by Chris Harman
18 Quoted in J Keane, Tom Paine , p125.
19 E Countryman, A People , p150.
20 Figure given in E Countryman, A People , p221.
21 E Countryman, American Revolution , p162.
22 E Countryman, American Revolution , p71.
23 So in Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence there was a garbled attack on the monarchy for encouraging slavery and then urging the slaves to rebel. See E Countryman, American Revolution , p71.
24 R R Palmer, ‘Social and Psychological Foundation of the Revolutionary Era’, in A Goodwin (ed), Cambridge New Modern History , vol VIII (Cambridge, 1965), p422.
25 Quoted in P McGarr, ‘The Great French Revolution’, in Marxism and the Great French Revolution, International Socialism 43 (June 1989), p40.
26 Quoted, among other places, in P McGarr, ‘The Great French Revolution’, p48.
27 The saying is famously credited to Danton in Georg Buechner’s 1835 play Danton’s Death . In fact it seems to have originated with the Girondin Vergniaud a year before the break between Danton and Robespierre, arguing for harsh punishment for bread rioters.
28 L Madelin, Talleyrand (London, 1948), p12.
29 A Soboul, The French Revolution 1787–99 (London, 1989), p37.
30 R S Duplessis, Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997), p242.
31 R S Duplessis, Transitions , p237.
32 The most notable of the recent ‘revisionists’ is F Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1981).
33 A Soboul, French Revolution , p99.
34 Quoted in A Soboul, French Revolution , p255.
35 Quoted in A Soboul, French Revolution , p307.
36 A Soboul, French Revolution , p309.
37 Quoted in A Soboul, French Revolution , p325.
38 For details of the loans and taxes, see P Kropotkin, The Great French Revolution (London, 1971), pp410–411.
39 G Lefebvre, The French Revolution , vol II (New York, 1964), p57.
40 According to P Kropotkin, The Great , p404.
41 Quoted in P Kropotkin, The Great , p387.
42 According to P Kropotkin, The Great , p387.
43 A Soboul, French Revolution , p339.
44 For details, see A Soboul, French Revolution , p342.
45 A Soboul, French Revolution , p386.
46 Quoted in H G Schenk, ‘Revolutionary Influences and Conservatism in Literature and Thought’, in C W Crawley (ed), Cambridge New Modern History , vol IX (Cambridge, 1965), p91.
47 See his Class Struggle in the First French Republic (London, 1977).
48 G W F Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York, 1956), p447.
49 Quoted in H G Schenk, ‘Revolutionary Influences’, p100.
50 G Williams, Artisans and Sans-culottes (London, 1981), p58.
51 G Williams, Artisans , pp59, 62–66. ‘Planting the Liberty Tree’, in E P Thompson’s classic The Making of the English Working Class , ch 5 (New York, 1966), contains a comprehensive account of all these developments.
52 According to G Williams, Artisans , p78.
53 For a full account see E P Thompson’s The Making , pp73–74.
54 See the account in J D Mackie, A History of Scotland (Harmondsworth, 1973), pp311–313.
55 T Moore, The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald , vol 1 (London, 1831), p204.
56 According to F Campbell, The Dissenting Voice, Protestant Democracy in Ulster (Belfast, 1991), p51.
57 F Campbell, The Dissenting Voice , p98.
58 The figure is given in T Gray, The Orange Order (London, 1972), p69. T Pakenham gives the number killed in the rebellion as between 30,000 and 70,000 – see The Year of Liberty (London, 1978), p392.
59 F Campbell, The Dissenting Voice , p83.
60 C Fitzgibbon, quoted in T Gray, The Orange Order , p68.
61 Quoted in H G Schenk, ‘Revolutionary Influences’, p100.
62 Quoted in H G Schenk, ‘Revolutionary Influences’, p98.
63 Quoted in J Keane, Tom Paine , p323.
64 Quoted in H G Schenk, ‘Revolutionary Influences’, p106.
65 Quoted in H G Schenk, ‘Revolutionary Influences’, p105.
66 E Gibbon, Autobiography , quoted in P Gray, Voltaire’s Politics (New Jersey, 1959), p259.
67 Both Coleridge and Hölderlin are quoted in H G Schenk, ‘Revolutionary Influences’, p100.
68 See A Desmond and J Moore, Darwin (London, 1992).
69 Quoted in R M Hartwell, ‘Economic Change in England and Europe 1780–1830’, in Cambridge New Modern History , vol IX, p42.
70 Such facts suggest that the pre-Columbian civilisations of the Americas may not have been as irrational or as impeded by their failure to use the wheel, since nature did not provide them with potentially domesticable draft animals to pull wheeled vehicles.
71 The first railway ran from Stockport to Darlington and opened in 1825, but most of its motive power came from stationary engines, not locomotives. See P Mathias, The First Industrial Nation (London, 1983), p255.
72 Figures from E Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (Harmondsworth, 1971), p86.
73 For a full account of this transformation in attitudes to time, see E P Thompson, ‘Time, Work and Industrial Capitalism’, in Customs in Common (London, 1992), pp352–403.
74 Evidence to Poor Law Report of 1832, quoted in D McNally, Against the Market (London, 1993), p101.
75 J Thelwall, The Rights of Nature (London, 1796), pp21, 24, quoted in E P Thompson, Making , p185.
76 See, for instance, D Williams, John Frost, a Study in Chartism (New York, 1969).
77 See M Jenkins, The General Strike of 1842 (London, 1980); for a contemporary account, see The Trial of Fergus O’Connor and Fifty Eight Others (Manchester, 1843, reprinted New York, 1970).
78 For a full account, see J Saville, 1848 (Cambridge, 1987).
79 Quoted in Cambridge New Modern History , vol IX, p59.
80 According to G Mayer, Frederick Engels (London, 1936), p44.
81 For Engels’s interest in and admiration for Owen, see G Mayer, Frederick Engels , p45. For his view of the influence of political economy, The Condition of the English Working Class , translated in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 4 (London, 1975), p527, and for his first critique of it, a year after arriving in Manchester, see his ‘Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy’, in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 3 (London, 1975), p418.
82 Published today in various editions as the Paris Manuscripts, The 1844 Manuscripts or sometimes simply as The Early Writings .
83 All the quotes are from K Marx, 1844 Manuscripts , in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 3.
84 This Marx does in the three volumes of Capital . For more in-depth accounts of his ideas, see my book The Economics of the Madhouse (London, 1995), the first chapter of my Explaining the Crisis, a Marxist Reappraisal (London, 1999) and A Callinicos’s The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx (London, 1999).
85 Most English translations use the word ‘man’ here and follow it up with the pronoun ‘he’. But Marx in fact uses the German word ‘Menschen’ (humans) not ‘Mann’ (man).
86 Quoted in R Price (ed), Documents on the French Revolution of 1848 (London, 1996), p46–47.
87 D Blackbourn, The Fontana History of Germany, 1780–1918 (London, 1997), p147.
88 R Price (ed), Documents , p9. For the German Rhineland, see J Sperber, Rhineland Radicals (New Jersey, 1993), pp54–59.
89 R Price (ed), Documents , p11.
90 C Pouthas, ‘The Revolutions of 1848’, in Cambridge New Modern History , vol X, p393.
91 C Pouthas, ‘The Revolutions of 1848’, p394.
92 R Price (ed), Documents , p17.
93 These are the figures given by Frederick Engels writing at the time in Neue Rheinische Zeitung , 2 July 1848, translated in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 7 (London, 1977), p161.
94 Flaubert’s novel Sen
timental Education includes a sympathetic account of their attitudes, as well as caricatures of the meetings of the revolutionary clubs.
95 R Price (ed), Documents .
96 F Engels, Neue Rheinische Zeitung , 27 June 1848, translated in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 7 (London, 1977), p131.
97 Quoted in R Price (ed), Documents , p20.
98 Quoted in F Mehring, Absolutism and Revolution in Germany, 1525–1848 (London, 1975), p214.
99 Neue Rheinische Zeitung , 31 December 1848, translated in Collected Works , vol 7.
100 All the figures here come from D Blackbourn, Fontana History of Germany , p180.
101 It is this revolt which features in the film The Leopard .
102 The words used by the prince in the film The Leopard .
103 Speech in debate with Douglass, quoted in J M McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (New Jersey, 1992), p11.
104 See for instance his speech of 4 July 1861, quoted in J M McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (London, 1988), p312.
105 Quoted in J M McPherson, Battle Cry , p46.
106 Marx noted this at the time. See his article for the paper Die Presse of 7 November 1861, translated in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 19 (London, 1984), p50.
107 J M McPherson, The Struggle for Equality , p47.
108 Quoted in J M McPherson, The Struggle for Equality , p47.
109 J M McPherson, The Struggle for Equality , p51.
110 J M McPherson, The Struggle for Equality , p82.
111 J M McPherson, The Struggle for Equality , pp128–129
112 Even Frederick Engels could write to Marx (30 July 1862) that he expected the North to get a ‘thrashing’ and expressed doubts about the North’s ability to ‘suppress the rebellion’ (9 September 1862). Marx by contrast was ‘prepared to bet my life … these fellows [the South] will come off worst … You allow yourself to be influenced by the military aspect of things a little too much’ (10 September 1862). K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 41 (Moscow, 1985), pp414–416.
113 Marx quotes the speech at length in his article for Die Presse of 22 August 1862, in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 19, pp234–235. Parts are also quoted in J M McPherson, The Struggle for Equality , p113.
114 K Marx, article in Die Presse , 12 October 1862, translated in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 19, p250.
115 See, for instance, his satirical novels Zadig and The Princess of Babylon .
116 A Smith, The Wealth of Nations (London, 1986), pp174–175.
117 ‘Niggers’ is the common expression for the ‘natives’ used by the characters in Kipling’s short stories. ‘Wogs’ was a convenient catch-all insult for anyone unlucky enough to be colonised by the British Empire.
118 B Stein, A History of India (Oxford, 1998), p202, even goes so far as to speak of ‘the development of an indigenous capitalist class in India well before the onset of formal colonisation’. I am not knowledgeable enough to judge whether the characterisation is correct. I suspect, however, that what is being described is merchant and finance capital, such as that which characterised Europe from the middle of the feudal period onwards, rather than industrial or agrarian capitalism, except in the most embryonic of forms. Some historians also argue that the religious and peasant revolts could have opened the way for full capitalist development; others deny it vehemently. Again, I am in no position to make a judgement.
119 K Marx, ‘The Revolt in the Indian Army’, New York Daily Tribune , 15 July 1857, contained in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 15 (Moscow, 1986), p297.
120 According to B Stein, A History , p248.
121 Figures for the early years of direct imperial rule and for the years after the 1890s are given in B Stein, A History , pp257, 263.
122 These are the figures given by B Stein, A History , p262.
123 A ‘Censor’, ‘Memorial to the Emperor’, translated in F Schurmann and O Scholl, Imperial China (Harmondsworth, 1977), p139.
124 These are the explanations both of the editors and of Tsiang Ting-fu in F Schurmann and O Scholl, Imperial China , pp126, 133, 139.
125 This is the argument put very strongly by J Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilisation (Cambridge, 1996), pp539–541.
126 W Franke, ‘The T’ai-p’ing Rebellion’, extract in F Schurmann and O Scholl, Imperial China , pp170–183.
127 The figure is given in P A Kuhn, ‘The T’ai-p’ing Rebellion’, in J R Fairbank (ed), Cambridge History of China , vol 10 (Cambridge, 1978), p309.
128 J Batou, ‘Muhammed Ali’s Egypt, 1805–48’, in J Batou (ed), Between Development and Underdevelopment (Geneva, 1991), pp183–207. Some economic historians (for instance, D Landes in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (London, 1998)) challenge this picture of advance. They point to inefficiencies, high real cost and the low quality of output. But similar points can be made about early industrialisation in other countries, like Japan in the 1880s, that later experienced international competitive success. One big difference between them and Egypt was that they were more insulated from direct foreign competition and were more easily able to evade direct Western dictation of their trade policies.
129 Quoted in J Batou, ‘Muhammed Ali’s Egypt’, p205.
130 M Hane, Modern Japan (Boulder, 1992), pp52–53.
131 M Hane, Modern Japan , p71.
132 T Gautier, quoted in A Horne, The Fall of Paris (London, 1968), p26.
133 A Horne, The Fall of Paris , p53.
134 See, for instance, the list of prices given by A Horne, The Fall of Paris , p254.
135 Quoted in A Horne, The Fall of Paris , p328.
136 P O Lissagaray, History of the Paris Commune , translated by E Marx (London, 1976), p65.
137 P O Lissagaray, History of the Paris Commune , p65.
138 K Marx, ‘The Civil War in France’, in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 22 (London, 1986), pp333–334.
139 K Marx, ‘The Civil War in France’, p339.
140 Quoted in A Horne, The Fall of Paris , p551.
141 The Times , 29 May and 1 June 1871, quoted in A Horne, The Fall of Paris , p555.
142 A Horne, The Fall of Paris , p556.
143 Louise Michel’s trial is described in many places. See, for instance, P O Lissagaray, History of the Paris Commune , pp343–344.
144 A Horne, The Fall of Paris , p363.
145 K Marx, letter to Kugelmann of 12 April 1871, in K Marx and F Engels, On the Paris Commune (Moscow, 1976), p284.
146 K Marx, letter to Kugelmann of 17 April 1871, in K Marx and F Engels, On the Paris Commune , p285.
Part seven: The century of hope and horror
1 Figures given in G Stedman Jones, Outcast London (Harmondsworth, 1976), p132.
2 See tables 13 and 3, in E Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (Harmondsworth, 1971).
3 OECD figures.
4 G B Longstaff in September 1893, quoted in G Stedman Jones, Outcast , p128.
5 Quoted in G Stedman Jones, Outcast , p129.
6 Charity Organising Society report of 1870–71, quoted in G Stedman Jones, Outcast , p266.
7 In practice, Maxwell used mathematical approaches that contradicted this model and laid the ground for some of the very different models that were to prevail in the twentieth century. But it was his original model that was to dominate much scientific thinking for a generation. See W Berkson, Fields of Force (London, 1974), chs 5, 6 and 7, especially pp150–155.
8 As with Maxwell’s model of the universe, there were elements in Freud’s theory which were subject to a very different approach. By the 1920s psychoanalysis was often seen as justifying irrationalist challenges to the mechanical-determinist approach. But Freud’s own starting point was certainly based on mechanical determinism. See, for instance, the accounts of his early surgical attempts to deal with hysterical symptoms in J Masson, The Assault on Truth (Harmondsworth, 1984), pp55–106.
9 Quoted in R Miliband, Capitalist Democracy
in Britain (Oxford, 1982), fn 2, p22.
10 See R Harrison, Before the Socialists (London, 1965), pp69–78.
11 M Cowling, 1867, Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution , quoted in R Miliband, Capitalist Democracy , p25.
12 K Marx, second draft for The Civil War in France , translated in K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works , vol 22 (London, 1985).
13 M Cowling, Disraeli , p49.
14 R Miliband, Capitalist Democracy , p28.
15 Hanham, quoted in R Miliband, Capitalist Democracy , p27.
16 R T McKenzie, British Political Parties (London, 1963), p15.
17 On this, see G Stedman Jones, Outcast , pp344, 348.
18 Britain, as the oldest industrial capitalism, also had one of the oldest nationalisms from above. E P Thompson showed how the government sponsored popular nationalist organisations to counter British Jacobinism in the 1790s. See E P Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966). More recently Linda Colley has emphasised the scale of developing national feeling from the mid-1750s onwards. See L Colley, Britons (London, 1994). Unfortunately, her approach is one dimensional and fails to see what Thompson did note, the counter-currents to nationalism that always existed.
19 E Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (London, 1909), pxi.
20 E Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism , p159.
21 E Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism , p160.
22 R Luxemburg, Social Reform or Social Revolution (Colombo, 1966).
23 B Vandervort, Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa 1830–1914 (London, 1998), p27.
24 Nicola Labanca, quoted in B Vandervort, Wars of Imperial Conquest , p164.
25 B Vandervort, Wars of Imperial Conquest , p177. See also T Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (London, 1992), pp539–548.
26 T Pakenham, The Scramble , p546.
27 T Pakenham, The Scramble , p652.
28 T Pakenham, The Scramble , p600. On Leopold’s philanthropic, anti-slavery claims, see pp 11–23.
29 Quoted in T Pakenham, The Scramble , p22.
30 Figures from H Feis, Europe: The World’s Banker, 1879–1914 , quoted in M Kidron, ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage but One’, in International Socialism 9 (first series), p18.
31 For a longer discussion of the economics of imperialism, see my book Explaining the Crisis (London, 1999), pp35–36 – and, for a reply to counterarguments on the empirical data, fn 50, p159.