The Tudor revolution
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These two extracts are written by Adam Buick, they confirm everything. Without a bourgeoise revolution, the bourgeoisie class could not have been established
Actually if I read Adam correctly he is not saying that at all. What he said was:
“More broadly, I have agreed with you that capitalism existed before the bourgeoisie won political control. Of course it did, otherwise they would have had no economic basis and in fact would not have existed.
If capitalism existed before the bourgeoise won political control then obviously the bourgeoise existed before it won political control since you can’t have capitalism without a bourgeoise or capitalist class
Actually to claim that “without a bourgeoise revolution, the bourgeoisie class could not have been established” goes against a materialist reading of history since it deprives the bourgeois revolution of the key material element that would make it a bourgeois revolution in the first place – namely a bourgeois or capitalist class
However, that state had to
be overthrown because in the end it became a
barrier to the further development of capitalism.
Hence the English Civil War and English Revolution
considered in 1688.You missed a part, Adam said that the state had to be overthrown. Also, you missed Engels analysis of the role played by force in history. There are several historians who have indicated that the Bolshevik revolution was a bourgeoise revolution without the bourgeoise
This debate has been wonderfully instructive to me on history. (as has the other debate on the other thread has been about philosophy – i particular was struck by the dance and dancer analogy)
But as always i want the things about the past i learn to have an application for the present and the future.
With this new analysis of class division, social change and political revolution being discussed, what can we say about today?
I assume that the history TM presents shows that the bourgeoisie dominated the social and economic relationships that existed, and that the political power of the time reflected this but often splintered over internecine disputes of which section should dominate.
My question is that will the economic class struggle and the class war bring forward a new society. The core of Marxist belief. Or will it be the secondary influences of capitalism. Its incapacity and inability to solve its deleterious effects such as environment destruction, global movement of migrants, pandemics and wars that will produce the revolutionary collective consciousness and will for a political revolution.
Shall we continue to talk about the working class or change our language to working people or merely The People.
We dominate all except the exercise of political power.
(apologies for the clumsy manner in how i pose the conundrum)
ALB, In 1850 Marx himself wrote an article on “England’s 17th century Revolution” in which the following passage occurs…
So it turns out this refers to 1688, yet you introduce it in the context of our discussion on the civil war, and then say it’s about 1688 after you notice it supports my argument and not yours.
More broadly, I have agreed with you that capitalism existed before the bourgeoisie won political control. Of course, it did, otherwise, they would have had no economic basis and in fact, would not have existed. I can even agree with you that capitalism developed after feudalism under the absolutist state. However, that state had to be overthrown because in the end, it became a barrier to the further development of capitalism. Hence the English Civil War and English Revolution considered in 1688.
Yes, no problem. The monarch stood in the way of the further development of capitalism. No argument. It is the description of Charles and his followers as feudal that I objected to. Under feudalism the king wasn’t absolute. After 1485 they were. Had Richard III won Bosworth, he would have fulfilled the same role as Henry, possibly, or change would have come a little later. The bourgeoisie supported the Tudors, who welcomed and patronised them, right from Henry VII. Opposed to the autocracy were the old nobles (what remained of them), who mounted numerous revolts, backed by the peasantry. But with the Stuarts, bourgeois interests were stymied with the Scottish Stuarts’ obsession with Divine Right and their desperation to centralise all power in their own persons, a la Louis of France. Charles was the last straw.
The status of the king had no bearing on whether the system was feudal or not. The only thing stopping absolutism was the real practical power of the barons. Yes, the move from Edward I onwards was to rely on paid mercenaries (which very much drove forward the commodification of society), rather than feudal levies, but the King remained a feudal ruler.
We can look at Henry’s relations to St. Thomas More: he didn’t pay the saint a salary, he gave him manors (and an allocation of pigs, swans, wine, etc), from which he derived income (and accrued rights and obligations).
Even when the landowners changed from extracting surplus to extracting surplus value, through their rents, they still considered themselves to be behaving as before, the aristocratic owners of land, land which conferred status and a network of personal relations, rather than commercial ones.
The dissolution of the monasteries did allow a lot of new land owners, and land became alienable (after all, Richard II, when he was Duke of York had to prove he was the legitimate heir when he engaged in lawfare to seize manors, he couldn’t just buy them). And the owners of this new land sought to have the same status as the older aristos (which was one point of contention).
We can imagine the thought experiment: suppose after the world revolution the infamous capitalist island still existed, receiving goods from the socialist society (as an externality) which they don’t need to pay for, but which they trade among themselves. They would remain capitalists, even if the world hegemonic economic mode were socialist.
You missed a part, Adam said that the state had to be overthrown
I didn’t miss the part nor did I deny the state had to be overthrown. I was simply countering your incorrect and non-materialist claim that Without a bourgeoise revolution, the bourgeoisie class could not have been established.
The bourgeoise class emerged prior to the bourgeois revolution and ws the material basis for such a revolution to happen in the first place- in the same way that a revolutionary socialist majority is the material basis for a socialist revolution. Or do you suppose a socialist majority can be created after the socialist revolution a la Leninist vanguardism?
As for historians claiming bourgeois revolutions can happen in the absence of a bourgeois I take this to mean the relative absence of the bourgeois in the practicalities of a revolution – not the absence of the bourgeoisie itself. In Russia pre-1917 there certainly was a domestic capitalist class but it was considered to be too weak by the Bolsheviks to mount en effective challenge to the Tsarist regime
“So it turns out this refers to 1688, yet you introduce it in the context of our discussion on the civil war, and then say it’s about 1688 after you notice it supports my argument and not yours.”
I was merely drawing attention to the fact that the “English Revolution” in the title of Marx’s article was that 1688 not the victory of Parliament over the king forty or so years before. In fact, at the time and up until Christopher Hill that’s what everybody meant by the term.
Obviously, though, you can’t discuss 1688 without discussing what happened in those preceding years as 1688 was the culmination of the struggle between parliament and king ending in the complete victory of parliament (which appoints William of Orange king by an Act of Parliament). Both Guizot, whose pamphlet Marx is reviewing, and Marx do this. Here’s what Marx wrote about Guizot’s interpretation:
“According to him, the whole struggle between Charles I and Parliament was merely over purely political privileges. Not a word is said about why the Parliament, and the class represented in it, needed these privileges. Nor does Guizot talk about Charles I’s interference with free competition, which made England’s commerce and industry increasingly impossible; nor about the dependence on Parliament into which Charles I, in his continuous need for money, fell the more deeply the more he tried to defy it. “
The passage which you took (correctly) as backing the view that the landowners created under Henry VIII were not feudal (“In fact, their lands were not feudal but bourgeois property“) was preceded by a passage that makes it clear that Marx was talking not just about 1688 but about Tudor times too:
“The English class of great landowners, allied with the bourgeoisie — which, incidentally, had already developed under Henry VIII — did not find itself in opposition — as did the French feudal landowners in 1789 — but rather in complete harmony with the vital requirements of the bourgeoisie. “
The grammar of the English translation makes it ambiguous as to which — the class of great landowners or the bourgeoisie — had already developed under Henry VIII. A check with the original German makes it clear that Marx is referring to the landed class. A literal translation would be : “the English class of allied-with-the-bourgeoisie great landowners — which incidentally, etc”. A comma in the English translation after “bourgeoisie” would have made this clear.
So, there is no difference between us on this point. The difference is that you see this landowning class as part of the bourgeoisie while I see it as a separate class (as does Marx, not that that settles anything beyond that that was Marx’s view).
No dispute here. I don’t necessarily insist on the term bourgeoisie. But by 1688 don’t we call them that, although except for some forfeits, the same families own the land as did in Tudor times? And still do today, maybe?
The big change in who owns the land was made under Henry VIII, not under the Interregnum, I believe?
“Such was the euphoria regarding the return of monarchy that a great deal of confiscated Crown land was returned with few problems. There were a few more issues with Church land (primarily a dislike of the historic wealth of bishops) but the Commission of Sales – a body that decided on compensation for those who had to hand back land – overcame these.”
Some of the current nobility are descended from the illegitimate children of Charles II. He had at least 14 so perhaps he was more of a sultan than feudal ruler. Princess Airhead was apparently descended from him, which means that her son, Prince William, will be one of them too. When/if he becomes king the Royalists can have the last laugh as a descendant of Charles II ascends the throne —even if only as a powerless figurehead, though still a big landowner and the head of decayed aristocracy.
And why do you deny nation-statehood to 16th c. Spain? How was it different from Elizabethan England – a definite nation-state?
If French bourgeois notions of citizenship are necessary to the economic fact of a nation-state, then that doesn’t apply to us, who live under one, so why should it apply to the Spanish. They certainly identified as a nation when Bonaparte invaded. And Elizabethan England was patriotic. One of the rallying cries of the Parliament in the civil war was that Charles, with his diverse rag-tag of foreign mercenaries and savage Celts, was the enemy of England.
I don’t know when one would say Spain had its revolution. Franco?
That’s a coincidence as I was about to come back on this. Habsburg Spain did take part in the world market as a “world power”, in fact as the strongest. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, that was its undoing as it relied on plunder from its empire rather than trade to increase the wealth of its ruling class and so failed to adapt its internal economy to run on capitalist lines (production for sake on an anonymous market with a view to profit).
Participating in the capitalist world market did not thereby make a state a capitalist state. So I think it is wrong to describe Habsburg Spain as this, and even more wrong to say it was a “nation state”, let alone the first one.
The growing feeling of the people of England constituting a “nation” with a national interest and destiny that you draw attention to as beginning to happen in Elizabethan England supports the contention that England or the Dutch Republic are the best candidate for being labelled the first nation-state.
The subjects of the Spanish Empire did not regard themselves as a nation and there was no attempt to try to inculcate in them that they were.
As to when Spain went through its bourgeois revolution in the sense of political power passing into the hands of the bourgeoisie, I don’t know. Marcos is our expert on things Spanish. But there were quite a few attempts to establish a Spanish Republic in the 19th and early 20th centuries, some successful for a while.
Then I am perfectly willing to accept this, but there is no doubt that Spain was a unified power that put its monarch even in control of the Church. The Inquisition in Spain was fully independent and jealous of its independence.
But you could say the same about the Japanese Empire. Japan was a nation-state in the 1930s, but the conquered people of Manchukuo and Korea did not consider themselves Japanese.
There was fierce Spanish opposition to Napoleon. Did that not constitute a national feeling?
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