Page 56 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

INTRODUCTION 45

eliminated it; industrial capital required little help from the state to create the
preconditions for industrialization and to discipline a workforce. It completed
these tasks itself. So instead the landed upper class continued to hold formal
political power and the ruling-class fractions entered into a complex relationship,
part rivalry for ‘mass support’, part aristocratic concession, part social and
cultural osmosis. Since English agriculture remained buoyant up to the 1870s,
aristocracy was enabled to make a long strategic retreat into the alter ego of
industry and trade. At no point, after the 1790s, did it attempt a last-ditch stand
or turn its bourgeois alliance into a reactionary path. The German type of
coalition was avoided. On the whole, the aristocratic contribution in England to a
tolerant politics and an amateur culture was exemplary. 25
It is as well to note the positive aspects of this account before turning to
criticism. Moore’s portrayal of internal ruling-class relations is subtle. It is, as we
shall see, more accurate than Anderson’s. And again, nuances apart, it is similar
to the ‘classic’ Marxist version. Like Edward Thompson and Poulantzas, Moore
holds to something like Marx’s formulation of the landed-industrial relationship.
According to Marx, the aristocratic cliques that held formal political position
held it on condition that they exercised power in the interests of industrial capital.
The chief, the most willing vehicle was Whiggery—hence Marx’s vivid satire on
Lord John Russell. At face value this is a character assassination of the
quintessential Whig politician; at a deeper level it is a personification of
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aristocratic powerlessness in an industrial world. Marx sought to show
precisely how the camouflage of surrogate rule by aristocracy for industrial
bourgeoisie worked in terms of the mechanisms of political party, the Whiggish
27
alliance and ‘pressure from without’. Similarly, Edward Thompson has argued
that after 1832 had eroded the ‘secondary complex of predatory interests’ that
was the nearest thing to ‘aristocracy’ in England there were two main
developments: the steady pursuit of bourgeois policies by landed politicians and
the steady erosion of landed power, even in its county bastions. A more
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aggressive policy by industrial bourgeoisie was simply unnecessary. Moore’s
account lacks the powerful sophistication of the notion of ‘old corruption’, is
more indulgent to Whig ‘statesmen’ and allows them a little more autonomous
influence, but his basic formulation is not dissimilar. Aristocratic politicians
worked the levers of power but learned the limitations of their own. It is
misleading, he notes, to mark only the strength of their formal position in the
political apparatus. 29
But in other respects Moore’s account is seriously flawed. His nineteenth-
century section is much less successful than the earlier passages. In part this
relates to the whole thesis about traditional social classes. At the point when
industrial bourgeoisie and working class become major actors, determinations
from a landed past are made to carry too great a burden of explanation. As I shall
suggest later, the active presence of a working class-in-the-making is actually
needed to explain fully the patterns which Moore portrays. Its virtual absence
here and the absence of precursors earlier in the story might partly be explained