It would not be an overstatement to say that the election to
the leadership of the Labour party of Jeremy Corbyn is an event of some
significance. Corbyn has been the unwitting benefactor of the enormous social
hostility aimed at the growing enrichment at the expense of millions of working
people by a handful of the super-elite. There is, without a doubt, something
rotten in the state of Britain.
A tremendous amount of newspaper columns, most of it pretty
puerile has drawn attention to Corbyn's left-wing politics. As Julie
Hyland correctly points out "Corbyn's history is steeped in opportunist
petty-bourgeois politics. For all his votes against aspects of Labour policy,
he has been a loyal defender of the party throughout his 32 years on Labour's
backbenches. No one can seriously propose that this party—which, in its
politics and organisation and the social composition of its apparatus, is Tory
in all but name—can be transformed into an instrument of working-class
struggle. The British Labour Party did not begin with Blair. It is a bourgeois
party of more than a century's standing, and a tried and tested instrument of
British imperialism and its state machine. Whether led by Clement Attlee, James
Callaghan or Jeremy Corbyn, its essence remains unaltered".[1]
One of the more interesting articles which appeared as
a byproduct of Corbyn's election victory was by the historian Edward Vallance
in the Guardian newspaper.[2] The purpose of my article is to
tackle the issues raised by Vallance's article rather than a polemic against
Corbyn's politics. As in politics so in history, principled considerations
need to guide any analysis.
His article took note of an interview with the New
Statesman in which Corbyn sought to trace his radicalism back to
mid-17th-century England. The interviewer asked Corbyn what
historical figure he most identified with. It was not surprising that he named
John Lilburne.
I am not against modern-day political figures
identifying with historical figures or having a good grasp of history, but much
historical water has passed under the bridge since 1640 and secondly to compare
Corbyn's opportunist petty-bourgeois politics with the revolutionary Levellers.
Their leader John Lilburne is a little disingenuous.
John Lilburne was the de facto leader of the Levellers who
appeared in the mid-1640s and were England's first radical political party.
They were responsible for many of modern-day political techniques such as mass
demonstrations, collecting petitions, leafleting and the lobby of MPs. Their
strength mainly lay in London and other towns and had quite considerable
support in the army. The MP Henry Marten described Lilburne saying "If the
world were emptied of all but John Lilburne, Lilburne would quarrel with John
and John with Lilburne."
The 'movement' contained other smaller groups of
radicals such as the Diggers known as the True Levellers and Ranters who were
on the extreme left wing of the Leveller movement. As Valance correctly points
out "Lilburne would forge a career as one of the most prominent radical
figures of the period. Along with the works of other writers, notably Richard
Overton, William Walwyn and John Wildman, Lilburne's ideas formed the
intellectual basis for what came to be known as the Leveller movement".[3]
How radical were the Levellers has preoccupied
historians and some politicians for centuries? This task has been more
difficult with the Leveller's legacy being claimed by fascists such as the BNP[4], and the semi-fascist UKIP[5] have adopted them as their
own. UKIP MP Douglas Carswell wrote on his blog that he thought the Levellers
were proto-Conservatives who favoured the small government, low taxes and free
trade.
Would, for instance, would Carswell agree with the egalitarian sentiment
of Thomas Rainborowe a leading Leveller at the Putney debates who said "I
think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the
greatest he, and therefore ... every man that is to live under a government
ought first, by his consent, to put himself under that government; and I do
think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to
that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under." I
doubt it somehow.
It was correct for the early Marxists to look at the early
plebeian movements as precursors of the modern socialist movement. What needs
to be clarified is what a modern socialist movement looks like. The Communist
Party Historians Group (CPHG) alongside numerous radical groups such as the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) tend to glorify the spontaneous movement of the
"middling sort" and to link it to working-class struggles today as if
there was some unbroken radical and democratic thread that would supersede the
need for a scientifically grounded Marxist revolutionary party.
If there is to be a rebirth of the Leveller
historiography, it must be done with a substantial appreciation of the
historians and political figures that flowered during the Russian revolution.
One such figure was Evgeny Pashukanis.[6] His area of expertise was legal
history. His writings on the radical movements of the 17th century are
perceptive and well worth a study but have been neglected by even today's
left-leaning historians. He rejected crude historicism and opposed historians
who saw the Levellers democratic demands as utopian.
Pashukanis saw the English Levellers and Diggers as
"primitive precursors of Bolshevism". In the introduction to his
Revolutionary Elements in the History of the English State and Law, one writer
said "These movements were primitive because they articulated their
demands chiefly in terms of bourgeois notions of distributive justice, yet they
were also precursors of Bolshevism because they attacked existing property
relations and recognised the necessity of forging political alliances with the
urban workers and rank and file soldiers. In praising the informal nature of
the Levellers' demands, and the democratic nature of their organisations, Pashukanis
is drawing an explicit parallel between the Levellers' organisation and the
structure of the Soviets of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies of 1917. The
Levellers' failure lay in the fact that they were betrayed by the upper strata
of the peasantry, and that they were insufficiently prepared to resist the
authoritarian opportunism of Cromwell and his generals".[7]
What is any serious student of the subject of the
Levellers to make of all this? Anyone who knows the history of the Levellers
this is not a simple question. It is very complex. You would search in vain
amongst the MPs mentioned including Corbyn of any sense of the revolutionary
process (which the Levellers took part in) that brought Oliver Cromwell to
power as England's first non-royal head of state. Many MPs would lack any kind
of historical knowledge on this matter, and they would certainly downplay the revolutionary
nature of the Levellers. And more importantly, they would stay deathly silent
on their social writings.
Any serious student of the Levellers would have to contend
with is the fact that modern-day historiography is still partially dominated by
Fabianism. In Putney, there is an exhibition on the Putney Debates of
1647. The information on Leveller involvement in the debates (which was
considerable) was largely dominated by politicians and historians with close
association with the British Labour Party and more precisely the Fabians.
Any debate over the Levellers has been dominated
certainly over the last century by figures in or around Social Democracy.
Perhaps the most important figure has been Tony Benn. Who before his death
spoke at a commemoration of Lilburne's birth?. As Julie Hyland noted "Benn prides
himself on his "historical viewpoint".
Through his father, the
experiences of the 1930s became a formative influence on him politically. From
this tumultuous decade of fascism, defeated revolutions, depression and war, he
developed a loathing for class conflict. This reinforced his belief that
parliamentary democracy and social reform were all that stood between Britain
and chaos. [8]
Fabians such as Benn present the English revolution,
not as a revolution and the Levellers are not seen as revolutionaries but mere
radicals. Speaking about British Fabianism, Leon Trotsky wrote:
"Throughout the whole history of the British Labour movement there has
been pressure by the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat through the agency of
radicals, intellectuals, drawing-room and church socialists and Owenites who
reject the class struggle and advocate the principle of social solidarity,
preach collaboration with the bourgeoisie, bridle, enfeeble and politically
debase the proletariat."[9]
To conclude "The interest in the radicalism
of the English revolution is indicative of the current crisis in British
political life ". This is certainly the most interesting and accurate
sentence in the whole of Vallance's article. Can a study of the Levellers tell
us anything about politics today? Firstly the fact that we are talking about
the 17th-century English revolution and its radical wing at all is because the
issues like what kind of democracy do we want, the rise of social inequality
and how to tackle it and in general what kind of society do we want are
contemporary. Given the explosive political situation today, it is
understandable that the bourgeoisie is a little nervous over a discussion of
the revolution of 1640.
In many ways, the answer given to all these questions in
many ways mirror the answers given by Cromwell and other bourgeois leaders of
his day are similar to today's politicians both Labour and conservative.
Cromwell opposed the abolition of private property and had no solution to the
rise in social inequality other than to send his army against anyone that
proposed it. For example, on May 17th, 1649, Cornet Thompson, Corporal Perkins
and Private Church rank and file Levellers were shot at the hands of Oliver
Cromwell troops. Like in the 17th-century real wealth and the power that
goes with it are still in the hands of a tiny, extremely wealthy elite who call
the shots.
[1] The political issues posed by Corbyn's
election as UK Labour Party leader14 September 2015-wsws.org
[4] See Edward Vallance's book-A Radical
History of Britain: Visionaries, Rebels and Revolutionaries - the men and women
who fought for our freedoms
[7] https://www.marxists.org/archive/pashukanis/1927/xx/english.htm
