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Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 7, July 13th, 1949.

. . . Off with their Heads

. . . Off with their Heads

Q.E.A. and K.L.G. raise some interesting points, but I beg leave to explode them on all counts. It so happens that Whig historians and intelligent Marxists are almost at one on the historical significance of the Great Rebellion. The efficiency of Stuart bureaucracy is quite incidental. The Rebellion was a necessary step in the liberating of those social forces that were to build capitalism—a form of society without which the economic development of the country could never have attained the heights necessary for the birth of the industrial working-class and the social production which are the sine qua non of modern socialism.

Red Flag or Alms Bag?

To build Charles Stuart into a great progressive because he gave doles to the poor, and defended them against what was in fact the guardian of social progress at that stage—the middle class—is to follow the line of "feudal socialism." of which Marx said, "The aristocracy in order to rally the people to them waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, as often as they Joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats-of-arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter." (Manifesto.)

And again, "In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently of its own interests, and to formulate its indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the working class alone."

But in effect this criticism of the rising society was a reactionary, backward-looking criticism. It is true that, as Marx said, the sordid bourgeois bond of cash-nexus was far harsher than feudalism, but this does not destroy the socially progressive nature of capitalism in the seventeenth century. It "put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations," but it accomplished the "subjection of nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, electric telegraph. . . ." Surely this displays the fact that with these things hindered in the discovery and use by the fixed, oppressive social framework of a society fitted to an agricultural age, "feudal relations in the 17th century became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder. They were burst asunder."

Necessary Step

In an essay written in 1935, Dr. Joseph Need ham extolled the Stuart reign—especially Bishop Andrewes and his paternal opposition to enclosures—because of the misery they inflicted on the people. Speaking of Ricardo, who was attacked for lacking such a "humanitarian" criticism of capitalism, Marx said:

"The reproach moved against him, that he has an eye only to the development of productive forces regardless of 'human being' . . . strikes precisely his strong point. The development of the productive forces of social labour is the historical task and privilege of capital. It is precisely in this way that it unconsciously creates the material requirements for a higher mode of production."

If today we wanted to go back to the Middle Ages in order to avoid the suffering of the "industrial revolution," we should stand much where K.L.G. and Q.E.A. stand. They forget that if they are, as they infer-redly claim to be, Marxists, then they believe that the material advances we have made since then, though they are not yet used for the benefit of mankind will be so some day! And that they would be still in the realm of fancy but for capitalism. Charles's aristocratic monopolies and autocratically imposed taxes were impediments to the free development of capitalism in its infancy, and therefore impediments to social progress.

Holy Despot

Regarding the personal character of Charles, it is difficult to get at contemporary accounts that are at the same time free from initial prejudice and robust enough to bear reading. One thing is certain, that Milton's portrait in "Eikonoklastes" is much more life-like than the other-worldly saint pictured in the forged "Eikon Basilike." and also more probable when compared with the facts of history. Why, pray, was the Petition of Right necessary? And the revolt of the Covenanters? What about "divine right"? It is to be remembered that while the popular, but less organised forces of Levellers and Diggers, opposed Charles' execution, they were emphatically not monarchists.

A most impassioned apology for Charles was made in the (C. of E.) Cathedral in Auckland on the tercentenary of his decapitation, by Rev. D. S. Millar. He claimed that the decapitated was a martyr for "the preservation of the ancient polity and pattern of worship of the C of E., i.e., of the episcopacy, that hierarchical organisation which the Anglican Church, alone of English Protestant Churches, has inherited from the feudal Church of Rome. If that was his cause, then I think he comes nearer to an "enemy of the people" than a democratic martyr.

All Roads . . .

The Roman Church becomes, in our own day, more and more the citadel of reaction, and the C. of E., with State support leans further to that policy known as "high church." Remarks Rev. W. H. Mellish, in a New York paper in 1947: "Monopoly capital . . . recognises in an authoritarian church an ally against the impending threat of more economic democracy." There is a parallel betwen today and 300 years ago. Remember James I saying, "No bishop, no king?"

Our friends also deny that any historian suggests that the revolution got England nowhere. But in fact, many suggest just that—in a general effort to pooh-hooh the role of radical change in history. Says the late Bishop Masterman, for instance, "Milton not only witnessed all these widespread and radical changes, but lived to see the new order of things itself reversed." This, is of course, quite inaccurate. The social, and most of the political gains of tho Rebellion, were never reversed.

Sunset in the West

The final charge is that of falsely accusing Toynbee of pessimism. The difference between his prophecy of doom for "western civilisation" and Marx's for "capitalism." is that capitalism is a much smaller thing in point of time, and is destined to give birth to something bigger. Toynbee gives us no hope that anything at all is necessarily likely to emerge from the ruin of the vast thing called "western civilisation." In fact, he is reported to have called on mankind to pray like mad that the day of judgment may be only put off. Cheerful?

Partisan.