History and ideology : Milton, the levellers, and the council of state in 1649
Martin Dzelzainis seeks to clarify the views of Milton and the Levellers in relation to the “Norman Yoke,” the belief that the Conquest had installed an alien legal system that continued to restrict the natural rights of free subjects. Although Milton was in 1649 asked by the Council of State to respond to two incendiary Leveller pamphlets, he never seems to have done so in print (although other polemicists did). Many modern commentators have sought to interpret this silence as evidence of Milton’s views. Dzelzainis argues that Milton, recently appointed as secretary for foreign tongues, could not easily have refused the request. He shows that the Levellers’ own anti-Norman posture was at the time being modified; thus Milton’s anti-Norman rhetoric after 1649 is no indication of support for the Levellers. Furthermore, such rhetoric was applicable to those who opposed the Rump, including Presbyte77. See Milton, Political Writings, ed. Martin Dzelzainis (Cambridge, 1991), xxi–xxv. 78. See James Tyrrell, The General History of England, 3 vols. (London, 1700–1704), 1:110–11, 115–16, 150; 116 (second pagination); for more on Whig responses, see Nicholas von Maltzahn, Milton’s “History of Britain”: Republican Historiography in the English Revolution (Oxford, 1991), 176–78. 79. Tyrrell, General History, 1:vi (second preface). This content downloaded from 207.46.13.128 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 06:14:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Property, Liberty and Self-Ownership in the English Revolution.
ly – to consent in some sense to the original establishment of political society. As Locke recognizes, this way of setting up the argument is deeply problematic, since none of Locke’s contemporaries was alive at the time of the founding of society and hence evidently not in a position to give or withhold consent. Locke turns to this problem in Chapter 8 of the Second Treatise, where, after repeating his view that ‘Every Man being, as has been shewed, naturally free, and nothing being able to put him into subjection to any Earthly Power, but only his own Consent’, he raises the question of ‘what shall be understood to be a sufficient Declaration of a Mans Consent, to make him subject to the Laws of any Government’ (p. 347). Locke’s answer is that there are two ways in which one can give one’s consent, express and tacit: No body doubts but an express Consent, of any Man, entring into any Society, makes him a perfect Member of that Society, a Subject of that Government. The difficulty is, what ought to be look’d upon as a tacit Consent, and how far it binds, i.e. how far any one shall be looked on to have consented, and thereby 22 Simmons, 1992, p. 327. 23 Dunn 2003, p. 39; Waldron 2002, p. 119. See Knights 2011 for an attempt to establish Locke’s position on this issue. 24 See Franklin 1978, p. 94.
PLEASURE, POWER, AND THE PURSUIT OF COMMUNISM: SOVIET YOUTH AND STATE-SPONSORED POPULAR CULTURE DURING THE EARLY COLD WAR, 1945-1968
art, with certain students accused of “showing political immaturity, failing to understand the Party’s positions on art.” This episode constituted part of a broader crackdown on abstract art by the Khrushchev administration from late 1962, precipitated the the Soviet leader’s derision of such art forms in December 1962 at the Manege exhibit. Such instances demonstrate the limitations of the top-level promotion of youth grassroots initiative, as the Khrushchev leadership reigned in youth autonomy when it threatened to go beyond the boundaries of the permissible. The dates cited above have particular resonance, since both 1957-58 and 1962-63 represent two periods when those at the top of the Party hierarchy moved away from pursuing a more pluralistic, tolerant policy course, due to anxiety inspired by both sharpening Cold War hostilities and domestic developments. In these periods, official rhetoric censured what it labeled as 639 TsAOPIM, f. 635, op. 13, d. 546, ll. 56-57. This is likely related to criticism of the Party associated with the fallout from the Secret Speech and the Hungary invasion. For more, see Polly Jones, “From the Secret Speech to the Burial of Stalin: Real and Ideal Responses to De-Stalinization,” in Jones ed., The Dilemmas, 41-63. 640 TsAOPIM, f. 6083, op. 1, d. 52, ll. 166-67. 641 Susan E. Reid, “In the Name of the People: The Manege Affair Revisited,” Kritika 6.4 (Fall 2005): 673716. 642 On these anxieties, see Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer, 156-88.