Marxist Historians (only) (2022)

Book Review from the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Marxist Historians. By Harvey J. Kaye, Zed Books, 2022

This is an update to a book first published in 1984. It’s a study of an influential group of academic historians, but there are wider lessons to be learned. They were mainly active in the second half of the twentieth century. Kaye’s survey is mainly confined to the following writers and books.

Maurice Dobb in Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1946) wrote on the transition from feudalism to capitalism. For Dobb the ‘bourgeois revolution’ of the seventeenth century provided the necessary foundation for the later Industrial Revolution. Dobb emphasised the role of class struggle in this process.

Rodney Hilton focussed on feudalism and the English peasantry. For instance, in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 there emerged a ‘positive class consciousness’ which ‘was initiated from within peasant society.’ Hilton argued that ‘one of the most important if intangible legacies of mediaeval peasants to the modern world is the concept of a freeman, owing no obligation, not even deference, to an overlord’ (Bond Men Made Free, 1973).

Christopher Hill wrote extensively on the English Revolution of the seventeenth century, though probably his best work is Reformation to Industrial Revolution: A Social and Economic History of Britain, 1530-1780, (1969). The English Revolution was ‘the world turned upside down’. In Hill’s account: ‘Levellers called for political democracy, Diggers for communism, Ranters for free love. Others called in question the common law, the Bible, the existence of heaven and hell, God and the devil’ (John Bunyan and the English Revolution, 1979).

Eric Hobsbawm wrote on workers, peasants and world history. Industry and Empire (1969) is a commercially successful social and economic history of Britain from 1750 to the 1960s. His examination of the development of the modern world, what he called ‘the long nineteenth century’, is divided into three phases: The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (1962), The Age of Capital, 1848-1875, (1975), and The Age of Empire, 1875-1914 (1987). These books probably made Hobsbawm Britain’s most famous ‘Marxist’ and historian.

E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1963) is one of the biggest selling non-fiction books in Britain. It is still widely used as a school and university textbook. His statement on the role of the historian was Thompson’s contribution to an understanding of class:

‘I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan . . . from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned in their own lives, as casualties.’

In William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (1955) Thompson defended what he called ‘Morrisian-Marxism’. According to Kaye, this is ‘a Marxism transformed by the concerns and values represented in the work of William Morris’. The Poverty of Theory (1978) is Thompson’s attack on the then growing popularity of interpreting Marxism as a form of structuralism.

Kaye pulls together a useful survey of some key Marxist historians and how they grappled with Marxism and history. The trouble was, and remains, their politics. Their collective contribution as historians has been called ‘history from the bottom up’, but their politics can be termed ‘politics from the top down’, and it calls into question their understanding of Marxism. All the above historians were at one time members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

After the suppression of the uprising in Hungary by the Russian military in 1956 all the above resigned from the CPGB – except Hobsbawm and Dobb. Hobsbawm remained in the CPGB until its break-up in 1991. As a cheerleader for the CPGB and the Russian empire, Hobsbawm defended the leading role of the party advocated by Lenin, and dismissed the view that the emancipation of the working class had to be the work of the working class itself – the cornerstone of any Marxian politics. Thompson later tried to justify his CPGB membership by claiming it was part of a ‘Popular Front’ against fascism. But he did not appreciate that his CPGB membership would lend legitimacy to Stalin’s reign of terror. His concern for the lives of ordinary workers did not extend to the working class in Russia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Later in life, after Thompson had joined the Labour Party, he rebuffed an approach by the Socialist Party to discuss ‘Morrisian-Marxism’.

Lew Higgins

Voices from the Past: Gerrard Winstanley 1608 ? - 1660 ? (1960)

From the October 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

War

“Wheretofore is it that there is such wars and rumours of wars in the nations of the earth? And wherefore are men so mad to destroy one another? but only to uphold civil property of honour, dominion and riches one over another.  .  .  . But when once the earth becomes a common treasury again, as it must . . . then this emnity of all lands will cease, and none shall dare to seek dominion over others, neither shall any dare to kill another, nor desire more of the earth than other.”

The True Levellers Standard Advanced (1649).

Labour

"No man can be rich but he must be rich either by his own labours or by the labours of other men helping him. If a man has no help from his neighbour be shall never gather an estate of hundreds and thousands a year. If other men help him to work, then are those riches his neighbour's as well as his; for they be the fruit of other men's labours as well as his own.  . . . Rich men receive all they have from the labourer's hand, and what they give, they give away other men’s labours, not their own.”

The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652).

Law

“Shall we have no lawyers?

There is no need of them, for there is to be no buying and selling; neither any need to expound laws; for the bare letter of the law shall be both judge and lawyer, trying every man's actions. And seeing we shall have successive Parliaments every year, there will be rules made for every action a man can do.”

The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652).

Religion

“ [Priests] lay claim to heaven after they are dead, and yet they require their heaven in this world, too, and grumble mightily against the people that will not give them a large temporal maintenance. And yet they tell the poor people that they must be content with their poverty, and they shall have their heaven hereafter. But why may not we have our heaven here (that is, a comfortable livelihood in the earth) and heaven hereafter too, as well as you? "

An Appeal to all Englishmen (1650).

These extracts from the writings of Gerrard Winstanley are taken from The Good Old Cause (Lawrence & Wishart). edited by Christopher Hill and Edmund Dell.

Sting in the Tail: Money-grubbing Olympics (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money-grubbing Olympics

Some people who watched the recent Olympic Games were interested less in the prowess of the athletes than in their potential for advertising endorsements.

Advertisers are looking for athletes with sales-appeal—no charisma, no contract, and one ad-man predicted that Carl Lewis’s ninth gold medal wouldn’t help him because “He's won before and no one liked him ’’(New York Post, 31 July).

And athletes should know when and when not to shed a tear:

“They're allowed to cry for joy when they win, but any athlete who cries because they've lost can forget about endorsements. ”

But patriotic tears could be more rewarding than mere tears of joy:

“The guy who won the high jump came close to crying during the National Anthem, but he held back, one tear could have been worth tens of thousands of dollars. ”

Maybe the next Olympics will see medals for those athletes who land the most lucrative advertising contracts.

Marriage of convenience

The decision by Boeing, the world’s biggest maker of civilian aircraft, to buy Rockwell, the aerospace and "defence” company, for three billion dollars, is more bad news for America's European competitors.

A spate of similar take-overs in America has produced a handful of industry giants and put European rivals at a competitive disadvantage because they have remained independent—and relatively small.

“But this attitude may be changing—Efforts to create a pan-European aerospace industry capable of matching US rivals gathered pace yesterday when the new chairman of Aerospatiale called on his fellow industrialists to “regroup” their interests ” (Guardian, 9 August).

For any industry' to survive in today’s capitalism it must “regroup” into bigger but fewer economic units—witness what’s happening in banking, insurance, car manufacturing, brewing, retailing, etc., and Europe’s fragmented aerospace and defence industry is belatedly catching on.

Hard Times Down-Under

We have received a pile of newspaper cuttings from a sympathiser in New Zealand which tell some familiar stories.

They tell of strikes involving teachers, telecom workers, air-traffic controllers, and many others, the health service is collapsing, one-fifth of the population lives below the poverty line, pay and benefits have been cut, etc.

A less familiar story concerns an employer who has ordered his workers to have their “bowel movements ” in their own time only:

“It's a completely reasonable request. It's a personal discipline" (Sunday Star Times, 7 July).

Presumably, this superman has disciplined himself to crap on cue, but for mere mortals it’s a case of “When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go!”

Workers in New Zealand are clearly having a tough time, but for some the screw has been turned just that little bit tighter.

Orwell’s “Lesser Evil”

The revelation that George Orwell named “crypto-communists” and “fellow travellers” to the British secret service drew noteworthy comments form some prominent left-wingers.

For example, Christopher Hill, the communist historian, claimed that Orwell’s writing was always ambiguous, and added that “Animal Farm was precisely an attack on communism. ” How an “ambiguous” writer could write “precisely” Hill didn’t say, but presumably he still defends the “communism” which Orwell so brilliantly attacked.

And Tony Benn curiously excused Orwell’s act on the grounds that “the biggest terrorists in the world are states”, possibly forgetting that he had been part of the British state when he was a Labour cabinet minister.

Orwell’s denunciation of the Russian dictatorship was wholly admirable, but in naming names he sided with one bunch of exploiters in its sordid quarrel with another, and that was utterly deplorable.

Big-time con-artists

A vicar at the C of E’s General Synod speaking on Camelot’s running of the National Lottery, described the lottery as evil, and added that “Punters are being deceived on a grand scale. ”

Yes, this is the same C of E which has for centuries been telling folk that after they die they will live on in one place or another., that once upon a time a luckless Israelite got himself done-in as payment-in-advance for their sins, that the meek shall inherit the earth, etc., etc.

When it comes to deceiving punters “on a grand scale” then Camelot has got nothing on the C of E.

Naive Greens

Anyone who wonders why we are so critical of the “Greens” should consider the following.

The United Nations commissioned a group of international economists to advise on the best way of achieving a sharp reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (Big Issue, 4 August).

Aubrey Meyer, a Green activist, discovered that the economists are working only on the cheapest way of tackling global warming:

"Their task was to work out the slowest rate of increase in emissions that the world could afford. It was putting economics before lives."

And yet Greens remain convinced that this problem can be solved within the capitalist system which creates it.

Whose news? (2009)

From the May 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Why are high house prices and high profits considered good news?

We are all used to hearing from the TV or radio that what we are about to experience is the ‘news’. Preceded by a little tune supposed to promote gravitas and/or imply the very latest fast technological process of news gathering we are presented with a sober middle-class gent or couple sporting sensible hair, grey suits and dazzling white smiles. A stranger to our culture may be very surprised that whichever channel is chosen the content of the news is almost identical. Indeed the choice of headlines is nearly always the same; a little odd considering that in this country we have over 100 digital channels! What can be the reason for such a strange phenomena? Could it be that there is total unanimity concerning what is important in human behaviour (this would be the only example of such total agreement within our species) or is there some agenda shared by those who own and operate our media?

It would be fair to say that the mainstream media in this country (TV, radio and newspapers) are owned by a tiny minority. Socialists have always maintained that the media’s obsessions reflect those of the ruling class who own them. The fact that high house prices and high profits are considered good news when it is the majority who are exploited even more as a result gives you an idea of the values shared by the owners of the media. The main disagreements (at least within the newspapers) concern the different commercial interests within the owning class – the dreary and unending European Union debate being an obvious example.

Another element that is thought to contribute to the ‘news’ is topicality – the story should reflect a perspective on a contemporary value or popular obsession. For our general readers it is obviously important that our analysis should begin with a reflection on contemporary events. However part of that analysis for us is a proof of the illusion of novelty/topicality of events within the anachronistic culture of capitalism.

A friend of mine has recently given up his subscription to a newspaper on the grounds that it merely repeats the same old propaganda values whatever the story. This is the essence of ‘the news’ in today’s media. It seeks only to find different stories to ‘prove’ its own value system. The ‘credit crunch’ is either the result of greedy bankers or lack of government supervision of the financial services. It could never be a proof of the instability and irrational nature of capitalism itself.

There arises an inevitable contradiction within journalism between the observation of change and its reporting when restricted by the use of reactionary values and language. It is the nature of language to struggle to find new concepts and metaphors to describe the changing world we live in. When change is accelerated during a revolutionary period this tension can create linguistic confusion and creativity (Christopher Hill’s book The World Turned Upside Down illustrates this wonderfully using examples from the English Revolution).

It is important to emphasise that propaganda is not always consciously produced by a conspiracy of journalists and press barons. I remember Michael Parkinson saying that he never experienced owner/editorial interference during his journalistic career. This, of course, merely emphasises the care taken to employ only political ‘fellow travellers’ rather than proof of the non-propagandist nature of the media. Within the commercial media the usual worker and owner tension can destroy real journalism under the profit and propaganda imperatives of our authoritarian culture.

What is really corrosive to good journalism is to be completely unaware of the political bias that is inherent in any interpretation of events (the news). Of course this is to give the benefit of the doubt to journalists and not to accuse them of downright lies. My father once found himself, in his role as a union shop steward, in the centre of a local news story. After an interview he gave to a journalist he was outraged by what was subsequently printed. This was, in part, testament to his political naivety but it also emphasises that what is printed must fit within the propaganda value of ‘the story’ even if this necessitates downright lies.

What would qualify as news for a future socialist media? Of course when we are in a position to produce stories for the mass media the world will begin to be a very different place. Reporting will surely emphasise the relationship between the rising political awareness of the population and the activities this provokes. Presumably what remains of the present media will portray the changing political landscape as a disaster for the world and everyone in it. A socialist media will initially have to counter this increasingly hysterical propaganda. Then the production of a forum for debate will become ever more important as the need for information to make democratic decisions becomes vital.

As the need to counter reactionary propaganda recedes then the media will transform itself into a vehicle of information and entertainment. Because the need for ‘escapist’ entertainment will also recede I suspect a different, possibly more ‘mature’ kind of fiction will replace it. I hope to live to see a world where fictional characters deal with important political dilemmas rather than personal and romantic ones. And what of sports? I hear the reader say fearfully. Perhaps, at last, competition between those who wish to compete will be confined to the sports arena where they belong.  By this time your writer will be enjoying a cricket game in Jamaica in his role as your Caribbean sports reporter (editors permitting).

Wez.

Winstanley: A 17th Century Utopian Socialist (1978)

Woodcut by Clifford Harper

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gerrard Winstanley’s writings were only rediscovered in 1894 and even now not much is known about his life. He was probably born in Wigan in 1609 and later went to London where he eventually became a freeman of the Merchant Taylors’ Company. By 1643, however, he was bankrupt and was forced to leave London to live on the land, at Cobham in Surrey. It was here, amidst the ferment of ideas stirred up by the Civil War between Parliament and Charles I (in which he wholeheartedly supported the parliamentary side), that Winstanley developed radical ideas.

Basically, he held that the earth had originally been given to mankind by God to be held in common and that landlords were usurpers. He urged that the original common ownership and free use of the land be restored and proposed that a start should be made by allowing the landless poor (one of whom he now was) to use the commons at St. Georges Hill near Cobham; hence their name of “Diggers”.

The Diggers did not parcel out the land amongst individuals, but worked it in common with the intention of later sharing in common the fruits of their joint labour. But they were never to enjoy these fruits; for right from the start they were harassed by the local landlords: they were taken to Court for trespass, their goods were seized, their houses pulled down and their crops destroyed. While this was going on Winstanley wrote a number of pamphlets putting the Diggers’ case. Later, in 1651, he decided to put their views into systematic form; the result was The Law of Freedom in a Platform, addressed to Cromwell, that appeared the following year. This proposed a communistic — and democratic, with annually elected officials and councils — society without buying and selling or money, to be established first on the commons and on the lands seized from the King, the bishops and royalists but with the eventual aim of embracing the whole of England.

Unlike Sir Thomas More in his Utopia (which appeared in 1516 and which is more widely known among socialists), Winstanley was not painting a mere picture of an ideal society but was putting forward a practical programme for action. Needless to say, Cromwell did not take up his suggestions and Winstanley and his ideas disappeared into oblivion — we do not even know when Winstanley died.

There was in fact no reason, apart from the opposition of the landlords (including the new ones created under Cromwell by the sale of royal and episcopal lands), why Winstanley’s ideas could not have been put into practice on a small scale. In the 19th century many colonies based on similar principles were to be established and to function for a while, especially in those parts of America where there were no landlords to sabotage them. Thus, in this sense, Winstanley can be said to be the first of the “utopian socialists” anticipating by over 150 years the projects of Fourier, Owen and Cabet.

We reproduce below an extensive passage from The Law of Freedom from which the extent to which Winstanley grasped that common ownership necessarily involves the disappearance of buying and selling and of money can be seen.

The Law of Freedom (1652)

The earth is to be planted and the fruits reaped and carried into barns and storehouses by the assistance of every family. And if any man or family want corn or other provision, they may go to the storehouses and fetch without money. If they want a horse to ride, go to the fields in summer, or to the common stables in winter, and receive one from the keepers, and when your journey is performed, bring him where you had him, without money. If any want food or victuals, they may either go to the butchers’ shops, and receive that they want without money; or else go to the flocks of sheep, or herds of cattle, and take and kill what meat is needful for their families, without buying and selling. And the reason why all the riches of the earth are a common stock is this, because the earth and the labours thereupon are managed by common assistance of every family, without buying and selling.

Even as now we have particular trade in cities and towns, called shopkeepers, which shall remain still as they be, only altered in their receiving in and delivering out. For whereas by the law of kings or conquerors they do receive in and deliver out by buying and selling, and exchanging the conqueror’s picture or stamp upon a piece of gold or silver for the fruits of the earth, now they shall (by the laws of the Commonwealth) receive into their shops and deliver out again freely, without buying and selling.

They shall receive in as into a storehouse, and deliver out again freely as out of a common storehouse, when particular persons or families come for anything they need; as now they do by buying and selling under kingly government.

For as particular families and tradesmen do make several works more than they can make use of, as hats, shoes, gloves, stockings, linen and woollen cloth and the like, and do carry their particular work to storehouses, to work upon without buying and selling; and go to other storehouses and fetch any other commodity which they want and cannot make.. For as other men partakes of their labours, it is reason they should partake of other men’s.

* * *

Every tradesman shall fetch materials, as leather, wool, flax, corn and the like, from the public storehouses, to work upon without buying and selling; and when particular works are made, as cloth, shoes, hats and the like, the tradesmen shall bring these particular works to particular shops, as is now in practice, without buying and selling. And every family as they want such things as they cannot make, they shall go to these shops and fetch without money, even as now they fetch with money.

* * *

As silver and gold is either found out in mines in our own and, or brought by shipping from beyond the sea, it shall not be coined with a conqueror’s stamp upon it, to set up buying and selling under his name or by his leave; for there shall be no other use of it in the commonwealth than to make dishes and other necessaries for the ornament of houses, as now there is use made of brass, pewter and iron, or any other metal in their use.

(Winstanley: The Law of Freedom and Other Writings, edited by Christopher Hill, Pelican Classic, 1973)

Material World: Pirate Nations – The Jolly Roger (2016)

The Material World Column from the December 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘We’ve had enough!’ The Pirate Party have captured the imagination of many in Iceland, especially the young. Iceland’s political landscape has been transformed by its general election result and the success of the Pirate Party which won 10 seats in the 63-seat parliament – up from the three it won in the 2013 general election, in a voter turn-out of 79.2 percent.  For the Icelandic establishment, they may still retain control of the helm but their ship of state is beginning to flounder.

The Pirate Party does not have a leader, although former Wikileaks activist and founding MP Birgitta Jonsdóttir tends to speak for it in public (perhaps, as a poet, she has a better way with words). She said her party subscribes to its agenda of ‘fundamental system change’.

They are challenging the assumption that political leaders are necessary and politics could not operate without them.

Ásta Guthrún Helgadóttir, another of their parliamentary members explained, ‘We are not here to gain power. We are here to distribute power.’

The Pirates’ core issues appeal to the popular sentiment in Iceland; direct democracy; freedom of expression; civil rights; and government transparency as set out in a crowd-sourced constitution which creates new rules for civic governance.

Political parties under the Pirate flag are now active in many countries. But we should remember that their libertarian attitudes were based on the history of real and sometimes not so real pirate ‘nations’. In the modern era, we have had Somalia which was notorious for its piracy, while one of the earliest foreign interventions of the newly-independent United States was the suppression of the Barbary pirates operating from North Africa. Our conception of piracy stems from the adventurers of those state-sponsored buccaneers and privateers from the time of Raleigh and Drake when the Caribbean was a melting pot of poor immigrants, political exiles and escaped plantation slaves.

Christopher Hill in Radical Pirates? described life at sea as based upon mutual aid, a much necessary survival tactic in which piracy was no exception in fostering a natural solidarity. Many pirates had crewed on merchant ships and grown to dislike the hierarchal authoritarianism.

Booty was divided up by a fairly egalitarian share system and those maimed received extra compensation. The Dutch Governor of Mauritius met a pirate crew and commented: ‘Every man had as much say as the captain’. The captain enjoyed no special privileges. Pirate captains were elected and could be deposed at any time for abuse of their authority; for cowardice or cruelty towards the crew and revealingly, for refusing ‘to take and plunder English Vessels’ for the pirates had turned their backs on the state and its laws and no lingering feelings of patriotism were to be allowed. The captain only had right of command in battle, otherwise, all decisions were made by the whole ship’s company.

Libertalia (or Libertatia) was a more-than-likely fictionalised colony founded in the late 17th century in Madagascar by pirates. Marcus Rediker, in Villains of All Nations, writes of Libertalia, ‘ [The] pirates were anti-capitalist, opposed to the dispossession that necessarily accompanied the historic ascent of wage labor and capitalism. They insisted that ‘every Man was born free, and had as much Right to what would support him, as to the Air he respired.’ They resented the ‘encroachments’ by which ‘Villains’ and ‘unmerciful Creditors’ grew ‘immensely rich’ as others became ‘wretchedly miserable.” They spoke of the ‘Natural right’ to ‘a Share of the Earth as is necessary for our Support.’ They saw piracy as a war of self-preservation. [They redefined the] fundamental relations of property and power. They had no need for money ‘where every Thing was in common, and no Hedge bounded any particular Man’s Property,’ and they decreed that ‘the Treasure and Cattle they were Masters of should be equally divided.’

Of course, the Pirate Party of Iceland will be unable to manage things much better than the conventional parties since it is capitalism, not the politicians, which runs its government and which is to blame for all our problems. They will have the doomed future of the original anarchistic pirates they wish to emulate, which they will soon discover if they ever do form a government.

ALJO

History from below (1978)

Theatre Review from the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The World Turned Upside Down, National Theatre, London. (Available in Penguin Books.)

Christopher Hill's book The World Turned Upside Down tells of the other English Revolution—the one that did not succeed; that was not led by Oliver Cromwell and Fairfax; the revolution that wanted to turn the world upside down. This is not the revolution that most histories revolve around. It is probably far more interesting. As Hill puts it, some of the figures in this story "speak more directly to us than Charles I or Pym or General Monck, who appear as history makers in the text books". At the time of the Civil Wars (1640s) and in particular in the period immediately after the execution of Charles I, England was rife with subversive ideas. A melting pot of dissenters, levellers, diggers, ranters, and early Quakers; every level of English society, including the church and the army, was touched by the passion of revolution. 

The common link was religion. From Cromwell downwards, those who were interested in changing the world sought authority and respectability from the bible. Those who opposed revolution used the bible to justify repression. For some, revolution meant a new way of approaching God; for others, the ranters in particular, revolution meant the end of the doctrine of sin and the idea that God inhabited everyone and everything; in effect the dissolution of religion.

The most interesting character was the digger Gerard Winstanley, whose ideas were briefly outlined in the Socialist Standard in June this year. Winstanley wanted a community without money, buying and selling, wage working, without army and law. Although the disasters of the digger experiments (strife within and brutal repression from without) caused Winstanley to recant somewhat on aspects of his more extreme views, he stood for common ownership of the earth by locally self supporting communities. Nor were his views utopian. Winstanley had practical views on the organisation of production; which may not have resulted in the abundance that is now possible, but which might have led to the majority being immeasurably better fed, housed, and clothed.

Hill's book is history from below, the story of the common, though extraordinary, people of the time. Keith Dewhurst has made a valiant attempt to turn this huge canopy of religious and revolutionary fervour into a play. The stage is crammed with incident; the execution of Charles I, Winstanley's insolence, (he refuses to doff his hat to Fairfax, a mere "fellow creature"), his anti-property and law views, the disputes between capitalist and landlord, the confrontations between army and people, the extreme sexual liberation of the ranters, disputes between property based, and real concepts of freedom; and the ultimate failure and disillusion of all except Winstanley. All this and more is crammed into the two hours traffic of the stage.

Why does the play fail? Ultimately, what it does not bring out is Hill's main thesis — that this was a period of real potential for an alternative society. Looking back now, one can say that it was bound to fail. But, argues Hill, looking at it then it was different; for the people involved an alternate society seemed viable. Perhaps in attempting to present a grand sweep of mid-seventeenth century history, Dewhurst was too ambitious. He might have succeeded better had he concentrated more on one digger community, and allowed the turbulent and exciting background to emerge through it. However, the play is yet another reminder of the long history of communist ideas, and as such is another blow at the absurdity of private ownership.

Ronnie Warrington