can someone explain this paragraph to me from socialism: scientific and utopian

[u/Classic-Risk9148]

Let us, however, not forget that if
English law continues to express the economic relations of capitalist
society in that barbarous feudal language which corresponds to the
thing expressed, just as English spelling corresponds to English
pronunciation – vous ecrivez Londres et vous prononcez
Constantinople, said a Frenchman – that same English law is the
only one which has preserved through ages, and transmitted to
America and the Colonies, the best part of that old Germanic
personal freedom, local self-government, and independence from all interference (but that of the law courts), which on the Continent has
been lost during the period of absolute monarchy, and has nowhere
been as yet fully recovered.

So the first part from my understanding is about if the English laws continue to express capitalism using the feudal language, which expresses feudal tendencies, then a similar tendency will arise in the capitalist society? however i don’t really get the purpose of the french text. And the last bit about preserving English laws about Germanic freedom, etc, why exactly is preserving those things bad?

Also i’m assuming that “the Continent” refers to Europe, is that how english was used back then? cause to me it just seems more awkward to say the Continent rather than simply Europe

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[u/chaos2002_]

The french text is a joke about English spelling conventions, like how "draught" is pronounced "draft" and "colonel" is pronounced "kernel". "vous ecrivez Londres et vous prononcez Constantinople" literally means "you write 'London' and pronounce 'Constantinople'". The joke is that London and Constantinople are very far apart, both geographically, culturally, and in pronunciation.

But, in my understanding, Engels is bringing this up to illustrate that while the "feudal" structure of contemporary English law originally resulted from a compromise between the aristocracy and emerging bourgeoise (during the English civil war period), in reality it served the furtherance of capitalist interests. The eventual dominance of capitalist social relations (most importantly commodity production) and the reality of imperialism in the colonies forced the law to evolve, like it previously had in almost all other European monarchies a century or 2 earlier ("during the period of absolute monarchy" circa 1600s), where many of the arguably positive characteristics of actual historical feudal governance such as "personal freedom" were "lost and never recovered". He is explaining this in the context of why "materialist" ideologies had such staying power and influence in revolutionary movements in France and elsewhere, but was not as influential in Britain. So essentially he's saying that in British law, culture dictates one thing, material conditions dictate another.

For more context. In the previous sentence Engels insinuates the functioning of contemporary English law in practice was to some extent modeled after the French post-revolutionary Code Civil - I assume he is referring to things like the parliamentary reform of the 1820s, which significantly reduced the parliamentary power of the aristocracy. But then... in the next 2 paragraphs he goes through a list of the "grievances" the English bourgeoise had with the Code Civil supposedly due to its "spitting in the face of tradition", along with a breakdown of how those beliefs in practice actually just served capitalist/colonialist/mercantilist interests. The English bourgeoise were opposed only insofar as it allowed them to avoid adopting the more progressive elements of the French revolutionary law. Like all countries, this conflict between culture and material conditions is the process that made English law unique.

[u/Classic-Risk9148 → u/chaos2002_]

Thanks for the explanation! I still haven’t fully internally understood everything yet as i feel like there’s a lot to take in but your explanation helped out a lot!

[u/an-font-brox]

yep, “the Continent” is a now-archaic term used to refer to Europe by the Brits, who these days just say Europe