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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Communism as historical tragedy
Message-ID: <1741@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Dec-85 16:51:30 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.1741
Posted: Wed Dec  4 16:51:30 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Dec-85 20:26:14 EST
References: <364@ubvax.UUCP> <28200340@inmet.UUCP> <11115@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <299@l5.uucp>
Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 48
Summary: 


>would have changed.  Once it is possible to make wealth rather than
>simply inherit it, you get a new influx of wealthy and powerful people,
>with middle-class ideas and middle-class expectations.  The nobility tends
>to dry up, and either become middle class, or be supported by the middle
>class who for some reason or other wants to have a few royality around.
>
>This sort of thing is happens again and again whenever a middle class
>develops.  But as far as I know, except for England, I don't know a
>single place where a decrease in relative power of the ruling class was not
>also accompanied by a civil war.  But in every case I can think of, the
>decrease in power was FOLLOWED by a civil war; the civil war only being
>an indication that the days of absolute power by the ruling class were
>over.
>-- 
>Laura Creighton         

I don't know whether you are right or not, but your point can be strengthened
if you note that England DID have its Civil War, but before the Industrial
Revolution.  The memory of that war, and particularly of the horrors of
the republican regime that followed it, is STILL enculcated in schoolchildren.
I imagine that the memory must have been much stronger in the 1840s,
only 200 years after the Civil War, than it was in the 1940's when I
went to school.  Also, remember that Britain had two more civil wars
and a kind of minor one in the century after the big one.
If you go back through the history of England, much of the time before 1600
was taken up with some kind of dynastic civil war.  The so-called
"Civil War" that ended in 1642(?) was the counterpart of the French
Revolution, and it successfully deposed the monarchy and the aristocracy.
Only the result was very bad (rather like the result in Black Africa
in the 20-40 years after the removal of the Colonial administrators),
so that the people more or less revolted again to bring back King
Charles II (of happy memory).  The next three civil wars were again
dynastic, but I'm sure that people must have been pretty fed up with
war, and very wary of removing the aristocracy again, by the time
the true industrial middle class arose.

(If you compare Great Britain in the 1650's with, say, Zimbabwe now,
you will find many parallels -- one-party democracy, local informers
against those who disagreed with party policy (or theology), hero-cult
of the leader, etc. etc.  The fact that Britain became one of the
sources for democratic government, including that of the USA, suggests
that Black Africa can have a bright future if allowed to do so.)
-- 

Martin Taylor
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