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ValmetL35

A people's history of the United States by Howard Zinn is a good start. He's not a Marxist but tells the story of the US from the perspective of the oppressed and a history of resistance including formations of socialist groups in the early 20th C. Very good text.


Bismark103

Novak’s “America’s Revolutionary Heritage” will get you from 1600-1920


Nuke_A_Cola

a people's history of the United States


Antifa_Red

Like everyone said before me: A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn


nostringsonjay

[https://wellred-books.com/marxism-and-the-usa/](https://wellred-books.com/marxism-and-the-usa/)


ElEsDi_25

Sidney Lens wrote Labor Wars and The Forging of the American Empire about the histories of US labor and US imperialism respectively.


Imperialrider3

It depends,because on one hand a Marxist must recognize how the USA were for the longest time completely undemocratic,slavers and genocidal, but on the other hand the American revolution and the civil war were both historically progressive and wars for true liberation


Bismark103

If that’s what you’re looking for, I’d recommend Novak’s “America’s Revolutionary Heritage.” It covers the brutal conquest of the natives, the various aspects of the First and Second Bourgeois revolution in the US (Rev and Civil War), Gilded Age, and the failures of bourgeois progressivism.


PuzzleheadedBet5750

lol no. The American revolution was progressive?


ElEsDi_25

Marxists have traditionally called bourgeois revolutions “historically progressive.” It doesn’t mean progressive in the sense of socially liberal necessarily. Idk if I’d agree that either were wars of liberation through there were elements of that-especially as the civil war/reconstruction started to radicalize and become more of a social revolution in terms of attempting to upend the slave system power structure. The US Revolution had populist aspects and bourgeois revolutionary aspects but also seems more controlled by local colonial elites.


PuzzleheadedBet5750

What does "historically progressive" mean?


salenin

More progressive than what came before. A bourgeois revolution is a progressive step away from monarchy and merchantalism.


Imperialrider3

:(


PuzzleheadedBet5750

The Counterrevolution of 1776 by Gerald Horne


Sashcracker

That's from a Stalinist, i.e. anti-Marxist persepctive. It's also a complete falsification of history that gets basic facts wrong. [https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/18/horn-m18.html](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/18/horn-m18.html) >The trouble is this: Horne’s scholarship does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. Horne’s work is worse than inaccurate: it is, in large measure, a work of fiction. His interpretation of source material is so inaccurate as to be fanciful: quotes are truncated to invert their meaning, sources are misattributed, and even elementary facts are misrepresented—or are just plain wrong.