'O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to
deceive.'
Walter Scott
"It might seem that the notion of tradition, unlike
kilts and bagpipes, has been around for many centuries. Once more, appearances
are deceptive. The term 'tradition' as it is used today is a product of the
last 200 years in Europe. Just like the concept of risk, which I talked about
in my last lecture, in mediaeval times, there was no generic notion of
tradition. There was no call for such a word, precisely because tradition and
custom were everywhere".
Anthoney Giddens
Neil Davidson died on May 3, 2020. His death removes from
the historical scene a gifted historian and a working-class autodidact that is rarely
seen today. Davidson wrote on many subjects, including the historical status of
bourgeois revolutions, Scottish politics and history, the relationship between
the nation-states and capital and seventeenth-century intellectual thought. However, as this obituary will show, his
historiography was always dominated by his pseudo-left political outlook.
Davidson was born 1957 in Aberdeen. He spent much of his
childhood in a largely rural area of Scotland that Davidson would later write
about as been the last part of the British Isles to lose its peasantry. Life was
hard for Davidson growing up in a flat with no indoor toilet. Davidson had a
tremendous work ethic and dedication to historical study. Davidson regularly
rose at 5 am to study Marxist classics without the early luxury of going to
university. The majority of his writings were done in the evening and weekends
because he held a fulltime civil service job. It was only very late in life did
Davidson escape the clutches of his civil service job for a life in academia.
He became a senior research fellow at Strathclyde University. In 2013 he became
a lecturer in sociology at Glasgow University.
He became radicalised during the early 1970s joining the
International Socialists forerunners of the Socialist Workers Party in 1976. When
Davidson joined the IS, it had already broken from orthodox Trotskyism, and from
1951 had sustained a systematic attack on the basic tenents of Trotskyism. Its
then-leader Tony Cliff repudiated any chance of there being a social revolution
in the post-war period. Cliff put forward his thesis that a form of "state
capitalism "had taken place in the Soviet Union.
The IS postulated that this was a new form of capitalist
exploitation on a world scale. The result of this theory was that it in the
words of Chris Marsden it "lent capitalism a new lease on life". He
continued "the IS' declaration that the Soviet Union was equivalent to US
imperialism and its insistence that the reformist parties and trade union
apparatuses represented the interests of the working class enabled it to secure
a niche in a layer of the petty bourgeoisie that relied upon the welfare state
and the trade unions for their privileges. This layer combined radical rhetoric
and pressure on the labour bureaucracies to safeguard wages and public-sector
jobs and services with unswerving opposition to any attempt to construct a
working-class party independent of the Labour Party".Davidson
agreed with IS's position on state capitalism because it made 'made perfect
sense'.
Davidson and the "Scottish
Revolution"
Davidson produced a significant amount of material on
Scottish history and politics. The books Origins of Scottish Nationhood (2000)
and Discovering the Scottish Revolution (2003) defined Davidson's attitude to
the "Scottish Question". Davidson's main position on Scotland was
that it existed as a Scottish state before 1707. However, there was no mass national
consciousness. Whether a mass national consciousness developed naturally or was
manufactured is a debate that still rages amongst historians. One does not have
to agree with Hugh Trevor Roper's politics to see that he had a point when he
wrote in his article on the 'invented traditions' of Scotland, that the 'the
whole concept of a distinct Highland culture' was a 'retrospective invention'.
It would seem that Davidson spent most of his academic
career looking for a Scottish bourgeois revolution. Some would say that it
would have been easier to find Lord Lucan. Davidson is correct to point out
that some decisive moments point to a significant pathway towards the goal of a
Scottish bourgeois revolution. One of these events is the defeat of the last
Jacobite revolt in 1746. However, this defeat was attained with the direct
intervention of the British state and with the help of the Scottish lowland
bourgeoisie. This action finally suppressed the last remnants of Scottish
feudalism. It was very much a bourgeois revolution from above with the help of
the English bourgeoise. The Scottish bourgeois revolution if you can find one,
was, in the end, a pretty tame affair and no way comparable to that of the
English bourgeois revolution of the 1640s.
Despite the rise of the Scottish Nation-state being intimately
connected to the development of the English bourgeoise numerous Pseudo left
commentators and historians have sought to argue differently in that it was an
oppressed nation that needed to throw off the yoke of English capitalism.
Scotland, despite Davidson arguing to the contrary, was not an
oppressed nation. On the contrary orthodox Marxists have argued it was, in
fact, part of an imperialist state. The Psuedo Left revisionists downplay the Scottish
ruling elites past crimes which have resulted in the Scottish bourgeoise making
vasts amounts of money out of the brutal exploitation of millions the world
over.
It could be argued that ever since 1707, workers in Scotland
have been oppressed not because of their nationality but because of their class
position within capitalist society. As a Socialist Equality Party(SEP)
statement points out "The Act of Union in 1707 provided the framework for
the development of capitalism and the vast growth of the productive forces.
This, in turn, formed the basis for the emergence of the first industrial
working class in the world. Since then, working people in England, Scotland and
Wales have fought side by side in epic struggles, including the great
revolutionary Chartist movement for democracy and equality, the general strike
of 1926, the mass strike movement that brought down a Tory government in 1974
and the year-long miners' strike of 1984-85.
The advocacy of Scottish independence is a reactionary
response to the bankruptcy of the nation-state system, which no longer
corresponds to the global organisation of economic life. In the last century,
this fundamental contradiction gave rise to two of the most devastating wars in
human history as the leading capitalist powers fought for world hegemony.
Today, with the advent of global production, in which every country's economy
is integrated into a greater whole dominated by huge transnational corporations
and banks, inter-imperialist and national antagonisms have reached a new peak
of intensity".
In order to justify his position regarding Scottish
independence, Davidson was forced to continue the "invention of Tradition"
historiography. I do not believe he falsified his research to fit a political
perspective, but it is clear that his positions on Scottish history led him
down a reactionary and nationalist road. In the first volume of his collected
essays entitled Holding Fast to an Image of the Past (2014) of which the title is
taken from Walter Benjamin's 'On the Concept of History' (1940) Davidson warned
that revolutionaries could without their knowledge, become 'tools of the ruling
class'.
Despite warning against this trait, it would seem that
Davidson did exactly what he warned others against. Davidson became a foot
soldier for the 2014 "yes" campaign for Scottish independence. He
downplayed the reactionary nature of the "Yes" Campaign and ignored
completely the significant opposition that existed to the separatist project
among Scottish workers. Davidson exposed his political bankruptcy saying at a RIC
meeting, "People in this room, people on the left, people out there on
picket lines … believe in the unity of the British working class, and they
dismiss some of us who argue for independence as useful stooges of the ruling
class".
Much of Davidson's work on Scotland was done while he was
still a member of the SWP. Davidson held a diametrically opposite line to the
SWP who in the early 1970s had a semi orthodox line on Scotland history.
In 1974 they wrote "Scottish nationalism had not played
any such progressive role since the 17th century when the idea of Scotland, or
at least of the Scottish lowlands, as a nation grew up in opposition to
Scottish feudalism. The struggles of the Scottish bourgeoisie against the
remnants of feudalism took place more or less simultaneously with similar
struggles in England, in the 1640s and 1688, with the movements in one country
being intimately bound up with movements in the other.
The Act of Union between the two countries did not represent
the suppression of the Scottish bourgeoisie by the English but rather an
agreement between the two to exploit the British empire jointly. The Scottish
bourgeoisie swung behind support for the Union after a colonial adventure of
their own failed. Indeed, it can be argued that the final bourgeois unification
of Scotland was only fully achieved with the aid of English arms when the
pre-capitalist society of the highlands was destroyed in the aftermath of 1745.
The Scottish bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie led no sort of struggle against
British imperialism; instead, they mobilised the rest of the population in its
support". Suffice to say this is not the SWP's position today.
Davidson
on the European Bourgois Revolutions
Despite his differences with the
SWP Davidson agreed with the SWP's attack on basic Marxist theory. Davidson
agreed with the SWP's revision of Leon Trotsky's theory of Permanent revolution.
The Deflected Permanent Revolution was put forward by Tony Cliff in 1963.
As the 2011 Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality
Party document points out "Cliff was to argue that the Stalinist
dictatorship was only the most finished expression of a new stage in the
evolution of world capitalism, which was partially expressed by Labour's
post-war nationalisations and those conducted by the newly independent colonial
regimes. He placed the intelligentsia alongside the Stalinist bureaucracy as
the midwife of yet another variety of state capitalism. The industrial working
class had "played no role whatsoever" in the Chinese revolution,
while in Cuba, "middle-class intellectuals filled the whole arena of
struggle". From this, Cliff declared that Trotsky's Theory of Permanent
Revolution was wrong because, "While the conservative, cowardly nature of
a late-developing bourgeoisie (Trotsky's first point) is an absolute law, the
revolutionary character of the young working-class (point 2) is neither
absolute nor inevitable… Once the constantly revolutionary nature of the
working class, the central pillar of Trotsky's theory, becomes suspect, the
whole structure falls to pieces".
Davidson's adoption of the deflected
permanent revolution thesis would dominate his work on the European bourgeois
revolutions. Davidson's book How revolutionary was the Bourgeois Revolutions is
a culmination of all his work on the bourgeois revolutions. The first thing
that strikes you about the book despite the excellent cover is the title. Why
ask a question that you know the answer to. Any GCE Ordinary Level history
student would know that they were very revolutionary.
The book is the product of
decades reading and research. Davidson put his archival expertise to good use.
The subject matter is complex, but the book is written with simple clarity
without lowering the academic standard.
The concept of the bourgeois
revolution is perhaps one of the most contentious subjects in modern-day
historiography. As the American historian James Oakes points out, there is a
tendency in historiography "to erase revolutions from all of human
history." The process, he noted, had been going on for decades. First… the
English revisionists said there was no English Revolution, and then François
Furet came along and said there was no French Revolution. We have historians
telling us that the Spanish-American revolutions were really just fought among
colonial elites that got out of hand and happened to result in the abolition of
slavery".
A recent history Today magazine's article called Do not Mention the Civil War.
Why is Britain Embarrassed by its Revolutionary Past? Highlights this trend.
The academic researcher Chris
Thompson is a prime example of this trend saying "the prolific use of terms like 'bourgeoisie',
'feudal' and 'modern' aristocracy, 'proletariat' and 'non-bourgeois strata of
the middle class' invites comparison with the debates of the Communist Party of
Great Britain's historians' group in the late-1940s and early-1950s recently
edited by David Parker. Antique concepts like the claim that a class of urban
capitalists were developing in the sixteenth century with feudalism or that
these people were held to be socially inferior and were excluded from power by the
Absolute States are given vigorous exercise. 'Bourgeois' revolutions inevitably
occurred and, in their outcomes, promoted capitalism. There is also an undertow
of historiographical controversy: Callinicos's protest against the revisionist
historians of the 1970s is linked to an attack on 'Political Marxists' like
Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood for their assistance in undermining a
more authentically Socialist interpretation".
It is perhaps a concession to
these historians that Davidson's book title tilts towards an accommodation with
this prevalent view that these revolutions were not that revolutionary.
Davidson is a political historian who incorporates his politics into his
historiography. Davidson's Philosophical Conceptions or world view is moulded
to a significant degree by the Socialist Workers Party's troika of theories
that were a departure from classical Marxism. The Deflected Permanent
Revolution, the Permanent Arms Economy and lastly the theory of State
Capitalism.
Both the first and the last of
these theories are the most relevant to our subject and Davidson's adoption of
these two theories underpin his understanding of the bourgeois
revolutions. The fact that Davidson
himself recognises in his preface when he says that how one defines the
bourgeois revolution and capitalism in general defines, you view of the
proletarian revolution.
In this instance, a correct
understanding of the early Soviet state is a prerequisite for an understanding
of proceeding and contemporary revolutions. Unfortunately, Davidson's position
on the early Soviet state is not one of an orthodox Marxist or Trotskyist.
Davidson's and the SWP's agreement
with the theory of the USSR being State Capitalist had it is origins in the
work of Bruno Rizzi's who wrote in his book The Bureaucratization of the World:
"In the USSR, in our view, it is the bureaucrats who are the owners, for
it is they who hold power in their hands. It is they who manage the economy,
just as was normal with the bourgeoisie. It is they who take the profits, just
as do all exploiting classes, who fix wages and prices. I repeat—it is the
bureaucrats. The workers count for nothing in the governing of society. What is
more, they receive no share in the surplus-value… The reality is that
collective property is not in the hands of the proletariat; but in the hands of
a new class: a class which, in the USSR, is already an accomplished fact,
whereas in the totalitarian states this class is still in the process of
formation".
The Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky
who was acutely aware of this belief that the USSR was "state capitalist,"
or some other form of exploitative society rejected this theory and did not
attach great significance to it.
According to the Marxist writer David North "the state-capitalist
theory, the categories of Marxian political economy were abandoned and replaced
with an unscientific descriptive terminology. It was a theory in which the
element of economic necessity was replaced entirely with an extreme form of
political subjectivism". Again
according to North "at the heart of the Rizzi positions was the
repudiation of the Marxist appraisal of the revolutionary role of the working
class.
As Leon Trotsky wrote "All the various types of disillusioned
and frightened representatives of pseudo-Marxism proceed… from the assumption
that the bankruptcy of the leadership only "reflects" the incapacity
of the proletariat to fulfil its revolutionary mission. Not all our opponents
express this thought clearly, but all of them—ultra-lefts, centrists,
anarchists, not to mention Stalinists and social-democrats—shift the
responsibility for the defeats from themselves to the shoulders of the
proletariat. None of them indicates under precisely what conditions the
proletariat will be capable of accomplishing the socialist overturn. If we grant as true that the cause of the
defeats is rooted in the social qualities of the proletariat itself, then the
position of modern society will have to be acknowledged as hopeless".
How does Davidson's agreement
with the theory of State Capitalism colour his attitude towards the bourgeois
revolutions? Well, a constant theme of his book is the underestimation of the
role political and social consciousness plays in revolutions which runs through
the entire book. The SWP's rejection of the revolutionary nature of the working
class which is implicit in the theory of State capitalism leads them into all
sorts of alliances with forces hostile to socialism such the Labour party,
trade unions and even the Stalinists.
So what Is Davidson's conception
of the bourgeois revolution? Despite the book being 0ver 800 pages long, it is a
little difficult to get a coherent picture of Davidson's theory of the
bourgeois revolution. He does state on page 420: "The theory of bourgeois revolution is
not … about the origins and development of capitalism as a socio-economic
system but the removal of backwards-looking threats to its continued existence
and the overthrow of restrictions to its further development. The source of
these threats and restrictions has, historically, been the pre-capitalist
state, whether estates-monarchy, absolutist, or tributary in nature. In no
bourgeois revolution did the revolutionaries ever seek to rally popular forces
by proclaiming their intention to establish a new form of exploitative society but
did so by variously raising demands for religious freedom, representative
democracy, national independence, and, ultimately, socialist reconstruction".
Davidson's point that is not
necessary for there to be a bourgeoisie that is active in the revolution for
that revolution to be bourgeois. Davidson, like many in the SWP, tend to
downplay the role of consciousness in history bourgeois or otherwise. The other
tendency pronounced in the SWP is to see historical processes as fixed rather
than fluid categories.
As the Russian Marxist Leon
Trotsky noted: "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
in 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".
As was said above a classical
Marxist view is that social classes are not fixed concepts but are fluid. The
bourgeois has existed in different forms as a class over time. It has changed
according to how capitalism has developed and vice versa. Davidson's
downplaying the study of socio-economic forces diminishes one's understanding
of the development of capitalism and its bourgeois revolutions. While it is perfectly
natural to concentrate on key players in the bourgeois revolutions, however, the
downplaying of other social and political figures tend to lead Davidson in
dismissing elements that made the bourgeois revolution more than just an
objective occurrence. As Dominic Alexander writes "Davidson's
concentration on the analysis of key thinkers as such tends to downplay the
extent to which revolution was a social and conceptual reality; that is to say,
the analysis tends to emphasise the conservative aspects of leading thinkers'
ideas against the revolutionary context from which they emerged".
Another aspect that colours
Davidson's understanding of the bourgeois revolution is his use of the SWP's
theory of The Deflected Permanent Revolution. The most important aspect in the
development of Marx's concept of revolution was the experience of the 1848
revolutions.
Marx correctly stated that the
bourgeoisie could not be trusted with the future development of humanity and
that responsibility had passed to the revolutionary working class "hence
the new era was one of permanent revolution". For decades Socialists have
approached the experiences and lessons of 1848 in order to understand their revolutions.
The greatest being the theoreticians of the Russian Social Democratic Party.
Davidson's approach as regards
the deflected permanent revolution is similar to his use of the State
capitalist theory. As one writer puts it "The theory supplants
non-revolutionary petty-bourgeois intellectuals and other bourgeois forces that
presided over a "deflected permanent revolution", consolidating state-capitalist
formations in one country after another".
In his introduction, Davidson
believes that the 1949 Chinese revolution was a bourgeois revolution which led
to a state capitalist formation writing “it could have been the socialist
revolution, if the movements of the mid-1920s had succeeded, but ended up
instead as the functional equivalent of the bourgeois revolution instead—a
lesser but still decisive systemic shift”.
Suffice to say this is not an
orthodox Marxist position on the Chinese revolution. It is not possible to go
into any great detail the complex nature of the Marxist position on the Chinese
Revolution however 955 this paoint was made by the American Socialist Workers
Party, which concluded, based on the
discussion in the Fourth International on the buffer states of Eastern Europe, “that
China had become a deformed workers’ state. It was a transitional regime.
Nationalised property and economic planning had been established, but the new
state was deformed at birth, with the working class lacking any political voice
or democratic rights. Either China would proceed towards genuine socialism,
which required the overthrow of the Maoist bureaucracy at the hands of the
working class in a political revolution—as advocated by the Trotskyist
movement—or it would relapse back to capitalism”.
To conclude my main problem with
the book is that because Davidson is wrong in his analysis of modern-day
revolutions, how do we trust his evaluation of the earlier Bourgeois revolutions.
This point aside the book does
provide us with a very useful reference point for a study of the bourgeois
revolutions. Readers should acquaint themselves with a thorough study of
Davidson's and the SWP's positions of defected permanent revolution and state
capitalism and their critics within the classical Marxist movement.
In conclusion, despite Davidson
leaving the SWP, he took with him all the ideological baggage he accumulated
during his membership. The theoretical revisions of Trotskyism, the deflected
permanent revolution, State Capitalism, were inculcated into Davidson's work up
till his untimely death. Are his books worth reading yes they are, but the
reader should be aware that the buzzing bees in Davidson's head are of a Psuedo
left character?
