Wez
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Feudal Tenure was abolished in 1645 and Charles II was obliged to confirm this in 1660. Perhaps this was an arrangement with the bourgeoisie to facilitate his return? The fact that socage represented a phase within decaying feudalism fits nicely with the events of 1642.
ALB your above link to a list of feudal tenures also includes this:
<b>Socage</b> (/ˈsɒkɪdʒ/)<sup id=”cite_ref-1″ class=”reference”>[1]</sup> was one of the feudal duties and hence land tenure forms in the feudal system. A farmer, for example, held the land in exchange for a clearly defined, fixed payment to be made at specified intervals to his feudal lord, who in turn had his own feudal obligations, to the farmer (principally those of protection) and to the Crown. In theory this might involve supplying the lord with produce but most usually it meant a straightforward payment of cash, i.e., rent.
Surely this means that your view of the payment of cash rents as being incompatible with feudal tenure is incorrect?
Thanks TM for correctly summarizing my thoughts on this subject. I can only think that Robbo has not been following the debate as closely as he might. ALB is commenting on the existence of different definitions of feudalism. Hill claims that his definition is the same as Marx’s – is this incorrect? Also the idea that Hill was influenced by Stalinism is rather far fetched. However it has been an ongoing disaster that the left have always been suckers for Bolshevik propaganda so it might be a possibility but if that were the case why does he continue to be respected by his peers – even by his enemies?. I still need to know the origin of the incomes of the conservative land owners who supported Charles I. ALB seems to think that the payment of money rents disqualifies them as feudal tenure and I’m not at all convinced by this.
TM – you don’t seem to be very selective in your quotes. Many seem to originate from anonymous sources. You must realize that there has been a long ideological struggle between historians concerning the matters under debate here. The priority of most reactionary historians is to destroy or at least undermine the Marxist theory of class struggle generating historical change. Your ‘gradualist’ theory of history is one of their favourite tactics and so you must forgive me for being suspicious of its credibility. None of us here are historians i.e. we don’t have access to original sources or the training to interpret their meaning. We have to rely on historians for our information and, as I’ve said, many have an ideological agenda.
‘ I don’t think that showing that some bourgeois sided with the absolutist state would disprove that the class struggle.’
‘I don’t think that the materialist conception of history says that every single member of a particular class has to support the objective interests of that class.’
Neither myself or C. Hill take that position. I just want some evidence that the income of those conservative landowners who supported Charles I did not come from feudal tenure as C. Hill maintains. Your point about the final abolition of feudal tenure taking place during the restoration may just indicate that Charles II recognized that his future depended on accommodating the economic needs of the bourgeoise.
Alan -that’s why I say ‘if’ the main income of the conservative landlords was derived from feudal tenure. Truth is I can’t find any reference to the origin of the income of the main supporters of Charles I with the exception of Christopher Hill. If feudal tenure had become obsolete by 1642 and it generated no revenue for such landowners then TM is correct that they were all bourgeois and we have to disregard the Marxist theory of class struggle generating historical change (at least when it comes to arguably the most important event in history). I need evidence before I take that drastic step.
TM your hubris is getting the better of you again. For a start feudal tenure was not abolished in England until 1660 so if the conservative landowners who supported Charles I derived their income from this source it makes them a feudal nobility. You ask why we use the ‘Eurocentric model’? Obviously because the whole globe is now dominated by capitalism which began in Europe!
And just to emphasize the above quote from ALB here are two more from Christopher Hill:
The issue was one of political power. The bourgeoisie had rejected Charles I’s Government, not because he was a bad man, but because he represented an obsolete social system. His Government tried to perpetuate a feudal social order when the conditions existed for free capitalist development, when the increase of national wealth could only come by means of free capitalist development.
The financial expedients of Charles’s personal Government affected all classes. Feudal dues were revived and extended, and that hit landlords and their tenants.
‘So Wez, you must think the bourgeoisie led the revolutions in Japan, Russia and China?’
Why must I think so? I know little of Chinese or Japanese history. As for Russia I believe the bourgeoisie were an important element within the failed revolutions of 1905 and February 1917. Indeed you can make the case that, in the long term, the Bolshevik coup d’etat of October 1917 also ultimately failed in respect that despite some initial socialist idealism they were forced by history to become a state capitalist economy which was finally destroyed by the bourgeoise in 1991. What is so important about the English revolution is that it created the model of capitalism that now dominates the world.
‘You are interpreting the word “revolution” solely in the narrow sense of a political uprising. I am using the word socio-economically.’
You are sounding more and more like the historians who wish to dismiss the class struggle and the revolutions that they provoke. The Tudors just got lucky at the Battle of Bosworth and were no different from any other aristocratic dynasty trying to consolidate their power. Usurpation was deriguour in the ceaseless power struggles between different aristocratic families. I can see that we will never agree about this but can’t you see that your playing into the hands of the gradualists and reformers politically?
‘It does not at all deny the materialist conception of history to say the revolution dated back to the Tudors.’
If you substitute the word ‘development’ for ‘revolution’ in the above quote then everyone can agree. But what political revolution happened during the Tudor period?
Just had a brief look at some writing by Ellen Meiksins Wood – looks interesting. Her defense of the class struggle as central to historical development would seem to reflect my own (on a very brief reading). Does she consider the events of 1642 to be an internecine struggle between capitalists? There doesn’t appear to be an online version of the book L Bird recommends.
Nobody disputes the rise of capitalism in England. What I do dispute is that the revolution in 1642 was a struggle between sections of the capitalist class. Charles I and his supporters still represented the decaying conservative (feudal) landowners. To dispute this makes a nonsense of Marx’s theory of the class struggle and supports those (ideological historians) who will go to any lengths to disprove Marxism and with it the contemporary analysis of capitalism and the necessity of the working class to destroy it through revolution. I’ll look up the writing of Ellen Meiksins Wood – L Bird’s ‘preferred’ historian of the period. Presumably he prefers her because it fits what he wishes to believe? Strange choice of words. History is one of the ongoing ideological battlefields and only occasionally a search for ‘truth’ – that’s part of what makes it so interesting.
I use the word feudal in the Marxist sense, and not in the more restricted sense adopted by most academic historians to describe narrowly military and legal relations. By “feudalism” I mean a form of society in which agriculture is the basis of economy and in which political power is monopolised by a class of landowners. The mass of the population consists of dependent peasants subsisting on the produce of their family holdings. The landowners are maintained by the rent paid by the peasants, which might be in the form of food or labour, as in early days, or (by the sixteenth century) in money. In such a society there is room for small handicraft production, exchange of products, internal and overseas trade; but commerce and industry are subordinated to and plundered by the landowners and their State. Merchant capital can develop within feudalism without changing the mode of production; a challenge to the old ruling class and its state comes only with the development of the capitalist mode of production in industry and agriculture.
Christopher Hill
