Wez
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‘Just as most French aristocrats became capitalists and joined the French Revolution in 1789’
Where are you getting this stuff? As you know these two events (English & French Revolutions) and their interpretation have caused intense debate among historians. In some ways they have become the ‘front line’ in a materialist/ideological battle between Marxists and all those variations that seek to exclude class conflict as the main cause. You make pronouncements with a confidence that belies the nature of the evidence. Who are your sources and do you really believe the debate will ever reach a conclusion? I realize, glancing at the title of this thread, that we have gone on something of a tangent here – or have we? Without the success of the bourgeoisie in both countries we would not have had the ‘Enlightenment’ and the science that followed?
TM – So, to be clear, you believe that Capitalist hegemony was achieved through an evolutionary process and that the events in 1642 did not represent a bourgeois revolution? You would go as far as to say 1642 represented an internecine struggle between members of the capitalist class? I would reject both of these perspectives and suggest that you might be opposed in general to the Marxist theory of history?
I agree with some of what ALB says but many of the King’s supporters still used the old feudal way of farming. They looked down on the nouveau riche capitalist farming and they in their turn saw the old farming practices as wasteful and as under-exploited land. At least this is the perspective of Christopher Hill who was regarded as the preeminent historian of the period. The idea that the events of 1642 were the result of an internecine struggle between different sections of the capitalist class (TMs understanding) is something I have not heard before and is counter to the Marxian analysis as I and CH understand it. I suppose it could be a semantic argument in terms of the definition of ‘feudalism’.
Strange then that after parliament’s victory one of their first acts was to abolish feudal economic relationships. You seem to have been convinced by Whig historians that there was no Bourgeois revolution in England (unlike those French barbarians) – something us Marxists have long dismissed as propaganda. Read Christopher Hill and learn.
Thomas Moore -I would say that it was the English aristocracy that was split during the English Revolution. It was certainly not a ‘capitalist conflict’ as the court was composed of feudal barons who wanted to maintain their economic power base against the rising bourgeois gentry (capitalist farmers) and prevent ‘free market’ capitalism. Of course you are correct in that the economic power was passing to the capitalist class during the dying days of Stuart feudal autocracy via their trade in slaves, coal and wool but they needed a political revolution to destroy feudal economic relations and so unleash the potential for capital accumulation. You seem to be confusing the existence of capitalists with capitalist hegemony. Germany, although consolidating the reformation with Lutherism, their bourgeoise failed in the revolution of 1848 (they seemed to be more interested in profits than power). Again the rise of capitalists/capitalism within feudal Spain is not the issue but its failure to take political control. The ‘English Model’ of capitalism became global because of its colonialism/imperialism and the economic miracle of the industrial revolution. It was imposed on the world and so, of course, we can use the model to explain Spanish politics.
‘The Spanish monarchy was the national capitalist, just as the Tudor autocracy in England was the national capitalist.’
If that were the case in England then there wouldn’t have been the need for the Bourgeois Revolution in 1642. The Reformation was a prerequisite for the formation and rise of the capitalist class but the Tudor and Stuart monarchies did all they could to prevent the rise to power of the bourgeoise. Although I don’t know much about Spanish history I would suggest the failure of the Reformation in that country inhibited the bourgeoisie gaining political power and led to the slow economic development that ultimately led to the pseudo-Fascist rule of Franco?
Thomas Moore – I was under the impression that the several attempts by the Bourgeoisie to take power in Spain was thwarted, to a great degree, by Catholicism and its support of Absolutism. What is this ‘Tridentine Catholicism’ that you claim was favourable to the capitalist class in Spain?
Bijou – I may be mistaken but weren’t Einstein’s theories of relativity entirely the result of ‘thought experiments’?
As a materialist I don’t doubt the existence of an objective reality independent of our concept of it but science still asks many more questions than it has answers. Perhaps this is because the present scientific paradigms are mistaken or inadequate? We cannot know what further research will reveal but we do know, by looking at history, that perspectives and knowledge will undergo profound change.
‘Of course, for postmodernoids, evolution wasn’t real before the 18th century. Creationism was because that was the reality that the social consensus created until then.’
Beware of contemporary conceit ALB. The future may look back on our own view of ‘reality’ as anachronistic just as we see the metaphysics of the past as outdated.
Psychologically those who believe in a deity still rely on some supernatural parental substitute to sustain them emotionally. Such immaturity makes them irrational and unreliable and subsequently no help in the struggle for socialism.
Yeah, I keep waiting to hear the fluttering of idealist wings.
‘ What we are looking for is a description that reliably predicts the course of a series or set of phenomena and so is of more practical use.’
And that is precisely what Marx’s theory of history does – based on dialectical philosophy. It doesn’t get more ‘practical’ than that. If you agree that both philosophy and science are a ‘phenomena of the mind’ we have no debate. Your statement that science gives us access to something that is in the phenomena themselves implies a contrast with philosophy in general – even materialist philosophy?
‘In other words, as Marcos has pointed out, dialectics is one way of describing observed changes in phenomena not something that is in the phenomena themselves. It belongs to the realm of human thought not to that of “Nature”.’
This implies that scientific descriptions of nature are not human creations but are somehow ‘Godlike’ pronouncements that exist outside of their cultural context. Science is created by scientists who are as human as anyone else. Science is a human construct and one of the most powerful descriptions of observed phenomena that we have but its origins are philosophical (i.e. logic, reason, empiricism etc.).
None of the above alters the fact that all Marx’s work is infused with the dialectical method. ‘Internal relations’ are described in terms of the interpenetration of opposites, the transformation of quantity into quality and the negation of the negation. This is the only way to understand the internal contradictions that transform something into something else. All of this is in the philosophical tradition going back to Plato. It is purely cultural bias that seeks to deny this and replace it with the religion of science.
