Wez
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TM your hubris is getting the better of you again. For a start feudal tenure was not abolished in England until 1660 so if the conservative landowners who supported Charles I derived their income from this source it makes them a feudal nobility. You ask why we use the ‘Eurocentric model’? Obviously because the whole globe is now dominated by capitalism which began in Europe!
And just to emphasize the above quote from ALB here are two more from Christopher Hill:
The issue was one of political power. The bourgeoisie had rejected Charles I’s Government, not because he was a bad man, but because he represented an obsolete social system. His Government tried to perpetuate a feudal social order when the conditions existed for free capitalist development, when the increase of national wealth could only come by means of free capitalist development.
The financial expedients of Charles’s personal Government affected all classes. Feudal dues were revived and extended, and that hit landlords and their tenants.
‘So Wez, you must think the bourgeoisie led the revolutions in Japan, Russia and China?’
Why must I think so? I know little of Chinese or Japanese history. As for Russia I believe the bourgeoisie were an important element within the failed revolutions of 1905 and February 1917. Indeed you can make the case that, in the long term, the Bolshevik coup d’etat of October 1917 also ultimately failed in respect that despite some initial socialist idealism they were forced by history to become a state capitalist economy which was finally destroyed by the bourgeoise in 1991. What is so important about the English revolution is that it created the model of capitalism that now dominates the world.
‘You are interpreting the word “revolution” solely in the narrow sense of a political uprising. I am using the word socio-economically.’
You are sounding more and more like the historians who wish to dismiss the class struggle and the revolutions that they provoke. The Tudors just got lucky at the Battle of Bosworth and were no different from any other aristocratic dynasty trying to consolidate their power. Usurpation was deriguour in the ceaseless power struggles between different aristocratic families. I can see that we will never agree about this but can’t you see that your playing into the hands of the gradualists and reformers politically?
‘It does not at all deny the materialist conception of history to say the revolution dated back to the Tudors.’
If you substitute the word ‘development’ for ‘revolution’ in the above quote then everyone can agree. But what political revolution happened during the Tudor period?
Just had a brief look at some writing by Ellen Meiksins Wood – looks interesting. Her defense of the class struggle as central to historical development would seem to reflect my own (on a very brief reading). Does she consider the events of 1642 to be an internecine struggle between capitalists? There doesn’t appear to be an online version of the book L Bird recommends.
Nobody disputes the rise of capitalism in England. What I do dispute is that the revolution in 1642 was a struggle between sections of the capitalist class. Charles I and his supporters still represented the decaying conservative (feudal) landowners. To dispute this makes a nonsense of Marx’s theory of the class struggle and supports those (ideological historians) who will go to any lengths to disprove Marxism and with it the contemporary analysis of capitalism and the necessity of the working class to destroy it through revolution. I’ll look up the writing of Ellen Meiksins Wood – L Bird’s ‘preferred’ historian of the period. Presumably he prefers her because it fits what he wishes to believe? Strange choice of words. History is one of the ongoing ideological battlefields and only occasionally a search for ‘truth’ – that’s part of what makes it so interesting.
I use the word feudal in the Marxist sense, and not in the more restricted sense adopted by most academic historians to describe narrowly military and legal relations. By “feudalism” I mean a form of society in which agriculture is the basis of economy and in which political power is monopolised by a class of landowners. The mass of the population consists of dependent peasants subsisting on the produce of their family holdings. The landowners are maintained by the rent paid by the peasants, which might be in the form of food or labour, as in early days, or (by the sixteenth century) in money. In such a society there is room for small handicraft production, exchange of products, internal and overseas trade; but commerce and industry are subordinated to and plundered by the landowners and their State. Merchant capital can develop within feudalism without changing the mode of production; a challenge to the old ruling class and its state comes only with the development of the capitalist mode of production in industry and agriculture.
Christopher Hill
‘It seems Charles I relied on levying of taxes and fines for the most part. He was always strapped for cash.’
But wasn’t that the case with many preceding monarchs including those that were indisputably Feudal? I don’t see how this makes him a capitalist. Anyways moving on – now I have to contend with ALB’s ‘three- class society’ which, presumably excludes the aristocracy and peasantry leaving us with two types of capitalist and a proto working class in the 1640’s? Talk about a ‘critique of the critique’ – this forum certainly keeps you on your intellectual toes.
Why would I want to say that? I just think that Charles I was a member of a decaying feudal nobility that had to be replaced by the capitalist class politically. At least this is what I have always believed but I will read the historians you suggest and review my understanding accordingly. I’m impressed by your confidence but it does seem to confront my understanding of what the class struggle means historically. Have you studied history at university?
‘Aristocrats can become capitalists.’
Does that mean that they are both at the same time? I take it to mean that they were a member of one class who transferred to another (as a member of the working class would upon winning the lottery). As a Marxist I define class by the relationship to the means of production. If you muddy these waters you end up with a sociology that declares that a more affluent section of the working class are ‘middle class’ – which is nonsense. I can accept that ‘bourgeois’ can have a broader meaning culturally but economically? We use the term ‘petit bourgeois’ to define a section of the working class whose income derives partly from profits and who politically identify with the capitalist 1%. Is this the kind of ‘complexity’ you speak of? I’ve been a member of the SPGB since 1980 which was instigated by my brother-in-law who was a professor of Russian history and who showed me the poverty of Lenin’s ideology compared with the materialism of Marx. I turned my back on the Left from that time.
‘Charles Stuart was not a bourgeois but a descendant of Scottish feudal lords ‘
So far, so good. But then you go on to say the source of his wealth was mercantile capitalism which makes him ‘bourgeois’ does it not? Can you tell me the source of this assertion – which historians would you recommend? It flatly refutes Christopher Hill’s version which has hitherto been my main source. It’s important to me because if the Marxist theory of class struggle does not adequately describe events in England at that time then, since it was the origin of global capitalism, it undermines the theory of historical materialism. At the moment I only have your assertions – I would like to read the historians that provided your perspective.
Oh dear TM you’re turning into another avian yourself by never answering a straight question. Say this out loud to hear how preposterous it sounds: ‘Charles Stuart was a Bourgeois.’
‘The relations of production had, in their base, ceased to be feudal and had become capitalist, but the capitalist class was divided.’
So you’re saying that the revolution was the result of a conflict within one class – not competing different classes. I repeat: doesn’t that invalidate the Marxist concept of the struggle between different competing classes as the dynamic element creating historical change?
