Ehud's Dagger : Class Struggle in the English Revolution

by Holstun, James

• ISBN13: 9781859847824
• ISBN10: 185984782X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-17
• Publisher: Verso

Summary

Seventeenth-century England saw the first capitalist revolution of the modern world '¬ ; a struggle by working men and women to create a libertarian future and keep themselves from being dragged into the slough that many are still struggling to escape. In Ehud's Dagger, James Holstun reconstructs their radical projects and calls for a return to and development of marxist history from below. He begins with a powerful critique of those anti-communist historians and literary critics who have tried to ignore or deny the role of working people in shaping the English Revolution. Then, drawing on Ernst Bloch's utopian marxism, Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of practical ensembles, and the political marxism of the British marxist historians, he begins his reconstruction of five seventeenth-century radical projects. In a Caroline prologue, he examines the political and poetic furor surrounding John Felton, who assassinated the Duke of Buckingham in 1628, enabling anonymous writers, readers and circulators of verse libels to contemplate a republican alternative to Charles's attempted absolutism. He then turns to the Revolution proper, focusing on the common soldiers of the Puritan New Model Army, who formed a military soviet in the summer of 1647 and bested their capitalist officers in debate; the Fifth Monarchist visionary Anna Trapnel, who wrote, preached, and prophesied publicly against the Protectorate on behalf of sectarian small producers; the Leveller theorist and desperado Edward Sexby, who wrote the brilliant republican treatise Killing Noe Murder and attempted to assassinate Oliver Cromwell; and the agrarian communist Diggers of Surrey, whose comrade and leader Gerrard Winstanley was the foremost social theorist of seventeenth-century England. Richly detailed and rigorously argued, Ehud's Dagger will spark renewed historical and literary critical interest in the prophetic writing, political struggle, and creative practical consciousness of working people in the early modern world.

Author Biography

James Holstun teaches English at the State University of New York, Buffalo.

Table of Contents

Preface: Apology, Summary, and Thanks	ix
PART ONE: HIERARCHY AND ASSOCIATION	1	(140)
Cornet Joyce's Commission	3	(6)
Historical Revisionism and the Perils of Chronism	9	(37)
Introduction	9	(2)
Con: A Prioris, Opposition, and Whiggery	11	(17)
Pro: Multiple Kingdoms, Religion, and Personalities	28	(14)
Revisionism as New Conservatism	42	(4)
Foucault, the New Historicism, and the Base Curiosity of the Plebs	46	(39)
Damiens's Remonstrance	47	(3)
Genealogy and Power	50	(11)
Structure and Subject	61	(8)
Change, Containment, and Subversion	69	(7)
Post-revisionism and Its Prospects	76	(9)
Class Struggle and the English Revolution	85	(56)
The Usual Suspects	85	(5)
Base, Superstructure, and Hierarchies of Determination	90	(6)
Status and Class	96	(10)
Class Consciousness and the Public Sphere	106	(6)
Original Theft and the Transition	112	(12)
Small Producers and the English Revolution	124	(12)
Early Modern Studies and the British Marxist Historians	136	(5)
PART TWO: RADICAL PROJECTS	141	(294)
The Deference of John Felton	143	(49)
Introduction	143	(3)
Good Clients Gone Bad: Patronage and Tyrannicide	146	(6)
Buck, King of Game	152	(13)
``God bless thee, little David!''	165	(12)
Felton at Colonus	177	(9)
Noble Felton Resolutions	186	(6)
New Model Soviets: The Agitators and Martial Praxis	192	(65)
Armed Prophets	192	(4)
Something New: The Emergence of the Agitators	196	(22)
``No Courtesy!'': Consensus vs Conflict at Putney	218	(13)
Possessive Individualism and the Expense of Blood	231	(15)
Contingency and Martial Law at Corkbush Field	246	(11)
The Public Spiritedness of Anna Trapnel	257	(48)
Handmaids Discovered and Revealed	257	(10)
Fifth Monarchy Woman	267	(12)
God's Handmaid vs the Little Horn: The Prophecy at Whitehall	279	(10)
A Gazing Stock: Cornhell and Bridewell	289	(8)
Britomart II	297	(8)
Forlorn Hope: Edward Sexby and the Republic	305	(62)
Centrifugal Charisma	305	(3)
Strange Engines: Serial Conspiracy	308	(19)
Sardonic Ethics in Killing Noe Murder	327	(25)
Aftermath: Tyrannicide as Critique	352	(15)
The Diggers' Hortus Inconclusus	367	(68)
Rational Hunger	367	(10)
Paternalists, Improvers, and Fellow Creatures	377	(12)
Natural Law in Loco Parentis	389	(8)
Green Millennialism	397	(14)
Georgic Prophets and Pastoral Poets	411	(10)
Common Futures: The Diggers and the Forest People	421	(14)
Index	435