Juliet Barker - Conquest: The English Kingdom of France

I once heard the veteran British Marxist Chris Harman point out, that despite Bourgeois rhetoric, nation-states were flexible things. The example he used was that for large parts of the 15th century quite significant sections of what we now call France was considered to be part of England. Conquest gives the history of this extraordinary period of English expansion and a detailed account of why it collapsed.

The English Kingdom of France began with the military invasion of France by Henry V. The battle of Agincourt is possibly the most well known part of this history, at least to the English. It led to a period of English military supremacy that culminated in the Treaty of Troyes in 1420. Under this treaty, Henry V married the daughter of Charles VI of France and it was agreed that Henry's heirs would become joint kings of France and England. The dauphin, Charles VII, was disinherited and it was he who, following the unexpected deaths of Henry V and Charles VI, led the French campaign to reclaim the lands ceded to the English.

Henry V's heir, Henry VI was only nine-months and his uncles ruled England and France in his name until he was old enough to rule as king. Juliet Barker is scathing about Henry VI's ability to rule, and indeed, his rule was marked by ineptitude and inexperience, bother from the king and from those around him. As Barker points out the 1431 "coronation of Henry VI should have been a triumphant moment in the history of the English kingdom of France... Yet the whole episode was somehow shabby, rushed and unsatisfactory. At almost every stage of the proceedings the English manage to cause offence to their French subjects."

Juliet Barker is damning on Henry VI's failings

Henry lacked any real political ability.... he never acquired the independence, judgement and decisiveness of thought that medieval kingship demanded. He had little understanding of the deviousness of others, his naivety frequently leading him to accept what he was told at face value, to the detriment of himself and his country. Her was easily influenced, susceptible to flattery, profligate with his gits and overly lenient in the administration of justice.... Henry showed no aptitude for, or even interest in, military affairs: despite the desperate plight of his French kingdom, he was said to have been the first English king who never commanded an army against a foreign enemy.

It is very clear that Henry VI's failures of military and political leadership contributed to the collapse of his French kingdom. Even before Henry's coronation, the French were making gains. Joan of Arc (who plays a relatively minor part in this particular history) was part of this, but Barker argues that her role was a calculated, but minor part of the Dauphin's campaign to regain his territory. The chapters on Joan of Arc are some of the most interesting. Barker demonstrates how her talents were clearly able to motivate and inspire the French population, but the ruling class was much more cynical about using her and actually sidelined her at times when her desire to press forward was actually mistaken militarily. Joan of Arc's later canonisation has more to do with more modern French nationalism, rather than her importance in the Hundred Years War.

Despite popular culture's portrayal of medieval military engagements, historians often tell us how rare sieges were of castles. This is particularly true of castles of the British Isles. But Barker's history is packed full of sieges, pitched battles and the capture and destruction of various strong points. Notably, betrayal frequently played a role in these defeats. Often defenders were happy to let the enemy in, sometimes out of nationalism, others because of gold. But massive military sieges were a significant and central part of the war.

The war involved enormous armies and cost an absolute fortune. The equivalent of millions of pounds of contemporary money was spent on armies and payments to those who ran the English occupation. Ordinary soldiers however frequently went without pay, and mutiny and desertion were common. It didn't help that Henry VI was extremely poor at money management, preferring to spend lavishly on his friends. At one point Henry VI's "annual income of £5000 (£2.63m) fell far short of what he spent: his household alone cost him £24,000 (£12.6m) a year".

The eventual English defeat in France was not just Henry's fault. Though he had a central responsibility in allowing it to happen. There were other guilty parties at the top of English society, who preferred to line their own pockets, than defend the wider kingdom. Interestingly, Juliet Barker finishes by linking the defeat in France and Henry VI's wider political failings (including popular dislike of his wife) to wider social discontent. The rebellion of Jack Cade that broke out in 1450 was a significant manifestation of this.

Like Juliet Barker's other books, this is a sometimes overly detailed work of history. But it is readable, entertaining and an excellent introduction to a forgotten period of English history.

Related Reviews

Barker - England Arise! The People, the King and the Great Revolt of 1381
Royle - The Wars of the Roses

Geoffrey Parker - Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the 17th Century

Any review of this extensive book must begin by acknowledging the immense amount of scholarship that has gone into it. Even without the index, notes and bibliography, there are 700 pages of dense text that covers an enormous amount of history. From almost every area of the world, Geoffrey Park has assembled vast amounts of data from primary and secondary sources to tell a history of a period of great change in human history. Using this material, Parker argues,"that the 1640s saw more rebellions and revolutions than any comparable period in human history". For Parker, the "General Crisis" of the 17th century was very different to other eras. The wars, revolutions, rebellions, famines, hunger and death is a consequence of both climate change (in this case, the little ice age) and general crisis in human society. By putting climate at the heart of the story, Parker is distinguishing himself from those historians who would try and remove human history from a wider context. And climate certainly was dramatic during the period under consideration.

"The seventeenth century experienced extremes of weather seldom witnessed before and never (so far) since: the only known occasion on which the Bosporus froze over (1620-1); the only time that floods in Mecca destroyed part of the Kaaba (1630); the coldest winder ever recorded in Scandinavia (1641); and so on."

As Parker points out, the consequences were profound for humans - hundreds of thousands of whom died. And many more suffered greatly,

"Infanticide and suicide in China rose to unequalled levels; far fewer European women married, and others did so only in their thirties; many Frenchmen, their growth stunted by famine and cold, were of shorter stature than any others on record."

Much of Parker's story concerns rebellion. Climate change in the 17th century, as in the 21st, means the destruction of crops, the failure of harvest and the movement of refugees. But what Parker brings out is the enormous unprecedented scale of this. The author illustrates the situation well, linking rebellion and war to the wider climatic changes. Sometimes though, the links are somewhat arbitrary. When discussing the aristocratic plots in Spain against the monarchy, Parker writes

"These events - the first aristocratic plots in Castile for 150 years - took place amid another spate of climatic disasters. In spring 1641 a prolonged drought threatened the harvests of Castile; and in August 1642 a tornado struck the city of Burgos with such force that it destroyed the nave of the cathedral."

The following years saw floods and heavy rains.

Climate and weather certainly do play their role in human history, both on the long scale and with their short-term events. But they are not the only factor and certainly are not always the key factor. The Marxist Chris Harman pointed out that climate change will play a role, in particular by intensifying fault lines in existing society. Parker seems to agree with this, at least in places, for instance noting that the Spanish Hapsburg's tended to worsen the impact of climatic changes through government policies that increased "sovereign debt" and foreign policies that failed to protect the interests of the majority of the population.

During Philip IV's reign in Spain, the country

"suffered extreme weather without parallel in other periods, particularly in 1630-2 and 1640-3; but more than any other seventeenth-century ruler, Philip intensified the impact of climate change by disastrous policy choices."

All this is enormously interesting, and Parker's detailed research illuminates a whole variety of people and places. By emphasising the role of climate and environmental factors we can see similar trends in widely different parts of the globe at the same time. Parker demonstrates how, unlike Philip IV, some countries were able to ride out the climatic crisis through government practice that marshalled resources and directed spending. Its notable that these tended to be countries in the Far East. Parker doesn't fail to neglect parts of the world were there are few written records from the period, notably Australia and South America, relying on the "natural archive" to try and understand what happened to populations there.

Parker should also be applauded for highlighting the role of ordinary people, whose role in the armies, the peasantry and indeed the rebellions of the era helped shape the wider history. For readers schooled in one area of history to see how widespread war and revolution were in the 17th century is particularly illuminating.

However, and its a big however, despite its detailed use of facts, I think Geoffrey Parkers' book fails to explain the real historical dynamic in the 17th century. While Parker doesn't see the climate as simplistically causing war and revolution, he does see it as one factor creating "stress" within society. So when writing about the causes of the English Civil War, Parker points to the fact that the country was a "composite state" and had a "lower political 'boiling point'" meaning that "upheaval tended to arise sooner at times of stress."

"Composite states," writes Parker, "required particularly sensitive handling when a ruler embarked on war, especially at a time of adverse climate."

The problem with this analysis is that it essentially sees European history as static in the 17th century. In reality, the 17th century, particularly in Europe, but also in China, Japan and elsewhere, was going through enormous changes. This was a period of transition, where the old feudal order no longer worked as capitalist relations were developing. Across Europe, particularly in England and north-western Europe, whole areas were volatile - not because they were composite states, but because different factions in society were struggling to shape society and the future of it. Climate and environment play their role of course. Hungry people may well be more likely to rebel. Those suffering cold and failed crops are more likely to rise up against unjust rulers and listen to the words of radicals.

But this isn't automatic. What makes the 17th century special, is that the development of capitalist relations was at both the top of society and the bottom creating enormous tensions. The English Civil War wasn't caused by a "composite state" unable to react to stress in society, it was caused by the unsolvable contradiction between the old feudal order trying to maintain its power and those who wanted to see a new social order. Parkers' failure to note this means that his book becomes little more than a series of descriptions of different societies and the potential for climate to intersect with other changes to cause war, famine or rebellion. It is notable, for instance, that in a book of near 700 pages in text, the word "capitalism" doesn't make an appearance.

Parkers' book is in no way useless. No student of history could fail to find a great deal material of interest here, and the authors grasp of the sources, the figures and the scale of the 17th century crisis makes fascinating reading. Ultimately though, the sheer quantity of material obscures the wider points that Geoffrey Parker is making, and I was certainly left unsatisfied by the work.

Related Reviews

Fagan - Floods, Famines and Emperors
Fagan - The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilisation

Peter Fryer - Hungarian Tragedy

It's a statement of the obvious, but revolutions change things. Most obviously a successful revolution changes the political and economic setup. But even unsuccessful revolutions throw life into turmoil. All that seems certain becomes uncertain; "All that is solid, melts into air" as Marx put it.

But revolutions also change people. They change the people who take part, turning them into leaders, writers and agitators - giving them the confidence to take up arms, or break open a police station. And finally they change the onlookers.

At the time of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Peter Fryer was an onlooker. He had, for some 14 years been a member of the British Communist Party. For years he'd been a proud journalist working "at less than a labourer's wage" on the CPGB's newspaper, The Daily Worker. Sent to Hungary to report on the events of the revolution, what he saw turned his world upside down.

Fryer almost certainly didn't have a rose tinted view of East European socialism. But he in no way expected the response that the Soviet regime inflicted upon the Hungarian people. More importantly, Fryer was inspired by the experience of a people in the midst of revolution. As he put it, "Here was a revolution, to be studied not in the pages of Marx, Engels and Lenin, valuable though these pages may be, but happening here in real life before the eyes of the world. A flesh and blood revolution with all its shortcoming and contradictions and problems - the problems of life itself."

In his travels, Fryer documents the revolutionary processes that mark working class uprisings time and again. The election of organising groups to run workplaces, cities and farms. The collective discussions and debates that take time, but are the true trappings of real democracy. The suppression of the enemies of people - sometimes, in the case of Hungary, the hanging of the secret police. We hear of the release of the thousands of people imprisoned by the former regime and the freeing up of ordinary men and women, held dormant for years. There is a lovely section where Fryer describes the explosion of independent newspapers - with one editor playing host to queues of young people coming in with their stories, poems, articles and writings.

Of course this was short lived. The Soviet invasion was a brutal suppression of these hopes. But the workers councils and committees didn't vanish. The people fought on, despite the overwhelming odds. Having tasted freedom, it takes much to give it up.

Fryer's dispatches were censored and then ignored by the Daily Worker. Such vivid descriptions of workers and peasants rising up and taking control, was far too much for an organisation and newspaper dedicated to believe that Russia and its client states ruled already in the name of the workers. His estrangement from the CPGB didn't mean he abandoned revolutionary socialism. His own experience in Hungary could only bring a greater desire to see a revolutionary transformation of society, but he learnt that that needed to take place in the East, as much as the West.

Further Reading

Chris Harman's "Class Struggles in Eastern Europe" goes much deeper into the background to the various risings against Soviet rule.

Mike Haynes' ISJ article "Hungary; workers' councils against Russian tanks" marked the 50th anniversary of the revolution. It's worth reading here.

Related Reviews

Dewer - Communist Politics in Britain

Matt Perry - Marxism and History

This is a useful and readable introduction to the Marxist understanding of history - or Historical Materialism as it is better know. Beginning with a brief explanation of how Marx and Engels understood history and then looking at how they engaged with this in their writing, Matt Perry shows that historical materialism is in no way as complex or difficult as some would argue.

However to put these ideas across, Perry has to take up some of the wider arguments around history and Marxist history in particular. Is history a science is a question that has perplexed many who would call themselves Marxists. Marx and Engels argued it was. But those who perceive science as something that happens in laboratories find this difficult to agree with. Even some of the best historians on the left (such as E P Thompson) disagreed with the founders of scientific socialism on this point. Perry shows how Marxist history as an approach does embody the essence of scientific research within the processes of research, the testing of hypothesises and the evaluation by peers.

I mention E P Thompson, because one of the central aspects to this book is the approach of various historians from the Marxist left and the wider left. Thompson, Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill get detailed analysis, mostly because of their links to the wider left grouping around the Communist Party Historian's Group (1946-1956). This is particularly interesting because this was a really flowering of work and ideas, between members of the CP and much wider layers of writers and researchers. Perry notes that because of their links to the CP, some areas of historical study remained out of bounds (particularly Russian history) and the group collapsed in 1956 as disillusionment following the invasion by Russian forces of Hungary led to some of its mainstays leaving the CP. However the works of many writers that came from the group, laid the foundation for important approaches to history, perhaps best epitomised by Thompson's Making of the English Working Class. The historian's group had a wide impact around the world, but it is perhaps noted most here for its pioneering work around the English Revolution.

Perry also looks at other historians. He starts with the explicitly historic writings of Marx and Engels, including chapters of Capital which are detailed historical accounts, even though there is a perception of it being a dry work of economics. The section on Engels' history of the German Peasant Wars is fascinating - Perry shows how his approach of linking ideological and political ideas as part of a social superstructure influenced, created and also impacting back on an economic base is Marxist history at its best. Perry also looks at what he considers a "historical masterpiece" - Leon Trotsky's monumental History of the Russian Revolution.

I only have time to briefly note the mention here of "base and superstructure". This notion is a critical part of the debates around Marxism and history, and Perry shows how this metaphor of Marx's has been used and abused - or dismissed by many on the left. However he argues that it was a central plank of Marx and Engels' historical approach and puts across one of the most straightforward explanations for the ideas. For those interested in this discussion I recommend these chapters in Perry's book, as well as Chris Harman's essay on the subject.

Finally Perry takes on the question of Postmodernism. Again his summary demolishes these attempts to argue that history has no meaning, or has stopped. Perry puts Postmodernism very much in the context of the post-World War II world. A point when capitalism, seemed to some as triumphant, and discussions about the "end of history" were about an ideological assault that would give the free-market free rein. Perry puts the case that idealistic approaches to history - that ideas are somehow independent of human society are not new, and that Marx himself critiqued this approach.

Perry's defence of the Marxist approach to history is clear and useful, rooting it very much in the real world. Humans must interact with the world around them to provide the necessities of life, as well as constructing and creating a society based on particular economic constructions. However I liked particular a point he develops from the historian John Saville, he argues that many left-historians are linked themselves to attempts to shape the future and change the world through the political organisations, campaigns or trade unions that they are part of. This in itself he argues "allows insights into the historical process with which they themselves were wrestling". I liked this point as it helps demonstrate why some arguments or writings from the postmodernists seems so completely incomprehensible to the rest of us - they are cut off and removed from the real historical processes around them.

Matt Perry's book deserves a wide readership, by students of history and writers of the subject. Its glossary is particularly useful, particularly if you have little or no experience of some of the more unusual academic phrases. I would have liked to read more by Perry on other historians - there are only passing references to Tony Cliff and I would have enjoyed Perry's thoughts on his historical work. But that's a minor criticism, I recommend this book to you.

Related Reviews

Harman - Marxism and History
Hughes - Ecology and Historical Materialism

Paul N. Siegel - The Meek and the Militant: Religion and Power Across the World

The question of religion has always been an important one for revolutionaries. This important, but slightly dated work, is an essential read for those attempting to understand the historic and social role of religion. Paul N. Siegel's work is from a Marxist point of view. He sees religion, not as a crude counter-revolutionary force which holds back workers and dims their outlook, but as Karl Marx did, dialectically. Religion is both the "opium" of the people and their "heart in a heartless world" offering hope for the future, a better life after death and on occasion, a radical way to interpret the world that can lead to radical action.

Siegel begins by looking at the origins of the Marxist critique of religion, seeing its roots in the French Enlightenment Materialists who came to an anti-religious position through a materialistic understanding of the universe. For those frustrated and annoyed at the contradictions of religion, there are entertaining sections here where Siegel summarises the materialist critique of Christianity. In particular the contradictions of the Bible, which frequently undermine claims of God as a benevolent force for good. There is much to build on in a critique of religion from a materialistic point of view. After all, religion does "foster ignorance", it is conservative, and it has frequently helped to serve the interests of the rich and powerful. The materialists also understood that the origins of religion lay in attempts to understand the universe. But Engels, Siegel points out, adds that only looking at this aspect misses a more important role of religion; that religion also reflects humanity's lack of control over social forces.

"Side by side with the forces of nature, social forces begin to be active - forces which confront man as equally alien and at first equally inexplicable, dominating him with the same apparent natural necessity as the forces of nature themselves... At a still further stage of evolution, all the natural and social attributes of the numerous gods are transferred to one almighty god."

Challenging religion then, means more than simply opposing it, or pointing out its inherent contradictions. Because it has a social origin and role, social change will ultimately be the way that society rids itself of the backwardness of religion. That's not to say that people cannot break from a religious understanding through argument or experience, but it is also true that this is not enough. Siegel quotes Freud,

"It is certainly senseless to begin by trying to do away with religion by force and at a single blow.... The believer will not let his belief be torn from him, either by arguments or by prohibition. And even if this did succeed with some it would be cruelty. A man who has been taking sleeping draughts for tens of years is naturally unable to sleep if his sleeping draught is taken away from him."

Religion offers an understanding of the world to the believer. It also offers a better world in the future, and sometimes, it is the radical language which believers use to try and change the world. The second half of the book looks at the social origins of the world's major religions. In doing so, Siegel shows how religion has often played a dual role. Early Christianity, for instance, offering a radical, revolutionary critique of existing Roman society and a political structure to organise. Siegel traces this role through history, examining for instance, how different Christian sects used different interpretations of the Bible  to push for change during the later years of European feudal society (and early, in some cases). The Quakers, the Diggers, the Levellers and many other Christian sects were trying to re-interpret the world and demand change in various forms. But often, when these movements were defeated,

"having laid down their weapons, they are co-opted and often transformed into the opposites through the influx of new members of different social classes. This process, epitomized in the evolution of early Christianity from a lower-class religion to the religion supporting the feudal structure, is repeated again and again."

But churches often themselves try to hold back the struggle. Siegel quotes Martin Luther King Jnr. during the Civil Rights Movement to illustrate this point, that

"too many Negro churches.. are so absorbed in a future good 'over yonder' that they condition their members to adjust to the present evils 'over here'."

Siegel thus outlines a clear Marxist understanding of the contradictory role of religion historically and, in contemporary capitalist society. His histories of the major religions are both interesting historically and illustrate his main points. While the religion may take different forms, there are many comparative points. Take Siegel's point about Hinduism and Buddhism, which both offer a better future in a future life,

"On the other hand, by performing one's caste obligations one could ascend to a higher caste in a future life and even, as later Hindu doctrine said, become a god... Everything is subject to change - except the caste system, which goes on forever. Instead of the everlasting reward and punishment in another world which the medieval Catholic Church used to maintain the social order, the Brahmans used an eternity of successive rewards and punishments in this world, with some transitory sojourns in another world."

Siegel's broad overview of religious history contains much of interest. The section on the appalling role of the Catholic Church during World War Two is very useful, as is his analysis of the origins of fundamentalist Christianity in the United States. Siegel's analysis of the origins of Islam and its role as both anti-imperialist, but also anti-socialist is also interesting in the light of events in the Middle East since World War Two. It is an analysis close to that of Chris Harman and will, even though it is now very dated, help inform anyone trying to understand the role of Islam today. Siegel also offers useful chapters tackling the question on whether Marxism is a religion (in the sense of a block of ideas passed down from a single, all knowing figure). This chapter feels particularly dated today, but Siegel was writing when the existence of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc allowed a bastardisation of Marxism to dominate. Also interesting is Siegel's study of religion after the Cuban Revolution. If at times the author is soft on the Castro regime, his suggestion that leading figures in that movement had a nuanced understanding of the role of religion is interesting. I was also struck by how contemporary the section on Zionism was.

The final section, which gives a brief overview of revolutionaries and religion is particularly important. Building on the work of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, Siegel rejects absolutely the idea that religious people cannot be revolutionaries, or in revolutionary organisation. He also explains how the Bolsheviks, in the early years of the Russian Revolution were able to separate Church from State and to use this strategy to undermine the historic role of religion, an example of not trying to do away with religion "at a single blow".

This important book contains much of interest to the contemporary radical reader. It is a very clear alternative to those, such as Richard Dawkins, who think that being a vocal atheist is somehow enough to be radical (and whose politics as a result frequently ends up being reactionary). By putting the historical materialist method at the heart of his study of religion, and explaining the dialectical social role of religion, Paul N. Siegel's book is a must read.

Barrington Moore Jnr - Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

Barrington Moore Jnr's Social Origins is one of those books that always seems to pop up in bibliographies. It is a sweeping work, that analyses the trajectories of many different countries, examining how they arrived at their modern states. Written in the 1960s it is in many places dated, and his critique of Marxism is very much a critique of the Stalinist version that dominated the era. The author's central argument is that it is the role of the landed aristocracy in rural areas, interacting with a developing capitalist class that creates the political and economic structures which determine the type of parliamentary democracy that evolves. Writing about India, he says,

"we have observed that an alliance between influential segments of a landed elite and a rising but weak commercial class has been a crucial factor in producing a reactionary political phase in the course of economic development. The British presence in India prevented any such coalition and thereby contributed to the establishment of a parliamentary democracy."

Earlier he writes

"The weakness of a national aristocracy was an important feature of seventeenth-century India that, as in other countries, inhibited the growth of parliamentary democracy from native soil. Parliamentary institutions were to be a late and exotic import."

Most of the book is a forensic analysis of the different paths of development for various countries. I suspect that most readers will get the most from this history, and I found the chapters on France and England good summaries of the history of the development of modern parliamentary democracy. Barrington Moore is good on the role of force in history, and the role of competing class interests in shaping historical outcomes.

"To regard the radicals as an extremist band, an excrescence on the liberal and bourgeois revolution is to fly in the face of this evidence. The one was impossible without the other. It is also quite clear that the bourgeois revolution would not have gone as far as it did without pressure from the radicals. There were several occasion, as we have seen, when the conservatives of the moment tried to stop the Revolution."

He continues later,

"The sans culottes made the bourgeois Revolution: the peasants determined just how far it could go. The incompleteness of the Revolution on the other hand, an incompleteness quite largely traceable to the structure of French society in the late eighteenth century, meant that it would be a long time before a full-blown capitalist democracy could establish itself in French society." 

But here is an example of what I think is Barrington-Moore's major theoretical weakness. It is of course true that paths of historical development inevitably effect more recent history. But, even though he denies it, the author comes close to implying an inevitability to the 20th century outcomes to these paths of development. He hedges his bets when writing about Japan

"By the time Commodore Perry's ships appeared in 1854, the Tokugawa system had suffered substantial decay. The decline of the old order, together with attempts to preserve the privileges of the agrarian elite, had already given rise to some of the social forces that eventually culminated in the regime that dropped its fateful bombs on Pearl Harbor in 1941."

But goes further in writing of China where he implies that "decisive characteristics of Chinese society during the last great dynasty, the Manchus (1644-1911)... impart a direction to the subsequent development of China that culminated... in the Communist victory". A very early beginning to Chairman Mao's victory.

Fascism was ultimately successful, he argues, in Germany (and as Barrington Moore characterises it, Japan) because of the late development of industry. So while Barrington Moore argues, that there isn't "some inexorable fate [that] drove Germany toward fascism from the sixteenth century onward" he does come close.

So while we can agree on some of Barrington Moore's ideas, we have to reject some of his more sweeping generalisations. In particular, I think Moore suggests that particular structures inevitably lead to particular outcomes. Take his gross mischaracterisation of the Russian and Chinese revolutions

"The main areas where peasant revolutions have in modern times had the greatest importance, China and Russia, were alike in the fact that the landed upper classes by and large did not make a successful transition to the world of commerce and industry and did not destroy the prevailing social organisation among the peasants."

What Barrington Moore is missing here, and everywhere else in his book, is the active role of the classes in determining the outcome of history. The Russian Revolution was successful not simply because the aristocracy and failed to destroy the peasants social organisation (though it might have done given another 50 years) but because there were active political parties in the country that shaped the revolutionary movement of workers and peasants to smash the state. Similarly, Fascism was triumphant in Germany and Italy because powerful movements failed to organise correctly to break the right-wing, and because Hitler forged a powerful fascist movement. In some countries, Britain and France for instance, nascent fascist groups were broken by working class movements. Nazism wasn't inevitable in Germany, it was the joint failure of the social democrats and Communists to unite that left Hitler able to win.

Barrington Moore's book also suffers from two other weaknesses. At times it is very heavily written and turgid. He is also prone to sweeping generalisations: "Though I cannot prove it, I suspect that one of the few lasting and dependable sources of human satisfaction is making other people suffer".

Readers will no doubt continue to grapple with Barrington Moore's book while engaging in debates around the development of capitalism. I remain unconvinced it is a particularly necessary read for others, and despite his liberal radicalism, his failure to understand more radical democratic solutions means the book ends up justifying the "democracy" of Britain and the United States. The later, after all, a regime that also dropped "fateful bombs" on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With this selective view of history, and its overly structuralist approach to historical change, Barrington Moore's Social Origins remains a thoroughly bourgeois work.

Related Reading

Chris Harman reviews Barrington Moore's Injustice: The social basis of Obedience and Revolt

Henry Heller - The Birth of Capitalism: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective

How did capitalism arise? It is a question that has been often discussed, and the debate between Marxists has been fierce. The post-war period saw a intensity of this discussion with figures like Rodney Hilton and others contributing their positions, and in the aftermath of 1968 the development of a new, revolutionary, left that broke with Stalinism, allowed the debate to flourish without the hindrance of a line that stemmed from the political outlook of the official Communist movement. A new generation of scholars, and some longer-standing figures, argued through what became known as the transition debate.

Henry Heller's remarkable book is, perhaps, the best summary of the debate I have read. It is not neutral - Heller is critical of many of those who have written from a Marxist and non-Marxist point of view on the transition from feudalism to capitalism - particularly Robert Brenner and his followers. Heller argues that to understand the transition the historian has to look at a variety of different aspects of society and place them in a unified context. Thus, writing about EP Thompson, he says:

[Thompson] like other British Marxist historians, gave license to an approach privileging the study of workers, plebeians and peasants. This was understandable given the previous neglect of the role of the people in history. But this opened the way to an approach which ignored the study of the political and economic opposition between workers and peasants on the on hand, and landlords and capitalists on the other, in favour of a one-sided preoccupation with the lower orders. The relationship between opposed classes must be the focus of any serious study of the origins and dynamics of capitalism. Moreover, class conflict is always resolved a the level of political struggle and the control of the state... It is the dynamic of class struggle which must be the focal point of a Marxist approach to history.

Heller looks at a much wider context to the development of capitalism than many others - his sections on Japan for instance, are fascinating, though I'd have liked a lot more about China, Asia and elsewhere. More importantly in the context of his engagement with Brenner and others, he firmly argues that it is not enough to discuss the development of capitalism through a study of English history. He uses studies of Italy, Germany and France to illustrate how capitalism began to develop, but failed to break through unlike in Holland and England. This, he writes, is because

The key difference between these countries, where the development of capitalism was arrested or limited, and England and Holland lay in the balance of power between capital, the state and feudal power. Italy failed to consolidate a territorial state because of the too great strength of merchant capital, while in Germany and France feudalism proved too strong. 

The failure of capitalism to break through had a number factors, but when it did break through in England and Holland, precisely because those economies were not separated out globally, it had an impact elsewhere, hampering its development still further. In this context Heller quotes Perry Anderson's criticism of Brenner as a "'capitalism in one country' approach". Heller repeatedly returns to this theme, noting for instance, that:

At the beginning of modern times [the non-unified] Germany and Italy were as much nations as France and England and both witnessed the development of capitalist classes. But the failure to construct national territorial states in the former countries aborted for the time being their capitalist futures. The lack of such a state deprived merchants and entrepreneurs of the protection necessary to gain control of foreign markets and territories, blocked the further development of national markets and arrested the maturation of their bourgeoisie.

Heller notes the special case of France, where the weak bourgeoisie was unable to overthrow the nobility, and the state, despite some "fostering" the development of the bourgeois "to a certain extent", but eventually continued to protect the interests of the old nobility, badly hampered the development of capitalism. He concludes that in France, "capitalism was forced onto the defensive until the eighteenth century". This can be contrasted with those countries where the state began to play the role of a "political bridge between feudalism and capitalism". There the state was able to "provide an arena for the generalisation and integration of capitalist relations of production". Thus the breakdown of the old feudal order was accompanied by the state facilitating commodity production through the creation and protection of markets internally and overseas.

Heller's focus on the world beyond England does not mean he neglects debates about the development of capitalism in England. One particularly important aspect about his argument is his discussion of "agrarian capitalism", much favoured by Brenner and his followers (such as Ellen Meiksins' Wood). Heller favourably quotes Brain Manning's approach which emphasised the interaction between town and country, farming and manufacture, agriculture and industry. In my view this is critical to understand the influence of this interaction if one is to see how capitalism could rapidly take off in England after the Civil War. Brenner, according to Heller, is unwilling to accept this because he rejects the idea of bourgeois revolution. In contrast, Heller highlights historians like Manning who show the way that the Civil War was a victory based on the "mobilisation of the middle sort of people", which "marginalised" the old order of landowners and aristocrats. This in turn creates a new state favourable to the development of capitalism. As Heller summarises:

As a result of revolution, the state was restructured in each case to enhance the further accumulation of capital at home and abroad, and to advance the social and political ambitions of the bourgeoisie. By transforming the state from a feudal to a capitalist institution, the revolutions in Holland, England and France, helped to consolidate capitalism as a system. In taking this view we have challenged the view of Brenner and the Political Marxists, who would deny the significance and even the existence of these bourgeois and capitalist revolutions.

Heller develops this focus on to the state with a study of Lenin's analysis of the development of capitalism in Russia, noting that it can lead to the development of capitalism from above as well as below.

I don't have time here to fully explore the other, linked, themes of Heller's book. One important argument that is worth highlighting here is his close study of the question of euro-centrism in relation to Marxist accounts of the development of capitalism. He absolves Marx of this crime, by noting how Marx emphasised capitalism as a system that grew based on the systematic exploitation of the rest of the world. He also notes the limitations of many "political Marxists" on this question. Heller's treatment of slavery and its importance in the development of capitalism is particularly noteworthy here. The consequences of the breakthrough of capitalism in western Europe were appalling for millions of people, it also hampered the development of capitalism elsewhere.

In his conclusion Heller re-emphasises the importance of his twin track approach - the coming together of social forces that could win revolutionary change, and a state that could encourage and develop capitalism:

Capitalist farmers, a group whose economic ambitions were evident in the late medieval period, together with well-to-do craftspeople followed a revolutionary path by reorganising production in both agriculture and industry from the sixteenth century onward. Led by these same proto-capitalist elements, petty producers and wage workers provided the shock troops of the early modern social and political revolutions.

He continues:

I have underscored the role of the sate in nurturing capitalism at its beginnings, overseeing its development through mercantilism and through combined and uneven development and then being itself transformed by revolution. Throughout I have insisted on tits role in totalising capitalist relations: generalising, maintaining and integrating capitalist relations right through society.

Henry Heller's book is a must read for those Marxists trying to understand how capitalism came to dominate the world and what this means in the 21st century. It is worth mentioning that in his engagement with other Marxists on this question he does highlight the work of Chris Harman who is often neglected as he wasn't an academic. Heller pays Harman the highest of tributes in his book, and it is worth noting that sometimes the best work on this subject comes from authors who were actively engaged in the building of political organisations to try and change the world.

Heller shows how the development of capitalist forces were initially progressive, but have now come to be fetters on the further development of society - and as we face global environmental chaos and economic crisis, his conclusion that we need to transform society again cannot be ignored. His book is important ammunition in understanding both the history of capitalism and the ideas that can be part of the fight for socialism.

Related Reviews

Callinicos - Making History
Perry - Marxism and History
Marx & Engels - The German Ideology
Harman - Marxism and History
Dimmock - The Origin of Capitalism in England 1400 - 1600

Michael Roberts - The Long Depression

Michael Roberts' The Long Depression is an accessible and important work of Marxist political economy. I'd rank it close to Chris Harman's Zombie Capitalism for activists trying to understand the current state of the world economy and what may happen to capitalism in the coming years.

Roberts' book is an attempt to explain the economic crisis that began in 2008 with the banking crisis and has now become a "long depression". He argues that mainstream economists cannot explain it properly, because they see the capitalism economic system as a stable one that is merely subject to external shocks of various sorts. In contrast, Marxist political economy sees the system as one that is inherently unstable, subject to regular economic crisis.

At the core of his argument is a reassertion of the importance of the falling rate of profit, something Marx put as the central cause of economic crisis. Firstly Roberts argues that Marx's "law" is "logically consistent", and then shows that it fits the reality of capitalism. So:

The US rate of profit has been falling since the mid-1950s and is well below where it was in 1947. There has been a secular decline... Thus the counteracting factors cannot permanently resist the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. But the US rate of profit has not moved in a straight line. In the US economy as a whole after the war, it was high but decreasing in the so-called Golden age from 1948 to 1965, Profitability kept falling also from 1965 to 1982. However, in the era of what is called 'neoliberalism,' from 1982 to 1997, US profitability rose.

Following Marx, Roberts shows how there are factors that counter the tendency of the profit rate to fall, and these are at the heart of his explanation of why the economic crisis of 2008 has become a long depression. Capital is currently unable to restore profit rates, and thus move out of depression.

Roberts demonstrates the value of Marx's approach by explaining historic slumps and depressions. He shows how the rate of profit's decline was the root cause of these, even though the actual trigger for crisis varies.

The trigger in 2008 was the huge expansion of fictitious capital that eventually collapsed when real value expansion could no longer sustain it, as the ratio of house prices to household income reached extremes. But such 'triggers' are not causes. Behind them is a general cause of crisis: the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

Failing to understand this helps explain why mainstream economists have failed both in terms of their explanation of crisis but also in their ability to solve the depression. Robert systematically exposes them, in particular he is critical of "Keynesian economists" who see state investment as a solution to the situation.

For orthodox Keynesians, a slump is due to the collapse in aggregate or effective demand in the economy (as expressed in a fall of investment and consumption). this fall in investment leads to a decrease in employment and thus to less income. Effective demand is the independent variable, and incomes and employment are the dependent variables. There is not mention of profit or profitability in this schema. Investment creates profits, not vice versa.

For me, these were some of the most useful sections of  the book for they demonstrated two things. Firstly that "common sense" arguments about the way to solve the economic crisis, such as massive state investment won't work. Secondly these solutions effectively function as an ideological fig leaf for capitalism, suggesting that the system can be made to work. Roberts shows that there isn't a reformist way to patch together a system that is inherently crisis prone.

In this context Roberts also argues that the austerity policies of most capitalist governments are "not insane" as Keynesians think, they "follow from a need to drive down costs, particularly wage costs, but also taxation and interest costs, and the need to weaken the labor movement so that profits can be raised. [Austerity] is a perfectly rational policy from the point of view of capital.

So can capitalism get out of its hole? Roberts argues that it can, but doing so requires the restoration of profitability which means that huge amounts of existing capital needs to be destroyed. These solutions (just as the bank bailouts did) will benefit the system and some of the capitalists, but the majority of the population will suffer. There are likely to be many more company collapses, bankruptcies, redundancies and wage cuts (and all the social ills that accompany these) before capitalism restores its profitability. The "dead-weight" of debt remains in the system and

The current low-growth world is a reflection of the burden of still high debt levels on the cost of borrowing relative to potential return on capital and thus on growth. The job of a slump (to devalue assets, both tangible and fictitious) has not yet been achieved.

I've focused in this review on what I consider to be the key part of The Long Depression - it's systematic explanation of the cause of slump and the importance of a Marxist approach. There is much more here. Readers of Michael Robert's blog will know that the has discussed the question of robot and AI technology and whether this will lead to a rosy future or a dystopian nightmare. Again he puts the question of profitability at the heart of this, showing that a completely robotic knowledge economy in the future is impossible. The chapters that look at the economic prospects for particular countries and regions are also interesting, if sobering, accounts of the bleak future for most working people unless they fight back. In the midst of the post-Brexit discussions in the UK I also felt Roberts' discussion on the role of the EU was particularly interesting. In particular he points out that the currency union wasn't logical and only serves the interest of the two major European economic powers.

The Eurozone countries are more different from each other than countries in just about any hypothetical currency union you could propose. A currency union for Central America would make more sense. A currency union in East Asia would make more sense. A currency union that involved reconstituting the old Soviet Union or Ottoman Empire would make more sense. In fact, "a currency union of all countries on Earth than happen to reside on the fifth parallel north of the Equator would make more sense". But the currency union went ahead because of the political ambitions of France and Germany to have a Europe led by them, even after Britain refused to join.

Finally Roberts puts the economic problems of capitalism in the context of its ecological destruction. I won't rehearse his arguments as this blog has frequently discussed these. But his conclusion is a sensible place to end this review. Unless capitalism is replaced in the next fifty years, ecology destruction will be on such as scale that "economic growth will slow, natural disasters will become common, and the cost of restoration and prevention will become too much for a profit-making mode of production to handle."

Related Reviews

Harman - Zombie Capitalism
Choonara - Unravelling Capitalism
Harvey - Seventeen Contradictions and the end of Capitalism
Marx - Value, Price and Profit

David Fernbach (ed) - In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Writings of Paul Levi

In recent years there has been renewed interest in the work of the German revolutionary socialist, Paul Levi. In part this has been inspired by the publication in English of Pierre Broue's classic book on the German Revolution, which emphasised the role that Levi played in the early years of the German Communist Party. Following the murders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibneickt, Paul Levi took on the difficult task of guiding the fledgling party in its early years.

Building mass revolutionary organisation during a revolution is not an easy task. The revolutionary wave that swept Germany at the end of World War One dragged millions of workers into action. Levi's task then, was to try and shape the rapidly growing Communist Party into the type of organisation that could lead a revolution.

The first few articles in this selected works, deal with Levi's writings and speeches in this early period. His address to the founding conference of the Communist Party (KPD) is a polemic designed to win an argument that KPD members needed to involve themselves in the elections to the German Parliament. On this question, and others, Levi was trying to challenge the ultra-left instincts of the new, young communists. Levi lost the argument and the KPD abstained. But millions of workers didn't and the KPD found themselves isolated in the debates around the election.

That said, the KPD grew rapidly, benefiting in part from its links with revolutionary Russia. Nonetheless, the lack of theoretical clarity meant that the KPD's leadership made some serious tactical errors. Paul Levi was the most able of the leaders and his articles are often critical looks at strategy and tactics, trying to learn lessons and teach the party.

Most famously the KPD attempted to force a revolutionary situation in Germany in March of 1921, the so called "March Action". This was a dismal failure and the KPD lost tens of thousands of supporters and many people were killed. Using the unemployed to try and force strikes, KPD members invaded work places, blew up railcars and tried to provoke a revolution that didn't fit with the experience of the majority of German workers.

Paul Levi, who by this point was no longer on the party's central bodies, wrote a long polemical critique of the Action. When published, his pamphlet led to his expulsion for breaking party discipline. It seems fairly clear to me though, that by this point, Levi had decided the KPD was broken beyond repair. His critique is a brilliant defence of the role of revolutionary socialist organisation and roots of the KPD's mistakes. This, and his speech in his defence to the KPD's CC are must reads for anyone trying to understand what took place in Germany in the early 1920s.

Comrades no doubt might argue whether or not he was justified in his actions. But famously Lenin quipped, that while Levi had lost his head, "at least he had a head to lose". But it is clear from these writings that Levi rapidly lost much of what made him such a brilliant leader. In the aftermath of his expulsion and his creation of a new, small left organisation, Levi argued that the KPD was no longer reformable. Part of the blame for this, he argued lay in the decline of the Russian Revolution and the resultant rot in the Communist International. What marks out Levi from others who drew these conclusions, was that Levi was doing this as early as 1921, long before the battles for the future of the Comintern or the Soviet Union had been decided. Levi's intervention in support of (say) Leon Trotsky could have been crucial. Instead he appears to have abandoned them.

Paul Levi

So, contained in these writings are two pieces that Levi writes at this time, one an introduction to a piece by Rosa Luxemburg on Russia, the other a very critical introduction to Trotsky's In Defence of October. Levi critiques the Russian Bolsheviks for their actions post October. But in the latter of these essays, and in other pieces, he clearly fails to see that Trotsky's polemic that is part of an argument about the way forward for the Soviets. Indeed in critiquing Trotsky, Levi ends up siding with those in the Bolshevik leadership who had done most to damage the Germany party.

Having written a brilliant defence of the Democratic Centralist method pioneered by Lenin in 1919, Levi is reduced to criticising the Bolsheviks for a method that meant the "stations of its development... were resolutions and splits on account of resolutions". Levi ignores the decades of brilliant underground work that the Russian Revolutionaries undertook, in order to blur the reasons for the very creation of the Bolshevik party on very specific principles of organisation.

Similarly he attacks Trotsky for writing long polemics on (eg) the Anglo Russian agreements or the revolution in China. Clearly Trotsky does this for fun. Levi seems to miss that both of these arguments went to the heart of Trotsky's battle with Stalin over the direction of Russian policy. Was the Russian party going to look outwards to Revolution, or inwards to Socialism in One Country?

Ultimately I found this a frustrating collection. Some of the articles are very important and will help socialists understand the German revolutionary process and the mistakes of the KPD. However the picture they paint of Levi himself is confused. In the immediate post-war period he comes across as a brilliant revolutionary, striving for revolutionary clarity and a party capable of leading a revolution. His 1919 polemic is a particularly brilliant example of this - it meant the forcing out of a section of the party that was influenced by anarchism and syndicalism. The resultant renewed clarity of ideas meant the KPD recruited thousands of new members within months on a much clearer basis.

But quickly after he leaves the KPD he comes across as a much more liberal socialist (an able one at that) whose polemics against the Russian Revolution seem more about a sectarian assault on the KPD than developing revolutionary clarity.

Sadly this book is also marred by an awful introduction, which, while an excellent outline of the life and times of Paul Levi, has several problems. Not least of these is that the author of the introduction tries to recast Levi as the living embodiment of Rosa Luxemburg's ideas. I think this is unfair on both Levi and Luxemburg, who were both brilliant individuals capable of making judgments based on concrete situations, rather than having some innate set of ideas that remained unchanged over years. Speculation whether Luxemburg would have taken the same decisions as Levi at key points is not particularly useful in clarifying the historical process in my view.

More worryingly, the introduction appears to lay the blame for the failure of the German Revolution and the rise of Fascism on "Leninism". But the KPD of the late 1920s and early 1930s was a long way away from Leninism - it had become, as Broue points out well, a tool of Stalin's foreign policy. It was no longer a revolutionary organisation that was struggling to end capitalism. It's weaknesses flowed from this position, not from a Leninism that was far from its own practise. Indeed in the earlier 1919 article, Levi clearly models his vision of the KPD in part on the Bolsheviks' own practise.

These criticisms aside, few of Paul Levi's writings have been available to the English reader and this book makes some of his key writings (particularly his critique of the March Action) available. This is something that should be welcomed by socialists and historians everywhere. But the book needs to be read in conjunction with a decent history of the German Revolution - Pierre Broue's brilliant work would be ideal, or Chris Harman's Lost Revolution.

Related Reviews

Broue - The German Revolution 1919 - 1923
Reissner - Hamburg at the Barricades

James Hinton & Richard Hyman - Trade Unions and Revolution: The Industrial Politics of the early British Communist Party

How should revolutionary socialists best relate to situations that are not revolutionary? How should those socialists organise, particularly in periods when the working class is not yet confident to fight against the system, when their rights, pay and conditions are under attack by the capitalists?

These questions are not easy ones to answer, but for socialists in Britain and indeed in large parts of the world, they are crucial ones. In Britain, with its history of Labour politics and Trade Union bureaucracy, it has been common to look back to the early years of the Communist Party and attempt to learn lessons from their activity.

The British CP was founded in the early 1920s. It brought together a number of varied factions of the Marxist left, encouraged by the success and the prestige of the Russian Revolution. Early in its history, as a party of a few thousands, though with many key industrial militants and in places, significant influence in the working class movement, the CP faced one of its greatest tests - the General Strike of 1926. This strike was a bureaucratic one. It stemmed not from the anger and militancy of ordinary workers, but from the leadership of the Trade Unions. Millions of workers took part, bravely and committed yet during the strike it was rare for their own creative organisation to break through the barriers of the trade union bureaucrats. After the defeat of the strike, the CP which had used its influence to encourage workers to look towards the General Council of the TUC, rather than their own self organisation, suffered major setbacks. Along with victimisation of many committed activists, the party lost many members and much influence. Rather than learn from its mistakes, the CP continued down a mistaken path which, it could be argued, left its union militants confused about the role of the union bureaucracy for decades.

This short book, published in 1975 is an explicitly socialist attempt to understand what the CP did wrong and draw some conclusions. Hinton and Hyman make no bones about it. They believe that the CP strategy was based on an incorrect understanding of the role of the union leaderships and an incorrect vision of how to move forward. In particular, they argue that any attempt to build a mass communist organisation in the 1920s was not just doomed to failure, but a mistake that could only further damage the prospects for building the revolutionary socialist movement.

This can be summed up in their conclusion, emphasised by being provocatively re-printed on the back cover. "By attempting to build a mass revolutionary party in Britain in the 1920s, where the labour movement was in retreat, the Communist Party committed a tragic blunder. It sacrificed clarity in its propaganda and its theory, and lost the opportunity to form a revolutionary cadre."

This cadre, they argue, could have formed the basis of a much stronger party in the future, for coming struggles. There is some truth to this. The ongoing existence of many tiny socialist sects throughout the world, demonstrates that theoretical clarity can create resilience. Yet the ongoing existence of a theoretically pure, stable, yet tiny socialist organisation that merely replicates itself over the years is hardly what the founders of revolutionary Marxism had in mind. The CP were, under the influence of the Russian Revolution and the Communist International attempting to build political organisation that could lead to a successful socialist revolution in the UK.

The CP's own analysis of the union leaders was frequently excellent, and their strategies for strengthening the working class movement and building their own influence were based on some excellent initiatives. The National Minority Movement was a CP initiative aimed at "making the trade unions real militant organizations for the class struggle". This attempted to bring together the best rank and file workers with the best of the union leaderships to encourage more militant action. Yet the CP underestimated the degree to which union bureaucrats are pulled by their social position, desiring less social confrontation and more negotiation.

The betrayal of these leaders, including many lefts whom the CP had courted and worked with over the years left the organisation confused. As the authors point out, "many party leaders found the betrayal of the General Strike incomprehensible."

So why did the CP have such a confused understanding of the situation. In one sense, Hinton and Hyman are right. Lack of theoretical clarity stemmed from the confused and ofter sectarian politics that marked out the socialist organisations that had developed in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet there was also the dominating influence of the Communist International and, in particular the Bolsheviks. The Russian Revolution had be lead by individuals and organisations that had little practical experience of trade unions and reformist organisations. Their understanding of the role of the trade union bureaucrat was limited and, in the aftermath of the Revolution, the isolation of Russia had led the Soviet government to court those organisations in the capitalist nations that could help undermine that isolation. The Anglo-Russian Trade Unity Committee was one example that helped to encourage the British CP to support leaders of British unions.

Hinton and Hyman play down the importance of this, as an excellent critique of this book by Duncan Hallas points out;

"the CPGB was not and could not be left to itself. It was part of a centralised world movement. It owed its very existence to the Russian revolution. Its leaders and members were profoundly influenced by advice and guidance (leave aside the question of “orders”) from the Moscow centre."

Hinton and Hyman also, repeatedly play down the opportunity for building "mass" socialist organisation, it is "only in the most abstract sense that 1926 can be described as a moment of revolutionary opportunity", they continue;

"The Party was operating in a profoundly unfavourable situation... Politically, the established institutions of the labour movement exerted a profound influence over the working class..."


Earlier the authors argue that building a mass organisation of revolutionary socialists is only possible at very specific times, "[t]here are moments, but only moments, when revolutionaries should concentrate their efforts on building a mass party."

The problem with this analysis, is that it is a recipe for sitting back and concentrating on discussing abstract ideas until the moments of revolutionary crisis appear. Yet, by then the moment will be lost as Rosa Luxemburg found to her dismay. You cannot build a mass revolutionary socialist group during the throws of a revolution. 1926 was not a revolutionary moment, yet it was a year when millions of workers took extended action as part of a General Strike, albeit one with many weaknesses. The organisation may have been small, but it had prestige and influence - the Russian Revolution was still a living reality, even with its distortions and the rise of Stalin.

Had the CP operated better during 1926 they may not have become a mass organisation. Certainly they were unlikely to prevent the sell-out of the bureaucrats. Yet they could have won significant numbers of militants to a stronger understanding of their role and the role of the union leaderships. The CP could have ended the General Strike with a growing membership, rather than a shrinking and demoralised one. By tying their flag to closely to the union leaders, they left themselves isolated from the best elements of the working class and hampered themselves for some time to come.

Hyman and Hinton argue that it the CPs strategy should have been one that allowed them to strengthen their own organisation to better ride out the coming storms. But the mistakes made by the CP stemmed in large part from mistaken analysis as well as the degeneration of the political leadership of the Communist International. Socialists cannot abstain from the struggle. The best way of building a revolutionary cadre is not to sit isolated, reading Marxist tomes, but to engage with the movement and further develop the ideas and theories that you have. Theory is important, but it must breath and grow as part of the class struggle. Hyman and Hinton here are arguing against a revolutionary strategy that involved engaging with the working class and, in part, I suspect they were penning a justification for their own trajectory out of revolutionary politics.

I've devoted a lot of words here, to a very short book. In part this is my own attempt to grapple with a similar political situation in Britain. The study of the 1926 General Strike and the actions of the best militants who were organised in the CP is important so that we can avoid similar mistakes in the future. For that reason, this short book deserves to be read, but it should be read in conjunction with other writings, in particular the Duncan Hallas article linked above, but also some of the books mentioned below.

Related Reviews

Cliff & Gluckstein - Marxism and Trade Union Struggle: The General Strike of 1926
Dewar - Communist Politics in Britain: The CPGB from its origins to the Second World War
Trotsky - On Britain

Useful Articles

Chris Harman - The General Strike 
Martin Smith - Britain's Trade Unions: The Shape of Things to Come
Duncan Hallas - The Communist Party and the General Strike