The making of bourgeois Europe : absolutism, revolution, and the rise of capitalism in England, France, and Germany 9780860912910

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The Making of Bourgeois Europe Absolutism, Revolution, and the Rise of Capitalism in England, France and Germany

• COLIN MOOERS 7'-

VERSO London . New York

First published by Verso 1991 ©Verso 1991 All rights reserved

Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London WI V 3HR USA: 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001-2291 Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

Britisll Lilnry C.taIopilll iD PubliatiOll Data Mooers, Colin The making of bourgeois Europe: absolutism, revolution and the rise of capitalism in England, France and Germany. I. Western Europe. Transcripts of discussions I. Title 940.28 ISBN 0-86091-291-4 ISBN 0-86091-507-7 pbk US Lilnry or CoDgress CatalogiDg-iD-Publicadon Data Mooers. Colin. The making of bourgeois Europe: absolutism, revolution, and the rise of capitalism in England, France, and Germany/Colin Mooers. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-86091-291-4. - ISBN 0-86091-507-7 (pbk.) I. Europe-History-18th century. 2. Europe-History-19th century. 3. Despotism-Europe-History. 4. Revolutions-Europe -History. 5. Capitalism-Europe-History. I. Title. 94O.2'8--dc20 . Typeset by BP Integraphics Ltd, Bath, Avon Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford

Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

Introduction Marxist Theories of State Formation and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism

2

5

I. The Market-relations Model II. Production Relations and Modes of Production III. State Formation and Economic Development

17 33

France: From Absolutism to Bonapartism

45

I. II. III. IV.

41

The Rise of the Absolutist State in France Across the Revolutionary Divide The Post-revolutionary State The Second Empire and the Bonapartist State

3 Germany: Prussian Absolutism to Bismarck I. The Rise of German Absolutism II. The Consolidation of Hohenzollern Absolutism III. The Frederickan State: Professionalism and Agrarian Reform IV. The Emergence of Bureaucratic Absolutism V. German Liberalism and the Bureaucratic State VI. Bismarck and Bourgeois Revolution from Above v

5

64 73 83

103

105 112

120 129 134 141

CONTENTS

vi

4

English State Formation and the Rise of Capitalism

155

I. The Agrarian Capitalist State II. Taxation and Office-holding in the English State III. 'Old Corruption': Parasitism and Capitalism

155

IV. The Anderson-Nairn Thesis V. Britain versus the Continent

171 176

161 164

Bibliography

187

Index

203

Acknowledgemen ts

Any work of this sort is bound to owe much to the efforts of others. This book, which began as a doctoral dissertation, has drawn on the inspiration and guidance of several individuals. Thanks must first go to Ellen Wood, who is owed the greatest debt of gratitude. Through her guidance I was made aware of the many unresolved issues surrounding the rise of capitalism and the states-system in western Europe. Her patient encouragement and careful criticism of early drafts enabled me to strengthen my arguments considerably. Nick Rogers and Bill Irvine rescued me from several rash generalizations concerning English and French political developments. Geoff Eley was good enough to read through the entire manuscript. His comments on the chapter dealing with Germany were especially helpful. Neal Wood provided extensive comments and detailed suggestions on eaclier drafts of this book, while Robert Brenner helped me to avoid several errors of interpretation on the origins of capitalism in Europe. Although we have agreed to disagree on many points. George Comninel's comments on my treatment of the French Revolution were extremely helpful. Colin Barker and David McNally provided me with invaluable insights and moral support at various stages in the writing and rewriting of this book. I am especially grateful for the encouragement and goodhumoured tolerance of my wife, Augusta Dwyer, who assisted me in completing this book while producing one of her own. My final debt of gratitude far exceeds the bounds of intellectual life. This book is dedicated to my mother whose quiet perseverance, personal sacrifice, and unerring support has made all things possible. vii

Introduction

This book began as an act of theoretical clarification centring on two related areas of Marxist thought. The first deals with the long-standing debate over the origins and evolution of capitalism in Europe. The second has to do with the concept of bourgeois revolution and to what extent it remains a useful tool for understanding the great revolutionary upheavals of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What is striking about recent Marxist scholarship is how few writers have attempted to bring together in a systematic way the insights of these two areas of debate. The reasons for this are undoubtedly complex. Many former Marxists have now abandoned the field for the apparently greener pastures of post-Marxism. But even among Marxists the past decade has witnessed a marked retreat from the idea that historical materialism is capable of providing a comprehensive theory of history and society. III at ease with accusations of 'reductionism' and 'determinism', many Marxists have sought to distance themselves from the holistic claims of Marx's historical method with its insistence on the essential unity of material and social life, of politics and economics. For many, this has meant taking refuge in methodologies alternative to Marxism, such as post-structuralism's insistence on discrete and irreducible orders of reality, or the currently fashionable methodological individualism of analytic Marxism. It has almost invariably led to the abandonment of notions once considered basic to Marxism. The concept of bourgeois revolution is a case in point. The assault on the Marxist concept of bourgeois revolution is by no means a recent occurrence. In England, anti-Marxist historians began to attack the

2

THE MAKING OF BOURGEOIS EUROPE

Marxist interpretation ofthe English Revolution as a bourgeois revolution in the early 1950s. 1 The 'revisionist' attack on the Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution dates from roughly the same period. Alfred Cobban. while declaring the importance of social forces in the French Revolution. explicitly rejected the Marxist claim that the revolution was a bourgeois revolution. It was, he concluded, 'not wholly a revolution for. but largely one against, the penetration of an embryo capitalism into French society.'2 But while the early assaults on the concept of bourgeois revolution had been more or less confined to the realm of historical scholarship, more recent revisionists have been much less timid about the underlying political implications of their work. Franc;ois Furet, one of the most sophisticated of the French revisionist historians, explicitly associates the 'skidding out of control' lderapage] of the revolution under the lacobins with the horrors of Stalinist dictatorships in the twentieth century, 'Today the Gulag leads to a rethinking of the Terror, in virtue of an identity of project.,3 The clear intent ofFuret's attack on the Marxist interpretation of the revolution has been to discredit the whole idea of revolution in any form. He has declared that 'the revolution is over' in the West, because the most important ideas of the liberal phase of the revolution have triumphed. 4 This is an increasingly popular theme among right-wing intellectuals. Developments in eastern Europe have led some to proclaim the triumph of liberal values across the entire planet signalling 'the end of history as such ... the endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. ,S Attacks on Marxism and trumpeting the virtues of bourgeois democracy are nothing new. What is new is the extent to which Marxists have been prepared to accept the revisionists' rejection of the Marxist interpretation of bourgeois revolutions. The usefulness of many of the detailed historical studies undertaken by revisionist historians is beyond dispute. However, their interpretation of historical events is certainly questionable. It is, therefore, a bit premature to conclude, as one recent Marxist writer has done, that the 'long-standing claims to historical validity of the Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution have been exploded. 06 One of the central purposes of this book is to rehabilitate the Marxist concept of bourgeois revolution while at the same time avoiding the pitfall of attempting to deduce its inevitability from abstract notions of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Nevertheless, it is important to insist upon the connection between the character of capitalist transition in various parts of Europe and the type of bourgeois revolution that was experienced. By far the most useful contributions to the 'transition debate' in recent years have insisted on a close relationship between forms of

INTRODUCTION

J

political power and the evolution of pre-capitalist class relations. 7 It should not, therefore, be surprising to find that the configuration of precapitalist class relations also affected the way in which pre-capitalist states were transformed into bourgeois states. An additional consideration, however, also needs to be taken into account which is often obscured by the way in which the rise of capitalism is conceptualized. Although capitalism developed first in England, its impact was quickly felt beyond national boundaries. The emergence of English capitalism involved the internationalization of new forces and relations of production which profoundly influenced the character and the tempo of the transition to capitalism in other parts of Europe. The uneven character of capitalist development also played a considerable role in determining the form of bourgeois revolution which occurred in continental Europe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It may be more accurate, therefore, to speak of more than one pattern of bourgeois revolution. If there is no single pattern of bourgeois revolution, how then do we define bourgeois revolutions? Geoff Eley has offered the following definition. It is necessary, he argues, to distinguish between two levels of determination and significance - between the revolution as a specific crisis of the state, involving widespread popular mobilization and a reconstitution of political relationships, and on the other band the deeper process of structural change, involving the increasing predominance of the capitalist mode of production, the potential obsolescence of many existing practices and institutions, and the uneven transformation of social relations.' This definition of a bourgeois revolution is sufficiently broad to encompass a number ofdifferent historical situations. Moreover, it says nothing about the character of the social forces which carry through the