This is a response to Neil Davidsons How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois
Revolutions? that appears in the current issue of Historical Materialism.
A Marxmail subscriber forwarded me the article. For this I am grateful. I
am also ccing Sebastien Budgen, another Marxmail subscriber and HM editor,
in the hope that he will allow me to put Davidson's article on the Marxmail
website so that others may read this very interesting contribution to the
transition debate.
Davidsons chief goal is to refute the analysis put forward by George
Comninel in Rethinking the French Revolution. Comninel basically puts the
revisionist findings of Francois Furet et al into a Marxist context. When
Furet, a former member of the French CP, found little evidence of a
revolutionary bourgeoisie, he provoked his former comrades into mounting
a heated counter-attack.
My own affinities with Comninels analysis are on display in my writings on
the American Civil War which were mainly intended to refute Charles Posts
attempt to see it as a vindication of the Brenner thesis. In his eyes, the
overthrow of the slavocracy was necessitated by the same sort of
ineluctable economic forces that led to agrarian capitalism in Great
Britain in the late middle ages. Oddly enough, the question of a bourgeois
revolution hardly figures at all in Brennerite literature. For them, the
most important thing is superceding extra-market forces such paying
tribute to the lord or corvée obligations, a system of unpaid labor on
medieval estates, etc. As long as the economic aspects of feudalism have
been liquidated, the question of a bourgeois revolution seems almost
incidental.
Although Brenner himself has never really addressed Comninels analysis,
his co-thinker Ellen Meiksins Wood considers it as a useful indicator of
Frances supposed failure to overcome extra-market forces necessary for
making the transition to capitalism. When a wing of the gentry revolted
against the King in 1789, this might reflect the fact that bourgeois
property relations had not matured sufficiently. To put it bluntly, Wood
believes that capitalism could only be found in England in this period. I
should add that Wood was Comninels professor, for what thats worth.
In the course of taking up challenges to the notion of a bourgeois
revolution, Davidson considers a couple that are the dialectical opposites
of each other, namely the world systems perspective of Immanuel
Wallerstein and the Brenner thesis itself. With respect to Wallerstein,
Davidson puts it this way:
Wallerstein thinks that bourgeois revolutions are no longer necessary,
but his position is also more extreme in that he thinks they have never
been necessary. Wallerstein regards the feudal states of the sixteenth
century, like the nominally socialist states of the twentieth, as
inherently capitalist through their participation in the world economy.
Bourgeois revolutions are, therefore, not irrelevant because they failed to
completely overthrow the feudal landed classes, but because, long before
these revolutions took place, the lords had already transformed themselves
into capitalist landowners.
In distinction to Wallerstein, Brenner sees social-property relations as
the key determinant, rather than participation in a world economy on the
basis of trade or commerce. Despite the fact that the two scholars are
often seen as opposite sides of the coin, Davidson sees some affinities:
So distinctive are these relations that, rather than encompassing the
entire world by the sixteenth century, as capitalism does for Wallerstein,
they were still restricted to a handful of territories even a hundred years
later. Where Wallerstein is broad, Brenner is narrow. But there are also
similarities. Like Wallerstein, Brenner treats bourgeois revolution as
irrelevant and does so for essentially the same reasons, namely that
capitalist development albeit confined to a very limited number of
countries --occurred prior to and independently of the events which are
usually described in this way.
After recapitulating the Brenner thesis, for which Davidson states his
preference vis-à-vis Wallerstein, he raises an interesting objection that I
have not heard before:
In effect, members of the Brenner school do not seem to recognise that
there is an abstract model in Capital. Brenner himself apart, they think
that England was the only site of endogenous capitalist development and
therefore assume that Marx takes English development as a model for the
origin of capitalism because, in effect, it was the only example he had.
Now, I do not dispute that England was the country where capitalism
developed to the greatest extent. It was for this reason that Marx made it
the basis of his analysis, in the same way that he always took the most
developed form of any phenomena as the basis of his analysis. But, in his
mature work, Marx repeatedly states that capitalist development took place
beyond England in space and before England in time.
When Davidson presented sections in the Grundrisse to members of the
Brenner school, including Wood, that stated that capitalist development
took place beyond England in space and before England in time, they would
pretend that they mean something else. For his part, George Comninel
issued disapprovingly admonitions about Marxs failure to understand his
own theory. Davidson expresses some bemusement over the gaps in the
Brenner thesis:
I understand how the Brenner school accounts for the establishment of
capitalism in the English countryside. I also understand how the Brenner
school accounts for the spread of capitalism beyond Britain. I do not
understand how capitalist social-property relations spread from the English
countryside to the rest of England. Nor, for that matter, how the same
process took place in Holland or Catalonia, the other areas where Brenner
himself thinks that capitalism existed.
For Davidson, the answer is recognizing that for Marx, the transition to
capitalism was as much an urban phenomenon as it was agrarian: Urban
labour itself had created means of production for which the guilds became
just as confining as were the old relations of landownership to an improved
agriculture, which was in part itself a consequence of the larger market
for agricultural products in the cities etc. (Grundrisse, p. 508)
Another interesting insight from Davidson is that Brenners conception of
capitalism is shared by an odd bedfellow:
For the members of the Brenner school, capitalism is defined by the
existence of what they call market compulsion the removal of the means of
production and subsistence from the direct producers, so that they are
forced to rely on the market to survive. There is, of course, a venerable
tradition of thought which defines capitalism solely in market terms, but
it is not Marxism, it is the Austrian economic school whose leading
representatives were Ludwig von Mises and Frederick von Hayek.
This is something I have noticed myself, but not exactly on this basis. If
capitalism is defined as resting on market compulsion, then vast areas of
obvious capitalist exploitation are invalidated according to this narrow
approach. For example, apartheid South Africa would be ruled out with its
pass system, etc. So would Nazi Germany which involved slave labor on a
grand scale. Of course, the libertarian would agree that such societies are
not capitalist. Von Mises and von Hayek both regarded Nazi Germany and
Communist Russia as noncapitalist since both societies involved statist
control of the economy, etc. Needless to say, this is a superficial
analysis but one that was pervasive in the academy.
Davidson also has some pointed observations on Woods explicit statement of
a theme that is implicit throughout Brenners writings, namely that
capitalism in England emerged in the countryside prior to the historical
formation of capital-wage labor social relations. If a system of tenant
farming could in and of itself be the key launching pad for capitalist
property relations, how then was surplus value produced? He writes:
If capitalism is based on a particular form of exploitation, on the
extraction of surplus-value from the direct producers through wage-labour,
then I fail to see how capitalism can exist in the absence of
wage-labourers. Where does surplus-value come from in a model which
contains only capitalist landlords and capitalist farmers? Surplus-value
may be realised through market transactions, but it can scarcely be
produced by them.
Once one establishes that the transition to capitalism in England was a
function of inexorable economic processes in the countryside quite early on
(the 1400s at least), then the bourgeois revolution becomes trivial, if not
irrelevant. Brenner wrote:
First, there really is no transition to accomplish: since the model starts
with bourgeois society in the towns, foresees its evolution as taking place
via bourgeois mechanisms, and has feudalism transform itself in consequence
of its exposure to trade, the problem of how one type of society is
transformed into another is simply assumed away and never posed. Second,
since bourgeois society self-develops and dissolves feudalism, the
bourgeois revolution can hardly play a necessary role.
According to Davidson, Brenners magnum opus Merchants and Revolution is
basically an attempt to demonstrate that feudal relations had been wiped
out by 1640 so the notion of a Great Revolution is besides the point.
Davidsons article concludes with a discussion of English history in the
17th century intended to show that Brenners dismissal of the need to
effect a social revolution is based on minimizing class conflict between
the forces led by Cromwell and the gentry.
Although I find Davidsons arguments extremely convincing, they share with
fellow SWP member Chris Harman a certain element of Eurocentrism. The
parameters of the discussion take place within Europe and do not attempt to
address the challenge put forward by Jim Blaut. While I understand
Davidsons need to reclaim the legacy of the bourgeois revolution as a key
element in transcending the Ancien Regime in anticipation for the
proletarian revolution of the future, this does not quite fully address the
class dynamics that were at play in the early stages of modern capitalist
society.
In order to grasp the full dimensions of the struggle, it is necessary to
take account of other *non-European* actors who had an independent
political and social identity. CLR Jamess Black Jacobins is essential
reading for understanding the full complexity of 1789. Taking Davidsons
challenge to Comninel on its own terms, we are still unable to explain why
bourgeois forces in the French Revolution would have been hostile to the
abolition of slavery, an obvious precapitalist social institution.
Chapter Twelve of Jamess history is titled The Bourgeoisie Prepares to
Restore Slavery. It begins:
Toussaint was perfectly right in his suspicions. What is the regime under
which the colonies have most prospered, asked Bonaparte, and on being told
the ancien regime he decided to restore it, slavery and Mulatto
discrimination. Bonaparte hated black people. The revolution had appointed
that brave and brilliant Mulatto, General Dumas,1 Commander-in-Chief of one
of its armies, but Bonaparte detested him for his colour, and persecuted
him. Yet Bonaparte was no colonist, and his anti-Negro bias was far from
influencing his major policies. He wanted profits for his supporters, and
the clamorous colonists found in him a ready ear. The bourgeoisie of the
maritime towns wanted the fabulous profits of the old days. The passionate
desire to free all humanity which had called for Negro freedom in the great
days of the revolution now huddled in the slums of Paris and Marseilles,
exhausted by its great efforts and terrorised by Bonaparte's bayonets and
Fouche's police. But the abolition of slavery was one of the proudest
memories of the revolution; and, much more important, the San Domingo
blacks had an army and leaders trained to fight in the European manner.
These were no savage tribesmen with spears, against whom European soldiers
armed with rifles could win undying glory.
Ultimately, the concept of a bourgeois revolution has very little
relevance outside of Europe if it means the promotion of free wage labor as
a universal standard. The development of capitalism outside of Europe in
fact was facilitated through the imposition of one form or another of
extra-economic coercion, ranging from slavery to debt peonage.
Despite Comninels affinity for the Brenner thesis, there is one aspect of
his revisionism that carries a lot of weight for me and for others with a
focus on the Black Jacobins of history. By demonstrating the affinity that
the gentry had with the rising bourgeoisie, Comninels reading has the
merit of being able to explain why Bonaparte sought the reinstitution of
slavery, despite all the freedom-loving rhetoric of 1789. Whatever was
revolutionary about the French Revolution could be traced to the
intervention of the sans culottes who were hostile to the possessing
classes, either bourgeois or aristocratic.
The simple fact is that Marx never wrote that much about 1789. His focus
was always on the class struggles in France that he was able to observe in
his own lifetime. In this arena, the bourgeoisie was hardly revolutionary.
His ultimate statement on this class that was always anxious to betray its
own stated historic goals was The Eighteenth Brumaire, a work focused on
the nephew of the Emperor who had sought to re-impose slavery on the Haitians.
About this bourgeoisie, Karl Marx wrote:
The French bourgeoisie had long ago found the solution to Napoleon's
dilemma: In fifty years Europe will be republican or Cossack. It solved
it in the Cossack republic. No Circe using black magic has distorted that
work of art, the bourgeois republic, into a monstrous shape. That republic
has lost nothing but the semblance of respectability. Present-day France
was already contained in the parliamentary republic. It required only a
bayonet thrust for the bubble to burst and the monster to leap forth before
our eyes.
I would suggest that the term Cossack Republic goes a long way in
explaining the contradictory aspects of the capitalist system than
monocausal explanations rooted in bourgeois revolutions or Brennerite
social property relations. As a world system based on commodity
production, capitalist social relations will adopt a variety of forms based
on the exigencies of local conditions. Where labor is plentiful, the system
will allow workers to compete in the marketplace against each other to
drive down wages. Where it is not plentiful and where propertyless people
have the opportunity to sustain themselves through hunting, fishing,
gardening, etc., capitalism will round them up and make them the private
property of the state or its dominant classes. In the historical evolution
of the capitalist system, Europe was a site for the former type of
exploitation; Latin America, Africa and Asia the latter. But as Wallerstein
pointed out--whatever his mistakes on other important questions--this was a
world system.
