Freedom as non-domination (2025)

From the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The historical influence of republicanism upon socialist thinking has been somewhat obscured, though recent works such as William Clare Roberts’ Marx’s Inferno and Bruno Leipold’s Citizen Marx have done much to help bring this relation back into the light. What is distinctive about the republican tradition is its conception of freedom, which differs from the one most commonly used today. Republican ideas about freedom were picked up and adapted by early socialists.

Freedom from and freedom to

Introductions to political or social freedom often start with Isaiah Berlin’s essay Two Concepts of Liberty. This article will follow the convention and begin here, not because there is anything uniquely faultless about Berlin’s essay, but because it has become the paradigmatic statement of the modern view of liberty. Berlin distinguishes between two ways of thinking about freedom, which he labels ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. In secondary texts this distinction is sometimes explained as being the difference between ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from’, but this does not really capture two distinct concepts just two different ways of talking about the same thing – for example, the ‘freedom to’ enjoy a quiet space is also at the same time the ‘freedom from’ the interference of noisy neighbours.

While freedom in the negative sense can straightforwardly be understood as an absence of constraint or interference, Berlin’s positive freedom is a little harder to pin down. If we think of positive freedom as being about self-mastery of our internal life, we still have something that can be collapsed into negative freedom. The mastery of physiological compulsion can still be thought of as the overcoming of interference or constraints, and so a type of negative freedom. Instead of being about self-mastery we can think of positive freedom as being about self-realisation and self-perfection. Positive freedom can be understood as overcoming the constraints or barriers that obstruct us from the realisation of our own full potential. Only by living the most fulfilling version of ourselves do we become truly free. On this account, freedom is not an absence but an end-state or achievement. As summarised by Quentin Skinner in A Third Concept of Liberty:

‘… what underlies these theories of positive liberty is the belief that human nature has an essence, and that we are free if and only if we succeed in realising that essence in our lives. This enables us to see that there will be as many different interpretations of positive liberty as there are different views about the moral character of humankind. Suppose you accept the Christian view that the essence of our nature is religious, and thus that we attain our highest ends if and only if we consecrate our lives to God. Then you will believe that, in the words of Thomas Cranmer, the service of God “is perfect freedom”. Or suppose you accept the Aristotelian argument that man is a political animal, the argument restated as a theory of freedom by Hannah Arendt in Between Past and Future (1961). Then you will believe that, as Arendt maintains, “freedom . . . and politics coincide” and that “this freedom is primarily experienced in action”.’

Berlin, who was writing during the Cold War and in opposition to Stalinism, highlights how this positive conception of freedom could be open to abuse. It leaves itself open to paternalistic and authoritarian interpretations. If freedom amounts to the achievement of our true potential or real interests, the question arises as to what these ‘real’ interests really are. If real interests do not have to be something that an agent is conscious of then the coercive interference from a higher social power could be a way of forcing people to be free. Says Berlin:

‘… George Orwell is excellent on this. People say “I express your real wishes. You may think that you know what you want, but I, the Fuhrer, we the Party Central Committee, know you better than you know yourself, and provide you with what you would ask for if you recognised your “real” needs.’

This is not to say, as is sometimes claimed, that Berlin thought that every use of the concept of positive freedom was a concealed attempt at manipulation and that we should therefore only use the negative conception. His claim was that historically the positive conception had been misused more often and with more devastating results. The negative conception of freedom was also open to misuse:

‘…Negative liberty is twisted when I am told that liberty must be equal for the tigers and for the sheep and that this cannot be avoided even if it enables the former to eat the latter if coercion by the state is not to be used. Of course unlimited liberty for capitalists destroys the liberty of the workers, unlimited liberty for factory-owners or parents will allow children to be employed in the coal-mines. Certainly the weak must be protected against the strong, and liberty to that extent be curtailed. Negative liberty must be curtailed if positive liberty is to be sufficiently realised; there must be a balance between the two, about which no clear principles can be enunciated. Positive and negative liberty are both perfectly valid concepts, but it seems to me that historically more damage has been done by pseudo-positive than by pseudo-negative liberty in the modern world.’

Ancient Rome

Having a grasp of these two common ways of thinking about freedom we can now introduce a third conception, which is commonly referred to as ‘republican’ or ‘neo-roman’ freedom. This way of thinking about freedom has been bought back into the public consciousness largely thanks to the work of historian of ideas Quentin Skinner and the political philosopher Philip Pettit. It can be thought of as ‘freedom as non-domination’ or ‘freedom as independence’. This republican concept of freedom can be directly tracked back to the Digest of Roman law. Here it is stated that ‘the fundamental division within the law of persons is that all men and women are either free or are slaves’ and that ‘Slavery is an institution of the law of nations by which someone is, contrary to nature, subjected to the dominion of someone else’. From this we can get a definition of what it means to be a free person within a society. A free person is someone who is not under the dominion of anyone else and can act on their own accord. As Livy, the Roman historian who served as an inspiration for Machiavelli and other 16th century Florentine republicans, put it – to be free was ‘to be in your own power’ and not dependent on the will of anybody else.

The key difference between republican and negative freedom can be illustrated in this way: On the negative conception of freedom a slave who is not interfered with, and left to do as they please, is free. While on the republican conception what makes someone free is not the absence of interference but the absence of domination. Even though a slave may be left to go about as they please, at any point they could be interfered with according to the arbitrary whims of their master. The knowledge that arbitrary interference can be applied at any point is enough to be a restriction to liberty, behaviour and comment must continually be self-monitored so as to avoid the sanction of the master. On the republican account, freedom is a status relation within a society that makes it impossible to be the helpless victim of arbitrary interference. As Sidney wrote in his 1698 Discourses Concerning Government, ‘he is a slave who serves the best and gentlest man in the world, as well as he who serves the worst; and he does serve him if he must obey his commands, and depends upon his will.’

In the English Civil War, disputes between Crown and Parliament drew upon this language of dependency and dominion, drawing upon common-law texts which had their basis in the Roman Digest. The effect of Royal prerogative was that those living under the king were reduced to a state of servitude. This was not because of any actual or threatened interference, but because the continuation of rights and freedoms was dependent on the goodwill of the King, and this could be withdrawn at any point. It was this state of dependency, of being under the dominion of the King, that was the threat to freedom. When King Charles was executed, the charge was that he had ruled arbitrarily and so tyrannically. The Act that abolished the monarchy declared that the effect of prerogative had been ‘to oppress and impoverish and enslave the subject’.

As well as being central to the English revolution, these ideas would surface again a century later in the French and American revolutions. The central idea was that it was only possible to have individual freedom through being a citizen of a self-ruling republic. To live under the dependence of a monarch, or in the American case under a colonial power, is to be reduced to the status of a slave. This understanding of freedom as being a state of independence left some controversy as to the normative status of industrial production and wage labour in the early years of the American republic. Wage labour was seen as being a state of dependency and so a form of unfreedom which was degrading to the moral health of the nation. ‘Free labour’, either in the form of small-scale production where the producers also owned their means of production or that of independent homesteaders was seen as being more conducive to building a strong and resilient nation.

Freedom as emancipation

Reaction against revolutionary and democratic movements in France and America saw the development and spread of the idea of freedom as non-interference. This, together with the irresistible rise of international commerce with its permanent dependence on wage labour, saw a decline in republican ways of thinking about freedom by the late 18th century. The concept of negative freedom, in the form of voluntarist ideas about freedom of contract, was one that was more suitable for the needs of the capitalist class. Though republican ideas about freedom would continue to persist in the labour and nascent socialist movements.

‘Something of slavery still remains… something of freedom is yet to come’ wrote the labour republican Ira Steward in 1873. Early socialists would continue to use the language of ‘wage-slavery’, ‘self-emancipation’ and other tropes drawn from radical republican heritage.

But they did not just adopt republican ideas wholesale; they responded to and critiqued them. Republican language focussed on an undifferentiated ‘people’ as the basis for a self-governing republic, socialist language on the proletariat as the group-agent capable of changing society. The first English translation of Communist Manifesto was in a newspaper entitled The Red Republican, and here the difference between radical republican and socialist ideas can be seen in contrast side by side. Labour republicans, such as the Knights of Labor, sought to lessen the dependence of the working class through the development of workers co-ops, etc. Marx’s Capital can be understood as an intervention within the labour movement against the prominence of such ideas. Socialist critique argued that it was not enough for individual groups of workers to separately own their own enterprises, market competition would still present itself as a form of impersonal domination.

Understanding freedom as non-domination provides a rich foundation for criticising capitalist society. The formally ‘free’ contract that the wage labourer enters into turns out to be a one-way ticket into a relation of dependency. Employers impose the same kind of arbitrary interference upon workers as kings on their subjects. The importance of non-domination in the foundations of socialism is why it has to be a movement for collective self-emancipation and why authoritarian attempts to impose it on an unwilling or passive population would be doomed to failure. Rather than being the ‘real interests’ of the proletariat imposed by an authoritarian state, freedom as non-domination is a collective good. The extent to which it is achieved depends on the extent to which it has been secured for others.

DJP

The Socialist Forum: The Question of Republicanism. (1931)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are asked what is our view of Republicanism and of the Spanish revolution.

Our object as a Socialist Party is to get Socialism, and we are not much concerned with the question which is the better way of running’ capitalism, by means of a monarchy or by means of a republic. The purpose in both cases is, from the capitalist standpoint, to have a figure-head in whom the majority of the population will repose confidence. As far as the workers are concerned, it is a distinction without a difference. In Spain the capitalist system will be carried on in much the same way as before, and in the main by the same set of politicians. Our objection to Republican presidents is the same as our objection to kings, i.e., that workers who still believe in the fiction that affairs are run by the titular heads of the republics or monarchies are not yet fit to take on the responsible task of understanding political and social problems themselves and of organising to control affairs collectively in their interests as a class.

Editorial: Neither monarchy nor republic but socialism (2022)

Editorial from the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many UK people will have struggled last month to escape the stadium-volume hullabaloo as the superannuated CEO of The Firm finally hung up her tiara and departed from her pampered life of ‘devoted service’, triggering a long-prepared barrage of nauseating hagiographies, crocodile tears and posturing TV gravitas. At least workers got an extra bank holiday out of it, which helped put the fun back into ‘state funeral’. Meanwhile certain activists, as reported in the Guardian, were keeping a very low profile, for fear of being trolled, cancelled or petrol bombed for the political viewpoint that, for the time being anyway, dared not speak its name: republicanism, the quest for the abolition of the monarchy. And this despite membership applications for Republic getting a sudden big boost, amid breathless speculation that, while Madge’s invincible popularity had stomped good and hard on those pesky anti-royalist weeds, the ascension of the royal Plant Whisperer might have the opposite effect on grass-roots republicanism, and see it shoot up to new and historic Beanstalk heights.

Socialists have a strong aversion to doffing their caps to anyone, especially to someone who thinks they’re superior because their ancestors wore beads in their hair and stole all the common land. We have every sympathy for people who see the monarchy as an absurd and anachronistic feudal cult which fetishises the class system and should have stayed lopped off at the time of the first King Charles. Historians will scratch their heads and wonder how supposedly rational people thought a bejewelled dynastic blow-up doll had any place in an advanced and civilised society. The only problem is, this isn’t an advanced and civilised society, and abolishing the monarchy wouldn’t make it one either. It would merely result in the same capitalist system of brutal class exploitation with some other figurehead at the top, leaving the super-rich class of narcissistic yacht-fanciers entirely free to go about their business of laying waste to the planet.

The monarchy is about as relevant to the lives of working people as Cowes Week or the final rubbish season of Game of Thrones. It may be a relic from the feudal period, but so are umbrellas and Morris Dancing. We say, instead of spending your waking hours trying to get to where you already are, minus a bit of silly made-up ritual, better to devote time to the vastly more important task of promoting the idea that graces the cover and forms the theme of this special issue: what we mean by socialism. Because socialism is all about where humans can go in the future, once we’ve broken the armlock that the money and market system puts us all in. Would there be kings and queens in this socialist future? Absolutely, in historical re-enactments or period film sets, at fancy dress parties, in chess and on the decks of playing cards, and in fairy stories of long ago and far away.

Editorial: Queen Capital’s jubilee (2022)

Editorial from the June 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism, as we have pointed out many times, is a class-divided society, where there is a capitalist class who own the means of production and derive their wealth from the working class, who own no or little property and are forced to work for a wage or salary. Huge disparities in wealth and income between the two classes are the inevitable outcome. In the UK, the most visible manifestation of this class divide is the royal family, who sit at the apex of the class system. They own large palaces and tracts of land around the country and enjoy luxurious lifestyles, whereas workers live a more frugal existence and have to live in more modest dwellings, in many cases slum housing.

This month the state is holding the queen’s platinum jubilee, celebrating that the monarch has been 70 years on the throne. Showy events, naff TV programmes and local street parties will inevitably be organised. This occasion is an opportunity to reinforce the idea that privilege and hierarchy are part of the natural order of things and to encourage deference among workers towards their superiors. It will also be a festival of nationalism and patriotism, so whether you are a worker struggling on low pay or benefits or you are a billionaire, you can take pride in your great British ‘heritage’.

These celebrations are coming at a time when workers are facing the biggest cost of living crisis for decades. There are royalist supporters who would argue that people need to be cheered up in these hard times. No doubt, a worker who is facing a choice between eating or heating their home will be thrilled to watch some sycophantic arselicker on the television droning on about how wonderful the queen and her family are. The capitalist state has graciously allowed the workers an extra day off from their daily toil. How very generous.

Some opponents of royalty, including some on the left, complain that the royal family leeches off the taxpayers and that they should be made to pay their fair share of tax. This misses the point somewhat as the tax burden falls on the capitalist class, not the working class. The royals derive their wealth and privileges not from any tax advantages but, as with the rest of the capitalist class, from the surplus value created by the working class.

Some groups, like Republic, advocate the replacement of the monarchy with an elected head of state. This would make no material difference to the lives of workers, as the basis of capitalist society, with its pursuit of profit and exploitation of labour, would remain unchanged. We can see this clearly in countries that do have an elected head of state. In France for example, there have been strikes by public sector workers and protests by the gilets jaunes movement and in the USA there has been industrial action among the Walmart workers. In both countries, poverty exists alongside riches, as in the UK.

So the solution is not merely abolishing the royal family, but the economic system upon which their power and privileges are based. A system that exploits and oppresses workers and is responsible for the climate crisis. We argue that the world’s workers need to organise democratically to replace it with socialism, a world of free access and common ownership. Anyway – enjoy your extra day off.

Correspondence: Socialism, the King and the House of Lords (1934)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent asks the following questions:— ,

  Will you please define the S.P.G.B.'s attitude towards the question of Royalty and Republicanism under a Socialist State? Also how would the S.P.G.B. deal with the House of Lords?

Reply.

Whatever part the institution of kingship has played in the past history of the human race and whatever part it now plays under the social system known as capitalism, neither monarchism nor republicanism will be issues under Socialism. The original functions of kingship have already long been lost and are only saved from oblivion because the memory of them is preserved in certain ancient names, ceremonials and pale imitations. Nowadays, although King George V of England and Emperor William II of Germany, and Emperor Nicholas of Russia and the President of the French Republic, went forth. to the seat of war in 1914, nobody seriously believed that they were there to lead or to direct the huge fighting forces of the capitalist State. It was just a piece of make-believe, but a highly important piece. Capitalism, both in war and in peace, under a monarchy and under a republic, inevitably produces a never-ending conflict between the classes—the owning class and the property-less class—and between sections of the same class. It is therefore essential that the capitalist class shall be able to cover up the yawning gulf between these antagonistic classes by throwing over it the cloak of national unity. This is one of the principal functions of the Church, and, above all, of the monarchy, or the Republican President. Surrounding the King or the President, the capitalists carefully build up a structure of ceremonies, hallowed by tradition, glorified by a lavish display of riches, and sanctified by the Church and the capitalist political parties.

Take away the class antagonisms by taking away the private ownership of the means of life and then the monarchist or republican edifice will be unnecessary. The members of society will be bound together by the tie of mutual interest. They will no longer have to be forced into a mockery of unity by the gloved hand covering the mailed fist.

It will be seen that the attitude of the Socialist is not at all that of the republican. The S.P.G.B. would not support capitalist republicans in an attempt to overthrow monarchy any more than it would help to defend the monarchy against republicanism. When, three years ago, the Spanish monarchy was overthrown, the reformist parties in Spain, as in England (the I.L.P., for example), were overjoyed at what they supposed was the inauguration of a new and better system of society. The S.P.G.B. declined to participate in the celebrations, for we know that it is immaterial to the working class whether they live under a capitalist monarchy or a capitalist republic.

The House of Lords presents no serious problem. When there is a majority of Socialists, politically organised for the purpose of achieving Socialism, the House of Lords will not be permitted to stand in the way. It, like the trappings of monarchy or republic, will have no function to perform under Socialism. It will end when capitalism ends.

The idea that the House of Lords will prove a final bulwark of capitalism is based on illusion. When the capitalists can no longer obtain a majority for their candidates at Parliamentary elections they will know that an unrepresentative body like the House of Lords will not be able to help them. It will prove a broken reed, if ever there was one.

Ed. Comm.

Kings and Cabbages (1969)

From the July 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British monarchy, which in theory is divine, eternal, and immutable, has changed as much as many other institutions of privileged society. Today, the royal family is a pretty bloodless lot, and no matter how much the Duke of Edinburgh may play for the headlines with cheeky, irascible turns of phrase, they know their place — and keep it.

This was not always so. The Prince Regent was active in the political battles and intrigues of his day and did his best to hasten his own ascension by aggravating his father’s illness. But a monarch actively involved had to take the consequences and the London mob was not slow to show its disapproval of the man who became George IV.

Victoria also was more than inclined to meddle. She tried to obstruct Liberal policy after the 1880 election and conspired against Gladstone’s government of 1886. She condemned the cause of female suffrage as a ‘mad, wicked folly’. But she was sustained by the propaganda which represented her as the embodiment of the growing wealth and power of the capitalist class of Victorian Britain. Workers endured their miseries, children starved, soldiers died, praying for long life for the queen. This did much to refurbish the image of the monarchy, and to re-establish it as a propaganda weapon of the ruling class.

Even so, Victoria came in for some criticism when, after her husband’s death, she withdrew from wholehearted devotion to her job. When her son, Edward VII, came to the throne the monarchy became associated with the dubious activities of high society — gambling, overeating, and of course the prodigious sexual adventures of the king himself who, despite this hectic existence, was lovingly known among the slum-dwelling proletariat as 'Teddy’. The reign of Edward VII did little to improve the stability of the monarchy.

The ruling class were clearly determined that there was to be no more of this and when George V succeeded he did so as a ‘constitutional monarch—in other words, one who did as he was told. It is true that he was drawn into the fringes of the bitter struggle between Lloyd George and the 1914-18 generals but George V never committed himself and certainly did not try, once the politicians had won, to jeopardise their victory. As a whole his reign made the monarchy more secure; and this at a time during which, in other parts of the world, five emperors, eight kings, and eighteen minor dynasties disappeared.

Reluctant hero 
George V had little talent or ability (left wingers used to call him George the Fish) and the fact that he unwaveringly trod the ‘constitutional’ path was enough for this arid man to be written into British history as a ‘good’ king. His son, Edward VIII, conformed to the same requirements and emphasised the fact that the capitalist class virtually employed the monarch as their figurehead and super salesman, when he was dismissed from the job because he wanted to choose his wife for himself.

The Abdication might have been a serious blow to the royal institution and this was the signal for the public relations boys to go to work. The unfortunate subject of their labours was George VI, who seemed to be a shy, awkward, and nervous, but likeable, fellow and who was certainly a reluctant hero. This delicate man had to work hard to plug the holes in the dyke and his employers made sure they got their money's worth, subjecting him to extremities of working conditions which would have provoked the most moderate trade unionist into an immediate strike. When the press prostitutes wrote that the strain of being king killed George VI, they were probably, for once, telling the truth.

Elizabeth II has followed the same well trodden path as her father. Indeed, so colourless has been her devotion to the job that men like Malcolm Muggeridge and John Carigg (when he was Lord Altrincham), who cannot be described as fiery revolutionaries, were once moved to protest at the regularly inane platitudes of her speeches. But this, of course, is what she is paid for; a special Coronation issue of the Economist, published on May 30, 1953, made the point, delicately but firmly, when it said:

  If, in the person of Elizabeth II, Her Majesty is more majestic than in the person of the great Victoria, it is because she seeks to rule only in the hearts of her people.

As any reader of the daily press knows, the Duke of Edinburgh has done his best to have the best of both worlds. Naturally it is perfectly permissible for him, in his capacity of chief export salesman for British capitalism, to criticise British export techniques and to tell businessmen to get their fingers out (how they laughed at that during the tea-breaks in the factories and typing pools!). It is even more acceptable for him to be rude about strikers and importunate students.

But even the Duke must not overstep the boundaries of his job and Philip has run into serious trouble over his attitude to the press. At one time he kept up a continuous campaign against newspapermen, covering the range from publicly saying that the Daily Express was a 'bloody awful’ paper to the childish prank of turning on a lawn sprinkler at the Chelsea Flower Show and soaking some nearby reporters.

The press does not normally take this kind of treatment lying down. The Daily Mirror rounded off its efforts in the Profumo affair with its famous front page denial of the rumour that the Duke had been another of Christine Keeler’s customers — a denial which was obviously intended to add strength to the rumour. About the same time the Sunday Express published a remarkable middle-page article which attacked Philip for his statements about the press and on other issues. The article ended by telling the Duke to lay off and warning him that if he did not the Express had some nasty facts to reveal about him.

Since then the publicity about the royal family, which has sometimes plumbed the deepest depths of monotonous stupidity, has fallen off. The comparatively low cost of Prince Charles’s investiture — £200,000 — continues the trend although it is probable that, after the investiture, we are in for another increase in publicity, with almost every newspaper and magazine competing for the silliest story about the prince’s good looks, wisdom, grace, athletic ability, courage, erudition, wit, artistry, generosity, modesty . . .

Riddled with lies

One thing which is certain is that when Charles comes to the throne we shall get a lot of nonsense about Charles I and II, all of it riddled with lies about the Stuarts being a lot of dashing cavaliers whose reigns were notable as a rollicking merry time for people of England. It is astonishing, how even the more sober organs of capitalist opinion dish out this kind of tripe — that same coronation issue of the Economist, for example, came out with this drool about Elizabeth II:

  Queens have been lucky for this country. and young queens especially. By name, Her. Majesty recalls the magical springtime of Elizabeth 1. But the parallel is closer— and equally happy—with Victoria, and either augury gives ample reason to salute Quern Elizabeth II with high hearts and hopes.

It does not need an elephantine memory to recall the super-crises and the disastrous (from the Economist's point of view) decline in the fortunes of British capitalism which have marked the years since Elizabeth II became queen. And it does not need any great powers of reasoning to conclude from this, that the personality who happens to be on the throne at any one time does not influence the course of events of capitalism.

To many people, this is a clinching argument in favour of a republic. If a monarch does nothing, they argue, if he has no influence over events, wouldn’t it be better to abolish the institution and replace it with a president who would at least be an active and participating politician? There might be something to be said for this argument were it not for the fact that presidents, too, are impotent in face of capitalism’s anarchies; they also react to events with the additional unfortunate (for them) result that all too often they lose their job if they react in the wrong way or the events are too fierce.

In truth, republics are no more stable, no more prosperous, no more controlled, than monarchies. The lives of workers in republics, like France and America, are generally the same as those of workers in monarchies like Britain and the Scandinavian countries — and any differences are not caused by the differing constitutions. Republics need have no less flummery and ceremony than monarchies and their state occasions can cost as much (as if that matters) as any coronation or royal investiture.

Working class problems are not caused by the existence of an aristocracy but by the private property society which might need an aristocrat as a ceremonial figurehead. Workers should remember this, if they decide (as they should) that they have no cause to wave a flag for their kings, queens, and princes (although they might go along to boggle at the stupefying grandeur of it all). But it is important that they should abstain for the right reasons, and see clearly that the cause of their poverty and exploitation is not to be found in palaces. To put it another way, until the working class stop acting like cabbages we shall continue to have, in one form or another, our kings.

Ivan

The Uses of Monarchy (1958)

From the March 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quite a thing has been going on recently concerning a picture of the Princess Margaret. This is virtually a repetition of what went on over the same painter’s portraits of the Queen and her husband, and there is no need here to add comments or repeat arguments. What is of greater interest is the trend of which this tiny storm is part: that is, that the Royal Family to-day is as constant a news-feature as football or film-star gossip and is, in fact, more popular than royalty has been since the nation-state began. When you consider that fewer than ninety years ago the reigning monarch was tipped as the last, and a vigorous republican movement was being led by prominent politicians and writers, it is obvious that the British monarchy has somehow had a boost in recent times.

Kings and Queens, traditionally, are romantic figures, the subjects of an inculcated mythology from everybody’s childhood. Every fairy tale revolves round them: once upon a time there was a Beautiful Princess or a Handsome Prince or a King who was Also a Magician. Elementary-school history devolves upon them: Merry Monarch, Good Queen, Peacemaker, Bluff King (never hooligan or wife-beater). For all that, the fact is that only for the last twenty years—if as long—has the Crown been really popular in Britain, and for a large part of the time it was very unpopular. Some idea of the change in the climate of opinion was given last year by the frenzy against critics of the Royal bearing and diction: the young Queen Victoria was ridiculed by cartoonists, and George V openly disparaged in the Press on his accession.

The idea of the monarch as head of the nation is a modern one, belonging to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and depending on the Crown’s holding no political power. Mediaeval kingship was a different thing. The king was supreme overlord, apex of the pyramid of feudal owning interests; his power was actual, deriving from and integral to the feudal system. This kind of monarchy declined as feudalism declined; as rival interests grew, the king became merely head of one of the contending factions. Edward IV, Richard II, Henrys Four, Five and Six were dependent on their factions, and their successors reasserted monarchy and appeared strong kings for a time only because the factions had exhausted themselves fighting.

The struggle against the monarchy was a vital part of the struggle of the rising commercial class. For half a century it held back for the struggles against the Papacy and Spain, but the storm was gathering before Elizabeth I’s reign ended. The bourgeoisie was a revolutionary class, needing control of the powers of government: the execution of Charles I was, in fact, the decapitation of an epoch.

After the swan-sang of the Restoration and James II's short, pitiful reign, the Whigs had one political aim above all others: to keep the Stuarts, with their feudal traditions and their Papal associations, off the throne. Even William III, brought and maintained by the Whigs as mere figurehead, was never pushed too far by them for fear he should name a Stuart as his successor.

Thus, the Hanover family was imported to be the new Crown dynasty, with nothing to commend them and the populace not prepared, as the 1715 and 1745 Rebellions showed, to lift a finger to support them. Drunken, stupid George I, of whom Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote “Our customs and laws were all mysteries to him, which he neither tried to understand, nor was capable of understanding if he endeavoured it.” and Lord Chesterfield said: “The King loved pleasure, and was not delicate in his choice of it. No woman came amiss to him, if they were very willing and very fat"; George II, full of senseless cruelty; George III, shaking hands with the trees in Windsor Park. Of the whole bunch, indeed, Sir Charles Petrie wrote in his Monarchy in the Twentieth Century: “There had clearly been a streak of abnormality . . . from the beginning.” A nineteenth-century poet, Landor, expressed it more feelingly:

“When George the Fourth from earth descended.
Thank God the line of Georges ended.”

However, it was with the Georges on the throne that the modern concept of monarchy developed. Bolingbroke’s Idea of a Patriot King, published in 1749, proposed (although Bolingbroke had the Stuarts in mind) the monarchy as the embodiment of national ideals, and after the final collapse of Jacobite opposition, this became accepted as the real function of monarchy. In fact, there were no interests now that the monarch could represent other than the “national” ones—that is, those of the propertied classes as a whole. No longer an overlord, removed from control of armed forces, set up in maintenance of bourgeois interests against those of the old order, the king had become King Capital’s torch-bearer.

Whatever remained of royal power and prestige sank to rock-bottom in Victoria’s early years. Her predecessors had shown as much interest as they were permitted in government; Victoria’s acquiescence established the convention that the Crown did not take part any more. The working class had little reason for enthusiasm, and the ruling class no longer had to support this dynasty in case something worse came along. When Victoria withdrew from public life after her husband’s death, a strong movement headed by Thackeray, J. R. Green. Morley. Joseph Chamberlain, Bradlaugh and several more asked if the monarchy were necessary at all. The movement faded, principally because the Empire-builders found the Crown too useful a figurehead, but the Crown had learned that it ought to show itself in public.

For that reason, the last years of Victoria's reign had royal display in plenty, and Edward VII gained still greater benefit from pageantry. It is doubtful if the monarchy became much more popular in Edward’s time, except among the beer-swilling and odds-laying sections, but he did open an important new field for the ruling class by carrying regal display—and with it, British interests— abroad. His visit to Paris, starting with compliments to actresses and ending with cheering crowds in the streets, in 1903 prepared the ground for the Franco-British Entente. Lansdowne and Grey conducted the negotiations, but the French President spoke of the “happy impetus” given to them by Edward's window-show. Subsequent monarchs and their families have done as much and more.

There has been one other important influence in the twentieth century in securing the position of the British monarchy: the rise of rival nations with other kinds of figureheads. First the Kaiser, then Mussolini. Hitler and Stalin caused the thought that, if this kind of thing were the modem alternative, there was something to be said for the British monarchy after all. George V was never greatly popular, but in the nineteen-thirties he was almost the only national figurehead in Europe whose public utterances were not inflammatory harangues on war and encirclement.

The real reason why the King never did so. apart from whatever personal inclination he may have had, was simply that it was not his place to speak as a leader or to state foreign policy. The monarchy in modem times is devoid of political power or autonomy. The last time a British monarch expressed himself independently on a political matter was when Edward VIII showed concern over the slums of Glasgow and South Wales; few people believed that the King’s wish to marry Mrs. Simpson was the only issue in the constitutional crisis of 1936. However, many people must have been given food for thought by the fact that potentially the most popular of all British monarchs was dismissed, as summarily as a worker from a factory, when he refused to toe the line laid down by the Cabinet on behalf of the ruling class.

If there was doubt among pro-capitalist politicians in the nineteenth century of the usefulness of monarchy, there is none today. The Conservative Party has never wavered in supporting monarchy, of course; and, since the first Ministers in the first Labour Government made their low obeisances, nor has the Labour Party. Indeed, in the Abdication crisis the Labour Party was solidly behind the Conservative Cabinet, and the Daily Herald's commentary was undistinguishable from that of the Mail or the Express. And since the war there has been ample opportunity—a royal wedding, an accession, a coronation, and a great deal of subsidiary display—to see the cap-touching and sycophancy which make plain the allegiance of a party which initially gained support by big talk about the abolition of privilege.

The only Labour criticism of royalty in fairly recent times was made from the viewpoint of what was good for Capitalism. Shortly after the coronation of George VI, Mr. Attlee spoke of the need for the Crown to come down to the man in the street a bit more—and found Conservatives agreeing heartily (“For them he must be no mere king in a gilt State coach.” wrote Wilson Harris in The Spectator). That policy was pursued with a vengeance, less with George VI himself than in the preparation of his daughter for the throne. No monarch ever started off so well for popularity: a popularity favoured by youth, romance and motherhood and skilfully fostered by every newspaper in the land (most of all, incidentally, by the pro-Labour Mirror and Pictorial).

The present Royal Family comes as close as any capitalist politician could desire to the modern monarchical ideal. No interference in politics, but a worthy interest in science; admirably suited to gather prestige abroad; most of all, a continual and absorbing attraction to the working class. There have been hints recently that the publicity has been overdone, that there have been too many chambermaids’ reminiscences and news items like the Sunday Pictorial’s announcement that the Queen's bust-line had improved to maintain the essential dignity of royalty. Nevertheless, the Crown today as never before embodies the national ideals—the ideals, that is, of the national ruling class.

But does monarchy serve any interest for ordinary people, beyond giving a holiday and a pageant now and then? It may be said that if it does them no good, it does them no harm either. If it were true that to fill people’s heads with nonsense did no harm, that might be so; and most of it is nonsense. There is no reason for thinking that the Queen and her husband are not pleasant decent people. If things were otherwise, however, the truth is that they would still be presented as paragons. Some monarchs have been cruel, irresponsible and contemptibly low, but their subjects have still been asked for reverence. Within a week of Edward VIII’s abdication his shortcomings were common knowledge, and Sir Charles Petrie (in the book already quoted) hinted at a strain of abnormality in Edward from the Hanover ancestry; would those things have been said if Edward had remained the King?

It is not the monarch that is at fault in all this, but the social system which needs a shining symbol; where there is no monarchy, something else has to be held up to dazzle the dispossessed. The man with the flag and the girl admiring the pictures in her magazine have the light full in their eyes just now—but they need only look away for a moment to see who holds it up, and why.

Robert Barltrop

The forgotten tradition of British anti-monarchism (2002)

From the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The old Plantagenets brought us chains; 

the Tudors frowns and Scars, 

The Stuarts brought us lives of shame; 

the Hanoverians wars; 

But his brave man, with his strong arm, 

brought freedom to our Lives 

-The best of Princes England had, 

was the Farmer of St. Ives” 

(Lines on Oliver Cromwell in Ramsay Churchyard, Huntingdonshire,1848)

Such sentiment praising Cromwell and the Civil War dismissal of royal tyranny was commonplace amongst the political radicals of the early 19th century. In fact, the popular memory of the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which toppled James II remained strong from the late-17th century. In large part this was due to the continued threat of royal power exercised within the lauded British “constitution”.

Unacceptable to the more progressive elements of the ruling class (still largely landed however), such remembrance of the “Interregnum” (the euphemism by which the Civil War period has become known) served as an ideological weapon in the struggle between royal and parliamentary authority. From the 1770s such anti-royal (though not literally republican) sentiment became intertwined with a political radicalism associated with John Wilkes and others who sought an extension of the suffrage to secure parliamentary dominance over royal authority. Inevitably the working class began to develop a political platform more independent of such “gentleman leaders”, especially during the period following the French Revolution. Thereafter, a popular working class platform combined the “natural rights” republicanism of Thomas Paine with “popular constitutionalism”, a crafty linguistic trick whereby radicals sought to place their demands for democratisation of the British political structure within a legal claim to their “right” to representation within the ancient constitution. Demands for such a constitution and rights, of course, were merely rhetorical flourish, using the prevalent language of the ruling class's defence of its challenge to royal authority from the 17th century.

Within this challenge to the British state by the working class in the early 19th century was a crude threat to privilege and expenditure on the throne and the vast sums spent on aristocratic pensions, palace building and the civil list. The crown, however, as an institution remained outside of this criticism.

What has been noted by many observers has been the absence of republicanism in British history. This is of course not strictly true. The regicide of the Civil War may be regarded as republicanism of sorts, despite being pursued within contemporary religious concerns. The historian Christopher Hill has established the Civil War as the British “bourgeois revolution”, a struggle from which the interests of the rising British commercial and financial interests emerged dominant, i.e. capitalist interests, although the clash of interests between land and capital is not always clear cut and mutually exclusive – a good book on this into the nineteenth century is John Saville, The Consolidation of the Capitalist State (1994).

It is true though that a republican movement did not grow up in Britain as it did in other European states in the nineteenth century but then, as seems fairly obvious, it didn't need to after the defeat of royal authority in the 17th century. Indeed, the early nature of Britain's bourgeois revolution meant that capitalist growth and secular control of its perceived interests went hand in hand with a “constitutional monarchy”, i.e. a monarchy that was increasingly impotent as political force but emerging as a convenient “impartial” figurehead.

Concocted pageantry

With this month's royal jubilee we are being subjected to no end of absurd and expensive pageantry with the usual round of royal documentaries, all giving the line that our glorious monarch is the centre of our “identity” and political stability. Such criticism as emerges will be directed at whether the Queen should step aside for Charles (a debate on the radio as I write) or some such trivia. The crucial impression that is supposed to emerge is that this pageantry has been around for centuries and is bound up with our “national identity”. However, as we have just seen, from the 17th to the mid-19th century, a critique of royalty operated in the political mainstream that attacked the morality of some members of the royal house and the expense of royalty. Although not approaching anything like an ideological commitment to republicanism, let alone a socialist analysis, its existence nonetheless challenges the myth of British politics as shrouded in a deferential and stable past. Such pageantry as we see today is no more than the creation of late 19th century efforts to establish an imperial and domestic symbolic loyalty around a “regal” figurehead external to “politics”.

David Cannadine and Eric Hobsbawm, amongst others, have described this “invention of tradition”. More recent research has gone further and suggested that a strand of “anti-monarchism” has persisted from the late-18th century through to the present day. Anthony Taylor in Down with the Crown (1999) has pointed to the presence of a minority republican radical grouping that surfaced into something like a popular movement, around the liberal Sir Charles Dilke, at the time of Victoria's retreat from public duties in the early 1870s (here it reveals its weakness, ironically being dependent on royal retreat rather than presence). He also points to a radical opposition in the jubilees of 1887 and 1897, which have been seen overwhelmingly as examples of popular frenzy for the crown and empire (seeing it as either a sign of strength or weakness of the late 19th century British empire). A 'Jubilee Version of “God Save the Queen”' from the 1880s, for example, runs:

Lord help our precious Queen, / Noble, but rather mean, / Lord help the Queen. / Keep Queen VicToryous, / From work laborious / Let snobs uproarious, / Slaver the Queen.

A critique of privilege passed from mid-19th century radicalism into the Liberal-Labour politics of the early 20th century. It is from this period that the image of the modern monarch as the impartial figurehead we know today emerged. The attack on privilege increasingly centred on the House of Lords as the practicalities of reformism and the need for patronage impacted on the nascent republican sentiment in the Labour Party. Opposition to the crown was thereafter the territory of the extreme left of capitalism, largely restricted to the “Communist” Party (see, for example, T.A. Jackson's The Jubilee –  and How from 1837 and continuing the old radical attack on expense).

Closer to 2002, the popularity of the monarchy has seriously flagged from its post-war heights in 1952 (although the response to the queen mother's death might signal something of a recovery in time for this year's potential squib of a jubilee). Press voyeurism has undermined its previously cultivated image of a wholesome family example. But such criticism rarely gets beyond the banal chat on the relevance of the crown to devolution and the European Union (Tom Nairn's project), although Tony Benn, the Christian radical capitalist of the Labour left, continues to plug a Paineite project to make us “citizens” and not “subjects”.

Socialists, of course, are unconcern as to whether we live in a republic or a constitutional monarchy – capitalism is capitalism whatever its political label. We must, however, point out the worst lies told about the history of our class. Constitutional monarchy has not always been a comfortable political framework for British capitalism and has always had its critics, including a minority of republicans. Socialists desire a good deal more than a mere capitalist republic. Unlike the left of capitalism, we openly advocate common ownership and democratic control which, for the privileged royal parasites, would mean the end of their vast ownership of resources and their place as sources of political deference and patronage. Like the lines daubed during the 1977 farce: “Stuff the Jubilee”.

Colin Skelly