Chapter 11 – Results and Prospects
Part 3
In
the 17th century, in England, feudal production was
dominant. Around 80% of the population was still employed in
agricultural peasant production. But, a merchant class, in the towns
and cities, was growing rapidly, and becoming economically and
socially powerful; in terms of foreign ventures, the existing ruling
class looked to it as a partner in developing colonial empires, and
to finance its activities; and capitalist production was taking hold
in agriculture itself. The bourgeois ideas that flowed from this, and the ability of this rising bourgeois class to mobilise the
peasantry behind them is what determined the dominant economic and
social power that challenged for state power in the English Civil
War.
And,
despite the fact that capitalist production still was not dominant,
by the end of the 17th century, this bourgeois economic
and social power was, by that time, dominant enough to provide the
ruling ideas of society that flowed through its institutions, such as
the universities, which then determined the consciousness of all
those functionaries of the state itself. Its supremacy, and control
of the state is signified by Locke's Second Treatise on
Government, and practically by the Glorious Revolution.
Yet, despite the bourgeoisie being the controlling economic and
social power, and state power being in their hands, they were still
not the controlling governmental power. The parliament, and thereby
the government was still firmly in the grip of the old landed
aristocracy.
Even
at the start of the 19th century, only 2% of the
population, in Britain, had the vote, and that is why, at events such
as the Peterloo Massacre, the crowds comprised not just urban
workers, but also the urban bourgeoisie. Only in 1832, with the
Second Reform Act, does the bourgeoisie, as a whole, exert its
influence, and only after 1848, does the industrial bourgeoisie, with
the backing of the urban proletariat, exert its specific political
power.
“The
Reform Bill of 1831 had been the victory of the whole capitalist
class over the landed aristocracy. The repeal of the Corn Laws was
the victory of the manufacturing capitalist not only over the
landed aristocracy, but over those sections of capitalists, too,
whose interests were more or less bound up with the landed
interest-bankers, stockjobbers, fundholders, etc....
Chartism
was dying out. The revival of commercial prosperity, natural after
the revulsion of 1847 had spent itself, was put down altogether to
the credit of Free Trade. Both these circumstances had turned the
English working class, politically, into the tail of the ‘great
Liberal Party’, the party led by the manufacturers. This
advantage, once gained, had to be perpetuated. And the
manufacturing capitalists, from the Chartist opposition, not to
Free Trade, but to the transformation of Free Trade into the one
vital national question, had learnt, and were learning more and
more, that the middle class can never obtain full social and
political power over the nation except by the help of the working
class.”
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The
state power flows from the economic and social power, which is its
base. The state power is objectively driven to defend and extend the
dominant economic and social relations, because it is on them that
the existence of the state itself depends. And, it is that objective
reality, which conditions the ideology of the state. Yet, a process
of combined and uneven development is also at play here.
In
his Preface to Capital I, Marx discusses the
development of ideas, in this context, and in particular, the
development of political economy in Germany. Even whilst capitalist
production was in its infancy, in Germany, German political economy
was able to skip over the stages of development, on the back of the
development of political economy in France and England, where
capitalist production was more advanced.
“Intrinsically,
it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development
of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of
capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves,
of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable
results. The country that is more developed industrially only
shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.
But
apart from this. Where capitalist production is fully naturalised
among the Germans (for instance, in the factories proper) the
condition of things is much worse than in England, because the
counterpoise of the Factory Acts is wanting. In all other spheres,
we, like all the rest of Continental Western Europe, suffer not
only from the development of capitalist production, but also from
the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern
evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising from
the passive survival of antiquated modes of production, with their
inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer
not only from the living, but from the dead. Le
mort saisit le vif! [The
dead holds the living in his grasp. – formula of French common
law]
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It
is also in this vein that such societies find that they must catch
up, and as Marx says they then suffer the iniquities of capitalism,
and from its inadequate development. Lenin makes the same point
about the development of capitalism in Russia that they were
suffering not just from capitalism but also from not enough
capitalism.
“And
from these principles it follows that the idea of seeking
salvation for the working class in anything save the further
development of capitalism is reactionary.
In countries like Russia, the working class suffers not so much
from capitalism as from the insufficient development of
capitalism. The working class is therefore decidedly
interested in
the broadest, freest and most rapid development of capitalism. The
removal of all the remnants of the old order which are hampering
the broad, free and rapid development of capitalism is of decided
advantage to the working class.”
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When
the economic and social power in society is balanced or generally
weak, this creates the conditions in which the state power itself can
rise up, above society, and exert its influence. It is why
conditions of dual power cannot last for long without one side or the
other taking control. In such conditions, the state power becomes
fused with the governmental power, usually via some kind of coup –
Cromwell's dissolution of parliament, Bonaparte's coup, Lenin's
dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and so on. All were the result of premature political revolutions, which arose before the revolutionary class, and the economic and social relations upon which it is based, were sufficiently developed, i.e. prior to the completion of the social revolution.
The
economic and social power may be balanced because a new revolutionary
class has become strong and exerted its influence – as with the
bourgeoisie under Mercantilism, leading to the English Civil War. It
may be weak for a variety of reasons. The society may be riven with
a variety of other cleavages. As with the situation in 1917, in
Russia, a weak bourgeoisie, dependent on the peasantry, may itself be
overthrown, by a tiny and weak proletariat, itself relying on a
Peasant War, to achieve its goals. The working-class in such a
situation, being entirely feeble, becomes the ruling economic and
social class effectively by default, as the material foundations of
the other classes – landlords and bourgeoisie - are torn up, along
with the economic and social relations that flow from them.
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