The Monistic Conception of History by G. V. Plechanoff (part III) (1927)

From the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Plechanoff’s Famous Work now translated.]

Link to Part II

Chapter II.

“One of the most important conclusions to which one must come through the study of history is that the government is the most potent cause in shaping the character of the people; that the qualities and defects of nations, their strength or their weakness, their talents, their education or ignorance, are almost never due to climate or racial peculiarities; that nature gives everything to everybody, and the governments preserve or destroy the gifts of nature that constitute the common possession of the human race.” In Italy there were no marked changes either in climate or in race; “nature was the same for the Italians of all times; the only thing that did change was the government—and these changes always brought with them, or came together, with changes in national character.”

Thus argued Sismondi against those who tried to make the fate of nations dependent upon their geographic environment. His arguments contain some truth. Geography can really not explain much in history, especially because it (geography) is part of history, and because, as Sismondi says, governments do change, though the geographic environment remains the same. But this is only by the way ; we are interested in an other question. The reader must have already noticed that the fluctuations of the historical fate of nations is opposed to the stability of geographic environment. Sismondi knows of only one factor that can explain these changes : government—that is, the political order of a given country. The character of a nation is wholly determined by the character of its government. It is true that after dogmatically stating this theory, Sismondi tries later to soften it. Political changes, he says, come either before changes in national character or after them. That means that the character of the government is sometimes determined by the character of the people. Sismondi then has before him the same contradiction that the French “Enlighteners” had. The character of a nation is determined by the character of its government; the character of a government is determined by the character of the nation. Sismondi could just as little solve this contradiction as the French “Enlighteners.” He was therefore compelled to take as foundation for his discourse at one time one, at another time, another, member of this antinomy, But, as long as he has once taken the view that the character of a government determines the character of a people, he had to exaggerate out of all proportions the concept of government. It meant for him the whole social environment, all peculiarities of social relations. It would be more correct to say that for him, all peculiarities of a given social environment are affairs of government, the results of the political order. This is the stand point of the eighteenth century. When the French materialists wanted to express, in a short and vigorous manner, their convictions as to the all-powerful influence of the environment on man, they said : “C’est la Législation qui fait tout”—and whenever they spoke about legislation, they always meant political legislation, political order. Vico has a small article called Essays on a System of Jurisprudence in which the Civil Rights of the Romans are Explained by Their Political Revolutions. Though this essay was written just at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the ideas expressed in it, on relations between civil rights and the forms of government, were the accepted views until the restoration period. The “Enlighteners” reduced everything to politics.

But since the activity of a legislator, though not always teleological, is invariably conscious, and the conscious activity of a man is always dependent on his “opinions,” we come again to the thought then, that opinion is above everything else, although we set out to prove the supremacy of environment. The younger set of French historians took an entirely different view of this problem.

The course and results of the French Revolution, with its numerous surprises, was in itself a flaring denial of the power of “opinions.” Many had become entirely disappointed with “reason,” and others, who did not succumb to disappointments, became more and more inclined to the view that environment is all-powerful, and the investigation of its development became all-important. But their views on environment were also changed. The great historical happenings have demonstrated the weakness of legislators and political constitutions to such an extent that to declare them as the determining historical cause was ridiculous. Political constitutions began to be viewed not as a cause but as a result that is to be explained.

“A large number of writers, learned historians and publicists,” says Guizot in his Essais Sur L’histoire de France, “tried to explain the given state of society and state of civilisation through the prevalent political order. It would be far wiser to begin with the study of society itself in order to understand its political institutions. Before these institutions can become causes they are results ; society creates them before it begins to change itself under their influence. Instead of judging a people according to its political institutions, we must first study the people to find out what sort of a government it must of necessity possess. Society, its constituents, the life of its individual members, their dependency on their social positions, the relations between various classes of men—in short, the civil life of men (L’etat des personnes), these are the problems that should first engage the attention of the historian who wishes to know how people lived, and the publicist who wishes to know how they were governed.”

This view is just the opposite of Vico’s. The latter would explain civil laws through political revolutions; Guizot, on the contrary, would explain political institutions through civil life, that is, through civil laws. But the French historian goes even further in his analysis of society. According to him, the civil lives of all nations that entered the historical arena after the fall of the western Roman Empire, are strongly tied to their land relations (état des terres). The study of their land relations must therefore precede the study of their civil life : “In order to understand political institutions, it is necessary to study the different groups that constitute a given society, and their mutual relations.” In order to understand these groups, it is necessary to know the nature of their land relations. From this standpoint Guizot studies the French history of the first two dynasties. For him it is the history of a struggle between various groups of society. In his history of the English Revolution, he goes a step further, describing it as a struggle of the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy, and thus silently admits that in order to explain the political life of a country, it is necessary to study not only the land relations, but their property relations in general.

This view was not only held by Guizot, but was also shared by Mignet, Thierry and others.

In his Vous des Révolutions d’Angleterre, Thierry represents the history of the English revolution as a struggle between the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. “All those whose ancestors belonged to the conquerors,” he says in speaking about the first English Revolution, “deserted their castle for the King’s camp. At the time it could be said that the armies assembled—one in the name of leisure and power and the other in the name of labour and freedom. All those who did not work, all those who looked to life only for the pleasures that they could get without working for them, assembled under the King’s banner, to protect their common interests; all the descendants of the conquerors that were drawn into commerce fell in with the party of the people.”

The religious movements of that time were, according to Thierry, only reflexes of real life interests : “Both sides fought for real interests. All the rest was only for pretext. Those who were on the side of the subjects were mostly Presbyterians, that is, they did not want any subjection even in religion. Those who fought on the other side were Anglicans or Catholics, that is, they strove for power and taxes, even on the religious field.” Thierry quotes from the History of the Reign of James the Second the following words : “The Whigs looked on all religious opinions as politicians ; even their hate of the Pope was caused not by the prejudices and idol-worship of that unpopular sect, but by their desire to make the power of the state absolute.”

In Mignet’s opinion “social movements are determined by ruling interests. These proceed to their goals, stop as soon as the goal is achieved, and make place for other movements which are unnoticed at first but which grow to be predominant in time. This was the way of feudalism. Feudalism exists in the needs of men—but not yet in practice—this is the first epoch; in the second epoch it existed in practice, slowly ceasing to correspond to man’s needs and finally ceased to exist entirely. No revolution was accomplished in any other way than this.” In his history of the French Revolution Mignet interprets these events from the standpoint of the “needs” of different social classes. The struggle between these classes is for him the mainspring of what happened. Of course this standpoint did not find favour in the eyes of the eclectics of that time. The eclectics accused the new historians of fatalism, and the spirit of system. As it usually happens in such cases, the eclectics did not see the really weak points in these new theories and energetically fought against its strong points. At all events this conflict is old and at present uninteresting. It is more important to note that these views were defended by the St. Simonist, Bazar, one of the most brilliant representatives of socialist thought of that time.

Bazar did not think that Mignet’s book on the French Revolution was perfect. As one of its defects he considered the fact that according to Mignet the French Revolution was a thing in itself, without any connection with “that long chain of efforts which, after destroying the old social order, were to make the introduction of the new order easier.” He knows, of course, that the book undoubtedly has its good qualities. “The author strove to characterize those parties that led the Revolution consecutively. He wanted to show us the connections between those parties and the interests of certain social classes, to show how the development of events put first one party and then another at the head of the movement and caused them to disappear entirely afterwards. The spirit of system and fatalism, for which these historians have been so severely criticised by the eclectics are, in Bazar’s opinion, most valuable assets.”

If one should have asked Thierry, Guizot or Mignet whether the character of the people determines the form of its government, or the form of the government determines the people’s character, every one of them would have answered that in spite of the fact that between these two there is always a strong mutual influence, they must, nevertheless, both be explained by a third, more important factor : “by the social life of the people and their property relations.” And the contradiction that could not be solved by the French materialists of the eighteenth century, could thus be solved now.

(To be continued.)

Trans.: H. Kantorovitch for the "Modern Quarterly".

Economics and Ideas. Their influence on Political Institutions. (Part 3) (1925)

From the June 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued front last month).

Divine Right or Social Contract.

The struggle of the bourgeoisie for political emancipation culminated in England in the Great Rebellion of 1642-48. The chief immediate cause of the outbreak was the dispute over the right of the crown to levy charges upon property owners either by taxes or forced loans without the consent of their representatives. Its general social causes however must be sought in the developing antagonism between the domination of hereditary privilege and kingly prerogative and the political needs of an increasingly commercial society.

As the crisis approached Parliament definitely demanded the right to appoint and dismiss Ministers, and the control of the army. In the six years’ Civil War which followed, the established regime—the “King’s cause” was defended by the nobility and the more old-fashioned of the landed gentry, whilst to the Parliamentary forces adhered the traders of the cities allied with the freehold farmers.

At this stage no purely political doctrine had an appeal wide enough to rally all revolting sections, and we find the morale of the Cromwellian Army—the backbone of the Parliamentary forces, provided by “puritanism,” which in belief was the antithesis to the Catholicism of the crown and in its attitude to life the mirror of the needs of the yeomen farmers and the small traders.

It was not until the first phase of the struggle had ended in a bourgeois victory, and the question of “divine right” answered emphatically in the negative by the execution of Charles, that its theoretical expression was forthcoming. As Stopford Brooke says,

  “the opposition to the theory of the Divine Right of Kings did not enter into literature till after it had been worked out practically in the Civil War. During the Commonwealth and after the Restoration it took the form of a discussion on the abstract question of the Science of Government, and was mingled with an enquiry into the origin of society and the ground of social life.” (“English Literature” p. 132.)

The result of this enquiry showed clearly the wide influence commercial relations of life now had in the sphere of political thought. The productive organisations and customs of feudalism had their origin in the remote and misty past. Through unnumbered generations they persisted with little change and they were looked upon with veneration and believed to have a supernatural origin.

But commerce and money had brought a new form of organisation. The firms and companies of the traders and manufacturers had a perfectly well-known origin. They were deliberately established as a result of definite agreements between men. The law of “contract,” not of “status” or custom, was their basis and safeguard. What more natural then than that the theorists of the new order should suggest that human society and the State were originally formed by a common agreement for the social good and that therefore the governing authority could be repudiated if it violated the terms of the “original contract.”

Such a theory was put forward by Hobbes in his “Leviathan” (1651) and later taken up by Locke and Rousseau. Though Hobbes’ materialistic views met with much opposition on religious grounds the effect of the idea of the “social contract”

“at the time of its first appearance was immense. Its almost universal acceptance put an end to the religious and patriarchal theories of society, on which Kingship had till now founded its claim of a Divine right to authority which no subject might question.” (Green’s “Short History,” p. 615).

In the next phase of the struggle ending in the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, the argument of the “social contract” was used with effect in the Parliamentary debates on the abdication of James II. and, in the final indictment against the King, his violation of the “contract” was specifically mentioned.

The Revolution with its “Bill of Rights” vested supreme authority in the House of Commons—the representative assembly of the propertied classes. Following it came another advance in bourgeois political theory by Locke, who cast into more acceptable form Hobbes’ ideas and definitely declared the supremacy of legislative assemblies. Again fact preceded theory. Locke’s “Essay on Civil Government” was the outcome

“not of a pure development of scientific ideas, but of the necessity for having a theory to justify accomplished facts.”

It was

“in truth an elaborate apology for the Revolution of 1688; not ostensibly for its righteousness or policy in the particular circumstances, but for the possibility of such a proceeding being rightful in any circumstances.” (Pollock, “Science of Politics,” p. 65.)

In the new regime the landowners were still predominant but the commercial and banking interests were a great and a growing social power. In the Commons the two rival groups faced each other as the Tory and Whig parties. But many of the wealthier landowners were by now interested also in commerce and finance and the antagonism between the two orders of property tended to become less. The power of the capitalists was manifested in the founding in 1694 of the Bank of England—originally a whig finance company; in the commercial laws based on the “mercantile” principle of accumulating bullion by restricting imports of manufactured goods whilst encouraging their export; and in the trade wars against France which the landed class generally discouraged.

The British Constitution now remained without serious modification for a century and a half, the most important development being the “cabinet system” which placed the executive under the control of the Commons. As an instrument giving political liberty to the exploiters of labour whilst securing the suppression of the producing masses the Constitution was one of the most perfect pieces of machinery in political history. The ruling’ classes rightly revered it as a perpetual guarantee of their wealth and privileges. They lavished adulation upon it. To Blackstone, the jurist, it was—”this noble pile,” whilst Burke went into ecstatic when he contemplated its “delicate equilibrium.” Based upon the right to representation of only a wealthy handful of the population—with an electorate of merely some 12,000 this allegedly democratic constitution was in reality an oligarchic despotism of the few over the many.

Through it was carried out by all due forms of law one of the most callous examples that history records of the spoliation and starvation of a helpless class through the enclosure and appropriation by the large landowners of millions of acres of the “common lands” used by the peasants of England for centuries. As a result of the growing numbers of landless and propertyless and the intense poverty of the new labouring class laws of unprecedented stringency were enforced for the protection of property. Thousands of working-class “criminals” were hanged for stealing no more than five shillings or a sheep, or for firing a rick of hay.

The “Rights of Man.”

The success of the mercantile interests in England in establishing their rule through Parliament gave a stimulus to the bourgeoisie in France—oppressed by economic fetters imposed by a despotism raised upon the remnants of feudalism, bearing the chief burden of a heavy taxation and excluded entirely from political power. Along with the smouldering discontent of the bourgeoisie developed a vigorous attack by the French intellectuals upon all the institutions and traditions of the established regime. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and the authors of the great “Encyclopedia ” directed their shafts of criticism and satire upon the “unreason” of social relations, the despotism of the State over men’s bodies and of the Church over men’s minds.

The English Constitution was eagerly discussed and applauded. In it the French bourgeoisie and their theorists saw the ideal framework of society. Buckle in his “History of Civilisation” gives a detailed account of the extraordinary influence that English literature and institutions had at this time in France. Even Rousseau’s famous work the “Contrat Social,” which became the text book of the revolution, was little more than a development of the ideas of Hobbes and Locke. In it Rousseau declared the irrationality and tyranny of all existing social structure and idealised the “free, independent individual” — the “natural” man. The book had an immense vogue with all the disaffected and its popularity was so feared by the authorities that it was accorded the honour of being burnt by the public hangman.

The philosophers of the “age of reason” were sincere enough in their fierce denunciations of tyranny and glorification of “liberty”—but they could not transcend the times in which they lived. When Rousseau wrote his famous words, “Man is born free and is everywhere in chains,” he was not thinking of the same “chains” as those of the equally famous declaration —”The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” Rousseau and those who thought with him denounced the chains of obsolete conventions and beliefs and of legal and political restrictions upon the individual and his goods. They did not conceive of property as a means of enslavement—to them it seemed the guarantee of freedom, of personal independence. Their utopia was a society of independent farmers, craftsmen and traders, and it was from this ideal basis that they formulated the inalienable Rights of Man— “to liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.” It required machinery and the “great industry” to demonstrate the titanic power of slavery latent in the “free rights of property” and the “liberty of the individual,” and thus to lay the basis for the slogan of Marx.

But while the philosophers were indulging themselves with universal principles the merchants, lawyers and politicians were concerning themselves with practical realities. They were not troubled with abstract intellectual problems but with urgent economic, legal and political ones. But the main problems that confronted the revolutionary bourgeoisie in France, though the same in essence as those their English comperes had faced differed in historical setting.

The “grand seigneurs” had not been “corrupted” by commerce to the extent of the English aristocracy. They were still an exclusive, arrogant caste, despising trade, holding ancient feudal rights over the peasantry such as were long extinct in England, and—a most important point, they were entirely exempt from taxation. While the English nobility had faced merely a check to their political domination, only affecting: them indirectly in an economic sense, the French nobility were confronted with a threat to their economic security, to their feudal dues and fiscal privileges—with virtual expropriation. Hence the com¬promise that was achieved with little difficulty in England was in France next to impossible.

When the crisis was upon them the bourgeoisie were reluctantly compelled to ally themselves with the stirring propertyless populace of the cities. It was the “common mob” who took the Bastille. But the traders, the lawyers and the politicians had a wholesome dread of the hungry masses—inflamed with revolutionary phrases and extravagant promises and freed for the moment from their customary habits of subjection. Mirabeau warned the assembly against its “seditious allies.”

Whilst they had need the bourgeoisie readily used the multitude as a threatening weapon against the crown and the aristocrats, but when the strength of the old regime was broken, when

  “the King could no longer collect an army, the force of the crowd was no longer necessary to the Assembly. A kind of Riot Act was accordingly passed under which certain officials might at any time proclaim Martial Law ; to restrain the forces of agitation a censorship was established over newspapers and public meetings and even over the sale of literature.” (Packwood Adams—”The French Revolution,” p. 100.)

Thus the bourgeoisie endeavoured to maintain its newly-acquired and precarious power, to stay the surging forces of revolt that it itself had done so much to unleash and to secure “order”—the bourgeois order of peaceful exploitation.

The great rallying cry that stirred all the sections opposed to the old regime was “liberty ! equality ! fraternity !” But these vague words meant different things to different men. In the mouth of a bourgeois they had a definite, limited meaning. “Freedom” meant—liberation from the tyrannical control which the autocratic rule of the Bourbons had exercised over the lives and property of its unprivileged subjects. “Equality” implied the abolition of hereditary privilege and the guarantee of legal and political equality for all “responsible citizens”—all who possessed property and paid taxes.

When, in June, 1789, the deputies of the “third estate” constituted themselves the National Assembly of France their general aim was nothing more than the abolition of feudal restrictions and the erection of a representative Constitution with a limited Monarchy on the lines of that in England. And when, three years later, the Constitution of 1791 was framed, though prefaced by the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” it divided the people into “active” and “passive” citizens; the former consisted of men who owned property and contributed taxes, and who alone were to exercise the franchise and bear arms in the National Guard; the “passive” citizens were the propertyless multitude who were allowed neither representation nor legal means of resistance. But the “have-nots” proved not quite so “passive” as the “haves” were desirous they should be.

With the further developments—the war, the republic, the inability of the bourgeoisie to consolidate its power, the temporary domination of the propertyless of Paris followed by the dictatorship and “order” of Bonaparte—we need not here concern ourselves.

[Thirteen] years before the Revolution in France, a bourgeois republic—untrammelled by any effete feudal structure, had been set up in America. In spite of its “Declaration” that “all men are born equal” its political system gave the franchise only to property owners, and to show how cynically inconsistent its founders could be, it established the legality of the slave-trade.

R.W. Housley

(To be continued)

1688 and all that (1988)

From the July 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

This year is a good one for patriots as there are three big anniversaries for them to celebrate. The shipwrecking of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the colonisation of Australia by British convicts in 1788 and the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688. This last is perhaps the least well known. Not that this is such a bad thing since there was nothing glorious for ordinary people in the revolution which replaced King James II by King William III.

1688 did, however, have an immense importance for the propertied classes of Britain as it established a stable property regime that has lasted to this day, under which those who held property at that time were legally established in their rights and their descendants have ever since enjoyed the full legal backing of the Courts against the kind of arbitrary dispossession that frequently occurred up until then. It also established the constitutional principle that the sovereign is subordinate to Parliament. Although he was more than the well-paid rubber stamp that present-day occupants of Buckingham Palace are, William was appointed king by Parliament. He did not claim to rule by “divine right” as had all previous monarchs, including his immediate predecessor James, who paid dearly for his illusion, as did his father, Charles I, who had his head chopped off in 1649 in the course of the English bourgeois revolution that much more deservingly merits the title of “glorious”.

The ideological defence of the 1688 revolution was provided by John Locke whose Two Treatises of Government is still required reading on political philosophy courses in English-speaking universities. This work is not only a defence of the “rule of law” as drawn up by a parliament of property-owners but an explicit defence of private property as against common ownership. Locke was forced to do this in order to refute any embarrassing literal interpretation of the Christian doctrine which he quoted in the chapter “Of Property” in his second treatise: “God gave the World to Men in Common”. Political argument at the time was conducted in religious terms — which takes some getting used to for those, like socialists, who know that god is a myth and religion a collection of superstitions, but less than 40 years before William III replaced James II, Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers had interpreted Christianity in just such a communist fashion.

Locke’s way round this embarrassing aspect of Christian dogma was to argue that God did indeed give the world to humanity in common, but that it wasn’t his intention that it should remain so. According to Locke, it was clearly God’s intention that humans should take action to keep themselves alive and that to do so they should consume products from nature, insofar as they worked to obtain these products (even if the only effort involved was reaching out and picking an apple from a tree) they were entitled to ownership rights over them. As Locke, speaking for God, put it:

Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men.

Locke’s argument here, that natural materials that are “common to all Men” can legitimately lose this status and become private property when they are mixed with human labour, is not as obvious as he assumes. For it could just as logically be argued that the natural materials from which all wealth is fashioned should remain common property even after they have had human labour mixed with them. This, at any rate, was the prevailing view in those societies which practised common ownership. Nor is human labour the individual product Locke assumes, but a social product — all humans acquire their skills in and through society — and, in fact, since human beings are a part and a product of nature, human labour is itself a natural force.

Locke used the same principle of labour to justify private property in land: a person was entitled to own the land which they had worked because they had mixed their labour with it. At one point in his argument, however, Locke contradicted himself, writing about his right to own “the Turfs my Servant has cut” whereas, on his own argument, these turfs ought to be the property of the servant, who actually did the work and mixed his labour with the natural material, rather than of the servant’s employer who had done nothing. This was probably only a slip on Locke’s part, but a revealing one, as it demonstrated that Locke took for granted the division of society into masters and servants and the right of the master to appropriate the product of the labour of the servant. It was, of course, by exploiting this contradiction that early socialists, at the time of the Chartists, were able to turn the labour theory of property against the landlord and capitalist classes and to denounce them for the parasitic exploiters of other people’s labour that they were.

But Locke was concerned not just with justifying the private property of the working farmer or artisan but also with justifying that of the rich merchants and large landed estate-owners who existed both before and after 1688 and whose rights the revolution was intended to consolidate. Here again he came up against Christian dogma which taught that humans were entitled to take from the common store of nature and make their property only what they needed and no more. In fact, to the extent that taking more than was required for personal use deprived someone else of their basic needs, this was robbery and the person in need was fully entitled to take what they needed from the greedy person’s surplus.

Such a doctrine provided no justification for the accumulation of capital and the concentration of property ownership that were necessary for the development of the capitalist society that the 1688 revolution was designed to accelerate. On the contrary, it ruled out the accumulation of property beyond the personal needs of the property-owner. So, after refuting common ownership, Locke had to go on to refute also the idea that there were limits to the size of property holdings. He did so in what has to be admitted was an ingenious, if entirely specious way.

Agreed, he wrote, property-owners have no right to own more than they can use but the reason for this limitation is that they have no right to let any surplus to their own needs go rotten. If however, he went on, some means could be found of accumulating a surplus in a form which didn’t rot this would be all right from a moral point of view. This could be done, Locke concluded triumphantly, if the surplus in the form of perishable agricultural products is converted into non-perishable metals like gold and silver, in other words, if they are sold for money and accumulated as such.

Locke took the argument even further. In agreeing to the use of money and to the putting of a value on it, humans had tacitly agreed to the accumulation of property and the unequal distribution of wealth ownership:

But since Gold and Silver, being little useful to the Life of Man in proportion to Food, Rayment, and Carriage, has its value only from the consent of Men, whereof Labour yet makes in great part, the measure, it is plain, that Men have agreed to disproportionate and unequal Possession of the Earth, they having by a tacit and voluntary consent found out a way, how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overplus, Gold and Silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one, these metalls not spoileing or decaying in the hands of the possessor. This partage of things, in an inequality of private possessions, men have made practicable out of the bounds of Societie, and without compact, only by putting a value on gold and silver and tacitly agreeing in the use of Money.

It is for having provided this pathetic justification for unequal property society that Locke is regarded by contemporary capitalist society as the greatest political thinker of the 17th century and is taught in English-speaking universities throughout the world. Winstanley, on the other hand, who was by far Locke’s superior, both in style and quality of argument, is dismissed as a minor religious fanatic. But then, he defended common ownership and denounced the rich merchants and landowners as robbers and usurpers while Locke flattered them and justified their riches.

Locke was, however, right on one point: the link between money and the unequal distribution of wealth. A money economy is, or inevitably soon develops into, a society characterised by two main classes, those who own and accumulate wealth having a monetary value and those who don’t. It is because the so-called Glorious Revolution was designed to stabilise such an unequal society that we socialists won’t be celebrating it. After all, as class-conscious members of the majority propertyless class in society, why should we celebrate the consolidation of the property rights of the ancestors of today’s property-owning minority?

Adam Buick

A Matter of Definition. A Capitalist Apologist Tackled. (1919)

From the July 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Clever Dodgers.

Some capitalist writers, in their philosophical peregrinations around and about such questions as "Democracy," "Revolution," etc., display an amazing ability at handling abstract principles, connected therewith, true in themselves, and utterly opposed to the fundamental principles of capitalism, not only without revealing their antagonism to the system, but, until their premises are closely examined, actually to support the capitalist State.

Thus A. M. Drysdale in a series of articles in the "Daily Chronicle" tries to prove that revolution, instead of being a socially organic necessity at certain intervals in human history, is always a reactionary movement of minorities. His reflections, in themselves rather more interesting than the usual capitalist drivel on such subjects, are, however, based upon a total misconception of the thing he makes the centre of his discourse, i.e., revolution. In this respect it is rather unfortunate for him that he insists on the vital importance of definition and classification, because he makes a complete hash of the only definition he attempts—the definition of revolution.

A Revolution Defined.

A revolution is anything accomplished, or possible of accomplishment. Attempts do not count. In mechanics a complete turn of a wheel along a plane bringing it to rest at a fresh spot is a revolution. A revolution in industry is not accomplished until the chief means and methods of production have been changed in form and character, as from handicraft to machine production, while a social revolution has not been effected until the class that is dominant has been supplanted by the class beneath it in the social scale.

The Capitalists' Victory.

Such a revolution was achieved by the capitalist class when they finally overturned the rule of the feudal lords and monarchy, and made the Commons supreme. In that revolution feudalism was subverted and the manufacturing and merchant class became the rulers of society. From that time onward there were but two classes in society : the victorious capitalist class and the working class. The latter being an enslaved class, must seek its emancipation from the dominance of capitalism through revolution, which can only mean the conscious application by the working class of principles that will change the basis of society from class ownership in the means of life to common ownership with democratic control.

Anything less than this is not revolution, and only those who make this their object can be correctly termed revolutionaries.

To Mr. Drysdale, however, everything that is "unconstitutional or anti-Parl amentary" is revolutionary. He says—

"The essence of the British Constitution is the unanimous acceptance of the majority opinion of the time, after, by all the processes of debate and discussion—public meetings, leading articles, elections, first readings, second readings, committee stages, third readings, royal assents—such opinion has been given the definite form we call Act of Parliament. Conduct (not criticism or agitation) opposed to that presentation of the national will is revolutionary."

Some Curious Samples.

These processes, necessary for the manufacture of opinion among the workers that coincide with capitalist interests, are universally admired by the capitalist class, and, of course, by Mr. Drysdale, for that reason. Their fraudulent pretension to be democratic has been exposed before ; we leave them to examine some concrete examples of revolution according to Mr. Drysdale.

"The Ulster Unionists, The Conscientious Objectors"—-(this latter is, of course, a glaring inconsistency, seeing that Parliament made provision for them in the Act)—"The gentlemen who refused the use of the Albert Hall for a labour demonstration, together with the electricians who retorted with the threat to cut off the light. The Firemen's and Seamen's Union when they refused to carry pacifists to Stockholm."

These are Mr. Drysdale's examples of revolution, and they lead him to the final remark—which takes away the chief factor in a revolution—"but it is a truism of revolution, especially in Great Britain, that its characteristic mark is minority."

Mr. Drysdale objects to these revolutionaries of his imagination because they neglect the constitutional weapon and employ, or threaten to employ, force. But although the employment of force may be necessary to effect a revolution, something else is equally necessary. In the first place, the force at the disposal of his fancied revolutionaries is altogether inadequate to effect their objects if the capitalist State is opposed to them. Secondly, the objects themselves are not revolutionary, consequently the actions, conduct, or threats are not, therefore, revolutionary either.

Having given instances in the present, Mr. Drysdale appeals to history to support his definition. He says:

 "Majorities always use the high road; the short cut, with its risks of damage by trespass, is, as the Irish say, the contraption of the minority impatient. Both the British revolutions in the Stuart period, the great French revolution, the Russian revolution, were all minority short cuts, and whatever their net ultimate gain may be they were, and have been, attended by penalties which the majority way would have escaped."

If the Bolshevik movement is meant by Mr. Drysdale, he is mistaken in calling it a revolution, because up to the present no evidence is forthcoming to prove either that a revolution has been accomplished, or that the workers of Russia have a revolutionary object. All the evidence so far goes to prove the contrary.

With regard to the English revolution of the Stuart period, the evidence is complete and convincing to those who read history. The forerunners of the modern capitalist class took no short cuts. Their fight against feudalism and monarchy extended over several centuries, and was only victorious when they made themselves masters of the political machine, and consequently the paymasters and directors of the Parliamentary forces.

The French revolution is, if possible, an even better example of the stupendous forces that have to be developed before a social revolution is accomplished. In his "History of the French Revolution" H. Morse Stephens shows that for nearly a century the bourgeoisie of France were planting the seeds, educating and organising for the day when they should, through the "States General," gain their victory over monarchy and feudalism.

Changes of dynasty, monarchs, or even the abolition of monarchies and the establishment of republics merely amount to changes of rulers. Only such great social changes as from feudalism to capitalism can be correctly termed revolutions. Transformations that affect society from top to bottom, that, in short, change the fundamental principles that form the basis of society. Such changes as these cannot be effected by short cuts or coups ; they rely for their success upon the conscious action of an entire class. A long process of evolution in the means of production causes incongruities in the apportionment of burdens or in the distribution of wealth. The class that suffers can only find relief by intelligent and conscious action, directed toward the establishment of relations in harmony with the changed means and methods of production.

The working class to-day suffer poverty in the midst of plenty because the means of life are owned by a class in society, production being based on the commodity character of human labour-power. The working class can only reap the advantage of the new methods of production when they establish a system where the means of life are owned in common and the commodity character of labour-power is abolished.

Mr. Drysdale falls into a fresh error when he imagines that the opposing interests of the two classes in society can be reconciled, and such a revolution rendered unnecessary. In a future article his suggestions will be examined.

F. Foan.

Link to Part 2

Past Class Struggles. (1919)

From the May 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

As was pointed out in a previous article, early England was Feudal, and under the Manorial system rural England was composed of estates divided among villeins (a particular kind of peasant proprietors), who owed certain services to their lords.

The growth of commercialism broke up the Manorial system and introduced the Capitalist system. The foundation of the Capitalist system was laid by divorcing the labourer from the soil, i.e., converting the peasant into a "free" labourer.

Feudalism rested upon the reciprocal duties of lord and peasant or villein. The rise of the trading and manufacturing class brought about the need for a large number of labourers who could be exploited without restriction. In order that the commercial or capitalist class could become the supreme class in society the serf had to be converted into a free labourer—free of all feudal ties and relying only on wages for his living.

The commercial class, who had acquired money through trade, had steadily grown and permeated the existing system to such an extent that it was gradually breaking the bonds of Feudalism. In this the trading class were assisted by the great feudal lords themselves, who, while despising trade as vulgar, coveted its riches.

But the starting-point of capitalism was the free labourer. The landed proprietors, to get money, leased their lands and commuted labour rents into money rents. The rise of woollen manufacture on the Continent brought about a corresponding rise in the English wool trade. Then the great landowners commenced enclosing the common lands and evicting the peasants to make room for sheep. At the same time the suppression of the monastries and the break-up of the bands of feudal retainers, drove thousands of other people to seek employment under the growing new conditions.

In these various ways the principle raw material of capitalism—the free labourer, who must work for wages or starve—was produced.

The whole system of government, however, was built upon the feudal organisation and the Court was in control. As the capitalist organisation was breaking up the feudal, it became necessary for the moneyed class to obtain supreme control of social affairs in order to sweep away the privileges and restrictions that were hampering its development. Society had to be reorganised, politically and religiously, to conform with the new economic organisation.

The religious change took the form of the Protestant Reformation, Catholicism, with its many fast days and ceremonials, was inimical to commercialism, hence the fight of the commercial class for political power was suffused with the glamour of a new religion. Freedom of contract in earthly affairs was bolstered up by the plea of freedom of judgment in affairs spiritual.

During feudal times a struggle had been going on between the Court party and the great nobles. In 1215 the nobles forced from John the concession of the "Great Charter," the gist of which was that the sovereign could not levy taxes himself, payments having to be granted by a council of barons and bishops. In 1265 the town element (representatives of shires and boroughs) was introduced into this council of Parliament. The succeeding history is that of the struggle for supremacy of Parliament against the royal power.

The merchants, embittered by the harassing and interrupting of commerce by enemy ships and the waste of money on foreign wars, time and again refused to grant the necessary subsidies and Parliament was dissolved. But the emptiness of the regal treasury always compelled the sovereigns to re-assemble Parliament.

By the time the bourgeois had arrived at wealth, then, and desired to become the ruling power, the Crown had secured the powers of government into its own hands, but at the same time, the necessities of the regal exchequer had compelled the feudal party to concede certain privileges and powers to the new class, and in this way the former helped to dig its own grave.

At the outbreak of the Revolution the parties taking part were : The Court Party, the lords and large landed proprietors ; the merchants ; the small farmers or country squires ; the town shop-keepers ; the political adventurers or opportunists ; and underneath all the poor of town and country.

The actual struggle commenced in 1642, when the Commons strove for the right to control the militia, and so take the military power out of the royal hands. In spite of the refusal of Charles to grant this request the militia were rapidly enrolled and lord lieutenants appointed.

The Lords desired to limit kingly power, the Commons to abolish it. In the early part of the war the Lords or Presbyterian party predominated and the policy of compromise was adopted. Underneath the Lords, however, were the Independents, growing daily in strength, menacing the policy and position of the Lords, and eventually compelling them to go over to the Court.

The Independents appealed only to Reason. Institutions, laws, customs everything, was by them brought before the bar of Reason and called upon to order itself according to the will of man, i.e., mercantile man. Equality of Rights, the "just" distribution of social property, was their cry. Let us hear Guizot speak of them.

"There was no contradiction between their religious and political systems ; no secret struggle between the leaders and their men ; no exclusive creed, no rigorous test rendered access to the party difficult; like the sect from which they had taken their name, they held liberty of conscience a fundamental maxim, and the immensity of the Reforms they proposed, the vast uncertainty of their designs, allowed men of the most various objects to range beneath their banners ; lawyers joined them in hopes of depriving the ecclesiastics, their rivals, of all jurisdiction and power; liberal publicists contemplated by their aid the formation of anew, clear, simple plan of legislation, which should take from lawyers their enormous profits and their immoderate power. Hanington could dream among them of a society of sages; Sidney of the liberty of Sparta or Rome; Lilburne of the restoration of the old Saxon laws; Hanison of the coming of Christ; even the non-principle of Henry Martyn and Peter Wentworth were tolerated in consideration of its daring ; republicans or levellers, reasoners or visionaries, fanatics or men of ambition, all were admitted to make a common stock of their anger, their theories, their ecstatic dreams, their intrigues ; it was enough that all were animated with equal hatred against the cavaliers and against the presbyterians, would rush on with the same fervour towards that unknown futurity which was to satisfy so many expectations."

"History of the English Revolution," Guizot, p. 216.

The principal figure in this party was Oliver Cromwell, a country squire of Hundingdonshire. Cromwell was a descendant of the unprincipled adventurer chosen by Henry VIII. as his chief instrument in the confiscation of the monastic lands, in which, process Cromwell the elder succeeded, by embezzlement, in amassing an enormous amount of wealth. Cromwell's parents had further augmented the monastic spoils by the profits derived from a lucrative brewery business. Such were the origin and connections of the man who was to lead the wealthier merchants to victory.

He organised a band of religious zealots drawn from the ranks of farmers and tradesmen, who contributed much to the earlier successes of the Parliamentary forces and also considerably exalted the power of their commander.

As the war progressed the Independents gradually gained the ascendant, and Charles I. was executed Jan. 30, 1648.

By 1649 the Independents had become strong enough to declare a commonwealth with a single House of Commons and Council of State, Cromwell managing to manoeuvre himself into the position of Lord Protector. The final working out of this was that all the executive power was centred in his hands. Then commenced the much desired epoch of the Merchants.

The commercial wars of Cromwell are described by Gibbins as follows :

"He (Cromwell) demanded trade with the Spanish colonies, and religious freedom for English settlers in such colonies. Of course his demands were refused, as well he knew they would be. Whereupon he seized Jamaica (1655) and intended to seize Cuba; and at any rate succeeded in giving the English a secure footing in the West Indies. He seized Dunkirk also from Spain (then at war with France, with a view of securing England a monopoly of the Channel to the exclusion of our old friends the Dutch. . . . Not content with victory in the West, Cromwell, with the full consent of mercantile England, declared war against the Dutch, who were now more our rivals than our friends. It would have been perfectly possible for the English and Dutch to have remained on good terms ; but the great idea of the statesmen and merchants of the 17th and 18th centuries was to gain a sole market and monopoly of trade, and so the Dutch had to be crushed. . . . Cromwell succeeded in his object. He defeated the Dutch and broke their prestige in the war of 1652-54, and designed to win their trade by the Navigation Acts of 1651. The contest between the English and Dutch for the mastery of the seas was already practically decided by the capture of New Amsterdam (New York), and the subsequent wars of Charles II. reign, completed the discomfiture of Holland."—"Industrial History of England," p. 123.

The defeat of the Dutch gave the English merchants the carrying trade of the Baltic and the Mediterranean. The Navigation Acts of 1651 referred to above set forth that all goods brought to England must be carried in ships of the actual country manufacturing the goods. As the Dutch had been previously the principal carrying nation, this was a direct blow at their supremacy, and also an indication of the growing power of the English mercantile marine.

Cromwell died in 1658, and shortly after the Royalist element began to regain a little power and succeeded in obtaining the recall of Charles II., but with greatly reduced royal power. This sovereign, more wily than his father, played into the hands of the wealthy class and was thereby enabled to enjoy a life of luxury. He pursued a foreign policy similar to that of Cromwell, enlarging the sphere of action of the merchants. He died in 1685, and his successor, James II., too thick headed to recognise the trend of the times, tried to restore the old supremacy of the Court.

In the meantime the French had grown in power and began to threaten the commercial position of England. William of Orange drew the attention of the English on account of the skilful way in which he harassed France. In consequence of this, and of the dissatisfaction aroused by the conduct of James, William was invited to the English throne in 1688. He landed with a force of Dutch, and with the help of the merchants and landowners defeated the Royalist forces.

William was presented with the "Declaration of Rights," after signing which his coronation was celebrated.

In the "Declaration of Rights" was incorporated the principles of the now all powerful capitalist class. The two chief points were—

"The raising and maintenance of a standing army to be the prerogative solely of Parliament.
Levying of taxes or loans without consent of Parliament to be illegal."

The early part of the Revolution had witnessed the desire of the revolutionary Bourgeois to abolish kingly power, but they soon found that such a measure was not entirely in their own interests. The mass of the people, seeing old habits and customs so ruthlessly jettisoned, began to question even the right of private property! During the expedition for the conquest of Ireland undertaken by Cromwell in 1629, a body known as the Levellers broke out into open insurrection, demanding "true and perfect freedom in all things." This outbreak was crushed, but it frightened some of the "eternal laws of reason" out of the capitalists, hence their acquiescence in the restoration of the shadow of kingship.

The successful culmination of the rebellion put the rising capitalists in a position to reap to the full the advantages of the new system of colonisation and unlimited competition. It brought to the English working class a depth of misery and slavery hitherto unknown.

Gilmac.

Wood for the Trees: Peer Review (2020)

The Wood for the Trees Column from the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Somebody once asked if writing for a political journal involves the work being ‘peer reviewed’. On reflection it’s a legitimate question given that we live in an age of conspiracy theories, fake news and media manipulation. Many seek reassurance that the truth can be found through the authority of a consensus guaranteed by experts. It has a scientific patina that can provide confidence in conclusions assimilated and then disseminated by hierarchical institutions like governments and various other agencies of ‘the establishment’. Such a procedure does indeed seem to be a legitimate element in discerning truth from falsehood or informed opinion from ignorance but it must be remembered that such experts within a capitalist context can sometimes be handpicked by the powerful to guarantee that these individuals will stay ‘on message’. Indeed some of them might never have reached the lofty heights of being recognised as experts if they had not proven their allegiance to the status quo.

Of course not all experts agree with one another and when deciding between them (as pragmatism and a rejection of populist philistinism demands) it is always worth bearing in mind their ‘track record’ in terms of political allegiance, business links and past accuracy. Recognized protocols of reason and logic under the guidance of a community composed of others dedicated to a field of study does represent an undeniable aid to progress and will be utilized by a future socialist society but being outside of the contemporary consensus (for obvious political and ethical reasons) how can socialists claim any authority in what we say? Are the majority correct in assuming that we are just another cult competing for their attention using unproven propaganda?

Of course it wouldn’t be true to say that socialists are entirely outside of cultural consensus since we have a long history that does provide us with continuity and context. Our political fortunes have waxed and waned over the last century and of the multitude of political organizations calling themselves socialist we are one of the very few who have survived courtesy of our adherence to authentic principles. In their lust and impatience for power many have followed either the Bolshevik model of elitist dictatorship or the reformist route in attempting to humanizing capitalism – both of which conform to the consensus model of left wing politics. They are both intellectually ‘respectable’ and understood within an authoritarian and idealist bourgeois ideological context and are also, of course, thoroughly discredited. If we give such ideologies and those who aspire to them the benefit of the doubt concerning their altruistic motivation we can see that their failure was not due to the weakness of some leader or other or to the lack of moral integrity but rather to a profoundly mistaken understanding of how the world works. Part of the reason for this failure to comprehend reality is a belief in linear progress – the idea that existing social structures continue to improve or evolve until the manifest elements of inequality and injustice disappear.

This ‘evolutionary’ version of history is one you’ll find in most English textbooks. This is emphasized in the description of one of the world’s most bloody revolutions (1642) as a ‘civil war’ and the embracing of a bloodless coup as ‘The Glorious Revolution’ (1688). The English are somehow immune from revolution and if we continue to trust our ruling class then everything will work out fine. The concept of class struggle and revolution is unpalatable to most English historians and for those who do embrace such concepts it is a dynamic confined to the past with no contemporary relevance. Behind such revision and complacency lies the dead hand of ruling class ideology. Those who do not legitimize the status quo in this way are marginalised. The success of any organisation be it scientific, political, religious, aesthetic or charitable depends on them embracing this ideological consensus. This is why a study of history is so crucial to political understanding because it always undermines any attempt to impose a ‘steady state’ evolutionary theory of political development. In the light of this the role of experts providing authority for a consensus can be seen as primarily ideological. Those who seek truth in this way will be disappointed as in the end every individual has to find their own political answers because those who represent the status quo will not and cannot provide them. It can be a shocking revelation to many that those who create the consensus can be just as mistaken as any wild-eyed conspiracy theorist – examples of this range from imaginary ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to the belief that turning cattle into cannibals had no health implications for humans or that cannabis is more dangerous than alcohol.

This has ever been so with ruling elites in history and it is sometimes surprising that any progress is achieved in the light of such ideological conditioning. But when the point arrives that the propaganda is so patently absurd in comparison with the real lives of ordinary people a paradigm shift occurs. Suddenly those outside of the ideological consensus find a voice that is listened to. The consensus is shattered and true progress is resumed. The only peers that socialists recognise are the revolutionary working class.

Wez.

Wood for the Trees: The Myth of Parliament (2019)

The Wood for the Trees Column from the October 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Watching the recent dramas broadcast from Westminster one would be forgiven for thinking that it represented the heart of political activity in this country. The participants are all convinced that as ‘representatives’ of their constituents it is they who decide the future of us all. This conceit is widely believed and, of course, the legislators and executives of the state do have an important, if exaggerated, effect on all our lives.

How have so many become so convinced that this sideshow is somehow the alpha and omega of political activity? To answer this we have to understand the history of the conversion of wealth into political power. Parliament is primarily about getting and spending money to preserve the wealth and power of the elite class. The two houses of parliament are not there, despite all the propaganda, to preserve the rights of ‘the people’ but to curtail their rights. How could such a paradox arise and why do the majority not recognise it as such?

Originally the King called upon an assembly or parliament of respectable property owners to organise and legislate for the taxes he needed to finance the military activity that defined kingship. Inevitably this caused tension and dissent among the already impoverished majority together with the wealthier emerging middle class, and the king always found a great reluctance in parliament to raise taxes without some kind of consent from and representation for those who paid the taxes. After years of riots and revolts it all came to a head in 1628 with the ‘Petition of Right’ which sought to make laws prohibiting the king from demanding arbitrary taxes without the consent of parliament. The king promptly ‘prorogued’ parliament (sound familiar?) which started the build–up to the English Revolution in 1642.

The growing bourgeoisie or capitalist class, whose wealth now rivalled that of the nobility, decided that a parliamentary coup would be their route to political power. After an attempted counter-revolution in 1688 they consolidated their power and took over the state using parliament as their executive voice. The bourgeoisie could now concentrate on what they did best – exploit the labour of their fellow humans for profit. They left the running of the state to underlings and those who took to politics as a career. There were, and still are, two main duties for MPs: raise taxes to run the state as cheaply as possible and make laws to secure the property of the capitalist class.

In 1799 ‘income tax’ was introduced and in contrast to the preceding land tax it gave the impression that the exploited majority were paying it instead of their employers. This deception made it appear that the working class had an incentive to keep taxes low in common with their masters. From then on it became a priority to minimise ‘public spending’ to keep taxation low. However, later in the nineteenth century it became clear that capitalism was failing to keep the working class in an even minimal state of health and this was obviously hurting profits. Bismarck was one of the first European statesmen to recognise this and together with his fear of a growing ‘socialist’ party he was motivated to introduce a form of welfare state. Although this placated many, as with all state spending, it was always kept under pressure by the need to keep taxes down.

Soon, in many capitalist states, the majority of the infrastructure was taken under government control along with welfare services. Leftist political parties adopted state or public ownership as some perverse form of socialism forgetting its origins as a cheap way for the capitalists to finance the infrastructure of the state by sharing its costs. To this day the ideological battle between left and right centres on the argument about levels of government investment in the state (seen as benefitting the majority and stimulating economic activity) or minimising public spending and letting the market decide by privatising and deregulating former state-owned industries/services. It has become a matter of ideological dogma and faith on both sides – ignoring the fact that both originated from the needs of capital and not labour.

Socialists find such a debate meaningless from a working class perspective. The present Brexit furore is a typical example of the anachronistic debates that we see in today’s hopelessly arcane parliament. Socialists and the class we represent have no interest in whether we’re exploited by European capitalists or those in the US and we certainly don’t give a flying fig about the internecine struggle within the ruling class concerning their contrasting economic interests.

All of the rhetoric about democracy, national self–determination, labour rights, cultural identity and emigration is merely hyperbole disguising sordid greed. The interminable manipulation of procedure and legislation underlines just how inappropriate the esoteric rituals of parliament are in a twenty-first century global capitalist context. Not until the majority recognise that real democracy is only possible when the production of the means of life are taken into common ownership will debate become a meaningful reality to which they will all personally contribute; the squabbles between ex-public schoolboys about how they can best add to the wealth left to them by their daddies will be long gone.

Wez.

Orange myths (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is Sunday 7 July. In Portadown this morning a riot took place and working people, including policemen, were hurt; some were arrested. Another battle  . . . another myth . . . another contribution to the bitterness and hatred that divide the working class in Northern Ireland.

The government and police and wanted to ban this morning's march through the exclusively Catholic Obins Street district. The marchers, Orangemen going to church accompanied by bands playing sectarian tunes and flaunting sectarian symbols, refused to obey the Government, the police and the law despite their vociferous protestations of loyalty to all three. The police - probably working on the assumption that they could cope more easily with the Catholics than they could with the loyalists - gave in and the march took place. The holy men of the Orange Order marched defiantly through Obins Street to communicate with their god.

The Orange Order intend repeating this exercise on the twelfth and thirteenth of July. The police have issued a notice proscribing these marches and - to compound this lunacy - the Catholics have announced their intention of staging parades at the same time and on the same date.

Paisley and several other loyalist politicians and hate-mongering clergymen have let it be known that they will defy any Government order banning the march. In their eyes the issue is sufficiently serious to justify a civil war. Serious enough to endanger the lives, homes and liberties of working people, for, make no mistake, it is workers who would be asked to slaughter one another. Not because they suffer poverty or live in slums; not because they endure the miseries of unemployment or have mean lives. No. Paisley, who has used bigotry and hatred to become one of the best paid politicians in Europe, and his friends don't experience these things. What they are asking Protestant workers to spill their blood for is something really wholesome and important: the right to march through avenues of Catholics reminding them that their forbears were defeated in 1690!

We would ask our Protestant fellow workers to examine some of the historical facts that make up the myths and damned lies for which their leaders want them to kill and be killed. We have, many times, in the past, exposed the myths that make up the "principles" behind the IRA murder campaign and the fallacious reasoning used to inveigle Catholics into support of Irish Nationalism, so it cannot be said that in exposing the lies and deceptions underlying Unionism we have any sympathy whatsoever with nationalism or republicanism. Our purpose is to disabuse workers on both sides of the notions and fictions that keep them divided; to show that neither Unionism nor nationalism have anything to offer the working class and, to bring them to an examination of the cause of their real, common problems.

King James and King Billy

James II succeeded to the throne of England following the death of his brother, Charles II, in 1685. A convert to Catholicism and a sickly pious man - following a life of profligacy and sexual abandonment - he was determined to re-establish the power of Catholicism in his kingdom. Within three years of becoming king, James' policies had provoked fierce opposition in England and fear and distrust among the Protestant population of Ireland. In 1688 seven members of the English parliament petitioned James' son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange, to become king of England. James reacted by allying himself with the French king, Louis XIV, who manipulated the situation to his own advantage by making England a semi-dependent of his own kingdom.

According to Orange fiction, James was the agent of Rome and popery. Nothing could be further from the truth. In seeking the help and support of Louis XIV, King James was allying himself with the pope's bitterest enemy. Louis, bent on European domination, had made Lorraine a subject state, had attacked Genoa and attempted to sack Rome. The pope of the period, Innocent XI, was outraged and humiliated. In 1686 some of the European powers, alarmed at the strength and ferocity of the French, entered into the Treaty of Augsberg. This Treaty, established specifically to resist the marauding armies of Louis XIV, was subscribed to by the king of Spain, the Emperor of Germany and by William, Prince of Orange. The nominal head of the Treaty powers was Pope Innocent XI. 

So, rather than being an enemy of the pope, as Orange mythology asserts, "King Billy" was the pope's ally when, in November 1688, he invaded England and his armies were partially provisioned and equipped by the powers of the Augsberg Treaty - and he had the official backing of the Roman Catholic church! Contrary to myth, when they fought in the Battle of the Boyne on 30 June and 1 July 1690, King Billy was an ally of the pope and King James an ally of the pope's most bitter enemy, Louis of France. Indeed, when news of King William's victory over King James at the Boyne percolated through to Rome the pope ordered the singing of a special Te Deum in St. Peter's and similar celebrations and rejoicings were held in Catholic churches in Madrid, Brussels and Vienna.

James was a Catholic, of course, and William a Protestant but, as always, the politics and economics underlying their conflict rose above religion.

Religious liberty

What about the notion that King Billy established religious liberty in Ireland and saved the Protestants from persecution? Again, Orange fable stands historical fact on its head.

It was James, as the legitimate incumbent of the English throne, who signed the Acts of the Dublin Parliament, giving freedom of religion to all citizens. King Billy, too, when he agreed the Treaty of Limerick in October 1691, accepted that the various religious denominations should continue to enjoy the freedom of religious worship established in the reign of Charles II and under the Acts of the Dublin Parliament agreed by James. Later he established the Episcopalian Church and effectively outlawed not only Catholicism but Presbyterianism -  the religion of the great majority of Protestants in Ireland.

A Presbyterian clergyman in 1691 was liable on conviction of delivering a sermon or celebrating the Lord's Supper to a term of imprisonment and fine of £100 and they were similarly punished for performing marriage rites. There are many recorded convictions for these "offences" during the period, especially in the counties of Antrim and Down. In 1694 the Williamite government passed a Test Act which effectively precluded Presbyterians from offices under the Crown and a further Act of 1713 set a punishment of imprisonment for Presbyterians convicted of schoolteaching and banned the marriage of Presbyterians and members of the Established church.

The History of Irish Presbyterianism gives the political and economic reasons for the persecution thus:

Presbyterians, having no political power, had to submit to political persecutions. The feudal system which transferred ownership of the soil from the toiler to the landlord was one of many evils introduced by the power of England.

King Billy was the chief agent of that feudal power which persecuted, viciously and equally, both Catholic and Presbyterian in Ireland.

Driven out of Ireland

Such was the "civil and religious liberty" enjoyed by the then, as now, numerically strongest Protestant denomination in Ireland that, in the first half of the eighteenth century, almost a quarter of a million Ulster Presbyterians were driven out of the country. These went mainly to America, where many played a distinguished role in the war of the American colonists to gain political and economic independence from England.

On both sides of today's sectarian divide it is ordinary working people, usually the very poorest, who are the victims of both the republican and loyalist myths. The hate mongers and fable peddlers don't live in the slums and are rarely victims of the violence they so actively promote.

When Presbyterians march to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne on "The Twelfth" and the victory of King Billy over his equally degenerate father-in-law, King James, they are commemorating a victory which was as opposed to the interests of their forbears in 1690 as it is to their own class interests in 1985.

Richard Montague

Belfast Branch WSP