[peawee]

We fought the revolutionary war so that rich factory-owners could more freely sell their wares without paying taxes to fund the war against the French and Native Americans that they sent Ben Franklin to London to beg the king for.

[tomschlick]

Yeah lets forget about taxation without representation, being forced to quarter troops in your home, being controlled from thousands of miles away, and the Boston Massacre. It was all corporations. Got it.

[jordigh]

The Boston Massacre was mostly propaganda to unite a bunch of colonists that weren't all that convinced that the King was such a bad guy... and it didn't work out that well as propaganda goes; most colonists (i.e. more than 50%) weren't convinced that war with England was the right thing to do.

The stories behind the other cases you cite are similarly murky. The US has been manufacturing consent since before it was born.

[nostrademons]

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were all wealthy men, largely physicians, lawyers, and merchants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_of_the_United_States_De...

The common people of the colonies were likely in a situation very similar to where ordinary citizens today are when deciding between Google/FB/etc. and the NSA. Distrustful of both sides, but more inclined to go with the weaker of them, because then they'd be less fucked over.

[dragonwriter]

> Distrustful of both sides, but more inclined to go with the weaker of them

Well, globally weaker and more locally powerful. Strength probably wasn't the decision criteria at all for those who chose the rebel side, it was probably perceived accountability: the local governments that were represented by the signers and which revolted were all accountable to the local population, the British government was not.

[themeek]

Wasn't President John Adams the defense lawyer representing the British Soldiers at the Boston Massacre?

[nostrademons]

He was.

[thatswrong0]

This is a really shallow reading of the events that caused the war, and it's certainly not the entire story nor is it representative of modern academic thought. There were, remember, thirteen original colonies, and each of those colonies had different people in them with different needs. The causes of the uprising in Boston, for example, were not the same causes that drove Virginians to support the war.

[michaelvkpdx]

Corporations weren't citizens in 1776. It only took us 100 years or so to fuck that piece of it up. Nothing in the original Constitution or Declaration requires capitalism.

[nostrademons]

They were, actually:

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-the-...

Arguably, corporations were more powerful then than they are now. Wars were fought because of the British East India Company - in 1778, it had a private army of 67,000 soldiers, over 50% more than the total strength of the American militia at that time.

[thaumasiotes]

The British East India Company didn't just have its own standing army. It also (since 1765) held the legal right to collect taxes in Bengal. For a large portion of India, it was the government.

[jacquesm]

See also: The Hudson Bay Company and Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company

[dragonwriter]

> Corporations weren't citizens in 1776.

Corporations aren't citizens now. If you mean "corporations weren't considered 'persons' in the scope of the 14th Amendment" in 1776 (or even, say, when the Constitution was first adopted), that's true, but then neither was anyone else.

Corporations, of course, have been legal persons in the general sense since the corporate form was invented; that's the whole point of the form.