Wez
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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.
‘The landowners were non-bourgeois capitalists then.’
You are truly a master of the non sequitur TM. That statement is so nonsensical I wouldn’t know how to answer it.
‘The revolution wasn’t complete until 1688.’
It was simply the bourgeoisie’s response to James II’s attempted counter revolution.
‘or doesn’t the Earl of Essex or the Earl of Manchester count?’
Interesting that TM should refer to these two renegade aristocrats since Cromwell replaced both of them accusing them of not wholly believing in the parliamentary cause and so preventing the conclusion of the revolution until the Battle of Naseby in 1645.
The Bourgeoisie needed stability and allowed Charles II back provided he accepted a deal where, with the exception of the regicides, he would rule with parliament (hence his confirming the abolition of feudal tenure upon his return).
But this is unnecessary as an explanation of the English Revolution since nobody here denies that the bourgeoisie were in the forefront of it. The article from which the above quote comes also goes on to establish that an important element of the aristocracy who supported Charles were still dependent on feudal tenure.
TM where do you get such confidence? This debate has gone on among historians since the event itself. The idea that the king’s army was a band of ‘outlaws’ sounds absurd to me. The country was split down the middle and some historians estimate that 250,000 people died during the period making the French revolution look like a bar brawl. And this was all down to the king and his band of outlaws? I believe it to be the first of the great revolutions in Europe that eventually created global capitalism. Until I’m provided with evidence to the contrary I still believe it was primarily a struggle between the rising bourgeoisie and the decaying remains of feudalism incarnated in the king and his conservative land owners together with some renegade capitalists. If Mary Tudor hadn’t died prematurely we would have endured a counter reformation for which she enjoyed great support from the English ancien regime.
Robbo, of course the gradual evolution of capitalism within feudalism is the origin of the capitalist class – nobody here is denying that. What I do deny is that the events of 1642 represented a struggle between elements of the capitalist class which would deprive it of its revolutionary nature as the climax of a class struggle.
