Andrew Bradstock - Faith in the Revolution: The political theologies of Müntzer and Winstanley

This is a fascinating little book. Its author is a Christian radical whose purpose in exploring the ideas of the German radical Thomas Müntzer and the English revolutionary Digger Gerrard Winstanley is to try and understand the role of Christianity in the struggle for revolution. Whether you have an opinion on that or not, Andrew Bradstock's summary of both these fascinating figures is very useful and interesting for radicals today. 

Bradstock begins with Müntzer. On this blog I've reviewed many books about Müntzer and the German Peasants' War that provided the context for his revolutionary ideas. Müntzer's starting point was, in the words of Bradstock, a "commitment to a transformation of the world", but he cautions that Müntzer 

takes up the cause of the poor and oppressed as much from a concern about the spiritual consequneces of such oppression as anything else. Indeed, his main worry is that, because the people have to work day in and day out to survive, they have no time to attend to the health of their souls, and are forced to reply for spiritual guidance upon the learned scholars and priests; and thus they never get to hear about the possibliilty of receiving a revelation from God.

This is an important point about Müntzer (and also, I think about Winstanley). He was a religious thinker before he was a social activist, but in becoming a social revolutionary Müntzer was not breaking from his revolutionary politics, but extending his religious activity and thinking. Müntzer "never envisaged fighting the last battle alone" - he did not see himself as a the person who was the vessel for God's actions. He say an enlightened minority the "elect" as being the people who would change the world and humanity. The non-elect were "destined for eternal damnation" and the elect would be saved. Who was who? 

The key to such knowledge... is to be found in the concept of urteyl, judgement, a gift of God to the elect by which they are enabled to know themselves to be among the chosen, and to recognised those who are the ungodly. This concept is essential for Müntzer and vital for an understanding of his leagues [his organisations], his apocalyptic, and his participation in the peasants' struggle.

Bradstock points out that Müntzer's thinking on the elect developed. But towards the end of his life he was seeing the elect as being the same as "the poor and materially oppressed common folk".  He made "the peasants' cause his own". It is tempting to draw an analogy here between Müntzer's concept of the enlightened few changing the world and Anarchist ideas of a minority changing the world for the masses. It's also possible that Müntzer was better than the average Anarchist in this sense because he understood that the elect were a mass social force. Though he doesn't seem to have abandoned his "two-tier conception of humanity".

How does this compare with Winstanley's thought? Winstanley was also shaped by the struggle around him, though England in the 17th century was much more economically developed than Germany in Müntzer's time. Winstanley was writing during and following a revolutionary movement that had beheaded a King, so his revolutionary policies in some ways are closer to modern revolutionary ideas than Münzter's. But Bradstock writes that:

Had Winstanley's millenarianism not been geuine - had he, in other words, truly been a secular thinker - it is at least arguable that he could have produced a more revolutionary programme than he did, since by interpreting the political struggle in which he was egaged religiously he failed to see it in a true historical perspective. Hi millenarianism, in other words, made it 'unnecessary' for him to demonstrate how it was possible for his programme to be realised.

I've written elsewhere on the brilliance of Winstanley's "vision of utopia". Here I think Bradstock is right. Müntzer understood that the, and the rest of the elect, had to fight. Winstanley didn't grasp that there were barriers to the implementation of his vision, so he tried to simply go out an enact it - digging on St George's Hill. Both leaders were however defeated because they underestimated their opponents and the historical context of what they were trying to win.

How does Bradstock's analysis fit with other revolutionary thinkers? He is at pains to criticise Engels' "analysis of Müntzer". This he says is basically an argument that religion is irrelevant to their struggles. He does this on a reading of Engels on the Peasants' War where Engels says that "the class struggles of that day were clothed in religious shibboleths... [but] this changed nothing and is easily explained by the conditions of the time." Bradstock here concludes that Engels (and thus all Marxists) are saying that "the presence of religious language in the revolutionary programme of a Müntzer or a Winstanley is politically insignificant". 

But this is a strange conclusion to come too, as neither Marx nor Engels thought this. They understood that religion arose in an material circumstance, and their writings on the Reformation, Luther and Müntzer reflect this analysis. So it's a strange to critique Engels for making an argument that is at the root of their materialist theory of history. Nonetheless, nowhere does Engels or Marx argue that the religious language of Münzter doesn't matter. Indeed quite the opposite. Both would have understood the centrality of Reformation thinking to the programme of Müntzer, while understanding that these ideas emerged from the economic and social context. 

Indeed despite Bradstock's clarity on some of the ideas of both the revolutionary figures he is discussing, he underplays the differences in economic, social and political development of the two contexts, which weakens his analysis somewhat.

The final section of the book is Bradstock's attempt to grapple with the issue that is central for him. What can Christianity offer revolution? Here he rightly emphasises the way that religion can be a force that encourages, inspires and offers guidance. He notes the importance of Christian thinking to radical forces in Nicaragua in the 1979 revolution as well as libertion theologists in South America. Too often though he falls back on radicalism being something brought from outside - just as Winstanley and Müntzer tried to do:

The relationship between scientific analysis and utopian visions is broadly dialectical: the former, by exposing the reality of the situation and the real possibilities for change, opens up new horizons for revolutionary activity, while utopian thinking, with its overarching vision of new people in new relationships, serves to stimulate science to explore new fields of possibility.

I think this is wrong. No mass revolutionary movement has been built because it started from utopian visions. Rather, in the case of the most successful of those movements, the visions have emerged out of the concrete reality of mass struggle. The Soviets and Workers Councils of the 1905, 1917 and 1919 revolutions in Russian and Germany were not pre-planned. They emerged because they were organs of struggle that did, or might have, become the basis for a new way of organising society. 

Unsurprisingly, as a Christian, Bradstock concludes that his religion makes revolutionaries better because they have "the certainty that neither they nor their effort will ultimately be meaningless or lost". It is, in my opinion, a little patronising to assume that non-religious, or non-Christian, revolutionaries might not feel the same. In either event, the belief in an afterlife shouldn't be some sort of get out clause for revolutionaries. What really matters is people's concrete engagement in the struggle, and the politics and theory that emerges from the testing of their ideas in practice. While Faith in Revolution is a book that I enjoyed reading this was more so for the author's penetrating insights into the ideas of two key radical figures, and less for his musings on Christianity and revolution.

Related Reads

Klaassen - Michael Gaismair: Revolutionary and Reformer
Stayer - The German Peasants' War and the Anabaptist Community of Goods
Drummond - The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas Müntzer

Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

In chronological order Commanche Moon is the second book in the series that Larry McMurtry wrote about the Texas Rangers Woodrow Call and Agustus McCrae. In the order of writing though, it was the fourth. This is in itself interesting, because it means that the book is both a prequel to the pulitzer winning Lonesome Dove, and also a full stop at the end of the stories of the two characters.

But it is as a prequel to Lonesome Dove that the book will be mostly judged. Here I found the work slightly wanting. This isn't because it is badly written, but rather that the plot is hung less around the story and more around the need to manouevre the characters (both major and minor) into the positions they occupy at the beginning of Lonesome Dove. So obvious is this, that the Texas Rangers have a brief hiatus at the eponymous settlement to show it at a slightly earlier stage in its limited development.

Because of this the book sometimes crams in some story arcs. Characters die off rather rapidly, and not always because of murder. Some of the stories seem unfinished. It's unclear what Ahumado's disappearance is all about - there's certainly no closure in these pages - which means that main arc of the first third of the book is left hanging. There's no purpose to this part of the story other than to introduce characters later. If, when reviewing Lonesome Dove, I could say I was impressed by the strength and centrality of the female characters, here they are mostly there as foils for the men. The exception is the portrayal of how surviving female victims of Native American attacks are shunned by white society afterward.

Unlike earlier works there is more focus on Native Americans, though unfortunately like earlier works, most Indians are depicted as bloodthirsty savages. At least Buffalo Hump a Commanche chief in this book has his violence given context, and the depiction of the actual raid he led is rather well done - even if there is a little too much lingering on violence against the Whites.

McMurtry is, to be fair, more sympathetic to the Native Americans here than I was used too. Though the main characters are either violent sadists (also true of Ahumado) or eccentric wanderers. Not great really.

Looking at the book as the end of the story, despite its position chronologically, makes the book somewhat more satisfying. Its easy to read this and find Lonesome Dove just around the corner, which makes the reader feel the ending is merely a pause. The love/hate relationship of the two characters, scarred by battle, love and loss, positions them well for their roles in Dove. But the novel was undermined for me by its transitional nature. Read in chronological order would be my advice - but understand that Dove is by far the better, and more rounded novel.

Related Reviews

McMurtry - Lonesome Dove
McMurtry - Dead Man's Walk

Philip Marfleet - Palestine, Imperialism and the Struggle for Freedom

As the genocide in Gaza continues, millions of people around the world are trying to understand the reason for Israel's continued assault on the Palestinians. If my personal experience is anything to go by, there can be few workplaces, coffee shops or trade union meetings were there have not been discussions about the causes of the occupation and the possibilities of peace. So the publication of Philip Marfleet's new book Palestine, Imperialism and the Struggle for Freedom should be welcomed because it seeks to explain the current conflict in the context of a century of "colonial occupation, displacements and dispossession". Crucially, and unusually for even left-wing books on the subject, Marfleet's book puts Palestinian action and resistance at the heart of the history.

Marfleet begins with the Zionist "vision" of a "public project for colonisation by Zionist settlers". He writes:

As the Ottoman Empire went into rapid decline Britain became the focus of Zionists' attention. Now the movement's leading figure was Chaim Weizmann, who was convinced that it must win support from within the British ruling class on the baiss that a Jewish state could serve the best interests of Britain's emprie. Weizmann was able to deal directly with members of the British government. During the First World War, as Britain advanced on German-Ottoman forces in Palesinte, he lobbied decision-makes in London, allying with the most aggressive imperial stategists - ministers who sought to extend British control across the Middle East.

These close historic links between Zionism, colonialism and imperialist interests are crucial to explain the modern actions of the Israeli state and the close relationship it has with Western powers. Marfleet shows how the Zionist state that was created in 1948 did not invent repression of the Palestinian people, instead it "learnt from the British". He writes:

Britain's ideologues of empire and those who administered it colonial territories were not only racial supremacists but also designed and implemented policies that involved savage represion. As Zionist settlement in Palestine accelerated, Britain was crushing resistance in neighbouring Egypt and Iraq. 

In Egypt in 1919, a rebellion involved "members of all the country's ethno-religious communities: significantly, Jews joined Muslims and Christians in the uprising". But the British "colonial regime used all means against the movement". Thousands were killed.

The point here is that there is no automatic divide between the religious peoples of the region. In fact, as Marfleet shows, Jews, Muslims and Christians lived side-by-side for centuries. One of the lessons the British taught the emerging Israeli state was how to divide and rule.

But it is the resistance of the Palestinians that is central to Marfleet's account. This began long before the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. In 1936 there was a massive revolutionary movement in Palestine. This history is seldom told, and much of it was new to me. It is one of the most fascinating parts of Marfleet's book. This revolution was incredible. Zionist militias were violently assaulting Palestinian villages, British colonial rulers were oppression and restricting Palestinian freedoms and resistance exploded. Marfleet places the revolution in the context of a developing industrial capitalist economy:

Change accelerated during the 1920s as Britain established the Mandate regime and Jewish settlement intensified. More and more peasants were forced from the land but - as Britain favoured industrial and infrastructural defvelopment for the Jewish sector and Jewish organisations impements the policy of Hebrew labour - many were rapidly impoverished.... by 1936 the majority of workers in Jaffa, a key industrial centre, were living below subsistence level. Industrial workers, semi-proletarians of the countryside, the peasants and the urban poor not only faced a European power and an emerging colonial-settler regime but also the reality of immiseration. It was in these circumstance that the uprising 'spread like wildfire, gripping the cities and country alike and giving rise to an unprecedeted armed insurrection'.

Space precludes any further summary of Marfleet's account of this extraordinary rebellion. But here we see one of the first examples of a theme which Marfleet returns to time and again - the way that Palestinian resistance sparks rebellion elsewhere. The 1936 "Palestinian intifada also stimulated solidarity across the Arab region. In Egypt there were demonstrations of support and the Muslim Broptherhood declared backing for the uprising".

Marfleet tells how the establishment of the Israeli state required the systematic displacement and violent oppression of the Palestinian people, as well as confrontations with the Arab states. In doing this Israel became a crucial ally of Western Imperialism, particularly of the US, post World War II. 

Importantly Marfleet shows how the failure of the leaders of the Arab world to build real solidarity with the Palestinians, and the limitations of the Palestinian leadership which became focused on the creation of a Palestinian state, undermined the wider struggle for freedom. But while Marfleet is rightly critical of some of the Palestinian leadership, he also notes how the cause of Palestinian oppression remains the Israeli state. He quotes Martin Shaw, a "pioneer figure in Genocide Studies" who said in 2010:

We should view Israel's destruction of large parts of Arab society in Palestine in 1948 not simply through the perspective of settler-colonial genocide, but as an extension of the exclusivist nationalism which had recently brought about extensive genocidal violence in the European war. 

This is, tragically, an ongoing process. Marfleet quotes from the genocide historian Mark Levene's work in 2024:

The target of Israel's offensive could not realistically be Hamas, said Levene, for the organisation 'will redeploy from underneath the rubble at will'. Referencing the pioneering work of Rafael Lemkin, [Levene] saw Israel's war as 'a conscious, wilful effort to destroy the integrity of a society'. Levene concluded: 'The charge of genocide is legitimate.'

But as Marfleet shows this genocide arises out of global imperialist interests and the nature of the settler-colonial state. It means that the solution, in terms of peace in the region, cannot be one with two states side by side, but rather a single state were people of all faiths, Jews, Muslims, Christians and none, live together. This has been the case in the past and could be in the future. The importance of Palestinian resistance is thus in part their ability to inspire and shape to mobilise and encourage resistance elsewhere in the world. In particular that of the massive working classes of the region. These, Marfleet argues are the force that can fundamentally transform the region. 

Palestine, Imperialism and the Struggle for Freedom is thus a book that stands out from among many other books about the history of the region, because it has an emancipatory vision of the struggle to liberate Palestine. It locates Israeli's oppression of Palestine in a historical process and argues that struggle from below is the force that stop it.

Marfleet is a long standing socialist and has written and studied the Middle East for many years. An earlier book of his on the 1987 Intifada became a crucial text for a generation of socialists. This new book ought to play the same role for new generations of radicals.

Related Reviews

El-Mahdi & Marfleet - Egypt: The Moment of Change
Sand - The Invention of the Jewish People
Masalha - Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History
Molavi - Environmental Warfare in Gaza
Pappe - Ten Myths About Israel
Gluckstein & Stone - The Radical Jewish Tradition: Revolutionaries, resistance fighters & firebrands
Hamouchene & Sandwell (eds) - Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region

David Humphreys Miller - Custer's Fall: The Native American Side of the Story

There have been plenty of accounts of the Battle of the Little Bighorn that range from general discussions of "General" Custer's strategy to microhistories of individuals or specific areas of the battlefield. Few accounts however discuss the Native American experience in all but the most general terms. One of the most famous of these is David Humphreys Miller's Custer's Fall. It is a remarkable piece of work because it is based on Miller's personal interviews with Native American survivors of the Little Bighorn. Miller learnt multiple Native American languages (including sign languages) and befriended many survivors. He also produced extraordinarily personal portraits of those he talked to as well as images of Western scenes, some of which are reproduced for this book.

What emerges from these accounts is a sometimes contradictory, but always fascinating story of the battle. Readers will, of course, have to be cautious. Some of these memories are those of old men, thinking back decades. In addition oral history is also at risk of distortion from either faded memories or the desire to change the narrative. However readers must also be cautious not to apply their own prejudices to this form of history. Native Americans thrived on oral history. Accounts were told, and retold. Indeed one of the interesting things about this book is it tells how the victorious Sioux told their war tales on the evening of the Battle. The memories of the day were already being cemented on the very evening of the victory.

The accounts here are made with the desire to remember and tell a story. Indeed Miller does tell a story - the book reads like a novel, and the reader will be hardpressed to work out exactly what is memory. What emerges however is a slightly different narrative of the day of the battle. The Native American story begins the conflict earlier, with an attack on small groups of Indians early in the day by Custer's forces. That said the rough outlines of the battle follow those told in countless other stories. There is one significant difference. Several of Miller's sources tell that Custer was likely killed, or injured, very early on in an attempt to ford the stream at Medicine Tail Coulee. It is then suggested that his troops carried his body with them as they tried to regroup. In his counter-revisionist study of Native American accounts of the battle Gregory F. Michno is emphatic in his argument that this is a myth, and that Custer did not get killed or injured early. That said Michno's rejection of this specific part of the Native American oral history is in part because his whole book is designed to place the "Last Stand" back at the centre of the history of the Little Bighorn, and the "Custer myth".

The truth of the matter is that no one really can tell. Not least because no one at the time knew that Custer, or "Long Hair", was at the Little Big Horn. In addition several other individuals worse buckskin on the day, Custer's characteristic outfits. But what matters for Miller's account is that many Indians believed that this is what happened. There are always different tellings of history, and the story that Custer was killed early on is a central part of the Indian account of the day. The story is important though, because for many Native Americans it explained why the troops behaved as they did. As Miller recounts, something "seemed completely to demoralise the soldiers - something that occurred within their own ranks".

There are plenty of other pieces of information here that will readers. The behaviour of the Native Americans after the battle, the actions of Custer's Native American scouts, the way the news spread among the Native Americans faster than it could have been communicated by the Whites. There is even a fascinating account of Finds-Them-And-Kills-Them who "normally wore woman's dress, but changed to warrior's clothing before riding into battle. Finds-Them-And-Kills-Them was a Crow who fought as part of General Crooks command against the Sioux at the Battle of the Rosebud before the Little Bighorn. Miller uses the term "hermaphrodite" to describe Finds-Them-And-Kills-Them. The term is incorrect and very dated, as Finds-Them-And-Kills-Them was a badé, or Two-Spirit person, "a male-bodied person in a Crow community who takes part in some of the social and ceremonial roles usually filled by women in that culture." The story of how Finds-Them-And-Kills-Them fought at the precussor to the Little Big Horn (albeit on the side of the Whites) is important as it shows how Miller places Native American culture at the heart of the story of these conflicts. Crucial to this was the democratic decision making processes of the tribes.

One final thing is worth recounting to illustrate this. Its the story of how at the "last great Indian Council on the Little Big Horn" in 1909, a wealthy businessman offered very large financial reward to the tribes for definitive information on "who killed Custer". For several tribes the chiefs debates this, mindful of the benefits of the cash reward. Not being able to decide, not least because no one actually knew, the tribes elected Chief Brave Bear to be the person who was given the honour of killing Custer. Chief Brave Bear had, after all, been "on th Washita when Custer had destroyed Black Kettle's village" and had "spilled pipe ashes on Custer's boots" at a later peace conference. Chief Brave Bear fully expected to be killed by the Whites after accepting the cash for his impoverished kin. He wasn't, but as Miller points out his only statement afterward before his death in 1932 was to say that "I was in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The Indians called the General 'Long Hair'. It is a fight I do not like to talk about."

While the Whites continued to celebrate Custer's defeat and alleged heroism, the Native Americans were magnanimous and subdued in the aftermath of their victory. Their accounts here are not celebratory, but tell of a battle fought and won, of bravery and solidarity. It is well worth a read if you ever want to visit the Greasy Grass.

Related Reviews

Hämäläinen - Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power
Donovan - A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn
Philbrick - The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn
Stevenson - Deliverance from the Little Big Horn: Doctor Henry Porter & Custer's Seventh Cavalry
Brown - Showdown at Little Big Horn
Michno - Lakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer's Defeat
Cozzens - The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West

Graeme Macrae Burnet - His Bloody Project: Documents relating to the case of Roderick Macrae

His Bloody Project tells the story of a horrific murder in 19th century rural Scotland. It purports to tell a true story based on found documents and archives. While these aren't real, they have been meticulously constructed by Graeme Macrae Burnet and, having read a number of histories of the crofting communities they certainly feel genuine.

The first substantial document is the account of the murderer himself. Supposedly written by Roderick Macrae in his prison cell before the trial, it is a story of his family's life in the small village of Culduie. The village is remote from the big cities and immersed in traditional practices and social relations. Superficially it is more feudal than anything else, Macrae's family use their land on sufferance from the landowner, and mediated through the control of the local authority figure - the constable Lachlan Broad. While Roddy's account is not necessarily truthful, it is shot through with the slights and abuses that these social relations engender. Roddies' father is abused and put upon by the all powerful constable. Following the death of Roddy's mother, their land is reduced and other attacks - such as refusing to allow the family to gather seaweed without permission are symbols of oppression - and Broad's personal victimisation.

Roddy's account is also a coming of age story - as he enters adolescene he is learning about the wider world, relations and sex. Broad is having sex with Roddy's sister, and clearly its a coercive relationship. Roddy's father steadfastly ignores this violence.

Roddy tells all this matter of factly, including the story of how he falls for, and then is rejected by Broad's own daughter. But he then also tells the story of how he murders Broad, and his two children, including the girl who rejected him in order to stop the oppression of his family. Its violent, unpleasant and Roddy is unrepentent. The reader will be torn between the satisfaction of the violent settling of debts with Broad, and simulatneously horrified by the wider killing.

But. Is Roddy telling the reader everything? The documents that follow cast a different light on the story, and Roddy's motivations. The transcript of the trial details the prosecutions desire to portray Roddy as a violent criminal, and the defenses' attempt to paint him as mentally distressed at the time of the killing - distress caused by the oppression and the shock at his mother's death.

Mixed in with this are other stories, including the pompous and unpleasant account of the doctor sent to study Roddy, and the village, in order to better prepare a defence. The doctor, immersed in the latest anthropological studies, sees savagery, stupidity and ignorance everywhere, except among the wealthy and the landowners. Similarly the media reporting of the trial sees the anger by Roddy's family and the wider community at losing land as due to their fondness for outdated and inefficient farming - rather than the despair at the threat to their livelihoods.

Burnet has done a magnificent job of using the "documents" to tell both a story and make a comment on the horrors and difficulties of croft life in a rigid and violent class society. I was pleased, but not surprised, to see that the books he used as source material included works by the wonderful historian James Hunter who has documented similar cases in his own work. 

Ultimately however, this is a novel about truth. Who is telling the truth? What are the real facts? Was Roddy right to kill Broad? Or was he actually commiting a different crime? And can someone take the law into their hands when the law is clearly geared towards protecting the wealthy and powerful. A very good, if painful read.

John Rees (ed) Essays on Historical Materialism

This book is a product of a particular moment in history. I purchased it after attending the conference at which most of the essays were given as papers. It was organised in 1998 by the International Socialism Journal, and reflected a number of ideological dynamics that were engaging the Marxist left. The first was the legacy of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Eastern European states. While the Socialist Workers Party, the tradition to which most of the contributors in this book, were undemoralised by this as they had theorised those regimes as State Capitalist, much of the rest of the left was. In addition the iedological right was riding high and confident. One consequence of this was attempts to undermine totalising approaches to history, and in academia particularly this meant the rise of post-modernism. The other, linked, consequence was a right wing assault on approaches to history that were based on Marxist, or even "history from below". 

The essays take up this ideological challenges in a number of ways. The first two probably stand the test of time the best. They are by Chris Harman on History, Myth and Marxism and the other is by Alex Callinicos and considers Post-modernism and its encroachment into the field of history. Callinicos' essay is perhaps one of the best short introductions to post-modernism I've read and repays a read, even if the immediate target of his writing is not as important as it was nearly thirty years ago. Another essay, by Mark O'Brien, on post-modernism and British history is also very useful - a solid defence of the importance of class through a study of the class forces and tensions within the Charist movement. In doing so O'Brien shows how the centrality of class undermines the post-modern rejection of continuity in history and the any sense of radical change. 

I was also particularly taken by Mike Haynes's article on Social History and the Russian Revolution. Here he traced the way that the collapse of Stalinism was leading to a retreat by left historians of the Revolution, and an assault of Marxist histories. One thing that struck me here, was that Haynes is more explicitly critical of "Western socialists" in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution than other writings. He writes: Western intervention [against Revolutionary Russia] was only able to have the effect it did because the revolution did not spread to the West as the Bolsheviks hoped and expected and because too little opposition was developed by  western socialists to the actions of their own governments in Russia."

But perhaps the best historical essay in the collection is Brian Manning's on Labour and the English Revolution, which defends a Marxist approach to the Civil War period, by closely studying the class dynamics of the revolutionary movement. He draws out who was arguing and fighting for what, and why, to demonstrate the importance of class. The question of the diverging intersts of "small producers" and "wage workers" within the Revolution is surprisingly important. He concludes:

In a bourgeois revolution, wrote Trotsky, 'that class which sacrifices most for the success of the revolution and hopes the most from it, receives the least of all... The disappointment of the masses follows quickly' and could lead to a second revolution, but 'more than once in history' this disappointment has 'become the starting point of a victorious counter-revolution'. The latter happened in the English Revolution. The disillusionment of plebeians with the immediate results of the revolution did not provoke them to further revolutionary acvitity but to the abandonment of revolutionary activity. The counter-revolution, however, was only partly successful.

Mannings article demonstrates how, and why this happened - relating the different interests of the participatory classes, to their struggles and actions and the failure to unite to move forward. Its an exemplary piece of writing, and one that many students could benefit from emulating. 

John Rees' concluding article on the differences between academic and revolutionary Marxism points out that the defeats of the left and the working class movement from the 1980s onward and opened the door to a generation of Marxists who divorved their Marxism from the struggle. This, Rees points out, undermines the basis of Marxism itself and weakens the approach of the Marxists to their history. But it also makes for a Marxism that is unable to deal with new challenges and ideas. There is much food for thought here for those Marxists who both restrict themselves to academia and refuse to soil themselves by engaging in the struggle, as well as those Marxists whose ideas are ossified and are no longer developing in engagement with new and emerging struggles from below. 

Related Reviews

Harman - Marxism and History
Harman - Selected Writings
Callinicos - Imperialism and Global Political Economy
Callinicos - The New Age of Catastrophe
Perry - Marxism and History