Thomas Muntzer and the Peasants War

[Rafiq]

Left view on this?

Is the peasant's war progressive?

Also, was Thomas Muntzer progressive?

I hear a lot of nazis like the peasant's war, but then again Engels wrote something 'good' about it.

[bcbm]

i don't know if progressive is the right word but it was a pretty huge rupture in middle age society and muntzer had a very egalitarian and communal vision.

[Queercommie Girl]

Partly progressive at the time, but no more than the numerous peasant rebellions that occurred throughout Chinese history.

Almost every peasant rebellion in ancient China started with an egalitarian and communal vision, usually based on some version of Messiahnic Buddhism or Daoism.

But peasant rebellions can never genuinely overthrow class society. If a peasant rebellion becomes completely successful, the rebel leaders will undoubtedly throw away their egalitarian ideology and another feudal dynasty would be established. Many Chinese Emperors originally came from the peasantry.

[RED DAVE]

Engels is the MAN, and he has the WORD!

The Peasant War in Germany (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/index.htm)

[B]RED DAVE

[Red Bayonet]

Peasant rebellions were not uncommon in the Middle Ages; and of course, they were progressive (just as the later bourgeois revolutions were).But most (e.g. John Ball's uprising) seem to have been crushed by the nobility simply singling out and eliminating the leadership.

[Queercommie Girl]

Peasant rebellions were not uncommon in the Middle Ages; and of course, they were progressive (just as the later bourgeois revolutions were).But most (e.g. John Ball's uprising) seem to have been crushed by the nobility simply singling out and eliminating the leadership.

That's in Europe.

In ancient China, there were many, many completely successful peasant rebellions, but none of them were able to shake the basic structures of feudal society.

After a peasant rebellion becomes completely successful, the rebel leaders will undoubtedly throw away their "egalitarian ideology", and embrace the ruling class ideology of the feudal lords.

So many Chinese feudal dynasties began with a successful peasant rebellion. Ancient China never had a stable feudal aristocracy. (No aristocracy in China has lasted for more than three centuries at most, and most of the time significantly less time than that) Because they would be periodically killed off by successive dynasties. That's something you never had in feudal Europe.

Marxists should be cultural internationalists, and look at the history of the entire world, rather than just Western or European history.

[bcbm]

After a peasant rebellion becomes completely successful, the rebel leaders will undoubtedly throw away their "egalitarian ideology", and embrace the ruling class ideology of the feudal lords.

munster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_Rebellion) is an interesting case because they did in fact try to establish a communal arrangement after taking power and even when it went down the shitter still maintained or even expanded some of these.

[bcbm]

norman cohn has an interesting book (albeit an attempt to paint modern "totalitarian" systems has heirs to european "fanaticism") about various upheavels in the middle ages: pursuit of the millenium (http://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Millennium-Revolutionary-Millenarians-Anarchists/dp/0195004566). silvia federici brings a foucaultian, marxist-feminist take to this period in all the world needs a jolt (http://abahlali.org/files/caliban%20and%20the%20witch.pdf) (pdf) from caliban and the witch.

[ComradeOm]

munster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_Rebellion) is an interesting case because they did in fact try to establish a communal arrangement after taking power and even when it went down the shitter still maintained or even expanded some of these.Were the Anabaptists of Munster peasants though?

[Dave B]

Actually the Mensheviks repeatedly used a quote from the Peasant War in Germany by Engels against the Bolsheviks who wanted to get too involved in the ‘democratic bourgeois revolution’ and suspected in fact that they really wanted to take power completely.

The Quote appears in several places in the Lenin archive where Lenin is arguing back against it, it was;



The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply.

What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time.

What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions.

He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement.

Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests.

Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost. We have seen examples of this in recent times. We need only be reminded of the position taken in the last French provisional government by the representatives of the proletariat, though they represented only a very low level of proletarian development. Whoever can still look forward to official positions after having become familiar with the experiences of the February government — not to speak of our own noble German provisional governments and imperial regencies — is either foolish beyond measure, or at best pays only lip service to the extreme revolutionary party.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/ch06.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/ch06.htm)

There was a ‘Christian based peasant’ rebellion in China in the 1860’s that had ostensibly egalitarian principles called the Taiping Rebellion;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion)

that does appear to have some superficial similarities to the ‘german’ one perhaps lending credence to the Marxist theory of history repeating itself.

Just this week there was a BBC radio 4 programme on it In Our Time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00yqvqt/In_Our_Time_The_Taiping_Rebellion/ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00yqvqt/In_Our_Time_The_Taiping_Rebellion/)

George Macdonald Fraser also wrote an entertaining novel on the subject if you like that kind of thing, his novels do provide a considerable historical details.

http://www.flipkart.com/flashman-dragon-george-macdonald-fraser-book-0007266545 (http://www.flipkart.com/flashman-dragon-george-macdonald-fraser-book-0007266545)

[Dave B]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nkqrv (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nkqrv)






Melvyn Bragg and guests Diarmaid MacCulloch, Lucy Wooding and Charlotte Methuen discuss the Siege of Munster in 1534-35.
In the early 16th century, the Protestant Reformation revolutionised Christian belief. But one radical group of believers stood out. The Anabaptists rejected infant baptism and formal clergy, and believed that all goods should be held in common. They were also convinced that the Second Coming was imminent.


In 1534, in the north-western German city of Munster, a group of Anabaptists attempted to establish the 'New Jerusalem', ready for the Last Days before the coming Apocalypse.


But the city was besieged by its ousted Prince-Bishop, and under the reign of its self-appointed King, a 25-year-old Dutchman called Jan van Leyden, it descended into tyranny. Books were burned, dissenters were executed and women were forced to marry. As starvation spread, King Jan lived in luxury with his 16 wives. The horrors of Munster have resonated through the European memory ever since.


Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford; Charlotte Methuen is University Research Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford and Lecturer in Church History and Liturgy at Ripon College Cuddesdon; Lucy Wooding is Lecturer in Early Modern History at King's College, London.