This editorial for workplaces was written by the American Trotskyist group known as Spark, on 23 June, 2026 to mark the 250th Anniversary of the declaration of Independence.

    Trump tried to turn the American Revolution into a celebration of his own birthday. Well, it doesn't belong to him. 250 years ago, when the 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain, those who did most of the fighting were the people who laboured: poor farmers, tradesmen, sailors, port workers, small shopkeepers, slaves, printers, blacksmiths, and so on - not people like Trump.

    They were, however, joined in their fight by part of the wealthy classes of their time. The merchants and plantation owners had their own grievances with the British monarchy. Britain's taxes hit them too. The high prices Britain charged for goods it sent to America hit them. And they, too, were subjected to the whims of the British king's envoy sent to rule them. So it was no surprise that many wealthy merchants and plantation owners wanted independence from Britain.

    To be more exact, they wanted independence for themselves. But many of them understood they couldn't get it unless they tied themselves to the ranks of the ordinary labouring population - the poor farmers who had been fighting for land, the labourers in the cities fighting just for bare survival, slaves fi ghting for ownership of their own bodies.

    The wealthy classes tried to put themselves forward as speaking for the labouring classes who were fighting.

    This explains some of the language in the Declaration of Independence - it was directed to the labouring classes. It asserted that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

    ALL men - nothing in the text says that some are created less equal than others, nothing excludes slaves from that aspiration, nothing implies that "the lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness" of most men will be less than what the wealthy classes have.

    It was a document that asserted that governments derive their power from "the consent of the governed" - ALL the governed. It declared that the "people" are justified in throwing out a power that has become destructive of their needs.

    That is, it was a call for revolution. The Declaration of Independence was not only a statement of the Americans' desire to be freed from British control. It laid out a social program - equality - asserting collective aims for which the ordinary labouring people fought.

    That fight went on another seven years before the British monarchy was forced to admit it could not defeat what had become the first successful anti-colonial revolution in history.

    Britain, at that moment in time, was the most extensive economic power and the strongest military power in the world. But it was defeated by a rag-tag army that still showed its origins in the local militias which populated rural areas. The British Army may have been conquering the world, but it was defeated by a people in arms.

    Britain's defeat marked a turning point. The wealthy classes quickly moved to transform what had aimed at social revolution into a war whose aim was only the establishment of a new nation.

    The new Constitution establishing that nation made a few things explicit. What had been the "pursuit of happiness", now became the pursuit of money and business spoils. Slaves were no longer considered a constituent part of the population, being declared worth only 3/5 of what a man counts for. No rights were spelled out in that document for the ordinary people who had made the fight. The revolution had been hijacked by the new ruling classes of the new American nation.

    It took another period of struggle, the fights against taxes imposed by the new government - the so-called "whiskey rebellions" - to bring forth a statement of democratic rights for the population. Those rights were added to the Constitution as its first ten amendments, but they never guaranteed democracy. What gave them their power was the readiness of the population to fight for them.

    It's just as true today when Trump attempts to hijack the American revolution, turning it into a celebration of himself. Working people will have the democracy they want when they fight for it.