Should the social revolution in England overthrow royalty ?

Contrary to appearances that make royalty an English love, the people of England are the first to have, through their social revolution, overthrown the monarchy and condemned their king to death 140 years before France (execution of King Charles I on January 30, 1649 in Whitehall near Westminster). Not only is royalty extremely costly to the English people and to all colonized peoples, but it remains like a ghost of a bygone past, the kings and queens of England not even being of English origin, being a permanent source of scandals and deciding nothing in political or social terms. If the big bourgeoisie maintains these old outdated political structures, it has its reasons and the main one is that it has itself become the main reactionary class...

The death of Elizabeth II is an opportunity to note that the list of monarchies that have survived on all continents is very long.

In Europe : the Windsors of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth ; the Bourbons of Spain, the Saxe-Coburgs of Belgium, the Orange-Nassau of the Netherlands, the Nassau of Luxembourg, the Oldenburgs of Denmark, the Bernadottes of Sweden, the Oledenburgs of Norway, the Grimaldis of Monaco, the Princes of Liechtenstein.

In Africa the Allaouites of Morocco, the Bakoena of Lesotho, the Dlamini of Swaziland.

In the Middle East, the dynasties of the Saud of Arabia, the Hashemites of Jordan, the Al Bou Said of Oman, the Al Sabah of Kuwait, the Al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, the Al-Maktum of Dubai, the Al-Thani of Qatar, the Al-Khalifa of Bahrain.

In Asia the Emperor of Japan, the Varman Norodom of Cambodia, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia, the Chakri of Thailand, the Sultans of Brunei, the Wangchuck of Bhutan, the Tupou of the Tonga Islands, the O le Ao le Mao of the Samoa Islands.

All monarchies are deeply reactionary regimes, so a demand of the workers’ movement as old as the French Revolution is : abolition of all monarchies ! No party or union, from the far left to the far right, all sworn republicans, has taken up this slogan !

In Spain, it was the fascist dictator Franco, with the blessing of Europe, who restored the monarchy by appointing Juan Carlos, the son of Alfonso XIII, as his successor in 1969. Alfonso XIII had been dethroned by the Republic proclaimed following the municipal elections of 1931, the results of which had forced him to abdicate.

It is not surprising that Brazil’s far-right president has declared three days of mourning, and that Biden has lowered the flags (in solidarity between imperialist states) in honor of Elizabeth II.

One of the reactionary aspects of monarchies stems primarily from their ties to religious hierarchies : popes, Muslim brotherhoods, Buddhist monks, etc. The religious website Evangelical Info recalls the situation in England : the Church of England has had a privileged legal status since the Reformation in the 16th century. Notably, bishops sit by right in the House of Lords, and the sovereign must profess the Anglican religion. Furthermore, schools have a legal obligation to provide instruction in the broad outlines of the Christian faith.

The King of England is statutorily the head of the Anglican Church.
In May 2019, RFI reported on one of the many episodes showing how those guilty of child sex crimes receive state protection through the monarchy : In a report published Thursday, May 9, an independent British commission of inquiry into child sexual abuse accused the Church of England of putting its "reputation" before the victims of clergy and criticized Prince Charles for supporting a bishop convicted of sexually abusing young boys.
When Bishop Peter Ball was accused of sexually abusing 18 young boys in 1992, the then Archbishop of Canterbury rushed to support him by writing him letters of comfort. He even encouraged his return to his post. In its report, the British commission of inquiry also criticizes the Church of England as a whole for having shown weakness and for having hesitated too long before facing up to accusations of pedophilia within its ranks.

To think that these questions of monarchies do not concern France, whose Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848 led to the overthrow of the monarchies, where the monarchy would only be defended by the marginal supporters of Louis XX, XXI or XXII, would be a mistake.

The French bourgeoisie’s nostalgia for the monarchy is blatant. It was the storming of the Tuileries Palace on August 10, 1792, that overthrew the monarchy, an event never celebrated by any government. The national holiday of July 14 does not celebrate the storming of the Bastille in 1789 ; it celebrates nothing ! During his first election, Macron chose the Louvre, the royal residence, to celebrate it. In 2022, he chose the Champ de Mars, in memory of the Fête de Fédération on July 14, 1790, which aimed to reconcile the people with Louis XVI.

But beyond the symbols, the French bourgeoisie, because it was colonial and imperialist, promoted, alongside the English bourgeoisie, monarchies, feudal regimes related to monarchies, throughout the world.

The monarchy in Belgium was established by France and England to end the Belgian Revolution of 1830. There was no Belgian king, so these two powers went looking for one.

Napoleon is the embodiment of this revolutionary bourgeoisie that buried the Enlightenment as soon as it took power. During the Egyptian Expedition, in his proclamation to the Egyptians of June 27, 1798, Bonaparte, to establish his domination, sought to rely on the Muslim clergy, beginning with a profession of faith suggesting his conversion to Islam : " In the name of God the Beneficent, the Merciful, and there is no god but God, he has no son or partner in his reign. Qadi, shaykh, shorbagi, tell the people that we are true Muslims. Thrice happy are those who will be with us ! They will prosper in their fortune and their rank ; the shaykhs, the qadi and the Imams will retain the functions of their places ; each inhabitant will remain at home and the prayers will continue as usual. Everyone will thank God for the destruction of the Mamluks and cry : glory to the Sultan, glory to the French army, his friend ! " A promise made to the clergy to become bourgeois in the name of God and the Sultan by collaborating with the French bourgeoisie, this is the program of the French bourgeoisie for the dominated countries from the moment it took power ! The colonial and then imperialist foreign policy of the French bourgeoisie was and remains to this day pro-monarchist, pro-religious, pro-tribal. This is evidenced by the Moroccan monarchy saved by French imperialism, the racist tribal regime of Mauritania artificially created by the Republican left in 1899, on the advice of Xavier Coppolani, who, thanks to his Corsican origins, understood the functioning of clans and tribes, and thanks to his childhood in Algeria the potential pro-colonial role of Muslim brotherhoods.

The Communist International of Lenin and Trotsky summed up this situation in 1922 : foreign imperialism does not fail to transform in all backward countries the feudal upper stratum of indigenous society into an instrument of its domination. The connection that exists between the indigenous bourgeoisie and the feudal-reactionary elements allows the imperialists to take full advantage of feudal anarchy, of the rivalry that reigns between the various clans and tribes, of the antagonism between town and country, of the struggle between castes and national-religious sects to disorganize the popular movement

Not to declare oneself anti-monarchist, more generally anti-feudal (against slavery, castes, the privileges of aristocrats and religious people, the oppression of women) to reserve this paragraph for England, as if it were obsolete in France, is to renounce the fight against French imperialism, it is the program of reformism !

The monarchies existing today are all not relics of history, but bourgeois regimes in the service of imperialism. Their abolition is on the agenda of the proletariat of the entire world.

To the Moroccan workers of Morocco and France, not to propose : Down with Mohamed VI ! Down with the kings of Morocco, servants of French imperialism ! is to do everything so that these workers place the electoral extreme left (LO, NPA, RP) in the same category as the PC and the CGT : organizations having renounced proletarian internationalism.

In countries currently dominated by imperialism, the denunciation of religious monarchies was made well before the Enlightenment in Europe.
The historian Ibn Khaldun, born around 1330 in the Caliphate of Tunis, already denounced monarchies veiling themselves in religion : after the disappearance of the esprit de corps of the Arabs, the end of their power and the dissolution which affected their morals, the caliphate disappeared and only pure royalty remained, such as it existed among the pagan kings of the East, where formal obedience to the caliph was sought for the religious prestige it conferred, while the totality of power and its means remained theirs

In the absence of the equivalent of the French Revolution, this current has maintained its importance. The following words are not those of an "Islamophobe", but those of Ali Abderraziq, Egyptian theologian, sheikh (doctor) of the University of Al-Azhar, judge at the Islamic court of Mansourah. This Muslim scholar wrote in 1925 in his work Islam and the Foundations of Power , anarchist and religious, anti-monarchist : The observation of facts supported by reason, the teachings of ancient and recent history show us that the conduct of rites as well as the other aspects of religion in no way require the kind of government that theologians call caliphate, nor do they require the existence of leaders called caliph. It should be added that the material interests of Muslims do not depend on such institutions either. We therefore have no need of the caliphate either for the conduct of our spiritual life or for the direction of our temporal affairs.

This same Egyptian cleric had no regrets for the monarchies of his country : What interest was there for Muslims in having these impotent fetishes erected by the kings of Egypt and adorned with the title of Caliph ? What did these manipulated idols, these well-domesticated animals bring them ? What about these large Islamic regions outside Egypt which were freed from the shackles of the caliphate, which denied its authority, which denied its authority, which lived and still live far from the shadow of the caliphs and their submission to their supposed religious majesty ? Were religious rites neglected there, more than elsewhere ? Were their affairs struck by particular disorders ? Did the blessings of heaven and earth vanish when the caliphs left them ? No, none of that happened : they disappeared, the world did not mourn their death.

This struggle against religious monarchies, led by workers freed from religious prejudices, followed by certain believers, the majority of whom will be exploited, remains one of the fundamental tasks in most countries dominated by imperialism.

It is not by allying with the Islamic far-right (as P. Poutou’s NPA or Anasse Kazib’s RP group, which emerged from the NPA, by becoming excessively involved in the fight against the expulsion of Imam Hassan Iquioussen), that revolutionaries will open up a perspective for the oppressed. But already by fighting for political freedom in countries like Morocco, Mauritania, the United Arab Emirates, by denouncing these regimes from the imperialist metropolis that supports them : France. Neither the NPA nor RP put forward the slogan of abolishing monarchies, whether Christian or Muslim.

This far left in France missed the opportunity of the death of Elizabeth II to denounce all monarchies. Why ? Because parties like LO, NPA, RP, through lack of confidence in the working class, want to grow by occupying positions in the union bureaucracies of the CGT and SUD. However, these reformist organizations prohibit themselves and their members from politicizing their demands. These union organizations have been in an uninterrupted sacred union since 1914, politically subservient to their bourgeois state.
It is not surprising that the British unions called for the suspension of strikes during the period of mourning for the Queen. The far-left syndicalists (LO, NPA, RP) feigned indignation, crying treason. As usual, traitors are, above all, foreigners. But this extreme left, at the beginning of the strike in Great Britain, had unanimously applauded this movement, without pointing out that the unions which lead it are potential traitors, like those in France, without explaining that everywhere, it is by forming strike committees, soviets, that the working class can fight the union bureaucracies !

Because having done so would have forced this extreme left to denounce for the same reasons the CGT, SUD and others who are no less traitors to the movements than their British counterparts.

When a general strike threatens to break out in Great Britain, every class-conscious worker, whether in France or England, warns his comrades by reminding them that in 1926 one of the largest general strikes in modern history took place in Great Britain. The Stalinist bureaucracy inaugurated its crimes against the working class by allying itself within an Anglo-Russian committee with the reformist trade union leaders to betray this strike. When Trotsky, expelled from the USSR, organized an international opposition to Stalinism in 1929, one of the conditions for membership was the denunciation of the trade union bureaucracies, including that of the CGT. Groups like LO and NPA, which more or less claim to be Trotskyian, have abandoned this fundamental point of his program.

Mélenchon adopted a fair tone, which desacralizes Elizabeth II, by declaring "we are going to eat the queen," but nothing more. N. Arthaud of Lutte Ouvrière claims to go further by mentioning the class struggle in this question.

But N. Arthaud claims that it only concerns the British : " British anti-monarchists denounce the cost of the monarchy for the taxpayer ." This statement is shocking.

First, she denigrates the "British anti-monarchists," citing only one aspect of their fight against the monarchy : the accounting argument. We know that the fight against the French monarchy, which certainly began with the problem of finances, was also political, philosophical, and religious. Are all English anti-monarchists so narrow-minded as to limit themselves to the financial aspect ?

One of the figures of the English anti-monarchist movement is the academic Fred Halliday, one of whose books was aptly titled : Arabia Without the Sultans . He describes how the monarchical, tribal or religious regimes of Saudi Arabia, South and North Yemen, Oman, were fought by workers (oil workers, port workers like Aden), poor peasants and concludes his book thus : The only certainty is that imperialism will continue to intervene in the Arabian Peninsula and to support oppressive local regimes until the people of this region, united and guided by revolutionary organizations, rise up to assert their freedom. Even if we no longer have a monarchy in France, the former colonies or protectorates like Morocco, Mauritania, are for France analogous to those described by Halliday for his country England. The anti-imperialist struggle in these regions is partly an anti-feudal struggle, and therefore also an anti-monarchical one.

By implying that anti-monarchists are only found in England, there is an anti-monarchist movement in France that N. Arthaud wants to make us forget : it is the tendency of revolutionary Marxists, Trotskyists, whose lineage goes back to Blanqui ! Trotsky was one of those who abolished the Romanov monarchy in 1917, a monarchy that had been supported by French "republican" finance for decades. Even if France has a Republic : Down with Mohamed VI, King of Morocco, down with the slave regime based on the castes of Mauritania ! are slogans that are part of the program of authentic revolutionaries !

N. Arthaud adds : The royal family is above all a large bourgeois family, at the head of a well-managed business, with all the bells and whistles, the hats, and the royal circus to boot.
So, as disgusting as it may be, this debauchery of reactionary tributes should not make us forget the true kings of modern times : the bourgeois dynasties.

To dismiss the question of the survival of feudalism on two-thirds of the planet, discrimination based on castes, tribes, religions, against women, is to reduce the struggle of the exploited to that of wage increases for employees of the imperialist metropolises !

The fight for the abolition of all monarchies across the planet is, in France as elsewhere, more relevant than ever !

The monarchy is considered an old British tradition, unlike France, which is said to have an old republican tradition. All this is a lie. The first country to overthrow royalty and establish a republic was England. It experienced not one but several revolutionary waves before France experienced its own revolution and overthrew royalty. The parliamentary system was established both in England and in France, and the same goes for the rule of the bourgeoisie over the nobility.

So history does not say what it is made to say. It is because the bourgeoisie preferred to govern jointly with the nobility and royalty that it chose the current system, not because of the choices of the English people, who themselves fought against royalty.

Historically, the dominant narrative is misleading. Royalty is ancient in England, but no more so than elsewhere. And the overthrow of kings and their condemnation to death is older than elsewhere.

But that is not the only point. What is certain is that all the ruling classes, including the left, including the unions, have chosen for many years to endorse the reactionary character of the bourgeois regime in England, one of the elements of which, and not the only one, was royalty.

Today, popular opinion is not necessarily ready to continue paying high prices for a ruling family that does not necessarily have its sympathy. Ideas are changing on this issue, and workers and young people no longer see power in the same way as before.

The popular masses of Great Britain are suffering the crisis hard, and the ruling classes have the full support of both right-wing and left-wing governments... In these conditions, the social and political order is less popular. We have even seen students ready to jeer at a right-wing government and even enter the royal palace to denounce the impossibility for them to continue their studies...

Of course, the social revolt is not only or primarily aimed at a corrupt royalty, living up to their necks in money, including public money... But the royal wedding only highlights the masses of billions of these people. The state has all the money it wants for these billionaires and nothing for the workers and the popular masses. All English workers have noticed this even if the press continues to make people believe that royalty is very popular...

Clever propaganda presents royalty as very cheap, but what is the reality ?

Excluding security costs, the Queen of England received approximately €46 million (£40.6 million) from the government in 2010. First, she has been given £7.9 million annually since 1990 to cover the costs of her official duties, and those of her children (except Charles, who is financially independent).
She also receives £3.9 million in "management and personnel costs" for the smooth running of the Crown Estates, which have in fact been nationalized, and, above all, around £19 million in aid for her transport and the maintenance of her castles and palaces.
And let’s not forget that she is also Queen of Canada...

The summary of accounts published Monday by Buckingham Palace indicates that the cost of the monarchy reached the equivalent of 58 million Canadian dollars (43 million euros) in 2009 in Great Britain (or 0.94 dollars per taxpayer). According to the Monarchy League of Canada, Elizabeth II cost the Canadian federation 50 million dollars (37 million euros), or 1.53 dollars per taxable citizen. And to note that the cost of the English royalty has doubled in ten years across the Atlantic, while it has decreased in the United Kingdom, where, moreover, Elizabeth II has been paying her taxes since 1992.
This is enough to give pro-republicans something to chew on, even if Robert Finch, president of the Monarchist League of Canada, defends the benefits of a parliamentary monarchy : "For the price of a cup of coffee a day, Canadians are entitled to a very stable system of government," he maintains. While Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have to answer to the federal Parliament for the record cost of the G8 and G20 summits, English-speaking Canadians don’t seem interested in the royal debate. According to a poll published Tuesday, only 33% denounce the cost of royalty. In Quebec, however, the figure is 78%.
But, as an editorialist in the daily newspaper La Presse summarized Tuesday, "the debate is no longer really about whether or not to abandon the monarchy. The real debate is more about how. What should replace the monarchy ?"

In addition to the United Kingdom, she is Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, where she is represented by governors-general. The sixteen countries of which she is Queen are known as the Commonwealth realms, and their combined population is 130 million.
Elizabeth II is also Head of the Commonwealth of Nations, Lord High Admiral of the British Admiralty, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Lord of Man, Duke of Normandy[2] (reigning over the Channel Islands), and Paramount Ruler of Fiji. As head of state, she is also the Commander-in-Chief of the armies in each of her kingdoms.

And all this brings in money...

1649 : the revolution

Guizot : the English revolution

The popular revolution in the English revolution

The First English Revolution

The Second English Revolution

The Third English Revolution

Revolutions in Scotland

Two traditions : The 17th century Revolution and Chartism

The editor of the Daily Herald recently doubted whether it was permissible to call Oliver Cromwell a "pioneer of the labor movement." A contributor to the same newspaper, opining in the same vein, recalled Cromwell’s implacable repression of the Leveller movement - the sect of Levelers (communists) - by Cromwell. These reflections and information are extremely characteristic of the conception of history held by the leaders of the Labour Party. That Oliver Cromwell was the first of bourgeois society and not of socialist society seems to be a fact to the demonstration of which it would be superfluous to devote two words. This great revolutionary bourgeois was an opponent of universal suffrage, in which he saw a danger to private property. MM. Webb deduce from this, incidentally, the incompatibility of democracy and capitalism, knowingly forgetting that capitalism has learned to accommodate itself to democracy as well as possible and to handle the instrument of universal suffrage just as well as that of the Stock Exchange [1]. English workers can nevertheless learn much more from Cromwell than from Macdonald, Snowden, Webb and the whole conciliatory brotherhood. Cromwell was in his time a great revolutionary and knew how to defend, without stopping at anything, the interests of the new bourgeois society against the old aristocratic society. This is what we must learn from him ; the dead lion of the 17th century is worth in this respect much more than many living dogs.

Following all the living authors—they are not lions—of the editorials in the Manchester Guardian and other liberal organs, the leaders of the workers’ party habitually oppose democracy to all despotic governments, whether it be the dictatorship of Lenin or that of Mussolini. The stupidity of the historical views of these gentlemen is expressed nowhere better than in this juxtaposition. Not that we are inclined to deny after the fact the dictatorship of Lenin, whose power was exceptional if we consider its real influence on the whole course of events in an immense state. But is it permissible to speak of a dictatorship while omitting its historical-social content ? History has known the dictatorship of Cromwell, that of Robespierre, that of Arakcheiev, that of Napoleon I, that of Mussolini. There is no point in arguing with the fool who puts Robespierre and Araktchéieff on the same level. Different classes have found themselves, in different conditions, obliged, for different purposes, to entrust, in the most difficult periods of their history involving the most responsibility, exceptional strength and power to those among their leaders who were most completely and most manifestly inspired by their fundamental interests. When it comes to dictatorship, it is important above all to elucidate which interests, the interests of which class, find their historical expression there. Oliver Cromwell at one time, Robespierre at another, expressed the historically progressive tendencies in the development of bourgeois society. William Pitt, who was also very close to personal dictatorship, defended the interests of the monarchy, of the privileged classes, of the summits of the bourgeoisie, against the Revolution of the petty bourgeoisie, expressed by the dictatorship of Robespierre. Liberal pedants usually claim to be opponents of both right-wing and left-wing dictatorships, yet they never miss an opportunity to support, in practice, the right-wing dictatorship. For us, on the other hand, the question is resolved thus : one dictatorship pushes society forward, another pulls it back. Mussolini’s dictatorship is that of the prematurely rotten, impotent Italian bourgeoisie, eaten away to the marrow of its bones ; it bears the mark of the tertiary accidents of mortal evil. Lenin’s dictatorship expresses the powerful rise of a new historical class and its superhuman duel with all the forces of the old society. If Lenin must be compared to anyone, it is not to Bonaparte, much less to Mussolini, but to Cromwell and Robespierre. We are quite justified in seeing in Lenin the proletarian Cromwell of the 20th century. This definition will be the highest apology for the petty bourgeois Cromwell of the 17th century.

The French bourgeoisie, having falsified the Great Revolution, adopted it, minted it into billon, and put it into circulation. The English bourgeoisie erased even the memory of the 17th-century Revolution, having dissolved its entire past in the idea of ​​"gradation." The advanced workers of England have to discover the British Revolution and, in it, beneath the scales of religiosity, the formidable struggle of social forces. The English proletariat can find, in the drama of the 17th century, great precedents for revolutionary action. A national tradition too, but entirely legitimate, entirely in its place in the arsenal of the working class. Another great national tradition of the English proletarian movement is in Chartism. Knowledge of these two epochs is indispensable to every class-conscious English worker. Elucidating the historical meaning of the 17th-century Revolution and the revolutionary content of Chartism is one of the most important duties of English Marxists.

To study the revolutionary period of England’s development, a period which lasted roughly from the forced convocation of Parliament by Charles Stuart until the death of Oliver Cromwell, is, above all, necessary to understand the place of parliamentarism and, in general, of law in living, not imaginary, history. The great national historian Macaulay diminishes the social drama of the 17th century by veiling the internal struggle of social forces under commonplaces that are often self-serving, but always conservative. The French conservative Guizot [2] approaches the events with greater depth. In any case, whatever exposition one takes, the man who knows how to read, capable of perceiving, beneath the historical shadows, the living, physical realities, the classes, the fractions, will be convinced by the experience of the English Revolution of the subordinate, auxiliary, and conventional role of law in the mechanics of social struggles, especially in revolutionary periods, when the fundamental interests of the fundamental classes of society are at stake.

In England, around 1630-1640, we see a Parliament founded on the most unusual electoral law and yet considered to be the representation of the people.

The Lower House represented the nation by representing the bourgeoisie and consequently the national wealth. It was established during the reign of Charles I, not without astonishment, that the House of Representatives was three times richer than that of the Lords. The king dissolved this Parliament and reconvened it when his financial needs required it. Parliament created an army to defend itself. The army gradually concentrated in itself all the most active, the most virile, the most resolute elements. This is precisely the reason why Parliament capitulated to the army. The reason, we say. By this we mean that Parliament capitulated not to an armed force—it had not capitulated to the king’s army—but to Cromwell’s Puritan army, which expressed the needs of the Revolution more boldly, more resolutely, and with more consistency than Parliament itself.

The supporters of the Episcopal or Anglican Church, half-Catholic, formed the party of the Court, the nobility, and, naturally, the higher clergy. The Presbyterians formed the party of the bourgeoisie, the party of wealth and "enlightenment." The "Independents," and especially the Puritans, were the party of the petty bourgeoisie and small property. The Levellers were the nascent party of the left of the bourgeoisie or plebs. Under the guise of church quarrels, in the form of the struggle for the religious organization of the Church, the classes were determining themselves and regrouping on new bourgeois bases. In politics, the Presbyterian party was for a limited monarchy ; the "Independents," who then called themselves "Radical Reformers" (Root and Branch Men), were for the Republic. The duality of the Presbyterians corresponded perfectly to the contradictory interests of the bourgeoisie, caught between the nobility and the plebs. The party of the "independents", which dared to push the ideas and slogans to their ultimate developments, naturally eliminated the Presbyterians from among the awakened petty bourgeois masses of the petty bourgeoisie of the towns and the countryside, the principal factor of the Revolution.

Events were developing empirically. Fighting for power and the interests of the wealthy, the two adversaries were using the guise of legality. Guizot explains this very well :

"Then began, between Parliament and him (Charles I), a struggle hitherto without precedent in Europe. The negotiations continued, but without either party hoping for anything, or even proposing to negotiate. It was no longer to each other that they addressed themselves in their declarations and their messages, both spoke to the entire nation, to public opinion : from this new power, both seemed to expect their strength and their success. The origin and extent of royal power, the privileges of the Chambers, the limits of the duty of loyalty imposed on subjects, the militia, petitions, the disposition of employments became the object of an official controversy, where the general principles of the social order, the diverse nature of governments, the primitive rights of liberty, the history, the laws, the customs of England, were alleged, explained, commented on in turn. Between the debates of the two parties within the Chambers and their armed encounter on the battlefields, one , saw reasoning and science interpose themselves, so to speak, for several months, suspend the course of events, and deploy their most skillful efforts to win the free support of the people, by imprinting on one or the other cause the character of legitimacy.

"At the moment of drawing the sword, everyone was astonished and moved...
Now, the two parties accused each other of illegality and innovation, and both with justice, because one had violated the ancient rights of the country, and did not abjure the maxims of tyranny, the other demanded, by virtue of principles still confused, liberties and a power hitherto unknown." [3]

As the Civil War progressed, the most active Royalists left the House of Commons at Westminster and the House of Lords and went to York, to Charles’s headquarters : Parliament split, as in all great revolutionary periods. In such cases, it is not decisive whether the legal majority is, in one circumstance or another, on the side of the Revolution or on the side of reaction.

At a certain point in political history, the fate of democracy depended not on Parliament—terrible as that was to scrofulous pacifists—but on the cavalry. In the first phase of the struggle, the royal cavalry, the most important weapon at the time, struck terror into the ranks of the Parliamentary cavalry. It is noteworthy that we observe the same phenomenon in later Revolutions, especially in the Civil War of the United States of America, where the Southern cavalry had, at the beginning, an undeniable superiority over the Northern cavalry, and finally, in our Revolution, in the first period of which the white horsemen dealt us cruel blows before teaching the workers how to ride properly. By its origin, the cavalry is the weapon most familiar to the nobility. The royal cavalry had much greater cohesion and displayed more resolution than the Parliamentary cavalry, recruited at random. The cavalry of the American Southerners was, perhaps, the weapon born of the planters of the plains, while in the industrial and commercial North people were only becoming familiar with the horse. Finally, in our country, the steppes of the southeast, the Cossack Vendées, were the main home of the white cavalry. Cromwell understood early on that the fate of his class would be decided by the cavalry. He said to Camden [4] : ​​"I will gather together men whom the fear of God will never abandon, who will not act unconsciously, and I answer that they will not be beaten." [5]. Cromwell’s words to the free peasants and artisans he was recruiting are characteristic in the highest degree : "I do not wish to deceive you with the ambiguous expressions used in the instructions, which speak of fighting for the King and Parliament. If the King should happen to be in the ranks of the enemy, I would discharge my pistol at him as at anyone else ; and if your conscience prevents you from doing the same, I advise you not to enlist under my orders," [Ibid., pp. 216-217.] Cromwell was therefore not only forming an army, he was forming a party ; his army was, to a certain extent, a party in arms, and this was precisely what made it strong. In 1644, Cromwell’s "sacred" squadrons had already won a brilliant victory over the king’s horsemen and received the nickname "iron-ribs." It is always useful for a revolution to have "iron ribs." In this respect, English workers have much to learn from Cromwell.

The historian Macauley’s reflections on the Puritan army are not without interest : "The army recruited in this way could, without itself suffering any prejudice, enjoy liberties which, if granted to other troops, would have exercised a destructive influence on discipline. Generally speaking, soldiers who had formed themselves into political clubs, who had elected deputies and adopted resolutions on the most important questions for the State, would have promptly escaped all control, ceasing to constitute an army to become the worst and most dangerous of mobs. It would not be without danger, in our time, to tolerate religious meetings in a regiment, where the corporal familiar with the Scriptures would instruct the less gifted colonel and admonish the major of little faith. But such were the reason, the seriousness and the self-control of these combatants..., that the political organization and the religious organization could exist in their camp without harming the organization military. The same men, known outside of service as demagogues [6] and country preachers, were distinguished by their firmness, their spirit of order and their absolute obedience at their post, in drill and on the battlefield. " And further : "In his camp alone, the strictest discipline coexisted with the most ardent enthusiasm, these troops, who went into battle with mechanical precision, burned at the same time with the unbridled fanaticism of the crusaders." [7]

Historical analogies require the greatest caution, especially when it comes to the 17th and 20th centuries ; yet one cannot fail to be astonished at certain striking similarities between the morals and character of Cromwell’s army and the Red Army. In the former, it is true, everything was based on the belief in predestination and on a strict religious morality ; among us, on the other hand, a militant atheism reigns. But the religious form of Puritanism covered the preaching of the historical mission of a new class, and the doctrine of predestination was a religious conception of historical legitimacy. Cromwell’s soldiers felt themselves, first and foremost, Puritans, and soldiers only secondarily, just as ours feel themselves above all revolutionaries and communists. But the differences are even greater than the similarities. The Red Army, formed by the party of the proletariat, remains its weapon. Cromwell’s army, embracing his party, itself became the decisive factor. We see the Puritan army beginning to adapt Parliament by adapting it to the Revolution. The army demands the exclusion from Parliament of 11 Presbyterians, representatives of the right. The Presbyterians, Girondists of the English Revolution, attempt to organize an uprising against Parliament. The amputated Parliament seeks refuge in the army and thus submits to it more and more. Under pressure from the army, and especially from its most energetic left, Cromwell is forced to execute Charles I. The axe of the Revolution is strangely seconded by the psalms. But the axe is more convincing. Then Colonel Pride, of Cromwell’s army, has the Parliament building surrounded and forcibly expels 81 Presbyterian MPs. Only a rump remains of Parliament. It is formed of the "Independents," that is, of the coreligionists of Cromwell and of his army. But this is precisely why Parliament, which had sustained a grandiose struggle against the monarchy, ceased, at the moment of victory, to be the source of any energy or thought of its own. Cromwell, supported directly by the army, but drawing all things considered, his strength from the bold accomplishment of the tasks of the Revolution, became the point of concentration of all thought and all energy. Only an imbecile, an ignoramus, or a Fabian can see in Cromwell only the personal dictatorship. In truth, the dictatorship of a class, of the only one capable of freeing the nucleus of the nation from the old bonds and chains, assumed here, in the course of a profound social transformation, the form of a personal dictatorship. The social crisis of England in the 17th century unites the characteristics of the German Reformation of the 16th century [8] with those of the French Revolution of the 18th. In Cromwell, Luther reaches out to Robespierre.The Puritans readily called their enemies "Philistines," but it was no less a matter of class struggle. Cromwell’s task was to deal the most terrible blow to the absolute monarchy, the court nobility, and the semi-Catholic Church, adapted to the needs of the monarchy and the nobility. As a true representative of a new class, Cromwell needed, for this purpose, the strength and passion of the popular masses. Under his leadership, the Revolution acquired all the impetuosity it needed. As far as it, embodied by the Levellers, went beyond the limits assigned by the needs of bourgeois society, which was in the process of being renovated, Cromwell showed himself implacable towards these "madmen." Victorious, Cromwell, combining biblical texts with the barbs of his warrior "saints"—the decisive word always belongs to the barbs—undertook to create the new law of the State. On April 19, 1653, Cromwell dispersed the remnants of the Long Parliament. Aware of his historic mission, the Puritan dictator hurled biblical stigmas at the deputies he was driving out : "Drunkard !" he shouted at one ; "Adulterer !" he reminded another. Then he created a parliament of men inspired by the fear of God, that is, in reality, a class parliament : for the middle class, the one that, aided by a severe morality, proceeded to accumulate wealth and began, with the texts of holy scripture on their lips, the plundering of the universe, was composed of God-fearing men. But this clumsy parliament hindered the dictator, depriving him of the freedom of movement necessary in a difficult domestic and international situation. At the end of 1653, Cromwell once again purged the House of Commons with the help of his soldiers. If the rump of the Long Parliament, dissolved in April, had been guilty of leaning to the right, in favor of an agreement with the Presbyterians, Barebone’s parliament was, on certain issues, inclined to walk too straight in the path of Puritan honesty, and thus thwarted Cromwell, who was absorbed in establishing a new social equilibrium. The revolutionary realist Cromwell was building a new society. Parliament is not an end in itself, law is not an end in itself, and if Cromwell and his "saints" considered the fulfillment of divine laws as the end in themselves, these laws were, in reality, only the ideological material necessary for the construction of bourgeois society.The Revolution acquired, under his leadership, all the impetuosity it needed. As long as it went beyond the limits assigned by the needs of bourgeois society, embodied by the Levellers, Cromwell was implacable towards these "madmen". Victorious, Cromwell, combining biblical texts with the barbs of his "saintly" warriors - the decisive word always belongs to the barbs - undertook to create the new law of the State. On April 19, 1653, Cromwell dispersed the remains of the Long Parliament. Conscious of his historic mission, the Puritan dictator threw biblical stigmas in the faces of the deputies he was driving out : "Drunkard !" he shouted to one ; "Adulterer !" he reminded another. Then he created a parliament of men inspired by the fear of God, that is, in reality, a class parliament : for the middle class, the one which, with the help of a severe morality, proceeded to the accumulation of wealth and began, with the texts of holy scripture on their lips, the plunder of the universe, was composed of men who feared God. But this clumsy parliament hindered the dictator, depriving him of a freedom of movement necessary in a difficult domestic and international situation. At the end of 1653, Cromwell once again purged the House of Commons with the help of his soldiers. If the rump of the Long Parliament, dissolved in April, had been guilty of leaning to the right, in favor of an agreement with the Presbyterians, Barebone’s parliament was, on certain issues, inclined to walk too straight a line in the path of Puritan honesty, and thus thwarted Cromwell, who was absorbed in establishing a new social equilibrium. The revolutionary realist Cromwell was building a new society. Parliament is not an end in itself, law is not an end in itself, and if Cromwell and his "saints" considered the fulfillment of divine laws as the end in themselves, these laws were, in reality, only the ideological material necessary for the construction of bourgeois society.The Revolution acquired, under his leadership, all the impetuosity it needed. As long as it went beyond the limits assigned by the needs of bourgeois society, embodied by the Levellers, Cromwell was implacable towards these "madmen". Victorious, Cromwell, combining biblical texts with the barbs of his "saintly" warriors - the decisive word always belongs to the barbs - undertook to create the new law of the State. On April 19, 1653, Cromwell dispersed the remains of the Long Parliament. Conscious of his historic mission, the Puritan dictator threw biblical stigmas in the faces of the deputies he was driving out : "Drunkard !" he shouted to one ; "Adulterer !" he reminded another. Then he created a parliament of men inspired by the fear of God, that is, in reality, a class parliament : for the middle class, the one which, with the help of a severe morality, proceeded to the accumulation of wealth and began, with the texts of holy scripture on their lips, the plunder of the universe, was composed of men who feared God. But this clumsy parliament hindered the dictator, depriving him of a freedom of movement necessary in a difficult domestic and international situation. At the end of 1653, Cromwell once again purged the House of Commons with the help of his soldiers. If the rump of the Long Parliament, dissolved in April, had been guilty of leaning to the right, in favor of an agreement with the Presbyterians, Barebone’s parliament was, on certain issues, inclined to walk too straight a line in the path of Puritan honesty, and thus thwarted Cromwell, who was absorbed in establishing a new social equilibrium. The revolutionary realist Cromwell was building a new society. Parliament is not an end in itself, law is not an end in itself, and if Cromwell and his "saints" considered the fulfillment of divine laws as the end in themselves, these laws were, in reality, only the ideological material necessary for the construction of bourgeois society.Then he created a parliament of men inspired by the fear of God, that is, in reality, a class parliament : for the middle class, the one which, with the help of a severe morality, proceeded to the accumulation of wealth and began, with the texts of holy scripture on their lips, the plunder of the universe, was composed of men who feared God. But this clumsy parliament hindered the dictator, depriving him of a freedom of movement necessary in a difficult domestic and international situation. At the end of 1653, Cromwell once again purged the House of Commons with the help of his soldiers. If the rump of the Long Parliament, dissolved in April, had been guilty of leaning to the right, in favor of an agreement with the Presbyterians, Barebone’s parliament was, on certain issues, inclined to walk too straight a line in the path of Puritan honesty, and thus thwarted Cromwell, who was absorbed in establishing a new social equilibrium. The revolutionary realist Cromwell was building a new society. Parliament is not an end in itself, law is not an end in itself, and if Cromwell and his "saints" considered the fulfillment of divine laws as the end in themselves, these laws were, in reality, only the ideological material necessary for the construction of bourgeois society.Then he created a parliament of men inspired by the fear of God, that is, in reality, a class parliament : for the middle class, the one which, with the help of a severe morality, proceeded to the accumulation of wealth and began, with the texts of holy scripture on their lips, the plunder of the universe, was composed of men who feared God. But this clumsy parliament hindered the dictator, depriving him of a freedom of movement necessary in a difficult domestic and international situation. At the end of 1653, Cromwell once again purged the House of Commons with the help of his soldiers. If the rump of the Long Parliament, dissolved in April, had been guilty of leaning to the right, in favor of an agreement with the Presbyterians, Barebone’s parliament was, on certain issues, inclined to walk too straight a line in the path of Puritan honesty, and thus thwarted Cromwell, who was absorbed in establishing a new social equilibrium. The revolutionary realist Cromwell was building a new society. Parliament is not an end in itself, law is not an end in itself, and if Cromwell and his "saints" considered the fulfillment of divine laws as the end in themselves, these laws were, in reality, only the ideological material necessary for the construction of bourgeois society.

By dissolving one Parliament after another, Cromwell demonstrated his lack of respect for the fetish of national representation, just as he had demonstrated, by the execution of Charles I, insufficient respect for the monarchy of divine right. It is no less true that Cromwell paved the way for the parliamentarianism and democracy of the last two centuries. Avenging the execution of Charles I, Charles II hoisted Cromwell’s corpse to the gallows. But no restoration could already reestablish the society that existed before Cromwell. Cromwell’s work could not be liquidated by the pilfering legislature of the Restoration, because the pen does not erase what the axe has written. The proverb is much truer, the terms thus reversed, at least when it concerns the axe of a Revolution. The history of the Long Parliament, which for twenty years experienced all the vicissitudes of events and reflected all the impulses of the social classes, was amputated right and left, rebelled against the king, was then buffeted by its own armed servants, was twice dissolved and twice re-established, commanded and debased itself before finally having the opportunity to promulgate the act of its own dissolution, will always retain exceptional interest as an illustration of the relations between law and force in times of social upheaval.

Will the proletarian revolution have its Long Parliament ? We do not know. It is very likely that it will be limited to a short parliament. It will succeed all the better the better it has assimilated the lessons of Cromwell’s time.

Here we will only say a few words about the second tradition, authentically proletarian and revolutionary.

The epoch of Chartism is imperishable because it provides us, over decades, with a kind of schematic summary of the entire scale of the proletarian struggle, from petitions to Parliament to armed insurrection. All the essential questions of the class movement of the proletariat—the relationship between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary action, the role of universal suffrage, trade unions and cooperatives, the significance of the general strike and its relationship to armed insurrection, right down to the mutual relations of the proletariat and the peasant—were not only crystallized practically in the course of the mass movement of Chartism, but were also resolved in principle. From the theoretical point of view, these solutions were far from always flawlessly sound ; they were not always successful ; the whole movement and its theoretical counterpart contained many unfinished and insufficiently mature elements. The revolutionary slogans and methods of Chartism nevertheless remain, even now, if criticism is allowed, infinitely superior to the sickly eclecticism of the Macdonalds and the economic stupidity of the Webbs. One can say, if one may resort to a somewhat risky comparison, that the Chartist movement resembles the prelude which gives without development the musical theme of an entire opera. In this sense, the English working class can and must see in Chartism, in addition to its past, its future. Just as the Chartists drove out the sentimental preachers of "moral action" and gathered the masses under the banner of the Revolution, the English proletariat will have to drive out from its midst the reformists, the democrats, the pacifists, and to unite under the banner of revolutionary transformation. Chartism did not win, because its methods were often erroneous and because it came too early. It was only a historical anticipation. The 1905 Revolution also suffered a defeat. But its traditions were revived after ten years, and its methods won in October 1917. Chartism is not liquidated. History is liquidating liberalism and preparing the liquidation of falsely working-class pacifism, precisely in order to resurrect Chartism on new, infinitely broader historical bases. The true national tradition of the English workers’ movement is here !

Notes

[1] Quoted by Beer, in his History of Socialism in England.

[2] Guizot (1787-1874). French politician and historian. Leader of the "doctrinaires" group, supporter of the English system of constitutional monarchy. After the July Revolution of 1830, which gave power to the financial bourgeoisie. Guizot, one of his ideologues, temporarily headed the Ministry of Public Instruction and then received the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. Guizot defended the electoral census, under which there were only 200,000 voters out of the entire population of France. When the liberal ministry of the banker Lafitte was formed, Guizot retired. In 1832, he formed, with Thiers and the Duke of Broglie, a reactionary ministry, presided over by Marshal Soult, and directed public education there. Belonged in 1837 to Molé’s right-wing cabinet, but resigned after a year, as Molé’s policy did not seem conservative enough to him. Ambassador to London in 1839, and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the new reactionary Soult cabinet, formed in 1840. In his functions, Guizot worked to combat the revolutionary movement on the continent, striving to unite the Austrian and French reactionary movements. In 1847, under Louis-Philippe, he presided over the last monarchical ministry. The Revolution of 1848 forced him to go to England. His political influence declined from then on. In his numerous historical works, Guizot was inspired, for the first time, by the class struggle, in which he saw the secret spring of history. This view, although he did not always apply it consistently, represented at the time a great advance in the development of historical studies.

[3] Guizot, History of Charles I. Paris 1882. Volume I, pages 347-349.

[4] John Camden (1595-1643). One of the leaders of the moderate opposition in the Short and Long Parliaments, on the eve of the Great English Revolution (see note 17). Camden made himself especially popular among the middle-class merchants, by refusing on several occasions to pay royal taxes and duties. During the struggle between the Long Parliament and King Charles I, the latter ordered the arrest of Camden and four other leaders of the opposition. Until then a supporter of the legal opposition, Camden was thus led to join the revolutionary army, of which he formed one of the best regiments. He was to be, shortly afterwards, mortally wounded in a battle between the royal and parliamentary armies.

[5] Guizot, Work cited, p. 216.

[6] Macauley meant : Like revolutionary agitators. Note by Trotsky.

[7] MACAULEY, Complete Works, vol. VI. p. 120. Russian ed., St. Petersburg, 1861.

[8] The German Reformation of the 16th century. The German Reformation was preceded by the absolute domination of the Roman Catholic Church, a domination which was felt particularly in Germany. The powerful development of commerce and the importance assumed, in this country, by money, led the Roman Church to impose numerous burdens on it. The artisans, the peasants and the petty bourgeoisie, whose need for money was increased by the commercial development1, were dissatisfied with it. Inventions and discoveries (discovery of America, progress in navigation and artillery, printing) prepared the way for the rise of German foreign trade and strengthened the commercial bourgeoisie. The struggle between capital and the feudal lords could only take the form of a religious protest at this time.

"Where is England going ?"

Leon Trotsky