"The object of this article is to suggest an
interpretation of the events of the 17th century different from that which most
of us were taught at school... This interpretation is that the English
Revolution of 1640-60 was a great social movement like the French Revolution of
1789.' "
Christopher Hill's essay on the English Revolution
published in 1940.
Brian Manning, alongside Christopher Hill, is mostly
identified with the conception that England witnessed a bourgeois revolution in
the middle part of the seventeenth century. Manning wrote most of the books
under conditions of an unrelenting attack on the concept of a bourgeois
revolution.
Most of this difficulty came working inside university
history departments that were extremely hostile to any Marxist historiography.
Manning did most of the work as a member of the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP). His chosen party favoured the genre "people's
history" or" history from below. This genre was not a product of
Marxism but that of Stalinism. As Ann Talbot succinctly puts it "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
an unprincipled 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".[1]
Whether Manning chose the title of his book is not
important, it reflected his newfound co-thinkers in the SWP. The use of the
term Far Left is a contentious one. No other historian including Hill used the
term.
Despite Norah Carlin saying that Hill did not leave
behind a group of like-minded Marxist thinkers, Manning was deeply influenced
by his former teacher. A student of Hill in the l in the early 1950s wrote "The
undoubted dominance of Christopher Hill in the history of the English
Revolution may be attributed to his prolific record of books and articles, and
his continuous engagement in a debate with other historians; to the breadth of
his learning, embracing the history of literature, the law, science, as well as
religion and economics; to the fact that his work set the agenda and the
standard to which all historians of the period had to address themselves,
whether in support of or opposition to his methods and interpretations; but
above all, to the inspiration he drew from Marxism. The English Revolution took
place in a culture dominated by religious ideas and religious language, and
Christopher Hill recognised that he had to uncover the social context of
religion to find the key to understanding the English Revolution, and as a
Marxist to ascertain the interrelationships between the intellectual and social
aspects of the period".[2]
Being influenced by Hill certainly made Manning a
better historian. By all accounts, he
was a very good teacher who "urged his students not to take notes, but to
listen and think." The SWP was his political home, but he had other namely
the Communist Party with its adoption of the genre "People's History". According to Jim Holstun, "Manning's work puts
English workers at the very centre of the English Revolution as innovative
political actors and theorists in their own right. His approach contrasts
strongly with the usual somnambulistic turn to the ruling class initiative and
frequently inverts its causal sequence".[3]
One consistency throughout his life was a tendency
good or bad not to criticise is adopted home whether on the board of the
magazine Past and Present, which was heavily dominated by the Communist Party
and its historians. Or in the SWP. The SWP's theoretical approach to history has "economist".
Despite a thin veneer of Marxism, The SWP
has an opportunist approach to historical events as Leon Trotsky pointed out "One
of the psychological sources of opportunism is superficial impatience, the lack
of confidence in the gradual growth of the party's influence, the desire to win
the masses with the aid of an organisational manoeuvre or personal diplomacy.
Out of this springs the policy of combinations behind the scenes, the policy of
silence, of hushing up, of self-renunciation, of adaptation to the ideas and
slogans of others; and finally, the complete passage to the positions of
opportunism." (Marxism and the Trade Unions, New Park, p. 74)
Manning's tendency in glorifying certain spontaneous
movements of the radical groups during the English revolution slotted in nicely
with the SWP's mantra of fighting for the English revolution". Suffice to
say this is not an orthodox Marxist approach to historical questions.
While professing to have a historical materialist
approach to the study history, their adoption of the history from below genre
would suggest otherwise. Their attitude towards developing Marxism in the
working class is best summed by a historian former member Neil Faulkner who
wrote "Since 2010, I have formed
many new and rewarding political friendships, and these have contributed, I
believe, to a richer, more nuanced understanding of the Russian Revolution. Not
least, the degeneration of the British Left over the last two or three decades-
which is a generic process, not something restricted to the SWP-has given me a
clearer understanding that the masses build revolutionary parties themselves in
a struggle; that is, they do not arise from voluntarism, from acts of will by
self-appointed revolutionary 'vanguards'; they do not arise from what has
sometimes has been called 'the primitive accumulation of cadre. Revolutionaries
should organise, but they should never proclaim themselves to be the party".[4]
That this kind of glorification of spontaneity was
tolerated inside a party that professed to Marxist was truly unbelievable. The
SWP, while paying lip service to the Marxist theory of history, would maintain
an "enthusiasm for the English Revolution". As Alex Calinicos would
say "there was a plan in 1994, as far as I remember never executed, to
take a minibus to the battlefield of Naseby to gloat over the destruction of
Stuart power by the New Model Army 350 years earlier".[5]
Not a serious approach to history never mind
politics. In all my time writing history, I have never come across someone who
would contemplate taking sides with one section of the petty bourgeoisie's
destruction of the Monarchy.
Of a far more serious problem was the SWP's refusal
to challenge Manning's attitude towards Cromwell. As Calinicos recalls "I
remember him saying that he had never cared for Oliver Cromwell, who reminded
him of Stalin. This statement would not look out of place amongst the more
conservative historians who have also compared Cromwell to Stalin.
Again this is not a Marxist approach towards Oliver Cromwell.
As the Marxist Leon Trotsky wrote "The
editor of the Daily Herald recently expressed his doubts as to whether Oliver
Cromwell could be called a 'pioneer of the labour movement'. One of the
newspapers. Collaborators supported the editor's doubts and referred to the
severe repressions that Cromwell conducted against the Levellers, the sect of
equalitarian of that time (communists). These reflections and questions are
extremely typical of the historical thinking of the leaders of the Labour
Party. That Oliver Cromwell was a pioneer of bourgeois and not socialist
society there would appear to be no need to waste more than two words in
proving. The great revolutionary bourgeois was against universal suffrage for
he saw in it a danger to private property.
It is relevant to note that the Webbs draw from this
the conclusion of the 'incompatibility' of democracy and capitalism while
closing their eyes to the fact that capitalism has learnt to live on the best
possible terms with democracy and to have taken control of the instrument of
universal suffrage as an instrument of the stock exchange. [It is curious that,
two centuries later, in 1842 in fact, the historian Macaulay as an M.P.
protested universal suffrage for the very same reasons as Cromwell. -- L. D.T.]
Nevertheless, British workers can learn incomparably more from Cromwell than
from MacDonald, Snowden, Webb, and other such compromising brethren. Cromwell
was a great revolutionary of his time, who knew how to uphold the interests of
the new, bourgeois social system against the old aristocratic one without holding
back at anything. This must be learned from him, and the dead lion of the
seventeenth century is in this sense immeasurably greater than many living dogs".[6]
As his book, the Far Left in the English Revolution
shows much of Manning's work during his SWP membership concentrated more of the
radical groups in the English Revolution such as the Levellers, diggers and to
a lesser extent Ranters. Manning's obituary, written by Alex Calinicos, was
entitled A True Leveller.
The SWP were Manning's main publisher with titles
such as 1649: Crisis of the Revolution (1992) and Revolution and
Counter-Revolution in England, Scotland, and Ireland 1658-60 (2003)They republished
The English People and the English Revolution.
Te Far Left Manning talks about in his book are the
various radical groups that sprang to life during the English Revolution. Much
of the past historiography examining the Levellers, Diggers has been dominated
by the school of historical research called 'history from below'. Manning's
book is a good attempt to establish the class nature of what Manning calls the
Far left.
Most of Manning's work has centred on three major
class formations. For Manning, the 'middling sort' was key to an understanding
of the English Revolution. Manning his book took on board that "not every
conflict between groups in society springs from class antagonisms, but when two
groups stand in a relation of exploiters and exploited it is a class relation:
and when one group seeks to exploit another group, and the latter group
resists, they become engaged in the class struggle".
The problem for a Marxist historian in writing on
this period of history is that 'classes, while they existed, were still in
embryonic form. But this did not stop Manning from using Marxist theory to
denote what was a class struggle. Manning is correct to warn of the difficulties of an
exact definition of the working class. We are talking about the seventeenth
century after all, not the twenty-first when class distinctions are clear. As Engel's
pointed out in his Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, 'In every great bourgeois
movement there were independent outbursts of that class which was the more or
less developed forerunner of the modern proletariat.'
Manning's work on the Far Left of the English
Revolution has been criticised from the right I might add for concentrating too
heavily on the work of other historians. One blogger wrote "This book is a
general survey rather than the result of detailed original research. The
sources cited are mostly secondary works, along with some contemporary
pamphlets. As far as I can tell, the footnotes do not mention any manuscripts
at all. You do not have to be a document fetishist to see this as a limitation.
The archives are full of unexplored opportunities. Concentrating only on what
has been published in print closes an awful lot of possibilities. For example,
early-modern court records are full of poor people saying things that they were
not supposed to say, and the fact that they were punished afterwards cannot
erase the fact that they said it. The most glaring omission is when Manning
mentions that plans for a Fifth Monarchist revolt were carefully recorded in a
manuscript journal, but does not cite the manuscript.[7]
Manning is correct to point out that different forms
of the class struggle were taking place in the seventeenth century. Manning correctly
believes that a period of dual power existed between the king and parliament
and later between the Presbyterians and the Independents.
Trotsky points out "The conditions are now
created for the single rule of the Presbyterian bourgeoisie. But before the
royal power could be broken, the parliamentary army has converted itself into
an independent political force. It has concentrated in its ranks the
Independents, the pious and resolute petty bourgeoisie, the craftsmen and
farmers. This army powerfully interferes in the social life, not merely as an
armed force, but as a Praetorian Guard, and as the political representative of
a new class opposing the prosperous and rich bourgeoisie. Correspondingly the
army creates a new state organ rising above the military command: a council of
soldiers' and officers' deputies ("agitators"). A new period of
double sovereignty has thus arrived: that of the Presbyterian Parliament and
the Independents' army. This leads to open conflicts. The bourgeoisie proves
Powerless to oppose with its own army the "model army" of Cromwell –
that is, the armed plebeians. The conflict ends with a purgation of the
Presbyterian Parliament by the sword of the Independents. There remains but the
rump of a parliament; the dictatorship of Cromwell is established. The lower
ranks of the army, under the leadership of the Levellers the extreme left wing
of the revolution – try to oppose to the rule of the upper military levels, the
patricians of the army, their own veritable plebeian regime. But this new
two-power system fails in developing: The Levellers, the lowest depths of the
petty bourgeoisie, have not yet, nor can have their own historic path. Cromwell
soon settles accounts with his enemies. A new political equilibrium, and still
by no means a stable one, is established for a period of years.[8]
Despite its slim appearance, the book is one of the few
to examine the plight of the poor during the English revolution. Manning is
correct to point out that the poor have received scant attention from
historians.
His usage of the great Marxist thinkers such as Marx,
Engels, Trotsky, Lenin to explain complex political formations is to be
commended. He attempts to use previous Marxist Writings on the bourgeois revolution
to attempt to answer the question of who were the poor and what class did they
belong to.
The poor were not one homogenous group. As manning
explains, they were made up of differing class formations. Therefore, to talk
of a working-class as we know it today would be mistaken. As Marx wrote, 'The
expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of
subsistence, and the means of labour, this fearful and painful expropriation of
the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital.'[9]
Manning explores the contradiction at the heart of
many of the radical groups which despite speaking on behalf of the poor against
the rich defended private property to safeguard the small producers' ownership
of the means of production. He correctly points out that in the end, these
radicals could not develop a consistent revolutionary consciousness and organisation.
Which in the end, led to their downfall?.Manning does not spend too much time examing the
various examples of "riot, revel and rebellions. He examines two revolts
The Corporals Revolt 1649 and The Coopers Revolt,1657. These parts of the book
read more like a novel and tend to look out of place with the more theoretical parts.
To conclude Manning book is a very good attempt at
analysing the revolutionary groups of the seventeenth century in the teeth of
severe opposition from revisionist historians and their hostility to Marxist
historiography.
Manning had a far clearer understanding of the
political nature of revisionism than Hill did. But Jim Holstun warned that "Manning
maybe too optimistic about the decline of the historical revisionist project,
and about the prospect for a revived practice of 'history from below', at least
in British history departments. Revisionism has indeed been subject to powerful
critiques by, among others, a group of 'post-revisionist' historians who are
eager to restore a consideration of ideology and political conflict to
17th-century history."
Ivan Roots's obituary of Brian Manning in The
Independent states that Manning's work is not very popular inside British
history departments because of its Marxist nature. Given the hostility to
Marxism inside the universities, this is hardly news. To give Manning his due,
he was consistent in his theoretical work and deserved a wider audience.
[1] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/hill-m25.html
[2]
Obituary:
Turning Point in History-Brian Manning. http://socialistreview.org.uk/272/obituary-turning-point-history
[3] Brian Manning
and the dialectics of revolt-Issue: 103-29th November 2004-James
Holstun- http://isj.org.uk/brian-manning-and-the-dialectics-of-revolt/
[4]
] A Peoples
History of the Russian Revolution. Neil Faulkner. Pluto 2017
[5] Obituary: A True
Leveller- June 2004-Alex Callinicos- http://socialistreview.org.uk/286/obituary-true-leveller
[6]
Two traditions: the seventeenth-century revolution and Chartism- https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/britain/ch06.htm
[7] http://www.investigationsofadog.co.uk/2008/04/01/brian-manning-and-marxism/
[8]
Leon
Trotsky-The History of the Russian Revolution-Volume One: The Overthrow of
Tzarism-
[9] Chapter
Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation- Capital Volume One-https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
