Moscow, Moscow University Publishing House. 1975. 205 pp. The print run is 2210. Price 67 kopecks.
Attention to the problems of philosophical, socio-political and utopian thought of the past has been steadily increasing in recent years. This is explained by the growing role of the ideological struggle in the modern world, and hence by the growing interest in the historical sources of certain trends in modern ideology. Soviet historical science pays considerable attention to the study of this range of topics. So, only on the history of public thought in England of the XVII-XVIII centuries. in recent years, a number of publications have been published. The works of B. Mandeville and A. Shaftesbury have been published. 1 Books about F. Mandeville and A. Shaftesbury have been published. Bacon and T. More 2 . Still, there is a lack of such work. The growing interest of the reader puts forward new serious tasks for historians. That is why it is gratifying to see the publication of a study by MSU Professor Yu. M. Saprykin, Doctor of Historical Sciences, on James Garrington.
This is the first work about Garrington in Russian. An outstanding thinker, one of the greatest representatives of political thought of the era of the English bourgeois revolution of the XVII century, which influenced a whole galaxy of British writers and public figures, was previously only briefly mentioned in the books of M. M. Kovalevsky and A. N. Savin3. His writings in Russian
1 See B. Mandeville. The Fable of the Bees, M. 1974; Shaftesbury. Esteticheskie opytyty [Aesthetic experiments], Moscow, 1975.
2 See Yu. P. Mikhalenko, F. Bacon and his Teaching, Moscow, 1975; I. N. Osinovsky. Thomas More, Moscow, 1974.
3 M. M. Kovalevsky. From direct narodopravstvo to representative and from patriarchal monarchy to parliamentarism. Vol. 2. Moscow, 1906, pp. 156-157. Sovremennye sotsiologi [Modern Sociologists], Moscow, 1905, pp. 229-232. Lectures on the History of the English Revolution, Moscow, 1937, p. 10.
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the language was never translated. In the West, however, there is an extensive literature devoted to Garrington's views. His works have been reprinted many times, and their significance is still debated to this day. Sometimes he is declared a predecessor of Karl Marx, sometimes one of the founders of modern democracy, sometimes a socialist, and so on. Yu. M. Saprykin took on the difficult task of contrasting the concepts of bourgeois researchers with a Marxist class analysis of Garrington's views, their genesis and role in the development of British socio-political thought.
Analyzing the views of Garringtan, his ideological predecessors, like-minded people and opponents, the author reveals the bourgeois-noble character of his theories, characterizes him as a representative of aristocratic republicanism. Class analysis also allows the author to find out the social genesis of Garrington's views: they were born in response to the needs of the gentry and the bourgeoisie, who won the revolution, to organize state power in such a way as to ensure their safety from the encroachments of the popular lower classes, who were not satisfied with the results of the revolution, on the one hand, and from the possibility of restoring feudal In this regard, representatives of bourgeois-noble political thought faced two important tasks: first, "to develop their own concept of property and prove that neither the masses of people deprived of property and peasants subjected to ruin and expropriation, nor the state authorities have any grounds to claim private property, and above all land" (page 23); secondly, "it was necessary to define such relations between the authorities and their subjects that would oblige the authorities to protect the property of their subjects from encroachments on it by the masses of the people, but at the same time exclude the right of the authorities to violate its freedom and inviolability, as well as the freedom of economic activity of the bourgeoisie" (pp. 24-25). Garrington tried to solve these problems.
The author analyzes Garrington's system of views in close connection with the ideological and political struggle of the revolutionary era, and determines his place in this struggle. The paper shows the essence of the views and social character of such complex and different trends in the English Revolution as the movement of diggers, Levellers, bourgeois Republicans represented by the independents who won the revolution (O. Cromwell, M. Needham, G. Ayrton), the monarchical bourgeoisie (T. Hobbes), the feudal aristocracy (R. Filmer), etc. These ideas are compared with the views of contemporary thinkers of Garrington.
Yu. M. Saprykin examines in detail the views of Garrington himself, especially his ideas about property and power. Garrington's main contribution in this area is convincingly argued: he put forward the idea of the primacy of property over power and "thereby tried, first, to free property from all its dependence on power, and therefore from the right of power to interfere with property, which was so feared by the bourgeoisie and nobles in the XVII century. secondly, to remove the relationship between property and power from the competence of people and reduce them to objective, natural foundations" (p. 91). Another important conclusion of Garrington's was the idea that the distribution of landed property between the king, the nobility, and the people depends on some form of state power (p.93). Property, therefore, became for Garrington a factor determining the form of political order, legislation, and military organization. "He used this conclusion as an argument to prove the necessity that power in the state should be the power of those who have property" (p. 98).
Speaking about the theory of property put forward by Garrington, and comparing it with the teachings of the English political thinkers of the XVI century T. Starkey, R. Crowley, D. Ponet, as well as with the theories of figures of the era of revolution, the author notes that the source of private land ownership Garrington saw not in power, as Hobbes and Ayrton believed, not in natural law not greed, as the Levellers thought, as J. R. R. Tolkien insisted. Winstanley, but in the efforts of people. Yu. M. Saprykin points out that this idea, expressed by Garrington as early as 1660, was not further developed by him and was later developed by D. Locke (p. 100).
The author's analysis of Garrington's attitude to the most important events of the English Revolution is interesting. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he considered the revolution and execution of the king inevitable, historically justified by changing the "balance of property" in favor of the gentry and the general population.
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"In this very interesting explanation of the causes of the English revolution," writes Yu. M. Saprykin, "Garrington undoubtedly noticed and systematized a number of important factors and phenomena in the economic and social life of England in the XVI-XVI centuries, connected with the development of the capitalist system in feudal England and the maturing of the bourgeois revolution of the XVII century" (p.108). Finally, raising the question of Garrington's utopian state ideal, the author characterizes it as "the ideal of bourgeois land ownership, based on private ownership of land and, moreover, on landlordsism under capitalist leases" (p.109).
Analyzing the concept of "people" in Garrington, revealing the class background of his political theory, Y. M. Saprykin convincingly shows that the constitution of Garrington was a step back in comparison with the democratic constitution of the Levellers, put forward in 1647 - 1649, and even in comparison with the draft People's Treaty drawn up by independent officers in the vdvar of 1649. His republicanism had an aristocratic character and expressed the interests of the rich and educated landowning elite of the middle nobility and bourgeoisie, "who did not strive for a revolutionary struggle against feudal relations, but rather to keep the results of the revolution already achieved in their hands with the help of an appropriately organized state, protecting them from attempts from above, by the authorities, and from below, from the lower strata of the English people" (pp. 161-162). Thus, Harrington's theories are essentially anti-popular, and they denounce him as "an apologist for landlords, absolute rent, and the wage labor of the poor" (p. 138). Garrington's Republicanism is not of a revolutionary nature; it is "post-revolutionary bourgeois-noble republicanism", " republicanism against the people "(p. 165, 166). This is the main reason for its weakness, utopianism, and failure.
Yu. M. Saprykin explains in a new way the reasons for the popularity of the ideas of "Oceania" during the bourgeois revolutions of the XVIII century - among the ideologists of the American Revolution, and later - the Thermidorian bourgeoisie in France. At the same time, he justifiably focuses on the anti-democratic orientation of Garrington's concept, which, in the author's opinion, is underestimated by bourgeois historians (p.162). However, noting the fruitful nature of such a statement of the question, I would like to express the wish that Yu. M. Saprykin more widely explored the role of Garrington's ideas in the development of political thought in subsequent centuries.
Of great interest is the last chapter of the book, devoted to Garrington's philosophical views and the connection of his ideas with the views of Renaissance thinkers, antiquity and English humanists. The author comes to the conclusion that Garrington, despite his attempts to consider social phenomena historically, "remained in the understanding of social life mainly on metaphysical positions" (p.200).
Thanks to Yu. M. Saprykin, Soviet historiography was enriched with a book that deeply reveals the historical roots of the political teaching of a major English thinker of the era of the first bourgeois revolution of "European scale" 3 .
There are several inaccuracies in the book. We are talking about the events of the Second English Republic, during which the activity of Garrington, which had stalled during the protectorate years, increased dramatically. Thus, on pages 71-72, the author writes that after the fall of the protectorate of R. Cromwell, power passed into the hands of army officers, who, "in order to have a semblance of legality," convened the "rump" of the Long Parliament, which was dispersed by Cromwell in 1653. Meanwhile, the "oblastye" was called by the officers not only and not so much to legalize their activities, but under the pressure of a broad movement of various strata of the people, and first of all the masses of the people, among whom the fall of the protectorate revived hopes for the continuation of the revolution, for solving pressing economic and political problems. Various sections of the people regarded the convocation of the "good old parliament" not as an end, but as a means of establishing a new, just government. This explains the huge variety of utopias, constitutional projects, political tracts, and petitions that were then published and presented to Parliament .4
3 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 6, p. 15.
4 T. A. Pavlova. The Second English Republic (1659-1660). Moscow, 1974, pp. 84-121.
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Garrington resumed his activities precisely in line with this irrepressible flow, directed towards the democratization of the political and social order. On page 79 it is said about the "second defeat of D. Monk" of the same "rout" of the Long Parliament on March 16, 1660. It is known that on March 16, 1660, the Long Parliament, which had been sitting since February 21 in a new composition (with the support of the Alonka army, Presbyterians who had been expelled by R. Pride returned to it), issued a solemn act of self-dissolution and ceased to exist, clearing the way for the restoration of the Stuarts and calling elections to a new "free parliament" (Convention), which was to meet on April 25 of the same year5 . Monk and his army, as well as the Long Parliament, were now working in complete unity to ensure the speedy and peaceful restoration of the monarchy. Unfortunately, there are a lot of annoying typos in the book, which in some cases lead to a distortion of the meaning. Thus, the dispersal by officers of the "oblost" of the Long Parliament, made on October 13, 1659, is dated October 18 (p. 79).
5 Ibid., pp. 178-182; ee. General Monk and the Stuart Restoration. "New and recent History", 1975, N 1, p. 140, 158.
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