ALB
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I read through that pamphlet-length article, Matt, and the introduction in which the author outlines the theory which he is going to criticise almost convinced me that the theory made some sense !
The criticism is basically that the concept is too wide to be useful as it covers so many different types of social and state structures. This is some validity in this but the theory doesn’t mean that sub-categories couldn’t be identified on the basis of something that some but not all share in common.
The other criticism is that they can’t all have been basically the same as otherwise how come that capitalism only emerged out of one of them — European feudalism? Therefore, this must have had a different “mode of production” to the others.
European feudalism had its own particular features and why capitalism emerged from it rather than one of the others is an important question. But this does not mean that the difference that led to this had to result from a different way in which the producers worked the land. That would be difficult to show.
In Defence of Marxism is the theoretical journal of those in the old Militant Tendency who remained loyal to Ted Grant and stayed in the Labour Party (where they still are I suppose).
There is another way out of the feudalism/not feudalism debate and that is to introduce a term that covers all pre-capitalist class societies:
The State and the Tributary Mode of Production
Actually, I think a good case can be made out for saying that the order of social evolution is: tribal communism, society based on the direct exploration of agriculture producers (peasants, if you like), capitalism, socialism.
That way, we don’t have to argue that feudal Europe was more advanced than the Roman Empire or that European feudalism existed all over the world. It was just the peasant-exploiting society out of which capitalism evolved. Capitalism then spread to the rest of the world at the expense of other types of peasant-exploiting societies.
That blog post that YMS put up shows how in popular parlance “feudalism” has come to be associated with open robbery of the producers as opposed to the more subtle and not so obvious robbery that capitalism brings about by the operation of its economic laws. A consequence of the ideological victory of the Intellectual champions of the rising bourgeoisie over their opponents, the defenders of feudalism.
I thought we had reached a consensus that “revolution” had a political sense as a more or less rapid change in political control whereas the better word for what you have just referred to would be “evolution”, a gradual socio-economic change that eventually prepares the ground for a political revolution (as happened in 1640).
Otherwise we start to go round in circles again.
More on the Sunak’s supposed “sacred responsibility to balance the books” from column by Sunday Times economic editor, David Smith, in today’s Times:
”The reality is different. Balanced budgets are rare. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s database goes back to 1948 and there are no years in which public sector net borrowing— the budget deficit — was exactly zero. In thirteen years there was a budget surplus; of these, eight were under Labour governments, five under the Tories.”
Incidentally, that means that in those 72 years there was a budget deficit in 59 of them — and the (capitalist) world didn’t come to an end. So a budget deficit is not even a big problem for capitalism let alone for wage workers (in fact it’s not our problem at all).
The problem is not whether or not by 1640 the capitalist mode of produced had largely replaced feudalism as production by serfs tied to the land — obviously it had, otherwise those in favour of it developing would have had no material basis for their struggle — but which class (if any) the Charles I regime represented.
Here’s how the two authors of the book describe the problem (without necessarily agreeing with it; nor do I):
“In examining the character of class conflicts in the making of the first ‘stage’ in the English Revolution, the ‘Great Revolution’ of 1640, traditional Marxist explanations of the Civil War have focused on the role of the rising gentry, conceived as an emerging bourgeois class. The two sides in the Civil War, parliamentary forces and royalists, are thus conceived as the agents of two opposing classes representing antagonistic modes of production: a rising capitalism and declining feudalism. This interpretation has not fared well with the more contemporary historiography and has been largely abandoned. A problem with it has been the difficulty in identifying the continuing existence of a distinctly feudal class to which the rising capitalist bourgeoisie was opposed. For by the time of the English Civil War, the ruling landed classes were, according to Robert Brenner, ‘by and large – though not of course uniformly – capitalist, in the sense of depending on commercial farmers paying competitive rents, rather than one that was sharply divided into advanced and backward sectors’.”
They go on to add:
“Yet the extent of Brenner’s depiction of such a thoroughgoing capitalist transformation of pre-revolutionary England society remains open to much debate. Henry Heller, for example, has pointed out that the nobility in northwest England remained an outpost of feudal reaction, and that this area was a royalist stronghold throughout the period.”
I don’t think these reactionary nobles could be described as being part of the bourgeoisie, so I don’t go along with the idea that the Civil War was between two sections of the bourgeoisie. But was Charles ruling on their behalf? Of course they supported him but they can’t have been much help in solving the financial difficulties of his state.
I see from something Wez has found (chapter 6 of this book) that I have been/am a “consequentialist” without knowing it, i.e have been arguing that the important thing about a political revolution that removes obstacles to capitalist development is not so much who carries out the revolution or what their intentions are but the outcome.
Anyway, here’s how that view is explained:
“While the bourgeoisie did in fact play some role in the classical revolutions, as we examine below, this agent-centred conceptualisation of bourgeois revolutions is itself unnecessary, if not unhelpful. Rather than looking at the intentions or composition of the agents involved in the making of revolutions, there is a veritable tradition of thinking (Marxist and non-Marxist) that conceptualises revolutions in terms of their socio-economic and political consequences. The most significant factor for this ‘consequentialist’ school of thought in classifying a revolution as ‘bourgeois’ is whether or not it removed the sociopolitical and ideological ‘obstacles’ (notably, the pre-capitalist state) to the development and consolidation of capitalism thereby establishing the state as an autonomous site of capital accumulation. For ‘f the definition of a bourgeois revolution is restricted to the successful installation of a legal and political framework in which the free development of capitalist property relations is assured’, Gareth Stedman Jones writes, ‘there is then no necessary reason why a “bourgeois revolution” need be the direct work of a bourgeoisie’. Bourgeois revolutions are therefore best understood ‘not as revolutions consciously made by capitalist agents’, but in terms of their developmental outcomes: revolutions that in one form or another promote the further development of capitalism. This then shifts the definitional content of the concept from the class that makes the revolution to the effects a revolution has in promoting and/or consolidating a distinctly capitalist form of state, which will in turn benefit the capitalist class irrespective of any role it played in the revolution. Bourgeois or capitalist revolutions therefore denote a sociopolitical transformation – ‘a change in state power, which is the precondition for large scale capital accumulation and the establishment of the bourgeoisie as the dominant class’.
The Lesser Awful argument, I like it. Perhaps we should adopt it instead of the Lesser Evil so as to avoid any theological implications.
Actually, Chomsky’s argument here is not as straightforward as he is suggesting as it’s not just voting against the Most Awful candidate but voting for the one of the other awful candidates more likely to defeat him. In fact, voting for them even if there’s a candidate standing who you might not consider awful at all.
The media are also reporting:
”Mr Sunak promised the “overwhelming might of the British state will be placed at your service” to those struggling financially,”
Oh yes? What is this “overwhelming might”? As experience over many years has shown, the state does not have the might to overcome the economic laws of capitalism. Those struggling financially will continue to struggle financially if the operation of capitalism brings about a higher level of unemployment — and the supposedly mighty state won’t be able to do anything to stop it.
Sunak’s statement about the “overwhelming might of the British state” rivals for hubris Gordon Brown’s claim to have ended the boom/slump.
That’s good and could even be the last word as far as we’re concerned as the author clearly knows more about Chinese history and society than all of us put together !
Anyway, whatever Chinese society was it wasn’t feudal as the landlord class wasn’t the ruling class. According to the author, it was the state bureaucracy that was:
”The bureaucratic state is best understood not as an instrument of the rule of a private landowning class, but as a ruling class in its own right.”
It is probably not without significance that the Trotskyist site concerned is that of the SWP which was ahead of the other Trotskyist groups in recognising that Russia was state capitalist with a bureaucratic ruling class. As we did too.
Just read about Chancellor Rishi Sunsk’s speech to the Tory virtual Conference (not to be confused with the virtual Tory conference that sir Keith Starmer addressed a couple of week ago) at which he spoke about the having a “sacred responsibility” to balance the books:
He is being touted as Boris’s successor. This speech shows that he certainly has the same ability to waffle as Boris. Far from there being anything sacred about “balancing the books”, that’s
what has to happen.The books have to balance. The question is how. The government’s books balance with its spending on the expenditure side and taxes and borrowing on the income side. This says nothing about how much comes from taxes and how much from borrowing. The books can be balanced — in fact must be balanced — at any level of expenditure and at any proportions of borrowing tax revenue.
Of course Sunak meant what he said to be understood that he would balance expenditure and tax revenue and so without needing to resort to borrowing. This hardly ever happens and isn’t necessary even from a capitalist point of view. But it’s not what he said, so he can get out of it if he doesn’t do it (as he probably won’t),
I don’t know whether this is good news or bad news. Good news for the animals anyway:
Researchers rush to test coronavirus vaccine in people without knowing how well it works in animals
Animal testing is self-imposed by pharma companies in order to minimise the chance of being sued. I am not sure that it is strictly necessary. Better to test on human volunteers. Fortunately there are plenty of them.
He will have as much chance as that being implemented as he has had in stopping catholics using contraceptives.
Unrealisticus reformismus est.,
To respond to Alan’s interjection of “what about the workers?”, whatever we call these pre-capitalist societies — whether feudalism, AMP or whatever — they are all based on the exploitation of the direct producers. What these produce over and above what is required to meet their immediate subsistence needs is taken from them in one way or another and used to maintain a privileged, ruling class. Before any such society can be classified how precisely this surplus labour is extracted and used needs to be established empirically.
As Marx put it:
”The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers — a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity — which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. This does not prevent the same economic basis — the same from the standpoint of its main conditions — due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc. from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances.” (Capital, vol III, ch 47, section on labour rent)
