'Behind the peasant the revolutionary beginnings of the
modern proletariat, already red flag in hand and with communism on its
lips'". Frederick Engels
“History is the long struggle of man, by exercise of his
reason, to understand his environment and to act upon it. But the modern period
has broadened the struggle in a revolutionary way. Man now seeks to understand,
and act on, not only his environment, but himself; and this has added, so to
speak, a new dimension to reason and a new dimension to history.” - Edward
Hallett Carr, What Is History?
"Heaven was to be sought in this life, not beyond, and
it was, according to Muenzer, the task of the believers to establish Heaven,
the kingdom of God, here on earth”. Frederick Engels
Martin Empson is not simply an individual author who happens
to have certain political views. He is an organic product of a specific
political tendency, the British Socialist Workers Party, and everything he
writes on history is shaped, consciously or not, by the theoretical and
political framework that tendency has built up over decades. When Martin Empson
writes history, whether about the German Peasant War, ecology and capitalism,
or any other subject, he does so within this theoretical and political framework.
Several specific distortions flow necessarily from it.
The German Peasant War is one of the most important
pre-capitalist revolutionary upheavals in European history, and Marxists have
always taken it seriously. Friedrich Engels himself wrote the foundational
Marxist study, The Peasant War in Germany (1850), composed in the immediate
aftermath of the failed revolutions of 1848–49. That timing was no accident.
Engels wrote it explicitly to draw historical lessons for the modern
revolutionary movement from a great popular uprising that had been defeated.
The material roots of the uprising. The Peasant War was not
simply a religious rebellion dressed in the language of scripture. It arose
from the concrete, material oppression of the German peasantry and plebeian
masses, feudal dues, enclosures, the consolidation of princely power, and the
crisis of the old feudal order as early capitalist relations began to penetrate
Germany. The Reformation provided the language and ideology of revolt, but the
driving force was social and economic antagonism.
Thomas Müntzer is a revolutionary figure. Engels drew a
sharp distinction between Martin Luther and Thomas Müntzer. Luther represented
the interests of the moderate bourgeoisie and the princes. He wanted religious reform
but recoiled in horror from the social revolution of the masses. When the
peasants rose, Luther called for their bloody suppression with his infamous
tract Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants. Müntzer, by contrast,
represented the most radical plebeian wing of the movement. His theology was a
revolutionary doctrine in religious disguise. The "Kingdom of God" he
preached was, in essence, a demand for the abolition of class privilege and the
establishment of a society of equals. Engels called him a "religious and
political revolutionary of the first rank."
The SWP and the
German Peasant War: How History Serves Opportunism
The question of how the Socialist Workers Party relates to
the German Peasant War is not simply an academic matter. It goes to the heart
of what the SWP is as a political tendency, how it uses
history, what lessons it draws (and refuses to draw), and whose class interests
its politics ultimately serve. To understand this properly, we must first
establish what a genuine Marxist history of the Peasant War looks like, then
examine how the SWP's theoretical and political framework systematically
distorts it.
The SWP advocates for its core idea of “socialism from
below' as a return to genuine Marxism and opposes Stalinism. However, in
practice, it appears to use this idea to dismiss revolutionary leadership.
Empson views Müntzer and the peasants mainly as symbols of heroism and
spontaneous radicalism but overlooks Engels’ key argument: Müntzer's defeat
resulted from the movement lacking the political and organisational conditions
necessary to transform mass militancy into victory. The SWP struggles to accept
this because recognising it would mean acknowledging the need for the Fourth
International, which it has generally opposed.
Thomas Müntzer (c. 1489–1525) stands out as a significant
and tragic figure in early revolutionary history. As a theologian and preacher
who broke away from Luther's Reformation on the left, Müntzer became the
ideological and military leader of the most radical faction during the German
Peasants' War of 1524–25, the largest mass uprising in Europe before the French
Revolution. Engels offered a detailed, sympathetic, yet strictly materialist
analysis of Müntzer in his influential work, The Peasant War in Germany (1850).
Written shortly after the failed revolutions of 1848, Engels drew clear
political lessons for the proletariat movement. To Engels, Müntzer was not just
a religious eccentric but a true revolutionary; his theology was the only way
to express a proto-communist agenda within the 16th-century context. Müntzer's
idea of the "Kingdom of God" fundamentally advocated for a society
without class divisions, private property, or a ruling state authority.
What distinguished Müntzer was his radical departure from
Luther. While Luther's Reformation mainly aimed to transfer church wealth from
Rome to German princes and create a new bourgeois-Protestant system, Müntzer
supported the plebeians and peasants—those most marginalised and argued that
the Reformation must genuinely transform real-world conditions. He called for
the immediate realisation of the "Kingdom of God" on earth. Engels
viewed this as the start of something truly new: a revolutionary who saw religious
reform as potentially masking social reaction.
Engels also provided a stern Marxist critique of Müntzer,
which serves as a key lesson. As outlined in Chapter 6 on the Peasant War in
Thuringia, Müntzer's tragedy highlights the common story of a revolutionary
leader who guides a movement whose class base is too weak to support his
proposed program. The greatest danger for a leader of an extreme faction is being
forced to take control of a government when the movement is not yet ready for
the dominance of the class he represents. Instead, he is forced to represent
not his party or class, but the class for whom conditions are finally suitable
for control.
This analysis highlights Engels at his most incisive, emphasising
the limits of the class that imprisoned Müntzer and the peasantry, as well as
the plebeian masses he led. As a fragmented, pre-capitalist, land-based class,
the peasantry lacked the resources to bring about enduring revolutionary
change. They could rise passionately but lacked the means to take control, reorganise
production, or form a new state. Their views were mostly local, combining
traditional communal values with aims for equality. During crises, the very
forces Müntzer inspired failed to respond adequately. The Battle of
Frankenhausen in May 1525 ended in a disastrous massacre; Müntzer was captured,
tortured, and executed.
Engels drew a notable comparison to 1848, noting that the
German bourgeoisie of his era had acted as traitors, like the princes and
moderate reformers of 1525. For the proletariat, the message was
straightforward. Unlike the peasantry, the modern working class has the
potential to seize power and reshape society because it is a direct outcome of
capitalist production. Consequently, the Marxist tradition regards Müntzer as
an early figure, emphasising that his defeat was not accidental but rooted in
systemic factors: revolutionary will, no matter how heroic, cannot replace a
revolutionary class.
What connects Müntzer
and the SWP?
Initially, they may appear entirely disconnected, a
16th-century millenarian theologian and a 20th-century socialist organisation.
However, a common thread exists. Engels' critique of Müntzer revealed a core
issue: what occurs when a revolutionary leader or group promotes hopes beyond
the existing class forces capable of advancing them? Müntzer reacted by pushing
ahead with revolutionary zeal, replacing class analysis with religious
conviction, a move that led to disastrous outcomes.
When the SWP and authors like Empson examine the German
Peasant War through the lens of "socialism from below," they often
introduce consistent distortions: While the SWP tradition celebrates the
heroism and radicalism of the peasant masses, it intentionally ignores Engels'
conclusion that their lack of proper class leadership and organisation led to
their downfall. Although their heroism is authentic, heroism without a clear
program, a leading class, or an international revolutionary organisation does
not constitute true socialism from below. It remains a tragedy. The SWP focuses
on the inspiring aspects of the uprising but neglects the critical lesson: the
necessity of building a revolutionary party with a scientific program. This
lesson reveals the SWP's own longstanding hesitation to do so.
Engels' prefaces from 1870 and 1874 place the German Peasant
War within a global context of class struggle. He compares 1525 to key moments
like 1789, 1848, and the rise of workers' movements across Europe. The main
lesson highlights internationalism: the working class can only succeed if
united as an international movement. The SWP, which parted ways with the
Fourth International in 1951 and has criticized Trotskyism for decades, fails
to understand this lesson. Therefore, their history remains largely national
and episodic, viewing each major uprising as an inspiring but isolated event
without a unifying thread leading to revolutionary change. Engels clearly
states that the German Peasant War introduced, in a rudimentary and confused
way, the issue of state power. Müntzer's program, expressed in theological
terms, called for the overthrow of the existing social order and the creation
of a new one.
The core issue is who controls state power. The SWP,
following Tony Cliff's rejection of the working class's revolutionary role,
lacks a true theory of socialist revolution and a plan for the working class to
seize state power and dismantle the capitalist system of oppression. Their
version of "socialism" is essentially pressure-group politics. In
historical analysis, this approach reduces the question of state power to vague
ideas of "people's power" or "mass mobilisation” that often
culminate in no concrete revolutionary plan.
Martin Empson’s book on the German Peasant War, for all the
factual research it may contain, cannot be trusted as a work of Marxist
history. The framework through which it interprets the facts is designed,
consciously or not, to produce conclusions compatible with the SWP's current
political practice, which means conclusions that do not lead
the reader toward the revolutionary programme. None of this suggests that
Empson's factual research is useless or that his book on the German Peasant War
lacks valuable information. Engels, writing in 1850, emphasised that the
historical record of the uprising was important and worth examining in detail.
However, the framework Empson uses to interpret that
record is politically biased. The test is straightforward: does his analysis
guide the reader toward Engels's conclusions — that the failure of the Peasant
War was due to a failure of class forces and revolutionary leadership,
that moderate reformers were objectively counter-revolutionary, and that the
modern working class needs an international revolutionary party to prevent a
repeat of that tragedy? Or does it lead the reader to celebrate spontaneous mass
struggle, implicitly supporting the SWP's politics of pressure, popular
frontism, and subservience to the Labour bureaucracy?
For a genuine Marxist history of this period, read Engels'
The Peasant War in Germany in its entirety, all three prefaces and all seven
chapters. It is not long, and it remains, 175 years after it was written, the
most penetrating analysis of that great uprising ever produced. No SWP book has
improved upon it, and none can because improving upon it would require a
political honesty that the SWP's entire existence depends on avoiding.
