intellectuals and the working class can gain from glasnost, the negative effects of Kagarlitsky in one or two pas- not the privileged bureaucracy and their hangers-on - will be primarily feit by the working not just an abstract question. to fall into the trap of the Бигенистасу -
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cial life, and protestant fundamen- Alter all. in the USA the atten- question: just how exceptional is ogy in Britain, the foundation of the backward monarchist ideol- Nain's argument. I will confine "frontier America perneate so- criticisms that could he made of tion given here lo the RoyalsIs Reflections on the British monarchy idcologies of small town and criticisms of the "undemocratic lavished on the First Family': Naire's argument begs the A more compassionate Marquez Fhere are a great many the whole argument? myself to cue. Scarpill. The French execute Louis XVI Nair's thesis thus neatly sun- Only after 1945 was real bour- preferable to Hitler, the last child capitalist development. The task regime became obviously a sar- cides with some of the ideas of genis democracy crablished in fight for a demccratic republic of radicals today. according to Nair, is modernisation'. the munist Party, including their Europe, and their the London the Turo wing of the Com- like those in other European vival and an obstaclo to real of feudal absolutism. capilatist countries. Naim explains this survival by capitalist system, for a merchunt- fcudal absolutist ancten regime survived until 1914-18 and took The first is that Mark overstated The sccond is that Marx was shape of fascism up to 1939-45 The London oligarchy was still making two criticisms of Mars. the power of industrial capital: more generally premature: the financier city state in London. bourgenisic proper never suc- there was space, in the world socialisnt' (1 abourism). The its revonge for its fall in the ing class incorporated as real threat to the regime, ginalised, and the work- cecued in taking power. chy hased on merchants. a sort of mediaeval tes- through trade unionin regime of aspeciul type. financiers and landlords, Really, Naim claims, mediaeval churacter. In republicanism, the only appendage of a London City-state. For this Lon Modem Britishna and raval distributive a Tate mediaoval oligar- was deleated and mar- tonal identity thus ac- quired an increasingly Rather, they created a "Britain" is simply the legitimising mile, bke the Venetian Doge or like the Venctian and pre-capitalist ancien monarchy played a Dutch Stadhouder. don oligarchy, the tate of the realm" Dutch republics. this framework tion of this backwardness runs as 'Britain" were either a bourgeois But The Enchanted Glass also revolution (as marxists think) or ing attack on British monar- monarchy is central to the system patriarchal family, and the politi- cal bankruptcy of the Labour and Revolution (1789): His explana- Nairn has produced a seath- In The Enchanted Glass Tom luminating sidelights on the and backward ideology as con- tive in its political implications. which is falsc and wholly nega monarchism" as an exceptional He denics that the events of His book should be roquired who thìnk that the monarchy is democracy (as liberals think). nature of the British social various territories, and that it is democratic idcologies of most states created since the French reading for all those socialists "British" national dentity, the The Enchanted Glass and political formation. He insists that the British: contains a theoretical thesis of political authority and its Reviewed by MIKE 1640-1714 in what is now intimately connected with chism, packed with il- pared with the rational- trade union Icaderships. steps towards a liberal Nairn sees British an urumportant issue. MACNAIR Tom Nairn follows.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 9 October 1988 cither non- existent or unrequited. i an historical and social context that, are the villains of this piece. It is Marquez's ability to place comprador bourgcois morality at lives searching for love which is ness of hourgonis socicty, and a proposal in an abstract way. So- cial conventions born out of the the dilemma his characters face tragedy is found not so much in Marquez docs not make this hyperisy and narrow-minded- wasted yours that fill up whole cach time from a new angle. It the advent of death but in the gives an early indication of Marquez's proposition that the story in and out of the lives of time hero and victim of Romantic to catch a rehellious parrot which widow Fernina Diaz and the all- Marquer weaves the thread of physician, bourgeois modemiser in the novel at the age of cighty- ing ahuse at any and everybody. onc-and a-half while anempting is lodged defiantly in a tree hurl- Dr Juvenal Urbino, respected and patron of the arts, dies early Urhino and the other two man Urhino's death is a pivocal returned to several times, but prent in the novel which is characters in the novel. his Love, Florentino Ana fantastic and the novel less reiant The conclusion he arrives at is upon this as a device, Marquer's Love that is built out of the more mischievous use of the absurd is pondering the myth of Romantic quite as good as anything in his un author who regularly evokes. Although the imagery is less more ambiguous and surprising than you might anticipate from Finds him in a reflective mood. sympathy for his characters by Love, contrasting it with the Treating them so pitilesily. mundane ruw material of previous work. everyday litc. Fans and first-time readers Jonathan Cape, £11.95