Wez
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MS – why all this prejudice towards the dialectic? Dialectics are fun and give us extraordinary insights that Marx used in his analysis. Understanding the dialectic is not difficult and once the basics are understood it helps to understand Marx’s method which many find inaccessible otherwise. I recommend you read Bertell Ollman’s Dance of the Dialectic which helps demystify the philosophical tradition.
LB – what do you make of Trevor Ling’s position that, with reference to the Buddha and Christ, it is the acquisition of the thoughts and values of such individuals by a State that transforms them into a ‘religion’ which inevitably subverts the meaning intended by its originators? Religion in this context is always an instrument of control and oppression.
‘Religion as a social fact, expresses itself through world epochs and is an anthropological constant.’
You can say the same of exploitation, authoritarian hierarchies, superstitious ignorance, fear of the unknown etc. Does that mean we shouldn’t seek to eradicate these things from the human community? Isn’t it our duty to oppose the belief systems that support such iniquities?
Indulging in ‘identity politics’ is a sure way of losing focus on resolving the class struggle. One of the few things I agree with Lenin about is his assertion that trade union consciousness and political consciousness are very different things and the former rarely translates into the latter. ‘Appealing to our common shared experience’ might well lead to victim mentality and political cynicism and is no substitute for focused revolutionary action born of political education.
‘ I feel differently. It is as said previously, appeal to the commonality, firstly, as fellow human beings, and, secondly as fellow-workers. Achieve those and socialism will come.’
A common refrain from reformists. Trouble is that when this fails to resolve anything, and if we align ourselves with such an approach, the whole struggle for socialism is weakened by being associated with it. Capitalism will always find minorities and those who represent ‘the other’ to oppress because its failures will always need such scapegoats. It feeds on the victims of war, famine, religious sectarianism, racism etc.
DJP – I think that I got the idea from Hill that they amassed such wealth that they became capitalists. If we’re mistaken I’m sure someone on here will have evidence to the contrary.
Fascinating stuff Robbo. However the writers of ‘How the West Came to Rule’ take a different view:
Meanwhile, the failed attempts at absolutist state-building during the Tudor
period (particularly between 1529 and 1547), and Elizabeth’s abandonment
of all ambitions to develop a continental-style monarchy, had left the English
monarchy painfully dependent on Parliament for raising the revenues required
for waging war.and
In terms of military and fiscal effectiveness, the Stuart state
was backward in comparison with its continental competitors.Is the ‘absolutist state’ mentioned above the same thing as the ‘centralised state’ that your above quotes believe is the prerequisite for capitalist development? Such debates are what give this period its continuing allure for historians. I take it then Robbo that your objection to the description of events in England in 1642/45 as a ‘bourgeois revolution’ is the term bourgeois which you would substitute with capitalist or agrarian capitalist? Unlike TM you do regard it as a political revolution and not just a squabble between capitalists?
As I’ve made clear on innumerable occasions I, along with C. Hill, believe that the merchant class bought up a lot of land to convert it into a capitalist enterprise – this was much resented by the conservative landowners. Some of them converted their own land into capitalist farms but those who did not still relied on feudal tenure and joined the king’s cause. DJP seems to think that there’s something different about ‘rural’ capitalists whereas I thought, as merchants, financiers, pirates and slavers they were the same old bourgeoisie. I don’t know where ALB gets the idea that I want all landlords of the time to be feudal – just ridiculous. As far as I understand it the proto working class were merely cannon-fodder.
‘capitalism proper first appeared in rural England’
DJP – my understanding is that much of the land sold by Henry VIII after the dissolution of the monasteries was bought by members of the bourgeois merchant class who turned the farms into capitalist enterprises. So they were already ‘bourgeois’ and did not represent a different type of capitalism. Is this incorrect?
‘It’s for the over-simplifiers like Marcos and Wez who accuse me of revisionism and of burying the class struggle.’
The strange thing about this debate is that I’ve encountered TMs arguments on many occasions but always from reactionaries who do indeed ‘wish to bury the class struggle’. Their constant refrain is ‘you’re over simplifying’. They use the same objection to the Marxist analysis of contemporary politics especially by referencing contemporary ‘bourgeois’ (excuse me for using this apparently loaded term) sociology and its seemingly infinite number of class distinctions. Someone once even accused dialectics as being ‘too simplistic’ – something that the writings of Hegel and Marx can never be accused of. So excuse me if I don’t take your insult to heart TM. Are you sure you’re not a CIA plant?
As far as I’m aware every Marxist I’ve ever read or met uses the term bourgeois and capitalist interchangeably. Certainly in the context of this debate they are since we’re discussing the traditional Marxist term, and its applicability or otherwise, for the events in England of 1642 as a bourgeois revolution. Many capitalist landowners and city merchants made common cause against Charles I.
