Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, entitled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” was a scathing indictment of the hypocrisy of a slave-holding society declaring “all men equal.”
We can ask a related question for today: What does the Fourth of July mean to the multiracial working class in the United States in 2026? As we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and all the events recognizing it, we should also grapple with the meaning of the holiday to our diverse class.
The culture of the capitalist ruling class has associations with the Fourth of July that are very different from those of workers, as can be seen in the ways the holiday is commemorated. Right-wing forces tend to celebrate the Fourth by glorifying military action and celebrating bourgeois concepts of freedom (to exploit workers; to maximize profits) and liberty (for some but not for others). The so-called “patriotism” espoused by the likes of Pete Hegseth and J.D. Vance veers quickly into a toxic white Christian nationalism that claims a divine right to dominate others.
The members of the ruling class aim to show that their class power is deeply rooted in history and the result of their alleged “natural superiority.” They use history as a device to gain loyalty and buy-in, and they deliberately scrub the historical record of working-class contributions and victories, especially those of the racially and nationally oppressed, women, and LGBTQ people.
Anthropologist Michel-Ralph Trouillot, in Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, focuses on what is not in the historical narratives, which he calls the “silences of history.” Ruling class forces deliberately silence parts of history, by eliminating sources, creating biased archives, rewriting narratives, and judging counter-narratives as irrelevant. In all these ways, they strive to deny or conceal the genocide of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans on which the country was founded.
The process of silencing history was fully out in the open with the March 2025 U.S. Department of the Interior’s Order 3431, entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” With this decree, the Trump-Vance administration ordered national parks and museums to remove references to slavery, genocide, and the victories of the Civil Rights Movement.
The National Parks Conservation Association and other organizations sued the Department of the Interior, and just last week, a U.S. District Court issued an order demanding the restoration of unlawfully censored information within 21 days, which would mean that they must be restored by the Fourth of July holiday. The reversal of this order by the court caps an outpouring of outrage by civil rights organizations about the silencing of history. It represents a victory for our multiracial, multigender working class. Trump and Vance, of course, are appealing the decision, so we need to keep up the pressure.
At the other extreme is the cynical idea that recognizing the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is tantamount to “celebrating capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism.” While the ruling class perspective calls on people in the U.S. to maintain the status quo, this cynical view also prescribes inaction. As Douglass said in his speech, “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future.”
But what is the perspective that will rally us to demand fairness, equality, and true freedom from exploitation?
The working-class perspective
The development of capitalism creates two distinct nations within a single state: a bourgeois nation and a working-class nation. There is the nation of the ruling class—white supremacist, capitalist, and imperialist—and there is the multiracial, multinational working class and oppressed peoples fighting for consistent democracy and liberation from oppression. The working-class perspective must be framed through the battle for consistent democracy.
When we consider the Fourth of July, we acknowledge that the United States was founded in the context of developing capitalism. We condemn the genocide perpetrated against the indigenous peoples of the continent in the capitalist thirst for resources, and the perpetuation of slavery throughout our founding and for decades thereafter due to the capitalist drive for super profits.
We acknowledge the racism that was part and parcel of the worldview of those who made the revolution. Let us be clear: Indigenous nations and African chattel were not considered human. They were not considered “men” in the “all men are created equal” formula. The defense of slavery was an integral part of their platform, particularly as they pushed west. Moreover, it must be noted that this was the basis for the emergence of a racist and sexist social division of labor that the U.S. economy was built on. This anti-human ideology remains very much present today.
But we also acknowledge that the bourgeois revolution was for its time, though incomplete, objectively a step forward, even though it was subjectively a step backward for the victims of colonialism. Lenin viewed the American Revolution as one of the few great, genuinely liberating and revolutionary wars in history. Predating even the French Revolution, it overthrew colonial rule and dismantled the vestiges of feudalism. For Lenin, it was a truly liberating war, especially compared to the intra-imperialist conflict of World War I of his time. The American Revolution led to a bourgeoisie with more freedom to develop the forces of production than the European bourgeoisie had previously. One necessary consequence was the rapid development of the working class.
Frederick Douglass praised the American insurgents of the times. They recognized certain “measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive,” and they struggled to break the colonial bonds. The fundamental contradiction in declaring equality without questioning slavery is our national inconsistency. He wrote that, “the existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie.”
However, Douglass wrote, if the Constitution was meant to be a “slave-holding instrument,” why is there no mention of slavery and slaveholding in it? Slaveholding only explicitly entered the U.S. Constitution 13 years after Douglass’ speech, with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. Despite the protections for slaveholding implicit in the document, the words were deliberately avoided. “On the other hand,” Douglass wrote, the Constitution “contain[s] principles and purposes” that are “entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.”
The degree of democracy established in the founding of the independent nation is worse than imperfect, constrained within the boundaries of bourgeois concepts. However, it does provide a foundation for a continuous push toward ever-expanding democracy—a project championed by the working class—in struggles from the slave rebellions of the pre-Civil War era, to the Reconstruction period, through the organized labor victories of the 1930s, to the fight against Jim Crow and for a Second Reconstruction and civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, and the current work to advance a Third Reconstruction.
Over these 250 years, the working class has consistently fought back, from John Brown at Harper’s Ferry to Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, from the Flint Sit-Down Strike to A. Philip Randolph and the Sleeping Car Porters, from the Battle of Blair Mountain to the 1963 March on Washington, to the recent mass demonstrations for No Kings Day and the trade union rallies for May Day.
These are struggles that benefit the working class as a whole. Speaking about the movement to protect Black voting rights in the face of the Callais decision, LaTosha Brown reiterated a working-class perspective on the Fourth: When African Americans struggle for and get what they need, she reminded us, they open things up for immigrants, women, LGBTQ folks, white working people, indeed the entire working class.
Echoing this was Ojibwe leader David Treuer, who said, in an NPR interview on July 4, 2021, that Indigenous Americans “remain committed to forcing this country to live up to its own stated ideals.” It is always working-class and oppressed Americans, and women, who challenge the bourgeois state to honor the lofty promises of the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, with every growth in democracy, the greater the voice of the working class.
How a working class moves forward
How can we continue to cultivate ever greater democracy, expanded until the voice of the entire working class can be fully heard and can prevail over the declining, disappearing, disintegrating bourgeoisie?
First, we must fight the rollback of the Voting Rights Act and restore the 20-odd congressional districts seized from southern African American districts in the Callais decision. Second, we must resist the civil rights counter-revolution that is a direct assault on not only African Americans, but all people. This means fighting to re-establish affirmative action, not as a mere policy, but as a necessary tool to address the systemic inequalities that are the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. We reject the false premise that remedial measures are “reverse discrimination.” In fact, it is a necessary precondition to uniting the working class and winning the battle for consistent democracy.
We must struggle to tell the true histories of the victories of working-class and oppressed peoples in the U.S. and to challenge false ruling class narratives at every opportunity—which means advancing a platform to address the racist inequalities suffered by people of color. This includes addressing the complete rollback of civil rights, honoring the treaty rights and demanding Land Back to native nations, and reinstituting affirmative action, to name a few.
We must continue to work toward democratic full equality for all and to build united working-class power.
For the 250th anniversary of the Fourth, this year is a time to reflect on what the United States could be in 50 years, at its tricentennial in 2076. The fruits of our struggle could be realized in a society based on peace, the fulfillment of human needs, protection of the environment, productive and dignified work for all, and the dominance of worker-led power—a socialist society. The U.S. working class has come a very long way since 1776, and with our continued efforts to build unity and solidarity, we can achieve a better world for the tricentennial and beyond.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views expressed here are those of the author.
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