Part 1:

You wrote:

“This is because the bourgeoisie does not represent a revolutionary class but a new ruling class based on class oppression of the laboring classes.”

Not revolutionary? So there wasn’t a revolution to change from feudalism to capitalism? You have just thrown out all of historical materialism and thus all of Marx.

The bourgeoisie was not a revolutionary class but a new ruling class in waiting. They had individual revolutionaries who used their privileges to dominate the revolution in order to betray it, but the real base for revolution had more to do with the poor peasants, slaves, indentured servants, and the rising proletariat in urban centers.

Beginning around 1760, steam power and the mechanized factory system produced a revolution in production. The old, farm-centered organization of society shifted and required free labor to leave the farms and villages and enter the factories and cities. The bourgeoisie could use the state to organize this production, carried out by the working class, while still insuring that the profits would remain in the hands of the ruling class.

The new government, however, derived its power from a deal between the nobility and the bourgeoisie that put down the uprising of the new industrial working class and the poor peasantry. The bourgeoisie allowed the nobility to keep their slaves, build their empires, and to fleece the poor peasantry. In exchange, the nobility allowed the bourgeoisie to gather “free labor” in their “free enterprises” so as to extract profit, very often from child labor, a portion of which they would share with the nobility. The nobility took positions within the new state, in the military, in the banks, and in the corporations of world conquest under the guise of “free trade.”

I have these quotes from great Marxists about this subject. I hope you will appreciate them as examples of real Marxism:

Lenin once wrote:

This is the ABC of history that our Mensheviks have for-gotten and distorted, adopting the point of view of the liberals: there will be no bourgeois revolution in Russia until the bourgeoisie becomes the driving force! This is an abject failure to understand the dialectics of history and the lessons of the nineteenth century. On the contrary, there will be no bourgeois revolution in Russia until the proletariat, in alliance with the revolutionary elements of the bourgeoisie (i. e., with the peasantry in our case), becomes an independent driving force, operating in spite of the vacillations and betrayals of the unstable and counter revolutionary bourgeoisie.

Lenin, Vladimir. The “Leftward Swing” of the Bourgeoisie and the Tasks of the Proletariat
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/apr/08.htm

We have this longer quote from Two Tactics by Lenin:

Do the new-Iskraists declare the aim of Social-Democratic activity to be a decisive victory of the revolution over tsarism? They do. They are unable correctly to formulate the requisites for a decisive victory and stray into the Osvobozhdeniye formulation, but they do set themselves the aforementioned aim. Further: do they connect a provisional government with insurrection? Yes, they do so plainly, by stating that a provisional government “will emerge from a victorious popular insurrection.” Finally, do they set themselves the aim of leading the insurrection? Yes, they do. Like Mr. Struve, they do not admit that an insurrection is an urgent necessity, but at the same time, unlike Mr. Struve, they say that “Social-Democracy strives to subject it” (the insurrection) “to its influence and leadership and to use it in the interests of the working class.”

How nicely this hangs together, does it not? We set ourselves the aim of subjecting the insurrection of both the proletarian and non-proletarian masses to our influence and our leadership, and of using it in our interests. Hence, we set ourselves the aim of leading, in the insurrection, both the proletariat and the revolutionary bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie (“the non-proletarian groups”), i.e., of “sharing” the leadership of the insurrection between the Social-Democracy and the revolutionary bourgeoisie. We set ourselves the aim of securing victory for the insurrection, which is to lead to the establishment of a provisional government (“which will emerge from a victorious popular insurrection”). Therefore. . . therefore we must not set ourselves the aim of seizing power or of sharing it in a provisional revolutionary government!!

Our friends cannot dovetail their arguments. They vacillate between the standpoint of Mr. Struve, who is evading the issue of an insurrection, and the standpoint of revolutionary Social-Democracy, which calls upon us to undertake this urgent task. They vacillate between anarchism, which on principle condemns all participation in a provisional revolutionary government as treachery to the proletariat, and Marxism, which demands such participation on condition that the Social-Democratic Party exercises the leading influence in the insurrection.

Lenin, Vladimir. Two Tactics, Chapter 9. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch09.htm

Trotsky wrote in his book, 1905, Chapter 4:

There can be no return from the class struggle to the unity of a bourgeois nation. The “lack of results” of the Russian revolution is only the temporary reflection of its profound social character. In this bourgeois revolution without a revolutionary bourgeoisie, the proletariat is driven, by the internal progress of events, towards hegemony over the peasantry and to the struggle for state power. The first wave of the Russian revolution was smashed by the dull-wittedness of the muzhik, who, at home in his village, hoping to seize a bit of land, fought the squire, but who, having donned a soldier’s uniform, fired upon the worker.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1907/1905/ch04.htm

In Chapter 9 of the History of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky tells the story of the “revolutionary bourgeoisie” who in order to defend the revolution defend the monarchy as well.

The representatives of the Executive Committee were sincerely perplexed as to why such a cultured and far-sighted man as Miliukov should be obstinate about some old monarchy, and even be ready to renounce the power if he could not get a Romanov thrown in. Miliukov’s monarchism, however, was neither doctrinaire, nor romantic; on the contrary, it was a result of the naked calculation of the frightened property-owners. In its nakedness indeed lay its hopeless weakness. Miliukov, the historian, might, it is true, cite the example of the leader of the French revolutionary bourgeoisie, Mirabeau, who also in his day strove to reconcile the revolution with the king. There too at the bottom it was the fear of the property-owners for their property: the more prudent policy was to disguise it with the monarchy, just as the monarchy had disguised itself with the church. But in 1789 the tradition of kingly power in France had still a universal popular recognition, to say nothing of the fact that all surrounding Europe was monarchist. In clinging to the king the French bourgeoisie was still on common ground with the people – at least in the sense that it was using against the people their own prejudices.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch09.htm

Trotsky wrote in Third International After Lenin, Chapter 7:

During the same period of ultra-Leftism, the Chinese Communist Party is driven for several years into the Kuo Min Tang, which is characterized by the Fifth Congress as a “friendly Party” (Pravda, July 25, 1924), without undertaking a serious attempt to investigate the class character of the latter. This idealizing of the “national revolutionary bourgeoisie’’ develops the greater. That is how the false Left course, with its eyes shut and burning with impatience, laid the foundation for the subsequent opportunism with regard to the East also. To give form to opportunism, Martinov was called upon, who was all the more a loyal councillor of the Chinese proletariat, having himself limped behind the petty bourgeoisie during the three Russian revolutions.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/militant/dregs.htm

From the Communist Manifesto, the WSWS objection is listed as one of the “bourgeois objections to Communism”:

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

Marx and Engels clearly state that the revolution they seek would cause “a radical rupture” with traditional ideas, meaning the ideas of Christianity and the Greco-Roman inspired rationalist ideas of bourgeois revolutions. These “common forms, or general ideas” must “vanish…with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.” This is a long way away from unconsciously slave-like, “paying them their tribute that is their due.”

Marx wrote in the German Ideology, Chapter 3, about the “philosophy of enjoyment”:

In modern times the philosophy of enjoyment arose with the decline of feudalism and with the transformation of the feudal landed nobility into the pleasure-loving and extravagant nobles of the court under the absolute monarchy. Among these nobles this philosophy still has largely the form of a direct, naive outlook on life which finds expression in memoirs, poems, novels, etc. It only becomes a real philosophy in the hands of a few writers of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, who, on the one hand, participated in the culture and mode of life of the court nobility and, on the other hand, shared the more general outlook of the bourgeoisie, based on the more general conditions of existence of this class. This philosophy was, therefore, accepted by both classes, although from totally different points of view. Whereas among the nobility this language was restricted exclusively to its estate and to the conditions of life of this estate, it was given a generalised character by the bourgeoisie and addressed to every individual without distinction. The conditions of life of these individuals were thus disregarded and the theory of enjoyment thereby transformed into an insipid and hypocritical moral doctrine.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03n.htm

Marx calls the bourgeois philosophy of enjoyment, supposedly a revolutionary break from puritanism and religious asceticism, “insipid and hypocritical” in that it disregards “the conditions of life of… individuals.” He does not seek to find agreement with these “few writers of the revolutionary bourgeoisie,” but rather criticizes their limitations as ideas in service of the ruling class to enslave the proletariat.

Finally, we have an 1890 letter from Engels, in which he outlines the limitations of Napoleonic Code:

It is similar with law. As soon as the new division of labour which creates professional lawyers becomes necessary, another new and independent sphere is opened up which, for all its general dependence on production and trade, still has its own capacity for reacting upon these spheres as well. In a modern state, law must not only correspond to the general economic position and be its expression, but must also be an expression which is consistent in itself, and which does not, owing to inner contradictions, look glaringly inconsistent. And in order to achieve this, the faithful reflection of economic conditions is more and more infringed upon. All the more so the more rarely it happens that a code of law is the blunt, unmitigated, unadulterated expression of the domination of a class – this in itself would already offend the “conception of justice.” Even in the Code Napoleon the pure logical conception of justice held by the revolutionary bourgeoisie of 1792-96 is already adulterated in many ways, and in so far as it is embodied there has daily to undergo all sorts of attenuation owing to the rising power of the proletariat. Which does not prevent the Code Napoleon from being the statute book which serves as a basis for every new code of law in every part of the world. Thus to a great extent the course of the “development of law” only consists: first in the attempt to do away with the contradictions arising from the direct translation of economic relations into legal principles, and to establish a harmonious system of law, and then in the repeated breaches made in this system by the influence and pressure of further economic development, which involves it in further contradictions (I am only speaking here of civil law for the moment).

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_10_27.htm

Especially relevant is Engel’s attitude towards Napoleonic Code: “it only consists” in “the attempt” to translate “economic relations into legal principles,” that is defense of exploitation, and an attempt at harmony despite the pressures of suppressing the proletariat. Far from a glowing approval of the accomplishments of the bourgeoisie as they gained dominance in the economy and therefore politics, Engels demeans their attempts.

Part 2

You wrote:

The article you cite does not tell us where the “The WSWS has argued that Napoleon Bonaparte and the Bonaparte family acted as a progressive force in French and European history”. It’s not in the link they given and I cannot recall any reference on the WSWS to the Bonaparte family as a “progressive force”. Perhaps you can assist?

Ann Talbot wrote the following in “Ted Grant: A political appraisal of the former leader of the British Militant Tendency: Part 2”

In 1794 Robespierre was overthrown on 9 Thermidor and power shifted to more conservative Jacobins who relied for support on propertied sections of the third estate. In 1799 Bonaparte seized power in the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire on behalf of the wealthiest sections of the French bourgeoisie. But neither of those regimes threatened the essential shift which had taken place in property relations. They remained defenders of bourgeois property rights and in that sense retained a certain progressive character in relation to the feudal absolutist regimes that still dominated Europe.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2006/09/gra2-s28.html

In fact, Bonaparte’s war on Europe drained France of all its resources, forced them to give up their territories where a revolutionary order could have developed, and in led, in the end to the restoration of the monarchy. Was it irrational for Bonaparte to invade Russia or was it necessary in order to drown the revolution in blood after sending them across Europe into Russia.

It does says there is an “impulse of capitalism to destroy its own sacred pillars of rule. In order to capture markets, the New York City financial elite undermine faith in institutions through out the world.” But then why is this happening now? What has changed?

The change relates to the George Floyd protests, the rising wave of strikes, the fall of towering media figures due to #MeToo, and the decline of the American empire.

Part 3

You wrote:

We are only told that this is a “natural process”, which just begs more questions.One might ask why Marx wrote a letter to Lincoln? Marx wrote, “the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstitution of a social world.” Why did he see the Civil War as progressive? Why didn’t he call for the tearing down of statues of Jefferson, Lincoln and others while he was alive? https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/02/pers-f12.html

He called for the removal of Napoleon’s monument, and Napoleon was Jefferson’s ally. He saw the Civil War from the perspective of the European and international working class. Any improvement for the working class anywhere, including improvement for the poor peasantry and the enslaved and displaced African-Americans mean an improvement for international working class. He complemented Lincoln’s character to show that he did not see Lincoln as an ordinary representative of the bourgeoisie but one that had a particular charm as an individual that set him apart from his class. This his individual contribution to ending slavery and struggling for a social world meant for Marx, that a revolutionary side existed to his personality and could benefit from encouragement. At the same time, his personal charm made him useful to the capitalist class to subdue the uprising of the workers and consolidate the influences of expansionism and corporate power over politics. He had proven himself with loyalty to Henry Clay and the idea of the expulsion of free black people from the Union. That’s why Lenin had to declare imperialism as an international system the greatest threat to society, rather than any particular national injustice based on economic relations.

You wrote:

Talk of the “hypocrisy” of the American revolutionaries is just a denial of the contradictions of historical development that Marx and Engels so brilliantly gave us the tools to understand. One of these contradictions well explained in the WSWS article cited:”In the end, what the American ruling class hates about Jefferson is what distinguishes him most: his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, the very subject of the D’Angers statue. They hate not only the Declaration’s assertion of equality, but its insistence on the right of people to revolution. Governments, Jefferson said, derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed…[W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”Your perspective will lead you to either distort Marx or to attack and reject him.

Marx and Engels showed the contradictions in historical development in order to advocate against bourgeois rule. This meant exposure of the “insipid and hypocritical moral doctrine” of the “bourgeois revolutionary” writers. (From the quote above from German Ideology, Chapter 3) The “philosophy of enjoyment,” as Marx put it, or “the Pursuit of Happiness” as Jefferson put it, had definite roots in the collaboration of the bourgeoisie with the nobility to maintain class rule through the revolution and into the construction of the new government. Marx, like Lenin, struggled over the term “the people” so it would not fall into the wrong hands and be used for bourgeois ends. Whose “future security” would these “new Guards” defend? This would depend on the independent organization of the working class, as opposed to any other class contained in “the people”, for its own interests and in direct opposition to the interests of the capitalist class. “The people” only shows up twice in the Communist Manifesto, both contained in this quote:

“The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.”

Marx and Engels. The Communist Manifesto: Chapter 3.

As people desert Jefferson “with loud and irreverent laughter”, smashing their monuments or allowing them to be smashed by one or another faction of the bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels approve! Lenin, too, emerged in a fight over the term “the people”, writing his first book titled, “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats.” In other words, beware the “Friends of the People.” In that book, he wrote: “Scratch the ‘friend of the people’—we may say, paraphrasing the familiar saying—and you will find a bourgeois.”

Lenin also mocked the nano-bureaucratic SEP perspective of the “Friends of the People”:

“the workers must wait, must rely on the friends of the people and not begin, with “unjustified self-assurance,” an independent struggle against the exploiters. Desiring to strike a deathblow at this “unjustified self-assurance,” our author waxes highly indignant at “this science that can almost fit into a pocket dictionary.” How terrible, indeed! Science—and Social-Democratic penny pamphlets that can fit into the pocket!! Is it not obvious how unjustifiably self-assured are those who value science only insofar as it teaches the exploited to wage an independent struggle for their emancipation, teaches them to keep away from all “friends of the people” engaged in glossing over class antagonisms and desirous of taking the whole business upon themselves— those who, therefore, expound this science in penny publications which so shock the philistines? How different it would be if the workers placed their fate in the hands of the “friends of the people”! They would show them a real, voluminous, university and philistine science; they would acquaint them in detail with a social organisation that conforms to human nature, provided only—the workers agreed to wait and did not themselves begin the struggle with such unjustified self-assurance!”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1894/friends/01.htm#v01zz99h-131-GUESS

The SEP bureaucracy, by banning factional democracy, strictly limits the “independent struggle” of the working class. It argues that science must be “voluminous” rather than appear as “penny pamhlets.” They consider the working class “unjustifiably self-assured” and in need of a slander campaign to silence the critics of nano-bureaucracy. By holding back the working class, they promise there will arise on its own “a social organisation that conforms to human nature.” In fact, by stifling democracy for the advanced workers, they fight against that social organization. They need Jefferson and the founding fathers of bourgeois democracy to hold up as a superior “social organization” with whom they can converse about socialism while the workers must silently watch.

To sum up, from the original post:”… While recognizing the historically determined limitations of the efforts of the revolutionists of earlier historical epochs, we pay them the tribute that is their due.”

Lenin quotes Marx from the Preface to Capital, “[From] my standpoint, the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history.”

This final quote shows Lenin’s view of what has become of once progressive, in relation to the proletariat, magazine that lost its way under the pressure to conform to bourgeois intellectualism and bourgeois politics.

The “friends of the people” have forgotten this antagonism; they have lost all sensibility of the fact that in this country, too, in Holy Russia, the pure-blooded bourgeois hide “under the cloak of democracy”; and that is why they are now reactionary (in relation to the proletariat), for they gloss over the antagonism, and talk, not of struggle, but of conciliatory, ”uplift” activity… I repeat, it is not that they have altered their opinions under the influence of a radical change of views or a radical change in our order of things. No, they have simply forgotten.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1894/friends/08.htm#v01zz99h-271-GUESS