feasible: but this is another question – of documentation, not intelligibility.) One of the main purposes of the study undertaken here is thus to try to hold together in tension two orders of reflection which have often been unwarrantably divorced in Marxist writing, weakening its capacity for rational and controllable theory in the domain of history.
The actual scope of the study below is marked by three anomalies or discrepancies from orthodox treatments of the subject. The first of these is the much longer ancestry accorded to Absolutism, implicit in the nature of the study that is the prologue to it. Secondly, within the bounds of the continent explored in these pages – Europe – a relatively systematic effort has been made to give equivalent and complementary treatment to its Western and Eastern zones, as was done in the preceding discussion of feudalism. This is not something that can be taken for granted. Although the division between Western and Eastern Europe is an intellectual commonplace, it has very rarely been the object of a direct and sustained historical reflection. The most recent vintage of serious works on European history has to some extent redressed the traditional geo-political imbalance of Western historiography, with its characteristic neglect of the Eastern half of the continent. But a reasonable balance of interest has still largely to be struck. Moreover, it is not so much a mere parity of coverage within the two regions that is needed, as a comparative explanation of their division, analysis of their differences, and account of the dynamic of their interconnections. The history of Eastern Europe is not merely a poorer copy of that of Western Europe, which can simply be added side by side to it, without affecting study of the latter; the development of the more ‘backward’ regions of the continent casts an unwonted light on that of the more ‘advanced’ regions, and often throws into relief novel problems within it, concealed by the limits of a purely Western introspection. Thus, contrary to normal practice, the vertical division of the continent between West and East is here taken throughout as a central organizing principle of the materials discussed. Within each zone, of course, major social and political variations have always existed, and these are contrasted and explored in their own right. The aim of this procedure is to suggest a regional typology that can help to clarify the divergent trajectories of the major Absolutist States of both Eastern and Western Europe. Such a typology may serve to indicate, if only in outline, precisely the sort of intermediate conceptual plane that is so often missing between generic theoretical constructs and particular case-histories, in studies of Absolutism as of much else.
Thirdly, and finally, the selection of the object of this study – the Absolutist State – has determined a temporal articulation unlike that of the orthodox genres of historiography. The traditional frameworks of historical writing are either single countries or closed periods. The great majority of qualified research is conducted strictly within national bounds; and where a work exceeds these for an international perspective, it usually takes a delimited epoch as its frontiers. In either case, historical time normally seems to present no problem: whether in ‘old-fashioned’ narrative studies or ‘modern’ sociological studies, events or institutions appear to bathe in a more or less continuous and homogeneous temporality. Although all historians are naturally aware that rates of change vary between different layers or sectors of society, convenience and custom usually dictate that the form of a work implies or conveys a chronological monism. That is to say, its materials are treated as if they share a common departure and common conclusion, spanned by a single stretch of time. In this study, there is no such uniform temporal medium: for the times of the major Absolutisms of Europe – Eastern and Western – were, precisely, enormously diverse, and this diversity was itself constitutive of their respective nature as State systems. Spanish Absolutism suffered its first great defeat in the late 16th century in the Netherlands; English Absolutism was cut down in the mid-17th century; French Absolutism lasted until the end of the 18th century; Prussian Absolutism survived until the later 19th century; Russian Absolutism was only overthrown in the 20th century. The wide disjunctures in the dating of these great structures inevitably corresponded to deep distinctions in their composition and evolution. Since the specific object of this study is the whole spectrum of European Absolutism, no single temporality covers it. The story of Absolutism has many, overlapping beginnings and disparate, staggered endings. Its underlying unity is real and profound, but it is not that of a linear continuum. The complex duration of European Aisolutism, with its multiple breaks and displacements from region to region, commands the presentation of the historical material in this study. Thus, the whole cycle of processes and events which assured the triumph of the capitalist mode of production in Europe after the early modern epoch, is omitted here. The first bourgeois revolutions occurred long before the last metamorphoses of absolutism, chronologically. For the purposes of this work, however, they remain categorically posterior to the latter, and will be considered in a subsequent study. Thus such fundamental phenomena as the primitive accumulation of capital, the onset of religious reformation, the formation of nations, the expansion of overseas imperialism, the advent of industrialization – all of which fall well within the formal compass of the ‘periods’ treated here, as contemporaneous with various phases of Absolutism in Europe – are not discussed or explored. Their dates are the same: their times are separate. The unfamiliar and disconcerting history of the successive bourgeois revolutions is not our concern here: the present essay is confined to the nature and development of the Absolutist States, their political antecedent and adversary. Two subsequent studies will deal specifically, in turn, with the chain of the great bourgeois revolutions, from the Revolt of the Netherlands to the Unification of Germany; and with the structure of the contemporary capitalist states that eventually, after a long process of ulterior evolution, emerged from them. Certain of the theoretical and political implications of arguments in the present volume will only become fully apparent in these sequels.
A last word is perhaps needed on the choice of the State itself as a central theme for reflection. Today, when ‘history from below’ has become a watchword in both Marxist and non-Marxist circles, and has produced major gains in our understanding of the past, it is nevertheless necessary to recall one of the basic axioms of historical materialism: that secular struggle between classes is ultimately resolved at the political – not at the economic or cultural – level of society. In other words, it is the construction and destruction of States which seal the basic shifts in the relations of production, so long as classes subsist. A ‘history from above’ – of the intricate machinery of class domination – is thus no less essential than a ‘history from below’: indeed, without it the latter in the end becomes one-sided (if the better side). Marx in his maturity wrote: ‘Freedom consists in the conversion of the State from an organ superimposed on society into one completely subordinated to it, and today too, the forms of the State are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the “freedom” of the State.’ The abolition of the State altogether remains, a century later, one of the goals of revolutionary socialism. But the supreme significance accorded to its final disappearance, testifies to all the weight of its prior presence in history. Absolutism, the first international State system in the modern world, has by no means yet exhausted its secrets or lessons for us. The aim of this work is to contribute towards a discussion of some of them. Its errors, misconceptions, oversights, solecisms, illusions can safely be left to the criticism of a collective debate.
1. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, London 1974, pp. 7–9.
The Absolutist State in the West
The long crisis of European economy and society during the 14th and 15th centuries marked the difficulties and limits of the feudal mode of production in the late mediaeval period.1 What was the final political outcome of the continental convulsions of this epoch? In the course of the 16th century, the Absolutist State emerged in the West. The centralized monarchies of France, England and Spain represented a decisive rupture with the pyramidal, parcellized sovereignty of the mediaeval social formations, with their
