Eduard Bernstein’s Socialism and Democracy in the Great English Revolution is a work of history and political argument, first published in German as a volume in Karl Kautsky’s series on the history of socialism and later translated into English. Bernstein, the leading theorist of socialist Revisionism, spent years in England as a correspondent and used that residence to study English economic and political institutions at first hand. The book turns those researches on the seventeenth-century upheaval that deposed and executed Charles I, and it reads that revolution through the lens of class: who fought, who paid, who was excluded from the settlement, and what became of the radical democrats who pushed the revolution further than its generals intended.
“A single-track mind is often the secret of political success.”
The argument rests on a comparison. England rose against absolute monarchy a century and a half before France, under very different conditions—a weakened feudal nobility, a large free peasantry, a substantial middle class, and a monarchy that never approached Bourbon absolutism. Yet Bernstein traces a parallel course: the revolution outran its proclaimed aims, its parties succeeded one another, a military dictatorship ended in a restoration that could not restore what had been, and the whole cycle closed with the settlement of 1688. In his mapping, the Presbyterians are the Girondins, the Independents the Jacobins, the Levellers the Hébertists and Babeuvists; Cromwell fuses Robespierre and Bonaparte, and John Lilburne, “Freeborn John,” is Marat and Hébert rolled into one. Bernstein insists the parallels are only partly valid—the Levellers resembled the Hébertists chiefly as the extreme element that never itself governed—but the analogy gives the book its spine.
From the Peasant Rising to the Puritan Revolt
The Editor’s Foreword and the Historian’s Task
Eduard Bernstein appears in the English edition of 1930 as the International Socialist Movement’s most original and independent thinker, freshly congratulated on his eightieth birthday. The moderate, practical temper of modern Labour and Socialist governments is credited largely to the Revisionist movement he launched a generation earlier. His years in England as correspondent for Vorwaerts gave him direct knowledge of English conditions and institutions, and from that research came Sozialismus und Demokratie in der grossen englischen Revolution, issued in Karl Kautsky’s history of Socialism and translated by H. J. Stenning as Cromwell and Communism. The conflicts Bernstein analysed, the foreword observes, have only grown more significant since he wrote.
England and France: A Parallel and Its Limits
England revolted against absolute monarchy a century and a half before France, under very different conditions, yet the two rebellions share important resemblances. England lagged in general development, but not every difference meant backwardness: only a remnant of the old feudal nobility survived, most landed titles were recent and estates run commercially, a numerous free peasantry existed, and a substantial middle class with strong guild elements—coarse and narrow in outlook, though intellectual limitation is no bar to vigorous action. The monarchy fell far short of Bourbon absolutism. Still, the formal course runs parallel: the English Revolution outstripped its proclaimed aims, parties and classes came forward in succession, military dictatorship ended in a restoration that could not restore the old conditions, and the last phase weakly repeated the Whig settlement of 1688. Its Presbyterians were the Girondists, its Independents the Jacobins, its Levellers the Hebertists and Babeuvists; Cromwell combined Robespierre and Bonaparte, and John Lilburne was Marat and Hebert in one. The comparisons hold only partly—the Levellers resembled the Hebertists merely as the extreme element never itself dominant. Only at its height did the movement throw off a genuinely communistic offshoot, the “true Levellers,” whose experiment in communistic self-help and sketch of reconstruction seem to have escaped historians. Most Levellers stood in the Puritan school; a minority of leaders professed rationalistic deism, if not outright atheism. “Freeborn John,” as Lilburne styled himself, lacked Marat’s erudition and literary power but may stand as a prototype of the People’s Friend, and his pamphlets never sank to Hebert’s vulgarity. Middle-class historians treated him no better than the editor of the Pere Duchesne: to Carlyle he was a noisy mischief-maker, and even Godwin is often unjust to him. The outstanding works on the period are Gardiner’s History of the Great Civil War and Gooch’s Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century; since the first German edition, Berens has published his study of The Digger Movement.
An Agricultural Nation
Seventeenth-century England remained overwhelmingly agricultural. About mid-century the population was some five million, at least three-fourths rural; apart from London, already very large, no town was excessively populous. Gregory King distributes 5½ millions as London 530,000, towns 870,000, villages and hamlets 4,110,000, while William Petty reckons London and suburbs at 690,000 and England and Wales at seven millions, naming Bristol the “British emporium” with 48,000 and Norwich its rival in the Eastern Counties woollen trade. Industry was backward, having lagged behind the Continent. England long produced the finest wool but worked only the coarser sorts, finer combing being done in Flanders until the religious wars drove crowds of Flemish weavers across in the later sixteenth century, raising the English weaving trade first in Norfolk and later in the west. Mineral wealth, except tin, was barely exploited before the seventeenth century; the value of coal for iron furnaces was only beginning to be appreciated, and in 1720 England still imported two-thirds of her crude iron. King’s figures for 1688—4,265,000 from agriculture, 240,000 from trades and industries, 246,000 from commerce—ignore domestic industry and the many who combined industrial and agricultural work, so they give no reliable picture of production.
The Aftermath of the Ket Rebellion
The Catholic historian Lingard charged that the insurrection, like that in Devonshire, aimed at restoring the old Church. The text concedes that the rapacity of new landlords was unfavourably compared with the monasteries’ indulgence, but holds Lollard and Anabaptist teachings far more evident in the rising than sympathy with Popery. Sir William Paget warned Somerset that neither law nor religion was to be found at home: the old religion was forbidden by law while the new was not yet “prunted in the stomackes”
The Mutiny at Ware
At Ware the radical soldiers stitched copies of the Agreement into their hatbands under the motto “England’s Freedom—Soldiers’ Right.” Robert Lilburne’s cavalry and Thomas Harrison’s infantry were the most disaffected, and Leveller leaders from other regiments had gathered among them. John Lilburne, Colonel Rainsborough—the man who had distinguished himself storming Bristol—and Major Scott rode between the divisions, urging the men to stand firm for freedom. Cromwell arrived with Fairfax and the general staff and worked the moderate regiments first, where a remonstrance refuting the agitators’ complaints was read out and applauded, the soldiers pledging discipline. Harrison’s men listened quietly and pulled the emblems from their hats as seditious. Lilburne’s cavalry met the generals with defiant shouts and jeered Fairfax as he read. Cromwell rode into their ranks and tore the badges off with his own hands, then arrested fourteen men as mutineers. A court martial condemned three to death; the lots were drawn, two were spared, and Richard Arnold was shot. Parliament issued warrants against Scott and Captain Bray for defending the mutineers and calling the execution a breach of the Petition of Right. The remaining meetings passed off quietly. Discontent had been suppressed, not removed: Arnold was cherished as a martyr, and men would later demand expiation for his “innocently shed blood.”
Cromwell Between Necessity and the Levellers
Cromwell acted from necessity. With Presbyterians and Royalists to contend with, he needed a united army, so he reshaped its organization to weed out unreliable elements, and Parliament resolved that no further addresses be made to the King and that no member hold commerce with him without permission. Carlyle’s picture of the situation—King at Carisbrooke, a Royalist party, a Presbyterian party headed by the City, and a Levelling party, with a Commons of some seventy members split down the middle—is judged broadly accurate, though Cromwell was in fact driven into the policy the Levellers wanted. He sought a union of anti-Royalist forces and attended a City meeting, but no understanding came of it. The Presbyterians looked to Scotland, where a Presbyterian-Royalist party gathered forty thousand men to invade England. In April 1648, the day after Cromwell’s City visit, a great rising of “apprentices” broke out under the slogan “God and King Charles,” put down only on the third day, with artisans and day labourers joining in. By May rebellion had spread to Kent, Essex, and Wales, and the Marquis of Hamilton marched forty thousand into England. The Independent leaders met at Windsor and, after a day of prayer, resolved to bring Charles Stuart, “that man of blood,” to account—a decision that restored harmony with the troops. Fairfax reduced Essex and Kent; Cromwell went first against Wales, then against the Scots.
Lilburne’s Offer and the Assassination of Rainsborough
While Cromwell was in the North, the London Presbyterians raised their heads, and around the time of Lilburne’s release Parliament voted him confiscated lands worth more than the cash award first proposed. Lilburne was reluctant to earn such favours from hostile Presbyterian members by continuing to attack Cromwell; revenge was not in him. Soon after his liberation he wrote to Cromwell through Captain Edward Sexby, once an agitator, offering reconciliation, and later sought him out in his camp. The letter, dated Westminster, August 3, 1648, the second day after his release, declares that he scorned revenge though he had twenty opportunities for it, and that he would lay hands on Cromwell only when Cromwell stood at the height of his glory, should he decline from Truth and Justice. Gardiner calls this “amusing self-sufficiency”; the author disagrees, finding in it proof that Lilburne kept closely in touch with events. Cromwell’s victories in late August restored his ascendancy; defeat would have left him and the advanced democrats in a critical position. Lilburne could not be persuaded back into the Army, but he sent word that Cromwell was expected to serve the good cause and to understand “the principles of a just government,” which prompted Cromwell to have friends in London negotiate with the Levellers. Each side needed the other: Parliament was bargaining with the King, offering to control the Army for twenty years and to keep the Presbyterian Church as the State Church for three years’ probation. Parliamentary dictatorship was odious to both—to Cromwell from personal interests and enmities, to the Levellers from doctrinal antipathy. Cromwell wrote to Colonel Hammond that the Levellers were not to be feared but the irresolute compromisers, reflecting that once the King question was settled, recalcitrant soldiers could be checked, the Ware mutiny having been so easily quelled. On October 29 Colonel Rainsborough was treacherously assassinated, strengthening the demand for strong measures; on November 20 Colonel Ewer brought a new remonstrance from St.
The Purge Completed and the King Brought to Trial
The Rump Parliament moved swiftly against Charles I. On 23 December 1648 it named a commission to consider proceedings against the King; by 1 January 1649 that commission recommended impeachment for high treason in waging war on the nation, and a Tribunal of State was decided upon. When the handful of Lords present refused to sanction it, the Commons resolved on 4 January that “the people are, under God, the original of all just power,” making the Commons, as the people’s elected representatives, the supreme authority whose resolutions carried the force of law without King or Lords. Two days later 135 persons were appointed to a High Court of Justice, Cromwell and other Army grandees among them, along with Robert Lilburne. John Lilburne was offered a seat—only Republicans were wanted—but his strict legal conscience kept him out of what he called an act of the sword clothed in legal form. He did not object to trying the King; he denied that this Parliament could pose as the people’s representatives and wanted a regular court of law rather than a special tribunal. His scruples changed nothing: Charles was sentenced on 27 January and executed on 30 January.
The Free Commonwealth Established
Parliament then ratified Pride’s purge by formally excluding the expelled members on 1 February, abolished the House of Lords as “useless and dangerous” on 6 February, and two days later abolished government by a king or any single person as “unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous.” A Council of State of forty-one members, Cromwell and Fairfax and Henry Marten among them, was appointed on 15 February, and on 19 May England was declared a Free Commonwealth.
Lilburne Returns to the Fight
Lilburne had spent January in the North on private business, disillusioned and ready to quit public life. Too proud to take a well-paid government post, he returned to London, of which he was a Freeman, and set up as a soap-maker in Southwark, declaring he would not fatten on the sufferings of working people. Political friends soon drew him back. On 26 February he headed a deputation of London citizens at the bar of the Commons, supporting a petition against the Council of State’s measures to suppress “disturbers of the peace” in the Army.
The Army’s Grievances and England’s New Chains
Those measures answered real discontent in the regiments near London, where men complained that much had been done for Parliament’s rights and nothing for the people’s—discontent that showed itself in sea-green ribbons, the Levellers’ badge. The Council of War forbade soldiers to petition Parliament or civilians, or to correspond with civilians on politics, and sought permission to hang inciters to mutiny by court martial. Lilburne’s petition opposed this, and an attached memorial published as England’s New Chains Discovered exposed the grandees’ alterations to the original Agreement of the People and attacked the new State Council as a mere creature of the Army’s Council of War. He proposed responsible commissions in its place, frequently changed and controlled by a Parliament sitting permanently until relieved by a newly elected Commons, and demanded complete freedom of the press as an unconditional right and a safeguard against conspiracy and tyranny.
The Soldiers’ Letter and the Broken Swords
On 1 March appeared a letter to Fairfax and his council of officers, signed by eight soldiers, listing the Army’s complaints: Cromwell striving after royal dignity, Parliament a mere reflector of the Council of War, that council a tool of Cromwell, Ireton and Harrison, and “Rule by the Sword” denounced outright. They called themselves English soldiers engaged for England’s freedom, not outlandish mercenaries to butcher the people for pay, demanded compliance with the Newmarket Heath Agreement, and endorsed Lilburne’s petition. On 3 March they faced a court martial. Three yielded and were pardoned; five stood firm. Asked who drew up the document, each in separate examination took full responsibility. Condemned though deserving death, they were led past their detachments seated backwards on a wooden horse and expelled from the Army with swords broken over their heads—Robert Ward, Thomas Watson, Simon Graunt, George Jellies and William Sawyer—executed at Westminster on 6 March. One of the pardoned three, Richard Rumbold, would carry the same convictions to the scaffold in 1685, declaring that God had not created the greater half of mankind with saddles on their backs and a bridle in their mouths while a few were booted and spurred to ride them.
Hobbes the Reluctant Utopist
The argument turns first to Hobbes, and to the mischief that follows when questions of pure expediency are raised into theoretical axioms. “Master Hobbs” — the Latinized form of the name — did not escape being called a socialist and Utopist after his death. Swap “absolute sovereignty of the people” for absolute sovereign or absolute assembly, and his quoted passages become a revolutionist’s handbook. Despite his materialism, Hobbes is a Utopist even as philosopher of monarchical absolutism, because he derives that absolutism from problematical “rights.” He suggests the Sovereign might delegate many rights and yet remain suzerain, provided he keeps control of armed power, the raising of money, and the right to decide what doctrines may be propagated — but he never says how or when this could happen. Instead he blames the civil war on the spread of the “opinion” that these powers were divided between King, Lords, and Commons; without that opinion, “the people had never been divided.”
The Life of James Harrington
Among the replies Leviathan evoked, the one that matters is Oceana by James Harrington. He cannot be called a socialist, any more than Hobbes, yet his literary activity exercised a great and legitimate influence on the evolution of socialistic ideas; with his good bourgeois sentiments he has more claim to a place in the history of socialism than many builders of socialistic “States of the future.” Born in 1611 to a well-to-do Rutlandshire family related by marriage to the higher aristocracy, he was exceedingly studious in youth and ripened into a bright, cheerful temperament and ready wit. After several years at Oxford he travelled through Holland, Denmark, parts of Germany, France, and Italy, particularly impressed by the Republic of Venice and its constitution. Returning home after his father’s death, he devoted himself to educating his siblings and step-siblings and to his estates. At The Hague he met Charles I’s sister Elizabeth, wife of the fugitive “winter King” of Bohemia; in England he became a frequent attendant at Court though he sought no position. He sided with the Parliamentary party, as he openly acknowledged. When Charles was confined at Holdenby in 1647, Harrington and Thomas Herbert were permitted to keep him company, and later at the Isle of Wight Charles took particular pleasure in conversing with him — except when talk turned on monarchy or republic, since Harrington did not disguise his sympathy for the latter. When Charles was brought to Windsor, Harrington was separated from him and arrested for refusing to swear to disclose and frustrate any escape attempts. Ireton soon procured his liberation; Harrington visited Charles frequently at St. James’ and finally accompanied him to the place of execution.
Oceana and the Confiscated Manuscript
After the King’s execution Harrington retired for a time to his studies. The violent death of a man he esteemed touched him keenly but could not induce him to side against the Commonwealth. In seclusion he wrote Oceana, designed to point a way out of the social confusion. Before printing he showed it to acquaintances, one being Major Wildman, and read passages aloud to them. Sent to be printed, Oceana — about which informants had reported awful things to the Government — was confiscated at the printer’s and brought to Whitehall. Harrington could not get it back until, through the advocacy of Cromwell’s favourite daughter Lady Bridget Claypole, he induced the all-powerful dictator to order its return. When Oceana appeared with a dedication to Cromwell, the latter is reported to have said the author would much like to lure him from his position of power, but he would not abandon for a few sheets of paper what he had obtained by the sword; no one could be more opposed than he to government of a single person, but he was compelled to assume the office of a High-Constable to avert social anarchy.
Controversy and the Art of Law-giving
Oceana appeared in 1656 and at once produced various replies, nearly all from theologians. Harrington answered his opponents; his polemical writings, though diffuse, reveal an erudite and witty controversialist. The most important reply is The Prerogative of Popular Government, directed in its first part against the “considerations upon Oceana” by Matthew Wren (son of the Bishop of Ely), and in its second against certain theologians concerning the electoral systems of antiquity and of the early Church communities. Wren’s 1659 reply, For Monarchy, drew a small satirical pamphlet, The Politicaster. Harrington’s answer to The Holy Commonwealth, produced by the devout Puritan Richard Baxter against the “heathen” system of politics in Oceana, is brief and full of irony.
The Decline of Quakerism and Its Philanthropic Influence
Quakerism, Bernstein argues, faded among the prosperous classes because its religious principles lost their hold on the modern bourgeois. It lacked a state establishment, mass influence, fine churches, distinguished preachers, sufficient rationalism for the cultured spirit, and sufficient symbolism to fascinate the surfeited mind; it “vegetates simply as a survival from former days.” Yet despite steady membership decline since the end of the seventeenth century, Quakerism exerted great influence in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a philanthropic movement—useful when industrial capitalism in its youthful vigour ruthlessly exploited a working class not yet strong enough for organized resistance. Quakers were pioneers and indefatigable champions of anti-slavery in England and America, at the forefront of penal code and prison reform; eminent protagonists of science, education, and subsequently political reform issued from their ranks; Quakers appeared in the Chartist movement, belonging to the “moral force” section, and among the Owenites.
In 1809, when Robert Owen risked abandoning his New Lanark scheme because partners demanded the sacrifice for profit, Quakers and sons of Quakers (apart from Jeremy Bentham) provided capital for continuing his reforms. William Allen caused Owen trouble, mainly over religious differences. Owen speaks in highest acknowledgement of associates from the Friends, especially John Walker, who invested £50,000. Before Owen went to New Lanark, two young Quakers intimate with him in Manchester greatly influenced his intellectual development: the chemist John Dalton, and another fellow-student at Manchester College, aged twenty-one, described by Owen as “his intimate friend,” named Winstanley—the same name as the most pronounced communist of the Cromwellian era; possibly a descendant of the “True Leveller” Winstanley, a Lancashire man. Between Gerrard Winstanley and Owen stands another Quaker, John Bellers.
The Plight of the Poor After the Restoration
All historians agree the situation of poorer classes, especially agricultural labourers, from the end of the Commonwealth in 1660 to the close of the century was invariably bad. Legislation of the restored monarchy was class legislation favouring great landlords; the “revolution” of 1688 only admitted commercial classes to greater share in government. In 1677 an Act declared all tenancies short-term leases in default of contrary agreements; such agreements could not be produced in most cases, so small freeholders and farmers could not assert rights at law, preparing transformation of agrarian conditions compelling them to toil like serfs or make room for a capitalist tenant. Export bounties were fixed lest improved cultivation reduce corn prices. Enclosure of forests, marsh lands, and heaths worsened small holders; shooting or snaring game was gradually prohibited from the time of James I, one reason being that poaching promoted idleness. Commercial growth brought slender benefits to a small section; wages were kept down by judicial assessments. The private soldier’s weekly pay, 7s. 6d. under Cromwell’s Commonwealth, was only 4s. 8d. in 1685. Wages had to be supplemented from the poor fund; poor rates amounted to over one-third of the whole Government budget. Charles Davenant estimated the poor and beggars in 1696 at nearly one-fourth of the population; an entire literature on the poor and poor relief sprang up. Two fundamentally different views appear: one concerned, in the interest of the comfortable classes, with getting rid of the “pauper plague”; the other aiming at raising the poor for their own sakes and seeking a better organization of society. Andrew Tarranton typifies the first; John Bellers the Quaker best represents the humanitarian outlook.
John Bellers: Life and the College of Industry
John Bellers was born in 1654 of well-to-do parents; a Quaker, he married a Quakeress and through this marriage became “Lord of the Manor” of Coin Aldwyns in Gloucestershire. Precluded from political career by his sect, he occupied himself with studies and philanthropical undertakings. Among his friends were William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and John Sloane, physician and philosopher, whose institution laid the foundation for the British Museum. He died in 1725, aged seventy-one, “one of the best men of his time,” and as Marx writes, “a veritable phenomenon in the history of political economy.”
Bellers’ first publication dates from 1695, one of the “seven lean years” of distress at the end of the seventeenth century, which depressed workmen’s wages to an extraordinarily low level. Proposals for Raising a College of Industry of All Useful Trades and Husbandry is the title, but Bellers has in view a labour colony or association. He explains the name: on page 11 he prefers “College” to “Workhouse” because it is a more pleasing name and useful instruction can be imparted there; in the concluding chapter he says “Workhouse”
The Levellers and the Limits of the Revolution
The central drama of the book is the collision between the Levellers and the men Bernstein calls the “grandees.” Lilburne and his allies—Walwyn, Prince, Overton, and the soldier-agitators—fought for a written constitution, the Agreement of the People, resting on popular sovereignty, annual parliaments, legal equality, religious toleration, and the abolition of tithes, excise, and merchant monopolies. The generals wanted the King brought down and Parliament purified; they did not want a new franchise or a dissolution on the Levellers’ terms. Bernstein is scrupulously even-handed here. He grants Cromwell’s practical superiority—the time for a new election had genuinely not arrived, and the propertied classes of the eastern counties were sliding toward the Presbyterians and Royalists—while crediting the Levellers with championing the political interests of the working class before its hour had struck. Cromwell, he writes, was the practical politician par excellence; the Levellers were ideologues who saw facts through the spectacles of abstract theory. The suppression of the movement, on this reading, was a political necessity and also a tragedy of timing.
The book is equally concerned with the economic content of the radical programme. Bernstein shows that the Levellers stopped short of communism, and that this was a strength: their demands were formidable precisely because they avoided Utopian speculation. Communism had no industrial proletariat to appeal to; at most it might have drawn rural labourers. Yet the movement threw off genuinely communistic offshoots. The “true Levellers,” or Diggers, who appeared on St. George’s Hill near Cobham in April 1649 with their spades, produced in Gerrard Winstanley a thinker of real originality—one who called buying and selling the Fall of mankind, argued that great riches cannot exist without the labour of others, and sketched a society of common storehouses in which families still kept their own houses and goods. Around them Bernstein groups the projector Samuel Hartlib, whose Macaria imagined the State as an economic institution with councils of agriculture, fishery, and commerce, and the physician Chamberlen, whose Poor Man’s Advocate proposed a national stock from forfeited lands for the relief of the poor.
What the Revolution Left Behind
Bernstein’s larger claim concerns the relationship between socialism and democracy. The seventeenth-century radicals were not socialists in any modern sense, and he does not pretend otherwise. What they established was the vocabulary: popular sovereignty, government by consent, a written constitution, freedom of the press, the accountability of rulers. The Rump’s resolution that “the people are, under God, the original of all just power” was extorted from men who had no intention of applying it broadly, yet it stated a principle that outlived them. Bernstein also records the failures with unsparing clarity—the tithes that survived, the game laws and feudal dues that fell only on small tenants, the courts that kept their old severity with a new name on the statute book, the common lands enclosed while Crown and Church estates were sold to army officers and speculators.
The book closes its account of Lilburne with his death in 1657, after a career of imprisonment, whipping, banishment, and repeated acquittals by juries that refused to convict him—the Guildhall verdict of 1649 set off celebrations across London for half an hour and more. Bernstein’s portrait is affectionate but not uncritical. He quotes Hume’s description of Lilburne as “the most turbulent but the most upright and courageous of human kind,” and adds his own estimate: a brilliant speaker, equally bold with sword and pen, combining the inflexible justice of an ideologue, the resolution of a war-tried revolutionary, and the keen judgment of a practical politician. If Lilburne was sometimes unjust to Cromwell, he represented another class and different principles, and a party zealot in continuous strife can be forgiven for falling short of the historian’s impartiality.
The later chapters widen the frame to the religious and intellectual fringe of the revolution—the atheistic and communistic currents, the conspiracies and sectarian offshoots, the political philosophy of the seventeenth century, Peter Cornelius Plockboy, the Quakers, and John Sellers, champion of the poor. Bernstein’s point throughout is that these tendencies, dismissed as fanaticism by the respectable and by most historians since, carried the revolution’s most advanced social thought. His book was written to rescue that thought from neglect, and its wager is that the conflicts it describes—between property and democracy, between the politics of the possible and the demands of the excluded—recur whenever men set out to remake a state.
