Charles, the problem is that both Aptheker and Hobsbawm have been connected with Communist Parties their entire adult life. The CP analysis has enshrined the notion of a "revolutionary" bourgeoisie. The reason for this is political. The CP's, since the Popular Front turn, have built alliances with the "progressive" wing of the bourgeoisie. In the most extreme version of this, Earl Browder characterized FDR as a revolutionary and dissolved the CP.
That being said, neither has the Trotskyist movement thought through this question to the degree it deserves. For my money, the sharpest debunking of the myth of a revolutionary bourgeoisie can be found in Daniel Guerin's history of the French Revolution. Guerin started out as a Trotskyist but switched to anarchism.
I have a ton of shit that I am trying to research right now, so I don't have the time to delve into the American revolution. But when I carve out the time, I am going to do a systematic study of the literature, from Aptheker to Beard to Theodore Draper's fairly new book, which is skeptical of the notion that a social revolution took place.
The one thing you won't catch me doing is quoting Lenin.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)