revolution and historical materialism

[black magick hustla]

Recently I have been reading "The imaginary institutions of Society" by the ex-marxist Castoriadis, in which in the introduction, he starts criticizing marxism.

One of the criticisms he makes is against allegation by marx that during revolutions one class replaces the other as the ruling class; Castoriadis argues this is only visible in the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th century, where the bourgeosie replaces the feudal ruling class. We don't see other revolutions that perfectly fit this paradigm of one class replacing the other.

So here is my question, can anyone of you tell me about revolutions before the 18th and 19th century where one class did really replace the other?

[CornetJoyce]

Yes but they don't fall within the rules of Marxology.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

Originally posted by [email protected] 03, 2007 12:13 am
Recently I have been reading "The imaginary institutions of Society" by the ex-marxist Castoriadis , in which in the introduction, he starts criticizing Marxism.

One of the criticisms he makes is against allegation by Marx that during revolutions one class replaces the other as the ruling class; Castoriadis argues this is only visible in the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th century, where the bourgeoisie replaces the feudal ruling class. We don't see other revolutions that perfectly fit this paradigm of one class replacing the other.

So here is my question, can anyone of you tell me about revolutions before the 18th and 19th century where one class did really replace the other?
Roman empire. It was a slave society. The ruling class were the slave owners. It split into east and west. West fell to German influence, which was then a feudal system. and the eastern empire (Byzantine Empire) was also a feudal system.

So, you actually see the Roman slave owning class, defeated by a new nobility and the roman empire function as under a different social system.

[Invader Zim]

So here is my question, can anyone of you tell me about revolutions before the 18th and 19th century where one class did really replace the other?

Well, while falling short of civil war, Medieval landed scoiety did not just transform from a warrior class into the nobility.

[black magick hustla]

Originally posted by bloody_capitalist_sham+August 02, 2007 11:40 pm--> (bloody_capitalist_sham @ August 02, 2007 11:40 pm)
[email protected] 03, 2007 12:13 am
Recently I have been reading "The imaginary institutions of Society" by the ex-marxist Castoriadis , in which in the introduction, he starts criticizing Marxism.

One of the criticisms he makes is against allegation by Marx that during revolutions one class replaces the other as the ruling class; Castoriadis argues this is only visible in the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th century, where the bourgeoisie replaces the feudal ruling class. We don't see other revolutions that perfectly fit this paradigm of one class replacing the other.

So here is my question, can anyone of you tell me about revolutions before the 18th and 19th century where one class did really replace the other?
Roman empire. It was a slave society. The ruling class were the slave owners. It split into east and west. West fell to German influence, which was then a feudal system. and the eastern empire (Byzantine Empire) was also a feudal system.

So, you actually see the Roman slave owning class, defeated by a new nobility and the roman empire function as under a different social system. [/b]
I was thinking about that however...

It doesn't fits as nicely. The roman empire crumbled because of fractured, invading nomadic tribes. The ruling class wasn't toppled by a class inside the roman society, rahter by invasors. The bourgeois revolutions fit much more nicely to the paradigm, because a unitary group, the bourgeosie, with unitary political interests, and with the same relation to the means of production, toppled the crippled feudal aristocracy.

[JazzRemington]

I'm not sure what is meant by "revolution" and "replacing one class with another."

The transition from slave-ownership ruling class to land-ownership ruling class didn't happen via a revolution, I don't think. Though the Germans did help overthrow the Roman Empire, they did not replace the slave-owning rulers with land-owners in the same strict sense that the bourgeois revolutions replaced land-owners with property-owners in government.

What happened, I think, is that the slave-owners collapsed due to their size and their inability to keep themselves together (along with the aid of the Germans, mind you). With the Roman retreat inward, a large amount of land was made available for the taking. The Germans, a society based on agriculture and the warrior ideal, took control of the land and instituted its own type of government: a warrior based, top-down hierarchy where land ownership the distinction between ruler and ruled.

It wasn't that the land-owning peoples overthrew the slave-owning government and replaced it with land-owners (paralleling the bourgeois revolutions). Rather 1) the collapse inward of the slave-owning empire, 2) the freeing of lands once owned by the slave-owners, and 3) the conquering of the newly freed lands by the land-owners.

[peaccenicked]

Previous to fuedal society, what we see is changes in the types of ruling class systems. The development of one class into another is not always mechanical, what is important is that what differentiated the different societies as modes of production. The idea of modes of production is more central to Marx's ideas than that of revolution. Revolution as merely one form of transformation and there can be different types of revolution.

"While all societies make their own imaginaries (institutions, laws, traditions, beliefs and behaviors), autonomous societies are those that their members are aware of this fact, and explicitly self-institute (αυτο-νομούνται). In contrast, the members of heteronomous societies attribute their imaginaries to some extra-social authority (i.e. God, ancestors, historical necessity)."

From Wiki on Castoriadis.

This idea of self-institute is already implied in Marx, the criticism that 'historical necessity' is by itself an imaginary institution depends on if or not the 'historical necessity' is an illusion or not. The most basic historical necessity I can see that is absolutely necessary and non illusionary is the one that declares we need to get rid of capitalism.


Appendix-wiki mode of productions, I give up to the Feudal epoch.

"In a broad outline, Marx recognized seven distinct epochs of human history, each corresponding to a particular mode of production:

The Foraging Mode of Production. Marx himself called this mode "primitive communism". Human society is seen as organized in traditional tribe structures, typified by shared production and consumption of the entire social product. As no permanent surplus product is produced, there is also no possibility of a ruling class coming into existence. As this mode of production lacks differentiation into classes, it is said to be classless. Paleolithic and Neolithic tools, pre- and early-agricultural production, and rigorous ritualized social control have often been said to be the typifying productive forces of this mode of production. This has also been called primitive communism. However, the foraging mode of production still exists, and often typified in contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. Past theories of the foraging mode of production have focused on lack of control over food production (Meillassoux, 1973). More recent scholarship has argued that hunter-gatherers use the foraging mode of production to maintain a specific set of social relations that, perhaps controversially, are said to emphasize egalitarianism and the collective appropriation of resources (Tim Ingold, 1987, 1988; Robert Kelly, 1995).
The asiatic mode of production. This is a controversial contribution to Marxist theory, initially used to explain pre-slave and pre-feudal large earthwork constructions in China, India, the Euphrates and Nile river valleys (and named on this basis of the primary evidence coming from greater "Asia"). The asiatic mode of production is said to be the initial form of class society, where a small group extracts social surplus through violence aimed at settled or unsettled band communities within a domain. Exploited labour is extracted as forced corvee labour during a slack period of the year (allowing for monumental construction such as the pyramids, ziggurats, ancient Indian communal baths or the Chinese Great Wall). Exploited labour is also extracted in the form of goods directly seized from the exploited communities. The primary property form of this mode is the direct religious possession of communities (villages, bands, hamlets) and all those within them. The ruling class of this society is generally a semi-theocratic aristocracy which claims to be the incarnation of gods on earth. The forces of production associated with this society include basic agricultural techniques, massive construction and storage of goods for social benefit (grainaries).

The slave mode of production. It is similar to the asiatic mode, but differentiated in that the form of property is the direct possession of individual human beings. Additionally, the ruling class usually avoids the more outlandish claims of being the direct incarnation of a god, and prefers to be the descendants of gods, or seeks other justifications for its rule. Ancient Greek and Roman societies are the most typical examples of this mode. The forces of production associated with this mode include advanced (two field) agriculture, the extensive use of animals in agriculture, and advanced trade networks.


The feudal mode of production. It is usually typified by high feudalism in Western Europe. The primary form of property is the possession of land in reciprocal contract relations: the possession of human beings as peasants or serfs is dependent upon their being entailed upon the land. Exploitation occurs through reciprocated contract (though ultimately resting on the threat of forced extractions). The ruling class is usually a nobility or aristocracy. The primary forces of production include highly complex agriculture (two, three field, lucerne fallowing and manuring) with the addition of non-human and non-animal power devices (clockwork, wind-mills) and the intensification of specialisation in the crafts--craftsmen exclusively producing one specialised class of product. "

[al-Ibadani]

In the Communist Manifesto M&E write:


Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the case of Rome the class struggle ended in the common ruin of the contending classes. In the case of feudal Europe, we had a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large.

[CornetJoyce]

Originally posted by [email protected] 03, 2007 01:11 am
I'm not sure what is meant by "revolution" and "replacing one class with another."

The transition from slave-ownership ruling class to land-ownership ruling class didn't happen via a revolution, I don't think. Though the Germans did help overthrow the Roman Empire, they did not replace the slave-owning rulers with land-owners in the same strict sense that the bourgeois revolutions replaced land-owners with property-owners in government.

What happened, I think, is that the slave-owners collapsed due to their size and their inability to keep themselves together (along with the aid of the Germans, mind you). With the Roman retreat inward, a large amount of land was made available for the taking. The Germans, a society based on agriculture and the warrior ideal, took control of the land and instituted its own type of government: a warrior based, top-down hierarchy where land ownership the distinction between ruler and ruled.

It wasn't that the land-owning peoples overthrew the slave-owning government and replaced it with land-owners (paralleling the bourgeois revolutions). Rather 1) the collapse inward of the slave-owning empire, 2) the freeing of lands once owned by the slave-owners, and 3) the conquering of the newly freed lands by the land-owners.


Rome had clientage, not fiefdoms. The Roman emperor didn't have to rely upon feudal levies, the empire being essentially a massive professional army with provinces attached. Civil wars were contests between rivals for the throne, with both or all sides supported not by feudal lords but legion commanders. Byzantium was even moreso: the Byzantine army had the first field hospitals and the imperial bureaucracy there was legendary. As is well known, Germanic and other tribes were enlisted into the legions and the empire became less and less Roman.

Tacitus tells us that the Germans of his day have no concept of private property: they are much like the Iroquois of Morgan's day. They did not adopt a feudal system within the next few hundred years. Jolliffe, who studied the Jutes of Kent, tells us that "Folk-right runs through every vein of the system we have been describing. Feudal right has no real place there. Land-right does not convey lordship, or conveys it feebly and with permanent limitations. Birthright, the right conveyed by blood, gives the family and the individual his freedom and his land, determines his course of tillage, surrounds the homestead with a hedge of legal peace like that of lord or king, carries the poorest freeman into the public life of the moot."

The feudal system system came much later.

[syndicat]

actually in England it was in large part the feudal gentry who drove the conversion to capitalism. they moved to get rid of their obligations to let peasants use the forests and commons and have a right to reside in their own cottage. they demolished cottages, fenced off the commons. they got all this legalized through their political power in the parliament. by forcing the peasants off the land, they became propertyless wageslaves who could be forced to work as agricultural proletarians at low wages. so much of the feudal gentry converted themselvs into capitalists. the land under feudalism was not a commodity, they had no right to just sell it off to make money, but it was in their interests to gain this right.

it's true that merchants and money-lenders and master artisans who employed helpers were also part of the transition, but in a number of European countries elements of the feudal landed class were also, as in England. moreover, the transition from feudalism to capitalism did not occur in all parts of Europe in a sudden revolution. Sometimes the military played an important role, like in Spain in the early 1800s. it was in the early 1800s that the lands of the church were seized in Spain and sold off, and restrictions on sale of land were lifted, and capitalist speculators by the 1900s had bought up the former feudal estates. there wasn't any sudden revolution in Germany through which the transition from feudalism to capitalism happened, as far as I know.

the capitalist class was sort of incubated within feudal society.

[CornetJoyce]

Originally posted by [email protected] 03, 2007 07:58 pm
actually in England it was in large part the feudal gentry who drove the conversion to capitalism. they moved to get rid of their obligations to let peasants use the forests and commons and have a right to reside in their own cottage. they demolished cottages, fenced off the commons. they got all this legalized through their political power in the parliament. by forcing the peasants off the land, they became propertyless wageslaves who could be forced to work as agricultural proletarians at low wages. so much of the feudal gentry converted themselvs into capitalists. the land under feudalism was not a commodity, they had no right to just sell it off to make money, but it was in their interests to gain this right.

it's true that merchants and money-lenders and master artisans who employed helpers were also part of the transition, but in a number of European countries elements of the feudal landed class were also, as in England. moreover, the transition from feudalism to capitalism did not occur in all parts of Europe in a sudden revolution. Sometimes the military played an important role, like in Spain in the early 1800s. it was in the early 1800s that the lands of the church were seized in Spain and sold off, and restrictions on sale of land were lifted, and capitalist speculators by the 1900s had bought up the former feudal estates. there wasn't any sudden revolution in Germany through which the transition from feudalism to capitalism happened, as far as I know.

the capitalist class was sort of incubated within feudal society.
All quite true. Cromwell himself was a country gentleman.

It should be noted though, that the early enclosures were carried out in the days when a parliament was an event rather than an institution, and the event was tightly controlled by the crown. The first James was on the throne for 22 years but parliament sat for less than 3 years in that time.

After the restoration and the moderate Revolution of 1690, the landed class was in control and was able to carry out the enclosures which acording to the great Marxist historian Christopher Hill were necessary for economic development and according to Oliver Goldsmith had turned England into "a land where wealth accumulates and men decay."

Due to primogeniture and entail, the estates could not be divided so the younger sons received cash to go into business or the imperial service or both. Thus the new capitalist class looked upon the old landed class with as much sibling rivalry as class antagonism The "revolution" that gave the urban business class parliamentary power only came with the Great Reform of 1832.

[The-Spark]

Maybe what Marx was saying by: "during revolutions one class replaces the other as the ruling class", that it wasnt through history but the theory of revolution itself. Maybe if some revolutions through history did not replace the ruling class with their own class it is not a true revolution. I believe he was stating what a revolution is.

[peaccenicked]

Looking at history, Marx pointed out that transitions between modes of production were not mechanical, traces of the old society could be found in the new one.
In terms of the history of class society, we have had a primitive classsless society ie There was no surplus for a class to emerge. With surplus class emerged.
The only true revolution in this connection can be the socialist revolution which seeks to create a new classless society in which surplus is communally spread.

[partizan604]

The bourgeois revolutions, medievil revolts were not social revolutions as we know them nowdays. They were not a movement of classes. They were civil wars for money and land.
Social classes themselfs appeared only in the mid of 18 century,at the start of the industrial age. The first social class was working class - a group without any rights or FREEDOM. This was when people heard about the revolt at the first time.
The bourgeois wasn't the social class, it was a social group, but never the less it was a WORKING capitalistic social group strugling for their rights and economical freedom.
A revolution itself, as we know it nowdays - is a movement of classes, but no way it's a replacing of classes. We can't destroy a class (and a destruction of class was and is the main proposition of revolution) just by replacing of it. we can take their power, their leading role in the governement, we can take everything they have or had - but... we will just replace them, we will be like them, 'we' will be 'them'.

[hajduk]

So like partizan said its change the term you are not any more slave,right now you are worker which is the same becouse capitalists use cheaper workers and kids <_<

[Labor Shall Rule]

To partizan604

I don&#39;t think you realize that social forces, in a complex political struggle, are behind all civil wars for money and land, to deny this, would be to deny that we are within class society altogether. I think you are forming a false conclusion is stating that &#39;social classes themselves appeared in the 18th century&#39;, considering that there has been social stratums that were conflicted to each other for centuries. You haven&#39;t really offered any evidence to suggest otherwise.

[black magick hustla]

the problem with arguing that modes of production can change without revolution is that you could then sustain through marxist theory that communism is possible without revolution, and you could give some historical examples for this.

[chimx]

Thus everything from Kautsky to Bernstein. This position became legitimized because Marx himself spoke of the possibility of obtaining a proletarian dictatorship through peaceful democratic means: La Liberte Speech (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm)