Grand Strategies in War and Peace Book

The most important part of this book is Bookchin's discussion of the rebel activists in the Paris sections during the French revolution...the general assemblies that played a crucial part as centers of mobilizing ordinary people to rise up in various rebellions. His discussion of Jean Varlet is particularly interesting...a militant who had developed a theory and program for governance through the direct democracy of assemblies.

Unfortunately, tho, Bookchin's account of the American revolution leaves a lot to be desired. I hate to say it, but it's almost racist. He doesn't discuss the fact that speculation in stolen lands of the native people's was a big motivating factor for the revolution, among the elite. In 1763 the UK had granted the Indians west of the Alleghenies their lands and prohibited settlement beyond that line. This undermined land speculation schemes that Washington, Jefferson and many other revolutionary leaders had invested in. Bookchin also never discusses the ways that African-Americans participated in the struggle, for example, by fleeing plantations to join the British after they offered freedom to black and European slaves if they'd fight for the British.

Bookchin mistakenly claims that most of the confiscated lands of the loyalist elite went to poor farmers. This is implausible because the lands were sold and the well to do had the money to buy them, not poor farmers. Also, there was a lot of bribery and corruption in these land transfers. Moreover the evidence is that concentration of wealth continued in the early 1800s as it had in the late 1700s.