In the case of slavery, we see that in the British Empire, it was abolished through reform. They passed the act to abolish it in 1833. In the case of America it was abolished through Civil War. Both slaves and white people were in the union army and participated in abolition. In the case of Haiti we have revolution. The slaves overthrew their masters. Some say were a few Europeans on the side of the slaves, ironically a Polish diaspora who Dessalines eventually made legally black and protected from the purges that targeted the French.
In the case of serfdom, we see sometimes the organic disappearance of serfdom from society through its obsolescence. Britain never emancipated its serfs through legal acts. Instead the black plague and 1381 peasants revolt weakened the institution without abolishing it, and by 1600 it was largely over with. the 1640s English civil wars, which some call its bourgeois revolution, did not even abolish serfdom, since it was already through by that point. In other cases we see a top down-abolition of serfdom, as in Russia, under the tsar in the 1800s , and in Japan through the Meiji restoration. These were not bourgeois revolutions but top down reforms carried out by rather conservative and autocratic institutions that had resisted change for as long as possible.
The transition between the slavery of late antiquity and the serfdom of the middle ages was likewise a very gradual process, and did not happen through revolution or reform, but through more subtle historical processes taking place over several centuries. There were servile revolts such as the famous one led by Spartacus, but these were failed revolts, not transformative revolutions which changed the mode of production.
These lead me to my questions:
- I think it is indisputable that class struggle plays a foundational role in the history of all societies. However, is revolution always inevitable, or is it only what happens when all other options fail?
- If other options succeed, is that undesirable for communism, since communists want these changes to happen through revolution?
- If the same problem can be tackled in different ways, and history shows that through evidence, then why cling to the thesis that it can only happen one way?
- Isn't it a bit teleological to insist that the capitalist mode of production must end in a specific way, i.e. through reform, through re
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