AOC is wrong. The American Revolution wasn’t against the wealthy
This article employs sharp partisan framing by opening with a dismissive Reagan quote and characterizing AOC's historical interpretation as driven by 'neo-Marxist' ideology rather than engaging substantively with her argument. The author centers wealthy Founders' contributions while omitting enslaved laborers, Indigenous peoples, and non-property-owning colonists who bore the human cost of revolution—a selective historical narrative that privileges elite actors and frames class-based critique as inherently flawed.
Primary voices: elected official, media outlet
- This article does not address the economic conditions of non-propertied colonists, enslaved people, or Indigenous populations during the Revolutionary period.
- This article does not examine AOC's specific policy arguments or whether criticism of wealth inequality is inherently Marxist.
- This article does not acknowledge that the Founders' concerns about 'tyranny' were often about protecting property and slave holdings from British imperial oversight.
- This article does not cite historical scholarship on class composition of Revolutionary support or debates among historians about economic motivations.
Establishment framingCharged languageOpinion/analysis
President Ronald Reagan had Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) number years before she was born. In his famed 1964 speech at the Republican National Convention, Reagan quipped: “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
In recent remarks at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, the New York congresswoman claimed that “the American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time.” It was, AOC asserted, “the heritage of our country” and part of how “America was founded.”
But the American Revolution wasn’t a war against wealth. Far from it. In fact, many of the American “billionaires of their time” helped bankroll the fight for independence. Without them, our nation’s founding might not have been possible.
John Hancock was the first man to sign the Declaration of Independence. He was also one of the wealthiest men in the colonies. Hancock served as the president of the Second Continental Congress and played a key role in the revolution.
So too did Robert Morris, who was one of only two individuals to sign the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution. In 1775, on the eve of the revolution, he was arguably the wealthiest man in the United States.
Morris was called the “Financier of the Revolution.” He used his extensive mercantile network and credit to fund the colonial war effort, often working in tandem with Haym Solomon, a Polish-born Jewish-American who went bankrupt financing the Continental Army. Morris himself also went broke, spending his final years in a debtors’ prison. Both Morris and Solomon put their mouths and their money on the line and suffered as a result.
There are, of course, numerous other examples. Indeed, many of our Founding Fathers were wealthy, although quite a few, often Virginians such as Thomas Jefferson, were land rich and cash poor. But by no means were they peasants.
Indeed, some historians have argued that one of the reasons the American Revolution succeeded was because it wasn’t predicated on completely overthrowing and pillaging the wealthy, such as subsequent revolutions in France, Russia, Mexico, China, Cuba, and elsewhere. Those revolutions were motivated, in part, by class resentment, precisely of the type that AOC propagates. And they failed.
AOC’s narrative about the American Revolution isn’t just inaccurate. It is also revealing and speaks to the tendency of many in the modern Left to view history through a neo-Marxist lens. But the truth is simpler. The American Revolution wasn’t a fight against “billionaires.” It was a historic fight for sovereignty and basic rights. It was, in every sense, exceptional. But that is a truth that the Left can’t come to terms with.
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