[Marxism] Re: Bourgeois revolutions not led by the bourgeoisie?

["Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In reply to:
> Message: 9
> Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 22:01:42 +0200
> From: Ed George <edgeorge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Marxism] Re: Bourgeois revolutions not led by the
>  bourgeoisie?
> To: marxmail <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Message-ID: <436283A6.70105@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
> 
> We?ve been here before:
> 
> *****
> 
> 
> The third approach appears on the face of it more convincing at first
> sight: that which - again conceding the revisionist argument that,
> whoever was in fact in the leadership of the bourgeois revolution, it
> was certainly not a class conscious, revolutionary, capitalist
> 'bourgeoisie' - contends that these revolutions were bourgeois not by
> virtue of their leadership cadre, but by virtue of their objective
> effects on the future course of capitalist development. 

[...]

> 
> But this is again wrong. First, if, as seems the case, the bourgeois
> revolutions are not led by a class conscious revolutionary bourgeoisie
> - not occasionally, but, it appears, always - our duty is to ask why.
> The approach suggested by Deutscher and Callinicos does not attempt
> this: it accepts the seemingly remarkable phenomenon of fundamental
> political upheavals, on the face of it supposedly beneficial to
> capitalism, led by non-bourgeois forces as unworthy of further
> explanation. [...] In the second place,
> one has to question the definition of bourgeois revolution as
> 'revolutions which promote capitalism'. In the cases of
> England/Britain and Germany this indeed appears incontestable; in the
> case of France, however - and remember that France is the seat of the
> classical model, the paradigm case - the efficacy for future
> capitalist development of the modern type of the bourgeois revolution
> is indeed questionable:

**********

Maybe we haven't been _here_, as yet:

It is important to understand bourgeois revolutions (as any 
revolution, counter-revolution, and historic fact in general) from 
the two interrelated aspects of (a) the concrete subjects of history 
and (b) the general march of history.

Ed raises both issues in his two questions, although it seems to me 
that he splits them in such a way as to turn the questions 
unanswerable.

My own answer to the first question is relatively simple though it 
has some dangerous mine lurking at some precise point:  the bourgeois 
as such is too worried about the bottom line to worry about general 
historical necessities.  This is why the intelectual and military 
preparation and/or development of bourgeois revolutions tends to pass 
to other classes' hands, which in a sense play the historical role of 
what Gramsci used to call the "modern Prince" in relation to the 
working class.

The mine is my answer to the second question:  "general historical 
necessities" may even _oppose_ the necessities of the class that is 
to benefit through the revolution.  A bourgeois revolution does not 
establish the abstract conditions for undisputed dictatorship for a 
single class, the bourgeoisie, but the conditions for the full 
deployment of the capitalist mode of production.  These conditions 
are not only of an economic character.  For example: in the 
particular case of France, which Ed brings to the fore, the 
consolidation of the individual personality of the peasant as a free 
person was as important a "goal" as the economic hegemony of the 
bourgeoisie over the Ancien Régime. 

A bourgeois revolution will of necessity establish some limits to the 
social activity of the bourgeoisie:  those limits which make it 
possible the exchange between Sections I and II of the economy and 
the conditions for accumulation to proceed not for the benefit of the 
"world system" but of the "domestic system".  This is not always 
something that the bourgeoisie will like.

A revolution proceeds in a field of possibilities that comes from the 
previous days.  In this sense, the social history of England after 
the War of the Two Roses and Holland after the peasant wars of the 
Reformation offer the Dutch and English revolution a soil that 
differs from that which enjoyed (or suffered) the French Revolution.  
There had never been anything like the yeoman in France, 1789.  This 
makes a difference, doesn't it?

Este correo lo ha enviado
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[No necesariamente es su autor]
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 
"La patria tiene que ser la dignidad arriba y el regocijo abajo".
Aparicio Saravia
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 



________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism