Joegoslavische oorlog

(1) Div., “Manifest – Krant van de Nieuwe Communistische Partij” 7 mei, Stichting HOC 2024 – Redactie, “25 years since NATO intervention in Yugoslavia”; “The criminal bombings of the US, NATO and EU in Yugoslavia lasted 78 days in 1999, 25 years ago. This imperialist intervention cost the lives of thousands of innocent people, led to the further division of Yugoslavia and a plummet in the standard of living of the population in the region. // The pretext for the imperialist intervention was ethnic and religious tensions, which the US and EU themselves had stirred up. But this intervention was essentially nothing more than the next step in the plans of Euro-Atlantic capital. It wanted to consolidate its influence in former socialist countries after the counter-revolutions and the division of the Soviet Union. The division of Yugoslavia was necessary for the EU, NATO and the US, especially after the now capitalist Russia appeared unwilling to give up its economic and political influence in the Balkans.

(2) Passim: In the early 1990s, the Balkans were not seen as a major priority by the US. The Balkans were initially of interest to European capitalist states, especially Germany, but also France and Great Britain. The monopolies of those countries saw opportunities in the Balkans for exporting capital, extracting raw materials and other economic activity. For German capital, the Balkans represented an opening to the Mediterranean and beyond. // Under the influence of various factors, nationalist elements emerged in Yugoslavia from the 1980s onwards. These were fueled by the EU and NATO countries by supporting nationalist groups and setting up provocations. In socialist Yugoslavia, the various peoples had lived together peacefully for decades and there were more than 3 million mixed families. Provocations were therefore necessary to divide the population, stir up nationalism and sow hatred. For example, German and Hungarian mercenaries were deployed from Germany to kill Muslims in Yugoslavia wearing Serbian uniforms.

(3) Passim: These developments took place in a context in which the Yugoslav economy was weakening. Particularly after Tito's death, Yugoslavia took loans from international capitalist institutions, implemented measures that led to the restoration of capitalist elements in the economy, and a new bourgeoisie began to emerge. The Yugoslav economy fell into crisis, which is a fertile ground for nationalist tendencies, although this would not have led to the wars and bloody division of Yugoslavia without imperialist provocations and intervention. // In December 1991, Germany, France and the United Kingdom were the first to recognize the breakaway Croatia and Slovenia. As the situation in the Balkans destabilized and German and European capital became more mixed, the attitude of the US, which wanted to have the upper hand on the international stage and control over developments in the Balkans, changed. For example, the US took the lead by organizing air strikes from NATO during the earlier war in 1995.

(4) Passim: In early 1999, Madeleine Albright, then US Secretary of State, demanded that the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević, allow NATO forces to be deployed to ensure 'peace' and 'stability'. In doing so, she revealed the real reason for the intervention that would follow. // On March 24, 1999, NATO's war against Yugoslavia began. 59 NATO bases in twelve countries were used to carry out more than 2,300 bombing raids in eleven weeks with 1,150 NATO aircraft. 420,000 rockets and bombs were fired. 37,000 bombs prohibited by international law. Thousands of bombs contain enriched uranium. // 1,002 soldiers of the Yugoslav army were killed. But most deaths occurred among the unarmed population. More than 3,000 civilians (30 percent of whom were children) were killed. 12,500 people were injured, including 2,700 children. Hundreds of thousands had to flee and millions were sentenced to a life of absolute poverty. // The material damage is estimated at more than 100 billion dollars. More than 25,000 buildings were bombed. Bridges and roads were razed to the ground, fourteen airports were destroyed, a third of the power stations and almost all industry were bombed. But bombings were also carried out on 305 schools and educational institutions, hospitals and maternity wards, monasteries, refugee camps and even cemeteries. The bombings caused enormous damage to the environment. The bombs containing enriched uranium had consequences for the health of the local population for years to come.

(6) Passim: The bloody NATO intervention led to massive protests and solidarity with the Yugoslav people all over the world. // The war ended after negotiations between American and Serbian officers. UN Security Council Decision 1244 essentially legalized the NATO intervention. Kosovo was founded as a new “country,” which essentially served as nothing more than a US protectorate, where Camp Bondsteel was formed. The largest US military base abroad, as the US demanded prior to NATO intervention.”

Feodalisme, Algemeen

() Div. “Grundlagen des Marxismus-Leninismus – Lehrbuch“, Dietz 1963; “ The basis of the relations of production of this order is the property of the feudal people in the means of production, especially in land [the term feudalism is derived from the Latin word feudum; this is the name given to the properties that the kings distributed to their followers who committed themselves to military service]. The peasants were personally dependent on the feudal lords, but no longer wholly owned them. The feudal lords had the right to the peasant's labor. The farmers had to do slave labor for the benefit of their masters. / In feudal society the peasants and artisans also owned their personal economy. The serf peasant owned his land and his personal economy, the products of which he was able to dispose of after he had fulfilled his obligations to the feudal lord. / This peculiarity of the relations of production opened up new possibilities for the growth of the productive forces. the producer now had a certain material interest in the results of his work. Therefore he did not break or damage the tools, but on the contrary carefully tended them and perfected them. Agriculture developed: the three-field economy was introduced and the fertilization of the fields was used to an ever greater extent. / Even more important progressive is the handicraft, which supplied agricultural implements and everyday objects that were used by the feudal lords and merchants. It also manufactured various types of equipment as well as weapons and critical equipment. The development of handicrafts and trade promoted the development of the cities. Over time, the cities became major centers of economic, political and cultural life, the cradle of the new, capitalist mode of production.

(2) Passim: The class struggle establishes a higher level than the slave-holding
society. the revolts of the peasants sometimes took over large areas. The fact
that in one country after the other peasant kings brought forth peasant kings:
the exchange of Wat tylers in England and the Jacquerie in France [14. Hh.],
The Hussite Wars in Bohemia [15. Century], the German Beaurnkrig [16th
century], the Taiping uprising in China [19th century. Century], the uprising
of the Sikh in India [17./18. Jah.], The Bolotnikov, Razin’s uprisings [17.
Century] and Pugachevs [18. Century] in Russia etc. / The political and
ideological superstructure of feudal society reflected the special forms of
exploitation and class struggle. In order to be able to exploit the serfs and
keep them in check, the feudal state had to constantly resort to military means
of power, which not only the Zentralgwelt, but every feudal lord had at their
disposal. The landowner was absolute master of his possessions and could judge
and punish. / The real anchors the social and economic inequality of feudal
society; the class and their individual strata came into being as classes
[feudal society was divided into classes such as the nobility, clergy,
peasantry, merchant class and others.]. The relations between the classes and
the relationships within the classes were based on a system of strict subordination
and personal dependence. The stability of the social differences made the
“transition from one level of the feudal hierarchy to the next higher. In
the spiritual life of feudal society the church and religion attained the
leading position. /

(3) Passim: In the epoch of feudalism, many significant discoveries were made that had a major influence on the further history of mankind: people learned to make steel from pig iron, to build sailing ships suitable for long journeys with keel, to make the simplest optical devices [glasses, telescope ], and found the compass, which the gunpowder, the paper, the letterpress and mechanical you honor. The muscular energy of humans and animals was supplemented to an ever greater extent by the energy of the wind [windmills, sailing ships] and the flowing water [the water mill, the water wheel was the simplest engine since it was widely used in the Middle Ages]. / The replacement of the production relations of the slave-holding society caused changes in the whole life of society through that of the feudal society. / Above all, the class structure changed. The ruling class became the feudal lords, the owners of the land. Another basic class of the feudal society were the serf peasants. The relationships between these classes had an antagonistic character; they were based on the irreconcilable opposition of class interests. The forms of exploitation were somewhat milder compared to slavery, but still extremely grassy. The exploitation of the farms was based, as in earlier times, that of the slaves on extra-economic coercion. Under the influence of these economic impulses of material interest, the layman was only at work in his personal economy. But a large part of the time he devoted to work for the feudal lords, for which he received no payment. The main reason for work is the fruit of punishment, corporal punishment, but also the fear of losing all personal property to the landowner."

Geschiedenis, 16e eeuw, Algemeen

(1) Ian Morris, “Why the West rules for now – The patterns of history and what they revealed about the future”, Profile Books 2010; ”The main impact these European adventurers did have on ordinary Easterners’ lives in the sixteenth century was through the extraordinary plants – corn, potatoes sweet potatoes, peanuts - they brought from the New World. These grew where nothing else would, survived wretched weather, and fattened farmers and their animals wonderfully. Across the sixteenth century million’s acres of them were planted from Ireland to the Yellow River. / They came, perhaps, in the nick of time. The sixteenth century was a golden age for eastern and western culture. In the 1590s [admittedly a particularly good decade] Londoners could watch new dramas such as Shakespeare’s Henry V, Julius Caesar and Hamlet or read inexpensive religious tracts such as John Foxe’s gory Book of Martyrs, churned out in their thousands by the new printing presses and crammed with woodcuts of true believers at the state. At the other end of Eurasia, woodcuts of true believers at the stake. At the other end of Eurasia, Beijinger could catch Tang Zianzu’s twenty-hour-long Peony Pavilion, which remains China’s most-watched traditional opera, or read The journey to the West [the hundred-chatter tale of Monkey, Pig, and a Shrek-like ogre named Friar Sand, who followed a sevent-century monk to India to find Buddhist sutras as, along the way rescuing him from countless cliff-hangers] /

(2) Passim: But behind the glittering façade all was not well. The Black Death had killed a third or more of the people on the western and eastern cores and for about a century after 1350 recurring outbreaks kept population low. Between 1450 and1600, however, the number of hunger mouths in each region roughly doubled. ‘Population has grown so much that it is entirely without parallel in history’, one Chinese scholar recorded in 1608. In faraway France observers agree; people were breeding ‘like mice in a barn’ as a proverb put it. / Fear has ever been an engine of social development. More children meant more subdivided fields or more heirs left out in the cold, and always meant more trouble. Farmers weeded and manured more often, dammed streams, and dug wells, or wove and tried to sell more garhillsides, stones, and sand that their parents would never have bothered with. Others abandon the densely settled cores for wild, under populated frontiers. Yet even when they painted the New word wonder crop, there never seemed to be enough to go around. /

(3) Passim: The fifteenth century, when labour had been scarce and land abundant increasingly became just a fuzzy memory: happy days, beef and ale, pork and wine. Back then, said the prefect of a country near Nanjing in 1609, everything had been better: ‘Every family was self-sufficient with a house to live in, land to cultivate, hills from which to cut for wood, gardens in which to grow vegetables.’ now, though, ‘nine out of ten are impoverished … Avarice is without limit, flesh injures bone … Alas!’A German traveller around 1550 was blunter: ‘In the past they ate differentially at the peasants’ house. Then there was meat and food in profusion.’  Today, though, ‘everything is truly changed … the food of the most comfortably off peasants as almost words than that of day labourers and valets in the old days’.”

Geschiedenis, 21e eeuw, Venuzuela

(1) Div., “Manifest – Krant van de Nieuwe Communistiche Partij”, Stichting HOC 2023 – Communistische Partij van Venezuela, “Wat gebeurt er in Venezuela? – Het Venezolaanse proces is een voorbeeld van zowel de grenzen van het progressivisme als van het reformistische karakter van allianties van meerdere klassen. Verergerd door de criminele sancties creëerde de crisis van het afhankelijke en rentenierskapitalisme de voorwaarden voor de regering onder leiding van president Nicolas Maduro Moros – de vertegenwoordiger van de bourgeois en maffiafractie die het staatsapparaat en de regering controleert – om de meest agressieve tegen de bevolking gerichte aanpassing in de geschiedenis van het land te realiseren. // De neoliberale wending in het economische beleid van de regering opende samen met het complexe scenario van de energiecrisis die veroorzaakt werd door de oorlog in Oekraïne, de mogelijkheden voor het samenvallen van belangen en de daaruit volgende onderhandelingen tussen het imperialisme, de bourgeoisie en de traditionele klasse van landeigenaren enerzijds en de nieuwe bourgeois fractie (de zelfbenoemde ‘revolutionaire bourgeoisie’) die de regering in Venezuela leidt, anderzijds. // Zoals we jullie tijdens de 22e IMCWP in Havana hebben laten weten, is het land op weg naar een proces van deregulering en het geleidelijke opheffen van de sancties op basis van een overeenkomst tussen de elites en een realisatie van een tegen de bevolking gerichte economische aanpassing die volledige garanties biedt aan binnenlands en buitenlands privaat kapitaal.

(2) Passim: Vanuit de PCV hebben we de sancties en imperialistische inmenging steeds krachtig veroordeeld. Zoals in het verleden eisen we ook vandaag de onmiddellijke en onvoorwaardelijke opheffing ervan. Ook verwerpen we alle onderhandelingen die het opgeven van soevereiniteit en de afbraak van de rechten van de werkende bevolking betekenen. We veroordelen de straffeloosheid voor degenen die dit misdadige beleid hebben aangemoedigd en voor de zakelijke sectoren en politici die van deze omstandigheden hebben geprofiteerd om rijkdom te vergaren, terwijl de Venezolaanse bevolking onder de ergste ontberingen lijdt. // Het tegen arbeiders en tegen de bevolking gerichte beleidspakket – Het is de werkende bevolking die uiteindelijk opdraait voor de gevolgen van de crisis en de imperialistische sancties; niet de bourgeoisie en niet de heersende elite. De PSUV-regering heeft door middel van een tegen arbeiders en tegen de bevolking gericht beleid de leiding gehad in het verminderen van de gevolgen ervan voor het bedrijfsleven en heeft dus de hele last afgewenteld op de werkende bevolking. // De kern van de economische aanpassing – of het ‘Anti-blokkadeplan’ zoals ze het eufemistisch noemen – was de afbraak van de rechten van de arbeidersklasse. Sinds de laatste loonsverhoging 18 maanden geleden, is de koopkracht van het reële loon met 90% gedaald. Het wettelijke minimumloon en de pensioenen bedragen nauwelijks 3 dollar per maand als gevolg van het criminele beleid om de lonen in lokale valuta te bevriezen, de dollarisering van de prijzen en een inflatie van meer dan 400% per jaar. // In haar absolute onderdanigheid aan de belangen van de zakelijke sectoren heeft de regering van Nicolas Maduro het beleid geïntensiveerd om als compenserende maatregel voor het inkomen van arbeiders de lonen te vervangen door bonussen. Met dit beleid heeft de regering de arbeidskosten dramatisch verlaagd en daarmee de winstmarges van de kapitalistische bedrijven vergroot. Het tegen arbeiders gerichte loonbeleid heeft ook invloed op de voortschrijdende deregulering van de arbeidsmarkt door de voorwaarden te scheppen voor de intensivering van de uitbuiting van de beroepsbevolking. Het resultaat zijn werktijden van meer dan 8 uur per dag, onvoldoende loon voor overwerk, banen zonder contract en vele andere vormen van misbruik door werkgevers.

(3) Passim: Maar lonen waren niet het enige recht dat werd opgeofferd; door het ministerieel memorandum 2792 werden de collectieve arbeidsovereenkomsten van werknemers in alle sectoren opgeschort. Daarnaast werd op instructie van het openbaar begrotingsbureau (ONAPRE) het beloningssysteem van de werknemers in de overheidsdiensten eenzijdig en willekeurig versoberd door de lonen met de helft te verlagen en ten slotte werd het recht van de werknemers op sociale uitkeringen, voorzieningen en spaargeld feitelijk afgeschaft. Dit alles vormt samen met de onzekerheid van de openbare diensten en de ontmanteling van essentiële verworvenheden zoals volksgezondheid en onderwijs, een beeld van een gewetenloze superuitbuiting en een alarmerende verslechtering van de levensomstandigheden van werkende gezinnen. // Het progressivisme noemt deze criminele opoffering van de rechten van de arbeidersklasse voor de winst van de kapitalisten ‘anti-imperialistisch verzet’. // De regering ontloopt elke verantwoordelijkheid door alle schuld af te schuiven op de imperialistische sancties. Ook al hebben deze een verwoestend effect gehad op de economie als geheel, niet minder waar is dat de regering in deze periode aanzienlijke hoeveelheden overheidsmiddelen heeft uitgetrokken om de particuliere sector te subsidiëren en dat een ander deel nog steeds verkwist wordt door corrupt beheer. Bijna tien miljard dollar aan staatssubsidies werd overgeheveld naar de private sector via tussenhandel in buitenlandse valuta; zo’n twintig miljard dollar verdween uit de nationale olie-industrie in een van de meest beschamende corruptieschandalen van de regering van Nicolas Maduro en de versnelde verrijking van hooggeplaatste burgerlijke en militaire ambtenaren, bedrijfsleiders en landeigenaren is overduidelijk. De enorme kloof van sociale ongelijkheid in het land is het beste bewijs voor een regering die de crisis aanpakt ten voordele van de machtigsten.

(4) Passim: Staatsonderdrukking van arbeidersstrijd – De neoliberale wending heeft de strijd van de Venezolaanse arbeiders- en vakbeweging weer tot leven gewekt. Elke dag worden er in het land gemiddeld 17 protesten voor loon- en arbeidseisen geregistreerd. De belangrijkste eisen van de arbeiders zijn de erkenning van het recht op een salaris en pensioen gelijk aan het basisvoedselpakket, de herinvoering van cao-onderhandelingen en de beëindiging van de criminalisering van de arbeidersstrijd. // De reactie van de regering en het staatsapparaat is vervolging, onderdrukking en berechting van degenen die deze strijd leveren. Er zijn meer dan 100 gevallen van vervolgde arbeiders, velen van hen worden nog steeds onrechtmatig vastgehouden. Onlangs werden twee vakbondsleiders uit de basisindustrie van Guayana ontvoerd en gevangen gezet terwijl ze aan het protesteren waren. Om deze illegale actie te rechtvaardigen vaardigde de rechtbank ten gunste van het bedrijf een grondwettelijk bevel uit dat de uitoefening van het stakingsrecht en elke vorm van vakbondsprotest verbiedt. // Dezelfde repressieve en intimiderende praktijken worden toegepast tegenover het onderwijspersoneel. Geconfronteerd met de mogelijkheid van een staking in die sector heeft de Minister van Onderwijs gedreigd met massale ontslagen van leraren en hen te vervangen door werklozen en gepensioneerden. Het is een kapitalistische staat die chantage van de werkloze arbeidersbevolking gebruikt om de klassensolidariteit te breken en zo lagere lonen af te dwingen.

(5) Passim: Zoals we kunnen zien, maakt de confrontatie met het imperialisme de klassenstrijd in het binnenland niet ongedaan. // Momenteel spreekt de regering openlijk over een strategische alliantie met de ondernemersorganisaties en over de rol van de staat als een simpele regulerende tussenpersoon ten dienste van de belangen van de kapitalisten. Deze liberale euforie geeft vrij spel aan de roofzucht van landeigenaren, agrarisch en mijnbouwkapitaal ten koste van de natuurlijke reserves van het land. De ecologische crisis in het mijnbouwgebied van Guayana is een van de meest dramatische voorbeelden. Dezelfde praktijken richten zich ook tegen de rechten van inheemse volkeren: ze worden van hun land verdreven, hun leefgebied wordt vernietigd en hun verzetsstrijd wordt onderdrukt. // Alsof dit nog niet genoeg is, komt de reactionaire wending van de PSUV-regering ook tot uiting in haar allianties met religieus extremisme. In de overheidsbegroting voor 2023 worden meer middelen uitgetrokken voor de verbreiding van deze sektes dan voor wetenschappelijke ontwikkeling. // De aanval op de arbeidersklasse betekende ook het opleggen van beperkingen aan de vakbondsvrijheden en aan de uitoefening van haar democratische recht om zich te organiseren in legale politieke partijen.

(6) Passim: De gerechtelijke maatregel tegen de Communistische Partij van Venezuela, die tien augustus jl. werd bekrachtigd door het onwettige vonnis nr. 1160, is precies bedoeld om de arbeidersklasse tijdens het brute offensief tegen haar rechten te ontdoen van haar strijdmiddelen. // Wat de gerechtelijke aanval op onze partij betreft, is het belangrijk dat de communistische en arbeiderspartijen van de wereld de volgende juridische dwalingen rondom het vonnis kennen: (1) De Constitutionele Kamer van het Hooggerechtshof (TSJ) heeft vonnis nr. 1160 gewezen in antwoord op een verzoek dat was ingediend door een groep niet-leden van de PCV, dat wil zeggen dat de TSJ een rechtszaak heeft toegestaan die was aangespannen door personen die niet voldeden aan de wettelijke kwalificatie om namens de PCV op te treden, en de TSJ heeft daarom gehandeld in strijd met de Organieke Wet van Bescherming en Grondwettelijke Waarborgen. // (2) Het door deze huurlingen ingediende verzoek bevatte geen enkel bewijs voor hun lidmaatschap van de PCV noch voor de geloofwaardigheid van de aantijgingen in de dagvaarding, hetgeen betekent dat de TSJ een beslissing heeft genomen zonder de feiten te controleren. // (3) Op haar beurt heeft de Constitutionele Kamer het grondwettelijke recht op verdediging door de PCV geschonden, door het door de PCV ingediende verdedigingsdossier en bewijs terzijde te schuiven, hetgeen een flagrante schending is van de rechtsstaat en een eerlijk proces. // (4) De TSJ heeft een bestuur ad hoc, bestaande uit zeven niet-leden van de PCV, benoemd om de wettelijke centrale leiding van de partij te vervangen, en daarbij het door het 16e Congres van de PCV gekozen Centraal Comité op onrechtmatige wijze genegeerd. // (5) Dit bestuur ad hoc is als volgt samengesteld: drie leden van de PSUV, een lid van de partij Somos Venezuela, een ex-kandidaat van de partij UPP89 en twee ex-leden van de PCV. Zij krijgen de bevoegdheid om de wettelijke rechten van de PCV over te nemen en al haar structuren op nationaal niveau te reorganiseren. // Zoals te zien is vonnis nr. 1160 een complete juridische dwaling zonder enige basis in de Venezolaanse wet. We hebben hier te maken met een autoritaire uitoefening van staatsmacht in het kader van de politieke beslissing van de regeringsleiders om te proberen de PCV te vernietigen.

(7) Passim: De overname van de wettelijke leiding van de partij maakt het deze huurlingen mogelijk hun toevlucht te nemen tot staatsgeweld om de ware leiding van de PCV en haar leden te beroven van hun hoofdkantoren en van de bezittingen van de partij. Sinds de uitvaardiging van het vonnis zijn deze huurlingen – met steun van de leiding van de PSUV – al overgegaan tot de vorming van nieuwe regionale leiderschapsstructuren met daarin vertegenwoordigers uit het middenkader van de PSUV en evangelische gemeenschappen, en leden van andere organisaties die ondergeschikt zijn aan de regering, zodat overduidelijk is dat geen enkel lid van de PCV deelneemt aan hun klucht en dat we te maken hebben met een verachtelijke en schandelijke aanval vanuit de regering. // De wettelijke ingreep in de PCV heeft een duidelijk doel: het vernietigen van het klassenverzet van de arbeiders tegen de tegen de bevolking gerichte maatregelen, het verzwakken van de strijd voor lonen en arbeiderseisen en het verhinderen van de versterking van een revolutionair alternatief voor de twee blokken van de bourgeoisie die verantwoordelijk zijn voor deze nationale ramp: het blok van de regering en het blok van de verschillende traditionele rechtse oppositiegroepen. // Door de aanval op de PCV verloor de arbeidersklasse de laatste partij met legale status die ze nog had, hetgeen betekent dat ze ook beroofd werd van haar recht om met haar eigen kandidaten, die haar ware belangen vertegenwoordigen, deel te nemen aan de presidentsverkiezingen van 2024 en de parlementsverkiezingen van 2025. Het pact van de elites is er dus in geslaagd om toekomstige verkiezingen te beperken tot de exclusieve deelname van de partijen van de bourgeoisie. // De manier waarop de aanval op onze partij werd uitgevoerd, heeft de mate van morele ontbinding van de PSUV duidelijk gemaakt: haar wanhopige poging om de strijd van de bevolking in te dammen en zichzelf te presenteren als een betrouwbare kracht voor de belangen van de zakelijke sectoren en de imperialistische monopolies. // We willen de Communistische en Arbeiderspartijen bedanken voor hun solidariteitsbetuigingen en we nodigen hen uit om een internationale campagne te ondersteunen die eist dat het onwettige vonnis nr. 1160 wordt herroepen en dat de wettelijke en democratische rechten van het echte lidmaatschap van de Communistische Partij van Venezuela worden hersteld.

(8) Passim: Los van onze meningsverschillen over de karakterisering van de regering van Venezuela en haar partij, moet de aanval op het bestaansrecht van een communistische partij een krachtig en vastberaden antwoord van de internationale communistische beweging krijgen. Het actieplan dat we tijdens de 22e IMCWP in Havana hebben goedgekeurd, roept ons op om ‘solidariteit te betuigen met de communisten die te maken hebben met vervolging en het verbod op de vrije uitoefening van hun politieke en sociale rechten’, maar ook om ‘internationale campagnes te realiseren uit solidariteit met en ter ondersteuning van de strijd van de arbeidersklasse … met haar gerechtvaardigde eis van het recht op vakbondsvorming, betere lonen en arbeidsomstandigheden, en haar democratische rechten.’ // We verzekeren jullie dat de plannen van de bourgeoisie en haar partijen om de PCV te vernietigen niet zullen slagen. Ze zullen net zoals de andere drie eerdere pogingen in onze geschiedenis mislukken om de eenvoudige reden dat onze aanpak een echte uitdrukking is van de belangen van een arbeidersklasse die vecht om haar rechten terug te krijgen. // We hopen dat onze ervaring als les en lering zal dienen voor de communistische en arbeiderspartijen in de wereld. Zoals Lenin terecht zei: “Alles is illusoir behalve macht.” // Wij staan als communistische en arbeiderspartijen voor grote uitdagingen op deze beslissende momenten in de wereldwijde klassenstrijd. Wat onze positie en rol betreft, willen we enkel herinneren aan een citaat van Marx en Engels in het Communistisch Manifest: ‘De communisten onderscheiden zich van de overige proletarische partijen alleen daardoor, dat zij aan de ene kant in de nationale strijd van de proletariërs in de verschillende landen de gemeenschappelijke, van de nationaliteit onafhankelijke belangen van het proletariaat hoog houden en doen gelden, aan de andere kant daardoor, dat zij op de verschillende trappen van ontwikkeling, die de strijd tussen proletariaat en bourgeoisie doorloopt, steeds het belang van de gehele beweging vertegenwoordigen.’ // Lang leve het proletarisch internationalisme! * Bron: SolidNet.org. Vertaling: Louis Wilms

Chili, Coup Pinochet

(1) Sergio Stuparich, “Chileense lente – roman uit Chili”, Het wereldvenster 1977; “We all knew the putsch was coming; the left-wing daily El Puro Chile last Friday announced: ‘The coup has been postponed until Monday’ [it happened on Tuesday]; the Tribuna, the magazine of the national party, announced that the fleet would not sail south until the resignation of Admiral Montero had been accepted and Admiral Merino would be appointed in his place. / Everywhere there were signs of preparation: Congress meets to declare that the government is in violation of the Constitution, for more than a month one strike has followed another in the private sector of the distribution; the fascist organizations resorted to attacks and unlawful murder. factories are being shut down and searches are being made for weapons to ensure that no bids are made on the current monument. ‘It will happen just like with us’, said a friend from Brazil, who then thought of the time of Goulart. / We discovered the plan ourselves and went to the party office to tell it: that Friday night the deed of conspiracy and subversion of the government had been denied, but someone from the carabineros had yet to join; people did not trust Sepulveda, the former highest police commissioner, nor any other general. Some participants in the plot wanted to leave the uniformed police out, but the problem was solved at the last moment. it was decided to take advantage of the personal grudges of Mendoza, the fourth in the rankings, and this indeed happened. The balance will be restored on the basis of the results of June 29th and several improvements will be expected. They wanted to set the deadline for the president on Sunday evening [decision that was postponed to allow for the surprise factor]; and if Allende refused the country would be occupied on Monday morning.

(2) Passim: Later, according to statements by Air Force General Leigh, the operation is postponed for a day. That was in broad terms the attack plan of the conspirators. At the desk they listened to our story, covered us and regarded the information as one of the old rumors that were circulating in those days. / We all knew it, or at least had some idea of ​​it, because the situation was extremely tense. but no means were mentioned to offer a stand and defend themselves, even the safety measures were insufficient. What was this negligence due to? Partly due to the fact that for some time the finding of solutions to difficult situations had been left to the political skill and refinement of companion Allende, who was the master of business in the luxurious salons. If something went wrong, he would sort it out one way or another, and convince everyone, as had happened all those other times, and then the situation would be under control again. For example, the experience of June 29 during the abatement of the failed coup. / But the most important reason that such negligence came to light was undoubtedly the wrong view and therefore the wrong approach to the conflicts that existed with the enemy. until eleven o’clock in the morning it was not only unknown how and when we had to defend ourselves, but also against whom we had to defend ourselves. within the left’s strategic scheme there were four different views on the role that the military could play and of course four different approaches; but of the four, three based their statement on the assumption that the army as a whole should not be regarded as a potential enemy, which history has cruelly and too late refuted:

(3) Passim: 1. The theory of the president and his government: unity of the army as support for the government. the army had been acting in accordance with the constitution and respecting the system for forty years, and would continue to do so, so that one should not interfere with the army, maintain its autonomy, leave its organizational cohesion and its promotion system untouched, without regard to internal ideological or personal differences; as if the civil wars were taking place outside the army. Never in a speech did I refer to the historically reactionary character of the military apparatus. the viands can be found elsewhere: initially ‘the right in the economy’ which was represented in politics by the very large companies, not to mention ‘imperialism’ and lately ‘fascism’, vaguely mainstreamed in the leaders of the right and the leaders of the ‘unions’ [gremios]. ‘To destroy fascism’ meant an undefined appeal to put a stop to the crimes committed by Valetain, the leader of the transport company, a jarpa, leader of the national party, or a Pablo Rodriguez. but there is not any military mentioned. Ruiz, Tores de le Cruz and others spoke out in writing against the government, despised, degraded and abused the left-wing militants… but the army was not touched. This was the official and most common position, the line that led to the tenth of September was followed. Prats is promoted to supreme commander of the army, according to his own explanation without even crying; Huerta [now, after the coup, on foreign affairs] becomes minister, Gonzalez, Magliochetti and other generals are appointed to high posts and all, without exception, participate in the coup while they currently hold key positions in Pinochet’s dictatorship.

(4) Passim: The confidence in the loyalty of the military to the constitution is so great that Allende himself signed the promotion of Pinochet and Leigh, who are now part of the Junta, and under pressure from the officers’ wives, they accepted the resignation of General Prats to ensure unity in the army. To preserve. / Result: for Allende, the coup is the result of ‘surprising’ the generals. This is what he said on September 11th when he held his stand in the Moneda. / 2. Growth of the vertical division. This is based on the assumption that there are deviating opinions in the various circles of the army: those who are loyal to the constitution [some of which are described as left-wing] and those who are loyal to the constitution. everything must be aimed at winning over generals or officer cadres [with their men]; In this way, the conspirators would be made unable to take action, or they could only make an unsuccessful seizure of power in the style of June 29, or at the time of the confrontation we could count on a continent of troops that the side of the people. the examples of Prats, Sepulveda, Parada, Montero, Bachelet [including Brady, Urbina and others] seemed to prove that the conspirators did not have that much power. / If we take a closer look at this statement, it turns out to be a vision that mechanically adds and subtracts generals as simple arithmetic, without taking into account that in a given moment, if the conspirators get the same support within the military institutions, a qualitative leap will be flattened and the constitutionally loyal will gradually but inevitably become replaced. They lose ground and their power is limited, so that on September 11, when they were in the highest spirits, they could at least do something. [In reality, they were an insignificant entity.] They represented a romantic attitude beyond the strong class division that motivated the conspirators.

(5) Passim: It is no coincidence that there is a celebration in the expensive neighborhood when Prats resigns, and when this general surrenders to the putschists to speak on the radio and television on the condition that they leave him free to commit crimes, he acknowledges the new rulers and signals his intention to withdraw to the new winter base. It is not surprising that not one regiment or unit as a whole claims the position of the constitution-loyal officers, but worse disperse cases of insubordination come for those who paid for the deeds with their life or prison. It is no coincidence that the navy groups around Merino, the second commander, and not Montero, whose whereabouts are still unknown, and that the carabineros obey a hitherto completely unknown general. / Result: the supporters of the vertical division of the army stick to their position and are still looking for left-wing elements among the gorillas after the massacres. () Passim: 3. Theory of horizontal division: the assumption is that class antagonisms have penetrated within the army [or that the conditions for this are appropriate], so that the cadre of non-commissioned officers must be trained to take part in the struggle of the proletariat.[‘soldado, no mueara por los patrones, vieve luchando junto al pubeblo’]. This location, based on the situation in Russia in 1917, has had little effect as a tactic in Chile in the 1970s. there are only scattered attempts at mutiny that are smothered with executions. Deterred by the example of the navy, where rebellious marines were tortured, although they did not receive full support, individual operations of small groups eventually became hardened. a frequently mentioned case is that of a carabinero from Antofagasta, which executed two officers ‘on trial’. In the belief that the soldiers are choosing sides for their own class [el publo unomade también es explotado!] becomes particularly dramatic when on the conscious 11th of September the workers of the S. factory shout at the carabineros to turn their weapons, which is outside the scope of the walls with insults and shots are answered. This phenomenon is understandable to such an extent that the soldier finds too little support to succeed in his action; the public plea of ​​the marines who had been tortured in July to be released from the curse before the coup took place and thus avoid execution, had a sad background. the horizontal division was only conceivable to the extent to which the workers’ class was organized as a real alternative revolutionary force; then and only then would the other sectors have been drawn into the fray. without this necessary condition, every spontaneous action meant suicide. /

(6) Passim: 4. Theory of countervailing power. events cruelly confirm the correctness of this last theory, when it is already too late to take any measures. / The decline was clearly visible in the political behavior of the left since October 1972. Since then, the government has only served as a buffer in the internal struggle, with more and more concessions to the right. In view of this situation, the response will require preparing the army as a social group to take power. the counter-power, then still in its early stages, begins to take firmer forms when, after the failed ‘tancazo’, the people demand a thorough approach to the conspirators and generally anticipate the fall of General Prats and two members of his staff, whose position is the army was already threatened and isolated. September 11th is nothing more than the last chapter in a situation that has probably already been decided. With matters thus presented, the idea that the left had to organize itself according to a war strategy in order to fully court the lower sense dates back only to June 29. Before that date, the idea of ​​an army that does not stick to its ground and crushes the government in an attack was unthinkable in Chile, as it had never happened in the history of our country. Only since that date have the people begun to recognize the urgent need for an armed secondary force [a hope that is quickly being crushed]. but at the same time it was also the opportunity for the army itself, which is preparing itself from the moment for the conquest of power. it was a matter of acting quickly, of gaining time to gather forces [Fidel Castro’s letter says it clearly].

(7) Passim: But while the response strengthens its organization, the left is left behind; trapped in its ‘constitutional’ ghosts, it still applies social-democratic solutions while social dynamics require a revolutionary solution; the traditional party structures are unable to transform themselves in accordance with the new ones that have been introduced, the military members are tied hand and foot, full of bureaucratic illusions or corrupt in the sense that they are accustomed to using the civil apparatus; In short, the left finds itself in a powerless position in the face of new historical challenges due to its own contradictions. / Although those in charge of the ‘counterforce’ complained in the days that followed the ‘tancazo’ that this was the only possible tactic, nothing concrete was done and the historical opportunity had already been missed, as if everything had been lost , their hidden names were no longer a point of official discussion and turned into defeatism. In the social-military circumstances we found ourselves in in those late months, an army united against a people who were unarmed and unprepared could only mean a crushing defeat. Those people who thought this way became more resentful about their private affairs or prepared to leave the country. what else? In this state of affairs it would be utopian to build anything; there was nothing that could be done to change it now.

(8) Passim: Indeed, we all knew that the coup was coming. in the left struggle we saw some people with their arms folded, waiting for ‘Chicho’ to put everything in order, for him to stop the movement of the rebels by reason of the commonwealth, on the grounds that ultimately the forces within themselves would defend us against an attack from the ‘dogs’. ‘ and from a single stray general who took the coup as his order. Some expected that a number of officers would defend us against other officers, while others thought of an attack of the troops against their superiors, and there were those who for a time had hopes of a working-class army against the regular troops. / Despite all the illusion about the ‘Chilean way’, constitutional traditions, ‘progressive genetics’, class-conscious soldiers or ‘poder popular’ [people’s power], the historical laws revolted with destructive force to tell the same story of the brained bald who, threatened in its interests, plays the role of the historical enemy of the propertyless and unemployed masses and successfully seizes its effective defense mechanisms. In Chile 1973, seeing the rise and consolidation of popular organizations, which, within the limits of the law, are gradually reducing privileges and economic privileges, the brutal violence of defensive repression reaches the level of true genocide with a cruelty unknown in the history of Latin America and equaled only in Nazi Germany.”

Overgang feodalisme naar kapitalisme, Algemeen

(1) Otto Finger, “Über historischen materialismus und zeitgenössischen tendenzen seiner verfassung”, Akademie Verlag 1977; “In the Feuerbach theses, Marx does not only make a theoretical criticism of the old material, he does not just point out serious errors, philosophical errors, blunders, inconsistencies, inconsistencies, he makes an ideological criticism, exposes the criticized assumptions of false consciousness, the civil class status was released. This becomes particularly clear in the direct Feuerbach thesis. She makes an assessment of the milieu theory developed in pre-Marx materialism, of the materialistic learning of the change in circumstances and upbringing. [Added by Engels in the first edition to the statement that people produce changed circumstances and upbringing, and therefore changed circumstances and changed upbringing. These teachers now forget that the circumstances are changed by the students and that the educator himself has to be educated. The question arises as to how it is that the material philosophers of the civil enlightenment ‘forget’ that they contain the relationship between man and his environment. The consequence is that militant theory must ‘probe society into two parts – one of which is superior to it’.

(2) Passim: But that is exactly the position of the bourgeois class, the position of the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. Now, at the time of the development of these milieu territories, the bourgeoisie was not a dominant class, but was still suppressed as a ‘district class’. The milieu theory expresses two different situations at the time. In a peculiarly critical form, it reflects the already relaxed rule of the feudal aristocracy. the one who is exalted above this company; so, feudalism, still has power, it still controls society, insofar as it is the previously created political and legal institutions, their forms of government, their ideological norms, their moral and educational systems that shape social life. The environmental theory is a moment of destabilization of this rule of the feudal, the abolitionist fairytale, and the entire feudal hierarchy; Because this power of feudalism appears neither as controlled nor as natural – it is the entirety of the factors that determine society, the milieu, that can be grasped, explained, and measured by people. So it contains an anti-feudal-bourgeois-revolutionary core: those who in the existing society are poorly cared for human things, those who are poorly cared for in human things in the feudal society, those who the feudal society has in every way defects and vices of all kinds. If this is due to the circumstances, then these circumstances must also be changed. The bourgeois revolution does exactly this; It replaces the feudal system with a bourgeois form of rule, enforces the bourgeois morality of the rulers, and creates a new bourgeois system of education and upbringing.”

Vergelijkende geschiedenis, Tijdperk van burgerlijke revoluties, Engeland en China

(1) Kenneth Pomeranz, “a force de ‘empire – Révoution industrielle et écologie, on purquoi L’Angleterre a fait mieux que la Chine”, éRe 2009; “Production, female income and allocation of work within households – Was not the high standard of living of the Chinese the result of institutions which were hampering the transition to other development forests? This is what is suggested by the notions of ‘involution’ or high level equilibrium trap that some historians convoke [Philip Huang in the first case, Mark Elvin in the second]. But, between Cine and Western Europe, nothing makes it possible to establish with certainty which factor markets came closest, in the XVIIIth century, to the ideal of the neoclassical market. // Land was generally less taxed in China, and the regalements and corporate privileges clearly constrained artisanal activities. European capital arches were better able to raise large starting sums, but before the rise of the railroad, the impact of this factor on productive activity was limited: those who borrow the largest sums of money were ‘money, in Europe, was first used to make war [or to develop colonies overseas, but we will come back to this point]. Chinese interest rates were not severely punished; it is also very likely that the millions of European households which made the bulk of investments in agriculture and proto-industry would have preferred this system of higher rates, probably because defaults in payment are less severely punished; it is moreover very probable that the millions of European households which made the main part of the investments in agriculture and proto-industry would have preferred this system of higher rates and lower resources. [Mechanized industry would have made profits even with interest rates much higher than Chinese or European rates.] //

(2) Passim: It is the question of work that has generated the most debate. Pure many others, the growth model of the Chinese rural economy is characterized at this time by its intrinsic limits which would fundamentally differentiate it from the European model. The best-known statement of this argument is the thesis of “ involution ” put forward by Philippe Huang: in a context of extreme population density and reduction in the size of farms, peasants, in order to meet consumption targets. that they tin and fixed, will have, according to Hunag, to be self-exploiting by working more and more pure of minimal returns. The main problem with this argument is that the productivity of paddy rice per hectare is significantly higher than that; this is why, as we shall see, hunger for land was not necessarily more acute in China than in most of the regions of Europe in the 18th century. More interesting is the second part of Huang’s thesis: like Chinese women were no female labor market. But in the musrue where it was all the same well to feed them their families pushed them to devote themselves more and more to the domestic manufacture of goods intended for the market [especially textiles], but very low remunerated, without buying any good which would have. were able to limit their household load. Suddenly, according to Huang, the intensification of labor did not lead to reallocation of working time to meet the market [nor of specialization], and did not create a mass market for manufactures: this is why it led to ‘involution’ and not to development. //

(3) Passim: It is unnecessary to summarize here all of the debates that Huang’s work aroused. Two points deserve to be underlined. all the more so it is difficiele, taking into account the preceding remarks, to maintain that the Chinese had just enough to live in 1750 as before. Then, the estimates of the revenues from spinning and weaving – ‘at the basis of the argument on the low ratio of female labor, gathered below the living wage – are based on data from the 1690s, at a time where the price of cotton fabrics is at one of its two lowest points for the whole period 1450-1850, when the prices of raw cotton remain relatively high. On the contrary, if we combine Huang’s data on physical productivity with more representative prices of the mid-18th century, we arrive at very different results. // Even with these corrections, the income of the spinners was very low. But as Huang himself notes, most of the tin-spinning work done by young girls, not by adulterers [at least in the lower Yangtze]; and even in the most pessimistic scenarios 210 days at a young age. For an adult combining spinning and weaving, the same 210 days of work yields around 12 taels per year; taking into account the price of rice in the middle of the 18th century, this was enough to acquire about three times the quantity consumed usually by an adult. Now compare this situation to that of a farm worker. With a twelve month work charge in the year, and assuming that all meals were paid for by the employer in addition to cash wages [even though we know that in fact only part of the food was provided] we can estimate that the incomes of agricultural workers were equivalent to those of spinners or weavers, within a range of plus or minus 15%. //

(4) Passim: Finally, whatever the other induced effects and cultural treats specific to the Chinese patriarchy, it appears that, at least for this period, the incomes of women were closer to those of men than in Europe. So Chinese families, when making their purchases, avianet all the reasons of the world to consider the opportunity cost not only of the time of the men but also of that of the women, and everything indicates that this is what they did. . To the corning level of life of the Chinese we must therefore add, at least temporarily, an increasingly strategic approach to family resources. As a result, on the Chinese side and on the European side, the similarities are strong, whether we look at the side of production as of consumption. // But these resemblances were not to last. In Europe, both population and per capita consumption experienced an unprecedented boom between 1750 and 1900. In China, on the contrary, population growth markedly stalled from 1800, and the per capita consumption of non-cereal products is declining: at the start of the 20th century, the figures for fabrics, sugar and tea are clearly below the most pessimistic estimates for 1750. And this is not due to a any overestimation of figures for the 18th century.

(5) Passim: Ecological constraints? Energy, fibers and trade – Ecological diferences are very important in this divergence between China and Europe. But the reason is not, as we have been able to write, that the most developed Chinese regions were ‘overpopulated’. With a comparable hope and standard of living, everything suggests that Mathusian pressures are not exerted more or less equally at the two ends of Eurasia. Let us therefore examine these ecological differences according to the ‘four basic needs of life’ which, according to Malthus, are in competition for the disposition of the soil: food, heating fuel, textural fibers and building material. // The food supply did not threaten directly either in the east or in Oues, even if in Great Britain, agricultural production reached its limits: at a time when, around 1800, owned societies and artificial aggregates did not exist, the The extension of the cultivated area would necessarily lead to soil depletion. But most of continental pre-Napolian Europe still had a good margin for progress, owing to institutions which encouraged fallow too much. discourages and attempts to drain the tides, or slow down the spread of mixed farming systems [agriculture and livestock]. Seen from China, everything happens as if particular institutional rigidities had conspired to delay the generalization in Europe of modern productive practices. Great Britain had been quicker to accomplish these reforms, so that on the eve of an unprecedented population explosion there was little room for improvement, which is confirmed by the fact that between 1750 and 1850. agricultural yields hardly increase any more.

(6) Passim: The only possible way to continue improving yields without degrading the environment was to apply labor intensive methods as was done in Denmark. But such a model was difficult to transpose to England, where English farmers were reluctant to risk an increase in their slarious costs without guaranteeing significantly higher gains. // Even in the north of La Cine, a region of dry cultivation, where the econ system is generally much more vulnerable than in the south, the data, although incomplete, suggest that from the point of view of nutrient supplies, the crop ratio cereals was better than in Angeleterre around 1800 [this report was probably less favorable in the cotton lands of the north of the Cie to which we will come back]. And cotton plants from northern China, we will come back to them]. And in the rice-growing regions, it was still possible, without changing the techniques used, to improve production without depleting the soil. … forests were by far the primary sources of fuel and building materials. The higher density of the Chinese population and the images of deforestation starting from the end of the 19th century mean that we tend to imagine them much more degraded in China than in Europe. But such an impression is false if one places oneself in 1750 or even in 1800. Great Britain had faced serious shortages of timber before 1650, just like northern Italy. By 1800, the forest cover was probably approaching there. the 5% against to to 15% in the rest of island and peninsular Europe. eme in France, rather well endowed compared to the rest of Western Europe, reached only a rate of 16% in 1789, against 33% in 1550. Under such conditions, and even in suposnat a thrifty management, La France in 1789 was to devote 90% of its annual forest growth to meeting only heating and cooking needs, leaving only little wood for construction, and even less for industry. / In particular the forges devouring fuel [and the shortage often forced them to operate only a few weeks a year]. //

(7) Passim: In China, scattered sources seem to show the same in the lower Yangzi, very densely populated, the ecological effects of deforestation of the mountains were not too much felt until around 1820. Wood was not plentiful in North China, but fuel supply was not plentiful in North China, but fuel shortage was not plentiful in North China, but fuel shortage was seldom a concern. From the only aggregate figures I could find for 1700, China’s forest coverage as a whole reached 37%. In 1900, on the other hand, deforestation reached dramatic levels. It is difficult to follow the evolution between the two // To compensate for the absence of sources, I tried to reconstitute the uses of the land in the Shandon region of the southwest around 1800., an interesting region for our purposes because it was both densely populated and little importing of construction timber, while its rate of deforestation would reach dramatic proportions in the 1930s. Despite my efforts to present the picture as gloomy as possible in 1800, the situation appears close to that of France: the rate of forest cover was in all probability 20% greater than the minimum requirements. Behind these figures, the hardships must have been immense for a large part of the population given the uneven distribution and the fact that wood was needed for other uses [but this was also the case in France]. //

(8) Passim: But what about the situation of even more populated areas of rice fields in China? Calculations are impossible for the lower Yangtze, as we have no precise figures concerning the imports of construction timber, which are gigantic in this region; but they are achievable in the case of lingnan, the second richest macro-region in China, around Canton. The territory of Linnan represents approximately 70% of that of France; it had 17.5 million inhabitants in 1753 and 30M. in 1853. However, even in 1853, the forests of Lingnan were more extensive than those of France in 1789; and despite the high population density, in 1793, it reached six times the level of France in 1789, and in 1853 it remained pulsed twice as high as the same French levels of 1789. In other words, despite higher population densities , Chinese performances seem to indicate that around 1800, the Malthusian movement was not stronger there than in Europe. The figures look like this … But these data also showed that despite efficient collection and use of fuel, the population and proto-industrial growth continued to strain on forest resources. In the 18th century, the price of wood, which was already high, continued to increase, in China as well as in Europe. And even if the survival of the populations populations was not threatened, there remained an important obstacle to the consumption of energy per head.  …..

(9) Passim: The European economies of the 18th century needed more textual fibers to cope with the increase in clothing consumption and to sell textual products to remote areas purvous of raw materials. But there were several problems. Producing more wool will have to devote too much of the land to sheep breeding, to the detriment of intensive crops. Flax, on the other hand, depletes the soil and is expensive in labor. It is purqoui it was mainly cultivated in gardens, on small peri-urban plots where it could benefit from abundant labor and human fertilizer. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the British parliament on several occasions received subsidies to support the flax crop, but production increased only slightly. In continental Europe, it increased only very slightly. In continental Europe, it hardly increased any more, except in Russia, where it was possible to leave the ground to rest for a long time after two harvests of flax. Increasing domestic production of textile fibers in proportion to New World cotton imports around 1830 would have been expected to trent up flax production in Angeleterre, which was hardly conceivable. //

(10) Passim: Cotton, the main textile fiber in Eastern Asia, is less popular than linen, it is as thick as soil. The gigantic imports of soybeans from Manchuria to the Yngzi inferior were mainly used to fatten the cotton fields – the same could be said of the Japanese peaches which saw a similar boom after 1750. If Europe finally converted to cotton, eke ayssuem ekke did not produce it themselves from imported fertilizer, but brought it from America. The question of textile fibers therefore led us to the more general problem of long-distance trade. The scarcity that affected densely populated regions capable of producing surplus timber. of cattle, grians, etc., but which, conversely, produced little of the manufactured goods which the first had in abundance. Thus, Great-Britain and the Low countres turned first towards the Baltic [and the Mediterranean for cotton], then towards the New World; and the lower Yazi turned to the regions further upstream of the river for Rice and timber, to Mandcourie for wheat and soa, and to North China for Raw cotton. Around these first lands, the Yanzi delta entered into a trade incomparably superior to anything that was practiced elsewhere in the world in the eighteenth century; and the delta of the Riviéra des Peres tends to follow the same model. //

(11) Passim: But this type of trade was beginning to reach its limits: this is a new characteristic shared by East Asia and Europe. In the outskirts where families were more or less free to choose what to devote their energy to, the growth of exports and trade tended to stimulate demographic growth, either through the bialis of natural growth or through immigration. In addition, as the better land became more common and the most accessible forests were cleared, part of the labor force tended to switch to the artisanal sector, and began to produce goods previously brought there. As that did not suppose the acquisition of expensive machines, and that the high cost of the transport of heavy goods protected the local industry, of the import sustituions thus operated in a more ‘natural’ way than nowadays. . Taken together, these changes are leading in these regions to limit the surplus of prayer materials and the importation of manufactured products. // This is precisely what happened in most of the interior cinema at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. The middle and upper Yanzi regions experienced rapid population growth which tended to reduce the surpluses of rice and timber: a part of the additional labor began to make coarse fabrics which were subscribed to the cargoes of lower yanzi. In western China, population growth was so rapid that it probably led to the conversion of part of the cash crops into cereal production; and a growing portion of raw cotton, which was mass produced locally, was spun and tied on site instead of being sent south. //

(12) Passim: The Angzi Delta primarily compensates for these losses by conquering new, more lintian markets [in Manchuria in Southeast Asia, and to some extent in the West] and by specializing more in high-end products for consumers. elites, as would any long industrialized region. but several factors reinforce this movement of manufacturing specialization. even if the data are unified, it can be estimated that the purchasing power of a spinner or a weaver in the Yangtze River delta fell by about 22 to 42% between 1750 and 1800 [ the reality is probably near the end of the range] and that by 1840 it had fallen by another 10%. Over a century, the demographic growth of the deltaa was close to zero, so the populatio of the Cine as a whole had roughly doubled. The LInnan region experiences the same processes, in an attenuated way. // To counter these developments, the inhabitants of the peripheries, more and more numerous, would have had, logically to migrate towards the delta of Yanzi, where the standard of living was higher. This would have allowed these regions to continue to export raw materials, while containing the level of salt in the delta, allowing its manufactured products to remain more competitive in export. // But this is where the institutional and cultural factuers come in. Tissue production is an overwhelmingly female activity, and women hardly ever emigrate without the entire family. Family mobility depended on strategies decided by men, and in rural areas the latter were almost all farmers. The industry was predominantly rural, and it was very difficult to live in the countryside for someone who had neither family ties nor access to the land: we were far from the situation in England, or the big landowners. earthlings were always looking for cottagers. Land in the delta was expensive, and a large deposit was required in order to be able to rent it. Even poor families in the interior had little reason to leave, unless they were deprived of land altogether. //

(14) Passim: It is true that throughout the seventeenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth, various institutional mechanisms [such as, for example, public loans for seeds or animals] had failed to facilitate the migration of the poor to regions where the need for agricultural workers. were more important. These incentives did not exist in Europe where various institutional arrangements discouraged Westerners in a better way to leave for Central Europe, which is richer in land, and where the high cost of transport to the New World limited the possibilities of emigration for the poorer; moreover, these contractors found themselves in competition with servile labor. In China, therefore, as long as there was land available, no doubt that it was more important, for the integration of labor markets, to encourage such emigration to areas requiring labor rather than immigration to labor. direction of the delta; From this point of view, the Chinese labor market seems to have been more integrated than in Europe. But as the possibilities of going to work on the land diminished, he as the possibilities of going to work on the land diminished, and it became more and more difficult, in the most developed regions, to retrain in industry or in services. In addition, the Chinese family ideal where ‘man plows and woman weaves’ meant that families in the agricultural peripheries also produce text pieces. Thus, we see the gradual appearance of a phenomenon already noticed by Saito Osamu for Japan during the Tokugawa period [1603-1867: the development of a family division of labor which tends to be sustained by geographical specialization. With the rise of incomes in certain Chinese rice-exporting regions, and with the policy of the Quing administration in favor of the expansion of cotton cultivation and weaving in these same regions, a greater number of families could preferring this solution, which allowed women to work at home [rather, for example, than expanding the practice of double harvesting rice, as other members of the Qing administration have said]. By adopting this solution, they reinforced the ecological pressures on the regions of the delta. //

(15) Passim: This demographic growth of the Chinese peripheries also makes it possible to explain why the observers of the nineteenth century did not perceive the decline in consumption which appears immediately when we compare the figures for 1750 with the data for the beginning of the twentieth century. Most regions have not experienced such a decline [the north and north-east are predominantly exceptions], but the change in the relative weight of the different regions is pulling the national boundaries down. The Yanzi Delta alone represented between 16 and 21% of the total population of the Cie in 1750, but less than 9% in 1850, and 7% in 1950. Among the eight Chinese macro-regions defined by Skinner, the the richest three accounted for more than half of Chinese sugar consumption in the mid-eighteenth century, so we have the explanation for the apparent decline in sales between 1750 and the 1930s. Living standards in many hinterlands have certainly continued to rise. progress but they remained far behind those of the Yanzi Delta, and they ended up crushing the average figures for the whole country. //

(16) Passim: Contingency and the ‘European miracle’ – We can now return to our original question: how did Great Britain escape the fate of the Yangtze Delta? One of the central factors has been technological change – especially the steam engine and coal, which relieved the earth of the constraints that weighed on it and left it more radically, until the arrival of chemicals and electricity at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. But the other crucial fact [at least as important as all these small changes in our sectors on which so much has been insisted in recent decades] is the relationship between Great Britain and its peripheries, very different from those we have just come from. describe pure China. // The importance of these two factors becomes clearer if we keep in mind that the mechanization of industry, once begun, was nothing of a more necessary or inevitable process than any of the other phases of the process. knowledge which had already had been fruitfull,  In reality, it would not have been able to continue if, in this context of the growth of the population and of its consumption part, no solution had been found to the problem of ever stronger contributors to resources and the environment. // Contrary to interior China, where the demographic growth and the subsituions of imports had contracted the interior trade, the exchanges continued, inside Europe, between the western heart and its eastern periphery. In Eastern Europe, agricultural improvements and the growth of the population were hampered by the serf system and other institutional constraints, which did not encourage the coming of workers from regions with demographic surpluses, because they were accustomed to more freedom. Likewise, in Eastern Europe, wage labor, which made it possible elsewhere to found families without having land assets, was very limited. Finally, the peasants did not have the possibility of turning massively towards artisanal activities.

(17) Passim: These same structures also prevent it from responding to external demand; they also limited the domestic demand of these regions for imported manufactured goods, since a large part of the population was poor and / or economically economically dependent [even if its products were not]. Thus the trade of the Baltic, which leveled off after 1650, remained at a level markedly lower than that of the distant trade of basic products in Cine. As a result of this stanation, exporting capacities remained at half-mast until changes in institutions, techniques and prices led to a new model in which the East sold its grain to the West and bought its manufactured goods. But I had to wait until the 1860s for this. // During the entire preceding century, it was the New World which, for reasons which derive from the unique history of this territory and its natural advantages, played the main role of a valve easing the constraints on the land in Europe. North West. Diseases from the Old World had caused the death of millions of indigenous people, and a large part of this labor force had been replaced by slaves, the transport of which cost about a quarter of the income from exports at the end of from the 18th century. In addition, these slaves often did not go hungry [as opposed to most Old World forced laborers]. As a result, the Slavery Atlantean Arc [from Brazil to the southern states of the United States] became the first ‘odern’ periphery, in which the main expenditure was devoted to the portaion of capital goods [here slaves] and to mass consumer goods [such as cheap textiles to dress slaves]. Thus the New World, unlike the peripheries of Ancine Monder, continued to strengthen its position as an agricultural periphery, allowing Western Europe to specialize more and more in the production of manufactured goods. [The latter represented the essential currency against African slaves, and were also sold to North America, which bought them with income from sales of grain and timber destined for West Indian plantations.] / /

(18) Passim: In the long term, exports from North America would increase further, but in Asia, the phenomenon is generally after 1860; and, as John McCusker and Russell have shown, North American settlement has long been dependent on these export capacities. But we could show that, from before 1830, goods from the New World relieved Great Britain of the constraints which weighed heavily on its lands, thus, the quantity of the Antils sugar imported by the British in 1801 represented ‘equivalent in terms of contributions. calories, of which 344 to 486,000 hectares of the best English cereal lands would have produced. In 1831, that is to say before the fall in sugar prices which led to a fivefold increase in per capita consumption, the figure reached 486 to 648,000 ha. Likewise, to dispense with imports of American cotton, the British would have had to devote more than 9.3 million ha to the production of wool: this is more than all the land consecrated in Great Britain to ranching and agriculture; This figure is also higher than that of 6 million ha proposed by Wrigely to assess the impact of coal around 1820. So, it is in part because the markets of its near European periphery did not function as well as it did. the case for China in eastern Asia, due in particular to forced labor and colonial monopolies, that Great Britain turned to Asia to find a solution to the eco-friendly limits weighing on primary resources. //

(19) Passim: The American importance, which affects Great Britain to save its land, continued to increase with industrialization, following closely the curve of fossil fuels. Thus, between 1815 and 1900, the British production of coal multiplied by fourteen, the imports of ucre by eleven, and the imports of cotton by twenty. At the same time, Great Britain begins to import enormous quantities of grain, beef, timber, and other commodities from America, as the New World becomes a vital outlet for all of America. supernumerary population from different parts of Europe. The mechanisms which enabled Europe to save its land thanks to American exports were subsequently attenuated, due to the assertion of European tastes that migrants had retained, due to technical progress, the rise of machines replacing slaves, and the rise of new independent states willing to finance the expansion of the frontier to the west. But they had played a crucial role in the growth of colonies and transatlantic trade.  //

(29) Passim The ‘ghost hectares’, sustainable development and discontinuity – ….. Coal is traditionally regarded as one of the essential elements of the industrial revolution. Only cotton, iron, steel and railroad co-occupy an equally central place in the work of historians, and three of these four other sectors depend directly on chabon. However, some recent work tends to downgrade its role by emphasizing, for example, that the early manufactures used water more often.as motive power, and that most of the English coal was used for heating and cooking. Even the calculations made by Wrigley, purely to reaffirm the centrality of coal, do not allow us to see what would have happened without this energy revolution. It is probable that the effects would have been repressed on the whole economy rather than on a single sector: we would have been able to heat houses, we would have had to buy more clothes, we would have produced less iron, etc. // Nevertheless, we must give coal a central role in our explanations of the industrial revolution, for the reasons mentioned by Wrigley, but not only It was not possible, for obvious geographic reasons, to continue to use indefinitely water as a driving force. Neither is it envisaged to replace coal in the various chemical and physiological processes where it was used as a source of energy, from dyeing to metallurgy via breweries, nor in the chemical industry and iron. And team, so central to the progress of the division of labor.

(21) Passim: In the metal industry it is also difficult to imagine substitutes for fossil energies. Even under ideal conditions, the whole of the woodlands of England and Wales could only have suppressed an annual production of 87,000 to 175,000 tons of smelted iron; however, British production had already reached 400,000 tons in 1820. Without the return of this cheap and flexible energy, other sectors would also have experienced slower growth. This is the case with the steam engine, which was initially so bulky, so dangerous and so consuming in energy that it was only good for pumping alone; the energy was almost free because of the small coals, these coals which were not even worth the cost of transport to market them: without this use, and if the coal thus extracted had not allowed a more general fall in the price of energy, it is not certain that the we would have taken a step to improve the steam engine. Coal does not allow the inventions of the industrial revolution to be exploited, but without it their economic impact would have been much more limited. // The second objection, pointing to the role of New Wave resources, takes up arguments that have already been used to minimize the role of overseas withdrawals in the accumulation of capital in Europe. How can we present these as decisive, when their weight is modest compared to other factors [such as the accumulation of capital in Europe itself, or domestic food production]? The question is of importance. particularly methodological, which goes well beyond our purpose here. //

(22) Passim: When we calculate the growth of a region or country, the importance of one factor is measured quantitatively: the smallest factors are seen as minor factors. But all depends on the categories that we defined at the start. Thus comparing the importation of American agricultural commodities into Great Britain in 1830 with the inevitable British ‘domestic agricultural production’ gave the impression that American imports were low. On the other hand, the import of textiles from the United States appears very important when compared to ‘other fibers’. The way in which we construct our categories and the degree of precision that we assign to them depend on complex presuppositions and implicit counterfactual reasoning, in particular on the substitutability of different products and on the importance of certain sectors in the economy as a whole. However, it seems much more likely that the importance of the pure New World Europe will be measured in terms of resources rather than of profits, as did for example eric williams in his famous book Capitalism and Slavery: if it were possible to To make profits by investing differently, it is much less certain that there are other ways to obtain such quantities of agricultural products. Unless you postulate that there must always be substitutes for everything, it must therefore be admitted that there are cases where small quantities make the difference. //

(23) Passim: How much weight one is willing to give to coal and the New World in the great divergence phenomenon depends in part on the arguments made at the beginning of this chapter about the similarities between China and Europe. However: 1) these facts, as the figures show, were not minor if we relate them to data such as the quantity of very available in the British territory: / 2) they correspond to the chrnology of the great divergence , and allow to explain it, pure as much as one accepts that this one takes place during the period 1750-1850; / 3) they made it possible to lift a constraint – that of the finite quantity of land – which it was very difficult to compensate for, given the assets available at the time and the institutional constraints; / 4) finally the case of the central regions of China and Japan, as well as parts of Europe [such as Denmark] show by example what the fate of companies deprived of these advantages would have looked like. It is not necessary to postulate that, without these resources, Europe would have been the victim of a Malthusian catastrophe, or that with a slightly greater ecological margin of maneuver, China would have engaged in industrialistion. [The latter is also not a necessary step, and it is purqui it is useful to wonder why England did not follow the example of the Yanzi delta, not the other way around]. a European ecological crisis could have had it, but other outcomes were also possible, by virtue of which the standards of living would have been preserved, without however leading to a full and complete industrialization, even would have prevented it. //

(24) Passim: Without fossil fuels and without access to the New World, two factors that combined, made it possible to save the economy from a more intensive use of its land, Europe would also have been able to take the path of the intensification of work. adopted by East Asia. Several indications show that it began to move in this direction in the 18th century: the decline in meat consumption between 14oo and 1800; the evolution of French agriculture and proto-industry: and especially the example of the labor economy was not essential but contingent: remove the unexpected resources offered by coal and the New Wave, and it It is not difficult to imagine a progressive evolution of Europe towards an economy based more on intensive labor, with a larger agricultural population, engaged in increasing yields while preserving soil fertility through marnanae, more manure, better use of crop residues, etc. By following such a path, the standard of living could be maintained, even improved, but Europe would not have invented the world which wastes energy and captial which has become our own. Indeed, to the extent that the extent to which the productivity of additional agricultural workers is proven [so their absence would drive up agricultural prices] and to the extent that the moderation of intensive labor is required, making the other solutions less advantageous. to land constraints, ruptures such as the industrial revolution and the ‘second agricultural revolution’, that of the XIXth century, would have been probable. ….. 

(25) Passim: Qu’est ce que le développement? – Huang’s insistence on his narrow definition of development makes sense if one adopts a clearly teleological approach, if one seeks in the eighteenth century only the clues of a certain mode of development, that which prevails in a wave arched by the massive use of energy. Very rapid technical change and all the other characteristic elements of modernity. but even if we adopt this point of view, the picture is actually more complex. If nowadays, reaching the standard of living of the most disadvantaged nations requires up to a certain point to increase the capital intensity of production in all sectors and to greatly increase the productivity of labor, it does not There is no consensus on when this process should take place or even if [as has been thought] it should happen in agriculture before industry. Much work on Tokugawa Japan, for example, emphasizes that Japanese agriculture and industry were characterized by labor intensity and market openness: these characteristics combined with the moderate increase in goods available to the market. consummation, played a crucial role, in giving birth to a relatively skilled and disciplined workforce [as well as an accumulation of capital], which subsequently proved essential to industrialization. Much work devoted to proto-industrialization. in Europe have drawn up very difficult observations, as we know. //

(25) Passim: There were enough similar elements in 18th-century Jiannan to ask – as others did before me – how much of its highly commercialized and labor-intensive economy [agriculture like craftsmanship] has in one way or another opened up the way to modern development. Consider, for example, to what extent the intensification of work at the beginning of the Odern era [ie before the 18th century], which Huang opposes to development, may have contributed to this growth. The more one follows Chayanov’s reasoning, according to leuel the peasants aspire to an income guaranteeing their biological and social reproduction rather than to maximizing their profit, as a business, the more one expects these peasants to prefer to produce for their own domestic use, the increase in the hourly productivity of their labor leading them to imitate their production for the market: according to Chayanov, the peasants accept to receive a more or less constant monetary income and prefer security, autonomy, or leisure time that they can get by devoting more time and energy to their household. If one accepts these assumptions, as does Huan, then it becomes all the more crucial to understand how a given society comes to a very different situation in which most people devote most of their work to pure production. market, working very intensely, and respond to monetary incentives by agreeing to work more for the market, in the hope of accessing more consumer goods. //

(26) Passim: In his book on the Yangi Delta, P. Huang broadly follows the singular interpretation forged by historian Robert Brenner from the English experience, according to which the shift into a modern economic culture could only occur when proletarianization deprives the population of any alternative. Hence the importance of the enclosures in Angelterre and the emphasis placed by Huang and Brenner on the qusi-absence, in China, of a ‘capitalist agriculture’ relying heavily on salt labor. Purtant, a number of works devoted to British agriculture – including those of Mark Overton, whom Huan quotes on several occasions – have cast doubt on this explanation: the demands of the market and the availability of new consumer goods accessible only on the new market, could have been more important stimulants. For his part, Robert Alen, whom Haung also quotes, found no evidence to support Brenner’s assertions that the competitive nature of the British land market would have pushed farmers to be particularly efficient. Studying a large sample of ex; poitaitons. he found no correlation between the lowers rate per acre and other rent costs]. From this and other indicies, he concluded that the rents were not determined by competition – they were fixed administratively or negotiated between the owner and the tenant. In other words, there is no reason to believe that the land market has been much more competitive in Angelterre than in Jiangnan, it may even have been less. (0 Passim: R. Allen also found no evidence that the growing profits of 18th century financial owners were a major source of industrial investment, or that agriculture offered a particularly large or rapidly expanding market for the economy. british industry. In addition, wage earners freed ’from agricultural work by waves of fencing in the midlands in the 18th century ended up more unemployed than in the ranks of the new industrial workforce. In the words of Pl Hunag himself, the enormous mass of 18th-century Angli unemployed, many of whom survive on relief and / or working only a few days a year during the harvest, must be regarded as a case in point. classic ‘involution’. And the fears that are emerging in the elites with regard to these individuals regarded as the index of a rising social crisis would be similar to those which I observe in Jiangnan. All these elements have led R. Allen to reject what he calls ‘agrarian fundamentalism’, that is to say the formulations – including that of Brenner – affirming that the key to English industrial precocity should be sought in the singularity of its agrarian institutions. // Other research on various economies has shown that the demographic pressure, associated with the weight of rents, taxes or other monetary obigation leads to the same result, even in the absence of proletarianization. This is, for example, the argument found in George Grantham’s work on European agriculture. The demographic growth [conceived both as a creator of needs and a source of labor]] associated with the access to the market would have infused there enough specialization and intensification of the work to allow production to satisfy and even to exceed. slightly the demand, which allows – with other research – to question the empirical foundations of Brenner’s theory according to which in France, the development would have been seriously hampered compared to the Great Bretage, because of the persistence of smallholding.

(27) Passim: We find the same arguments in most of the numerous works devoted to European proto-industrialization. A number of viable studies focusing on other regions of Europe and the world indicate that the combination of accelerating demographic pressure and the sheer attraction of new consumer goods on the market may have spurred this social preparation and sometimes referred to as a ‘revolution. industiruese ‘, did not require prior prearrangement, and they were often already committed long before income per hour worked began to increase significantly. Thus, it is wrong to see the intensity of work – even an increasing intensity of work – as an obstacle to development. … ()  Passim: We will come back to the question of whether there are possible paths towards an industrial economy that are compatible with the type of labor-intensive agriculture known in Jiannan. This question is obviously central to my thesis and it is on it that Huan focuses his criticism. But my book on the ‘Great Divergence’ also had another dimension, it sought to show ‘from the Chinese case which are the main factuers which allowed Europe to avoid what Huan applied a process of involution, a process which could have taken place since, as most scholars of Europe find out, both trajectories were equally possible in modern times. to consider this question, one must have a little further the examination of the conditions under which different economies have been able to increase their total production by mobilizing more labor [what Huan calls growth without development], vor why this possibility remains wide open in the 18th century, and what are the special circumstances that make it less plausible at the end of the 18th century and in the 19th century. // We must also avoid assigning to capital from the pre-industrial era the same primacy that we generally grant when studying modern economies, and in particular not believe that we can indefinitely substitute the captial to land if access to it becomes scarce. If this seems possible, or almost achievable, in the contemporary wave, with its astounding energy resources and its capacity to increase yields per hectare [thanks to chemical fertilizers and pesticides], it is on the other hand particularly anachronistic to transpose this in the reindustrial world: in this universe, food, textile fibers, fuel and construction materials come primarily from plants, and the production of fertilizers derives from either animals or plants, also requiring the use of the earth: This is the key element Adam Sith had well recognized the phenomenon of diminishing returns, as much for capital as for capital than for labor, and Karl Marx made this question a key element of his analysis. It is only when one imagines a world dominated by permanent technical innovations that one can relax this constraint of diminishing returns. // (Part of the question of the great divergence of the West from the East, then, is that the West has chosen to continually run to the abyss. One wonders whether this is a question of Northern fatalistic thinking on nascent Christian capitalism.)

(28) Passim: It was with this idea in mind that I wondered whether the British model of saving labor for maximizing profit observed in itself would not have come up against serious limits if the abundant coal available and imports from the New Monde [notably of cotton] did not come and liberate England from the need to devote part of its land to the production of energy and fibers [or to import them exclusively from Europe]. Recall that each ton provides as much energy as the yield of a larger uestio which is at the center of my book: one can wonder if, were it not for a certain number of contingent factors, the movement which, in the XVIIIth century, could have increased production [or from the point of view of the people, to increase their income] through the intensification of work, could have continued to counterbalance the forces which, for their part, were pushing in the other direction, that is to say the solution of capital intensification. We know that this last solution was imposed in the 19th century. If this had not been the case, England could very well have known in the XIX century an evolution closer to that seen in Flanders, Kinai or Jiannan. // Ask if England could have known Jiangnan’s fate. // To ask if England could have known the fate of Jiangnan it is not only by an effect of symmetry wanting to reverse the usual question: ‘could the Jiagnan have known the evolution of England?’; because the question makes sense in the light of a certain number of empirical findings which deserve explanation. // First of all, British population grew at a dizzying rate during the first century of its industrialization, but while agricultural yields initially kept up with the same rate of growth, this was not the case soon. //

(29) Passim: Secondly, despite Brenner and Huan’s insistence on ‘the English agricultural revolution of the eighteenth century’, there is much evidence to the contrary that the gains in total production were very modest during the second half of the eighteenth century and from the first part of the 19th century. The great accomplishments during this period are more to be found in the maintine or in the slight increase in yields per acre as the number of openers decreased, but this feat does not answer my question. The increase in the productivity of the land, which would be the crucial element here, was considered to have slowed down from the middle of the 18th century. Hstorians have argued a lot about the pace and extent of this slowdown, but in any case, their conclusions are closer to mine than those of Philip Huang. At one end of the spectrum is Gregory Clark. pure that ‘all the reliable information available to us shows the low increase in productivity in agriculture between 1700 and 1850′. Robert Allen takes a radical Moons stance, but his work also contradicts any idea of ​​uninterrupted growth in the harvests made available to a British population which was nevertheless growing sharply. According to him, the main changes in the middle and at the end of the 18th century concern the distribution of income from agriculture, not to production itself [the main gains in terms of yields were obtained between 1650 and 1725, -he]. F.M.L. Thompson also believes that the eighteenth century saw no agricultural revolution, the major advancements later would have come with modern agriculture based on external fertilizer supplies. Mark Overtyon offers a much more optimistic view of the 18th century: according to his calculations, make it average per acre, which was 92 in 1600 and 100 in 1700, would have reached 135 by 1750 and would have increased by 16% before 1800, thus reaching 158, then stagnating until 1836. But even this particularly favorable assessment should lead us to reflect. Overton observes that the yield per acre was already 115 in 1300: the increase would therefore not be 40% in five centuries, which probably corresponds roughly to the increase in rice yields in Jiangnan during the same period. period. // () Passim: Third, taking into account the growth of the English population which goes from 5.77 million inhabitants in 1751 to 16.74 M. by 1851 [much faster growth than in China, not to mention Jiannan]. it appears that we are in any case far from the account: in fact, at the end of the 18th century and even more so in the 19th century, Angelterre went from being a net exporter of food products to that of a massive importer. English agriculture in the modern era had succeeded in raising the yields of backward farms to the level reached long before by the best farms, and even slightly exceeding it. But as the very slow growth of the late 18th century suggested, there was not much room left to pursue this rise in productivity per acre without the input of modern technology. And tripling the population certainly required much more than an increase, if the needs were to be met by the country’s internal resources alone. // Fourth, this increase in yields has created serious environmental tensions in certain regions. This movement could hardly have continued, let alone amplified, without the arrival of imported guano without local phosphate extraction and, much later, without chemical fertilizers. //

(30) Passim: Finally, even if we adopt the most optimistic visions of the capacity of English agriculture to meet the needs of population in the early days of industrialization, the fact remains that food constitutes only part of the resources drawn from it. of the agro-forest system constitutes only part of the resources drawn from the agro-forest system: undeniably, textual fibers were increasingly going abroad; and fuel and building materials out of the basement. We could therefore ask ourselves to what extent technological progress alone would have made it possible to produce a sufficient quantity, only technological progress would have made it possible to produce a sufficient quantity of manufactured goods to compensate for these punctures on agriculture, if we do not want to take into account of the benefits of the expansion overseas, nor of those of the post-Napoleonic agrarian reform which affected many places in Europe, and of the happy location of the English reserves in coal [whose importance I underlined ]. In fact, I would say that the weakest part of my argument [and the strongest element to justify the European exception concept] probably lies in the realm of science and technology. But it cannot be maintained that the exit from the agricultural sector of part of the labor force, in a contest of stagnation or of very high, moderate yields, was pure to make industrialization possible, without making industrialization possible. either need to resort to the import of raw materials and fossil fuels … 

(31) Passim: English agriculture, commerce, mining and industrialization – … More importantly: even if we admit that Angelterre has obtained particularly remarkable results in terms of agricultural labor productivity, we should not overestimate the impact of this factor. As I underlined in The Great Divergence, the following three considerations must be borne in mind: first, what progress in English agriculture may have been, it could not suffice in the face of the crossiance of population and the challenges of industrialistaiten; secondly, most of these rpgrés were obtained after 1820 [that is to say at the end of the period 1750-1850, which Brenner and Isett consider together], and they were largely based on non-agricultural inputs [such as imported guan, phosphors extracted from mines, etc.] that would not have been imitated, even at the end of the 18th century, when agriculture was struggling to cope with the end of the 18th century, when agriculture struggled to cope with demographic pressure: last but not least, in what Wrigley called an ‘organic economy’, the plant world [with the limit imposed by the availability of land ] does not only provide food but also fuel, fibers and building materials. However, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the importation of cotton and the enormous increase in coal mining were intended to relieve the British agro-forestry system of the responsibility of purging the country in textile fibers and fuel. These two factors weighed much more heavily than the final modest progress made by agriculture in the food sector. “

Geschiedenis, Overgang van feodalisme naar kapitalisme, Europa

(1) Div., “Manifest 20 juni  – Krant van de Nieuwe Communistische Partij NCPN”, Stichting HOC 2023 – Roel Hoefmaker, “Tate, Twitter en Testosteron”; “Let op: in het volgende stuk quote ik een aantal schokkende uitspraken van Andrew Tate om deze gedachten te analyseren. Een triggerwarning is daarom in plaats. // Situatie vandaag de dag – “In een relatie is de vrouw eigendom van de man”; “je hoeft geen medicijnen te nemen tegen depressie, je moet vooral zelf harder werken om gelukkig te worden”; “een vrouw slaan is soms oké”; of “slaan, vastpakken, wurgen, hou je bek bitch, seks”. Het is een greep uit een paar uitspraken van Andrew Tate. En toch als je sommige mannen vraagt wat ze ervan vinden dan hoor je wel eens “ik ben het niet met alles eens, maar hij zegt soms wel verstandige dingen”. Zijn boodschap, dat het lastig is om in deze tijd een echte man te zijn, vindt duidelijk gehoor bij vele mannen en jongens. De NOS interviewde zo’n jongere die fan is van Andrew Tate. De geïnterviewde tiener gaf aan dat Andrew Tate voor hem een inspiratie is om aan zichzelf en aan zijn eigen kennis te werken. Hij zei dat “Tate jongens en mannen helpt om hun eigen kracht weer te vinden”. Volgens de tiener zou een man hard en sterk moeten zijn en moeten zorgen voor zijn gezin. Tegelijkertijd is de tiener het niet persé oneens met Tate’s uitspraken over verkrachting. Want zoals Tate zelf zegt: “als je een verantwoordelijkheid hebt over iemand anders moet je ook de autoriteit hebben”. Deze door de NOS geïnterviewde jongere is hierin helaas niet uniek voor zijn leeftijdscategorie. De NOS deed een peiling onder ongeveer 4000 jongeren en daarvan gaf een kwart, 1066 jongeren, aan het gedeeltelijk of helemaal eens te zijn met de uitspraken van Andrew Tate. Van die 1066 jongeren vindt bijna 30 procent, zo’n 300 jongeren, dat “als je jezelf in een positie brengt om verkracht te worden, dat dat ook deels je eigen verantwoordelijkheid is.” 15 procent vindt “dat je een vrouw mag slaan als zij je beschuldigt van vreemdgaan”.

(2) Passim: Veel jongeren beginnen Andrew Tate te volgen omdat ze aangetrokken worden door zijn mindset van zo snel mogelijk en zoveel mogelijk geld verdienen. Hierin kan je een lijn trekken naar een ander controversieel figuur: Elon Musk. Elon Musk wordt door zijn fans de hemel in geprezen als een selfmade miljonair die rijk is geworden met goede ideeën, de personificatie van ‘the American Dream’. Daar valt een hele hoop op af te dingen, maar zijn fans lopen ermee weg. Toen Elon Musk Twitter overkocht, zette hij deze zogenaamde Amerikaanse idealen door en doopte Twitter om als een ‘bastion van vrijheid van meningsuiting’. In de praktijk betekende dat direct het terugzetten van, en blauwe vinkjes geven aan, eerder verbannen extreemrechtse complotdenkers zoals onder andere Project Veritas. Ook Elon zelf liet al snel zijn anti-vax en anti-trans mening blijken door tweets als “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci”. Franse krant Le Monde analyseerde vorig jaar november ongeveer 500 Twitter-interacties die Musk die maand had gehad. Bijna alle vriendschappelijke interacties waren met extreemrechtse personen, waaronder alt-right figuur Ian Miles Cheong en conservatief activist Tom Fitton. // Hiermee is Elon Musk ondertussen vooral de American Dream-guy van conservatief rechts Amerika. Zowel Musk als Tate hebben als gemene deler de promotie van de kapitalistische gedachte dat je het recht hebt om te pakken wat je pakken kan. Deze gedachte wordt mooi verpakt in termen als verantwoordelijkheid nemen en zelfbeschikking maar vooral Tate laat zien dat dit al snel afglijdt naar verregaande toxische problemen op sociaal-emotioneel gebied. Maar waar komt dit gedachtegoed dan vandaan? En is deze hedendaagse hang naar een zogenaamde traditionele mannelijke rol iets nieuws?

(3) Passim: Ethisch Egoïsme? – Lang antwoord kort: nee. Er zijn theorieën die claimen dat juist in tijden van crisis dit, door nostalgie aangedreven, conservatisme de kop opsteekt. Zo stelde een onderzoek van de Universiteit van California, Los Angeles dat tijdens coronatijd jongeren een groter belang hechtten aan traditionele genderrollen. Ook in de geschiedenis kan je dit soort patronen ontwaren. De industriële revolutie, en de daarmee samenhangende emancipatie van de arbeidersklasse, viel samen met de zogeheten ‘Victorian Era’. In die tijd werd de doctrine van ‘Seperate Spheres’ van Aristoteles populair. Een theorie die, om het kort te zeggen, voorstond dat mannen sterker zijn vrouwen en dat met dat ‘feit’ ook verschillende rollen in de maatschappij kwamen kijken. In een tijd waarin mannen en vrouwen samen in de fabrieken moesten werken, werden tegelijkertijd conservatieve idealen over mannen en vrouwen scherper neergezet. Historicus Catherine Hughes zei over die tijd: “In eerdere eeuwen was het normaal dat vrouwen naast hun echtgenoten en broers meewerkten in de familiezaak, maar in de Victoriaanse tijd werden de rollen tussen mannen en vrouwen sterker gedefinieerd dan ooit in de geschiedenis.”

(4) Passim: Een opkomst van conservatieve normen lijkt een product van veranderende tijden. Dit was vlak na de Tweede Wereldoorlog niet anders. Zo doet de huidige cultus rondom de regie nemende en zelfbeschikkende ‘self-made’ mannen sterk denken aan het werk van de schrijfster Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand vluchtte in 1926 vanuit Sovjet-Rusland naar Amerika. In verschillende boeken en nieuwsbrieven werkte zij haar objectivistische theorieën uit over individualisme, succes, en haar problemen met communisme. Haar theorie was dat het communisme een negatieve kijk had op persoonlijk succes en eropuit was om persoonlijke prestaties te remmen. Zo schreef zij onder andere: “When men share the same basic premise, it is the most consistent ones who win. So long as men accept the altruist morality, they will not be able to stop the advance of communism. The altruist morality is Soviet Russia’s best and only weapon.’ // Altruïsme als wapen van het communisme. Je ziet hierin een poging van Rand om een filosofische tegenhanger op het communisme te formuleren, een theorie die ze zelf het ‘ethisch egoïsme’ noemt. Echte helden, volgens Rand, moeten alleen handelen uit eigen belang. Alleen op die manier, zo stelt ze, krijg je grote historische gebeurtenissen. Het kapitalisme noemt ze hierin niet alleen een ideaal, maar vooral een onbekend ideaal. In Rands woorden is het kapitalisme: ‘een maatschappelijk systeem gebaseerd op de erkenning van individuele rechten, inclusief eigendomsrechten, waarin al het eigendom privaat bezit is.’ Ook stelt ze dat alleen in puur kapitalisme het individu zich kan ontpoppen. Het kapitalisme als perfecte systeem voor de Randiaanse ethisch egoïstische held: een echte mannelijke machoman die alles aanpakt wat hij kan krijgen. Klinkt bekend? Want de ideeën waarmee Andrew Tate jonge mannen aanspreekt zijn precies op zo’n mentaliteit gebaseerd.

(5) Passim: Vrijdenken als brandende sigaar – Nu is het geenszins mijn intentie om een zwart-witte tegenstelling neer te zetten tussen progressief en conservatief, daar persoonlijke waardeoordelen aan te koppelen, of grote complotten te insinueren. Zouden we dat doen, dan doen we tekort aan de ingewikkeldheid van deze thema’s. We spreken hier immers vooral over tendensen en patronen in de samenleving, die mede worden beïnvloed door stress en onzekerheid in tijden van crisis. Ik wil hier vooral inzoomen op hoe deze tendensen worden gebruikt en ingezet. Daarbij kun je zeker wél de vraag stellen in wiens belang deze tendensen zijn. Een blik in het verleden kan ons hierbij helpen. // In zijn inleiding bij ‘De ontwikkeling van het socialisme van utopie tot wetenschap’ laat Engels zien hoe de hang naar het traditionalisme in de Victoriaanse tijd werd gebruikt door de bourgeoisie in hun verhouding tot de werkende klasse: ‘En nu brak de triomf aan van het kleinburgerlijke Britse fatsoen over de vrijdenkerij en de godsdienstige onverschilligheid van de continentale bourgeois. De arbeiders van Frankrijk en Duitsland waren opstandig geworden. Zij waren volledig besmet met het socialisme en bovendien — om zeer goede redenen — wat betreft de middelen ter verovering van de heerschappij geenszins verstokte aanhangers van de legaliteit. Hier was de ‘puer robustus’ (‘sterke jongen’) inderdaad elke dag meer ‘malitiosus’ (‘kwaadwillend’) geworden. Wat bleef de Franse en Duitse bourgeois als laatste redmiddel anders over dan hun vrijdenken stilzwijgend te laten vallen, zoals een kwajongen de brandende sigaar waarmee hij over het dek liep te geuren, stilletjes wegwerkt wanneer de zeeziekte hem besluipt?

(6) Passim: De een na de ander werden de spotters in hun uiterlijke optreden vroom, zij spraken met eerbied over de kerk, haar leerstellingen en gebruikten en namen die laatste zelfs in acht voor zover ze er niet onderuit konden. De Franse bourgeois aten op vrijdag geen vlees en de Duitse bourgeois doorstonden in hun kerkbanken langademige protestantse preken. Zij waren met hun materialisme bedrogen uitgekomen. ‘De godsdienst moet voor het volk behouden blijven’ — dat was het enige en laatste middel om de maatschappij te redden van de totale ondergang. Tot hun ongeluk ontdekten ze dit pas nadat zij hun uiterste best hadden gedaan om de godsdienst voorgoed te verdelgen. En toen was het de beurt van de Britse bourgeois om hen uit te lachen en toe te roepen: “dwazen dat jullie zijn, dat had ik u tweehonderd jaar geleden al kunnen vertellen!” Ik vrees echter dat noch de religieuze verknochtheid van de Britse, noch de bekering post festum (“achteraf”) van de continentale bourgeois het opkomende proletarische getij zal kunnen keren. De traditie is een grote remmende kracht, de kracht van de traagheid in de geschiedenis. Maar ze is louter een passieve kracht en daarom moet zij het onderspit delven. Ook de godsdienst vormt op de duur geen schutsmuur voor de kapitalistische maatschappij. Als onze juridische, filosofische en religieuze ideeën meer of minder rechtstreeks het product vormen van de economische verhoudingen die in een gegeven maatschappij heersen, dan kunnen deze ideeën op den duur geen standhouden wanneer die economische verhoudingen grondig zijn veranderd.

(7) Passim: Wij hebben geen andere keuze dan hetzij te geloven aan een bovennatuurlijke openbaring, hetzij toe te geven dat godsdienstige preken nooit in staat zullen zijn om een ineenstortende maatschappij te schragen. En inderdaad, ook in Engeland zijn de arbeiders begonnen weer in beweging te komen.’ // In deze tekst beschrijft Friedrich Engels een situatie in het Europa van 1886 waarin een opkomst van traditionele normen en waarden door de bourgeoisie wordt aangewend om de vereniging van de arbeidersklasse in te dammen – traditie als remmende kracht. Progressieve ideeën, het vrijdenken, laat men vallen als een brandende sigaar. Je kan in deze analyse een parallel trekken naar 150 jaar later, de situatie van vandaag de dag. Het is in het licht van de analyse van Engels dan ook niet gek dat Eva Vlaardingerbroek, een van de opiniemakers van extreem-rechts in Nederland, haarzelf laatst ‘post-festum’ heeft bekeerd tot het katholicisme. Of waarom Elon Musk laatst in een podcast van de Babylon Bee heeft aangegeven het eens te zijn met de principes van Jezus. Als Musk écht een Jezusfan is, dan kun je je afvragen waarom hij zulke slechte werkomstandigheden heeft in zijn fabrieken. De vraag is dus: hebben we het hier over een oprechte overtuiging, of hangt het samen met een grotere rechts-culturele hang naar conservatieve normen? //

(8) Passim: De rol van het individu – Hierin moeten we ook de ideologie van het kapitalistische systeem niet vergeten. Zoals Ayn Rand deze onbekende idealen van het kapitalisme omschreef als een sociaal systeem waarin een individu zich kan ontpoppen als die durft te gaan voor zijn eigen belang. Niet voor niets is een van de grootste mythes van het kapitalisme de leugen van de zogeheten ‘American Dream’. Deze ‘dream’ is, in de kern, het idee dat we met hard werk en individualistische zelfbeschikking kunnen opklimmen uit onze slechte situaties naar een hogere positie op de maatschappelijke ladder. De zogeheten beoogde zelfbeschikking die hierbij komt kijken, van o.a. Peterson en Tate, is op zichzelf natuurlijk een nobele waarde om naar te streven. Maar deze zelfbeschikking neemt in het ideologisch kapitalisme van Rand al snel toxische, egoïstische vormen aan. Het is daarom niet gek dat deze individualistische theorieën vaak samengaan met hyperconservatisme en extreemrechtse hondenfluitjes. Extreemrechts verafgoodt real-life Randiaanse figuren, zoals Elon Musk en Andrew Tate, en framed ze door een nostalgische conservatieve lens. De mannelijke man als held van het kapitalisme wordt zo gekoppeld aan conservatieve waarden en normen in de angst van het verliezen van een zogenaamde eigen vertrouwde cultuur. Zelfbeschikking wordt zo over-geromantiseerd in een conservatief kapitalistische Amerikaanse droom. Maar hoeveel beschikking hebben wij over ons eigen lot, en wat wordt bepaald of beperkt in het systeem waarin we leven? Deze vraag over de rol van het individu in maatschappelijke ontwikkeling, heeft ook Marx en Engels beziggehouden. Dit wordt ook wel de “Structuur of Agency discussie” genoemd. Marx schreef hierover in 1852: “De mensen maken hun eigen geschiedenis, maar zij maken die niet uit vrije wil, niet onder zelfgekozen, maar onder rechtstreeks aangetroffen, gegeven en overgeleverde omstandigheden.’

(9) Passim: De hierboven behandelde conservatieve rechtse theorieën staan daarmee dus haaks op het communisme. Niet alleen gaan ze voorbij aan de realiteit van de materiële omstandigheden, maar ze zijn er in de kern ook op uit om die materiële werkelijkheid te ontkennen en daarmee verdeeldheid te zaaien onder de werkende klasse. Onze hoop op een rechtvaardige samenleving ligt daarom niet in de zelfbeschikkende actie van het individu, maar in de samenwerking van individuen in het collectief. Echte kracht zit niet in het hyperindividualisme van Rand, Musk en Tate, maar de kameraadschappelijke revolutionaire samenwerking van een georganiseerde arbeidersklasse. Om met Engels te spreken: “Ik vrees echter dat noch de religieuze verknochtheid van de Britse, noch de bekering ‘post festum’ van de continentale bourgeois het opkomende proletarische getij zal kunnen keren.”

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(10) Div. “Grundlagen des Marxismus-Leninismus – Lehrbuch“, Dietz 1963; “ In the course of time the developing productive forces came into conflict with the production relations prevailing in feudal society and the political and ideological mining determined by them. The peasants always fought against the feudal lords for free access to the products of their own economic activity then strove to free themselves from the feudal taxes in order to improve their economy, etc. Now the small workshops of the handicraft gave rise to large manufactures which were based on the handicraft technique, but largely applied the division of labor and exploited the labor power of personally independent producers. / The cities - the mainstay of the young bourgeoisie - developed stormily. The commerce became more and more buoyant. With the help of royal troops, the merchants conquered New Markets overseas. The washing of the trade in turn resulted in a narrow development of production. This development was also promoted by the technical and scientific discoveries that were made in the 16th and 17th centuries. / In the lap of feudal society a new, capitalist mode of production gradually developed. Their further development required the elimination of feudal behavior. The bourgeoisie, the class, read the bearers of feudal relations. The bourgeoisie, the class that acted as the bearer of a new mode of production, brought a 'free' labor market, that is, workers who were free from both personal dependency and property, so that hunger drove them into the factories and factories. the bourgeoisie needs a national market, the removal of tariffs and all other barriers that the feudal lords had erected. She stipulated that the taxes that were used to maintain the court and the class privileges were revoked. She fought to be able to unlock and grow old in all areas of society. / Around the bourgeoisie all classes and strata that are to be satisfied with the feudal order come together: from the elf peasants and the lower classes of the cities who suffered miserable, humiliation and oppression, to the progressive scholars and shift sellers who come from regardless of their origin suffered under the spiritual yoke of feudalism and the Church. / The epoch of the bourgeois revolutions began. "

Geschiedenis, WOII, Samenzwering 1944

(1) Div., “Zur Vorgeschichte der Verschwörung vom 20. Juli 1944“, Verlag des Ministeriums für Nationale Verteidigung 1960; “ The influential German business circles behind the Goerdeler-Beck Group, which had been closely intertwined with the international financial capital for years, linked the actions and connections of the bourgeois opposition and inspired their plans and programs. / When the Gestapo killed the conspiracy after the failed coup and almost all participants were executed, their backers from the big bourgeoisie remained almost without exception alive. Insofar as they had been arrested at all, they were soon released again or at least treated mildly at the objection of the fascist armaments minister Speer, who considered them indispensable in the armaments industry. They play a decisive role in West Germany again today. / Finally, as the leading representative of German and international finance capital, former Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schact has to be named, who, as is well known, had arranged for the financing of German rearmament together with Popitz. Schacht was a mastermind and conspirator rolled into one. But he knew how to stay in the background, so that he could jump off in time later. Schacht has good connections to heavy industry - especially to the Reusch district and to banking capital in Germany. He also had connections to British and American financial circles and politicians through the 'Bank for International Settlements' and through the Abwehr. (2) Passim: Closely connected with the conservative conspiratorial circles around Goerdeler, who mainly represented the Interessen of large parts of German finance capital, were leading representatives of the German large-scale agrarians, who grouped around von Kleist-Schmenzin, von Zitzewitz-muttrin and Count Dohna-Tolksorf. Characteristic of their class interests and thus of the character of the conspiracy are the efforts of the monarchy for restoration, which were intended to secure participation in political power for the nobility. Even right-wing Social Democrats within the conspiracy agreed to these plans at the beginning of the war. / Up until the summer of 1944, the plans and programs of the reactionary majority of the conspirators never gave up the effort to restore the monarchy in Germany. While the conservative aristocratic and literary circles advocated a Hohenzollern hereditary monarchy, the Anglo-phile politicians in the conspiracy, as well as Schacht and Popitz, advocated a constitutional kingship based on the English model. The defense agent and former associate Henry Ford, the crown prince's son Louis Ferdinand, was designated as the pretender to the throne. / Influential officials of the Foreign Office were also among the leading Gremium of the conspirators, in the first place the Secretary of State von Weizsäcker, as well as the two leading diplomats Eric and Theo Kordt, who had extensive connections to politically and economically leading crises in England and the USA. They were both members of the Hitler fascist espionage and diplomatic dinners and members of the leading reactionary group of conspirators.(3) Passim: Reactionary Christian circles from both confessions played a large part in the conspiracy, such as the lawyer Dr. Wirner [formerly the center tower], the former Reichsernähurngsminister Dr. Hermes, the former state president of Württemberg Dr. Bolz, Bishop Graf Gahlen [Münster] and Bishop Dibelius, who blessed the Hindenburg-Hitler Pact in 1933 and is now an avid supporter of NATO. / In addition, the Goerdeler Group had contacts to the top of the Christian trade unions, for example Jakob Kaiser. These circles encouraged the honest opposition of many simple Christians to the Hitler regime in the service of the conspirators and at the same time give Goerdeler's reactionary post-war plans a Christian facade. These are the same forces that bless Adenauer's politics and his inhumane nuclear war course today. Finally, the Goerdeler group was also joined by a notorious Nazis, including the police president of Berlin, Graff Helldorf, one of the initiators of the Reichstag fire, and the ministerial director and SS group leader Nebe, head of the Reich Criminal Police Office and temporarily head of one of the SS notorious for mass murder -Individual groups in the Soviet Union. ... 

(4) Passim: The Kreisau circle of the Anglophile Count J. Moltke, an employee in the Abwehr’s foreign department, played a strange role in 1942/43. This group was composed of representatives of various political views. His program was Christian, although the basic tendency was Christian. Although the basic tendency remained Christian reactionary, the program showed progress towards the goals of Goerdeler and Beck. Therefore, at a meeting in 1943, the supporters of the Kreisau Circle did not come to an agreement with the Goerdeler Circle Formerly the Kreisauers were conservative and liberal representatives of large estates, civil servants, diplomacy, liberal professions as well as representatives of both churches and the Jesuits. In addition to right-wing social democrats who pacted with the reactionary majority, he also owned a group of progressive intellectuals around the social democrat Professor Reichwein and Dr. Leber who later established relationships with the Stauffenberg district. “

Franse revolutie, Religie

(1) Alec R. Vidler, “The Pelican history of the church – The church in an age of revolution”, Penguin 1971;  “After the aridity of the age of reason there was as much need for a reconstruction of Catholic as of Protestant theology. At het beginning of the nineteenth century Herder said that the Church of Rome was like an ancient ruin into which no new life could enter, and it looked like that. Catholic theological teaching was based on dry and decadent Cartesianism. The romantic school l of writers and artists brought fresh air in this stuffy atmosphere. For example, FrederickSchlegel [1772-1829] said that poetry, in order to be able to give expression to the infinite mysteries of life, need a mythology like that of the ancient Greeks or early Christians. At first he proposed to create a new religion that would absorb the French Revolution as Christianity had absorbed the Roman Empire. ’I am thinking of founding a new religion’ he wrote to Novalis, ‘or a least of helping to preach it. Perhaps you are better qualified to make a new Christ – if so, he will find in me his St. Paul.’ If Catholicism could be presented to such men as a living faith it would evidently fall on receptive soil and in the event in the event a number of them did become converts. / Stimulated by romanticism, a revival of Catholic theology took place at various centres in Germany, notably at Tübingen. Tübingen is one of the German universities where Catholic and Protestant faculties of theology exist side by side. The Catholic faculty dates from 1817: it had an able and enterprising group of theologians, which included John Sebastian Drey [17777-1853] and John Adam Möhler [1796-1838]. They south to do for Catholicism when Schleiermacher was doing for Protestantism. / 

(2) Passim: They were determined to show that their faith had nothing to fear from historical criticism or philosophical discussion.  The ideas of organism in contrast to mechanism and of development, in contrast to a fixed and closed system were fundamental for them. Their theology was dynamic. Dogmas should be regarded not as abstract and isolated opposition, but in relation to the living whole of which they formed a part, they are the fruit of the perpetual effort of faith. All religion is revelation: Christianity is the revelation at completes and synthesizes all partial revelation, preserving whatever is true and durable in them. Tradition is not a fixed set of fossilized statements, but the word of God lining in the faithful. It is constantly developing and has constantly to be rethought in the light of the total movement of human culture. / 

(3) Passim: They maintained that Catholicism is the complex whole of which Protestantism is a one-sided distortion, and they contrasted the universality of the Catholic Church with the nationalism and territorialism with which Protestantism was compounded. They were criticized as innovators by conservative Catholics, and as time went on they modified some of their more daring proposals of doctrinal restatement and ecclesiastical reform, for, to begin with, they had called in question such long-standing customs as clerical celibacy, private masses, communion in one kind, and a Latin liturgy. It cannot be said they were viewed with official favour in the Roman Church, but they had staked out a claim for the ideas that reason and revelation, natural and supernatural, liberty and authority, are not opposed to one another but are complementary, and that Catholicism is capable of meeting not only Protestantism, but historical criticism, science, and philosophy in an open encounter.”(Een progressieve beweging, die op termijn had kunnen uitmonden in een soort van bevrijdingstheologie avant la letter, doch uiteindelijk veranderde in een nieuw conservatisme)