“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer
soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service
of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man
and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this
consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the
triumph.”
Tom Paine
“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 that you cannot start forcing the
historical material into a ready-made format. I took that approach with my
book. Of course, I had read a great deal of secondary material, but I wanted to
go where the historical archives and contemporary material would take me. I did
not wish to influence my work, nor did I intend to engage in debates with other
Marxists or currents, in order to determine where history would go. After you
have done that, you can demarcate it and illuminate it by — in a relatively
minor way — dealing with other currents and approaches. What makes something
Marxist is that it is the application of that method. “
John Rees
John Rees’s Fiery Spirits offers a new perspective on the
English Revolution. Fiery Spirits establishes
Rees as the leading contemporary continuator of the Marxist tradition,
initiated by Christopher Hill and Brian Manning in writing the history of the
17th-century English revolution.
The latest book complements both Rees’s PhD thesis and his The
Leveller Revolution, as well as his most recent publication, Marxism and the
English Revolution. Rees is a gifted historian, and his latest book is well-written
and thoroughly researched. It neither downplays nor overplays the Fiery Spirits,
presenting a relatively objective assessment of their role in the English Revolution.
Like the great historian Christopher Hill, Rees is 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. The Fiery Spirits, who were
some of the revolution's ideologues, ransacked the Bible and half-understood
historical precedent to justify some theory that explained their actions.
Rees’s new perspective centres on a small group of highly
influential MPs. These “fiery spirits” played a significant role in shaping the
course of the English bourgeois revolution, which ultimately led to the
establishment of an English republic. Through their radical parliamentarianism,
combined with mass protest, these revolutionaries pushed the revolution forward
to its conclusion.
Rees is careful not to elevate these Fiery Spirits above
the role played by Oliver Cromwell, who was, after all, the leader of the
English revolution. As the Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky once wrote, “ 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 learnt from him, and the dead lion of
the seventeenth century is, in this sense, immeasurably greater than many
living dogs.”
One of the main tasks Rees had was to rescue these “Fiery
Spirits” from what E.P. Thompson once wrote was the “condensation of history”.
They have been buried under a large number of dead dogs, and it is to Rees’s
credit that he has rescued them. Henry Marten, Peter Wentworth, Alexander
Rigby, and others deserve their place in history, and this work traces the
radicalism of these Fiery Spirits in some cases back to the reign of Elizabeth
I.
Dominic Alexander makes an interesting point in his review
of Rees’s book: He writes, “In one sense, this partial continuity is evidence
of how deeply the causative factors of the English Revolution were ingrained in
the nation's history. The conflict was not, as many revisionist historians have
tended to argue, a mere accidental product of contingent events and
personalities. The Fiery Spirits is, however, not so much a
riposte to that vein of argument as it is a response to a more interesting one
about the autonomy of the political sphere in the unfolding of the Revolution.
The long pre-history of the parliamentary opposition faction is one proof that
even granting the relative independence of the political
sphere, causation there also runs deep into the history of early modern England”.
Rees’s book presents a relatively orthodox Marxist understanding
of the English bourgeois revolution and its leading actors. It is therefore
perhaps surprising how little Rees uses the work of Leon Trotsky; there is no
direct quote of Trotsky in any of Rees’s latest books. For any Marxist, Trotsky
should be the basic starting point for any analysis of revolutions and their
actors.
Trotsky writes, “The English revolution of the seventeenth
century, precisely because it was a great revolution shattering the nation to
the bottom, affords a clear example of this alternating dual power, with sharp
transitions in the form of civil war. The English Revolution of the seventeenth
century, precisely because it was a profound revolution that shook the nation
to its core, affords a clear example of this alternating dual power, with sharp
transitions in the form of civil war. Initially, the royal power, resting on
the privileged classes or the upper echelons of these classes – the aristocrats
and bishops – is opposed by the bourgeoisie and the circles of the squirearchy
that are closely associated with it. The government of the bourgeoisie is the
Presbyterian Parliament supported by the City of London.” For
Rees, this “dual Power began in the very early part of the 17th
century.
The hallmark of a good book is that even seasoned readers
who have studied this period for ages can learn something new. Rees presents
new material that highlights the extraordinary level of factionalism and revolt
that preceded the outbreak of revolution. From an early period, the Fiery
Spirits led this rebellion. As Alexander writes, “The connections between the
activities of the radicals in the Commons and the popular movement became, as
Rees shows, the key dynamic driving events in the years 1640-1. The fiery
spirits were indeed a minority in the Commons. Still, the weight of popular
support behind their moves, such as Henry Marten’s during the struggle over the
attainder of the King’s chief advisor Earl Strafford, meant that, as in this
instance, ‘the course of events proceeded on the path that Marten advocated, not
that which Pym still trod’ (pp.163-4). Indeed, during this confrontation, which
led to Strafford’s execution, Pym lost control of parliament. Popular
mobilisations against Strafford made the difference; one MP wrote, ‘unless this
Earl be sacrificed to public discontentment I see not what hopes we have of
peace’ (p.165).
The Great historian E. H Carr was fond of saying, "Study
the historian before you begin to study the facts." This maxim should be
applied to Rees. The Fiery Spirits is, without doubt, a significant addition to
our understanding of the English bourgeois revolution. It contains new detailed
research and reinterprets significant episodes and stages of events. Rees
recalibrates our understanding of the revolution from a historical materialist
standpoint. However, to what extent you could describe Rees as a revisionist is
open to conjecture.
When I asked AI this question, its reply was “while John
Rees engages with historical revisionism to some extent, his primary framework
is that of Marxist historiography, which is distinct from the broader category
of revisionist historians who challenge traditional interpretations.” Not much help.
There is something Jesuitical about Rees’s ability to write
history from a relatively orthodox Marxist perspective while retaining the
political outlook of a pseudo-left. He appears to retain the ability to
compartmentalise his mind and pursue a scientific Marxist approach to history,
up to the point where his radical politics, to some extent, draw the line. He
is perhaps aided by an approach that was further encouraged by the extreme
specialisation of academic life, which enables him to concentrate on very
narrow areas of history that never bring him into direct conflict with his
political organisation, Counterfire, on political questions.
Speaking of which, in a previous article, I wrote this: “Rees
was a member of the SWP before leaving to found the Counterfire group in 2010,
as a significant split from the SWP. Counterfire specialises in providing
a platform for the remnants and detritus 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, are 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. “
While I do not personally subscribe to Rees’s political
outlook, I can nonetheless recommend this book as highly as his previous work.
Rees is a historian well worth reading, and it should be interesting to see what
he is working on next. As Ann Talbot wrote about Hill which equally applies to
Rees “A historian that stands head and shoulders above his detractors and his
books deserve to be read and reread, and if with a critical eye, it should
always be with the knowledge that his limitations and faults as much as his
great historical insights and innovations are the product of his time. He may
be bettered, but never dismissed, and only bettered by those who have studied
him closely.
