Ehud's Dagger: Class Struggle in the English Revolution Paperback – December 15, 2003

This is a somewhat eccentric book. It is by an English professor and it wishes to counter the anti-Marxist consensus that has grown up around the origins of the English revolution. The book comes in two parts. The first discusses the revisionist historiography of the English Revolution, the Foucault-New Historicist influences on literary criticism, and Marxist revisions of the theory of class struggle. The second part looks at five special aspects of the revolution: the supporters of the assasin of the Duke of Buckingham, the praxis of the New Model Army, a female prophet named Anna Trapnel, a supporter of tyrannicide named Edward Sexby, and Gerrard Winstanely and the Diggers.The first, smaller part is the more useful. Holstun makes some telling points against the revisionists, such as the way they define pre-revolutionary ideology so broadly that any opposition to the king before 1640 can be defined out of existence. Because no one broke absolutely with the views of the past, we can supposedly argue that none broke at all. He notes the way revisionists euphemize Stuart censorship, how they crudely psychoanalyze revolutionaries or reduce their concerns to envy, and how they describe the English revolution as a "war of three kingdoms" "instead of complex societies in a structured hierarchy dominated by England." In his critique of the New Historicists Holstun aptly focuses on their obsession with power, on the grotesque or barbaric gesture (such as the execution of Damiens). His defence of Class Struggle is also interesting, though less original in his reservations about the base and superstructure model. Sartre, rather unusually, serves as an inspiration and there is some interesting criticisms of Habermas.The second part is much more disappointing. Each of the five chapters concentrates on a series of texts. Instead of advancing beyond previous Marxist arguments, there is a tendency to simple recapitulate old verities. There is a long summary and paraphrase which becomes increasingly tedious, while there is little new evidence brought forth. Meanwhile the relationship between the anti-Buckinghamites, the Agitators, Trapnel, Sexby and Winstanley and the larger population is never made clear. Holstun could have said more, in his discussion of the Agitators, about their suggestions for redistributing land. The chapter on Trapnel, included in order to bring some discussion of gender, does not succeed in this, since female Fifth Monarchy prophets were very untypical of their sex. Moreover there is a rather sentimental appreciation of Baptism and Quakerism as radical movements. He cites E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, to emphasize the complex heritage of Dissent. Yet Thompson's chapter "The Transforming power of the Cross," emphasizes Methodism's philistinism, its reactionary and sycophantic nature, its hatred of pleasure and curiosity. Holstun also argues that without the experience of their female prophets Mary Wollstonecraft and her feminism could not have existed. Perhaps, but the absence of these movements in France did not stop the Marquis de Condorcet and the radical Herbertistes. The chapter on Sexby is actually more nuanced, agreeing that Sexby's anti-Cromwellian pamphlet, Killing no Murder, is still within the Protestant theory of anti-tyrannical writing. (But one should not forget that the Sexby chapter concludes with some fatuous comments on assasination.) The chapter on Winstanley also provides some useful refutations on Winstanely as a minor, time-bound, envious, totalitarian misogynist. Ultimately, there is a major problem with tone: Holstun always finds a radical movement or an inspiring vision from the past. Ultimately, this optimistic note rings hollow.