I’m sure this whole article comes as a shock to nobody, but it’s nice to see it recognised like this.

  • novibe@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    “Capture”. Did no one study the bourgeois revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries?

    The capitalist class revolted against the aristocracy and built new systems of government to benefit them. That is the origin of the modern state and capitalism.

    The state as we know it has always been just a tool of the capitalist class to control all other classes. That’s what the state is, a tool of class control.

    • Spendrill@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      I’m from the UK. We still have a monarch and an aristocracy, as well as a capitalist class. Even worse: they interbreed.

      • novibe@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        You’re from the UK and you don’t know about the English Revolution…? Where a constitutional monarchy was instituted, and the capitalists came into power?

        • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          It was far more of a religious war than anything else. You had aristocracy and rich capitalists on both sides. More so, the birth of nationwide capitalism had already taken place in the UK and joint venture stock companies were around long before the civil war too.

          But catholic and protestant was a line you could always 100% accurately draw between the two sides. In fact, the only thing that really changed was that the monarch having to be church of England was made into law. The rest of British history makes infinitely more sense when the civil war is looked at through that lense.

          • novibe@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            I feel there is a misunderstanding of what a bourgeois revolution is. Sure, soon before the English Revolution, there was the institution of stock markets and corporations. But bourgeois revolutions don’t “make” capitalism. They institute capitalism as the main power and system.

            Before the English Revolution, nobility and owning land was the real power. After it it was owning capital. That’s what makes it a bourgeois revolution.

            And sure? There were “capitalists” fighting to maintain the existing power structures, just like there were workers fighting against the bolsheviks in the Russian revolution, right? That’s not a very compelling argument.

            The capitalists could, through ideology and propaganda, be working against their own interests. Or they as individuals actually benefitted from the system as it was, despite not being the class in power.

            In any case, revolutions happen when the existing dominant class is abruptly removed in favour of another. You can’t say this happened in England before the English Revolution.

            Also, if you think Protestantism vs Catholicism has nothing to do with the power structures of late medieval and early modern Europe… idk what to tell you man. Religion is never just religion.

    • Bigmouse@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Forgive my ignorance, but which event of the 17th century would you classify as a burgeois revolution? Late 18th century of course, even many during the 19th century, but i just can’t remember any such event from the 1600s

      • novibe@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        The first one, the English Revolution from around the 1640s to the 1660s?

        • Bigmouse@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          That’s an edge case, but if you’d count those parliamentary nobles as burgoise then that’s fair. Thanks