Party is a direct antithesis to the original. Not give give in to a grandiose display of egotism, but had I been alive all those years ago, I imagine myself being a Tea Partier, or at the very least very, very strongly aligned with their politics. On the other hand, the modern American conservative movements would be starkly against the Tea Party, it's attack on corporate power and act of civil disobedience with the destruction of private property.

Another thought that occurs to me is that this kind of drastic action would go a very, very long way in our modern struggles against corporate power. While I would advise against taking over a ship in order to dump Monsanto's Round-Up into the sea, acts of civil disobedience and even what some might consider terrorism against entrenched, corrupt, monopolistic corporate power could ultimately have large and beneficial consequences. Blah, blah, blah, legal disclaimer about breaking the law, and all of that, but can you imagine directly challenging Chevron or Dow Chemical or Lockheed Martin or Pfizer or some other highly corrupt corporation? Even with corporate media, that news would spread like wildfire.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that a bit and see what discussion might come of it.

WhoaitsZ

It is unfortunate that today most people just believe what they hear with no research whatsoever. The "Tea Party" now is tools of what they supposedly hate because they rather follow a shepherd like Gingrich blindly than know what is really going on.

Its hilarious how most TPs want less government and more freedoms while in the same breath they wish to deny gay and abortion rights. Its all been said before so I will shut up for now.

The majority of the 'Tea Party' are without doubt the single biggest tools who are working against themselves of our time.

Baraka_Guru

Interesting. So as the history goes, Britain and the EIC sought to stop tax-evading tea smugglers via a tax break, and the response was the Boston Tea Party...because they didn't want to pay the tea tax either?

So what values can we encapsulate in the Boston Tea Party then? It doesn't seem to directly equate "no taxation without representation." Instead, it seems to be more about no taxation period. They didn't want to pay the tea tax.

So this tax....was this essentially a duty? It's not like tea was a local product or anything. The only place to get tea was elsewhere. The difference, then, is that this is a tax on a product: tea. This isn't a tax on individuals.

The current iteration of "tea party" values do differ. It's not a refusal to pay a duty on a popular beverage. It's, well...you know, personal. "I" pay too much tax; the government spends too much of "my" money. And lets throw in some constitutional fetishism while we're at it.

No, I think the current use of Boston Tea Party symbolism is mainly that---symbolism. I suppose it's the closest thing to "direct action" associated with "tax issues." To compare the two, I guess the similarity is in "not taking it anymore," where it = "that tax issue."

Because, you know, both "tea parties" are about tax issues; it's just that the issues are much different.

So the comparisons drawn between the two are quaint, but I can see now how it is misleading.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

The privateers were attempting to bypass an existing monopoly. The EIC had been pulling strings for years, cornering numerous markets, particularly shipping, and that meant that merchants and sailors had to choose between low wages and no control over one's career under the EIC, or become a privateer and run the risk of getting caught. It's a choice that's been faced by people living under monopolistic conditions throughout the history of capitalism. Join the company or face being either legislated out of existence or undercut out of existence.

But I take your point, I hadn't thought of it in that way.

dksuddeth

to put this in more modern terms, so that some people may understand better, they can look at Microsofts practice of bundling internet explorer in windows 'for free' to undercut the netscape navigator package, or any other web browsing software for sale by packaging it as the default browser in AOL software.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Baraka_Guru

Well, not exactly. As far as I know, Netscape Communications aren't guilty of tax evasion, and their browser is legitimately distributed.

I can't think of an apt modern comparison. Maybe something to do with tax breaks to media companies to fight pirated media content or something. Or maybe the resistance to a tax on media storage that intends to compensate for copying of copyrighted material.

I really don't think there is a modern equivalent, because it would mean poignant anger somewhere, and I don't think we see that.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

loquitur

Will, what you're describing is a libertarian revolt against special government favors to the well-connected. That maps much more closely to the nonreligious right in the US than to the left. Assault on earmarks? check. Disapproval of bailouts? check. Disapproval of corporate welfare? check. mistrust of public-private "partnerships" (i.e. corporatism - which is what the EIC was)? check. suspicion of government support for privileged or connected groups (unions, the IP lobby)? check. Mistrust of elites and aristocrats? check. Modern day left in America involves promotion of governmental support to all sorts of constituencies. We can argue about whether that is good or bad (and we'd probably disagree) but you can't deny that the modern left's raison d'etre is to promote government programs. Focussing on the fact that the EIC was a corporation leaves out the most important part of the story, because back then there were no corporations except by special government grant -- a corporation was the very definition of special favors. And a corporation with a monopoly was even more offensive.

The analogies don't map perfectly, of course -- history does move on, after all -- but you're right in seeing a real continuity of attitudes. Walter Russell Mead, the historian, refers to these attitudes as Jacksonian. What you've pointed out is that the attitudes substantially predate Jackson.

Willravel

We have to be careful how we use the term libertarian, though. What we saw in the Boston Tea Party, filtered through today's terms, isn't strictly libertarian because modern American libertarians' stance on monopolies is that the free market should correct them and that destruction of someone else's property is a fundamental violation of the unofficial rules of property rights. Yes, they'd happy bitch and moan about how the IEC's monopoly wouldn't be possible without the government, but that misses the point. EIC, being a profit-driven organization, would seek out any methods available to them in order to beat the competition, become the monopoly, and then control the entire market. It's not like without UK laws the EIC would have faces stiff competition from privateers because the EIC would have found other ways to screw them and to un-level the playing field in their favor.

I suppose the Boston Tea Partiers could be considered similar to modern left libertarians, in that they not only were distrustful of government power, but they were also distrustful of private power because they could see that both of them were corrupt, together and independently. It's more Noam Chomsky than Ludwig von Mises, to put it in more simple terms.

What you're not seeing from the modern Tea Party, however, is scrutiny of corporate power. Sure, the tiny, tiny minority of right-libertarians in the movement are shouting about corporate welfare or earmarks, but the vast majority (according to polling) simply want lower income and property taxes and smaller government, which seems to mean less social programs. The simple reason behind this is the movement is being funded and largely run by 'corporatists', people interested in shifting power away from government regulators and into the market so they can, basically, get away with more shit. It's not the organization that Ron Paul and his supporters started in 2007, but rather the movement Fox News and conservative talk radio created in April of 2008.

loquitur

well, except that the John Hancocks of the world were in fact fabulously rich entrepreneurs. John Adams was a successful business litigator (as, for that matter, was Abraham Lincoln decades later). You can go through the roll call of Massachusetts Patriots and you'll see a lot of rich and bourgeois leading the pack. And the Virginia revolutionaries were wealthy plantation owners. I think you're overstating your case vastly, Will.

Chomsky has as much to do with this as he has to do with reality generally.

Willravel

That was an odd left turn. Neither John Hancock nor John Adams were involved in any way with the Boston Tea Party, in fact I believe John Adams was not a big fan of mob actions in general. I'm talking about the intent of the actual people involved in the act. Regardless, while you're certainly correct that many of our 'founding fathers' were wealthy, many of them were well aware of the dangers of not just government power, but also power of more private varieties.

Thomas Jefferson, likely the most quoted founding father by lefties like myself, specifically warned of the danger posed by an “aristocracy of our moneyed corporations” (in an 1816 letter to George Logan). He wasn't just distrustful of power concentrated in government, but in corporations as well, which is of note to this discussion. John Adams, the admittedly rich man, was quoted saying, "All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in the Constitution or Confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.” at the Constitutional Convention. Abraham Lincoln, the liberal Republican, said, "...corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed." in a letter to Col. William F. Elkins.

pan6467

If you truly look at history, as unpopular as this may sounds the US was not truly independant of England until the war of 1812.

But I can se your hypothesis Will, and comparing the "tea parties" of then and today is comparing apples and oranges.

I find it seriously sad that a GOP governor in Florida wants to cut 170 million for the disabled while cutting taxes for corporations by 4 Billion. I was a tea partier in 08 and in all honesty that makes me sick. Once Beck and Hannity and Levine etc. started becoming the voices..... you had to be blind not to see you were being used. Where are the tea partiers voices now, when the GOP shows their true colors and blames the tea party for not resolving the budget in Washington or SB 5 here in Ohio or Wisconsin or Florida and so on.

Where is the outrage that GE can make 14 BILLION in profit and not pay taxes? You are right, the government is allowing the rich to steamroll the little guys, but this has been going on since the beginning of this country. The "land barons" of the West, the Monopolies of the late 1800's to early 1900's, the depression of the 30's, WW2 allowing our government to build a military industrial complex, the 60's when it wasn't truly about change it was about power, the narcissism and egocentrism of the 70's, Reagan dumping many programs on the states (that we now see could not afford them), the greed of the 80's, the mergers of the 90's and finally the total breakdown of the economy. With the baby boomers as a whole (not individually) whining about Social Security and 30 years ago being told they needed to plan for a future without it, hence 401k's, IRAs, and so on. Now it is time to pay the piper and we have been led down the road of credit and "borrowing" to get what we want and NOT what we need.

It's all been done before and it will be again. The credit problems we faced in the 30's and even some problems in the 1800's. We have gotten through all these crises before and we shall again. We just need a stronger leadership to get people to believe in the government again, as a nation we are too fractured.

It leads me to one of my favorite movie lines (from My Fellow Americans): You have 300 million voices and each one wants something different.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

roachboy

i thought this an interesting piece from al jazeera about the contemporary u.s. of a.:

It's a plutocracy, stupid - Opinion - Al Jazeera English


there are problems of anarchronism and translation (flipsides of the same thing) that attend trying to make too direct a connection between the contemporary "tea party" neo-fascism and the 1773 boston event. this is a reasonably good resource on the latter:

Coming of the American Revolution

it helps disentangle the adamses for example. plus the webspace gives a pretty detailed intro along with some primary material of the sort that's always useful to look at when you're playing about with the past.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

loquitur

Will, what you're leaving out is that for Jefferson, corporations WERE special government-granted privileges. There weren't any off-the-shelf private corporations until much later in the 19th century. To get a corporation in Jefferson's time you needed to have an act of the legislature that specially created it, and until later, you couldn't create a corporation for strictly private purposes -- in fact, a number of early 19th century corporations even had eminent domain power because they were considered public-interest arms of the state. So when Jefferson warned about corporations, he was basically warning about what we might call today corporatism or cronyism: special favors to the well-connected, granted under the guise of acting in the public interest. The earliest group of business corporations in the US were banks, so of course there was a fair amount of suspicion. The first corporations of any kind were municipalities, dating back IIRC to royal charters in 17th century England. So when you use the word "corporation," it helps to know the historical context in which it was used. For instance, there is a reason that the NYC government's law department is called the "Corporation Counsel" -- it's a leftover from the day when the Corporation of the City of New York was created.

I took a course on corporate history in law school, and honestly I'm surprised I still remember this stuff. Current corporate form, in which corporations became explicitly a method of private business organization rather than at least nominally a delegation of public interest functions, arose in the (I think) 1830s or so (by which point Jefferson was dead). [I'll need to check that date] Off-the-shelf corporations were created by US state legislatures in the 19th century in order to deal with the demand for new corporations as the economy expanded -- that demand was threatening to swamp state legislatures' ability to get any other kind of work done.

As for the founders, you're right about John Adams (he generally distrusted populist sentiment and feared mob rule), but John Hancock was one of the behind-the-scenes instigators of the Tea Party. He owned wharves and had an importing business, remember - he stood to benefit from hamstringing the EIC.

The Jefferson quote about corporations demonstrates for me, at least, the perils of assuming that words meant the same thing in the same context when they were first used as they do today. They don't.

---------- Post added at 06:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:39 PM ----------

Oh, as for Lincoln - he was a railroad lawyer. Those railroads got rich by getting special favors from the government (these were legislatively created corporations that were granted rights of way and in many cases power of eminent domain), as did the canal companies before them. So yes, he knew damn well what he was talking about with corporations, because they basically were insiders using the system for their own benefit.

But if you read his thoughts about free labor and free enterprise, it's right out of the loquitur school of thinking. One of the reasons he despised slavery was that it was an affront to the human dignity that is afforded by work, because work and enterprise are means to self-improvement that is denied to a slave.

ASU2003

Maybe he should of said Howard Zinn...


There is a lot we don't really know about the people and their motives in history. But, it is facts like this that the History Channel should be investigating rather than some Ax Men or Ice Road truck drivers...

roachboy

lincoln was entirely cynical about the distinction between wage slavery and actual slavery in the debates with calhoun in 1858. there was none of this improvement shit. it was entirely a matter of being able to quit your job. that's it. that's what makes you free, in lincoln's view. and he's not wrong. is he?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite