“A battleground
which has been heavily fought over...beset with mines, booby-traps, and
ambushes manned by ferocious scholars prepared to fight every inch of the
way.”
Lawrence Stone
"Every
sociological definition is at the bottom a historical
prognosis".
Leon Trotsky
A social order that
was essentially feudal was destroyed by violence, and a new and
capitalist social order was created in its place."
Christopher Hill
“The sensible way
to proceed — I think this is how Marx and
Engels proceeded — is to develop a methodological view: historical
materialism or dialectical materialism, whatever you want to call it. Then, you
approach any material with that framework in mind, but you have to be
able to go where the material leads you. Engels warned
you can’t start forcing the historical material
into a readymade format. I took that approach with my
book. Of course, I had read a lot of secondary material, but I
wanted to go where the historical archive and contemporary material
would take me. I didn’t wish to my work, never
mind debates with other Marxists or currents, to determine where
the history would go. After you’ve done that, you can
demarcate it and illuminate it by — in a relatively minor way —
dealing with other currents and approaches. As far as I am concerned,
what makes something Marxist is that it is the application of
that method. “
John Rees
In his new book, the
Pseudo Left writer and historian John Rees seeks to re-introduce a
Marxist interpretation of the English
Revolution. Rees spends most of the introduction
being comfortable with the assertion of several historians that we have
now entered into a ‘post-revisionist’ era in the study of the
17th-century English Revolution. However, Rees
concedes there is little agreement on what this
means. The book discusses the possibility of
re-establishing a Marxist critique of the English Revolution and the
options for countering the new Revisionist revolt. It places the
study of the English Revolution within the context of the general
crisis of 17th-century Europe. The English Revolution was,
without a doubt, a seminal period in English history. The violent Revolution
saw more dead than the First and Second World Wars.
Chapter
One: The Edward Sexby Question concentrates on the
Republican Leveller Edward Sexby. Sexby spoke at the
Putney debates in 1647. He was perhaps the most radical
voice at Putney who called for a much wider franchise than any other Leveller, saying
:
"We have
engaged in this kingdom and ventured our lives, and it was all for
this: to recover our birthrights and privileges as Englishmen - and by
the arguments urged, there is none. There are many thousands of us
soldiers that have ventured our lives; we have had little property in
this kingdom as to our estates, yet we had a birthright. But it seems
now, except a man hath a fixed estate in this kingdom, he hath no
right in this kingdom. I wonder we were so much deceived. If we
had not a right to the kingdom, we were mere mercenary soldiers. There are
many in my condition that have as good a condition; it may be little
estate they have at present, and yet they have as much a right as those
two (Cromwell and Ireton) who are their lawgivers, as any in this place. I
shall tell you in a word my resolution. I am resolved to give my
birthright to none. Whatsoever may come in the way and be thought, I will
give it to none. I think the poor and meaner of this kingdom (I speak
as in that relation in which we are) have been the means of the preservation of
this kingdom. It may be little estate they have at present, and yet they
have as much a right as those two (Cromwell and Ireton) who are their
lawgivers, as any in this place. I shall tell you in a word my resolution. I am
resolved to give my birthright to none. Whatsoever may come in the way and be
thought, I will give it to none. I think the poor and meaner of this kingdom (I
speak as in that relation in which we are) have been the means of the
preservation of this kingdom.[2]
Rees correctly spends
a significant amount of time in the book to re-establish Sexby as a
leading figure in the English Revolution. No biography
of Sexby exists, and his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(ODNB) entry was only published in print in 2004 and on the internet in
2010.
Sexby went
further than most to try and turn the English revolution into an international
revolution against the ruling elites of Europe. Sexby’s first step
was translating the Leveller’s Agreement of the People[3] into
French. The uprising in France was the first to use
the red flag as its symbol, and the Leveller sympathiser Henry
Marten received reports of the progress of the
Bordeaux Republic. Alan Marshal’s well-written Oxford Dictionary biography
of Sexby elaborates further:
“ A few
months after the loss of his commission, Sexby was chosen by the
council of state as an unofficial envoy to the Frondeurs to fan the
flames of revolt in south-west France. Based at Bordeaux, his activities
were regarded with grave suspicion by many among the supporters of the prince
of Condé. However, Sexby could commend to the
republican Ormée faction some of those radical ideas which
he had effectively abandoned when he entered the service of the English
Commonwealth. In the spring of 1653, he even had a hand in drawing up
a manifesto entitled L'Accord du peuple, a hastily edited
version of the English Levellers' Agreement of the
People, rather inappropriately applied to French conditions, as well
as another text designed to appeal more specifically to the sensibilities of
the Huguenots of rural Guyenne. This Manifesto called for land
reform, religious toleration, and the establishment of a godly
government modelled on the Puritan regime in
England. This enthused some French rebels sufficiently to send a
deputation to Westminster on an ill-fated quest for formal
English assistance in their struggle with Cardinal Mazarin and the
young Louis XIV. But the revolt was finally crushed in August 1653, and
Sexby himself fled back to England, where he continued to sponsor
Anglo–Suguenot amity. It was rumoured in the following spring that he
would command a combined force of English troops and Irish levies in an
invasion of Guyenne.”7uguenot amity. It was rumoured in the
following spring that he would command a combined force of English troops and
Irish levies in an invasion of Guyenne.”
Rees’s chapter
on Sexby hopefully opens up the possibility of further
study on the international aspect of the Levellers. Much more study could
be done on how Leveller's ideas penetrated the thoughts of
American Republicans such as Thomas
Jefferson, whose family was distantly related to Leveller leader
John Lillburne. When Jefferson and John Adams visited
England, Adams wrote in his diary, “Edgehill and Worcester were curious
and interesting to us, as Scaenes where Freemen had fought for their
Rights. The People in the Neighbourhood appeared so ignorant and careless
at Worcester that I was provoked and asked, “And do Englishmen so soon forget
the Ground where Liberty was fought for? Tell your Neighbours and your
Children that this is holy ground, much holier than that on which your
Churches stand. All England should come in Pilgrimage to this Hill
once a Year.” This animated them, and they seemed much pleased with
it. Perhaps their Awkwardness before might arise from their
Uncertainty of our Sentiments concerning the Civil Wars. All England should
come in Pilgrimage to this Hill, once a Year.” This animated them, and they
seemed much pleased with it. Perhaps their Awkwardness before might arise from
their Uncertainty of our Sentiments concerning the Civil Wars”. [4]
Chapter
Two: Politics and Class in the English Revolution Class and politics are perhaps two of the most
contentious issues when writing about the English Revolution. The American
historian Lawrence Stone once described the study of the English
Bourgeois Revolution as “A battleground which has been heavily fought
over...beset with mines, booby-traps, and ambushes manned by ferocious
scholars prepared to fight every inch of the way.” Rees begins this
chapter with the strange assertion that we should put the revisionist arguments
behind us and concentrate on the “post-revisionist “ period. Perhaps
it would be ok if the revisionist's political, social and economic base had
disappeared, but they have not.
The historical
revisionism that struck the study of the English Revolution began in
earnest in the 1960s. Its central aim was to refute both the Whig and
Marxist interpretation of the English Revolution and, in doing
so, conceal the true political and class nature of
the Revolution. John Rees is a former member of the
Socialist Workers. Party(now a member of Counterfire) and, like
all Pseudo Left organisations, the SWP was extremely reluctant
to take to the battlefield against a coterie of revisionist historians. The
SWP would sooner wait till it established a connection
with several left-leaning historians, such as
Christopher Hill and Brian Manning and let them do
the fighting. To say the results of this policy were mixed was an
understatement.
In an article by John
Rees in Spring 1991, “ We have waited some considerable time for
Christopher Hill to enter the lists against the revisionist historians of the
English Revolution. Of course, Hill has taken the occasional potshot
at the revisionists in articles and lectures, some of which form the basis for
this book. But generally, he seems to have stayed a little aloof,
cultivating a disdain which still lingers in this book’s
introduction, where he claims, ‘We should not take these fashions too
seriously: they go in cycles, and it is no doubt my age that makes me a
little sceptical of latter-day “revisionist” historians who try to convince us
that there was no revolution in 17th century England, or that if there was it
had no long-term causes or consequences.”[5]
Rees is forced to
admit that Hill was not at his best when dealing with ideology and
consciousness and writes “ His touch has always been
less sure when dealing with the role played by ideology and
consciousness in making the Revolution. This may seem an odd
claim to make against a historian who is famous for rescuing the ideas of the
radical revolutionaries of the 1640s from the dismissive sneers of
establishment historians. Yet, although Hill remains wedded
to ‘history from below’ and is clear on how the ideas of the
revolutionaries sprang from the world around them, he is less clear on how
they, in turn, shaped that world. He says: ‘The Revolution
was not planned, not willed. Some historians think there could have been
no revolution if it was not planned, just as all strikes are made by
wicked agitators. But Parliament did not make the Revolution; no
one advocated it ... For that matter, neither the French nor the Russian
Revolutions were willed in advance by anyone. By 1917, the
Bolsheviks, building on English and French
experience, could take advantage of a revolutionary situation; but
they did not make the Revolution. A revolutionary situation developed
when the Tsarist state collapsed, just as the English state collapsed in 1640, and
the Bolsheviks were prepared to take advantage of it. [6]
He
continues, “Hill is less sharp than he should be on these questions
precisely because the popular frontism of his Communist Party days
seems to have left him methodologically confused, unable to distinguish
the defining characteristics of bourgeois and proletarian revolutions
properly. This weakness is embarrassingly obvious in his Lenin
and the Russian Revolution.” Rees and the SWP did not deepen this
analysis regarding Hill's attachment to the
Stalinist theory of “history from below”.
As the Marxist writer
Ann Talbot, in her excellent obituary of Christopher
Hill, elaborates, “The Communist Party sponsored a form of “People’s
History”, which is typified by A.L. Morton’s People’s History of England
in which the class character of earlier rebels, revolutionaries and popular
leaders was obscured by regarding them all as representatives of a
national revolutionary tradition. This historical approach reflected the
nationalism of the bureaucracy, their hostility to internationalism and their attempts
to form. Itincipled alliance with the supposedly
democratic capitalists against the fascist Axis countries. People’s
history was an attempt to give some historical foundation to the policies of
Popular Front—the subordination of the working class to supposedly
progressive sections of the bourgeoisie and the limiting of political
action to the defence of bourgeois democracy—which provided a democratic
facade to the systematic murder of thousands of genuine revolutionaries,
including Trotsky. It was the approach that Christopher Hill was
trained in, along with E.P. Thompson, Rodney Hilton and Eric
Hobsbawm, who were part of the Marxist Historians Group and came under the
influence of Maurice Dobb and Dona Torr.14e approach that
Christopher Hill was trained in, along with E.P. Thompson, Rodney Hilton and
Eric Hobsbawm, who were part of the Marxist Historians Group and came under the
influence of Maurice Dobb and Dona Torr.[7]
Rees spends a
substantial amount of time in this chapter to establish to what
extent Marxists are determinists. Given that Rees is not a classical
Marxist, his answer is predictably somewhat vague. Rees
does not believe that Marxists writing on history are
reductionist, but in the last paragraph of the
chapter, he writes that Marxists have a profound objection to
determinism. Which Marxists is he talking about? If he had said
Vulgar determinism, I would have no problem with this, but
he did not.
Rees makes scant use
of Leon Trotsky’s vast writings on determinism, so it is
worth quoting his essay, The ABC of Materialist Dialectics, at
length. Trotsky writes, “Our scientific thinking is only
a part of our general practice including techniques. For
concepts, there also exists “tolerance” which
is established not by formal Logic issuing from the
axiom ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’, but by the dialectical Logic issuing
from the axiom that everything is always changing. “Common
sense” is characterised by the fact that it systematically
exceeds dialectical “tolerance”.
Vulgar
thought operates with such concepts as capitalism, morals, freedom,
workers’ state, etc, as fixed abstractions, presuming that capitalism is
equal to capitalism. Morals are equal to morals, etc. Dialectical
thinking analyses all things and phenomena in their continuous change
while determining the material conditions of those changes that
critical limit beyond which ‘A’ ceases to be ‘A’, a workers’ state ceases
to be a workers’ state. The fundamental flaw of vulgar thought lies in the
fact that it wishes to content itself with motionless imprints of a
reality which consists of eternal motion. Dialectical thinking gives to
concepts by means of closer approximations, corrections,
concretisation, a richness of content and flexibility; I would even say “a
succulence,” which, to a certain extent, brings them closer to living
phenomena. Not capitalism in general, but a given capitalism at
a given stage of development. Not a workers’ state in general, but a
given workers’ state in a backward country in an imperialist
encirclement, etc.
Dialectical thinking
is related to vulgar in the same way that a motion picture is related to a
still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph
but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion. Dialectics
does not deny syllogism but teaches us to combine syllogisms in such
a way as to bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing
reality. Hegel, in his Logic, established a series of
laws: change of quantity into quality, development through
contradictions, conflict of content and form, interruption of continuity,
change of possibility into inevitability, etc., which are just as important for
theoretical thought as is the simple syllogism for more elementary
tasks. Hegel wrote before Darwin and before Marx. Thanks to the
powerful impulse given to thought by the French Revolution,
Hegel anticipated the general movement of science. But because
it was only an anticipation, although, by a genius, it received from
Hegel an idealistic character. Hegel operated with ideological
shadows as the ultimate reality. Marx demonstrated that the
movement of these ideological shadows reflected nothing but the
movement of material bodies.16 Hegel wrote before Darwin
and before Marx. Thanks to the powerful impulse given to thought by the French
Revolution, Hegel anticipated the general movement of science. But because it
was only an anticipation, although, by a genius, it received from Hegel an
idealistic character. Hegel operated with ideological shadows as the ultimate
reality. Marx demonstrated that the movement of these ideological shadows
reflected nothing but the movement of material bodies.[8]
Chapter Three-The
Levellers, the Labouring classes and the Poor. It is safe to say that Rees has probably
been the foremost expert on the Levellers for at least the last
decade. In that decade, we have seen a significant rise in
the interest in John Lilburne and his Leveller
Party. In the last few years alone, four significant studies have
begun with Elliot Vernon and P. Baker's The Agreements of the
People, the Levellers, and the Constitutional Crisis of the English
Revolution, followed by Rachel Foxley's The Levellers: Radical Political
Thought in the English Revolution. John Rees's The Leveller
Revolution. Gary S. De Krey released a two-volume set on the
Levellers in 2018.
Rees’s work is
at the high point of Leveller's study. His PhD thesis[9] is
worth several reads, and his book The Leveller Revolution breaks
new ground and re-establishes the Leveller's rightful place at
the centre of the English Bourgeois Revolution.
As Rees explains in this
short book current historiography has certainly carried over much of the worst
traits of Whig attitudes towards the
Levellers. Some historians, such as John Adamson, have
ignored them completely. Others have portrayed them as having little or no
influence on the outcome of the Revolution. John Morrill mentioned
them twice in his book The Revolt of the Provinces. There have been
oppositional voices. Edward Vallance has uncovered a persistent influence
of John Lilburne's politics on radicals in the 1700s. He
concludes, 'historians have undervalued the degree of intellectual
sympathy and continuity there have been oppositional voices. Edward
Vallance has uncovered a persistent influence of
John Lilburne's politics on radicals in the 1700s.
Their revisionism
was a by-product of their assault on Marxist historiography. In his
PhD thesis, Rees writes “that revisionists depended on a wider
conservative turn in social theory. The Althusserian school of
the 1970s, which became the post-structuralist school, which became the
post-modernist school which fed the 'linguistic turn', provided a theoretical
toolbox for the revisionists and those that came after the revisionist
challenge to liberal and left interpretations of the English Revolution
synchronised with almost suspicious exactitude with the end of the post-war
boom and the abandonment of the welfare state consensus. This change, beginning
in the mid-1970s, achieved its electoral representation when Margaret Thatcher
became prime minister of Britain in 1979 and Ronald Reagan president of the US
in 1980. "In a way, revisionism was never only about the English
Revolution. Very similar arguments were deployed at much the same time about
the French and the Russian Revolutions.”[10]
Although Rees does
consult an unprecedented range of sources for his work on the
Levellers, like Hill and Brian Manning before him, he
steers well clear on any of the historians or
writers who were persecuted and later murdered
by Josef Stalin. I can only assume that in the past, to do
so would cut across the SWP’s adaptation to Stalinism. This certainly
applies to Hill, a former member of the Communist Party
Historians Group (CPHG).
As Ann Talbot
writes (this quote technically applies to the historians and writers
inside the SWP}, “There is something Jesuitical about the relationship of
these historians to Marxism. They seem capable of partitioning their minds
and pursuing a scientific Marxist approach to history up to the point where the
Stalinist bureaucracy drew the line, like the Jesuit scientists who would
pursue their investigations as far as the Church authorities permitted,
but no further. It was an approach further encouraged by the extreme
specialisation of academic life that enabled them to concentrate on very
narrow areas of history that never brought them into direct collision with the
bureaucracy on political questions.”[11]
One of those
writers not consulted is Evgeny Pashukanis. While it
is true that Pashukanis did not write extensively on the Levellers or
the English Revolution, he did write one essay that historians have
consistently ignored. Pashukanis has been rescued from the
condescension of history by Mike Head. Head's book,
Evgeny Pashukanis, A Critical Reappraisal, shines the light of day on one
of the most important legal theories to emerge from "the
boldest and most sweeping experiment of the 20th century"—the October 1917
Russian Revolution. Head is a law professor at the University of Western
Sydney in Australia and a regular contributor to the World Socialist Web
Site.
In his review for
the World Socialist Web Site, Kevin
Kearney writes, “Like the revolution itself, the Soviet legal
experiment which produced Pashukanis was cut short by the
consolidation of the Stalinist bureaucracy and its attack on Marxism in the
form of the nationalist theory of "socialism in one country." The
legal complement to "socialism in one country" was the concept of
"socialist legality"—a complete abandonment of the classical Marxist
perspective of the "withering away" of the state and law. Ultimately,
the bureaucratic caste isolated itself from and dominated the
masses, necessitating not only the permanency of the state and
"the rule of law" but an unprecedented strengthening of their
invasive and repressive powers. With the publication of his
General Theory—the same year Stalin unveiled his theory of "socialism in
one country"—Pashukanis became the preeminent Soviet jurist, and his
book was required reading at universities around the country.
Within 12 years,
however, Pashukanis found himself under increasing pressure to adapt
his ideas more openly to the needs of the Stalinist
bureaucracy. Pashukanis was eventually labelled a
"Trotskyite saboteur" and executed by Stalin in 1937. His
writings were subsequently expunged from the
universities. Pashukanis was by no means a recanting anti-Stalinist,
nor was he a Trotskyist. Head successfully tackles this myth by clarifying
the political record,
which demonstrates that Pashukanis lined up against the
Left Opposition, which was led by Trotsky, from at least
1925. However, by putting Pashukanis' theoretical work in
the correct economic and political context, Head shows how it was used as
Marxist window-dressing for the bureaucracy's
counter-revolutionary policies.”ever, by putting Pashukanis'
theoretical work in the correct economic and political context, Head
shows how it was used as Marxist window-dressing for the bureaucracy's
counter-revolutionary policies.[12]
Despite this,
Evgeny Pashukanis’s Revolutionary Elements in the History of the
English State and Law (1927) contains an important analysis
of the English Revolution and the role of the levellers in
that Revolution. Pashukanis writes, “The Levellers and
those movements which sought social Revolution and attacked the
existing property relations was, so to speak, confirmed. But this was only
the case if we were to be satisfied by the consideration
of ideological formulae and not the objective meaning of the given
revolutionary movement. The ideology of the Levellers was typical
bourgeois ideology; the overwhelming majority of the Levellers acted
as defenders of the principle of private property, and this by no means
contradicts the fact that the victory of the Levellers’ movement should
have objectively led to the most decisive infringement on
the right of feudal property. Moreover, this success
and this victory could not have found its expression other
than eliminating feudal ownership. Therefore, when the opponents
of the Levellers accused them of attacking property and of
favouring communism, this was not merely slander. It was a statement
of uncontested fact that for the privileged feudal owners, the
radical democratic transformation for which the Levellers strove would
have presented a real threat. The affirmations of the leaders of the
Levellers, concerning their adherence to the principle of private
property, were a very weak consolation. On the contrary, the
preaching of the commonality of ownership and the clouded communist ideology of
the extreme left leaders of the German peasant war was, in
fact, less of a threat to embryonic capitalist social
relationships but was instead the banner of the implacable,
most consistent opponents of feudal ownership and all serf and
semi-serf relationships. It is here that it seems possible
for us to find a series of elements which bring the two
movements closer together even though they are so different in their
ideological bases.
The Levellers
undoubtedly were a purely bourgeois party. To the extent that commodity-money
and bourgeois-capitalist relationships at that time (i.e. in the 1640s)
extended rather deeply into the English countryside, to such an
extent that demands could not enter into their programme for a
general division of land, “an agrarian law” etc. But this did not mean that in the case of victory for Levellers, the
relationships of land ownership would have remained the same. The makers of the great French Revolution were
no less attached to the principle of private property. Noblemen. In
England the secularisation of monastic holdings happened long before
the Revolution, in the reign of Henry VIII. These lands were sold
cheaply by the Crown and plundered by influential people and land
ownership was accompanied, as a rule, by a worsening in the position of the
peasants living off the land. All this confiscation of monastic holdings
was, in general, and as a whole, a step on the road to victory of
bourgeois relationships over feudal ones. However, in this case, it
was at the expense of the destruction of one of the pillars of feudal
society while the position of another part of it was strengthened. The
landlords, rounding out their holdings by robbing the monasteries,
simultaneously retained their feudal privileges concerning the
peasants. As was shown above, they used their feudal privileges to direct
the further progress of the development of capitalist relations in the country
for the maximum profit for themselves and the maximum loss for the basic mass
of the peasantry.”30the destruction of one of the pillars of feudal
society while the position of another part of it was strengthened. The
landlords, rounding out their holdings by robbing the monasteries,
simultaneously retained their feudal privileges concerning the peasants. As was
shown above, they used their feudal privileges to direct the further progress
of the development of capitalist relations in the country for the maximum
profit for themselves and the maximum loss for the basic mass of the peasantry.”[13]
Chapter Four: The Middling
Sort. The question of the
Middling Sort has vexed historians for well over a century. Since the
“Storm over the Gentry” debate, historians have been lobbing
grenades at each other over this issue. While it is difficult to
argue against the idea that England had no “ pre-formed
revolutionary ideology before 1640”, it would be a fool or a charlatan to
deny that there was no resistance to the King by a
growing Middle Class. Thomas Hobbes, not noted for his radicalism,
was forced to recognise that London’s middle class had looked at
the successful revolt of the Dutch, saying that ‘the like change
of government would to them produce the like prosperity’. Rees is to
be commended for the quality and accuracy of his research, which is second to
none on this subject.
Rees correctly points
out and backs this up with substantial research that the Revolution's main
leaders and its left-wing were predominantly from the middle
class. He writes, “The leaders of the Levellers were
overwhelmingly from the middling sort. They were or had been,
apprentices and became craftsmen, free of their respective City
companies. John Lilburne was famously apprenticed to the
clothier Thomas Hewson. Thomas Prince, eventually co-treasurer of the
Leveller movement, was also a clothier. Samuel Chidley, Prince’s
co-treasurer, was, like his father Daniel, free of the Company of Haberdashers. William
Walwyn, older and more prosperous than most Leveller leaders, was
from the Merchant Adventurers. Originally a Gloucestershire
yeoman, William Larner was first apprenticed to the Merchant Taylors’
Company. Edward Sexby was originally apprenticed as a
grocer.
He continues,” Some
figures, like Lilburne and Sexby, were from gentry
families. But significantly, they were both second sons. As
Earle observes, the spread of primogeniture meant that, as a study of
Northamptonshire showed, ‘by 1700, most younger sons of the county’s
gentry families had either gone into the church or trade in London,
while the daughters had married London merchants…’. So, the term
‘second son’ was a So, the conclusion that we might draw from all
this is that the Levellers were part of an increasingly self-conscious and
socially decisive group. Their ideas appealed to social groups below them.
Still, these layers were less numerous than in modern society
and were more socially marginalised than the middling sort to which the
Levellers belonged.”[14]
Chapter Five: The Levellers
and the Historians. This is by far the most interesting chapter,
and Rees acknowledges this by setting
aside nearly forty pages for the topic.
Leon Trotsky once wrote,
"In reality, leadership is not a mere "reflection" of a
class or the product of its free creativeness. Leadership is shaped by
clashes between the different classes or the friction between the various
layers within a given class.. this sentiment animates Rees’s investigation
into how historians have seen the Levellers. It is impossible to do
justice in this review to such an all-encompassing review of current and past
historiography. I will return to this chapter at a later date.
To conclude this is a
very short book which tackles a huge subject. To my mind, it seems to have been
put together in too much haste. It would be remiss of me at this juncture to
leave out Rees’s political persuasion. Rees was a member of the SWP before
leaving to found the Counterfire group in 2010 as a major split from the SWP.
Counterfire
specialises in offering a platform for the flotsam and jetsam of pseudo-left
politics. The group is thoroughly convinced of the power and longevity of
capitalism and is hostile to the working class and genuine socialism. Counterfire
and Rees’s occasional use of Marxist phrases, and even rarer references to the
Russian revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, is for the sole
purpose of opposing the independent political mobilisation of the working class
on a revolutionary and internationalist programme. Counterfire's
self-proclaimed “revolutionaries” are bitterly opposed to the orthodox Marxism
represented by the World
Socialist Web Site, the
Socialist Equality Parties and the International Committee of the Fourth
International.
[1] The mournfull Cryes of many
thousand poor tradesman, who are ready to famish through decay of Trade in D
Wolfe, Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution (Frank Cass 1967), pp.
275–276.
[3] The Agreement of the People (1647-49) was the principal
constitutional manifesto associated with the Levellers.
[4] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-03-02-0005-0002
[5] Revisionism refuted-Spring 1991) https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/rees-j/1991/xx/engrevrev.html
[6] Revisionism refuted-Spring 1991)
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/rees-j/1991/xx/engrevrev.html
[7]"These the times ... this the man":
an appraisal of historian Christopher Hill-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/hill-m25.html
[8] The ABC of Materialist Dialectics (December 1939) https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm
[9] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/10465/1/HIS_thesis_Rees_Thesis_2014.pdf
[10] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/10465/1/HIS_thesis_Rees_Thesis_2014.pdf
[11] These the times ... this the man": an appraisal of historian
Christopher Hill-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/hill-m25.html
[12] A Marxist perspective on jurisprudence-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/11/pash-n26.html
[13] Revolutionary Elements in the History of the English State and Law
(1927) https://www.marxists.org/archive/pashukanis/1927/xx/english.htm
[14] The Levellers, the labouring classes, and the poor-https://www.counterfire.org/article/the-levellers-the-labouring-classes-and-the-poor/
