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."