| Popis: |
A generation brought up to believe in the imminence of revolution, faced now with the fact of a war which may well end in revolution, does well to study past revolutions. In particular, we ought to study seriously the history of England's century of revolution in order to understand how our world came to be and what worlds lie before us from which to choose. Fortunately, a large number of able men and women are studying the record of Stuart England and their conclusions should help us to understand the present. Unfortunately, in a number of recent studies the conclusions are thin or confusing. In some cases, the authors appear hesitant to draw from their special studies any general conclusions at all; in others, the conclusions are contradictory to the point of meaninglessness. The crux of the difficulty is the question of causal relations in history. Particularly, a number of authors tacitly make use of the Marxian hypothesis of historical materialism but stop short of the obvious conclusions; others reject the Marxian hypothesis and end in chaos. This criticism does not, of course, mean that the work is without value: all the studies which are analyzed in this essay have been made by trained historians who have assembled in orderly fashion historical evidence of great importance. It does mean that the authors have failed to draw from the evidence the most useful conclusions. |
