Reason and Science in Danger.
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Not at all.
There was nothing gradual were you on the ground during the mass evictions and vagrancy laws inflicted on you in Tudor England.
Just as most French aristocrats became capitalists and joined the French Revolution in 1789, and just as it were samurai who destroyed their own system in 19th c. Japan and handed the country to the bourgeoisie, and as it was a proletarian minority who took power in Russia in 1917 and liberated capitalist economic forces there, so the capitalist revolution isn’t necessarily carried out politically by members of the capitalist class. If aristocrats control the land and production according to new capitalist relations of production then those aristocrats have become capitalists in their turn. Those whose heads roll are those of their own class who try to resist those changes, like the noble rebels and their peasant followers who attempted rebellion against Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elisabeth I in the name of reaction.
Seems you need the capitalist revolution to follow the same political mode in all cases. The revolution is in the social and economic realities which are reflected politically, but not necessarily following an identical course in every country. Capitalism grows inside the feudal system in Europe and Asia. Your notion follows a simplistic trajectory of
1. Feudalism.
2. Bourgeois armed uprising.
3. Capitalism.
A neat three pages.
Although this is not the case at all, I will grant that possibly France and Russia come closest to it. Certainly not England.
The old nobility of England were (80%) dead by 1485. To use Marx’s words, they had ripped their own class to pieces in the fratricidal Wars of the Roses. The state fell into the hands of Henry Tudor, who quickly subdued the remnants – by marriage to himself and his supporters and by crushing a series of attempts by recalcitrants to grab the state back. His son began the dismantlement of the social fabric, seizing the monastic lands and distributing the old estates to rural capitalists who evicted the rural population and turned arable to pasture. The proletariat was created by the mass eviction of the peasantry from the land, turning peasant farmers into propertyless wage-slaves and vagrants pushed into the towns as the land was enclosed. A process which would continue into the 18th century.
The Tudors gathered round them merchant venture capitalists, eager for England to compete with Spain, with piracy on Spanish shipping a principal enterprise, adding the slave trade by the time of Elizabeth.
Charles I’s father James began the process in Scotland of breaking the semi-feudal semi-tribal Gaelic clans, destroying Clan MacGregor well before the Clearances proper began under William III.
The rest of the political story is an ongoing squabble between factions of the capitalist class, who include the monarch and aristocracy.
‘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?
History can not be analysed from the point of view of the bourgeoise class, that is what we have learned for centuries and that is what we have learned from the education system. Without the Materialist Conception of History, this analysis becomes a wasting of time. History has been made by the peoples it has not been made by Kings, Queens, Priests, or personalities. Without reading the Communist Manifesto which explains the historical stages of mankind, this situation can not be understood. Personally, for me, Karl Marx and Engels are more than enough, they are the ones who placed history on two feet, before them, history was backward
‘Just as most French aristocrats became capitalists and joined the French Revolution in 1789’
This is pure historical distortion. The title of this thread should be: bourgeoise Reason and bourgeoise science in danger
Spain had what it was called the Golden Age of Spain, and we can see that on their literature ( which I have read ) thinkers, and the influence that they had from the Arabian scientists, probably, the Renaissance started in Spain instead of Italy. Everything I have seen in Spain, I have seen it in Italy, and both are my favourites countries due to their cultural background
The nobility of the Sword were impoverished in France. Louis XIV had ennobled many of the richest members of the bourgeoisie (nobility of the Robe) to get much-needed money. The old nobility were desperate to secure funds via lucrative bourgeois alliances, the bourgeoisie eager to receive noble titles – though they were secretly despised by the nobility of the Sword.
Many of these bourgeois joined the emigre forces. Similarly, even members of the nobility of the Sword, feeling ill-used by these usurpers, ditched their titles and joined the Revolution. Generally they favoured constitutional monarchy on the English model and moderatism. The richest bided their time until the fall of the petit-bourgeois Jacobins and then returned, including the emigres. They were given back their titles and lands by Napoleon.
Even during the Terror, only 6% of those guillotined were aristocrats. The rest were bourgeoisie and proletarians. Labourers made up 80% of victims.Next you will be telling me that the bourgeoisie led the capitalist revolutions in Japan, China and Russia!
Well, the so-called Chinese and Russian socialists revolution, they were bourgeoise revolutions which established State capitalism in both countries, as well in Cuba ( A transfer of the means of production from private capitalists hands into the private hands of the state-defined like that by some left-wingers organizations, it is state capitalism ) On Russia, Georgi Plekhanov did an excellent job explaining the bourgeoise character of the 1905 bourgeoise revolution, and the Socialist Party of Great Britain has also done a good job by explaining the bourgeoise character of the 1917 Russian revolution or the Bolshevik coup. ( Much better than Leon Trotsky in a concise pamphlet ) You still continue proclaiming the individualistic conception of history which was proven its falsehood more than 100 years ago. Japan is a very old capitalist country which also had a capitalist revolution which overthrew the old mode of production similar to the old European Feudalism, Marx was working on the Asiatic mode of production
I know all that, but it wasn’t the bourgeoisie that led these revolutions. Unless you think of the Bolsheviks as bourgeoisie. Or Mao’s peasant army as bourgeoisie.
True, the Russian bourgeoisie had initiated the fall of Tsarism but then the task of turning Russia into a capitalist state was taken out of their hands by the Bolsheviks. As for the Chinese native bourgeoisie, some of it joined Mao’s peasant armies upon realising Chiang was a traitor feathering his own nest – although most of the bourgeoisie stayed with him, abandoning China and leaving it in the hands of the peasant Reds, who took on the task the KMT had failed at.
You could say the Bolshevik elite became capitalists after their political victories, but they hadn’t come from the bourgeoisie, although some individuals may have.
Have you read the Communist Manifesto, Plekhanov writing on the 1905 Russian revolution, SPGB pamphlet on the 1917 Russian revolution, Lenin on the development of capitalism in Russia. Enver Hoxha who was a Leninist/Stalinists he had a different description on the Chinese revolution
Hoxha was a Bolshevik too, so I dare say he had a different, erroneous, view. I have read the SPGB booklets on Russia and xeroxed and distributed them years ago. From them I learned that it wasn’t the bourgeoisie that took power in October 1917, but a clique of proletarian intellectuals who thought mistakenly they could rush through to socialism in a semi-feudal society. Lenin turned his error into political capital in order to hold on to power.
TM – the problem is that if we were to accept that, for instance, the English Revolution was the result of a struggle between sections of the same class then that would invalidate the Marxist conception that it is the struggle between classes that generates historical change.
Wez wrote:
TM – the problem is that if we were to accept
that, for instance, the English Revolution was the
result of a struggle between sections of the same
class then that would invalidate the Marxist
conception that it is the struggle between classes
that generates historical change.Also, there is no president, king, Queen, Minister of state, or politician able to alter the economical base of any society
Hoxha was a Bolshevik too, so I dare say he had a different, erroneous, view. I have read the SPGB booklets on Russia and xeroxed and distributed them years ago. From them, I learned that it wasn’t the bourgeoisie that took power in October 1917, but a clique of proletarian intellectuals who thought mistakenly they could rush through to socialism in a semi-feudal society. Lenin turned his error into political capital in order to hold on to power.
Enver Hoxha was a Leninist, but the point is being a Leninist he had a different point of view about the Chinese revolution, and it considered that it was a bourgeois revolution. The Pamphlet of the SPGB was written a few months ago, and what you have said is not what the pamphlet says. The Communist Manifesto is the one who describes the economical stages of our society starting from classical slavery, and it shows that since the emergence of social classes in our society ( except primitive communism ) history has been made by the struggles between opposite classes, or class struggles, it is not than one individual decided to make history, even more wars are not produced by one individual or one president, it is the market the cause of war. The anthropological discovery of Lewis Morgan motivated Marx and Engels to amend their conception about world history. Without the proper source, it is impossible to understand this situation, it is like hitting the Piñata in the wrong place
Seeings as how this debate is going off on a tangent, a very interesting one, by the way. Can I go off on a tangent of my own?
TM you re clearly very familiar with the Party case, and from your postings it seems that you agree with what we say, you even refer to distributing our material. Have you ever thought of joining us? (you may well have been a member in the past) and following on from that, why don’t you join (rejoin)? We certainly could do with your help.
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