Historiography Series
This is the fourth draft of this article countering the arguments of Conrad Russell. This is not my last word on the matter but does supersede all other articles. Again comments are welcome.
The coalition government recently published its changes to the National Curriculum. Aside from the fact that the new changes are way too narrow, parochial and would return the educational system back to the Victorian era they have provoked an ideological battle amongst writers, historians and other academics.
Certainly amongst historians the battle lines are
being fought largely between left and right leaning historians. It is perhaps
with great irony that Tory government supporters have labelled their opponents
Marxists. A recent headline in the Daily Mail was entitled “I refuse to
surrender to the Marxist teachers hell-bent on destroying our schools:
Education Secretary berates 'the new enemies of promise' for opposing his
plan”.[1]
The reason I say ironic is that for the last twenty years or so there has been
a concerted attempt to downplay and in some cases deny that Marxists or Marxism
has any role to play in the understanding of History.
Certainly in the area of English civil war
historiography the attack on Marxism has been over the years heated, persistent
and in some cases aggressive. A small recent example of this can be seen from
Christopher Thompson’s reply to this article[2].
The purpose of this essay is not trawl through the
entire history of these attacks of which there are a substantial amount,
although having said that it would be a good subject for an essay but to
examine one example namely the work of Conrad Russell and expressly his essay
The Bourgeois Revolution: A Mirage”.
The essay which was published in History Today in
1990 was more populist in style than academic. Russell’s article was perhaps
the most open polemical attack on the method of historical Materialism and was
published in what became and still is a substantial house organ for revisionist
historians. His article was also one of many similar articles in the field of
history and politics that sought to cast doubt on Historical Materialism and
Marxism in general as a method of historical analysis. In fact it presaged what
has become an anti-intellectual and anti-Marxist counter-revolution in the
field of English Civil war studies.
The another high point of this anti-intellectualism
was two years after Russell’s article there appeared Francis Fukuyama’s The End
of History and the Last Man. Fukuyama’s attack coincided with a systematic
attack from revisionist historians across all fields on Marxist historiography
that gained substantial momentum after the collapse of the USSR. In many ways
his article echoed a school of thought both inside and outside academia which
saw the end of the U.S.S.R as signifying the end of Marxism. For a number of academics
who were largely out of their depth in this field the USSR equaled Marxism
rather than it being a Stalinized distortion.
According to Conrad Russell the English bourgeois
revolution was a mirage something illusory and unattainable or an incorrect
conception. Russell’s conclusion was there was no revolution in the 1640s and
for that matter he does not fancy there being one in 1688 either. It should be
borne in mind that before Russell wrote his article it was broadly accepted
that some kind of revolution had happened. Whether it was a puritan revolution
or a bourgeois revolution.
Russell’s framework for answering the question was
there a revolution? is a little ropey to say the least. Relying on Professor
Alfred Cobban “Four laws!” was hardly the most objective or for that matter
scientific yardstick. Cobban like Russell was opposed to Marxism and held
similar views to Russell albeit in a different area of study, Cobban wrote
extensively on the French revolution which he believed was not a social
revolution.
According his page on Wikipedia “Cobban’s views and
works in the macrocosm were to be the inspiration and birthplace of the
historical school now known as Revisionism. Along with George V. Taylor, Cobban
vehemently attacked the traditional Marxist conception of the past within
Marx's dialectic, particularly in his work The Social Interpretation of the
French Revolution. His resultant argument was that the Revolution could not be
seen as a social revolution exacerbated by economic changes (specifically the
development of capitalism and by corollary, class conflict between the
bourgeoisie and the nobility). Rather, argued Cobban, the French Revolution
should be seen as a political revolution with social consequences”.[3]
Whether Cobban’s writing was the birth place of a
new form of revisionism is open to question. In some sense all
historians are revisionists but this particular group of historians were united
by their hostility to both Whig and Marxist historiography.
It is also strange that Russell who was a very
distinguished historian failed in his essay to produce any real detailed
examination of Marx’s actual writings on the English bourgeois revolution.
Although not prodigious however he did write extensively on the rise of the
bourgeoisie.
Look at this beautiful statement from the communist
Manifesto. “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the
instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with
them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of
production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of
existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production,
uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and
agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed,
fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and
opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can
ossify. All that is solid melts into air all that is holy is profaned, and man
is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and
his relations with his kind”. Also if Russell had indeed looked at Marx’s
writing he would have found that Marx was familiar with people who denied
revolutions had taken place.
Russell had an annoying habit in this essay of
lumping Whig history together with Marxist. So much so that Russell believed
that the Whig version of the origins of the English civil war was a dialectical
one. It is not in the realm of this essay to go into any detail suffice to say
that Russell really did not know what he was talking about. I am not sure how
much Marxist literature he read but it is clearly not enough for such an
eminent historian to make such a flippant remark without really backing his
argument up.
Russell who would have been fully conversant with
the “Whig interpretation of history” and he would have also been aware that Sir
Herbert Butterfield’s slim volume of that name was in fact a polemic, directed
at economic determinism.
In examining Russell’s theories it should be borne
in mind he was not the first to revise Marxist historiography. When this
revision started in Britain is open to much debate but for the sake of this
essay it would have started with Elton’s High Road to Civil[4] War
essay. Elton’s essay is a strange one. Having read it a few times one is struck
by the paucity of his argument, which is odd because of the tremendous influence
it had on large numbers of revisionist historians. Elton’s essay was an expression
of his conception of how to practice history. In an essay of the same name he
opposes the conception that every historical event can be rationally explained.
In ‘The Practice of History’, which
was written in response to E H Carr's 1961 book What is History?
Elton commented “All assessment of evidence must be the work of the intellect,
of the reasoning faculty. The historian cannot but work on the assumption that
whatever happened is capable of rational explanation and that evidence is the
product of an act discoverable by reason. And yet we all know that this is not
quite true; that we act, react and reflect from motives which have little to do
with reason and under influences--such as ill-health, a quarrel with people not
involved in the transaction, whim and lack of thought--that can but rarely
appear in the ... evidence”.[5]
Elton’s “empirical or thesis-free” method was
clearly attractive to Russell and he adopted some if not all Elton’s love of
empirical methodology. For me Russell is a pivotal link between earlier
revisionists such as Elton and their more modern day counterparts.
Russell main argument is that Marxist historiography
stood or fell on the theory that the English Civil war was provoked by the rise
of the gentry/middle class. Which predicated the rise of the bourgeoisie.[6]
Russell believed “the notion of the rising middle
classes is a fallacy” and “together with increasing doubt about the rising
middle classes, historians are showing increasing doubt about the dialectical
model, in which change comes about by the clash of opposites. This model, as
Marx generously admitted, is one we originally owe to Hegel, and its survival
has owed as much to Hegelian as to Marxist influence. The Whig version of the
origins of the English Civil War, for example, was a clearly dialectical view,
and it has come in for heavy criticism in the past fifteen years”[7].
Some things need to be said about the above quote.
Firstly to be honest you would be hard pressed to find in Russell’s writing
when the bourgeoisie did “rise”. In fact you get the feeling that Russell would
like it to be never and certainly it did not arrive through revolution in any
century.
It is true
that during the latter part of Russell’s life Marxist historiography and the
notion that we witnessed a revolution in the 1640s did come under increasing
attack. Russell in his essay never really comes close to answering why before
he wrote his essay was there a notion that a revolution of some kind did take
place in the 1640s so accepted amongst serious historians for the better part
of three centuries
Even during the 17th century some of the
more perceptive writers saw that a revolution of some kind had taken place. Vernon
F Snow[8]
wrote an important essay outlining the use of the word revolution during the
17th century. Snow says “One of the first writers-if not the first-to
apply the concept specifically to the English political upheaval was Matthew
Wren, the son of Dr Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely. Sometime after the trial and
execution of Charles I, this royalist wrote a treatise entitled Of the Origin
and Progress of the Revolution in England. 'The world is full', he wrote, 'of
both books and pamphlets, who have nothing to do but to teach their readers
these events; and the design of writing this was only summarily to treat of the
most general causes of those strange revolutions we have seen.” Russell is strangely silent on this varied
historical usage of the word revolution and his essay almost takes the form of a
religious exorcism.
According to Russell “historians are showing
increasing doubt about the dialectical model. Who are these historians? What
are they saying and more importantly what their political bias is?
While there has been an assault on Marxist
historiography over the last twenty years the legacy and influence of
historians such as Christopher Hill still resonate with us today. A cursory
look at a growing number of publications would show us that Russell has not
entirely succeeded in extinguishing the word revolution from Early Modern historiography.
The
Storm over the Gentry.
When Russell ties the theory of a rising Middle
Class or bourgeoisie to the fate of the Marxist historians he is doing a
dis-service to his profession. It is very strange that Russell does not
elaborate on the “Storm over the Gentry” debate. Because if he did he would
have had to tackle what leading Marxist historians such as Hill did actually
say on the matter?
Russell mentions nothing in his article about Hill being
very wary of the debate over the rise or decline of the gentry. The debates
over the gentry which took place in the early 1950s were for Marxists far more
complex than just placing their entire historical faith on the rise of the
middle class.
Russell’s original point was that Marxism really
stood or fell on the basis of a rising gentry. The “Storm over the gentry
debate is probably one of the most important in civil war historiography. The
original debate was centered on R H Tawney’s thesis of a rising gentry later
supported by Lawrence Stone who in 1948, who close to the historical positions
of R.H. Tawney published in the Economic History Review entitled "The
Anatomy of the Elizabethan Aristocracy". Tawney and Stone’s arguments were
countered by historians Hugh Trevor Roper and later by J H Hexter.
It would be a mistake to describe both Tawney or
Stone as Marxist and their positions regarding the gentry were not Marxist
positions. This is not to say that their work is not without great merit and
should be studied at great length. Although Stone himself did describe himself
in the early part of his career as being a young Marxist his mistakes were the
product of an incomplete assimilation of the Marxist method of Historical
Materialism. Stone had a major problem in that he never really understood the
difference between genuine Marxism and a crude form of economic determinism.
Stone himself soon moved away from any link with Marxist historiography and in
his own words he became in 1987, "an old fashioned Whig".
Hill’s positions on the debate are instructive. He
was critical of both sides and that the debate was more to do with the
developing Cold War anti-communism than merely a debate over civil war
historiography. Hill also called for further research into the economic
positions of people on both sides who took part in the war/revolution.
Hill was also a good enough Marxist historian to
understand that the real target of the debate was not just Tawney or Stone or
himself for that matter but of Marxism itself. The question is should Marx and
his method of investigating and explaining historical phenomena be held
responsible for the implementation of his method by subsequent historians
Marxist or otherwise. After all if a patient dies on the operating table should
that lead to the questioning and repudiation of the whole history of medical science?
To buttress his claim that middle class did not rise
at this time or that there was a revolution Russell uses the ultra-conservative
historian J H Hexter. Hexter’s article the Myth of the Middle Class in Tudor
England published in 1961. Russell’s use of Hexter is natural to bolster his
argument but to use a rebuttal piece by K G Davies called The Mess of the
Middle Class in the same paragraph is a little weird. I am all for historical balance but this seems
a little strange. I could be wrong but Russell’s choice of historians to defend
his charge are to some extent logical but they also give the appearance that
Russell did not give much thought to them. They almost seem to be thrown in as
afterthought. He does not detail much about their work and most annoyingly no
footnotes are given making research difficult.
Hexter's most important essay entitled "The
Storm over the Gentry" which
Russell strangely ignores was published
in a mainstream magazine after it was turned down by a number of leading
American historical journals. Hexter’s main argument was to criticize what he
believed were left wing historian’s too heavy reliance on social determinism
which he believed undermined their arguments.
Hexter who has been described as a Neo Whig and was
as William H Dray[9]
said “unabashedly, and often polemically Whiggish. For Hexter, the English
Civil War was to be seen as the defense of traditional English liberties
against an aggressive Crown. This position contrasted in the 1970s with the
revisionist views of Conrad Russell and others who disputed both the uniqueness
of the English Civil War and its connection with ideas of liberty. However,
inasmuch as the revisionists were also explicitly anti-Marxist, their stance
owed a great deal to Hexter's critiques. Russell in particular echoed Hexter's
emphasis on continuity in English political values, Hexter's distinction
between the Civil War and the subsequent Revolution, and Hexter's belief that
contingencies better explained the coming of the War, while rejecting Hexter's
view that Parliament was acting out of a clear-cut sense of constitutional
obligation and embracing instead the view that religious conflicts and
practical problems in the composite monarchy were more decisive”.
In Dray’s essay he attempts to try to define what is
to be a Whig historian. For instance Hexter’s fascination with constitutional
matters certainly would put him in the Whig camp.
Economic
Determinism
Russell went on “Another flaw in the model is that,
in its pure and original form, it does not recognize the power of ideas as an
independent variable. Ideas do not simply reflect the economic circumstances of
their thinkers. Where they do correlate with the economic circumstances of
their thinkers, they do so in a way so various that a much more flexible
instrument than that of class is needed to explain it. It might be possible to
construct an explanation of why Victorian pollbooks show weavers voting
Liberal, and butchers voting Conservative, but if so, it is an explanation
which would have more to do with industrial psychology than with class
conflict. In the English Civil War, people's allegiance normally correlates
with their religion, but their religion does not correlate with their social
background. Even in areas which were strongly of one persuasion, such as
Northampton, we find people like the man who was recommended for a job on the
ground that he was 'of Northampton, but I thank God not of that persuasion'.
There is no way the material can be explained unless by admitting the autonomy
of the mind”. [10]
Russell’s divorce of ideas from their economic or
material base is common to most of the later revisionist historians. Hill
disagreed with Russell’s downplaying of the link between ideas and their
material basis. In his book The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution[11]
he sought to use the method of Marxism to understand the complex and
dialectical relationship between ideas and their origins. In the introduction
he states…
“Marx himself did not fall into the error of
thinking that men’s idea were merely a pale reflection of their economic needs,
with no history of their own: but some of his successors, including many who
would not call themselves Marxist, have been far more economic-determinist than
Marx. It seems to me that any body of thought which plays a major in history –
Luther’s, Rousseau’s, Marx’s own-takes on because it meets the needs of
significant group in the society in which it comes into prominence”.
Another reason Russell believed that the revolution
was a mirage was his point that the gentry or bourgeois fought on both sides so
therefore how could you talk of a bourgeois revolution. He made the correct
point that the social origins of the civil war bourgeoisie were not clear cut
and that capitalists were on both sides. For him the civil war was nothing out
of the ordinary and was largely a series of breakdowns or mistakes from leading
players such as Charles1.
It is clear that there has been varying degrees of
success of how well Marxist historians have applied historical materialism to
the study of the English revolution. The historian Robert Ashton in his essay
The Civil War and the Class Struggle outlined the pitfalls encountered by
Marxists historians. Ashton is correct in his analysis on the tensions between
the king and growing section of the bourgeoisie over a number of issues that
went back over a few decades at least.
Ashton does not subscribe to the revisionist
contention that just because there were bourgeois elements on both sides of the
war that it discounts the Marxist theory of a bourgeois revolution. Ashton
points out that this makes it harder for a clear cut analysis but does not rule
out the possibly of doing one.
For Ashton the makeup of the 17th century was
complex and varied. In his article On Charles and the City of London contained
in Essays in the Economic and social History of Tudor and Stuart England; he
believes the monarchy had the support of a small but significant section of the
bourgeoisie who stood to gain if Charles won the war. On parliaments side stood
varying different sections of the bourgeoisie. While this scenario does make it
difficult to make generalizations it does not as Russell believes make a
Marxist analysis null and void.
Having read enough of Hill I am clear that he
accepted that there were gentlemen and landowners on the Parliamentary side in
the civil war and small farmers and artisans on the Royalist side i.e.
different sections of the bourgeoisie and Aristocracy.
From his knowledge of early Soviet historians and
his study of the writings of Marx and Engels he never made the assumption that
this was a chemically pure revolution. In fact in his major writings he makes
the point that large numbers of people fought and took sides outside of purely
economic reasons. According to Ann Talbot[12]
“he was sensitive enough to his historical sources to detect the social
currents that brought people of diverse social backgrounds into struggle
against the king and well-grounded enough in history to identify new and
revolutionary ideas in the curious and archaic guise in which they appeared—as
the ideologists of the revolution ransacked the Bible and half understood
historical precedent for some kind of theory to explain what they were doing”.
Russell rejected this analysis and reiterated that
“historians are showing increasing doubt about the dialectical model, in which
change comes about by the clash of opposites. This model, as Marx generously
admitted, is one we originally owe to Hegel, and its survival has owed as much
to Hegelian as to Marxist influence. The Whig version of the origins of the
English Civil War, for example, was a clearly dialectical view, and it has come
in for heavy criticism in the past fifteen years”.
It is true that Marx did owe a debt to Hegel.
Marxism was a development on from Hegel’s philosophy. Russell is correct that
one of the basic components of Marxism is the conception of unity of opposites.
Marx took what was the best or materialist from Hegel and discarded his
idealist component.
Ilya Stavinsky[13]
explains this well “any development, in wide sense of this word, consists of
the birth of the event, its development, in narrow sense of this word, and its
death. So with time the birth of the event transforms into its opposition, the
death of the event. Consequently, the birth and the death are opposite meanings
and for this reason they constitutes dialectical contradiction. The essence of
the dialectical logic consists in the fact that it describes the development of
this contradiction i.e. it shows the transition of the event from one stage,
the birth, to its opposite stage, death. For this purpose dialectical logic
possesses by its system of category and by its abstract laws. By using them
dialectical logic can grasp in detail the process of any development
independent of its character whether it is social or natural event. Such
categories are form, content, and essence, quality, quantity, elementary form,
particular form, universal form, and opposites, real and formal contradiction
and so on. Examples of laws: the transformation of content into forms, the
transformation of quantity into quality, unity of opposites and so on”.
Marx clearly tied the study of history with the
study of society itself. If Russell had
probed a little further in his research he would have found that the main
writers and philosophers during the 17th century attempted to understand their
revolution along those similar lines.
On this matter Russell could have done no worse than
consulted a number of articles written by a number of the Soviet historians who
wrote on this matter. It would have perhaps given his arguments a more
objective tone.
One such writer
[14]Evgeny
Pashukanis said “ The English Revolution of the seventeenth century gave birth
to the basic directions of bourgeois social thought, and forcibly advanced the
scientific, i.e. materialist, understanding of social phenomena. “It suffices
to mention such a work as Oceana – by the English writer Harrington, and which
appeared soon after the English Revolution of the seventeenth century – in
which changes in political structure are related to the changing distribution
of landed property. It suffices to mention the work of Barnave – one of the
architects of the great French Revolution – who in the same way sought
explanations of political struggle and the political order in property
relations. In studying bourgeois revolutions, French restorationist historians
– Guizot, Mineaux and Thierry – concluded that the leitmotif of these
revolutions was the class struggle between the third estate (i.e. the
bourgeoisie) and the privileged estates of feudalism and their monarch. This is
why Marx, in his well-known [15]letter
to Weydemeyer, indicates that the theory of the class struggle was known before
him".
I believe that unlike Russell the war was a
qualitive turning point and I attach an importance to an investigation into the
growing capitalistic nature of agriculture key to understanding who fought and
why they did. I am not downplaying the importance of investigating the role
played by an increasing industrial and commercial class but they were a small
minority of the bourgeoisie and did punch above their weight this was in
reality a pre-industrial society and therefore as Harrington wrote land and
property were the key in understanding the revolutionary nature of the period.
If it is correct to say that we are dealing with a
class of land owners who held sway before and after 1642 what was the material
or economic basis of this power and how did it reflect in the political
superstructure.
Another aspect of Marxist analysis that was attacked
by Russell and a whole host of subsequent revisionist historians has been the
development of the Base and superstructure argument.
As Marx pointed out
“In the social production of their life, men enter into definite
relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of
production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their
material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production
constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which
rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite
forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life
conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It
is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the
contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
“At a certain stage of their development, the
material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing
relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing
— with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto.
From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into
their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of
the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less
rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should
always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions
of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science,
and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short,
ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it
out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of
himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own
consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather
from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between
the social productive forces and the relations of production. No social order
ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it
have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the
material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old
society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can
solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that
the tasks itself arises only when the material conditions of its solution
already exist or are at least in the process of formation”.
But it is clear that no all historians rejected the
base and superstructure argument. Robert Ashton writing on the English Revolution
makes an interesting point on some historians while not being Marxist did use
some use of Marxist ideas. Ashton said “The idea of religious, political and
constitutional issues as an ideological superstructure based on foundations of
material and class interests has been influential far beyond the ranks of
Marxist historians. It has indeed been adopted, in part at least and with a
radically different emphasis, by some of their more formidable and determined opponents.
While to the casual observer of historical debate
these arguments could be viewed as storm in a teapot what lay behind them was
Russell’s systematic attack on any materialist approach to historical
understanding, smuggled in under the guise of a revaluation of the English
revolution or in Russell’s case no revolution. Speaking of Russell Jim Holstun
described his work as a ‘manifesto for historical revisionism’, Holstun makes
the point that Russell sought another way to explain the social changes that
were taken place in the English revolution that historians should concentrate
on the upper yeomanry, the middling sort of people who were rising according to
Russell ‘not so much at the expense of the gentry, as at the expense of small
holders and the laboring poor’. Russell would often make the point that he not
conversant with the term’s feudalism and capitalism.
Russell’s essay is heavy on what was negative about
Marxist historiography but is extremely poor when it comes to an alternative
thesis. This negativity was picked up upon Mary Fullbrook[16]
who said “The negative emphasis of much of revisionist work so far has quite
understandably provoked the sort of reaction quoted by John Morrill in the
preface to the new edition of his book, The Revolt of the Provinces: 'One
colleague and friend wryly accused me of "explaining why no civil war
broke out in England in 1642"... '. But revisionists feel no great
compulsion to develop a comprehensive explanation since they consider that the
object of explanation has itself been misinterpreted: the English Revolution
was not a world-historically important event requiring a commensurate scale of
explanation, but rather represents, at least in origins, a somewhat bloody tiff
between a specific monarch and certain factions among his subjects”
Conclusion
Where does this debate over an essay written over
twenty years ago leave us? Whether Russell knew how much damage his and other
attacks on Marxist historiography of the civil war would do is a moot point. I
believe he was acting very consciously when writing his essay and was genuinely
hostile to Marxism. While better writers than me have been able to refute the
main thrust of his arguments this debate does not take place in a vacuum and
there are consequences that flow from his ideas.
There has been a definite shift away from studies
that have been commonly associated with Marxism or “history from below” to a
more right wing “History from above” over the last 20 years. This is confirmed
in a recent article in the New York Times[17],
“In History Departments, It’s Up With Capitalism, it goes on A spectre is
haunting university history departments: the spectre of capitalism. After
decades of “history from below,” focusing on women, minorities and other
marginalized people seizing their destiny, a new generation of scholars is
increasingly turning to what, strangely, risked becoming the most marginalized
group of all: the bosses, bankers and brokers who run the economy”.
What damage this shift away has done would need a
PHD thesis and some. One thing is clear that the paucity of research into the
economic changes taking place in the 17th century will badly limit our
knowledge of the English revolution. I am not saying that Russell is solely
responsible for the shift in academic circles both here and America. But his
essay did play a small part in creating this atmosphere.
References
[1]
I refuse to surrender to the Marxist teachers hell-bent on destroying our
schools: Education Secretary berates 'the new enemies of promise' for opposing
his plan-By Michael Gove 23 March 2013 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2298146/I-refuse-surrender-Marxist-teachers-hell-bent-destroying-schools-Education-Secretary-berates-new-enemies-promise-opposing-plans.html
[2]
Comment on ‘Conrad Russell and “The Mirage of the English Revolution” ’
http://keith-perspective.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/comment-on-conrad-russell-and-mirage-of.html
[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Cobban
[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Elton
[5]
Defender of the Faith: Geoffrey Elton and the Philosophy of History- Geoffrey
Roberts http://www.ucc.ie/chronicon/elton.htm
[6]
(For more detail on this debate see Causes of the English Revolution. Lawrence
Stone http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4995438334891885282#editor/target=post;postID=372003558176245437)
[7]
The Bourgeois Revolution: A Mirage? Conrad Russell, History Today Volume: 40
Issue: 9 1990.
http://www.historytoday.com/conrad-russell/bourgeois-revolution-mirage
[8]
The Concept of Revolution in 17th Century England The Historical
Journal V2 1962
[9]
J H Hexter Neo Whiggism and Early Stuart Historiography History and Theory
Vol26 No 2 May 1987 pp133-149 by William H Dray
[10]
The Bourgeois Revolution: A Mirage? Conrad Russell, History Today Volume: 40
Issue: 9 1990.
http://www.historytoday.com/conrad-russell/bourgeois-revolution-mirage
[11]
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"These the times ... this the man": an appraisal of historian
Christopher Hill-By Ann Talbot 25 March
2003 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/hill-m25.html
[13]
Formal and Dialectical Logic as Unity of Opposites or Development of Classical
Philosophy. By Ilya Stavinsky
[14]
Evgeny Pashukanis The Marxist Theory of State and Law (1932)
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K. Marx, Letter to Weydemeyer (March 5, 1852), MESW, vol.1, p.528.
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The English Revolution and the Revisionist Revolt Mary Fulbrook Social History
Vol. 7, No. 3 (Oct., 1982), pp. 249-264 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
[17]
In History Departments, It’s Up With Capitalism-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/education/in-history-departments-its-up-with-capitalism.html?_r=0
