I apologise for possible
mistakes in French quotes, the text was contorted
in some places and insufficiently schooled in
French I more or less left thesparse quotes
alone.J Braddell,editor
Excerpts from the Origins of
Totalitarian Democracy
by Jacob L.
Talmon
(London: Secker and Warburg,
1955), Intro, Part I, Part II and Conclusion
http://www.coloradocollege.edu/Dept/PS/Finley/PS425/reading/Talmon.html
INTRODUCTION
THIS study is an attempt to show that
concurrently with the liberal type of democracy,
there emerged from the same premises in the
eighteenth century a trend towards what we
propose to call the totalitarian type of
democracy. These two currents have existed side
by side ever since the eighteenth century. The
tension between them has constituted an important
chapter in modern history, and has now become the
most vital issue of our time. It would of course
be an exaggeration to suggest that the whole of
the period can be summed up in terms of this
conflict. Nevertheless it was always present,
although usually confused and obscured by other
issues, which may have seemed clearer to
contemporaries, but viewed from the standpoint of
the present day seem incidental and even trivial.
Indeed, from the vantage point of the mid
twentieth century the history of the last hundred
and fifty years looks like a systematic
preparation for the headlong collision between
empirical and liberal democracy on the one hand,
and totalitarian Messianic democracy on the
other, in which the world crisis of to-day
consists.
(Chapter I) THE TWO TYPES OF DEMOCRACY,
LIBERAL AND TOTALITARIAN
The essential difference between the two
schools of democratic thought as they have
evolved is not, as is often alleged, in the
affirmation of the value of liberty by one, and
its denial by the other. It is in their different
attitudes to politics.
The liberal approach assumes politics to be a
matter of trial and error, and regards political
systems as pragmatic contrivances of human
ingenuity and spontaneity. It also recognizes a
variety of levels of personal and collective
endeavour, which are altogether outside the
sphere of politics.
The totalitarian democratic school, on the other
hand, is based upon the assumption of a sole and
exclusive truth in politics. It may be called
political Messianism in the sense that it
postulates a preordained, harmonious and perfect
scheme of things, to which men are irresistibly
driven, and at which they are bound to arrive. It
recognizes ultimately only one plane of
existence, the political. It widens the scope of
politics to embrace the whole of human existence.
It treats all human thought and action as having
social significance, and therefore as falling
within the orbit of political action. Its
political ideas are not a set of pragmatic
precepts or a body of devices applicable to a
special branch of human endeavour. They are an
integral part of an all-embracing and coherent
philosophy. Politics is defined as the art of
applying this philosophy to the organization of
society, and the final purpose of politics is
only achieved when this philosophy reigns supreme
over all fields of life.
Both schools affirm the supreme value of
liberty. But whereas one finds the essence of
freedom in spontaneity and the absence of
coercion, the other believes it to be realized
only in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute
collective purpose. It is outside our scope to
decide whether liberal democracy has the faith
that totalitarian democracy claims to have in
final aims. What is beyond dispute is that the
final aims of liberal democracy have not the same
concrete character. They are conceived in rather
negative terms, and the use of force for their
realization is considered as an evil. Liberal
democrats believe that in the absence of coercion
men and society may one day reach through a
process of trial and error a state of ideal
harmony. In the case of totalitarian democracy,
this state is precisely defined, and is treated
as a matter of immediate urgency, a challenge for
direct action, an imminent event. The problem
that arises for totalitarian democracy, and which
is one of the main subjects of this study, may be
called the paradox of freedom. Is human freedom
compatible with an exclusive pattern of social
existence, even if this pattern aims at the
maximum of social justice and security ? The
paradox of totalitarian democracy is in its
insistence that they are compatible. The purpose
it proclaims is never presented as an absolute
idea, external and prior to man. It is thought to
be immanent in man's reason and will, to
constitute the fullest satisfaction of his true
interest, and to be the guarantee of his freedom.
This is the reason why the extreme forms of
popular sovereignty became the essential
concomitant of this absolute purpose. From the
difficulty of reconciling freedom with the idea
of an absolute purpose spring all the particular
problems and antinomies of totalitarian
democracy. This difficulty could only be resolved
by thinking not in terms of men as they are, but
as they were meant to be, and would be, given the
proper conditions. In so far as they are at
variance with the absolute ideal they can be
ignored, coerced or intimidated into conforming,
without any real violation of the democratic
principle being involved. In the proper
conditions, it is held, the conflict between
spontaneity and duty would disappear, and with it
the need for coercion. The practical question is,
of course, whether constraint will disappear
because all have learned to act in harmony, or
because all opponents have been eliminated.
(2) THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ORIGINS OF
POLITICAL MESSIANISM; THE SCHISM
Enough has been said already to indicate that
totalitarian democracy will be treated in these
pages as an integral part of the Western
tradition. It is vital to add that much of the
totalitarian democratic attitude was contained in
the original and general eighteenth century
pattern of thought. The branching out of the two
types of democracy from the common stem took
place only after the common beliefs had been
tested in the ordeal of the French Revolution.
From the point of view of this study the most
important change that occurred in the eighteenth
century was the peculiar state of mind which
achieved dominance in the second part of the
century. Men were gripped by the idea that the
conditions, a product of faith, time and custom,
in which they and their forefathers had been
living, were unnatural and had all to be replaced
by deliberately planned uniform patterns, which
would be natural and rational. This was the
result of the decline of the traditional order in
Europe: religion lost its intellectual as well as
its emotional hold; hierarchical feudalism
disintegrated under the impact of social and
economic factors; and the older conception of
society based on status came to be replaced by
the idea of the abstract, individual man. The
rationalist idea substituted social utility for
tradition as the main criterion of social
institutions and values. It also suggested a form
of social determinism, to which men are
irresistibly driven, and which they are bound to
accept one day. It thus postulated a single valid
system, which would come into existence when
everything not accounted for by reason and
utility had been removed. This idea was, of
course, bound to clash with the inveterate
irrational ability of man's ways, his likings and
attachments.
The decline of religious authority implied the
liberation of man's conscience, but it also
implied something else. Religious ethics had to
be speedily replaced by secular, social morality.
With the rejection of the Church, and of
transcendental justice, the State remained the
sole source and sanction of morality. This was a
matter of great importance, at a time when
politics were considered indistinguishable from
ethics. The decline of the idea of status
consequent on the rise o f individualism spelt
the doom of privilege, but also contained
totalitarian potentialities. If, as will be
argued in this essay, empiricism is the ally of
freedom, and the doctrinaire spirit is the friend
of totalitarianism, the idea of man as an
abstraction, independent of the historic groups
to which he belongs, is likely to become a
powerful vehicle of totalitarianism. These three
currents merged into the idea of a homogeneous
society, in which men live upon one exclusive
plane of existence. There were no longer to be
different levels of social life, such as the
temporal and the transcendental, or membership of
a class and citizenship. The only recognized
standard of judgment was to be social utility, as
expressed in the idea of the general good, which
was spoken of as if it were a visible and
tangible objective. The whole of virtue was
summed up as conformity to the rationalist,
natural pattern. In the past it was possible for
the State to regard many things as matters for
God and the Church alone. The new State could
recognize no such limitations. Formerly, men
lived in groups. A man had to belong to some
group, and could belong to several at the same
time. Now there was to be only one framework for
all activity: the nation.
The eighteenth century never distinguished
clearly between the sphere of personal
self-expression and that of social action. The
privacy of creative experience and feeling, which
is the salt of freedom, was in due course to be
swamped by the pressure of the permanently
assembled people, vibrating with one collective
emotion. The fact that eighteenth-century
thinkers were ardent prophets of liberty and the
rights of man is so much taken for granted that
it scarcely needs to be mentioned. But what must
be emphasized is the intense preoccupation of the
eighteenth century with the idea of virtue, which
was nothing if not conformity to the hoped-for
pattern of social harmony. They refused to
envisage the conflict between liberty and virtue
as inevitable. On the contrary, the inevitable
equation of liberty with virtue and reason was
the most cherished article of their faith. When
the eighteenth-century secular religion came face
to face with this conflict, the result was the
great schism. Liberal democracy flinched from the
spectre of force, and fell back upon the
trial-and-error philosophy. Totalitarian
Messianism hardened into an exclusive doctrine
represented by a vanguard of the enlightened, who
justified themselves in the use of coercion
against those who refused to be free and
virtuous. The other cause for this fissure,
certainly no less important, was the question of
property. The original impulse of political
Messianism was not economic, but ethical and
political. However radical in their theoretical
premises, most eighteenth-century thinkers shrunk
from applying the principle of total renovation
to the sphere of economics and property. It was
however extremely difficult to theorize about a
rational harmonious social order, with
contradictions resolved, anti-social impulses
checked, and man's desire for happiness
satisfied, while leaving the field of economic
endeavour to be dominated by established facts
and interests, man's acquisitive spirit and
chance. Eighteenth-century thinkers became thus
involved in grave inconsistencies, which they
attempted to cover with all kinds of devices. The
most remarkable of these certainly was the
Physiocratic combination of absolutism in
politics with the laissez-faire theory in
economics, which claimed that the free,
unhampered economic pursuits of men would set
themselves into a harmonious pattern, in
accordance with the laws of demand and supply.
But before the eighteenth century had come to an
end, the inner logic of political Messianism,
precipitated by the Revolutionary upheaval, its
hopes, its lessons and its disappointments,
converted the secular religion of the eighteenth
century from a mainly ethical into a social and
economic doctrine, based on ethical premises. The
postulate of salvation, implied in the idea of
the natural order, came to signify to the masses
stirred by the Revolution a message of social
salvation before all. And so the objective ideal
of social harmony gave place to the yearnings and
strivings of a class; the principle of virtuous
liberty to the passion for security. The
possessing classes, surprised and frightened by
the social dynamism of the idea of the natural
order, hastened to shake off the philosophy which
they had earlier so eagerly embraced as a weapon
in their struggle against feudal privilege. The
Fourth Estate seized it from their hands, and
filled it with new meaning. And so the ideology
of the rising bourgeoisie was transformed into
that of the proletariat. | The object of this
book is to examine the stages through which the
social ideals of the eighteenth century were
transformed-on one side-into totalitarian
democracy. These stages are taken to be three:
the eighteenth-century postulate, the Jacobin
improvisation, and the Babouvist crystallization;
all leading up to the emergence of economic
communism on the one hand, and to the synthesis
of popular sovereignty and single-party
dictatorship on the other. The three stages
constitute the three parts into which this study
is divided. The evolution of the liberal type of
democracy is outside its scope. Modern
totalitarian democracy is a dictatorship resting
on popular enthusiasm, and is thus completely
different from absolute power wielded by a
divine-right King, or by a usurping tyrant. In so
far as it is a dictatorship based on ideology and
the enthusiasm of the masses, it is the outcome,
as will be shown, of the synthesis between the
eighteenth-century idea of the natural order and
the Rousseauist idea of popular fulfillment and
self-expression. By means of this synthesis
rationalism was made into a passionate faith.
Rousseau's " general will ", an
ambiguous concept, sometimes concocted as valid a
priori, sometimes as immanent in the will of man,
exclusive and implying unanimity, became the
driving force of totalitarian democracy, and the
source of all its contradictions and antinomies.
These are to be examined in detail.
(3) TOTALITARIANISM OF THE RIGHT AND
TOTALITARIANISM OF THE LEFT
The emphasis of this theory is always upon
Man. And here is the distinguishing mark between
totalitarianism of the Left, with which this
study is concerned, and totalitarianism of the
Right. While the starting-point of
totalitarianism of the Left has been and
ultimately still is man, his reason and
salvation, that of the Right totalitarian schools
has been the collective entity, the State, the
nation, or the race. The former trend remains
essentially individualist, atomistic and
rationalist even when it raises the class or
party to the level of absolute ends. These are,
after all, only mechanically formed groups.
Totalitarians of the Right operate solely with
historic, racial and organic entities, concepts
altogether alien to individualism and
rationalism. That is why totalitarian ideologies
of the Left always are inclined to assume the
character of a universal creed, a tendency which
totalitarianism of the Right altogether lacks.
For reason is a unifying force, presupposing
mankind to be the sum total of individual
reasoning beings. Totalitarianism of the Right
implies the negation of such a unity as well as a
denial of the universality of human values. It
represents a special form of pragmatism. Without
raising the question of the absolute significance
of the professed tenets, it aspires to a mode of
existence, in which the faculties of man may - in
a deliberately limited circumference of space,
time and numbers - be stirred, asserted and
realized so as to enable him to have what is
nowadays called a wholly satisfying experience in
a collective elan, quickened by mass emotion and
the impact of impressive exploits; in brief, the
myth.
The second vital difference between the two types
of totalitarianism is to be found in their
divergent conceptions of human nature. The Left
proclaims the essential goodness and
perfectibility of human nature. The Right
declares man to be weak and corrupt. Both may
preach the necessity of coercion. The Right
teaches the necessity of force as a permanent way
of maintaining order among poor and unruly
creatures, and training them to act in a manner
alien to their mediocre nature. Totalitarianism
of the Left, when resorting to force, does so in
the conviction that force is used only in order
to quicken the pace of man's progress to
perfection and social harmony. It is thus
legitimate to use the term democracy in reference
to totalitarianism of the Left. The term could
not be applied to totalitarianism of the Right.
It may be said that these are distinctions that
make little difference, especially where results
are concerned. It may further be maintained that
whatever their original premises were,
totalitarian parties and regimes of the Left have
invariably tended to degenerate into soulless
power machines, whose lip service to the original
tenets is mere hypocrisy.
Now, this is a question not only of academic
interest, but of much practical importance. Even
if we accept this diagnosis of the nature of Left
totalitarianism when triumphant, are we to
attribute its degeneration to the inevitable
process of corrosion which an idea undergoes when
power falls into the hands of its adherents ? Or
should we seek the reason for it deeper, namely
in the very essence of the contradiction between
ideological absolutism and individualism,
inherent in modern political Messianism ? When
the deeds of men in power belie their words, are
they to be called hypocrites and cynics or are
they victims of an intellectual delusion ? Here
is one of the questions to be investigated. This
essay is not concerned with the problem of power
as such, only with that of power in relation to
consciousness. The objective forces favoring the
concentration of power and the subordination of
the individual to a power machine, such as modern
methods of production and the arcane imperilled
by modern technical developments, are outside the
scope of this work. The political tactics of
totalitarian parties and systems, or the
blueprints of social positivist philosophies for
the human hive, will be considered not for their
own sake, but in their bearing on man's awareness
and beliefs. What is vital for the present
investigation is the human element: the thrill of
fulfillment experienced by the believers in a
modern Messianic movement, which makes them
experience submission as deliverance; the process
that goes on in the minds of the leaders, whether
in soliloquy or in public discussion, when faced
with the question of whether their acts are the
self-expression of the Cause or their own willful
deeds; the stubborn faith that as a result of
proper social arrangements and education, the
conflict between spontaneity and the objective
pattern will ultimately be resolved by the
acceptance of the latter, without any sense of
coercion.
(4) SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS MESSIANISM
The modern secular religion of totalitarian
democracy has had unbroken continuity as a
sociological force for over a hundred and fifty
years. Both aspects, its continuity and its
character as a sociological force, need
stressing. These two essential features permit us
to ignore the isolated literary ventures into
Utopia in the earlier centuries, without denying
the influence of Plato, Thomas More or Campanella
upon men like Rousseau, Diderot, Mably, or
Saint-Just and Buonarroti.- If one were in search
of antecedents, one would also have to turn to
the various outbursts of chiliasm in the Middle
Ages and in the Reformation, especially to the
extreme wing of the Puritan Revolution in
seventeenth-century England. The coexistence of
liberal democracy and revolutionary Messianism in
modern times could legitimately be compared to
the relationship between the official Church and
the eschatological revolutionary current in
Christianity during the ages of faith. Always
flowing beneath the surface of official society,
the Christian revolutionary current burst forth
from time to time in the form of movements of
evangelical poverty, heretical sects, and
social-religious revolts. Like the two major
trends of the modern era, the Church and the
rebels against it derived their ideas from the
same source. The heterodox groups were, however,
too ardent in their literal interpretation of
God's word. They refused to come to terms with
the flesh and the kingdom of this world, and were
unwilling to overcome the ideal of a society of
saints to the exclusively transcendental plane.
There were, however, vital differences between
the chiliastic movements of the earlier centuries
and modern political Messianism. The former were
only sporadic occurrences, although the tension
from which they sprang was always latent. A flame
burst forth and was soon totally extinguished, or
rendered harmless to society at large. The crisis
might leave behind a sect. The myth might survive
and perhaps rekindle a spark in some remote place
and at some later date. Society as a whole went
on much as before, although not quite free from
the fear and mental discomfort left by the
conflagration, and not wholly immune to the
influence of the new sect. There was however a
fundamental principle in pre-eighteenth century
chiliasm that made it impossible for it to play
the part of modern political Messianism. It was
its religious essence. This explains why the
Messianic movements or spasms of the earlier type
invariably ended by breaking away from society,
and forming sects based upon voluntary adherence
and community of experience. Modern Messianism
has always aimed at a revolution in society as a
whole. The driving power of the sects was the
Word of God, and the hope of achieving salvation
by facing God alone and directly, without the aid
of intermediary powers or submission to them,
whether spiritual or temporal, and yet as part of
a society of equal saints. This ideal is not
unlike the modern expectation of a [3] society of
men absolutely free and equal, and yet acting in
spontaneous and perfect accord.
In spite of this superficial similarity, the
differences between the two altitudes are
fundamental. Although the Christian
revolutionaries fought for the individual's
freedom to interpret God's word, their sovereign
was not man, but God. ~ They aimed at personal
salvation and an egalitarian society based on the
Law of Nature, because they had it from God that
there lies salvation, and believed that obedience
to God is the condition of human freedom. The
point of reference of modern Messianism, on the
other hand, is man's reason and will, and its aim
happiness on earth, achieved by a social
transformation. The point of reference is
temporal, but the claims are absolute.
It is thus a remarkable fact that the Christian
revolutionaries, with few exceptions, notably
Calvin's Geneva and Anabaptist Munster, shrunk
from the use of force to impose their own
pattern, in spite of their belief in its divine
source and authority, while secular Messianism,
starting with a point of reference in time, has
developed a fanatical resolve to make its
doctrine rule absolutely and everywhere. The
reasons are not far to seek. Even if the Monistic
principle of religious Messianism had succeeded
in dominating and reshaping society the result
would still have been fundamentally different
from the situation created by modern political
" absolutism". Society might have been
forbidden the compromises which are made possible
by the Orthodox distinction between the kingdom
of God and the earthly State, and as a
consequence social and political arrangements
might have lost much of their flexibility. The
sweep towards the enforcement, of an exclusive
pattern would nevertheless have been hampered, if
not by the thought of the fallibility of man, at
least by the consciousness that life on earth is
not a closed circle, but has its continuation and
conclusion in eternity. Secular Messianic Monism
is subject to no such restraints. It demands that
the whole account be settled here and now. The
extreme wing of English Puritanism at the time of
the Cromwellian Revolution still bore the full
imprint of religious eschatology. It had already
acquired modern features however, It combined
extreme individualism with socia radicalism and a
totalitarian temperament. Nevertheless this
movement, far from initiating the continuous
current of modern political Messianism, remained
from the European point of view an isolated
episode. It was apparently quite unknown to the
early representatives of the movement under
discussion. While eighteenth-century French
thinkers and revolutionary leaders were alive to
the political lessons of the " official
" Cromwellian Revolution as a deterrent
against military dictatorship, and a writer like
Harrington was respected as a master, it is
doubtful whether the more radical aspects of the
English Revolution were much known or exercised
any influence in France before the nineteenth
century. The strongest influence on the fathers
of totalitarian democracy was that of antiquity,
interpreted in their own way. Their myth of
antiquity was the image of liberty equated with
virtue. The citizen of Sparta or Rome was proudly
free, yet a marvel of ascetic discipline. He was
an equal member of the sovereign nation, and at
the same time had no life or interests outside
the collective tissue.
(5) QUESTIONS OF METHOD
Objections may be urged against the view that
political Messianism as a postulate preceded the
compact set of social and economic ideas with
which it has come to be associated. It may be
said that it is wrong to treat Messianism as a
substance that can be divorced from its
attributes; to consider it altogether apart from
the events which produced it, the instruments
which have been used to promote it, and the
concrete aims and policies of the men who
represented it at any given moment. Such a
procedure, it may be said, presupposes an almost
mystical agency active in history. It is
important to answer this objection not less for
its philosophical significance than for the
question of method it raises. What this study is
concerned with is a state of mind, a way of
feeling, a disposition, a pattern of mental,
emotional and behaviouristic elements, best
compared to the set of attitudes engendered by a
religion. Whatever may be said about the
significance of the economic or other factors in
the shaping of beliefs, it can hardly be denied
that the all-embracing attitudes of this kind,
once crystallized, are the real substance of
history, The concrete elements of history, the
acts of politicians, the aspirations of people,
the ideas, values, preferences and prejudices of
an age, are the outward manifestations of its
religion in the widest sense.
The problem under discussion could not be
dealt with on the plane of systematic, discursive
reasoning alone. For as in religion, although the
partial theological framework may be a marvel of
logic, with syllogism following syllogism, the
first premises, the axioms or the postulates must
remain a matter of faith. They can be neither
proved nor disproved. And it is they that really
matter. They determine the ideas and acts, and
resolve contradictions into some higher identity
or harmony. The postulate of some ultimate,
logical, exclusively valid social order is a
matter of faith, and it is not much use trying to
defeat it by argument. But its significance to
the believer, and the power it has to move men
and mountains, can hardly be exaggerated.
Now, in Europe and elsewhere, for the last
century and a half, there have always been men
and movements animated by such a faith, preparing
for the Day, referring all their ideas and acts
to some all embracing system, sure of some
pre-ordained and final denouement of the historic
drama with all its conflicts into an absolute
harmony. Jacobins may have differed from the
Babouvists, the Blanquists from many of the
secret societies in the first half of the
nineteenth century, the Communists from the
Socialists, the Anarchists from all others, yet
they all belong to one religion. This religion
emerged in the second part of the eighteenth
century and its rise will be traced in these
pages. The most difficult problem of the secular
religion was to be the antinomy of freedom and
the exclusive Messianic pattern. Complex,
intricate and at times magnificent as the
theories evolved by the various Messianic trends
in the later days were, the original phase, which
is the subject of this study, reveals the first
elements and threads in a crude, naive and simple
form. This fact should help towards understanding
the historic phenomenon as a whole. For some of
the basic ideas of the late and highly developed
Messianic secular religion, especially, as it
will be shown, those relating to human nature,
ethics and philosophical principles, have
remained the same as they were in the eighteenth
century.
It is in the nature of doctrines postulating
universal abstract patterns to be schematic and
grey. They lack the warmth, limpidity and
richness which is to be found in living human and
national tissues. They do not convey the tensions
which arise between unique personalities, in
conflict with each other and their surroundings.
They fail to offer the absorbing interest of the
unpredictable situation and the pragmatic
approach to it. But all these, absent in the
doctrine, emerge in the vicissitudes of the
doctrine as a sociological force. This study is
neither purely a treatise on political theory,
nor a recital of events. Justice would not be
done to the subject by treating it in terms of
the individual psychology of a few leaders. Nor
would the point be made clear by an analysis in
terms of mass psychology. Religion is created and
lived by men, yet it is a framework in which men
live. The problem analyzed here is only partly
one of behavior. The modern secular religion must
first be treated as an objective reality. Only
when this has been done will it be possible to
consider the intellectual and historical patterns
created by the interplay between the secular
religion and particular men and situations. This
interplay becomes particularly interesting, when
it results in contradictions between, on the one
side, the impersonal pattern and, on the other,
the demands of the particular situation and the
uniqueness of personality.
PART I THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ORIGINS OF
POLITICAL MESSIANISM
. . . a l'epoque ou ['influence de ces
progres sur ltopinion, de ['opinion sur les
nations ou sur leurs chefs, cessant tout a coup
d'etre lente et insensible, a produit dans la
masse entiere de quelques peuples, une
revolution, gage certain de celle qui doit
embrasser la generalite de ltespece humaine.
Apres de longues erreurs, apres stetre egares
dans des theories incompletes ou vagues, les
publicistes vent parvenus a connaitre enfin les
veritables droits de l'homme, a les deduire de
cette seule verite qutil est un etre sensible,
capable de former des raisonnements et d'acquerir
des idees morales. CONDORCET
Rousseau, den ihr noch einmal uber das andere
einen Traumer nennt, indes seine Traume unter
Buren Augen in Erfullung gehen, verfuhr viel zu
schonend mit euch, ihr Empiriker; das war sein
Fehler. JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE
Chapter One NATURAL ORDER: THE
POSTULATE (a) THE SINGLE PRINCIPLE
IN I755 Morelly in the Code de la Nature
set out to " lift the veil " so that
all should be able to behold " with horror,
the source and origin of all evils and all crimes
", and learn " the simplest and most
beautiful lessons of nature perpetually
contradicted by vulgar morality and vulgar
politics". He placed on the one side the
science of natural morality, which was meant to
be the same for all nations, and was as simple
and as self-evident in its axioms and
consequences " que les mathematiques
elles-memes "; and on the other side the
chaos of errors, absurdities, false starts and
loose ends, presented by the whole of human
history. Morelly's aim was to find a situation
where it would be " almost impossible for
" man to be depraved and vicious ", and
in which man would be as happy as possible.
Chance, " cette pretendue fatalite ",
would be exorcised from the world. Morelly
thought in terms of deliberate planning, but at
the same time claimed to be only discovering an
objective pattern of things. This pattern is
conceived by him as a social mechanism, a "
marvelous automatic machine". It is
described as " tout intelligent qui
starrangeat lui-meme par un micanisme aussi
simple que merveilleux; ses parties etaient
preparees et pour ainsi dire taillees pour former
le plus bel assemblage ". Like any being in
nature, mankind has " un point fixe
d'integrite ", to which it is ascending by
degrees. The natural order is this ultimate
fulfilment of mankind. Morelly's Code de la
Nature is the earliest in the series of
writings with which this study is concerned. It
was the first book in modern times to put
fully-fledged communism on the agenda as a
practical programme, and not merely as a Utopia.
It became Babeuf's Bible, although he happened to
attribute the work to Diderot. A soulless, badly
written book, very crude in its premises and
argument, not very influential in the
pre-Thermidorian period of the Revolution, it
expresses nevertheless in an exaggerated form the
common tenets of eighteenth-century thought.
All the eminent French political writers of the
second part of the century were engaged in a
search for a new unitary principle of social
existence. Vague as to the concrete nature of the
principle, they all met on common ground as far
as the postulate of such a principle was
concerned. The formulae differed only in
emphasis, and some of these differences deserve
to be illustrated. Helvetius, laying all the
emphasis on utilitarianism, of which he was, in
his De l'Esprit (I758), the first
teacher, and Holbach, writing in the seventies,
and preaching materialist determinism, both
postulated a kind of cosmic pragmatism, of which
the social order was only a replica. The
structure of the world is such that if society
were properly balanced, all that is true would
also be socially useful, and all that is useful
would also be virtuous. None therefore would be
vicious except fools, and none unhappy but the
ignorant and wicked, in other words, those who
presume to kick against the necessary, natural
order of things. Mably, who like Morelly was in
the last resort a Communist, and therefore had a
fixed image of the desired natural pattern, in;
contrast to the vagueness of the utilitarian
postulate, strove for scientific certainty in
social and human affairs. He believed that
politics could develop from the most conjectural
into a most exact science, once the recesses of
the human heart and passions had been explored,
and a scientific system of ethics defined.
Condorcet, writing at the height of the
Revolution in 1793, when he was in hiding and
about to die the victim of the triumph of his
ideas, summed up in a most moving manner the
achievement -of his age by claiming that it had
come into the possession of a universal
instrument equally applicable to all fields of
human endeavour. The same instrument was capable
of discovering those general principles which
form the necessary and immutable laws of justice,
of probing men's motives, of "ascertaining
the truth of natural philosophy, of testing the
effects of history and of formulating laws for
taste ". Once this instrument had been
applied to morals and politics, a degree of
certainty was given to those sciences little
inferior to that which obtained in the natural
sciences. This latest effort, Condorcet claimed,
had placed an everlasting barrier between the
human race and the " old mistakes of its
infancy that win forever preserve us from a
relapse into former ignorance " The analogy
with the claims of dialectical materialism in the
next century is evident.
Placed in this context Rousseau occupies a
position all his own. He starts from the same
point as the others. He wants to investigate the
nature of things, right, reason and justice in
themselves, and the principle of legitimacy.
Events and facts have no claim to be taken for
granted, and to be considered natural, if they do
not conform to one universally valid pattern, no
matter whether such a pattern has ever existed.
And yet, Rousseau makes no attempt to link up his
ideal social order with the universal system and
its all-embracing principle. A mighty fiat
conjures up the social entity whatever its name,
the State, the social contract, the Sovereign or
the general win. The entity is autonomous,
without as it were antecedents or an external
point of reference. It is self sufficient. It is
the source and maker of Al moral and social
values, and yet it has an absolute significance
and purpose. A vital shift of emphasis from
cognition to the categorical imperative takes
place. The sole, as explaining and as-determining
principle of the philosopher, from which all
ideas may be deduced, is transformed into the
Sovereign, who cannot by definition err or hurt
any of its citizens, Man has no other standards
than those laid down by the social contract. He
receives his personality and all his ideas from
it. The State takes the place of the absolute
point of reference embodied in the universal
principle. The implications of this shift of
emphasis will be examined later.
Eighteenth-century thought, which prepared the
ground for the French Revolution, should be
considered on three different levels: first,
criticism of the ancient regime, its abuses and
absurdities; second, the positive ideas about a
more rational and freer system of administration,
such as, for instance, ideas on the separation of
powers, the place of the judiciary, and a sound
system of taxation; and lastly, the vague
Messianic expectation attached to the idea of the
natural order. It is due to this last aspect that
social and political criticism in
eighteenth-century writings always seems to point
to things far beyond the concrete and immediate
grievances and demands. So little is said
directly about, for instance, feudal abuses or
particular wrongs, and so much, however vaguely,
about eternal principles, the first laws of
society, and the cleavage of mankind into ruling
and exploiting classes, into haves and have-nots,
that has come into existence in contradiction to
the dictates of nature. An incalculable dynamism
was immanent in the idea of the natural order.
When the Revolution came to test the
eighteenth-century teachings, the sense of an
imminent and total renovation was almost
universal. But while to most the idea of the
natural order preached by the philosopher
appeared as a guiding idea and a point of
reference, only to be approximated and never
really attained, to the more ardent elements it
became charged with a driving power that could I
never be halted till it had run out its final and
inexorable course. And that course appeared to
expand into boundlessness.
It is easy to imagine the horror of Robespierre's
listeners at the Convention when, desperately
anxious to know where all the purges and all the
terror were leading, after all possible
Republican and popular measures had already been
taken, and the sternest reprisals against
counter-revolutionaries applied, they heard the
Incorruptible say that his aim was to establish
at last the natural order and to realize the
promises of philosophy. There was something
strikingly reminiscent of the medieval
evangelical revolutionaries quoting the Sermon on
the Mount to the dignitaries of the Church in
Babeuf's pleading before the Court at Vendome. He
read extract after extract from Rousseau, Mably,
Morelly and others, and asked his judges, haunted
by the memory of Robespierre's reign of virtue,
why he should be tried for having taken the
teachings of the fathers of the Revolution
seriously. Had they not taught that the natural
order would result in universal happiness ? And
if the Revolution had failed to realize this
promise, could one claim that it had come to an
end ? The survivors of the Gironde restored to
power after the downfall of Robespierre, who in
1792 were still using the same vocabulary as
Robespierre and keeping up a constant appeal to
nature and its laws, had learned their frightful
lesson in year II of the Republic. Writers like
Benjamin Constant and Mme de Stael were soon to
develop their brand of liberal empiricism in
answer to 1793. It was out of that inner
certainty of the existence of a natural and
wholly rational and just order that scientific
socialism and the idea of an integral Revolution
grew.
Already, however, by the end of 1792 a Girondist
" liberal " grew alarmed. Thus Salle
wrote to Dubois-Crance: " The principles, in
their metaphysical abstractness and in the form
in which they are being constantly analyzed in
this society - no government can be founded on
them; a principle cannot be rigorously applied to
political association, for the simple reason that
a principle admits of no imperfection; and,
whatever you may do, men are imperfect. I say
more: I make bold to say, and indeed, in the
spirit of Rousseau himself, that the social state
is a continuous violation of the will of the
nation as conceived in its abstract
relationships. What may not be the results of
these imprudent declamations which take this will
as a safe basis; which, under the pretext of full
and complete sovereignty of the people, will
suffer no legal restriction; which present man
always in the image of an angel; which, desirous
of discovering what befits him, ignore what he
really is; which, in an endeavour to persuade the
people that they are wise enough, give them
dispensation from the effort to be that ! . . . I
would gladly, if you like, applaud the chimera of
perfection that they are after. But tell me, in
divesting in this way man of what is human in
him, are they not most likely to turn him into a
ferocious beast ? "
Eighteenth-century philosophers were never in
doubt that they were preaching a new religion.
They faced a mighty challenge. The Church claimed
to offer an absolute point of reference to man
and society. It also claimed to embody an
ultimate and all embracing unity of human
existence across the various levels of human and
social life. The Church accused secular
philosophy of destroying these two most essential
conditions of private and public morality, and
thereby undermining the very basis of ethics, and
indeed society itself. If there is no God, and no
transcendental sanction, why should men act
virtuously? Eighteenth-century philosophy not
only accepted the challenge, but turned the
accusation against the Church itself. The
philosopher felt the challenge so keenly that, as
Diderot put it, they regarded it their sacred
duty to show not only that their morality was
just as good as religious ethics, but much
better. Holbach was at pains to prove that the
materialistic principle was a much stronger basis
for ethics than the principle of the "
spirituality of the soul " could ever claim
to be. A great deal of eighteenth-century thought
would assume a different complexion, if it was
constantly remembered that though a philosophy of
protest, revolt and spontaneity,
eighteenth-century philosophy, as already hinted,
was intensely aware of the challenge to redefine
the guarantees of social cohesion and morality.
The philosophers were most anxious to show that
not they, but their opponents, were the
anarchists from the point of view of the natural
order. The philosophical line of attack on the
Church was that apart from the historic untruth
of the revealed religion, it also stood condemned
as a sociological force. It introduced "
imaginary" and heterogeneous criteria into
the life of man and society. The commandments of
the Church were incompatible with the
requirements of society. The contradiction was
harmful to both, and altogether demoralizing. One
preached ascetic unworldliness, the other looked
for social virtues and vigor. Man was being
taught to work for the salvation of his soul, but
his nature kept him earthbound. Religion taught
him one thing, science another. Religious ethics
were quite ineffective, where they were not a
source of evil. The promise of eternal reward and
the threat of everlasting punishment were too
remote to have any real influence on actual human
conduct. This sanction at best engendered
hypocrisy. Where the teachings of religion were
successful, they resulted in human waste, like
monasticism and asceticism, or in cruel
intolerance and wars of religion. Moreover, the
" imaginary " teachings and standards
of the Church offered support and justification
to tyrannical vested interests harmful to society
as a whole. Rousseau, Morelly, Helvetius,
Holbach, Diderot, Condorcet, not to mention of
course Voltaire, were unanimous in their
insistence on the homogeneous nature of morality.
Some, the Voltairians and atheists, speak in
terms of a deliberate plot against society, when
attacking the claims of religious ethics. Others,
like Rousseau, lay all the emphasis on matters of
principle, above all the principle of social
unity: you cannot be a citizen and Christian at
the same time, for the loyalties clash. " It
is from the legislative body only," wrote
Helvetius, " that we can expect a beneficent
religion . . . let sagacious ministers be clothed
with temporal and spiritual powers, and all
contradiction between religious and patriotic
precepts will disappear . . . the religious
system shall coincide with the national
prosperity . . . religions, the habitual
instruments of sacerdotal ambition, shall become
the felicity of the public."
NATURAL ORDER: TO POSTULATE
Holbach taught the same, and although Rousseau
and Mably quarreled bitterly with the two
atheistic materialists, there was hardly a
fundamental disagreement between them. For even
to them the vital consideration was not really
the existence of a Divine Being, but guarantees
for social ethics. Rousseau, the master of
Robespierre, and Mably, whose religious ideas
made such a deep impression upon Saint-Just, were
nearer Hebrew Biblical and classical pagan
conceptions than Christian ideas. Robespierre's
Jewish idea of Providence hovering over the
Revolution was a conclusion from the
eighteenth-century view that the moral drama is
played out under the judgment of Nature
exclusively within the framework of social
relations. No eighteenth-century thinker
recognized any distinction between membership of
a kingdom of God and citizenship of an earthly
state, in the Christian sense. Whether, as the
eighteenth century as a whole, in the spirit of
the Old Testament, believed, that reward and
punishment for the deeds of one generation are
distributed to posterity, or whether, as Rousseau
and Mably thought, it was the individual who
comes to judgment to be rewarded or punished as
an individual soul, the only virtues or sins
recognized were those of social significance. The
only difference between Helvetius and Holbach, on
the one hand, and Rousseau and Mably, on the
other, was that according to the materialists
social legislation and arrangements alone were
sufficient to ensure moral conduct, while
Rousseau and Mably feared that man may elude the
law. It was vital that man should always remember
that even if he eludes the magistrate, the
account would still have to be settled elsewhere
and before a higher tribunal. It was not less
important that the unhappy and the injured should
not despair of justice in society, even if it
fails to come to their succor on earth. Rousseau,
transcending the limits of mechanical materialist
rationalism, harked back to antiquity. He felt
compelled by the ancient sense of awe at the idea
of a Divinity hovering over the city-state, and
imbuing every act of its life with a solemn
significance. He was fascinated by the pomp and
thrill of collective patriotic worship in the
national religious fetes, games and public
displays, while Mably was convinced that no
religion was possible without external forms,
institutions and fixed rites.
The articles of Rousseau's civil religion, other
than those concerning the existence of Divinity
and the immortality of the soul, do not
materially differ from " the principles that
are eternal and invariable, that are drawn from
the nature of men and things, and like the
propositions of geometry are capable of the most
rigorous demonstration ", upon which
Helvetius believed a universal religion should be
founded. They refer to the laws of the State and
articles of the Social Contract. It was not only
theism that caused Rousseau to make the belief in
Divinity a social necessity. It was also the fact
that his and Mably's approach differed from that
of the rationalists on the fundamental point,
already made. The social harmonious pattern of
Helvetius, Morelly and Holbach was a matter of
cognition. It was there to be discerned and
applied. In the case of Rousseau and Mably it was
a categorical imperative, a matter of will. The
materialist determinists felt confident that
knowledge would be translated into action. Not so
Rousseau and Mably, with their different attitude
to human nature, and their deep sense of sin.
Hence Rousseau felt driven to demand the death
penalty for one who disbelieved in the civil
religion, while Mably wished to ban all atheists
and even deists, who claim that a religion of the
heart was all that was wanted. Man had to be made
to fear God, and made to experience the sense of
fear constantly and vividly.
Too much has been made of the contradiction
between the chapter on the Civil Religion in the
Social Contract and the Pro Cession de Foi du
Vicaire Savoyard. The latter may well have been a
shock to the materialists in so far as the purely
philosophical problem of the existence of a
personal deity was concerned. The direct and
intensive relationship between man and God of the
Vicar of Savoy need not, however, necessarily be
taken as a refutation of the self sufficiency of
the religion of society. It would be so if the
State or society were to be considered as purely
human contrivances. If the State or Society are,
as in the case of Robespierre, regarded as
existing under the personal Providence of God,
like the pre-exilic Hebrew society, and if the
relationship between God and man, unlike that
presented by the Old Testament, does not entail a
hierarchical organization and a system of laws
and duties outside the framework of social
institutions and laws, then the purely religious
sense of awe and patriotic piety not only need
not clash, but are likely to become fused into
the Robespierre type of mysticism. There are no
other priests than the magistrates, religious and
patriotic ceremonial are the same, and to serve
you country is to serve God.
The faith in a natural order and the
immutable, universal principles deduced from it
was the cause of the almost universal opposition
in the second part of the eighteenth century to
Montesquieu's central idea, in spite of the high
esteem in which the father of the idea of
republican virtue was held. The lack of
understanding for the pragmatic evolution of
social forms was so great that Morelly took the Esprit
des Lois to be a didactic tract designed to
show the vagaries and follies of mankind, once
they had deviated from and abandoned the state of
nature. Politics, according to Sicyes, was an
art, and not a descriptive science like physics.
Its object was to plan, to create reality and to
do so in obedience to a permanent pattern. It
was, Sieyes maintained, natural law that was old,
and the errors of existing societies were new.
Diderot did not think that a knowledge of history
must precede that of morality. It seemed to him
more useful and expedient to gain an idea of the
just and unjust, "before possessing a
knowledge of the actions and the men to whom one
ought to apply it ". The emphasis upon
" ought " instead of " why "
was Rousseau's answer to Montesquieu. In the much
quoted passage in Emile, Rousseau says
that Montesquieu was the only man capable of .
creating the " great and useless "
science of politics, or rather political right,
but unfortunately contented himself with dealing
with the positive laws of the established
governments, " et rien au monde n'est plus
different que ces deux etudes ". Rousseau's
own references to relativism conditioned by
different geographical circumstances do not
affect his general approach. They appear to see
the necessary tribute he feels obliged to pay to
political geography, and they usually occur when
the subject is economics. Condorcet, like
Rousseau, thought that Montesquieu would have
done better had he been less occupied with
finding " the reasons for that which is
there than with seeking that which ought to
be". More interesting and less noticed was
eighteenth-century criticism of Montesquieu which
implied that his relativism was due to his having
given preference to geographical and other
factors over the human factor. The underlying
assumption of this criticism-a point to be
developed later - was the idea that while
objective conditions make for variety, it was
human nature that called for uniformity. Even
Montesquieu himself, never quite a "
Montesquieu'ist " - as Marx not a Marxist -
believed in natural laws derived from man's inner
being as a constant and immutable quality.
Helvetius and Mably maintained that Montesquieu's
thesis was vitiated by his failure to recognize
that human psychology was the only vital factor
in shaping political systems. To Helvetius it was
the desire for power and the ways of obtaining
it. Mably recognized human passions, and not
climatic differences or the particular
configuration of a territory, as the decisive
factor in politics. He believed that human
psychology was the same in every climate. Hence,
knowledge of psychology was the safest way to
scientific politics.
Condorcet and others put the main emphasis on the
rights of man as the condition of an exclusive
social system. His criticism should be read
together with his comparison between the French
Revolution and the political systems of antiquity
and the United States of America. The case
between rationalist politics and political
empiricism has nowhere been made clearer on the
side of eighteenth century French philosophy.
Condorcet objects to the empiricism of the
ancient Greek political philosophy. It was a
science of facts, but not a true theory founded
upon general, universal principles, nature and
reason. The Greek thinkers aimed less at
extirpating the causes of evil than at destroying
their effects by opposing their causes one to
another. In brief, instead of applying a
systematic and radical cure, they tried to play
up to prejudices and vices, and play them off
against each other so as to cancel their effects.
No effort to disperse and suppress them was made.
The result was, that these policies deformed,
misled, brutalized and inflamed men, instead
of refining and purifying them. Condorcet seems
at one time to come very near Morelly's
condemnation of what to-day would be called
reformism: the perennial effort, in the words of
the Code de la Nature, to perfect the
imperfect. This procedure - claimed Morelly -
only complicates the chain of evils, misleads the
people and kills the energy for a radical reform.
Like all his eighteenth-century predecessors,
Condorcet based his idea of a radical reform on
the immutable necessities of human nature, or
rather the rights of man derived from them. He
thought that the Greeks had a consciousness of
rights, but failed to comprise their coherent
structure, their depth, extent and real nature.
They saw in them, as it were, a heritage, a
set of inherited rights, and not a coherent,
objective framework. Even the American Revolution
had not yet achieved the full consciousness of
these principles. The Americans had not yet
acquired principles sufficiently invariable not
to fear that legislators might introduce into the
political institutions their particular
prejudices and passions. Their object could
not as yet therefore be to build on the firm,
permanent basis of nature and universal maxims a
society of men equal and free; they had to be
content with establishing " laws to
hereditary members ", that is to say, within
the context of the given realities and
expediency. The American system therefore offered
an example of a search for a mean between the
oligarchy of the rich and the fickleness of the
poor, inviting tyranny. The French
Revolution marked the absolute turning point.
" We arrived at the period when philosophy .
. . obtained an influence on the thinking class
of men, and these on the people and their
governments that ceasing any longer to be gradual
produced a revolution in the entire mass of
certain nations, and gave thereby a secure pledge
of the general revolution one day to follow that
shall embrace the whole human species . . . after
ages of error, after wandering in all the mazes
of vague and defective theories, writers . . . at
length arrived at the knowledge of the true
rights of man . . . deducted from the same
principle . . . a being endowed with sensation,
capable of reasoning . . . laws deduced from the
nature of our own feeling . . . our moral
constitution."
The French Revolution compared with the American
Revolution had been an event on quite a different
plane. It had been a total revolution in the
sense that it had left no sphere and retrospect
of human existence untouched, whereas the
American Revolution had been a purely political
change-over. Furthermore, while the French
Revolution had enthroned equality and effected a
political transformation based upon the identity
of the natural rights of man, the American
Revolution had been content to achieve a balance
of social powers based on inequality and
compromise. It was this human hubris and impious
presumption that frail man is capable of
producing a scheme of things of absolute and
final significance that, on the one hand,
provoked some of Burke's most eloquent passages
and, on the other, led Joseph de Maistre, Bonald
and their school to proclaim the idea of
theocratic absolutism.
Chapter Two THE SOCIAL PATTERN AND
FREEDOM : :. (HELVETIUS AND HOLBACH)
(a)IDENTITY OF REASON
WE now reach the core of our problem, the paradox
of freedom. The fighting argument of the teachers
of the natural system was that the powers that be
and their theoretical defenders deliberately or
ignorantly took no heed of human nature. All the
evils, vices and miseries were due to the fact
that man had not consulted his true nature, or
had been prevented from doing so by ignorance,
which was spread and maintained by vested
interests. Had man probed his true nature, he
would have discovered a replica of the universal
order. By obeying the postulates of his own
nature he would have acted in accordance with the
laws of Nature as a whole, and thus avoided all
the entanglements and contradictions in which
history has involved him. Now the paradox is that
human nature, instead of being regarded as that
stubborn, unmanageable and unpredictable Adam, is
presented here as a vehicle of uniformity, and as
its guarantee. The paradox is based upon vital
philosophical premises.
There is a good deal of confusion as to the
philosophical kinship of the eighteenth-century
philosophers. It is made worse by the fact that
the philosophers were not philosophers in the
strict sense of the word. They were eclectics.
They were as much the heirs of Plato and
Descartes as Locke and Hume, of philosophical
rationalism and empirical skepticism, of Leibnitz
and Condillac's associationist theory. Not even a
founder of utilitarianism like Helvetius, or one
of the most important teachers of materialist
determinism like Holbach, ever made their
position unequivocally clear. But it is necessary
to sum up what all the eighteenth-century
thinkers had in common in their underlying
premises as far as it affects the subject of this
investigation.
Following the footsteps of Descartes, the
philosopher believed in truth that is objective
and stands on its own, and which can and would be
recognized by man. To Holbach truth was the
conformity of our ideas with the nature of
things. Helvetius believed that all the most
complicated metaphysical propositions could be
reduced to questions of fact that white is white
and black is black. Nature has so arranged that
there should be a direct and unerring correlation
between objects and our powers of cognition.
Helvetius, Holbach and Morelly repeatedly say
that error is an accident only. We all would see
and judge rightly if it were not for the
ignorance or the particular passions and
interests that blind our judgment, these being
the result of bad education or the influence of
vested interests alien to man. Everyone is
capable of discovering the truth, if it is
presented to him in the right light. Every member
of Rousseau's sovereign is bound to will the
general will. For the general will is in the last
resort a Cartesian truth. Helvetius goes so far
as to deny any inherent differences of ability
and talent. These are nothing but the product of
conditions and chance. Uniform education, the
placing of all children in as similar conditions
as possible, their subjection to exactly the same
impressions and associations, would reduce the
differences of talent and ability to a minimum.
With what eagerness this theory was seized upon
by the revolutionary egalitarians, especially
Buonarroti. Genius can be reared, and you can
multiply men of genius according to plan, taught
Helvetius.
Rationalists and empiricists at the same time,
eighteenth-century thinkers felt no incongruity
when boasting that in contrast to their opponents
they based their theories on experience alone.
They never tired of urging people to observe and
study man in order to learn how he behaves and
what are his real needs. But this emphasis on
empiricism was directed not against philosophical
rationalism, but only against the authoritarian,
revealed religion and the teachings of tradition.
Their empiricism was vitiated by the rationalist
premise of Man per se, human nature as such
ultimately endowed with only one unifying
attribute, reason, or at most two, reason and
self-love. If there is such a being as Man in
himself, and if we all, when we throw off our
accidental characteristics, partake of the same
substance, then a universal system of morality,
based on the fewest and simplest principles,
becomes not only a distinct possibility, but a
certainty. Such a system would be comparable in
its precision to geometry, and the most cherished
dream of philosophers since Locke would come
true.
Since this universal system of ethics is a matter
of intellectual cognition, and since it is quite
sure that Nature intended the moral order to be
purposeful and conducive to happiness, it becomes
quite clear that all the evils that exist, all
chaos and misery, are due simply to error or
ignorance. Man, however, is a creature not only
of reason but of individual and unpredictable
passion. " Will the simplicity and
uniformity of these principles agree with the
different passions of men ? " Helvetius'
answer to his own question is that however
different the desires of men may be, their manner
of regarding objects is essentially the same.
There is no need to accept the individual's
actual refusal to submit his passionate nature to
reason as a fact that must be taken for granted
and will always be with us. And here
eighteenth-century philosophy was immensely
helped by the associationist psychology of
Condillac, with its roots in Locke. The mind is
at birth a talbula rosa, with no innate ideas,
characteristics or vices. All are formed by
education, environment and associations of ideas
and impressions. Man is a malleable creature. He
is by nature neither good nor bad, rather good in
so far as he is accommodating to what Nature
intended him to be. All his actual badness and
viciousness . is a result of evil institutions,
and may be traced still further to the "
first little chain " of evils, the original
fatal error as Morelly and Holbach called it, the
idea that man is bad. The institutions and the
laws erected on this premise were calculated to
thwart man and his legitimate aspirations. They
acted as an irritant and made man evil, which the
powers that be took for a further justification
of their oppressive methods. Man is a product
of education. Education in the widest sense of
the word, including of course the laws, is
capable of reconciling man with the universal
moral order and objective truth. It can teach him
to throw off the passions and urges which act
against the harmonious pattern, and develop in
him the passions useful to society. In a society
from which the Church had been excluded and which
treated social utility as the sole criterion of
judgment, education like everything else was
bound to be focused in the governmental system.
It was a matter for the Government. Helvetius,
Holbach, Mably, the Physiocrats and others, in
the same way as Rousseau himself, believed that
ultimately man was nothing but the product of the
laws of the State, and that there was nothing
that a government was incapable of doing in the
art of forming man. How fascinated Helvetius was
by the power and greatness of the founder of a
monastic order, able as he was to deal with man
in the raw, outside the maze of tradition and
accumulated circumstances, and to lay down rules
to shape man like clay. Rousseau's adored
Legislator is nothing but the great Educator.
(b) SELF INTEREST
The problem of man's self-interest is the
central point of the eighteenth-century theory.
Prima facie, man's self-love is calculated to be
the rock upon which any harmonious social pattern
might founder. Eighteenth-century thinkers
declared it however to be the most important
asset for social co-operation. They hailed it as
the most precious gift of Nature. Without the
desire for happiness and pleasure, man would sink
into sloth and indifference and, as Helvetius,
Rousseau, Morelly, Mably, Holbach and others all
agreed, would have never attained his real
self-fulfillment, which can be achieved only in
organized society and in the relationships
maintained by it. Self-love is the only basis of
morality, for it is the most real and most vital
element in man and human relations. It therefore
offers a simple and safe standard to judge how
people would act and what could satisfy them. But
the main value of the principle is in the fact
that man's self-interest in the natural state,
far from setting him irretrievably at variance
with his fellow men and society, draws them
together as nothing else, no transcendental
commandments, could. Self-love, as Morelly
defined it, is by nature indissolubly bound up
with the instinct of benevolence, and thus plays
in the sphere of social relations the same part
as Newton's law of gravitation in the physical
world. According to Helvetius and Holbach, nature
has so arranged that man cannot be happy without
the happiness of others, and without making
others happy. Not only because he needs the sight
of happiness in others to feel happy himself, but
also because, owing to cosmic pragmatism, our
courses and interests are so linked up in a
higher unity that man working for his own welfare
inevitably helps others and society. Holbach
called the vicious man a bad calculator. Virtue
is nothing but the wise choice of what is truly
useful to himself and at the same time to others.
Reason is the intellectual capacity for making
the right choice, while liberty is the practical
knowledge of what is conducive to happiness, and
the ability to act on it. No sacrifice of
self-interest is required. On the contrary, a
legislator demanding it would, in the words of
Mably, be insane. What the individual may be
asked is to forgo immediate advantages for more
solid and permanent gains in the future. He may
properly be invited to lose his soul to win it
back, to surrender some selfish interests to
society so as to be able to increase the solid
totality of good, embodied in the social good,
from which his own particular interest inevitably
flows. For ultimately, if group interests within
society are eliminated, and replaced by a general
interest, deduced from human nature, common to an
equal degree to everyone, the general interest is
nothing but one's individual interest writ large.
Man's real interest is immanent in the general
social good. Selfishness and vice do not pay.
In words reminiscent of Plato, Holbach speaks of
a harmony of the soul that constitutes happiness,
and comes into existence when man is at peace
with himself and his environment. The man torn by
passions, tormented by cupidity, worn out by
frustration, tossed about by heterogeneous urges,
has his harmony disturbed and becomes miserable.
In brief, even from the strictly utilitarian
point of view, virtue is its own reward. The
virtuous man, as our writers never tire of
repeating, cannot fail to be happy. The happiest
is the man who realizes that I his happiness lies
in self-adjustment to the necessary order of
things, that is to say, in the pursuit of
happiness in harmony with others. All misery is
the outcome of a vain attempt to kick against the
natural order from which man can never depart
without peril to himself All misery and all vices
come, as Rousseau put it, from the preference man
gives to his amour-propre over his amour de sol,
legitimate and natural self-love. What is useful
is virtuous and true. Not just in the sense of
limited pragmatism that that is true which in a
limited sphere produces results. It is so owing
to what has been called here cosmic pragmatism.
Things were meant to fit, and their
appropriateness is demonstrated by results. Their
appropriateness is also their truth, for the
universe is simultaneously a system of truths and
a wonderful machine designed to produce results.
The pattern of social harmony cannot be left to
work itself out by itself . The designs of nature
to be realized require deliberate arrangements.
The natural identity of interests must be
reproduced by the artificial identification of
interests. It is the task of the Legislator to
bring-about social harmony, that is to say,
reconcile the personal good with the general
good. It is for the Legislator, as Helvetius put
it, to discover means of placing men under the
necessity of being virtuous. This can be achieved
with the help of institutions, laws, education
and a proper system of rewards and punishments.
The Legislator, acting on man¹s instinct of
self-love, is capable of forcing him to be just
to others. He can direct man's passions in such a
way that instead of being destructive they would
come to bear good fruit. The object of the laws
is to teach man his true interest, which is after
all another name for virtue. This can be done if
there is a clear and effective distribution of
rewards and punishments. A proper system of
education in the widest sense would fix firmly in
the minds of men the association of virtue with
reward, and of vice with punishment, these
embracing of course also public approval and
disapproval.
" The whole art of this sublime architecture
consists in making laws which are wise and
learned enough to direct my self-love in such a
way that I neglect, so to speak, my particular
advantage, and to reward me liberally for the
sacrifice,'' wrote Mably. It is a question of
external arrangements and of education at the
same time. The personal good may be made with the
help of appropriate institutions and arrangements
to flow back from the general good so that the
citizen, having his legitimate needs satisfied,
would have no incentive to be anti-social, He can
be made fully conscious of this and made to
behave accordingly. Helvetius and Holbach taught
that the temporal interest alone if handled
cleverly was sufficient to form virtuous men.
Good laws alone make virtuous men. This being so,
vice in society is not the outcome of the
corruption of human nature, but the fault of the
Legislator. This statement is not invalidated
even if it is admitted that man as he is would
naturally always prefer his personal to the
general good. For man is only a raw element in
regard to the edifice of social harmony. A
legislation is possible under which none would be
unhappy but fools and people maimed by nature,
and none vicious but the ignorant and stupid.
That such a society has not yet come into
existence is due not to man, but to the failure
of governments to form man with the help of
education and proper laws. For the restoration of
the natural order would be effected only as a
result of a total change in man's actual nature.
And so the natural identity of interests is
completely over-shadowed by the postulate of
their artificial identification. Until now
education had been left to chance and made the
prey of false maxims. It was now time to remember
that all felicity was the outcome of education.
" Men have in their own hands the instrument
of their greatness and their felicity, and . . .
to be happy and powerful nothing more is
requisite than to perfect the science of
education." Legislators, moralists and
natural scientists should combine to form man on
the basis of their teachings, the conclusions of
which converge upon the same point. Governments
have it in their power to rear genius, to raise
or lower the standard of ability in a nation.
This, as Helvetius and Holbach insist, has
nothing to do with climate or geography. Since
human thought is so important for man's
disposition towards the general good and towards
his fellow citizens, and the harmonious pattern
in general, it is only natural and necessary that
a government should take a deep interest in
shaping the ideas of men and exercise a
censorship of ideas.
(C) THE NATURAL ORDER, THE LEGISLATOR, AND THE
INDIVIDUAL
These ideas on self-interest and the power of
education have strong political and social
implications. As justice only has meaning in
reference to social utility, it is clear that a
just action is one that is useful to the greater
number. It could thus be said that morality
consists in the interest of the greater number.
The greater number embodies justice. " It is
evident," says Helvetius, " that
justice is in its own nature always armed with a
power sufficient to suppress vice, and place men
under necessity of being virtuous." Why have
the few, representing a minority and therefore an
I immoral interest, for so long dominated the
greater number? Because of ignorance and
misleading influences. The existing powers are
interested in maintaining ignorance and in
preventing the growth of genius and virtue. It is
therefore clear that a reform of education could
not take place without a change of political
constitution.
The art of forming man, in other words
education, depends ultimately on the form of
government. Self-Love as applied to the political
sphere means the love of power. Political wisdom
consists not in thwarting this natural instinct,
but in giving it an outlet. The satisfaction
of this urge like the satisfaction of man's
legitimate self-interest is conducive to virtue.(!)
From this point of view democracy appears as the
best system, as it satisfies the love of power of
all or of most. The totalitarian potentialities
of this philosophy are not quite obvious at first
sight. But they are nevertheless grave. The very
idea of a self-contained system from which all
evil and unhappiness have been exorcised is
totalitarian. The assumption that such a scheme
of things is feasible and indeed inevitable is an
invitation to a regime to proclaim that it
embodies this perfection, to exact from its
citizens recognition and submission and to brand
opposition as vice or perversion. The greatest
danger is in the fact that far from denying
freedom and rights to man, far from demanding
sacrifice and surrender, this system solemnly
re-affirms liberty, man's self-interest and
rights. It claims to have no other aims than
their realization. Such a system is likely to
become the more totalitarian, precisely because
it grants everything in advance, because it
accepts all liberal premises a priori. For it
claims to be able by definition to satisfy them
by a positive enactment as it were, not by
leaving them alone and watching over them from
the distance.
When a regime is by definition regarded as
realizing rights and freedoms, the citizen
becomes deprived of any right to complain that he
is being deprived of his rights and liberties.
The earliest practical demonstration of this was
given by Jacobinism. Thus in the case of Rousseau
his sovereign can demand from the citizen the
total alienation of all his rights, goods,
powers, person and life, and yet claim that there
is no real surrender. In the very idea of
retaining certain rights and staking out a claim
against the sovereign there is, according to
Rousseau, an implication of being at variance
with the general will. The proviso that the
general will could not require or exact a greater
surrender than is inherent in the relationship
between it and the subject does not alter the
case, since it is left to the sovereign to decide
what must be surrendered and what must not.
Rousseau's sovereign, like the natural order, can
by definition do nothing except secure man's
freedom. It can have no reason or cause to hurt
the citizen. For it to do so would be as
impossible as it would be for something in the
world of things to happen without a cause.
There is no need to insist that neither
Helvetius, Holbach nor any one of their school
envisaged brute force and undisguised coercion as
instruments for the realization of the natural
system. Nothing could have been further from
their minds. Locke's three liberties figure
prominently in all their social catechisms. They
could not conceive any clash between the natural
social pattern and the liberties, the real
liberties, of man. The greater the freedom, the
nearer, they believed, was the realization of the
natural order. In the natural system there would
simply be no need to restrict free expression.
Opposition to the natural order would be
unthinkable, except from fools or perverted
individuals. The Physiocrats, for instance, were
second to none in their insistence on a natural
order of society " simple, constant,
invariable and susceptible of being demonstrated
by evidence". Mercier de la Riviere preached
" despotism of evidence " in human
affairs. The absolute monarch was the embodiment
of the " force naturelle et irresistible de
l'evidence ", which rules out any arbitrary
action on the part of the administration. The
Physiocrats insisted at the same time on the
freedom of the press and the " full
enjoyment" of natural rights by the
individual. A government conducted on the basis
of scientific evidence could only encourage a
free press and individual freedom !
Eighteenth-century believers in a natural system
failed to perceive that once a positive pattern
is laid down, the liberties which are supposed
to be attached to this pattern become restricted
within its framework, and lose their validity and
meaning outside it. The area outside the
framework becomes mere chaos, to which the idea
of liberty simply does not apply, and so it is
possible to go on reaffirming liberty while
denying it. Robespierre was only the first of the
European revolutionaries who, having been an
extreme defender of the freedom of the press
under the old dispensation, turned into the
bitterest persecutor of the opposition press once
he came into power. For, to quote the famous
sophism launched during the later period of the
Revolution against the freedom of the press, the
very demand for a free press when the Revolution
is triumphant is counter-revolutionary. It
implies freedom to fight the Revolution, for in
order to support the Revolution there is no need
for special permission. And there can be no
freedom to fight the Revolution. On closer
examination the idea of the natural order reaches
the antithesis of its original individualism.
Although prima facie the individual is the
beginning and the end of everything, in fact the
Legislator is decisive. He is called upon to
shape man in accordance to a definite image. The
aim is not to enable men as they are to express
themselves as freely and as fully as possible, to
assert their uniqueness. It is to create the
right objective conditions and to educate men so
that they would fit into the pattern of the
virtuous society.
Chapter Three TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY
(ROUSSEAU)
(a) THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BACKGROUND
ROUSSEAU
Rousseau often uses the words nature and the
natural order in the same sense as his
contemporaries to indicate the logical structure
of the universe. He also uses nature, however, to
describe the elemental as opposed to the effort
and achievement of the spirit in overcoming and
subduing the elemental. The historical state of
nature before organized society was the reign of
the elemental. The inauguration of the social
state marked the triumph of the spirit. It must
be repeated that to the materialists the natural
order is, so to speak, a ready-made machine to be
discovered and set to work. To Rousseau, on the
other hand, it is the State, when it has
fulfilled its purpose. It is a categorical
imperative. The materialists reached the problem
of the individual versus the social order only
late in their argument. Even then, supremely
confident of the possibility of mutual
adjustment, they failed to recognize the
existence of the problem of coercion. To
Rousseau the problem exists from the beginning.
It is indeed the fundamental problem to him. A
motherless vagabond starved of warmth and
affection, having his dream of intimacy
constantly frustrated by human callousness, real
or imaginary, Rousseau could never decide what he
wanted, to release human nature or to moralize it
by breaking it; to be alone or a part of human
company. He could never make up his mind whether
man was made better or worse, happier or more
miserable, by people.
Rousseau was one of the most ill-adjusted and
egocentric natures who have left a record of
their predicament. He was a bundle of
contradictions, a recluse and anarchist, yearning
to return to nature, given to reverie, in revolt
against all social conventions, sentimental and
lacrimose, abjectly self-conscious and at odds
with his environment, on the one hand; and the
admirer of Sparta and Rome, the preacher of
discipline and the submergence of the individual
in the collective entity, on the other. The
secret of this dual personality was that the
disciplinarian was the envious dream of the
tormented paranoiac. The Social Contract was the
sublimation of the Discourse on the Origins of
Inequality. Rousseau speaks of his own
predicament, when describing it ; and elsewhere
the unhappiness of man, who, after he left the
state of nature, fell prey to the conflict
between impulse and the duties of civilized
society; always " wavering between his
inclinations and his duties ", neither quite
man nor quite citizen, " no good to himself,
nor to others ", because never in accord
with himself The only salvation from this agony,
if a return to the untroubled state of nature was
impossible, was either a complete self
abandonment to the elemental impulses or to
" denature (de'naturer) man"
altogether. It was in the latter case necessary
to substitute a relative for an absolute
existence, social consciousness for
self-consciousness. Man must be made to regard
himself not as a " unite numerique, l'entier
absolu, qui n'a de rapport qu'a lui-meme ",
but as a " unite fonctionnaire qui tient au
denominateur et dont la valeur est dans son
rapport aver l'entier, qui est le 'corps social
". A fixed rigid and universal pattern of
feeling and behavior was to be imposed In order
to create man of one piece, without
contradictions, without centrifugal and
anti-social urges.
The task was to create citizens who would will
only what the general will does, and thus be
free, instead of every man being an entity in
himself, torn by egotistic tensions and thus
enslaved. Rousseau, the teacher of romantic
spontaneity of feeling, was obsessed with the
idea of man's cupidity as the root cause of moral
degeneration and social evil. Hence his
apotheosis of Spartan ascetic virtue and his
condemnation of civilization in so far as
civilization is the expression of the urge to
conquer, the desire to shine and the release of
human vitality, without reference to morality. He
had that intense awareness of the reality of
human rivalry peculiar to people who have
experienced it in their souls. Either out of a
sense of guilt or out of weariness, they long to
be delivered from the need for external
recognition and the challenge of rivalry. Three
other representatives of the totalitarian
Messianic temperament to be analyzed in these
pages show a similar paranoiac streak. They are
Robespierre, Saint-Just and Babeuf. In recent
times we have had examples of the strange
combination of psychological ill-adjustment and
totalitarian ideology. In some cases, salvation
from the impossibility of finding a balanced
relationship with fellow-men is sought in the
lonely superiority of dictatorial leadership. The
leader identifies himself with the absolute
doctrine, and the refusal of others to submit
comes to be regarded not as a normal difference
of opinion, but as a crime. It is characteristic
of the paranoiac leader that when thwarted he is
quickly thrown off his precarious balance and
falls victim to an orgy of self-pity, persecution
mania and the suicidal urge. Leadership is the
salvation of the few, but to many even mere
membership of a totalitarian movement and
submission to the exclusive doctrine may offer a
release from ill-adjusted egotism. Periods of
great stress, of mass psychosis, and intense
struggle call forth marginal qualities which
otherwise may have remained dormant, and bring to
the top men of a peculiar neurotic mentality.
(b) THE GENERAL VERSUS THE INDIVIDUAL
It was of vital importance to Rousseau to save
the ideal of liberty, while insisting on
discipline. He was very proud and had a keen
sense of the heroic. Rousseau's thinking is thus
dominated by a highly fruitful but dangerous
ambiguity. On the one hand, the individual is
said to obey nothing but his own will; on the
other, he is urged to conform to some objective
criterion. The contradiction is resolved by the
claim that this external criterion is his better,
higher, or real self, man's inner voice, as
Rousseau calls it. Hence, even if constrained to
obey the external standard, man cannot complain
of being coerced, for in fact he is merely being
made to obey his own true self. He is thus still
free; indeed - freer than before. For freedom is
the triumph of the spirit over natural, elemental
instinct. It is the acceptance of moral
obligation and the disciplining of irrational and
selfish urges by reason and duty. The acceptance
of the obligations laid down in the Social
Contract marks the birth of man's personality and
his initiation into freedom. Every exercise of
the general will constitutes a reaffirmation of
man's freedom. The problem of the general will
may be considered from two points of view, that
of individual ethics and that of political
legitimacy.
Diderot in his articles in the Encyclopedia
on the Legislateur and Droit naturel was a
forerunner of Rousseau in so far as personal
ethics are concerned. He conceived the problem in
the same way as Rousseau: as the dilemma of
reconciling freedom with an external absolute
standard. It seemed to Diderot inadmissible that
the individual, as he is, should be the final
judge of what is just and unjust, right and
wrong. The particular will of the individual is
always suspect. The general will is the sole
judge. One must always address oneself for
judgment to the general good and the general
will. One who disagrees with the general will
renounces his humanity and classifies himself as
" denature". The general will is to
enlighten man " to what extent he should be
man, citizen, subject, father or child ",
" et lui convient de vivre on de
mourir". The general will shall fix the
nature and limits of all our duties. Like
Rousseau, Diderot is anxious to make the
reservation in regard to man's natural and most
sacred right to all that is not contested by the
" species as a whole". He nevertheless
hastens, again like Rousseau, to add that the
general will shall guide us on the nature of our
ideas and desires. Whatever we think and desire
will be good, great and sublime, if it is in
keeping with the general interest. Conformity to
it alone qualifies us for membership of our
species: " ne la perdez donc jamais de vue,
sans quoi vous verrez les notions de la bonte, de
la justice, de l'humanite, de la vertu, chanceler
dans votre entendement".
Diderot gives two definitions of the general
will. He declares it first to be contained in the
principles of the written law of all civilized
nations, in the social actions of the savage
peoples, in the conventions of the enemies of
mankind among themselves and even in the
instinctive indignation of injured animals. He
then calls the general will " dans chaque
individu un acte pur de l'entendement qui
raisonne d'arts le silence des passions sur ce
que l'homme peut exiger de son semblable et sur
ce que son semblable est en droll d'exiger de lui
". This is also Rousseau's definition of the
general will in the first version of the Social
Contract. Ultimately the general will is to
Rousseau something like a mathematical truth or a
Platonic idea. It has an objective existence of
its own, whether perceived or not. It has
nevertheless to be discovered by the human mind.
But having discovered it' the human mind simply
cannot honestly refuse to accept it. In this way
the general will is at the same time outside us
and within us. He is not invited to express his
personal preferences. He is not asked for his
approval. He is asked whether the given proposal
is or is not in conformity with the general will.
" If my particular opinion had carried the
day, I should have achieved the opposite of what
was my will; and it is in that case that I should
not have been free." For freedom is the
capacity of ridding oneself of considerations,
interests, preferences and prejudices, whether
personal or collective, which obscure the
objectively true and good, which, if I am true to
my true nature, I am bound to will. What applies
to the individual applies equally to the people.
Man and people have to be brought to choose
freedom, and if necessary to be forced to be
free.
The general will becomes ultimately a question of
enlightenment and morality. Although it should be
the achievement of the general will to create
harmony and unanimity, the whole aim of political
life is really to educate and prepare men to will
the general will without any sense of constraint.
Human egotism must be rooted out, and human
nature changed. " Each individual, who is by
himself a complete and solitary whole, would have
to be transformed into part of a greater whole
from which he receives his life and being."
Individualism will have to give place to
collectivism, egoism to virtue, which is the
conformity of the personal, to the general will.
The Legislator " must, in a word, take away
from man his resources and give him instead new
ones alien to him, and incapable of being made
use of without the help of other men. The more
completely these natural resources are
annihilated, the greater and the more lasting are
those which he acquires, and the more stable and
perfect the new institutions, so that if each
citizen is nothing and can do nothing without the
rest; and the resources acquired by the whole are
equal or superior to the aggregate of the
resources of all Individuals, it may be said that
legislation is at the highest possible point of
perfection." As in the case of the
materialists, it is not the self-expression of
the individual, the deployment of his particular
faculties and the realization of his own and
unique mode of existence, that is the final aim,
but the loss of the individual in the collective
entity by taking on its color and principle of
existence. The aim is to train men to " bear
with docility the yoke of public happiness
", in fact to create a new type of man, a
purely political creature, without any particular
private or social loyalties, any partial
interests, as Rousseau would call them.
(c) THE GENERAL WILL, POPULAR
SOVEREIGNTY, AND DICTATORSHIP Rousseau's
sovereign is the externalized general will, and,
as has been said before, stands for essentially
the same as the natural harmonious order. In
marrying this concept with the principle of
popular sovereignty, and popular self-expression,
Rousseau gave rise to totalitarian democracy. The
mere introduction of this latter element, coupled
with the fire of Rousseau's style, lifted the
eighteenth-century postulate from the plane of
intellectual speculation into that of a great
collective experience. It marked the birth of the
modern secular religion, not merely as a system
of ideas, but as a passionate faith. Rousseau's
synthesis is in itself the formulation of the
paradox of freedom in totalitarian democracy in
terms which reveal the dilemma in the most
striking form, namely, in those of will. There is
such a thing as an objective general will,
whether willed or not willed by anybody. To
become a reality it must be willed by the people.
If the people does not will it, it must be made
to will it, for the general will is latent in the
people's will. Democratic ideas and rationalist
premises are Rousseau's means of resolving the
dilemma. According to him the general will would
be discerned only if the whole people, and not a
part of it or a representative body, was to make
the effort.. The second condition is that
individual men as purely political atoms, and not
groups, parties or interests, should be called
upon to will. Both conditions are based upon the
premise that there is such a thing as a common
substance of citizenship, of which all partake,
once everyone is able to divest himself of his
partial interests and group loyalties. In the
same way men as rational beings may arrive at the
same conclusions, once they rid themselves of
their particular passions and interests and cease
to depend on " imaginary " standards
which obscure their judgment. Only when all are
acting together as an assembled people, does
man's nature as citizen come into active
existence. It would not, if only a part of the
nation were assembled to will the general will.
They would express a partial will. Moreover, even
the fact that all have willed something does not
yet make it the expression of the general will,
if the right disposition on the part of those who
will it was not there. A will does not become
general because it is willed by all, only when it
is willed in conformity to the objective will.
Exercise of sovereignty is not conceived here as
the interplay of interests, the balancing of
views, all equally deserving a hearing, the
weighing of various interests. It connotes the
endorsement of a truth, self-identification on
the part of those who exercise sovereignty with
some general interest which is presumed to be the
fountain of all identical individual interests.
Political parties are not considered as vehicles
of the various currents of opinion, but
representatives of partial interests, at variance
with the general interest, which is regarded as
almost tangible. it is of great importance to
realize that what is to-day considered as an
essential concomitant of democracy, namely,
diversity of views and interests, was far from
being regarded as essential by the
eighteenth-century fathers of democracy. Their
original postulates were unity and unanimity.
The affirmation of the principle of diversity
came later, when the totalitarian implications of
the principle of homogeneity had been
demonstrated in Jacobin dictatorship. This
expectation of unanimity was only natural in an
age which, starting with the idea of the natural
order, declared war on privileges and
inequalities. The very eighteenth-century concept
of the nation as opposed to estates implied a
homogeneous entity. Naive and inexperienced in
the working of democracy, the theorists on the
eve of the Revolution were unable to regard the
strains and stresses, the conflicts and struggles
of a parliamentary democratic regime as ordinary
things, which need not frighten anybody with the
spectre of immediate ruin and confusion. Even so
moderate and level-headed a thinker as Holbach
was appalled by the " terrible"
cleavages in English society. He considered
England the most miserable country of all,
ostensibly free, but in fact more unhappy than
any of the Oriental despot-ridden kingdoms. Had
not England been brought to the verge of ruin by
the struggle of factions and contradictory
interests ? Was not her system a hotchpotch of
irrational habits, obsolete customs, incongruous
laws, with no system, and no guiding principle ?
The physiocrat Letronne declared that " the
situation of France is infinitely better than
that of England; for here reforms, changing the
whole state of the country, can be accomplished
in a moment, whereas in England such reforms can
always be blocked by the party system", It
is worth while devoting a few words to the
Physiocrats at this juncture, for their thinking
reveals a striking similarity to totalitarian
democratic categories, in spite of the
differences of outlook. The Physiocrats offer an
astonishing synthesis of economic liberalism and
political absolutism, both equally based upon the
most emphatic postulate of natural harmony.
Although they preached that in the economic
sphere the free play of individual economic
interests and pursuits would inevitably result in
harmony, they were intensely aware of opposing,
conflicting and unequal interests, where politics
were concerned. In their view these tensions were
the greatest obstacle to social harmony.
Parliamentary institutions, the separation and
balance of powers, were thus impossible as roads
to social harmony. The various interests would be
judges in their own cause. The clashes among them
would paralyze the State. The Physiocrats thus
rejected the balance of powers, claiming that if
one of the powers is stronger, then there is no
real balance. If they were of exactly the same
strength, but pulled in different directions, the
result would be total inaction. The object of
legislation is not to achieve a balance and a
compromise, but to act on strict evidence, which
according to the Physiocrats was a real thing,
having as it were nothing to do with, and lifted
above, all partial interests. The authority
acting on this evidence must accordingly be
" autorite souveraine, unique, superieure a
tous individus . . . interets particuliers":
"le chef unique", " qui soit le
centre commun darts lequel tous les interets des
differents ordres de citoyens viennent se reunir
sans se confondre ". The Physiocrats had so
great a faith in the power of evidence to effect
rational conduct that they refused to consider
the possibility that the absolute monarch might
abuse his authority. They believed in the
absolute monarch acting on strict evidence, and
in the isolated individual. These two factors
represented the general interest, while the
intermediate partial interests falsified the
evidence ", and led man astray on to selfish
paths. " There will be no more estates
(orders) armed with privileges in a nation, only
individuals fully enjoying their natural
rights."
Rousseau puts the people in place of the
Physiocratic enlightened despot. He too considers
partial interests the greatest enemy of social
harmony. Just as in the case of the rationalist
utilitarian the individual becomes here the
vehicle of uniformity. It could be said without
any exaggeration that this attitude points
towards the idea of a classless society. It is
conditioned by a vague expectation that somewhere
at the end of the road and after an ever more
intensive elimination of differences and
inequalities there will be unanimity. Not that
this unanimity need be enforced of itself. The
more extreme the forms of popular sovereignty,
the more democratic the procedure, the surer one
may be of unanimity. Thus Morelly thought that
real democracy was a regime where the citizens
would unanimously vote to obey nothing but
nature. The leader of the British Jacobins, Horne
Tooke, standing trial in 1794, defined his aim as
a regime with annual parliaments, based on
universal suffrage, with the exclusion of
parties, and voting unanimously. Like the
Physiocrats Rousseau rejects any attempt to
divide sovereignty. He brands it as the trick of
a juggler playing with the severed limbs of an
organism. For if there is only one will,
sovereignty cannot be divided. Only that in place
of the Physiocratic absolute monarch Rousseau
puts the people. It is the people as a whole that
should exercise the sovereign power, and not a
representative body. An elected assembly is
calculated to develop a vested interest like any
other corporation. A people buys itself a master
once it hands over sovereignty to a parliamentary
representative body.
Now, at the very foundation of the principle of
direct and indivisible democracy, and the
expectation of unanimity, there is the
implication of dictatorship, as the history of
many a referendum has shown. If a constant appeal
to the people as a whole, not just to a small
representative body, is kept up, and at the same
time unanimity is postulated, there is no escape
from dictatorship. This was implied in Rousseau's
emphasis on the all-important point that the
leaders must put only questions of a general
nature to the people, and, moreover, must know
how to put the right question. The question must
have so obvious an answer that a different sort
of answer would appear plain treason or
perversion. If unanimity is what is desired, it
must be engineered through intimidation, election
tricks, or the organization of the spontaneous
popular expression through the activists busying
themselves with petitions, public demonstrations,
and a violent campaign of denunciation. This was
what the Jacobins and the organizers of people's
petitions, revolutionary journe'es, and other
forms of direct expression of the people's will
read into Rousseau. Rousseau demonstrates clearly
the close relation between popular sovereignty
taken to the extreme, and totalitarianism.
The paradox calls for analysis. It is commonly
held that dictatorship comes into existence and
is maintained by the indifference of the people
and the lack of democratic vigilance. There is
nothing more on Rousseau than the active and
ceaseless participation of the people and of
every citizen in the affairs of the State. The
State is near ruin, says Rousseau, when the
citizen is too indifferent to attend a public
meeting. Saturated with antiquity, Rousseau
intuitively experiences the thrill of the people
assembled to legislate and shape the common weal.
The Republic is in a continuous state of being
born. In the pre-democratic age Rousseau could
not realize that the originally deliberate
creation of men could become transformed into a
Leviathan, which might crush its own makers. He
was unaware that total and highly emotional
absorption in the collective political endeavour
is calculated to kill all privacy, that the
excitement of the assembled crowd may exercise a
most tyrannical pressure, and that the extension
of the scope of politics to all spheres of human
interest and endeavour, without leaving any room
for the process of casual and empirical activity,
was the shortest way to totalitarianism.
Liberty is safer in countries where politics are
not considered all-important and where there are
numerous levels of non-political private and
collective activity, although not so much direct
popular democracy, than in countries where
politics take everything in their stride, and the
people sit in permanent assembly.
In the latter the truth really is that, although
all seem to be engaged in shaping the national
will, and are doing it with a sense of elation
and fulfillment, they are in fact accepting and
endorsing something which is presented to them as
a sole truth, while believing that it is their
free choice. This is actually implied in
Rousseau's image of the people willing the
general will. The collective sense of elation is
subject to emotional weariness. It soon gives way
to apathetic and mechanical behavior. Rousseau is
most reluctant to recognize the will of the
majority, or even the will of all, as the general
will. Neither does he give any indication by what
signs the general will could be recognized. Its
being willed by the people does not make the
thing willed the expression of the general will.
"The blind multitude does not know what
it wants, and what is its real interest.
" Left to themselves, the People always
desire the good, but, left to themselves, they
will always know where that good lies. "The
general will is always right, but the judgment
guiding it is not always well informed. It must
be made to see things as they are, sometimes as
they ought to appear to them."
(d) THE GENERAL WILL AS PURPOSE
The general will assumes thus the character of a
purpose and as such lends itself to definition in
terms of 'social-political ideology' a
pre-ordained goal, towards which we are
irresistibly driven; a solely true aim, which we
will, or are bound to will, although we may not
will it yet, because of our backwardness,
prejudices, selfishness or ignorance. In this
case the idea of a people becomes naturally
restricted to those who identify themselves with
the general will and the general interest. Those
outside are not really of the nation. They are
aliens. This conception of the nation (or people)
was soon to become a powerful political argument.
Thus Sieyes claimed that the third estate alone
constituted the nation. The Jacobins restricted
the term still further, to the sans-culottes. To
Babeuf the proletariat alone was the nation, and
to Buonarroti only those who had been formally
admitted to the National Community. The very idea
of an assumed preordained will, which has not yet
become the actual will of the nation; the view
that the nation is still therefore in its
infancy, a " young nation ", in the
nomenclature of the Social Contract, gives those
who claim to know and to represent the real and
ultimate will of the nation - the party of the
vanguard - a blank cheque to act on behalf of the
people, without reference to the people's actual
will. And this, as we hope later on to show it
has, may express itself in two forms or rather
two stages: one-the act of revolution; and the
other - the effort at enthroning the general
will. Those who feel themselves to be the real
people rise against the system and the men in
power, who are not of the people. Moreover, the
very act of their insurrection, e.g. the
establishment of a Revolutionary (or
Insurrectionary) Committee, abolishes ipso
facto not only the parliamentary
representative body, which is in any case,
according to Rousseau, a standing attempt on the
sovereignty of the people, but indeed all
existing laws and institutions. For " the
moment the people is legitimately assembled as a
sovereign body, the jurisdiction of the
government wholly lapses, the executive power is
suspended, and the person of the meanest citizen
is as sacred and inviolable as that of the first
magistrate; for in the presence of the person
represented, representatives no longer exist ".
The real people, or rather their leadership, once
triumphant in their insurrection, become
Rousseau's Legislator, who surveys clearly the
whole panorama, without being swayed by partial
interests and passions, and shapes the "
young nation " with the help of laws derived
from his superior wisdom. He prepares it to will
the general will. First comes the elimination of
men and influences not of the people and not
identified with the general will embodied in the
newly established Social Contract of the
Revolution; then the re-education of the young
nation to will the general will. The task of the
Legislator is to create a new type of man, with a
new mentality, new values, a new type of
sensitiveness, free from old instincts,
prejudices and bad habits. It is not enough to
change the machinery of government, or even
reshuffle the classes. You have to change human
nature, or, in the terminology of the eighteenth
century, to make man virtuous. Rousseau
represents the most articulate form of the esprit
re'volutionnaire in each of its facets. In the
Discourse on Inequality he expresses the burning
sense of a society that has gone astray. In the
Social Contract he postulates an exclusively
legitimate social system as a challenge to human
greatness.
Chapter Four PROPERTY (MORELLY AND
MABLY)
(a) PREMISES AND CONCLUSIONS-THE
DISCREPANCY
The idea of the natural social pattern as
analyzed in the foregoing pages must appear
unsatisfactory. It is an abstract- postulate, a
shell without contents; nothing but a form. The
social and economic concreteness, which alone
could give it a substance, has been missing from
the analysis. There has been much controversy on
the amount of socialism in eighteenth-century
thought. Some have found fully fledged socialism
in it, others not a great deal of socialism, or
no hint of socialism at all. The truly remarkable
feature of eighteenth-century thinking is not the
presence or absence of socialism, but the
discrepancy between the boldness of the premises
and the timidity of the practical conclusions,
where the problem of property was concerned. The
Marxist historian may well feel justified in
pointing out that this discrepancy was due to the
bourgeois background of the writers. They
appealed to a sole principle of social existence,
and to the equality inherent in natural rights,
against the privileges of the feudal classes.
They beat a retreat, when this political and
philosophical postulate proved to carry with it a
threat to property. When speaking of Man, it did
not occur to some of our thinkers that the "
canaille " was included in the term. Some
even emphatically rejected the idea. Only the
bourgeois was Man. Those beneath him were too
ignorant, too brutalized, had too little share in
maintaining society, to be counted at all. And
yet, the socialist dynamism in the idea of the
natural] system can hardly be denied. The very
idea of a natural, rational order carried with it
the implication of an orderly social pattern,
unless it be held, as the Physiocrats did hold,
that free economics are the very essence of the
natural order, since they are bound in the end to
result in perfect harmony. In the idea of the
rights of Man, in the conception of the
individual Man as the first and last sole element
of the social edifice, there was inherent the
implication that all existing forms and interests
may and should be upset and entirely reshaped, so
as to give Man his due.
On these principles property could not be
regarded as a sacred natural right to be taken
for granted. Everything could be remodeled at any
time. The argument was not, as it used to be,
that the poor and unfortunate Citizen has a right
to expect succor from the paternal royal
Government, and in order to bring it the
Government may override any interests. Man in the
natural order does not ask for charity, he is the
focus of the whole social and economic system.
The egalitarian idea condemned unequal classes
and privileges as an evil that came into
existence in contradiction to the teachings of
Nature and the needs of Man. Some writers went so
far as to brand the existing State and all its
legislation as a weapon of exploitation and a
ruse of the haves to hold down the have-nots.
Furthermore, if virtue was conformity to the
natural pattern, its greatest enemy was clearly
the spirit of selfish avarice engendered by
private property. Not only avowed Communists like
Morelly and Mably, but also Rousseau, Diderot and
Helvetius were agreed that " all these
evils are the first effect of property and of the
array of evils inseparable from the inequality to
which it gave birth". Diderot
contrasted the " esprit de propriete "
with the " esprit de communaute ". He
admonished the Legislator to combat the former
and to foster the latter, if his aim were to make
man's personal will identical with the general
will. Rousseau's eloquent passage on the first
man who enclosed a plot of land with a fence,
deceived his neighbors into the belief in the
legality of his act, and thus became the author
of all the wars, rivalries, social evils and
demoralization in the world, is not more radical
than Morelly's and Mably's obsessive insistence
that property is the root cause of all that has
gone wrong in lustory. Rousseau's condemnation of
the laws as an instrument of the rich to make the
poor accept exploitation and misery is a
counterpart of Helvetius's statement that " the
excessive luxury, which almost everywhere
accompanies despotism, presupposes a nation
already divided into oppressors and oppressed,
into thieves and those robbed. But if the thieves
form only a very small number, why do not they
succumb"-Helvetius asks-" to
the efforts of the greatest number ? To what do
they owe their success ? To the impossibility to
make common causes (' se donner le mot ') in
which the robbed ones find themselves."
Helvetius was on common ground with most of his
contemporaries, when he claimed that only a
regime of State ownership, with money banished,
offered a possibility of a legislation, stable
and unalterable, calculated to preserve general
happiness. He added his own utilitarian gloss. If
it be true that man is motivated by self interest
alone, he will in a country of powerful private
interests be naturally attracted to serve those
interests, instead of the national interests.
Where the nation is the sole distributor of
rewards, a person would have no need to serve any
other interest than the national. In Rousseauist
theory " the State by the reason of the
Social Contract is the master of all its members'
goods", since every citizen on entering the
Social Contract has surrendered all his property
to the State. He received it back to hold it as
trustee of the Commonwealth, but his rights and
powers are always subordinated to the overriding
claim of the community. Rousseau would actually
have wished to see all property concentrated in
the hands of the State, and no individual
admitted to any share of the common stock "
save in proportion to his services ".
Rousseau would have arranged that with the demise
of the owner all his property should escheat to
the State. He proposes in the Projet de
Constitution pour le Corse the establishment of a
large public domain. The State would alienate
holdings to private citizens for a number of
years on a trust. Government land would be i
cultivated by a system of corve'es. All these
ideas, however, were contradicted by the very
writers who put them forward. Rousseau, Helvetius
and Mably concurred that private property had
become the cement of the social order, and the
foundation stone of the Social Contract.
Helvetius called private property " le droll
le plus sacre ....dieu moral des empires".
The inconsistency is the most flagrant in the
case of Mably, whose manner of wrestling with it
is, in spite of his extremism, is representative
of the school as a whole.
(b) MORELLY, THE COMMUNIST.
The only consistent Communist among the
eighteenth-century thinkers was Morelly.
According to him, avarice, " cette pests
universelle . . . cette fievre lente ",
would never have come into being, if there had
been no private property. All trouble in the
world is born either of cupidity or of
insecurity. If all goods were in common, and
nobody had anything in particular, there would be
no irritant for cupidity, and no fear of
insecurity. All would naturally have worked for
the common good, obeying their natural l desire
for personal happiness, and inevitably
contributing to the happiness of others. " Otez
la propriete aveugle et l'impitoyable interet qui
l'accompagne . . . plus de passions furieuses,
plus d'actions feroces, plus de notions, plus
d'idees de mal moral." Every moral,
social and political evil is due to property, and
no remedy short of the abolition of private
property was possible. It is no use blaming
accident or fate for the troubled conditions of
states and empires. In the state of nature, where
there is no private property, everything works
with the regularity and precision of a clock.
Morelly regards Communism as a practical
proposition.
This gives a peculiar complexion to his approach
to the question of compulsion to induce man to
conform to the general good. He recognizes that a
transitional regime of " some severity
" may be necessary to restore the natural
Communist order. There is, however, no violence
involved, he claims, in an attempt to bring man
back to nature, which means to his true nature.
The argument that human nature, as it has come to
be under the influence of civilization and evil
circumstances, cannot be changed, is false. This
deformed, distorted nature of man is not his real
nature. Nature, like truth, is constant and
invariable. It does not alter because man has
turned his back on it. The truth is that Morelly
confuses liberty with security. Liberty,
furthermore, is achieved according to him not in
privacy or nonconformity, but in co-operation and
in fitting into the collective whole so that the
machine as a whole functions smoothly. The author
of Code de la Nature firmly upholds the creed of
Theodicy. Providence could not have delivered
humanity to eternal chaos and hazard. There must
be a conclusion after a long period of trial and
error. This Messianic conclusion will be the
Communist state of nature. Morelly is one of the
very few Utopian Communists who were not
ascetics. In a striking passage he rebuffed
Rousseau, without mentioning him by name, for his
condemnation of the arts and civilization as
producing immorality. He called Rousseau a
cynical sophist. The arts have ennobled our
existence. If they had also contributed to our
deterioration, this was due solely to their
association with the " principle
venimeux de toute corruption morale, qui infecte
tout ce qu'il touche".
Morelly's Communist vision of the perfect society
presupposes spiritual totalitarianism, in
addition to perfect planning. The system of
production and consumption would be based on
public stores to which all produce would be
brought, and from which it would be distributed
according to needs. There would be an overall
plan. Every city would fix the number of those
who should take up a particular branch of science
or art. No other moral philosophy would be taught
than that which forms the basis of the laws. This
social philosophy will have as its foundations
the I utility and wisdom of the laws, the "
sweetness of the bonds of blood and
friendship", the services and the mutual
obligations) which the citizens owe to each
other, the love and usefulness of labor, and the
rules of good order and concord. " Toute
metaphysique se reduira a ce qui a ete
precedamment dit de la Divinite.''
Speculative and experimental sciences would be
free, but moral philosophy " retranche
". " There will be one kind of public
code of all sciences, to which nothing will ever
be added in what concerns! metaphysics and ethics
beyond the limits prescribed by the laws, added
will be only physical, mathematical and
mechanical discoveries confirmed by experience
and reason." Laws would be engraved on
obelisks, pyramids and public squares. They would
be followed literally, without the slightest
alteration being permitted.
Mably worked on the same premises and arrived at
the same Communist conclusions as Morelly. But
only in theory. While Morelly was a convinced
optimist, Mably was a man of a morose pessimistic
nature. His thinking was hampered and his
position made most difficult by the hard core of
his Catholicism. The juxtaposition of Catholicism
and eighteenth-century categories of thought make
Mably a singularly interesting case. His whole
attitude was determined by a secularized idea of
the fall of man and original sin. Hence his
fundamental distinction between the ideally and
solely true and just, and the half-truths, the
semi justice and the palliatives of the world in
which, for our sins, we are destined to live.
Like a medieval moralist he wrote: " si
notre avarice, notre vanite et notre ambition
vent des obstacles insurmontables a un Lien
parfait, subissons sans murmurer la peine que
nous Britons." Mably was a Messianic
type gone sour. If the element of original sin is
left out, Mably easily qualifies as a prophet of
Communist Messianism, and in fact he became the
prophet of Babeufism. For Mably there is always
in the background the vision of an ideal social
harmony of egalitarian Communism projected into
the golden age of a remote past or into the realm
of a natural and a solely valid scheme of things.
It is never quite clear whether the sinful
disposition of man destroyed the original
harmony, or whether the destruction of this
harmony by private property and inequality has
ruined man's innocence. Mably not only does not
consider the original natural community of goods
a chimera, but claims never to have ceased to be
surprised that men abandoned that state at all.
He can see nothing in mankind's history since
then but one everlasting Walpurgis of the
passions, of greed and avarice above all. This is
a constant theme in his writings and is
elaborated ad nauseam on every occasion. Although
admitting that without the driving power of
passion, nothing positive would ever have been
achieved, Mably only reluctantly considers the
passions as releasing creative forces, and seldom
acknowledges the mystery, or what Hegel was to
call " die List der VernunEt ", that
evil ingredients are inseparable from the process
of achieving good things. As if foreshadowing
psychoanalysis, and following Hume, Mably seeks
all motives of human action in dark urges,
aggressive impulses, irrational aversions and
inhibitions. Reason is always the handmaid of the
passions. Conscious ideas and alleged evidence
are at bottom rationalizations of our irrational
urges,` " The passions are so eloquent,
so lively and so active that they need no
evidence to convince our reason, or to force
reason to become their accomplice."
" Wills bravent meme "evidence."
The most imperious, indeed the common
denominator, of all passions is self-love. A
benevolent instinct in the state of nature, since
the establishment of inequality and private
property, self-love has erected a barrier between
man and man, and when it seems to bring us
together, it is only in order to arm one against
the other. This state of things would continue
until a " community of goods and
equality of conditions has imposed a silence upon
them ". This is the only arrangement
that can destroy those particular interests which
will always triumph over the general interest.
Equality alone, without a community of goods,
would be ephemeral, giving place within two or
three generations to the same glaring
inequalities, misery on the one hand, and luxury
and exploitation on the other. But as this "
plus haut degre de perfection " can
hardly be expected, there is need to fix a regime
for mankind in the state of sin.
The first condition of some order in this sinful
state is respect for property. Mably emphatically
disclaims any intention of raising a "
sacrilegious hand " against private
property, under the pretext of producing the
" great good ". In the early days all
that tended to loosen the natural community of
goods, and directly or indirectly to introduce
private property, was an unmitigated crime. Once
private property had been established, however,
any law is wise which deprives the passions of
every means, or pretext, of hurting or
endangering the rights of property in the
slightest degree. In the state of sin, attacks on
property are no less an expression of cupidity
than the love of property. Mably thus becomes
entangled in the gravest incongruities and
contradictions. Property is the source of all
evil, and yet he would protect it. In common with
all eighteenth-century thinkers he takes human
self-love for granted and man's desire for
happiness as the basis for all social
arrangements. He is at the same time deeply
suspicious and contemptuous of human nature. Like
his contemporaries he is a determinist, but at
the same time overwhelmed by the anarchy and
unpredictability of human passions. The outcome
of these contradictions is the egalitarian
Jacobin idea of ascetic virtue equated with
happiness, and a thoroughly restrictive
conception of economics. Man should be made
happy. But happiness is not to Mably a release of
vitality, but-a phrase destined to become a
favourite with Robespierre, Saint-Just and
Babeuf-" bonheur de mediocrite ";
" Nature has but one happiness in spite
of the vagaries of societies ", and
this it offers equally to all men. Resorting to
psychological determinism, Mably declares that
the fixing of an equal quantity of happiness is
made possible by the essential likeness of human
passions and similarity of their inevitable
effects. He believes in " an art of
government fixed, determinate and unchangeable,
since the nature of man, whose happiness is the
scope of policy, is connected with and depends on
a fixed, determinate and unchangeable principle
". The safest road to happiness is the
sentiment of equality, just as the sole criterion
by which the laws should be judged is their
contribution to the establishment of equality.
Men and nations are under the same law: every
type of hubris, be it exaggerated ambition or an
over-great success, must end in ruin. And so the
greatest happiness is to Mably the tranquillity
of the soul, with passions at rest; the wisest
policy -moderation and frugality; and the
greatest strength - mediocrity that goes without
ambition and scheming. In order to make man
happy, the State must imbue him with the
sentiment of virtuous equality. It must " regulate
the movements of your heart ", to make
you " contract honest habits, and defend
your reason against the blows of your passions
". Legislation must keep our passions "
under strict subjection, and by thus
strengthening the sovereignty of reason, give a
superior activity to the virtues". All
legislation must start with a reform of morals.
The supreme task of government is to employ the
sacred violence which tears us away from under
the sway of the passions. Mably's moral
asceticism leads him to a denial of the value of
culture. " A community which maintains
moral purity will never allow the invention of
new arts." To Mably the progress of the
arts is tantamount to the progress of vice, and
the work of artists is pandering to the caprices
and vices of the rich and ostentatious. In all
artistic endeavour Mably can see nothing else
than a colossal waste of skill, effort and
genius-and all to arouse a dangerous admiration.
Hardly another thinker in modern times preached
the doctrine of the incompatibility of the good
and the beautiful with the same vehemence as this
morose Abbe. " When I think ", he
writes, " how disastrous all the agreeable
accomplishments had been to the Athenians, how
much injustice, violence and tyranny were
inflicted upon the Romans by the pictures,
statues and vases of Greece, I ask myself what
use we have for an Academy of Fine Arts. Let the
Italians believe that their ' babioles ' are an
honor to a nation. Let people come to seek models
of laws, manners and happiness among us, and not
of painting. Rousseau and Mably agreed that there
was nothing more dangerous than vice when
brilliant.
As could be expected, Mably's ideas on education
are Spartan. The Republic should take away
children from under the exclusive tutelage of
their parents. Otherwise there is bound to arise
a diversity of manners which would militate
against equality. Mably thinks that as most
people are "condemned to the permanent
infancy of their reason ", being moved
by " an instinct a little less coarse
than that of the animals ", it would be
dangerous to allow a free press or full religious
toleration, until men were mature enough for it.
It is true that freedom of thought could not
flourish under censorship. But it would only be
safe to grant freedom of discussion to the
learned, for their errors would be no danger to
society, and would only stimulate discussion. It
was an error on the part of the newly-established
United States of America to grant freedom of
political expression to its people, still so much
imbued with the bad ideas and habits of the Old
World. And yet Mably would not agree that he was
advocating a system of oppression. He wrote in
the best eighteenth-century fashion that the aim
of society was nothing else than to preserve for
all men the rights which they hold from "
the generous hands of nature ". The
Legislator had no other commission than to impose
duties which it was essential for everyone to
carry out. " You will easily perceive
how important it is to study the natural law . .
. the law of equality among men. Without such
study, morality, without certain principles,
would run the risk of erring at every step."
Mably claimed to be a staunch upholder of the
dignity of man, which should be " inviolably
respected in every human being. Similarly
Rousseau, having laid down a blueprint of a
totalitarian regime for Corsica, triumphantly
concludes that the measures prescribed by him
will secure to the Corsicans all possible
freedom, since nothing would be demanded of them
which is not postulated by nature.
As applied to economics this philosophy of
virtuous happiness means ascetic restrictionism.
Here Mably found himself on common ground with
other contemporaries. If you cannot abolish
property, you must watch over it. " La
propriete . . . ouvre la porte a cent vices et a
cent abus," wrote Mably, " il
est done prudent que des lois rigides veillent a
cette forte." Rousseau claimed for the
State the right and power " to give it
(property) a standard, a rule, a curb to restrain
it, direct it, subdue it and keep it always
subordinate to the public good ". He
wished the individual ~ to be as independent as
possible of his neighbour, and as dependent as
possible on the State. Precisely because the
individual has the supreme right to a secure
existence, the State must have both the means of
securing it, and the power of putting a check on
those who claim or attempt to have more than
their due by robbing others. Rousseau supplied
Babeuf with his main catchword, when he commanded
the State to see to it that all have enough and
nobody more than enough.
Hardly any of the thinkers with whom we are
concerned thought of economics in terms of
expansion and increase of wealth and comfort.
Their primary consideration was egalitarian
social harmony, and the defense of the poor.
Derived from this was something like the medieval
monk's fear of the appetites, the anti-social
passion, which kills the virtuous love of the
general good. This expressed itself in two ways,
in the demand for restricting the size of
property by legislation, and in the outspoken
condemnation of the rising industrial and
commercial civilization. Mably wanted large
fortunes to be continually broken up by
legislation. He wished to fix a maximum of
property to be allowed to a citizen, and also
preached the idea of an agrarian law: the
redistribution of the land on an egalitarian
basis. Rousseau taught that no citizen should be
so rich as to be able to buy up another, and none
so poor as to have to sell himself. He advocated
a progressive income tax to check the growth of
fortunes and, like Mably, was in favor of taxing
luxury as heavily as possible. There is no
more baffling feature in French
eighteenth-century social philosophy than the
almost total lack of presentiment or
understanding of the new forces about to be
released by the Industrial Revolution. Few
saw in the expansion of trade and industry a
promise of increased national prosperity. Most
treated it as the excrescence of the acquisitive
spirit on the part of a small, selfish and
unscrupulous class; not a possibility of
improvement for the workers, but a new way of
degrading and enslaving them. All were agreed in
considering the people on the land as the
backbone of the nation, indeed the nation itself.
Rousseau thought that an agricultural society was
the natural home of liberty, and Holbach believed
that only those who owned land could be
considered citizens. Rousseau wanted the "
colon " to lay down the law for the
industrial worker." In his famous speech on
England Robespierre took it for granted that the
English nation of merchants must be morally
inferior to the agricultural French people.
All feared and despised commerce, big capital
cities and urban civilization in general.
Rousseau called industry " cette partie trop
favorisee ". Holbach saw in commerce a
social enemy. All the recent wars, he claimed,
had been caused by the greed of commercial
interests and had as their aim markets and the
advantage of a small part of the nation. "
The capitalists and big merchants have no
fatherland !" was the universal cry. They
pay no heed to the national interest, their sole
consideration is private, antisocial profit.
" Negociants avides et qui n'ont d'autre
patrie que leurs coffees."" " La
tranquility, l' aisance, les interets les plus
chers d' un etat vent imprudemment sacrifices a
la passion d'enrichir un petit nombre d'individus."
All this happens because the money that commerce
brings in is regarded as an instrument of power
and happiness. All forget the inflation caused by
the surplus of money, and the people's hardships
that ensue from it. National credit is one of the
most pernicious inventions. " Rien n'est
plus destructeur pour les maeurs d'un people que
['esprit de finance." The memory of the
Law disaster and other financial and commercial
scandals was still fresh. Far from desiring to
extend man's personality by inspiring him with
new aspirations and needs, far from seeing the
value of civilization in diversity and variety,
most eighteenth-century political writers -
moralists in the first place - condemned industry
and commerce for precisely provoking new and
" imaginary needs ", and stirring up
man's caprices: " "desire
extravagants . . . fantaisies bizarres d'un tas
de des oeuvres." Mably coupled in this
condemnation also the arts and crafts. He saw
" millions of artisans occupied with
stirring up our passions ", and providing us
with things which we would be only too happy not
to have heard of And here Mably, the fanatical
egalitarian, and preacher of the sacred dignity
of man, makes the astonishing suggestion that the
whole class of artisans workers should be
excluded from the right to exercise national
sovereignty, " especes d'esclaves du
public . . . qui vent sans fortune, et qui, ne
subsistent que par leur industrie,
n'appartiennent en quelque sorte a aucune societe
". These classes are condemned to cater
for the vices and caprices of the rich, they
depend on the favors of their employers, and thus
are too debased and too ignorant to partake in
the formation of the national will. They lack the
dignity, independence and freedom necessary for a
Legislator, and have no interest in the
maintenance of the social framework Holbach wrote
in almost precisely the same terms. Mably urged
the Legislator to deal with the " slaving
" classes kindly, for otherwise they may
easily become the enemies of society. Mirabeau
complained that all attention was being paid to
the large factories called " manufactures
reunies", where hundreds of workers would
work under a single director, and hardly any
thought to the so very numerous workers and
artisans working on their own. " C'est
une tres grande erreur, car les derniers font
seuls un objet de prosperite rationale vraiment
important ". The " fabrique reunie
" may enrich one or two entrepreneurs, but
the workers in it will for ever remain wage
earners neither concerned with nor benefiting
from the factory as such. In a " fabrique
separee " no one will get rich, but many a
worker will be comfortably off, and a few
industrious ones may manage to collect a little
capital. Their example will stimulate others to
economy and effort, and thus help them towards
advancement. A slight rise in the wages of a
factory worker is of no consequence to the
national economy: " elles ne seront
jamais un objet digne de l'interet des lots."
No one was so radical in his demand for State
control and interference with trade as Mably. He
particularly advocated control of the corn trade,
and thus made an important contribution to the
discussion before and during the Revolution on
this most vital sector of the French economy.
Like Rousseau, he loathed foreign trade. Its sole
motives were greed and luxury. It destroyed the
righteous spirit of the virtuous Republic set up
by Calvin, for Calvin's Geneva and Sparta were
Mably's and Rousseau's inspiration. As moral and
political considerations were to them at bottom
the same, they viewed economic, especially
commercial, expansion as a peril not only to
morals, but also to liberty. Mably regarded
commerce as " essentiellement contraire
a l'esprit de tout bon gouvernement ".
Encourage avarice and luxury under the pretext of
favouring commerce, and all laws that you make to
strengthen your liberty would not prevent you
from becoming slaves. Mably defiantly asserts
that the effect of all his restrictions will be
to benumb and enfeeble (engourdir) men. "
C'est ce que je souhaite, si par cet
engourdissement on entend l'habitude qu'ils
contracteront de ne rien desirer au-dela de ce
que la Loi leur permet de posseder." As
to the objection that some people would rather
flee the country than submit to laws engendering
torpor, Mably's answer is that those whose
passions are too strong to obey salutary laws had
better go soon, as they are enemies of the
Republic, its laws and its morals. " But
nobody will flee; the tyranny of a government and
magistrates sometimes drive out people, but just
laws, on the contrary, attach them to their
country by dint of their austerity.
And so once more the theory has come full circle.
The postulate of liberty should have suggested
the release of spontaneity. Instead, we are faced
with the idea of the State acting as the chief
regulator, with the purpose of enforcing ascetic
austerity. The initial and permanent aim was to
satisfy man's self-interest, acclaimed as the
main and laudable motive of action, and at the
end a brake is imposed on all human initiative.
Liberty has been overcome by equality and virtue;
spontaneity and the revolt against traditional
restrictions, by the postulate of the natural
social harmony. There is the same incongruity in
eighteenth-century economic thinking as there is
in its approach to political ethics.
Eighteenth-century thinkers spoke the language of
individualism, while their preoccupation with the
general interest, the general good and the
natural system led to collectivism. They did not
intend men to submit obediently to an external
principle standing on its own, but so to mould
man that he would freely come to think that
principle his own. The same applies to the
social-economic sphere. The writers in question
certainly abhorred the idea of industrial
concentration, and the vision of great multitudes
of workers under the umbrella of a large
State-owned or private concern. That meant
slavery and the degradation of man's~dignity.
They wanted to see as many as possible, all if
possible, become free and independent small
farmers and artisans. Even Communists, like
Morelly and Mably, considered economic
organization in terms of contributions by
individual producers to the public stores, and
the distribution of the products to the
individual consumers.
Eighteenth-century thinkers wished somehow to
combine elitism and individualism, with the State
acting as a brake upon excesses of inequality, or
as regulator and provider, or as the guarantor of
social security to the poor and weak. They lived
before the age of large-scale industry and
industrial centralization. Few of them also had
any feeling for the image of a nation engaged in
a mighty productive effort. Man was primarily a
moral being to them. Of the major Revolutionary
figures, Sieyes and Barnave were the first to
think in terms of a collective productive effort.
The industrial expansion under Napoleon arid the
Restoration alone gave a great impetus to this
line of thought. And yet, the eighteenth-century
restrictionist attitude, essentially sterile and
reactionary, is less interesting and less
important for what it says than for what it fails
to say. It fails to run out its course, it halts
timidly in the middle. Impelled by a
revolutionary impetus of total renovation, and by
the idea of a society reconstructed deliberately
with a view to a logical and final pattern, it
nevertheless shrinks from throwing into the
melting-pot the basis of social relations,
property. Eighteenth-century thinkers did much to
undermine the sanctity of property, and to make
the State the chief arbiter in the economic life.
They shrank from drawing the final conclusions
and tried to be as conservative as possible. But
the impetus of the idea was too strong. The
French Revolution came with its Messianic call
and its economic and social strains and stresses.
The awakened masses, carried along by the idea of
universal happiness, could not grasp why the
Revolution should be only political and not
social. They could not understand why the
Legislator, so omnipotent in all other spheres,
should not have the power to subdue the
selfishness of the rich and to feed the poor, and
in general should not be able to solve the social
problem on the pattern of the natural scheme and
in accordance with the " necessity of things
". The very idea of democracy appeared to
imply an ever closer approximation to economic
equality. A purely formal political democracy,
without social levelling, had no meaning l~ in
the eighteenth century, brought up as it was on
the ideas of antiquity. It was a later product.
Jacobin dictatorship was caught unprepared by
these whirlwinds. It had to improvise a half-way
house. Carried on by the Messianic urge and their
vague vision, the Jacobins, like their
eighteenth-century teachers, lacked the courage
to make a frontal attack on the property system.
This is why the " reign of virtue "
postulated by them appears so unsatisfactory and
so elusive an ideal as almost to be meaningless,
and why the dictatorial social and economic
policies which necessity imposed upon them were
adopted by them with so much reluctance.
Nobody realized better than Saint-Just that an
irresistible dynamism was driving the Jacobins
into a direction of which they had hardly dreamt
in the beginning. As we shall see, Babeuf and
Buonarroti discovered that the Jacobin half-way
house was a heart-break house. It was necessary
to go the whole way towards a State-owned and
State-directed economy. The solution of the
economic problem was the condition of theJacobin
Republic of Virtue. The Thermidorian reaction
learned a similar lesson from Jacobin
dictatorship, but drew the opposite conclusions:
property must become the rock of the social
edifice, and social welfare must be put outside
the scope of state politics. It may be said that
the French Revolution followed stage by stage the
teachings of Mably, but in a reverse order. Out
of his despair of ever seeing the solely valid
Communist system established, Mably developed a
whole series of practical policies for the state
of sin, which had a deep influence upon the
course of the Revolution. Babeuvism was a
Mablyist conclusion derived from the failure of
these policies, when tried, to solve the problems
of society, and a vindication of Mably's original
promise that all reforms would be ineffective
without the abolition of property. Only, while
Mably thought the latter a hopeless dream, Babeuf
and his followers resolved that the Revolutionary
changes had brought it into the realm of
practical politics, and that the failure of the
Revolutionary palliatives had indeed made it
inescapable. Mably's political thinking - a
subject not within the scope of this work as such
- could be presented as a series of layers, each
of which corresponded to and inspired a
particular phase of the Revolution. He laid down
a prophetic blue-print of the initial stage of
the Revolution. Accepting the division of society
into estates and classes as an unavoidable evil
as long as men could not " all be brothers
", he foretold that by reasserting their
particular interests and liberties the various
orders would isolate and weaken royal despotism.
The Parliaments would become the " anchor of
salvation ", and the crisis forced by them
would compel the King to summon the Estates
General. These would establish themselves as a
National Assembly meeting at fixed periods. The
Constituante learnt from Mably the principle of
the absolute supremacy of the Legislature over a
weak, despised and always suspect royal
executive; and the sacredness of the principle of
parliamentary representation, direct democracy
having been rejected by Mably as a regime which
gives rein to an anarchical, capricious and
ignorant multitude. The Jacobins took from Mably,
not less than from Rousseau, their idea of
virtuous, egalitarian happiness.
On the very eve of Thermidor Saint-Just brings
with him copies of Mably to the Committee of
Public Safety, and distributes them amongst his
colleagues, the other dictators of Revolutionary
France, in order to win them over definitely for
his plan of enthroning virtue, and thereby
completing and insuring the regeneration of the
French people, and the emergence of a new type of
society. Finally, Babouvism adopted Mably's
Communism, while the post-Therrnidorian regime
based the exclusion of the propertyless from
political life also on Mably's precepts.
PART II THE JACOBIN IMPROVISATION
Mais elle existe, je vous en atteste, ames
sensibles et puree; elle existe, cette p assion
tendre, imp erieuse , irresistible , tourment et
delices de coeurs magnanimes, cette horreur
profonde de la tyrannic, ce zele compatissant
pour les opprimes, cet amour sacre de la patrie,
cet amour plus sublime et plus saint de
l'humanite, sans loquel une grande revolution
n'est qu'un crime eclatant qui detruit un autre
crime; elle existe, cette ambition genereuse de
fonder sur la terre la premiere Republique du
monde; cet egoisme des hommes non degrades, qui
trouve une volupte celeste dans le calme d'une
conscience pure et dans le spectacle ravissant du
bonheur public. Vous le sentez, en ce moment, qui
brille dans vos ames; je le sens dans la mienne. ROBESP1ERRE
(a) THE REVOLUTIONARY ATTITUDE
ON the threshold of the French Revolution the
Revolutionary forces found their chief spokesman
in Sicyes. The author of the most successful
political pamphlet of all time - the Communist
Manifesto - whatever its delayed influence, had
little effect when it appeared-summed up
eighteenth-century political philosophy with a
view to immediate and practical application. For
the first time in modem history, and perhaps in
history altogether, a political pamphlet was
consciously and enthusiastically seized upon by
statesmen and politicians, indeed by public
opinion in the widest sense of the word, as a
complete guide to action; not just as an analysis
of reality by an acute mind, containing wise
reflections and stimulating ideas, the way in
which a political pamphlet would have been
treated in the past. This in itself was an
event of incalculable importance. It was a signal
of the new importance acquired by ideas as
historic agents. In the past ideas mattered
little as factors in political change. Deeply
rooted respect for tradition and precedent worked
for stability and continuity. Under a traditional
monarchy the administration was recruited from
the aristocracy, or civil service families.
Government was a question of management by those
to whom it was a traditional occupation. With the
replacement of tradition by abstract reason,
ideology and doctrine became all-important. The
ideologists came to the fore. Moreover, ideas had
reached the masses. Statistics have been adduced
to show that the works of the philosophers were
neither widely distributed nor widely read in the
years before the Revolution, and the influence of
eighteenth-century ideas upon the Revolution has
been seriously questioned. On becoming acquainted
with the Revolutionary literature one is almost
tempted to answer that statistics is no science.
The prevalence of philosophical canon books in
libraries or the number of their actual readers
is in reality no index to their influence. How
many people in our own days have actually read
the Capital of Marx or the works of Freud ? Few
however would deny that the ideas propagated in
these books have entered contemporary thinking
and experience to a degree that defies
measurement. There is such a thing as a climate
of ideas, as ideas in the air. Such ideas reach
the half-literate and semi-articulate second,
third or even fourth hand. They nevertheless
create a general state of mind. Tocqueville found
many references to the " rights of man
" and the " natural order " in
peasant cahiers. From the point of view of this
inquiry Sieyes's writings of. 1788-9 deserve
special attention in that they embody the
Revolutionary eighteenth-century philosophy as a
still undivided complex. There is no explicit
suggestion of a fissure yet. The schism into two
types of democracy was to develop soon. The
question is whether Sieyes's pamphlets of that
period suggest the possibility of a split, and
whether one can discern in them a tension between
incompatible elements. This is not an easy
question to answer. It requires a good deal of
detachment.
Sieyes's ideas of the early period of the
Revolution have become part and parcel of Western
European consciousness and have entered into the
woof of modern liberal-democratic thinking to an
extent which makes it difficult to bring home how
revolutionary they were at the time they
appeared, and to realize the far-reaching
totalitarian-democratic potentialities immanent
in them. Yet, these very ideas, which became a
landmark in the growth of liberal democracy, were
calculated to set the modern State on the path of
totalitarianism. They helped to initiate that
process of ever-growing centralization that leads
to the totalitarianism of facts, towards which
the modern State has been moving for the last
century and a half They also marked a decisive
advance in the direction of the totalitarianism
of ideas based on an exclusive creed, Sieyes's
postulate of a rational regime in place of the
slavish acceptance of established and
time-hallowed incoherence, and of; arrangements
long void of meaning; his rejection of the old
idea that government was the King's business,
while that of the subjects was to give their
loyalty and yield taxes; his condemnation of
privileges; the demand that the Estates General,
based on feudal class distinctions and convoked
to help the King to solve the problem of the
deficit, should give place to a National Assembly
representing the sovereign nation, and be called
upon to apply its unlimited powers to the total
reshaping of the body politic; Sieyes's raising
of the homogeneous nation-above orders and
corporations-to the level of the only real and
all-embracing collective entity - all these ideas
now so widely accepted as axiomatic were of the
utmost revolutionary significance at the time,
and, moreover, released a dynamic force, which
soon swept beyond the conscious objectives of
those who set it in motion, and is to-day more
powerful than ever. The absurdities,
incongruities and abuses of the ancient regime
were indefensible. Sieyes's impatience with, and
contempt for, the old parchments, the cult for
precedent, the " extase gothique " of
" proof " hunters and timid slaves of
" facts ", cannot fail to win sympathy.
But it must not be forgotten that this clash of
attitudes, stripped of grotesques and stupid,
selfish conservatism, on the one side, and of
compelling verve, on the other, marked the
beginning of the fundamental and fateful conflict
between two vital attitudes, not in the sphere of
abstract thought alone, but in the realm of
practical politics as well. One stands for
organic, slow, half-conscious growth, the other
for doctrinaire deliberateness; one for the
trial-and-error procedure, the other for an
enforced solely valid pattern. The Legislator,
writes Sieyes, " dolt se sentir presse
de sortir enfin de l'effroyable experience des
siecles . . . enjoin" denser des vrais
principes". There is no respect in this
attitude for the wisdom of ages, the accumulated,
half-conscious experience and instinctive ways of
a nation. It shows no awareness of the fact that
strictly rationalist criteria of truth and
untruth do riot apply to social phenomena, and
that what exists is never a result of error,
accident or vicious contrivance alone, but is a
pragmatic product of conditions, slow,
unconscious adjustment, and only partly of
deliberate planning. These are the principles,
exclaims Sieyes, or we must renounce the idea of
a social order altogether. When contrasting the
character of an art peculiar to politics (the
" social art") with the descriptive
nature of physics, Sieyes foreshadows Marx's
famous dictum by saying of politics that it is
" l'art plus hardi darts sa vol. se
propose de plier et d'accommoder les fan's a nos
besoins et a nos jouissances, il demande ce qui
dolt etre pour l'utilite des hommes.... Quelle
dolt etre la veritable science, celle des fan's
ou celle des principes ? " This
approach determines his judgment of the British
Constitution. That so vaunted chef~oeuvre would
not stand an impartial examination by the
principles of a " veritable political
order". A product of hazard and
circumstances rather than of lights, " un
monument de superstition gothique" (the
House of Lords), in the past regarded as a
marvel, it was in fact nothing but an "
echafaudage prodigieux " of precautions
against disorder, instead of being a positive
scheme for a true social order.
This type of absolutist approach caused Sieyes to
become the first exponent of what we propose to
call the Revolutionary attitude. It is an answer
to the question as to what attitude a Revolution,
which claims to realize a solely valid system,
should take to the representatives of the past
scheme of things, and to opposition in general.
From one angle, it is the problem of
Revolutionary coercion. Sieyes was clear in his
mind that a Revolution had the characteristics of
a civil war, and was in its nature incompatible
with compromise or any kind of give-and-take. The
attacked old system and its representatives
benefiting from so many vested interests could
not be expected to dissolve of their own
volition. However old and decrepit a man may be,
Sieyes says, he will not willingly abandon his
place to a young man. There must be a removal by
force. The representatives of the two privileged
estates, the nobility and clergy, will thus try
to distract the attention of the Third Estate by
small concessions such as, for instance, the
offer to pay taxes equal to those paid by the
latter. In order to stave off the attack on their
privileges they will talk of the necessity of
reconciliation between the classes. All these
ruses, Sieyes insists, must not overshadow the
fundamental fact of the life-and-death struggle
between the two systems, which the new and old
social forces represented. The two camps had no
common ground, for there could be no common basis
for oppressors and the oppressed. It was
impossible to call a halt in 1789: it was
imperative to go either the whole way, or
backward, abolish privileges altogether, or
legalize them. It was impossible to bargain. No
class willingly renounces its power and
privileges, and no class can expect fairness or
generosity from the other, or even conformity to
some general objective standard. Thus in Sieyes's
opinion the Third Estate could rely only on its
own courage and inspiration. Severance was
therefore the sole solution: a Revolutionary
break and the total subordination of the few to
the many. Furthermore, a Revolution has not
accomplished its task even when it has abolished
the powers that be, which prevent the will of the
people from being expressed and prevailing, and
has enabled it, with no delay or subterfuge of
any kind, to speak and to fix the mode of
existence it desires.
An equally and perhaps more important objective
is to prevent the old system from coming back.
The old forces are bound to try to worm their way
back by all means. Sieyes therefore lays down
that the Third Estate shall be barred from
sending members of the two privileged orders as
their representatives. The question may be asked,
should not people be permitted to act foolishly,
if they choose? No, they must not, for the
question of the National Assembly and the general
good are involved. It would, Sicyes maintains, be
like electing British Ministers of State to
represent Frenchmen at the French National
Assembly, at a time of war. The nobles are
aliens, enemy aliens of the Third Estate, that is
to say, of the French nation, to the same degree
as members of the British Cabinet. The
implication of Revolutionary dictatorship is
clear. The provision, however necessary at the
moment, may be regarded as a thin end of the
wedge pierced into the framework of popular
sovereignty, on the very eve of its triumph.
This is the more remarkable, since the whole
burden of Sieyes's case for a rational principle
in politics and for the revolutionary replacement
of one system by another is the theory of the
unlimited sovereignty of the people. The "
veritable political order " is realized by
the will of the people becoming the sole source
of law, in place of the power of the King and
authority of tradition. When the nation enters
upon its own, and assembles to speak its mind,
all established laws and institutions are
rendered null and void. The situation in 1789 was
that the King had summoned the Estates General
for a particular purpose-to remedy the deficit;
and under certain conditions and rules - the
three orders were according to custom to
deliberate separately. Sieyes urged the Estates
General, or at least the Third Estate, to declare
themselves an extraordinary I National Assembly
and to act like men just emerging from the state
of nature and coming together for the purpose of
signing a Social Contract. He thus wanted the
Estates (or Assembly) to act in a Revolutionary
way, as if there had been no laws and no
regulations before then. The nation was the
sovereign. Once assembled it could not be bound
by any conditions or prescriptions. It would be
alienating its very being, if it was. The nation
expressed justice by the mere fact of its being
and willing. " La volonte rationale . .
. n'a besoin que de sa realite." An
extraordinary National Assembly, such as Sieyes
wanted the Estates General to become, embodied
this national will in the raw, being not just a
representative body, but Rousseau's people in
assembly really; while an ordinary National
Assembly laid down by the constitution created by
the Extraordinary Assembly-an ordinary
representative body-would be bound by the rules
fixed in the Constitution. The Extraordinary
Assembly may and would, of course, for
convenience' sake declare most of the existing
laws valid till their replacement by new ones,
but this expedient in no way affected the
principle. Who is the nation ? Sieyes answers:
all the individuals in the forty thousand
parishes of France. These individuals, stripped
of all their other attributes and affiliations,
like membership of a class, profession, creed or
locality, have the common attribute of
citizenship and the same interest in the common
general good. " Les volontes individuelles
vent les seals elements de la volonte
commune." Whoever claimed a position
different from that assigned by common
citizenship is the enemy of all other citizens
and of the national good. The most dangerous
enemy of the latter is esprit de corps, the
sectional interests of groups, whether these
groups were traditional privileged orders, social
classes or corporations with a special status.
The existence of groups implied partial selfish
interests. The common national will was formed by
the concurrence of individual wills alone, and
was falsified and destroyed, indeed could not
even be brought forth, where sectional interests
were operative. Thus the Estates General in its
old composition could not claim to be more than
an " Assemblee cleric on obili judicielle
". It constituted a body where
representatives of three separate nations met,
and negotiated, but could not form one national
representation, voicing one common national and
one general interest.
So far Sicyes is interpreting Rousseau. Now the
Third Estate - and this is Sicyes's original
contribution occasioned by the all-important
controversy of the hour - comprised the crushing
numerical majority of the nation, all those who
had no pretensions to privilege or status
different from that implied in common
citizenship, all those, moreover, who by their
skill and effort maintained the social fabric.
They were therefore the nation. The privileged
orders were aliens, an encumbrance, an idle limb.
The nobles might as well go back to the
Franconian swamps and forests, where they claim
to have come from originally, and leave the freed
old Roman stock alone. They would thus seal their
claim to be a superior race. Sieyes's egalitarian
conception of a monolithic nation and unlimited
popular sovereignty was an argument for the
elimination of feudal privilege and regional
incongruities. It was, however, calculated to
open the way to that democratic centralization,
under which the long unhampered arm of the
central power resting on the idea of a single
national interest, and carried by the energy of
popular feeling, sweeps away all intermediate
clusters of social activity whether functional,
ideological, economic or local.
The problem becomes more acute in the light of
Sieyes's two reservations: first, that the people
should not be allowed to act foolishly against
its own interest, and second, that in order that
the nation may become a monolithic entity,
nonconforming groups should be eliminated. This
would mean that unlimited popular sovereignty,
although in theory resting with the totality of
the nation alone, may come to be redeposited in a
part only of the nation, which claims to
constitute real monolithic people, and to embody
the single national interest. According to
Sieyes, the basis of all social order is
equality. The sense of equality is also the
essence of happiness, because it silences
pretentious pride as well as envy, vanity and
servility. Equality is a postdate of reason as of
justice. The cleavage of society into unequal
parts, oppressors and oppressed, has come into
existence in contradiction to the dictates of
reason and fairness. Sieyes employs the famous
simile of the law as the centre of an immense
globe and the citizens placed, without exception,
in the same distance on the circumference. But
here comes the vital shift. The whole trend of
thought becomes deflected by the question of
property.
(C) PROPERTY
The aspects of Sieyes's thought emphasized till
now, such as the absolutist doctrinaire
temperaments, Revolutionary coercion, egalitarian
centralism, the conception of a homogeneous
nation, contained totalitarian implications. The
question of property pushes Sieyes's ideas back
firmly on the path of liberalism. The law in the
focus of his globe must not, he states, interfere
with the citizen's use of his innate or acquired
faculties and more or less favorable chances to
increase his possessions. ". . . N'enfle
sa propriete de tout ce que le sort prospere, on
un travail plus fecond pourra y Router, et ne
puisse s'elever, dans sa place regale, le bonheur
le plus conforme a ses gouts et le plus digne
d'envie." From the point of view of the
law, economic inequality had no more significance
than inequality of height or looks, difference of
sex or age Moreover, in the tradition of Locke,
private property is presented by Sicyes as the
very essence of liberty, as only an extension of
the property of one's person, and of man's
freedom to employ his faculties and labour.
" La propriete des objets exterieurs on
la propriete reelle, n'est pareillement qu'une
suite et comme une extension de la propriete
personnelle." The right of first
occupation is, again in the spirit of Locke, only
a specific personal right to the deployment of
skill and effort. It gives the first occupant an
exclusive right of ownership, from which others
are shut out. The outcome of this conception of
property as a natural right is the liberal
conception of the role of the State: to allow men
to follow their economic pursuits, without
hindrance, and to interfere only when an attempt
on a man's property is made by his neighbor. The
role of the State is to insure safety; not to
grant rights, but to protect them. " Tous
ces individus (on the circumference of the globe
with the law in its centre) correspondent entre
eux, ilk s'engagent, its negocient, toujours sons
la garantie commune de la loi; si dans ce
mouvement general quelqu'un vent dominer la
personne de son voisin ou usurper sa propriete,
la loi commune reprime cet attentat, et remet
tout le monde a la meme distance Belle meme."
Only once or twice does Sieyes seem to reflect
uneasily on the advantage unequal property
accords to its owners. On one occasion he remarks
that most property was still with the privileged
orders. He hastens, however, to reassure his
readers that he has no intention of touching
property. It is a natural right.
Sieyes's conception of property leads him to the
most flagrant violation of his egalitarian
principles, even in the political sphere. So
eloquent in the condemnation of privilege and
group interests as an insult to human dignity and
the immoral foe of the national interest, Sieyes
is brought to make the distinction between two
kinds of rights, natural and civil. Preservation
and development of the natural rights is the
purpose for which society has been formed; while
political rights are those by which society is
maintained. Hence the distinction between active
and passive citizens. The latter have only
natural rights, the right to the protection of
their persons, liberty and property. They have no
part in the formation Of the public powers. This
is reserved to the active citizens alone. 'They
alone contribute to the establishment and
maintenance of the public weal. They alone are
" les vrais actionnaires de la grande
entreprise sociale ". The term is
highly significant. Society is reinterpreted from
a moral and political arrangement based on the
natural rights of man into a joint stock company.
Sieyes's conception of property is more
conservative than any so far encountered in this
essay. The reason is not far to seek. The earlier
thinkers, spinning their ideas in a vacuum, with
little faith in putting them into practice, could
be radical, although even they flinched from
drawing the final conclusion. Sieyes was writing
guides for immediate action. Sieyes, like so many
architects of the Revolution, felt the urgency of
reaffirming the sanctity of property while
opening all the other floodgates of the
Revolution.
BALANCE OR REVOLUTIONARY PURPOSE-
UNDER THE CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY
(a) LEGALITY AND THE SUPREMACY OF THE
REVOLUTIONARY PURPOSE SIEYES was one of
those who caused the initial absolutist impulse
of the Revolution to spend itself in the
abolition of the feudal Monarchy. The shock
became so to say absorbed in a system of balance,
established by the Constituent Assembly and
consecrated by the Constitution of 1791. The new
order was in a sense the negation of the basic
ideas of a " veritable political order
", in the name of which the Revolution of
1789 had been accomplished: the sovereignty of
the people and the rights of man. A hereditary
Monarchy with the power of veto was retained, and
the poorer strata of the nation were
disfranchised. The idea of a solely valid social
order, underlying Sieyes' attitude in 1788-9,
gave way to the claim that the Revolution had
accomplished its task in that it had released the
social forces, till then suppressed, and created
the conditions for those forces to reach a
harmonious balance by themselves. That a major
force, namely the poor, the majority of the
nation, had not been given a chance to enter the
contest was conveniently overlooked. The whole
subsequent development of the Revolution may be
described as a struggle between two attitudes,
one based on the idea of balance and the newly
established legality, and the other emanating
from the idea of the primacy of the Revolutionary
purpose, and implying the legality of
Revolutionary coercion and violence (Jacobinism).
Certain dates and events stand out as decisive in
this struggle. The bourgeois system of balance
came to an end on August 10th, 1792, as a result
of an armed coup by the disfranchised elements
under the leadership of the Insurrectionary Paris
Commune. The coup was carried out in the name of
the primacy of the Revolutionary purpose, against
the established legal authorities, above all the
Legislative Assembly, which had been elected on
the basis of a property qualification. The
Monarchy, which had never recovered from the
shock it had received as a result of the King's
fight a year earlier, was abolished. The
distinction between active and passive citizens
ceased to exist. The last remaining feudal dues,
which the Constituent Assembly had retained on
the grounds that they were derived from property
relations and not from personal dependence, were
soon finally annulled. The last conclusions were
thus drawn from the original premises of the
Revolution of 1789, which had been whittled down
into the Constitutional Monarchical and bourgeois
compromise: the undisputed supremacy of popular
sovereignty, and the equal rights of man. It
could thus be said that the Revolutionary
purpose, which was enthroned by the unlawful
events of August, 1792, the brief dictatorship of
the Commune, the massacres of September, 1792,
and the Ministry of Danton, was embodied in these
two ideals. The same could not be said about the
Revolutionary purpose which, on June 2nd, 1793,
led to the attack on the Convention, culminating
in the expulsion of the Girondist deputies. The
latter had been duly elected on a free ballot,
and till a very short time earlier commanded the
majority of the Convention. The Jacobin
Revolutionary purpose in this case was the
salvation of the Revolution. The Revolution meant
to the Jacobins the Republic one and indivisible,
and the defense of the welfare of the masses,
menaced by tendencies running counter to their
ideological and administrative centralization,
and aiming at the preservation of established
economic (bourgeois) interests. The dictatorship
of the Committee of Public Safety and the
declaration of the Revolutionary Government which
followed the June coup implied the claim that at
that stage the Revolutionary purpose had come to
be embodied in a single party, Jacobinism,
representing the true will and the real interest
of the people, or rather the popular masses. The
terrorist Jacobin political and economic
dictatorship was an improvisation precipitated by
war, - economic emergency, internal treason and
party strife. With the passing of the imminent
military danger, and the destruction of the
Enrages libertists and Dantonists, the first two
groups representing anarchical social violence,
and the latter a wish for a return to legality
and some form of balance, the dictatorial regime
should have come to an end. The Revolutionary
purpose, which was its justification, seemed
realized with the defeat of its enemies. But
Robespierrist dictatorship and terror continued.
The question of the Revolutionary purpose,
involving the question of the purpose of the
terror, assumed thus a new and vital
significance. It could no longer be summed up as
unrestricted popular sovereignty. Social policies
alone and as an end in themselves did not exhaust
it either. It thus came to signify the reign of
virtue, the idea of an exclusive and final scheme
of things. But this conception was not something
new or improvised. It was there in Jacobinism
from the start, as a postulate. It only reached
self awareness during the regime of terror, to
clash at once with the ideas of liberty and
popular self -expression, values with which it
had for a long time been identified, to be soon
defeated on Thermidor 9th by a reaction
reasserting the idea of balance, and to re-emerge
in a flicker of total self-awareness in the plot
of Babeuf in 1796.
JACOBINISM-MENTAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL
ELEMENTS
The driving power of Jacobinism, or as for the
purposes of this study it would be more correct
to say, "Robespierrism", was the vague,
mystical idea that the way to a natural rational
and final order of things had been opened by the
French Revolution. " Nous voulons, en un
mot, remplir les voeux de la nature, accomplir
les destine de l'humanite, tenir les promesses de
la philosophic, absoudre la providence du long
regne du crime et da la tyrannic." This
Messianic attitude of Robespierre and his
followers must be constantly borne in mind,
otherwise the whole significance of Jacobinism
will be lost. It was incompatible with the
acceptance of the theory of balance, and implied
an absolute, dynamic purpose, to be pursued in
all circumstances, and imposed. For the
understanding of Jacobinism it is vital to
remember that abstract, collective concepts were
to them not abridgments, combinations of ideas,
or guiding maxims, but almost tangible and
visible things, truths that stand on their own
and compel acceptance. " Eternal principles
", the " natural order ", "
the reign of virtue " had an all-important
meaning to Robespierre and SaintJust, just as
such concepts as " classless society ",
" the leap from the realm of necessity to
the realm of freedom " have to an orthodox
Marxist. Hence disagreement could not be
considered by them as mere difference of opinion,
but appeared as crime and perversion, or at least
error. It was usual for Robespierre to preface
his statements with the explicit premise that as
there could be only one morality and one human
conscience, he felt sure that his opinion was
that of the Assembly. In his famous clash with
Guadet on the subject of Providence and Divinity,
Robespierre declared that believing, as he did,
that all patriots had the same principles, it was
impossible that they should not admit the eternal
principles voiced by him. " Quand
j'aurai termine . . . je suds sur que M. Guadet
se rendra lui-meme a mon opinion; yen atteste et
son patriotisme et sa gloire, chases vaines et
sans fondement, si elles ne s'appuyaient sur'les
verites immuables que je viens de proposer."
In the circumstances such words were, of course,
tantamount to blackmail. This mental attitude was
interwoven with certain psychological
peculiarities. Robespierre was quite incapable of
separating the personal element from differences
of opinion. That every polemical argument became
in Robespierre's mouth a torrent of personal
denunciation may be explained by his implicit
conviction that as there is only one truth, he
who disagreed with it was prompted by evil
motives. But less explicable seems Robespierre's
habit of declaring himself a victim of
persecution, of embarking upon a dirge of
self-pity and of invoking death as solace, every
time he was opposed. Here we are faced with a
paranoiac streak, a strange combination of a most
intense and mystical sense of mission with a
self-pity that expressed itself in an obsessive
preoccupation with martyrdom, death and even
suicide. It is the psychology of the neurotic
egotist, who must impose his will - rationalized
into divine truth - or wallow in an ecstasy of
self-pity. The refusal of the world to submit
becomes to such a nature a source of endless
anguish, usually rationalized into a Weltschmerz.
At every setback or humiliation, the world grows
instantly dark, deformed and contorted with pain.
Its order begins to appear wrong beyond remedy,
and all men banded together in an evil plot. A
similar mentality is discernible in Saint-Just,
Robespierre's junior colleague, the philosopher
of Jacobin dictatorship, and one of its most
formidable representatives. After the failure to
get elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1792,
because he had not yet reached the prescribed age
of twenty-five, Saint-Just wrote this passionate,
astounding letter: " I have been
impelled by a republican fever that devours and
eats me up. You will find me great some day . . .
I have a feeling that I can soar above the rest
in this age. Adieu ! I am above misfortune. I
will bear everything, but I will tell the truth.
You are all cowards, you have not appreciated me.
My palm will rise nevertheless and perhaps
obscure yours. Infamous creatures that you are. I
am a rogue, a rascal, because I have no money to
give you. Tear out my heart and devour it; you
will become what you are not. Great ! O God !
Must Brutus languish forgotten, far from Rome !
My decision is made meanwhile. If Brutus does not
kill the rest, he will kill himself."
At a later date, as one of the dictators of
France, Saint-Just wrote that on the day he would
become convinced that it was impossible to give
the French people " moeurs douces,
energiques, sensibles et inexorables pour la
tyrannic et l'injustice", he would stab
himself. Few confessions could equal the one
found in SaintJust's Institutions Republicaines.
A youth of barely twenty-three compelled to
" isolate himself from the world
", he " throws his I anchor into
the future, and presses posterity to his heart ".
God, the protector of innocence and virtue, had
sent him on the perilous mission of unmasking
perverse men surrounded by fame and fear He was
destined to put crime into chains, and to make
men practice virtue and probity. "J'ai
laisse derriere moi toutes ces faiblesses, je
n'ai vu que la verite dans l'univers, et je l'ai
cite. Les circumstances ne vent difficiles que
pour ceux qui reculent devant le tombeau. Je
t'implore, le tombeau, comme un bienfait de la
Providence, pour n'etre pas temoin de l'impunite
des forfeits ourdis contre ma patrie et
l'humanite. Certes, c'est quitter peu de chose
qu'une vie malheureuse, dans laquelle on est
condamme a vegeter le complice ou le temoin
impuissant de crime . . . Je meprise la poussiere
qui me compose et qui vous parle; on pourra la
persecuter et faire mourir cette poussiere. Mais
je defie qu'on m'arrache cette vie independante
que je me suds donne dans les siecles et dans les
cieux." The breath-taking incongruity
between the invocation to death as solace and the
role of executioner-in-chief of the author is
only equalled by another strange contrast, that
between SaintJust's atrocious denunciations of
opponents and his sentimental declamations. The
terrible indictment of Danton opens with the
uncanny enunciation: " il y a quelque
chose de terrible dans l'amour sacre de la
patrie, il est tellement exclusif, qu'il immole
tout saris pitie, sans frayeur, sans respect
humain, a l'interet public." In another
speech the Republic is said never to be safe as
long as a single opponent is left alive, and the
sword is brandished against not only the
opponents, but also the "indifferents
". But this does not prevent Saint-Just from
weaving the blissful dream of a cottage on the
banks of a river, from appealing to Frenchmen to
love and respect each other, and from imploring
the Government to let everyone find his own
happiness. This is a self-righteous mentality
which is quite incapable of self-criticism,
divides reality into watertight compartments and
adopts contradictory attitudes to the same thing,
making judgment wholly dependent on whether it is
" me ", by definition representing
truth and right, or the opponent who is
associated with it. I:.
(c) THE DEFINITION OF THE GENERAL WILL
The Jacobin absolute purpose was not to be
imposed externally. It was held to be immanent in
man and sure to restore to man his rights and
freedoms. It was realizable only in the
collective experience of active popular
self-expression. Jacobinism was not satisfied
with acquiescence. It insisted on active
participation, and condemned neutrality or
indifference as vicious egoism. Jacobinism did
not ask for obedience, it wanted to exact living,
active communion with the absolute purpose.
Robespierre declared it to be the duty of every
man and citizen to contribute as much as was in
his power to the success of the sublime
undertaking of the Revolution: the
re-establishment of the inalienable rights of
man, which is the sole object of society, and the
sole legitimate motive of revolutions. Man must
sacrifice his personal interest to the general
good. He must, so to say, bring to the common
pool the part of public force and of the people's
sovereignty which he holds, " on Lien il
dolt etre exclu, par cela meme, du pacte social".
Needless to add that whoever wants to retain
unjust privileges and distinctions incompatible
with the general good, and whoever wants to
arrogate to himself new popovers at the expense
of public liberty, is the enemy of the nation and
of humanity.
This was the central problem of Jacobinism:
the dilemma of the single purpose and the will of
men. It could be defined as the problem of
freedom, conformity and coercion in a regime
which claims to achieve two incompatible aims,
Liberty, and an exclusive form of social
existence. It is at bottom Rousseau's problem of
the general will, with an equally strong emphasis
placed on active and universal participation in
willing the general will as on the exclusive
nature of the general will. Saint-Just came to
grips with the issue in a striking passage at the
end of his remarkably moderate, even complacent
exposition of the Revolutionary ideals in his
book of 1791, L'Esprit de la Revolution et de
la Constitution (of 1791). He sets out there
to answer a presumed challenge as to whether the
new Constitution was the will of all.
Saint-Just's answer is firmly negative. It would
be impossible he goes on to say, that the change
of the Social Contract should not divide into two
camps, the " fripons " or the egoists,
who stand to lose by the change, and the
unfortunates who were oppressed under the old
compact. But it would be an inadmissible abuse of
the letter of the law to consider the resistance
of some criminals as a part of the national will,
since such resistance could not claim to be a
legitimate opposition. Saint-Just goes much
further. As a general rule, he declares, every
will, even the sovereign will, inclined to
perversion, is nil. Rousseau had not said all,
when he described the general will as -
incommunicable, inalienable, eternal. The general
will, to be such, must also be reasonable. In
this respect Saint-Just quite mistakenly "
corrects" Rousseau. The author of the Social
Contract did not intend to say anything different
from what Saint Just goes on to say, namely, that
a will may be tyrannical, even if willed by all,
and that it would be no less criminal for the
sovereign to be " tyrannized by
himself" than by others. For in this case,
the laws flowing from an impure source, the
people would be licentious, and each individual
would be both a tyrant and a slave. " La
liberte' d'un peuple mauvais est une perfidie
generale, qui n'attaquant plus le droit de tous
ou la souverainete morte, attaque la nature
qu'elle represente." The objective
content is equally essential for the concept of
liberty. " Liberte ! Liberte sacree !
"-exclaims SaintJust-" tu serais
peu de chose parmi les hommes, si tu ne les
rendais qu'heureux, mais tu les rappelles a leur
origine et les rends a la vertu."
Liberty deserves to be loved only to the extent
that it leads " to simplicity through the
power of virtue ". Otherwise liberty is
nothing but " the art of human pride ".
Clearly, the spontaneously expressed will of man
or people cannot as such claim to be taken for
granted as the exercise of sovereignty. All
depends on its objective quality, on its
conforming to the general good, the reasonable
general will, and virtue; all three in fact
meaning the same thing, an objective standard.
Who is to define it ? By what is it to be
recognized ?, How rigid or how flexible a
standard is it likely to be. These are the vital,
but unanswered, questions. At a later date in the
debate on the Constitution of 1793, SaintJust
enunciated a totally different definition of the
general will and one which shows an unmistakable
awareness of the dangerous irreverence in the
earlier conception. Saint-Just seemed now to
remove all objective quality from the general
will, reducing the question to a matter of
counting votes and interests, all of which are
explicitly recognized as valid. Moreover, the
postulate of objectivity is violently assailed.
" La volonte generate, proprement cite,
et dans la langue de la liberte, se forme de la
majorite des volontes particulieres,
individuellement recueillies sans une influence
etrangere; la loi, ainsi former, consacre . . .
l'interet general, de la majorite des volontes a
du resulter celle des interets."
SaintJust condemns the substitution of what he
calls " a speculative will " for the
real general will, of the philosophical view
(" vues de ['esprit") for the interests
of the corps social. " Les lois etaient
['expression du gout plutot que de la volonte
generate." Thus if the actual,
expressed will of the people is not taken for the
general will, and some allegedly objective,
external idea is proclaimed to constitute the
general will, the general will becomes depraved.
Liberty no longer belongs to the people. It
becomes a law alien to public prosperity. This is
Athens voting at its twilight,without democracy,
the loss of its freedom. This idea of liberty,
Saint-Just declares, if it prevails, will banish
freedom for ever. He goes on to make an eloquent
and terrible prophecy, which events vindicated to
the letter. `' Cette liberte sortira du cceur
et deviendra le gout mobile de l'esprit; la
liberte sera concrete sons toutes les formes de
gouvernement possibles; car dans l'imagination,
tout perd ses formes naturelles et tout s'altere,
et l'on y cree des libertes comme les yeux creent
des figures dans les nuages . . . Dans vingt ans
le theme soit retabli par les fluctuations et les
illusions Fortes a la volonte generate devenue
speculative."
It took less than twenty years for Napoleon to
make the claim that he embodied the general will
of the French nation and to find theoretical
support for it. Where does Saint-Just after all
take his stand ? Is the general will to him what
is actually willed by the people in flesh,
whatever its contents, " la volonte
materielle du people, sa volonte
simultanee", the aim of which, as he says,
is to consecrate the active interest of the
greater number, and not their passive interest ?
Or does the general will need the attribute of
objective truth to become the general will, in
which case the actual count of votes takes a
second place behind the objective doctrine
embodied in the Enlightened ? Neither Robespierre
nor SaintJust ever stated their position quite
unequivocally, but the latter attitude is
implicit in their whole approach. As will be
shown, Saint Just¹s definition of the general
will, made in the course of the Constitutional
debate in 1793, came not as an answer to the
challenge of a " speculative " idea
claiming to constitute the general will, but as
an argument in a debate on the mode of organizing
the expression of popular sovereignty.
Robespierre's insistence on the exclusion of
those who do not bring with them to the common
pool and common effort their part of popular
sovereignty, is a clear indication of his
attitude. It is proposed to examine in the coming
pages the development of the Jacobin attitude on
this point throughout the Revolution I as
illustrated by the thought of the two leading and
most representative figures of Jacobin
dictatorship, Robespierre and SaintJust.
(d) THE IDEA OF BALANCE-SAINT-JUST
The evolution of Robespierre's thinking on this
matter is more interesting and more elaborate
than that of SaintJust. He wrestled with the
problem for a much longer time than his younger
friend, who, when he arrived on the central
Revolutionary scene, found the dilemma largely
resolved by circumstances. Robespierre was active
at the centre of affairs from the very earliest
days of the Revolution. Up to the period of the
Convention Saint-Just was only an impatient
onlooker of the great events from his native
little town, and no more than a local
Revolutionary activist. This may explain why in
the case of Robespierre the outline of his future
intellectual development is discernible quite
early, whereas in the case of Saint-Just the
passage from complacency in his book of 1791 to
Revolutionary dictatorial extremism in 1793
appears abrupt and almost unexpected. Saint-Just
made the passage from obscurity to supreme power
in one leap. A fundamental difference between
Robespierre and Saint-Just is revealed by a
comparative analysis of their views in the
pre-Convention period. In spite of the
far-reaching totalitarian implications of Saint
Just¹s above quoted definition of the general
will, contained in his book on the 1791
Constitution, the underlying attitude of the work
is the orthodox view of the day that the
Revolution had been accomplished in the sense
that it had liberated the social forces and
enabled them to set themselves freely into a
harmonious pattern, the essence of which is
balance. Robespierre was never prepared to adopt
this approach. To him the aim of the Revolution
had not been achieved by giving the social and
political forces a free play to reach a balance.
He was not prepared to be content with letting
the forces out and watching them. His whole
attitude is dominated by the idea of a dynamic
purpose. The Revolution constitutes the unfolding
of this purpose. There is no question of a
balance of forces. The decisive fact is the
deadly struggle between two forces, Revolution
and counter-revolution, which between themselves
sum up the whole of reality. " The
omission of what you could do would be a betrayal
of trust . . . a crime of lese-nation and
lese-humanity. More than that: if you do not do
all for Liberty, you have not done a thing. There
are no two ways of being free: either you are
entirely free or return to be a slave. The
slightest opening left to despotism will
re-establish soon its power"-declared
Robespierre in the debate in the Constituante on
the franchise on August 11th, 1791, when hotly
opposing the followers of the ideology of
equilibrium, who adopted the mare d'argent as a
qualification for eligibility to the Legislative
Assembly.
It may be convenient to throw a glance at
Saint-Just's ideas in 1791 first, before
proceeding to Robespierre. The contrast between
the idea of balance and of Revolutionary purpose
will thus be brought into sharp relief.
Saint-Just speaks in glowing approval of the 1791
principles. France had produced a synthesis
(coalise,) of democracy (e'tat civil),
aristocracy (the legislative power), and monarchy
(executive). In the best tradition of
Montesquieu, Saint-Just explains that a large
country like France must have a monarchical
regime, as a republic would not suit it. At all
events, the new Constitution was the nearest
possible approximation in the conditions of
France to a popular regime, with a minimum of
monarchy, notwithstanding the formal supremacy of
the executive power, necessitated also
incidentally by the people's love for the King.
The new regime appears to Saint-Just to be
eminently safe because of the essential sanity of
the French people: presumption, which
characterizes the English people and prevents the
establishment of democracy in England, is not the
principle of French democracy; violence is not
the essence of French aristocracy; and justice,
not caprice, is the characteristic of the new
French monarchy. " Le chef d'oeuvre de
l' Assemblee Nationale est d' avoir tempers cette
democratic." The golden balance, the
right measure between a popular and despotic
regime, has been achieved. The nation has been
given the degree of liberty necessary to its
sovereignty, legislation has become popular
through equality, and the monarchy had retained
only enough power to be a vehicle of justice.
" The legislators of France have devised the
wisest equilibrium." Wisdom could not place
too strong a barrier between the Legislative and
Executive. But the deliberations of the
Legislature should be submitted for royal
acceptance so that the particular interests of
the two powers should cancel each other out. An
eye watching over the lawgiver himself, a power
able to arrest his arm, is needed. This role can
best be performed by an executive-head who does
not change, and is the repository of laws and
principles, which the instability of the
legislators should not be allowed to upset. It
would be absurd to consult the people in these
deliberations, because of the slowness of the
procedure, the people's lack of prudence, and its
vulnerability to evil influences. " Where
the feet think, the arm deliberates, the head
marches." This is indeed out of tune with
the plebiscitary tendencies of the 1793
Constitution. The judiciary, the best regulated
and most passive organ of the State, should be
vested with the supervision of the exercise of
sovereignty. Saint-Just's views on equality in
1791 are particularly significant Complete
equality like that established by Lycurgus - an
equality suitable for the poverty of a republic -
would produce a revolution or engender indolence
in a country like France. The land would have to
be divided and industry suppressed. A free
industry was however the source of political
rights, and inequality in fact has always given
birth to an ambition that is " vertu "
in itself. There is no social harmony with all
men socially and economically equal. Natural
equality would confuse society. There would be no
authority, no obedience, and the people would
flee to the desert. While abolishing abuses, the
legislators have wisely respected interests.
" Et l'on a Lien fait; la propriete rend
l'homme soigneux: elle attache les cccurs ingrate
a la patrie." As to political equality
- the only form of equality suitable for France,
a country built on commerce - its essence lies
not in equal strength, but in the individual's
having an equal share in the sovereignty of the
people. Unlike Robespierre, Saint-Just
nevertheless fully approves the division into
active and passive citizens. The completely
indigent class who would be classified as passive
citizens and deprived of franchise is not large
and would not be condemned to sterility, and the
Constitution would benefit by not becoming too
popular and anarchical. Possessed of independence
and a chance of emulation, the poor will enjoy
the social rights of natural equality, security
and justice. The legislators had taken a wise
course in not humiliating the poor, while making
opulence unnecessary.
It did not occur to Saint-Just or to most of his
contemporaries to inquire how many people were to
be disfranchised under the scheme. He is content
to observe that the inequality established by the
division into active and passive citizens does
not offend natural rights, but only social
pretensions. Saint-Just's analysis of the problem
of the individual versus the State anticipates
Benjamin Constant's distinction between the
legislators of antiquity and the spirit of modern
liberty. The ancients wished that the happiness
of the individual should be derived from the
well-being of the State, the moderns have an
opposite attitude. The ancient State was based
upon conquest, because it was surrounded by
inimical neighbors, and the fate of the
individuals thus depended on the fortunes of the
republic. The vast modern State has no ambitions
beyond self-preservation and the happiness of its
individual citizens. Following Rousseau closely,
Saint Just declares that the severity of the laws
should correspond inversely to the size of the
territory. The Rights of Man would have proved
the undoing of such small city-republics Las
Athens or Sparta. France, who has renounced
conquests, is strengthened by the Rights of Man.
" Ici la patrie s'oublie pour ses
enfants." The future prophet of the
" swift sword " cannot forgive Rousseau
his justification of the death penalty. " Quelque
veneration que m'impose l'autorite de J. J.
Rousseau, je ne te pardonne pas, o grand homme,
d'avoir justifie le droit de mort." For
if the right of sovereignty can't be transferred,
no more can man's right over his own life. Before
passing a death sentence, the Social Contract
should be altered, because the crime on which
sentence was given was the result of an
alteration in the contract. A repressive force
cannot be a social law. As soon as the Social
Contract is perverted, it becomes null and void,
and then the people must assemble and form a new
Social Contract for its regeneration. The Social
Contract is, according to Rousseau, made for the
preservation of the partners; indeed, but for
their conservation by vertu and not by force,
says Saint-Just. In the circumstances of 1791
Saint-Just had no perception that his theory of
balance was in the long run hardly compatible
with his idea of the predicated general will. At
all events, he presupposed an extremely wide area
of common agreement, and consequently the margin
of illegitimate opposition was thought by him to
be so narrow as not to deserve serious attention
As the common area, upon which the play of social
forces could be allowed to move, grew narrower,
the predicated general will became more rigidly
defined, and the exclusions more numerous
At first, the dynamic purpose of the Revolution
was to Robespierre the unhalted advance towards
the complete realization of, the democratic
ideal. Freedom of man and unrestricted popular
sovereignty were supreme purposes. In the earlier
phase of the Revolution, Robespierre was
profoundly convinced that the people's will, if
allowed free, genuine and complete expression,
could not fail to prove identical with the true
general will. " L'interet de people c'est le
Lien public . . . pour etre bon, le people n'a
besot que de se preferer lui meme a ce qui n'est
pas lui."
With this conviction of Robespierre's went the
all-pervading consciousness of a deadly struggle
between the popular Revolutionary purpose anvil
the forces opposed to it, which could not be
resolved by compromise, but only by total victory
and subordination. The liberation of man; the
dignity of the human person; government of the
people, by the people, and for the people-meant
things very real to Robespierre. They were almost
tangible, visible objects to him. There is a ring
of genuine fervor in Robespierre's condemnation
of the traditional distinction between rulers and
subjects, ruling classes and oppressed classes,
and in his impatient anger with snobbish
pretensions, and with contempt for those beneath
oneself It is important to emphasize that, like
Rousseau, Robespierre, when speaking of man's
dignity and freedom, means - the absence of
personal dependence, in other words, equality.
Rousseau had said that man should be as
independent as possible of any other person, and
as dependent as possible on the State. Human
dignity and rights are degraded, when man has to
acknowledge another man as his superior, but not
in equal dependence of all on the collective
entity, or the people, on ourselves in brief.
Throughout the ages, Robespierre says, the art of
government was employed for the exploitation and
subjugation of the many by the few. Laws were
designed to perfect these attempts into a system.
All the legislators, instead of endeavoring-to
release the popular I forces and satisfy their
longing for freedom, dignity, happiness and
self-government, have always thought in terms of
governmental power. Uppermost in their minds were
precautions against popular discontent and
insurrection, convinced as they were that the
people are by definition bad and mutinous.
"L'ambition, la force et la perfidie ent ete
les legislateurs . . . asservi raison." They
proclaimed reason to be nothing but folly,
equality to be anarchy. The vindication of
natural rights became to them rebellion, and
nature was ridiculed as a chimera. " C'est
avous maintenant de faire la votre, c'est a dire
de rendre les hommes heureux et libres par vos
lots."
Robespierre denounced all references to the Roman
tribunate. This ancient and so much vaunted
institution implied the people's bondage. As if
the people needed special advocates to plead on
its behalf before some superior powers and a
higher tribunal ! The people had no desire of
going on strike on the Mountain, and wait there
till its grievances had been answered. The people
was the master in its own house, and not a client
or supplicant. It intended to stay in Rome and
expel the tyrants.And so we see Robespierre
almost alone in the Constituent Assembly fighting
for universal suffrage. There was no stronger
advocate of the principle of popular election of
all officers of State, administrative, judicial
and other. He laid the greatest emphasis upon the
spread of political consciousness in the masses,
and encouraged its expression through the various
channels-popular societies, the press, petitions,
public discussions, demonstrations, and even
extra-legal direct action by the people.
Robespierre's determined stand against the death
penalty and his fervent defense of the
unrestricted freedom of the press were not only a
struggle for values good in themselves, but a
fight against the instruments of traditional
governmental tyranny, and for means of popular
self-expression. It was in the very nature of a
government " not of the people " never
to be satiated with power. Every government
" not of the people " was a vested
interest against the people. The evils of society
never come from the people, always from the
government. " C' est dans la vertu et dans
la souverainete du people qu' it faut chercher un
preservatifcontre les vices et le despotisme du
gouvernement." The first object of a
Constitution is to protect the people from its
own government and their abuses.
Robespierre was of course out of tune with
Montesquieu's idea of the Separation of powers,
reaffirmed by the Constituent Assembly. For
whatever the Constitutional devices for
subordinating the Executive to the Legislature
adopted by the Assembly, there remained
nevertheless in the 1791 Constitution the fact of
a permanent head of the Executive, unelected,
primeval, so to say, in the same way as the
people was in regard to the Legislative power.
The British system appeared to Robespierre a
fraud and a plot against the people. In the past,
in the era of bondage, the idea may have been to
temper tyranny by creating tension between the
various governmental agencies and sowing discord
among the various powers. But the aim of the
Revolution was to extirpate tyranny altogether,
and to let the people rule. Robespierre was at
heart a Republican before he ever knew it.
Robespierre was filled with a constant anxiety
not to allow the agencies of power to fall into
the hands of the Executive. In those hands they
were bound to become anti-popular
counterrevolutionary forces. There could be
little hesitation for him as to what attitude to
take up on such questions as the royal veto and
the royal sanction for Legislative decrees. In
his determination to neutralize the Executive's
power to do harm, Robespierre fought to deprive
the King of every possible prerogative. This was
consistently his line on every issue that came up
in the great constitutional debates of 1791 on
the reform of the French State. He was, for
instance, against the royal command of the
National Guards. He violently condemned the
employment of the old Markhaussee and its
officers, recruited from the Armee de tigne under
royal command, for police duties and functions of
justice of the peace (regular judges of the peace
were to be elected). Robespierre demanded that
military courts be composed of an equal number of
officers and men, for otherwise the courts
martial, consisting of officers alone, would be
punishing patriotic soldiers, under the guise of
penalties for indiscipline.
In all the incidents which occurred in the first
two or three years of the Revolution between
popular demonstrations and the police Robespierre
invariably took the side of the former, accusing
the authorities and the police of
counter-revolutionary designs, provocation or
ill-will. As if by definition any popular riot
was the expression of the people's righteous
anger, and every action of the authorities
counter revolutionary. The question as to
"who is the nation, and who is not of the
nation", whether the nation is the sum total
of persons born on French soil, a community of
faith, or is equivalent to the people as a social
category, is not yet decided. It was to unfold
itself gradually. But already at the time
Robespierre's conception of the nation had no
room for corporate bodies. The nation, as
Rousseau and Sieyes had taught, recognized no
other components than individuals. The nation
thus composed was a collective and yet monolithic
personality, with one interest and one general
will. Corporate bodies equated with partial wills
were not " of the nation". They were
directly opposed to, or at least at variance
with, the general good. Although not a militant
anti-clerical, Robespierre would not thus allow
the Church to continue as a separate corporation.
He supported the idea of clerical marriage, and
insisted that bishops should be elected not by
the clergy alone, but, like any other public
servants, by the people of the diocese, spiritual
and lay. Robespierre demanded guarantees that the
National Guards not only would not fall under the
control of the administration, but would be
prevented from forming an esprit de corps.
Officers were to be changed every two years.
External marks were not to be worn off duty.
Robespierre demanded an elected jury for civil
cases in the same way as for criminal cases
because he feared the esprit de corps which a
professional body of judges was bound to develop.
Robespierre made no protest against the ban on
trade unions in the famous Loi Le Chapelier
promulgated in defense of the homogeneity of the
national will and the notional interest. It was
only gradually that Robespierre came to brand a
social class as being not " of the nation
". Sieyes had condemned the privileged
orders for placing themselves outside the
national community. After the abolition of feudal
privileges, it became a sign of good
Revolutionary sentiment to emphasize the unity of
the French nation and to depreciate anything that
might discriminate for or against any part of the
community by assigning to it a special status.
The French nation was composed of Frenchmen, and
not of classes or castes. Even before this
principle was finally violated by the
disfranchisement of the poorer classes,
Robespierre became acutely aware of the fact that
national unity was giving way to a split into two
warring social classes, the haves and the
have-nots. He was at first desperately anxious to
prevent it, not only by vehement opposition to
the mare d'argent. He fought for the admission of
the poor into the National Guard, insisted on the
eligibility of the poor as members of jury, made
a determined and successful stand against a ban
on petitions by passive citizens. He repeatedly
warned the Assembly that if the agencies of power
were to be reserved to one class, they would
inevitably become instruments of class domination
and oppression. France would become divided into
two separate nations, and the subjugated people
would feel no obligation to their country. They
would become aliens. He scoffed the defenders of
the mare d'argent, attributing to them the idea
that " human society should be composed
exclusively of proprietors, to the exclusion of
men ".
Robespierre was to go through a fateful evolution
in this respect. Having started with passionate
opposition to the exclusion of the lower strata
from the body of the sovereign and politically
active nation, an opposition based on the idea of
the sacred and equal rights of man; he finished
by declaring the popular masses alone the nation,
and by virtually outlawing the rich, if not the
bourgeoisie as a whole. The " nation "
came to be identified with the " people
", " this large and interesting class,
hitherto called ' the people ' . . . the natural
friend and the indispensable champion of liberty
. . . neither corrupted by luxury, nor depraved
by pride, nor carried away by ambition, nor
troubled by those passions which are inimical to
equality . . . generous, reasonable, magnanimous
and moderate . Far from accepting the idea of
equilibrium between the social forces,
Robespierre labours under an acute awareness of a
mortal struggle which is being waged with no
respite. The counterrevolution is conceived by
him as an actual, or latent, permanent
conspiracy. It is lurking in the dark corners,
scheming, plotting, waiting only for an
opportunity, insidiously preparing its forces.
Robespierre cannot help viewing every issue, even
prima facie a neutral problem, from the same and
sole angle of the opportunities it offers, and
the perils it holds out, to either of the two
combatants. Whatever widens the area of popular
sovereignty and democracy is a gain for the
Revolution, a position won on the road to
victory, a defeat and loss to the
counter-revolution.
All the same, although Robespierre has a
permanent dynamic objective, and not just a
pragmatic party programme, he is also a
tactician. In a war the objective is fixed, but
the tactics may change. No tactical move should
be judged in isolation and on its own; the wider
context is what determines the significance as
well as the moral character of a particular move.
And so Robespierre, the tactician, at times
considers a slight retreat an improvement of the
democratic position. He declared himself the
defender of the Constitution of 1791, many
provisions of which he had originally opposed
bitterly. He frowned upon premature Republican
propaganda. A believer in popular direct action,
he is conscious of the ambushes and provocations
that the counter-revolution is scheming, and
warns the people not to expose itself, while the
enemy is too strong, to the charge of anarchy,
calling for suppression by police action.
Robespierre may be regarded as the father of the
theory which operates with the basic distinction
between a people's war and a
counter-revolutionary war.
Brissot and the Girondists wanted war, because
they hoped that a national emergency, heightened
by proselytizing enthusiasm, would sweep away all
counter-revolutionary sentiment and plotting,
unite the nation, and then carry the Revolution
across Europe. True to his general line of
thought, Robespierre judged the question of war
from the angle of the irreconcilable conflict
between Revolution and counter-revolution. It
seemed to him clear that in the case of war, the
armed forces, the concentration of wartime
powers, the patriotic anxiety and pride
engendered by a national emergency, were bound to
be utilized by the counterrevolution as weapons
to crush the Revolution, in alliance with foreign
courts. Robespierre himself would have liked to
turn the war into a people's war, that is, into
an opportunity for the establishment of a popular
regime based on Revolutionary stringency and
military discipline. This could open the way to
purges, and to a complete reshuffling of the
officer corps and the administration, and perhaps
sweep away the throne altogether. Robespierre
never ceased to think and feel that " if we
do not destroy them, they will annihilate
us". " They " were not necessarily
men, individuals, although the tone of violent
personal invective and denunciation is calculated
to suggest this, but a criminal system as such,
collective forces, of which the individual
criminal was only a representative sample. Thus
after the flight of the King, Robespierre is less
concerned with the King's actual offense than
with the lesson of more general significance
contained in the flight: the fact that Louis
could not have made his escape, if there had been
no powerful forces to encourage and help him. The
existence and strength of these forces, just
revealed, was what mattered most in Robespierre's
opinion. This attitude determined Robespierre's
conception of justice as it found an expression
in his speeches on the reform of the judicial
system. and above all on the trial of the King.
The problem is of fundamental importance. Is
there such a thing as objective, independent
justice based upon a code that has nothing to do
with the tug of war between contending social and
political forces; and employs the sole criterion
of strict evidence ? Or is justice to be
considered in reference to the political struggle
that is on, as a weapon of the victorious party ?
Robespierre clearly inclined to the latter
conception. It was not cynicism on his part, not
a disbelief In objective justice altogether. On
the contrary he was only convinced that all
justice was, in the widest sense of the word,
embodied in one party, and none in the other, by
definition. The question of evidence was really
secondary. Whether the actual crime was actually
committed in the way envisaged in the criminal
code was not all that mattered. What really
mattered more was that it could, and in all
certainty would, have taken place, given the
opportunity. Man does not matter by himself
either way, only as a part of a system. And the
system as a whole is a crime and a standing
conspiracy. "A King cannot rule
innocently." Louis must die that the
Republic should live. " Une measure de salut
public a prendre, un acte de providence rationale
a exercer" (Robespierre). As early as
October, 1790, Robespierre was instrumental in
setting up a supreme court to deal with charges
of lese-nation. The Tribunal was to have the
power to destroy all counter-revolutionary
designs, and be composed of " friends of the
Revolution". Judges were to Robespierre
magistrates of the Government; in a free country,
functionaries elected by the people. Their domain
and the basis of their judgment was not a special
science of jurisprudence, but the laws of the
Constitution. " Indeed, the word
jurisprudence ought to be struck out of the
French vocabulary: "a state possessing a
constitution and a legislature the courts need no
jurisprudence but the text of the law." Thus
the nation as the source of all laws was to be
the sole interpreter of the Constitution and sole
censor over the courts, and not some independent
body. This line of thought was to lead to the
precedence given under the system of terror to
patriotic conscience and popular instinct over
legal competence and legal proof.
Furthermore, in this whole approach there is
already implied the Terrorist concept of "
suspect ", a person being considered guilty,
before having been convicted on any particular
charge, simply because of member-ship of a
class (or caste)of people, and because of past
affiliations. On the 1 eve of his death on the
guillotine one of the architects of Jacobinism, t
Desmoulins, was to discover the enormity of this
conception of justice. " It n'y a point de
yens suspects, it n'y a que des prevenus de
delits fixes par la lot," he wrote.
Chapter Three VOLONTE UNE
(a) DIRECT DEMOCRATIC
ACTION
It is not surprising that as a
faithful disciple of Rousseau, Robespierre was
not prepared to recognize the decision of a
representative assembly as expressing the kind of
popular will which is identical with the general
will. Parliaments were in the same category as
other vested interests and corporations, although
formally emanating from the choice of the
people., A representative assembly elected on the
basis of a property qualification, such as the
Legislative Assembly, was certainly not " of
the people ". Without, as he stated, going
the whole way with Rousseau, nevertheless
Robespierre could not reconcile himself to the
idea that an assembly, once elected, even if
chosen on a free ballot, was sovereign and its
authority unquestionable. The absolute
independence of a parliamentary assembly was
" representative despotism". There is
always the danger that the people might be
afflicted with as many enemies as it had
deputies. Robespierre's motion of
self-renunciation on the ineligibility of members
of the Constituent to the Legislative Assembly
was motivated by the fear that if the same people
were elected, the Legislative Assembly would
become a permanent vested interest.
Robespierre searched for safeguards- against
"representative despotism ". They were
two: constant popular control over the
Legislative body, and direct democratic action by
the people. Robespierre dreamt of an assembly
hall with a public gallery large enough to
contain twelve thousand spectators. Under the
eyes of so large a sample of the people, no
deputy would dare to defend anti-popular
interests. On the one hand, Robespierre insisted
that any obstacles put in the way of the people
in a free choice of representatives were useless,
harmful and dangerous. On the other hand, he
strongly approved of any rule that was calculated
to protect the people from the " misfortunes
of a bad choice ", and the corruption of its
deputies. At one time Robespierre demanded a
fundamental law whereby at fixed and frequent
intervals the primary assemblies would be called
upon to pass judgment upon the conduct of their
deputies. These assemblies were to have the power
to revoke their unfaithful representatives.
Moreover, once in session, the primary assemblies
would act as the sovereign in council, and use
the opportunity to express their views on any
matter concerning the public good. No power could
interfere with the exercise of direct popular
sovereignty by the nation in council. " Ce
pen d'articles tres simplex, et pulses dans les
premiers principles de la Constitution suffiront
pour assurer a jamais le bonheur et la 1iberte du
people francats."
Robespierre fulminated particularly against an
alliance between the Legislative and the
Executive, which to him could only mean a plot
against the people. The exercise of executive
powers by an elected body was to Robespierre the
worst of all despotisms, an oligarchy. He dreaded
most the modern system, where a cabinet emanating
from the majority of the assembly works in close
touch with, and is supported by, its own party.
He was himself later in 1793 to become the father
of the theory of Revolutionary government
exercised by the Convention through committees, a
system, as he put it, as new as the Revolution
itself, not to be found in any treatises on
political science. With an eye on the Rolandist
Ministry, the Incorruptible condemned in severest
terms the state of affairs in which party leaders
and members of the cabinet manage everything
behind the scenes in caucuses and ministerial
conclaves. Under such a system the will of the
people becomes falsified, and the majorities
achieved by such machinations are illegitimate.
The laws voted upon in this way represent a
fictitious, and not a genuine, expression of the
general will. The general will, constant and
pure, the sole depository of which is the people,
must neither be arrogated by a party-cum-cabinet
plot to perpetuate " representative
despotism ", nor become identified with the
selfish impulses of ephemeral assemblies.
Robespierre expressed impatience with the
acceptance of numerical majority in the assembly
as sovereign. The general will, the will of the
truly popular majority, is not identified with
parliamentary majority or minority. The majority
in the real sense is where the true general will
resides, even if that will happens to be
expressed by a numerical minority. There was only
one step from this essentially anti-parliamentary
programme to the justification of direct popular
action in the name of the sacred principle that
the people have not only a right, but the duty,
to resist oppression and despotism, to rise
actively against the plots of government and
treacherous intrigues by unfaithful
representatives. " It is vital for Liberty
to be free to exercise reasonable censorship over
the acts of the Legislative body. The National
Assembly itself is subject to the general will,
and when it contradicts it (the general will),
the Assembly can no longer continue to
exist.".
The mandatories of the people have to be placed
in a position that would make it impossible for
them to harm liberty. As the people of Paris were
nearest to the seat of power, they and their
representative bodies, the Commune and the
Sections, were duty bound to act as the watchdogs
of the millions of people in the provinces. This
was Robespierre's attitude in the crisis of
August 10th, 1792, as well as in the events which
a year later caused the exclusion of the
Girondist deputies from the Convention, when the
President of the Convention, the Jacobin Herault
de Sechelles, yielded to the armed insurgents
with the words that the force of the people was
identical with the force of reason. On May 26th,
1793, Robespierre said in his speech at the
Jacobin Club that " when the people is
oppressed, and when it has nobody to rely upon
but itself, he would be a coward who would not
call upon it to rise. When all the laws are
violated, when despotism has reached its climax,
when good faith and shame are trampled upon, then
it is the duty of the people to rise. That moment
has arrived: our enemies are openly oppressing
the patriots; they wish, in the name of law, to
plunge the people into misery and bondage.... I
know of only two modes of existence for the
people: to govern itself, or to entrust the task
to mandatories." The popular deputies who
wish for responsible government are being
oppressed. The people must come to the Convention
to protect them against the corrupt deputies.
" I declare," exclaims Robespierre,
" that having received from the people the
mandate' to defend its rights', I regard as
oppressor him who interrupts me, or refuses me
the right to speak, and I declare that alone I
put myself into a state of insurrection against
the president and all the members sitting in the
Convention. Contempt having been shown for the
sans-culottes, I put myself into a state of
insurrection against the corrupt deputies."
Three days later, again at the Jacobins,
Robespierre went further: " Si la commune de
Paris, en particulier, a qui est confie
specialement le vein de defendre les interets de
cette I grande cite, n'en appelle point l'univers
entier de la persecution dirigee contre la
liberte par les plus vils conspirateurs, si la
commune de Paris ne s'unit au peuple, ne forme
pas avec lui une etroite alliance, elle viole le
premier de ses devoirs." An uprising of the
people follows a pattern and has its technique.
Of the representative institutions of the people
of Paris, the Commune and the Sections, only the
Commume was an elected and clearly defined body.
The Sections were the public meetings of the
inhabitants of the various districts. The direct
democracy was a casually assembled body of men.
The Sections were assiduously attended and
dominated by the Revolutionary activists and
enthusiasts, in fact by a small minority. At the
moment of crisis a Central Revolutionary
Committee of the Sections is formed, usually
strengthened by provincial activists, federals
who happen to be in Paris. The members of this
Insurrectionary Committee are in every case
obscure, third- and fourth-rate people. For it is
supposed to be an uprising of the anonymous,
inarticulate masses. In the background are the
Jacobin leaders to direct, give inspiration and
define the programme. The Central Insurrectionary
Committee of the people in insurrection create a
Revolutionary Commune by replacing the old one,
or by declaring the existing body to have become
Revolutionary. Such a declaration marks, as said
once before, the outbreak of the uprising of the
sovereign people against oppression. The people
are now to exercise directly their sovereign
rights. The elected representatives of the
National Assembly must stand aside or yield to
the will of the represented.
This is the pattern followed on August 10th,
1792, and May 31st to June 2nd, 1793. On the
earlier occasion Robespierre calls upon his
Jacobin friends to ', engage their sections to
let the Assembly know the real will of the
people; and in order to discover that will, to
maintain relations with the popular
societies", that is to say the clubs, where
popular opinion is formed. Robespierre repeats
the same call on May 8th, 1793. His speeches on
the eve of the two insurrections constitute the
political plank of the insurgents, whether they
refer to them or not. On August 15th, 1792,
Robespierre, who is not a member of the Assembly,
heads the deputation of the insurgent people to
the Legislative Assembly to remind the
representatives of the people that the people is
not " asleep ". The popular demands in
1793 to expel the Girondist deputies, to limit
the franchise to sans culottes, to arm sans
culotte Revolutionary armies everywhere to watch
over the counter-revolutionaries, and to pay poor
patriots for duties per formed in the defense of
liberty, come straight from Robespierre's earlier
statements. On June 8th, 1793, when an attempt is
made by Barere at the Convention to cancel the
emergency state of insurrection in Paris,
Robespierre insists that the insurrection must be
made to spread to the whole country, because the
country could no longer suffer the "
disorder that had been reigning". The
popular Revolutionary authorities, the Comite's
de surveillance and the Revolutionary armies must
remain to maintain order, safeguard freedom and
keep the aristocrats in check. Robespierre did
not deny that such direct action by
self-appointed guardians of the people's freedom
entailed anarchical violence. But the attitude of
justice of the peace did not befit the solemn
nature of a Revolution and the supremacy of the
Revolutionary purpose. Revolutionary events have
to be judged by the Convention " en
legislateurs du monde", declared Robespierre
on November 5th, 1792, in his speech against
Louvet, who tried to indict him for his part in
the events of the last few months, and accused
him of aspiring to dictatorship. A Revolution
cannot be accomplished without Revolutionary
violence. It was not possible " apres coup,
marquer le point precis ou doivent se briser les
fiats de l'insurrection populaire ". If one
particular act of popular violence and coercion
was to be condemned as illegal, then all other
Revolutionary events, the Revolution root and
branch, would have to be declared a crime. "
Why do not you put on trial all at the same time,
the municipality, the electoral assemblies, the
Paris Sections, and all those who followed our
example ? For all these things have been illegal,
as illegal as the Revolution, as unlawful as the
destruction of the throne and of the Bastille, as
illegal as liberty itself." These were
unanswerable arguments, once the people was
recognized as the supreme and permanently active
agent in politics. The " people "
became here a vague mystical idea. At one moment
it appears as an avalanche forging ahead,
swallowing up all in its way, acting with
monumental ruthlessness. At another Robespierre
presents it as modest, magnanimous and humane,
the depository of all virtues, schooled in the
school of sorrow and humiliation. No knots of
power or nests of influence were to be left to
hamper the march of the people, or distort its
self espression.
As late as spring, 1793, Saint-Just showed
himself still obsessed with the sacredness of the
principle of unlimited popular self expression
and the fear of governmental power appropriated
by a small group of rulers. The occasion on
which; he voiced these sentiments was the
discussion on a draft of Constitution submitted
on behalf of the Girondists by Condorcet. The
plan contained two important features: a
Legislative Assembly elected indirectly by
departmental councils, and an Executive Council
on a direct popular vote Both suggestions were
rejected by Saint-Just in the name, oaths,
indivisibility of the general will, the only
guarantee of a I " vigorous government
" and a " strong constitution ",
very characteristic and strange epithets for a
system under which the Executive was to have no
power at all. The Girondist project of an
Executive Council elected directly by the people
appeared to Saint-Just the most dangerous threat
of all to the unity of the Republic and popular
sovereignty. The Legislative and the Executive
would not only both be elected, and thus rivals,
but the latter, being derived from direct
election, would be endowed with a higher prestige
than the indirectly chosen Assembly. Moreover,
whereas in the past the Ministers were outside
the Executive Council, and did not form a cabinet
deliberating together and acting as a
collectively responsible body, the new project
laid down that the Executive Council and the
Ministers were to form one and the same body. In
short, the Council was to be an elected,
deliberating body, executing its own decisions.
" Le conseil est le ministre de ses propres
volontes . . . sa vigilance sur lui-meme est
illusoire."
Apart from the heresy of an elected Executive,
the elected Ministers enjoying also parliamentary
privilege, the people would also be without any
guarantees against them. The Ministers would
shield each other through Ministerial solidarity,
and the Legislature would remain without powers,
and indeed, without anything to do, since the
Executive Council was also to be a deliberative
council. In two years, Saint-Just thought, the
Assembly would be suspended, and the Executive
Council would reign supreme and without
restrictions of a fundamental law. The Council
would have enormous powers at its ' disposal. Its
members would be the true representatives of the
people, the armies would be under its control,
all means of propaganda, intimidation and
corruption in its hands. Only powerful and famous
men known to each other would be elected to form
in due course a hereditary body of patricians
sharing between themselves the Executive power.
All hope for a people's government would have to
be given up. There would again be rulers and
subjects.
Saint-Just's own plan envisaged an Assembly
elected by direct . suffrage, and an Executive
Council chosen by secondary electoral assemblies,
and subordinated to the Assembly. The Executive
Council and the Ministers were to be forbidden to
form one body, and furthermore the Ministers, who
were to be especially appointed, were to be
forbidden to form a cabinet, in case they should
become a " cabal". Saint-Just went so
far as to forbid the Assembly to divide itself
into committees, to appoint special commissions
from its own members, except to report on special
matters, or to carry out delegated functions. No
way was to be opened for the development of
partial wills. The general will of the sovereign
must not be falsified by distilling or diluting
processes. The general will is one and
indivisible. The Jacobin type of democratic
perfectionism persued, as was partly embodied in
the Constitution of 1793, especially in regard to
plebiscitary approval of laws voted by the
Legislative and to the people's right to resist
oppression, was calculated to lead to anarchism:
a direct democracy with thousands of sections
throughout France in permanent session,
bombarding the National Assembly with
resolutions, protests, petitions, and above all
deputations with the right to address the House;
revoking and reselecting deputies; a permanent
national referendum broken up into small local
plebiscites; an Executive always suspect, and
with no power to act; a Legislative bullied and
blackmailed by outside and frequently armed
interference; finally, sporadic outbreaks of
popular violence against institutional
authorities; massacres such as the September
massacres of the suspects, with the people's
instinct as the sole judge of their necessity and
timeliness, and the sole sanction to give them
legality and justification.
This democratic perfectionism was in fact
inverted totalitarianism. It was the result not
of a sincere wish to give every shade of opinion
a chance to assert itself, but the outcome of an
expectation that the fruit of democratic
sovereignty stretched to its limit would be a
single will. It was based on a fanatical belief
that there could be no noise than one legitimate
popular will. The other wills stood condemned a
priori as partial, selfish and illegitimate. The
ancients have already understood, and indeed
witnessed, the phenomenon of . . . extreme
democracy leading straight to personal tyranny. Modern
experience has added one link, the role of the
totalitarian-democratic vanguard in a
plebiscitary regime, posing as the people. The
fervour and ceaseless activity of the believers,
on the one hand, and intimidation practiced on
opponents and the lukewarm, on the other, are the
instruments by which the desired " general
will " is made to appear as the will of all.
Only one voice is heard, and it is voiced with
such an insistence, vehemence, self-righteous
fervour and a tone of menace that all the other
voices are drowned, cowed and silenced.
Robespierre was the chief engineer of this type
of popular self-expression in the elections to
the Convention in Paris during the undisputed
dictatorship of the Insurrectionary Commune' with
" vote par appel nominal ", open
voting, ban on opposition journals, publication
of names of people who had signed royalist
petitions, the scrutiny of electoral lists, and
the exclusion of electors and 'elected thoughr
unorthodox. The result was that only a small
-minority of the Paris voters recorded their
vote, in some sections scarcely more than a
twentieth of the electorate. Only a tenth voted
in the whole of France. The Jacobin Constitution
of 1793 was approved by barely two million votes
out of the seven entitled to vote. In Paris
nobody voted against, in the departments only
fifteen to sixteen thousand. It was at once
suspended and put into a glass case in the hall
of the Convention. Let the people speak, for
their voice is the voice of God, the voice of
reason and of the general interest ! Robespierre
clung with tenacity to his faith in the equation
of liberty and virtue, but even his faith had to
give way to the painful realization that this may
not always be the case.
He thus put up a ferocious and successful fight
against an appeal to the people on the fate of
Louis XVI, demanding first guarantees that "
bad citizens, moderates, feuillants and
aristocrats would be given no access " to
the primary assemblies and would be prevented
from misleading and playing upon the tender
feelings of the people. For the aim is not to let
the people speak, but to insure that they vote
well, and bad voters are excluded. Saint-Just
considered that an appeal to the people on the
fate of tile King would be tantamount to a writ
for restoration of the 'Monarchy.
Anti-parliamentarian under the Legislative
Assembly, Robespierre became in time a staunch
defender of the supremacy of the Convention,
especially after the expulsion of the Girondists.
He opposed bitterly the suggestion that the
Convention should dissolve, after having voted
the Constitution of 1793, for the preparation of
which it had been elected. The purified
Convention (after the expulsion of the
Girondists) would be replaced by envoys of Pitt
and Coburg, he claimed. At one time a defender of
the principle that the Sections should remain in
permanent session, he later helped to reverse The
argument was that after the people had won and
obtained their own revolutionary popular
government, there was no need any more for direct
democratic supervision and vigilance. The
permanence of the Sections, which formerly
secured such control, would now be an opportunity
for counter-revolutionary intriguers and idlers
to corrupt public opinion and to plot against the
Government, while the good honest sans-culottes
were away in the fields and workshops.
Robespierre came to admit to himself that the
people could not be trusted to voice its real
will.
In his famous confidential Catechism Robespierre
declared that the gravest obstacle to Liberty and
the greatest opportunity for the
counter-revolutionary forces was the people's
lack of enlightenment. One of the most important
causes of the people's ignorance was the people's
misery. When will the people become enlightened?
he asked himself When they have bread and when
the rich and the Government will have ceased to
hire perfidious journalists and venal speakers to
mislead them. This line of thought carries
with it far-reaching implications, which were to
be fully grasped and systematized by Babeuf and
the Egaux. What in effect Robespierre was saying
was that as long as the people were hungry,
dominated and misled by the rich, their recorded
opinions could not be taken as reflecting the
true will of the sovereign. From the point of
view of real democracy and the true general will
the task was therefore not just to let the people
speak, freely and spontaneously, and then to
accept their verdict as final and absolute. It
was first to create the conditions far a true
expression of the popular will. This involved the
satisfaction of the people's material needs,
popular education, and above all the elimination
of evil influences, in other words, opposition.
Only after that would the people be called to
vote. There could be no doubt about the way they
would vote then. In the meantime the will of the
enlightened vanguard was the true will of the'
people. There was thus no necessary inconsistency
between the earlier emphasis on the active and
permanent exercise of popular sovereignty and the
later dictatorial policies of the enlightened
vanguard - Robespierre and his colleagues. The
general will commanded different attitudes at
different times. It spoke every time through
Robespierre. There was the need to mobilize and
to stir the masses in order to enable the
Revolutionary vanguard to carry out the real will
of the people. Once the vanguard had come into
power, it must be given freedom to realize that
will in all its purity. The a priori consent of
the masses to what the vanguard would do may be
taken for granted, and if so,, the perpetuation
of popular political activity, unnecessary in the
new conditions, would only, as said before in
another context, give a chance to
counter-revolutionary cunning.
(b)LIBERTY AS AN OBJECTIVE PURPOSE
The nearer the Jacobins were to power, the
stronger grew their insistence on the conception
of liberty as a set of values and not as merely
the absence of constraint. The general will
acquired an objective quality, and the reference
to the actual exercise of popular sovereignty as
the essential mode of arriving at the general
will came to be less often repeated. It is only
fair to the Jacobins to emphasize in this
connection the supreme crisis of the Revolution,
which they were called upon to face in 1793. The
country was in deadly peril from invasion. The
federalist uprisings in Lyons, Bordeaux, Toulon,
Marseilles, Normandy and elsewhere, the success
of the Vendeean revolt, the breakdown of the
circulation of commodities, the inflation caused
by the collapse of the assignats, the paper
money, combined to create an atmosphere of
fanaticism, fear, excitement, suspicion and
general emergency. Yet, these factors, grave no
doubt as they were, could not in themselves
account for the regime of terror, without the
permanent totalitarian disposition of Jacobinism.
Without the fanatical, single-minded faith in
their embodying the sole truth, the Jacobins
could not have found the courage and strength to
build up and sustain their regime of terror.
Without their ever more narrowly defined
orthodoxy, there would have been no need to brand
so many as, and indeed to turn so many into,
enemies of the Revolution.
The Terror continued unabated even after the
decisive victories of the Revolution over all its
enemies, external and internal, in October, 1793.
It fell to SaintJust, as rapporteur on the most
important issues of the Revolution in the years
1793-4, to start the process of redefining the
Revolutionary idea of liberty. His first major
pronouncement on this matter was the famous
speech on supplies, November 23rd, 1792. The
alarming state of French finances and economy in
general, was attributed by Saint Just to the
" essor " of liberty that followed the
outbreak of the Revolution, and to " la
difficulte de retablie l'economie au milieu de la
vigueur et de l'independance de l'esprit public.
L'independance armee contre l'independance n'a
plus de loi, plus de juge . . . toutes les
volontes isolees ''en obligent aucune."
Liberty was at war with morality arid order.
There was a danger of anarchy. To counteract this
anarchy of isolated wills, SaintJust at first
resorted to grand invocations of national
solidarity and to the argument that the interests
of everyone had become so intertwined with the
fortunes of the Revolution that its collapse
would spell universal doom. " I1 faut que
tout le monde oublie son interest et son orgueil.
Le bonheur et l'interet particular vent une
violence a l'ordre social, quand ils ne vent
point une portion de l'interet et du bonheur
public. Oubliez-vous vous-memes. La revolution
fran,caise est placee entre un arc de triomphe et
un ecueil qui' nous briserait tous. Votre interet
vous commande de ne point vous diviser."
Whatever the differences of opinion among the
patriots, the tyrants would not take any notice
of them. " We win together or perish
together." The self-interest of everyone
commands him to forget his personal good.
Personal salvation is only possible through
general salvation. All personal interest and
welfare must be sunk in the general pool.
From this appeal to the enlightened self-interest
of everyone, Saint-Just comes to the idea of a
Republic that represents objective values of its
own, and in such an integrated form as to prevent
the independence of wills. The Republic envisaged
by him would " embrace all relations, all
interests, all rights, all duties " and
would assure an " allure commitment "
to all parts of the State. Liberty, the opposite
of independence, becomes now " l'obeissance
de chacun a l'harmonie individuelle et homogene
du corps entier". This conception is
translated into a " Republique une et
indivisible . . , avec l'entiere abstraction de
tout lieu et toutes personnel ". The unity
and indivisibility of the Republic is thus
transformed into something that is prior even to
the Social Contract. It is an essential part of
the objective general will and liberty, out of
the reach of the transient will of passing
mortals. The whole comes before its components. .
" A Republic, one and indivisible, is in the
very nature of liberty; it would not last more
than a moment, if it was based upon a fragile
convention between men." This was another
reason for Saint-Just's vehement opposition to
Colldorcet's draft of the 1793 Constitution. The
Girondist project envisaged a Legislative elected
indirectly by departmental councils, and not by
the " concours simultane de la volonte
generate " and "le peuple en corps
". A deputy elected that way, SaintJust
maintained, would represent only the portion of
the people who voted for hirm, and not the
indivisible nation. All the deputies coming
together as representatives of the fractions of
the people would not constitute a legitimate
majority; they would not express or embody the
general will, but would form a congress, instead
of a National Assembly. The majority in a
congress derives its authority from the voluntary
adhesion of the parties. The sovereign thus
ceases to exist, as it is divided. A general will
obtained that way is a " speculative",
not a real will. Those who will must do so
primarily as aspects of an indivisible entity,
and not as possessors of partial wills. The
nation is an organic, indivisible entity, and not
a conglomeration of mechanically joined
particles.
If each department was understood to represent a
portion of the territory, with the portion of the
people inhabiting it in possession of sovereignty
over that province, the " droit de cite du
people en corps" would become undermined and
the Republic would be broken up by the slightest
shock, such as the Vendee rebellion. The
territorial division was solely a geometrical
division for electoral purposes, not even for
administrative reasons. Thus a priori unity of
Frenchmen was the basis and symbol of the unity
of the Republic, not the territory, and certainly
not the Government, because this would mean a
Monarchy. Praising Saint-Just's views, one of the
deputies remarked that his draft of the
Constitution would make it possible for Frenchmen
to settle down as a French nation, and to observe
their obligations to one another, even if they
were evacuated to a foreign territory. The
instinct for national unity emerged stronger than
the logic of the Social Contract. If the essence
of a nation is what Renan was to call some eighty
years later " le plebiscite de tons les
jours ", in Luther, words the active and
constantly reaffirmed will to live together and
under the same law, then the right of secession
could not be withheld. The Jacobins preached the
former, but passionately denied the latter. They
had to postulate an 'a priori' will to form an
indivisible entity, as they were too cosmopolitan
and rationalist in their outlook to admit a
historic, racial or any other irrational basis
for national unity. This conception of French
national unity, when confronted with the
Revolutionary attitude to old Europe, was
calculated to involve France in one of those
permanent wars which spring from a conflict of
irreconcilable ideas on relations between
nations. Such a war is usually the outcome of the
attitude of " heads I win, tails you lose
" adopted by a Revolutionary power preaching
a new doctrine of international relations, not
based on reciprocity.
On the basis of the voluntary, non-racial and
unhistorical conception of nationhood
Revolutionary France, rationalizing her interests
and her desire for expansion, claimed - true, not
without some hesitation - to have the right to
admit into the Republic foreign provinces on her
borders, like Savoy, Nice, the cities on the
Rhine, Belgium and others, which had expressed
freely or had been brought to voice, the wish to
be united to the French Republic. Coupled with
the French proclamations of November and December
I5th, 1792, that France would hasten to help any
people rising against its King and feudal system,
this attitude amounted to an invitation to any
foreign commune or province to break away from
the body of the nation, the State entity. A
partial will was thus set up against the general
will of the whole. France was to become the cause
and engineer of the disintegration of nations and
annexed of their severed parts, in the name of
the right of any group to express and act on its
general will. At the same time the Convention
declared the death penalty for any attempt to
divide French territory or to cede any part of
the " Republique une et indivisible ".
The implication was that in Republican and
democratic France a general national will had
already crystallized, while no such will could
have crystallized in the countries under the
feudal system. Furthermore, as Europe was in any
case heading towards a unified free form of
government, the beginning might as well be made
by joining the liberated parts of Europe to
France. It would thus be possible to give them
protection, while offering to France, the
champion of the unity of free peoples against the
dynastic tyrannies which have kept the European
peoples divided, an increase of strength in the
struggle for universal liberation.
This meant endless war with old Europe, without
prospect of an agreement on any common basis. No
halt was in sight. For it must have soon appeared
clear to the more acute Revolutionaries -among
them indeed Robespierre - that in fact the free
will of men, instead of being a tangible and
reliable criterion for nationhood, was in fact
very shifting ground. Hence the idea of natural
frontiers. Although no doubt part of French
tradition. and an expression of a rationalized
desire for expanded and safer frontiers, the idea
of natural frontiers was meant also to be a
safety valve, a signpost to the French
themselves, and a kind of assurance to the
nations of old Europe that there was a halt to
the French claims to the right of annexing
peoples who had offered themselves for reunion.
France would not go on annexing parts of other
states for ever, for she had come to believe in
the consistence of a national entity, which must
not be broken by the partial will of parts. The
basis of this national entity was no more than
the will of the passing generation, but something
of a more permanent character - the facts of
nature and history, which together have fixed
unmistakable frontiers to nations in the form of
rivers, mountains and seas. The concomitant of
this recognition of a natural and historical
basis of national unity was the declaration of
non-interference in the internal affairs of other
states, the spread of anti-alien feeling and the
campaign against foreign agents and spies in
France-as a reaction to earlier proselytism.
(C) THE RIGHT OF OPPOSITION; OUTLAWING OF
PARTIES
The 'a priori' idea of national unity, however,
far from serving as a basis for a national
reconciliation founded on a common past, gave
rise to a process of eliminating from the
national body the elements thought to be
inassimilable to the new principle of French
national existence. Saint-Just's "Rapport
sur la necessite de declarer le gouvernement
revolutionnaire jusqu'a la paix ", made on
October I0th, 1793, sees a turning point in this
respect. . It is a far cry from that conception
of liberty which takes for granted the right of
every individual to express his particular will,
and to defend his particular interest
spontaneously and without external constraint. It
is very remote from the confident belief that if
everyone forms his will on his interest, the
general will would result from a majority of
wills. A new principle which " hence forth
should never depart from the minds of those who
govern" is declared: the Republic "
will never be founded till the will of the
sovereign has constrained the royalist minority
and ruled over it by right of conquest".
"Depuis que le people francais a manifesto
sa volonte tout ce qui est hors le souverain est
ennemi." There was nothing between the
people and its enemies but the sword. Those who
could not be governed by justice, must be ruled
by the sword. " Vous ne parlerez point
la.meme langue, vous ne vous entendrez.jamais.
Chassez-les donc ! " And he meant it
literally, for the plan proposed by him a little
later envisaged the eventual expulsion of all
suspects, as well as their total expropriation,
in other words the total liquidation of a class.
Saint-Just invokes the principles of democracy in
this connection. " Il leur faut la
puissance, qui n'appartient ici qu'a la
democratie." The idea of democracy implied
here contains no reference to the right of
opposition, to individual liberties or
toleration, and clearly revives the ancient Greek
view of democracy as the victory of the mass of
the underprivileged over the privileged minority,
and the suppression of the latter by the former. Severity
is an essential element of a free democratic
regime, and plays a greater part there than in a
tyrannical state. " There is no
government which can preserve the rights of
citizens without a policy of severity, but the
difference between a free system and a tyrannical
regime is that in the former that policy is
employed against the minority opposed to the
general good, and against the abuses or the
negligence of the authorities, while in the
latter the severity of the State power is
directed against the unfortunates delivered to
the injustice and the impunity of the
powers."
A weak government was ultimately oppressive to
the people Saint-Just thought. " It is just
that the people should in its turn rule over its
oppressors", for " tyrants must be
oppressed". All the wisdom of a government
consisted in the elimination of the party opposed
to the Revolution and in making the people happy
at the expense of the vices of the enemies of
liberty. The surest means of establishing the
Revolution was to turn it to the benefit of those
who support it, and to the destruction of those
who fight it. Robespierre said the same things,
and almost in the same words. There were no
divergencies between the Incorruptible and
Saint-Just, after they were brought together by
the latter's election to the Convention. "
There are no other citizens in a Republic
"Capote Robespierre, `` than republicans.
Royalists . . . conspirators are nothing but
aliens, or rather enemies.'' Social protection
was the duel of the citizen. But a citizen was
not just everyone born on French soil. Only he
was a citizen who was spiritually identified with
the substance that constituted French nationhood,
the general will. The enemies of the people could
not possibly be offered an opportunity of
distorting and sabotaging the people's will.
Neither the necessity of national unity, which
commands men to sink their differences in the
face of external danger, nor the idea of the
legitimacy of the natural divergencies of opinion
had any validity. There were only the people, and
the people's enemies. "Domptez par la
terreur les enemies de la liberte . . . vous aver
raison comme fondateurs d' une republique. Le
gouvernement de !a Revolution est le despotisme
de la liberte contre la tyrannic." Both
tyranny and liberty employ the sword, but the
only resemblance between them is that the blade
in either hand shines similarly.
What about the right of opposition ? Nothing was
more calculated to exasperate Saint-Just and
Robespierre than this argument, the claim of an
opponent to a right to oppose the regime as a
right to resist oppression. Resistance to
oppression was a sacred right and duty in a
tyrannical state, but once the regime of liberty
had been established, once the people had come
into their own, the claim to resist "
oppression" by the new order was mockery or
perversity, or sheer selfishness, defiant of the
general good. " Let the people claim its
liberty, when it is oppressed, but when liberty
is triumphant, and when tyranny has expired, that
one could forget the general good in order to
kill his country by preference of one's personal
good, this is mean villainy, punishable hypocrisy
!" The claim of the aristocracy that its
destruction by the people was an act of
dictatorship was a revolting abuse of
terminology. The people and tyranny ; it was a
contradiction in terms. " The people is no
tyrant, and it is the people that now
reign." " Toutes, les idees se
confondent ": a " fripon "
condemned to the guillotine invokes the right of
resistance to oppression ! Robespierre fulminated
against justice of the people being called
'barbarism or oppression. " Indulgence pour
les royalistes . . . grace pour scelerats.... Non
! grace pour l'innocence, grace pour les faibles,
grace pour les malheureux, . . . grace pour
l'humanite !" It is absurd to say that a
free government of the people can be suppressive-
because it is vigorous. " On se trompe. La
question 'est mal posee.'- Such a government
oppressed only what was evil, and was therefore
just. A Republican government rested on the
principle of 'vertu ', or terror. It was true
that force made no right, but - it may well be
that it was indispensable for making justice and
reason respected. Not only traitors, but also the
indifferent, the passive, who were doing nothing
for the Republic, must be punished. The people's
cause must be supported as a whole, for those who
pick holes are disguised traitors. " Un
patriote soutient la Republique en masse, celui
qui la combat en detail est un traltre.... Tout
ce qui n'est pas respect du people et vous
(Convention) est un crime." As the aim of an
anti-federal government of the people was the
unity of the Republic not for the profit of those
in power, but for the benefit of the people as a
whole, no isolationist tendency could be
tolerated in an individual. Such isolationism
would be as immoral in the civil sphere as
federalism was in the political sphere. "
Lorsque la liberte est fondee, il s'agit de
l'observation des devoirs envers la patrie, il
s'agit d'etre citoyen." There could be no
reason and no excuse - as there was in the past -
for isolating oneself in order to preserve one's
independence. SaintJust insists more than once
the only difference between liberty and
independence is to do evil. For liberty was in
the last analysis not freedom from constraint,
but a set of objective and exclusive values.
Independence from these values implied vice and
tyranny, bondage to egoism, passion and avarice.
" L'idee particuliere que chacun se fait de
sa liberte, scion son interet, produit
l'esclavage de tous." According to
Robespierre it was wrong to regard terror as pale
repressive violence, resorted to without
reference to the general principles governing a
Republic. It was only accentuated justice -
nothing but an emanation from and special facet
of the principle of virtue - not a special
principle. " La terreur n'est autre chose
que la justice prompte, severe' inflexible; elle
est done une emanation de la vertu; elle est
moins un principe particulier qu'une consequence
du principe general de la democratic applique aux
plus pressants besoins de la patrie."
Similarly Saint-Just declared that a Republican
government had vertu as its principle; if not
terror. " Que venlent ceux qui ne veulent ni
vertu ni terreur ? " Elsewhere he said that
a Revolution needed a dictator to save it by
force, or censors to save it by virtue.
Virtue, the elusive personal quality, the least
tangible of all criteria, was fast becoming the
decisive criterion, when the new splits were no
longer caused by class differences or royalist
loyalties. The doomed wicked were to Robespierre
the assassins from within, in the first place,
the mercenary scribes (journalists) allied to
kill public virtue, to sow discord and to prepare
a political counterrevolution by means of a
" contra-revolution morale ".
Journalists could expect no quarter from the
former defender of unrestricted liberty of the
press. The idea of a sole exclusive truth, which
is the basis of the rigid and fixed conception of
Republican virtue, excludes the possibility of
political parties representing honest differences
of opinion. According to Saint Just it was
precisely in a regime of Liberty - such as he
claimed to be representing - and one based on
absolute truth and virtue, that parties and
factions were an anachronism, and a criminal one.
Factions had a useful function in the "
ancient regime ", they contributed to the
isolation of despotism and weakened the influence
of tyranny. " They are a crime to-day,
because they isolate liberty." Liberty is
attained only when the general will can express
itself as an entity, as the sole and undivided
sovereign deliberating on the common good of the
people as a whole. The curiosity awakened by
party controversy, the corruption engendered by
party strife, distracted the hearts and minds
from the love of country and single-minded
devotion to its interests. " Every party is
therefore criminal, because it makes for the
isolation of the people and the popular
societies, and for the independence of the
government. Any faction is therefore criminal,
because it neutralizes the power of public
vittue.... The solidity of our Republic is in the
very nature of things. The sovereignty of the
people requires that it should be one . . . it is
opposed to factions - every faction is therefore
an attempt on sovereignty."
Saint-Just is quite unable to see in the parties
an instrument for expressing and organizing the
various trends in public opinion. He only sees
the people, on the one hand, and the parties
conspiring against it, on the other. He called
upon the people and the Convention to govern
firmly and to impose their will upon the "
criminal factions ". The description of the
evils of a multiple party system is strikingly
reminiscent of the evils now-a-days attributed to
a single party regime. It deserves to be quoted
in full " Pride engenders the
factions. The factions are the most terrible
poison of the body politic, they put the life of
the citizens in peril by their power of calumny;
when they reign in a State, no person is certain
of his future, and the empire which they torment
is a coffin; they put into doubt falsehood and
truth, vice and virtue, justice and injustice; it
is force that makes law.... In dividing the
people the factions put party fury in place of
liberty; the sword of the law and the assassins'
daggers clash together; no. one dares to speak or
to be silent; the audacious individuals, who get
to the top in the parties, force the citizens to
choose between crime and crime."
As to himself and his friends, Saint-Just would
reject with indignation any imputation that they,
too, were a party. They were the very people
itself.This he declared in his last and
undelivered speech in defense of Robespierre. He
looked forward in that speech to the day when the
Republican Institutions would eliminate for ever
all parties, putting " human pride under the
yoke of public liberty ", and the "
dictatorship of justice ". He prayed
fervently that " the factions may disappear
so that liberty alone would remain ". "
The fondest prayer a good citizen can pray for
his country, the greatest benefaction a generous
nation may derive from its virtue, is the ruin,
is the fall of the factions." For after the
struggle for unfettered sovereignty of the people
had been won, the supreme aim was the unity of
will. " il faut une volonte une," wrote
Robespierre in his carpet.
" That it should be republican we want
republican ministers, republican papers,
republican deputies, a republican
government." The external war was a mortal
malady, but the body politic was ill from
revolution and the " division of wills
". Like to Rousseau, a political party was
to Robespierre the function of a private
interest. ' The factions are the coalition of
private interests against the general good."
-For there is such a definite quantity as the
general good: "The concert of the friends of
liberty, the complaints of the oppressed, the
natural ascendancy of reason, the force of public
opinion do not constitute a faction."
Incapable of adapting himself to the idea that
differences of opinion were a normal phenomenon
and not unnatural, an expression of egoism,
perversion, or stupidity, Robespierre was quite
shaken at the moment of his greatest triumph,
when after the fall of the " factions
", the Girondists, the Hebertists and the
Dantonists, he was faced with new strains and new
differences. He was appalled at the idea that
there should still be differences, and divisions
of opinion. He declared that wherever a line of
demarcation made itself visible, wherever a
division pronounced itself, " la il y a
quelque chose qui tient au salut de la patrie
". It was not natural that there should be
separation and division among people equally
animated by love for the public good. " It
n'est pas naturel qu'il s'eleve une sorte de
coalition contre le gouvernement qui se devoue
pour le sahlt de la patrie." It was to him a
symptom of a new malady, because the Convention
had of late been voting decrees on the spot. It
had been showing unanimity on the sacred
principles. There were no more factions. The
Convention, with a trained discerning eye, had
been going straight ahead and hitting its target
unerringly. The postulate of unanimity as the
only natural principle among patriots implied the
postulate of unity in action.
The question presented itself: how would
democracy work, without parties ? There is no
direct answer to this from St.Just, but what he
had to say on the subject of educating public
opinion and organizing the sovereignty of the
people clearly re-echoes Rousseauist formula and
deserves to be quoted in full. It was doubtless
the vision of a plebiscitary democracy (or
dictatorship), where the people are asked to
answer with a clear " yes " or "
no " obvious questions, the answer to which
could hardly be in doubt. " As all are
incessantly deliberating in a free state, and
public opinion is affected by many vicissitudes
and stirred by caprices and various passions, the
legislators must take care that the question of
the general good is always clearly put, so that
when deliberating all should be able to think,
act and speak in the spirit and within the
framework of the established order . . . in
harmony. It is in this way that the Republic
truly becomes one and indivisible, and the
sovereign is composed of all hearts carried
forward to virtue." Unless the question was
put and answered in this circular way, society
would be delivered to strife, selfishness and
anarchy. Another indication about Saint Just's
ideas on the subject may be gained from his
complaint that the laws and decrees passed by the
Convention had been deteriorating as their
projects had ceased to be the subject of
preliminary examination and discussion at the
Jacobin Club. Clearly SaintJust thought it
inadvisable to have the Convention without
guidance from an extra-parliamentary body of
censors.
(d) THE THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT
Robespierre's answer to the problem is contained
in his theory of the Revolutionary Government,
and has the merit of precision "J'avoue que
mes notions en politique no ressemblent en rien a
celles de beaucoup d'hommes," he said about
his theory. He said, as we have seen, that it was
new as the Revolution itself, and could not be
found in any of the theoretical treatises. It was
the product of the Revolution, shaped on its
lessons, and a theory that reversed whatever was
left of Robespierre's earlier ideas on the
separation of powers and his enmity towards the
Executive. The function of a government was
according to Robespierre to direct the physical
and moral forces of the nation towards the
purpose for which it was instituted. Thus while
the aim of a constitutional regime was to
preserve the Republic, that of a Revolutionary
Government was to found it. A constitutional
regime can be established only in conditions of
victorious and peaceful liberty. A Revolutionary
Government implies the war of liberty against its
enemies. One defends civil liberty, the other
public liberty. A constitution Government has as
its task the defense of personal freedom against
the encroachments of governmental powers; a
Revolutionary regime must defend public liberty,
embodied in the Revolutionary Government, the
actions. It owes protection to peace of citizens,
nothing but death to enemies of public liberty.
" Celle qui les (Revolutionary violent
measures) nomment arbitraires ou tyranniques vent
de stupides sophistes on pervers qui cherchent i
confondre les contraires." The Revolutionary
Government must have the powers and the machinery
to act without the city, or area cambered by any
religious checks and legal niceties, to mobilize
the forces of the nation, and to hit ruthlessly
and powerfully.
VOLONTE UNE I9 means that the barrier between
the Legislature and the Executive must be broken
down so as to insure prompt action. Government
action must no longer be slow and complicated as
it was in the past, when nothing but informal and
casual contact was maintained between the two
branches of the administration. Robespierre had
moved very far from his savage denunciation of
the " intrigues " between the Rolandist
Ministry and the Girondist leaders in the
Assembly, and from the principle that no deputy
could be a Minister of State. What Robespierre
was proposing was government by a Committee
emanating from the Convention. All executive
powers, rendered practically unlimited owing to
the Revolutionary character of the Government'
were to be handed over to a " faithful
commission ", " d'un . . . patriotisme
epure, une commission si sure quel-t-on ne poisse
plus cacher ni le nom des trustees ni la frame
des trahisons." It was to be a Committee of
the most faithful and most ruthless.
This was the conception underlying the regime of
the Committee of Public Safety and Jacobin
dictatorship, a regime designed to make the
Revolutionary purpose triumph at all costs, and
not to realize liberty in the sense of free
self-expression; a system which replaced the
principle of popular choice by the principle of
the infallibility of the enlightened few in the
central body acting in a dictatorial manner
through special agents appointed by themselves.
" The two opposite genii . . . contesting
the empire of nature, are in this great period of
human history interlocked in a mortal combat to
determine irretrievably the destinies of the
world, and France is the stage of this
redoubtable struggle. Without, all tyrants are
bent upon encircling you; within, all the friends
of tyranny are banded in a conspiracy: they will
go on plotting, until all hope will have been
wrested from crime. "We have to strangle
internal as well as the external enemies of the
Republic, or perish with her; and, in a situation
like this, your first maxim of policy must be the
guiding principle that the people shall be led by
reason, but the enemies of the people by terror
"-thus spoke Robespierre. War ! The state
of war ! This means a state of emergency, above
all an atmosphere of " rise and kill him, or
he still kill you". If you credit your
opponent with such a fixed resolution, you are
free of all obligations towards him, legal, moral
or other. Doing justice, observing the code of
law, become meaningless; sheer mockery, when
demanded. The supreme law is salvation achieved
by the annihilation of the enemy. The war is
global; global, for the theatre of operations is
global; global, because all lives, all
possessions and all values are involved, all
assets and all means mobilized. This being so,
the war has no fixed or limited front. It is not
the battlefield alone where the fight takes
place. Every preventive action taken to weaken
the enemy, to sow confusion in his ranks, to
impoverish him or to undermine his morale, to
uncover his flank or to deceive and to get him
into a trap, is legitimate, is a laudable act;
indeed, a sacred duty. From the point of view of
those engaged in the battle on your own side, the
fact of war changes the whole scale of values. A
war entails direction of the war-operations by a
supreme command acting in strictest secrecy, with
all possible speed, employing every means of
surprise, not hampered by any checks or control;
furthermore, by a supreme command composed of men
especially, or rather exceptionally, qualified
for the task: endowed with the gift of
leadership, trustworthy, ruthless, energetic and
pure. In short, all emphasis comes to be placed
on personal qualities, Robespierre's elusive
quality of virtue.
The democratic test of election, of
preliminary, reiterated and confirmed
authorization for the democratic execution by
appointed, supervised and responsible leaders of
decisions publicly debated, clearly defined and
resolved upon, relegated into the background.
It is impossible to debate in public or to
prescribe how to act in the heat of battle, under
the impact of unforeseen mortal contingencies.
The men in the supreme command will know best how
to act. Authorization to and control of leaders
must make place for implicit trust, a priori
consent, unconditional obedience. The
relationship between the leaders and the led
assumes the character of a personal relationship.
However much a salvationist creed may try to
ignore the personal element in the realm of pure
theory, in so much as in course of time it
evolves into a war of the elect against the
condemned, it must resort to the personal
leader-saviour, endowed with unique qualities,
eliciting filial love and obedience from the led.
The latter are soldiers in a global struggle.
Soldiers do not argue, but carry out orders.
Sometimes these orders seem contradictory, often
outrageous, but the soldier must assume that
however inexplicable and wrong they may appear in
the narrow context surveyable by him, they form
part of the grand strategy of the global war, and
thus are perfectly logical and desirable moves,
when viewed from the point of view of the whole.
And thus the suspension of personal judgment is a
categorical imperative, and the very opposite of
characterlessness and moral nihilism. The
personal element becomes all-important for
another reason. If the power of the supreme
command must be so boundless, its action so rapid
and ruthless, placed in wrong hands it will
surely become the most terrible power for evil,
in proportion to the means at its disposal.
" Plus son pouvoir est grand, plus son
action est libre et rapide; plus il doit etre
dirige par la bonne foi. Le jour ou il tombera
dans des mains impures ou perfides, la liberte
sera perdue; son nom deviendra le pretexte et
l'excuse de la contrerevolution meme. Son energie
sera celle d'un poison violent." Hence the
supreme and sacred duty of watching over the men
holding the rudder, of purging the supreme
command all the time from the contaminated ~or
contaminable.
Who will perform the task ? Certainly not the
ordinary soldiers. The result would be anarchy.
They have not in any case the means of knowing
what is going on in the headquarters. It must be
the purest of the ensemble at the supreme
command, in fact the strongest. This is the
reason for Robespierre's maniacal insistence on
the personal purity of the leaders of the
Revolution, of his obsessive campaign against the
" corrupt ". These were in in-is
eyes more dangerous than the open
counter-revolutionaries, because they could as it
were by one move turn the Revolution into
counter-revolution. Impure, corrupt, was, of
course, considering Robespierre's mentality, any
one who opposed him or differed from him, or
showed an open mind and receptive spirit to
things outside the orbit of ascetic Jacobin
virtue. Nearly everyone felt in peril when
listening to Robespierre's denunciation of the
unnamed impure in the Convention and on the two
supreme Committees who must be weeded out, and to
Robespierre's " woe, woe to him who names
himself ". In the circumstances of war, in
face of the cosmic stakes, and the titantic
powers at hand, the sole means of purging an
impurity was of course killing him, just as the
sole defense by the impure was to kill the
accuser. " I1 faut guillotiner, ou
s'attendre a l'etre "-as the shrewd and
adroit Barras put it. A brief outline of the
regime of the Committee of Public Safety will
bring home the antithesis reached by the Jacobin
idea in the course of the Revolution.
The Jacobin dictatorship was an improvisation.
It came into existence by stages, and not in
accordance with a blue-print. At the same time,
it corresponded to, and was the consequence of, a
fixed attitude of mind of its authors,
intensified and rendered extreme by events. The
Comite de Defense (generate) set up on January
1st, 1793, was the immediate parent of the
Committee of Public Safety. It was made to sit
'en permanence' on March 25th. Reorganized and
strengthened, it entered on April 6th upon its
unbroken and undisputed reign as the Committee of
Public Safety. Its duties were to supervise and
accelerate the work of the Provisional Executive
Council, and it had powers to suspend the orders
of the Council and to take any steps it
considered necessary for the defense and safety
of the country, and to have them executed
forthwith by the Council. Although it emanated
from the Convention, was responsible to it and
was appointed originally only for executive
duties, the Committee of Public Safety soon
acquired an absolute ascendancy over the
Convention, deprived the Executive Council of all
powers, and in fact as well as, in the Course of
time, the law brushed aside all institutions of
elected democracy. On October 10th, I793, the
Executive Council, Ministers, commanding generals
and -all constituted authorities were placed
under its supervision. The Representatives on
Mission, with practically unlimited powers and
subordinated directly to the Committee, were the
arms of the latter in the provinces. The decrees
of April 8th and 30th, 1793, gave them powers to
supervise " most actively " the agents
of the Executive Council, the armies, army
supplies, to prevent sabotage and the squandering
of public money, to fight defeatism and attempts
on morale, and to keep up the Republican spirit
in the army and in the rear. On a motion of
Billaud-Varenne on November I8th, 1793 (28
Brumaire), they were granted powers to supervise
and overrule local authorities, and to prosecute
local officials for defaults, and to replace them
without elections, it being implied that the
local Jacobin Club would be consulted. Following
Danton's intervention of a few days earlier, the
Convention on December 4th (I4 Frimaire)
appointed national agents to the smaller
administrative units with similar overall powers
as those held by the Representatives, held
directly from the Committee of Public Safety.
These agents were to replace the elected
procureurs- syndics of districts and procureurs
de Commune, and their substitutes. They were
vested with powers of enforcing laws, of tracking
down sabotage and incompetence, of purging the
local administration and the local Comites de
surveillance whose task was to watch over aliens
and suspects. The national agents as "
agents of the whole people " were to replace
local representatives brought to power by "
the influence of family fortune" and family
ties. A decree of 5 Brumaire suspended election
of municipal bodies altogether. This extreme form
of centralization based upon the contrast between
the oneness of the national interest and the
singleness of the general will, on the one hand,
and the partial character of the regional units,
on the other, reached thus its climax in a
centralized dictatorship of a small body,
simultaneously a part of the Legislative and an
Executive. " Le depot de Execution des lois
est enfin confide a des depositaires
responsables" was Danton's comment. This
dictatorship was a single party dictatorship. Its
laws and decrees clearly envisaged the closest
co-operation between the agents of the
dictatorial Committee and the local popular
societies, that is to say, the Jacobins, a
network of societies, with no place in the
Constitution or in the official framework of
administrative institutions. At the same time all
public meetings other than of Jacobin clubs were
forbidden as subversive of the unity of the
government and tending to federalism. All
Revolutionary armies, which had been raised
locally from among the zealots and maintained at
the expense of the rich, to watch over
counter-revolutionaries and to combat federal
uprisings, were dissolved, to leave only the
Revolutionary army of the Convention common to
the whole of the Republic. On April 1st, 1794 (I2
Germinal), Carnot moved that a vast country like
France could not be governed by a government
which was not in the closest and permanent touch
with the various parts-" ramasse et dirige
ses forces vers un but determine ". The
Committee of Public Safetv should therefore be
the organ which does all the thinking, proposes
all major measures to the Convention, and acts on
its own in urgent and secret matters; a plan that
would seem unexceptional to-day to people
accustomed to centralized cabinet government, but
extraordinary at the time it was expounded. On
April 2nd the Provisional Executive Council was
abolished. The Committee of Public Safety
remained the supreme and sole executive body with
twelve especially appointed commissions under it.
The sample of the sovereign people, Paris, was
destined to lose the special position for which
the Jacobins had fought so hard against the
Girondists, in the advance towards extreme
centralization. The law of I4 Frimaire forbade
the formation of any central committee of the
Sections. All the insurrections and journees of
the earlier days were hatched in and carried out
by the ad hoc organized central Committees.
To deal a blow against the Hebertists, who were
the masters of the Commune, the Sections were
forbidden to correspond with the Commune, and
were instructed to maintain direct contact with
the Committee of General Security, the auxiliary
body of the Committee of Public Safety. Only
three months earlier (September ) the Sectional
assemblies had been renovated and given powers to
arrest suspects. The same law had fixed two
Section meetings per week - which was already a
restriction of the principle of permanence - and
a salary of forty sons for every attendance so as
to attract and enable the right type of
sans-culottes to be there. Hebert and his friends
paid with their lives for the last attempt at a
popular insurrection made before 9 Thermidor
against the Convention and the Committee of
Public Safety, after the Hebertists had been
denounced by Robespierre for their violent
actions against religious worship.
Hand in hand with centralization went the
organization of terror. The vital decrees were
passed in the later part of March and early in
April, 1793, and were largely due to Robespierre
and Marat, the latter having consistently
agitated for personal dictatorship " to save
liberty by violence ". Whole groups of
people were outlawed. People who took part in
counter-revolutionary riots and persons seen with
a white ribbon or other royalist and rebellious
insignia were deprived of such legal safeguards
as criminal procedure and jury; if apprehended
and found guilty, they were to be execute! within
two hours. Emigres were outlawed, banished for
ever, and their goods confiscated, and enemies of
the Revolution and aristocrats were put "
hors de lot". The law on the "
disarming of suspects " defined as "
suspects" not only members of the outlawed
classes and their families, like the nobility and
the refractory clergy, but anyone recognized as
such by the authorities. The law on the suspects
of September I7th went a step further.
It declared suspect all who had befriended
tyranny, federalism and counter-revolution by
deed, word or by the way of personal relations;
persons who failed to pay their taxes; people not
furnished with cartes de civisme from their
Sections; suspended or dismissed officials;
nobles, their relatives and relatives of emigres;
persons unable to bring evidence of their
rightful means of earning a living and of their
patriotic conduct in the past. Concierges had
earlier been ordered to post the names of the
inhabitants of the houses in their charge, and
private homes were opened to search. The decree
of March 2Ist set up in every commune Comite's de
surveillance, recruited from the most faithful
and charged with general supervision over aliens
and suspects, drawing up lists of the latter, and
revising the certificates of " civisme
". On March 28th a social law fixed the
death penalty for journalists and pamphleteers
calling for the dissolution of the Convention,
the re-establishment of the monarchy, and
attacking the people's sovereignty. On April 1st
the parliamentary immunity of deputies to the
Convention was suspended. The Revolutionary
Tribunal was properly set up, after having had a
fleeting existence as Tribunal Criminal
Extraordinaire, on April 5th. It was on that day
freed from the supervision by the special
Conventional Committee, to which its predecessor
was subject. Moreover the need for Conventional
authorization to start proceedings was waived.
Denunciation by one of the established
authorities or by an ordinary citizen was to be a
sufficient ground, except in case of deputies,
commanding generals and similar high dignitaries.
The jury was to vote and make its declarations
publicly and " a haute voix ". There
was no appeal, and the punishments were death and
confiscation of property. The month of October,
which saw the Republic triumphant on all war
fronts, instead of seeing the Terror abate,
marked its intensification against the leading
political groups and personalities in opposition.
The signal event was the trial and execution of
the twenty-two Girondist deputies expelled from
the Convention on June 2nd, among them Vergniaud,
Gensonne, Brissot, Lasource (Roland committed
suicide, Mme Roland was guillotined). They were
delivered by the Convention to the Tribunal on a
unanimous vote, and were sentenced unanimously
after proceedings lasting three days, the time
thought sufficient for the jury to have their
" conscience sufficiently enlightened
", so as to be able to dispense with further
examination of evidence and witnesses. Four days
were also thought sufficient to enlighten the
conscience of the jury on the crimes of Hebert,
Momoro, Vincent, Anacharsis Cloots and their
friends, sentenced on March 24th, 1794. Danton,
Desmoulins, Philippeaux were sent to the
guillotine about a fortnight later, also at the
end of four days, after the Convention had at the
instigation of Saint Just voted them unanimously
" hors des debate ", as guilty of
plotting to destroy the Revolutionary Government
and restore the Monarchy.
Political centralization focused in the Committee
of Public Safety was followed by judicial
centralization focused in the Revolutionary
Tribunal in Paris. Saint-Just carried, in April,
a motion that all persons accused of conspiracy
wherever they be should be brought before the
Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris. The decree of
May I 8th (29 Floreal), proposed by Couthon, the
third, crippled member of the Robespierrist
triumvirate, and executor of the rebellious city
of Lyons, suppressed all Revolutionary Tribunals
and Revolutionary Commissions outside Paris. Then
on June 10Th, 1794, came the famous laws of
Prairial - suggested by Couthon. They marked the
crowning point of the Terror and were based on
the axiom that the annihilation of the enemies of
the Revolution took prererence over formal
justice. 'Any kind of evidence, material, moral,
or verb al that "naturellement obtenir l'
assentiment de l'esprit juste et raisonable"
was declared acceptable as legal evidlence, the
need for examining witnesses being dispensed
with. The right of the defendant to plead before
the Revolutionary Tribunal was suspended. The
right to denounce conspirators and persons guilty
of " incivisme" was accorded to all
citizens. The right of delivering suspects to the
Tribunal was extended to the two Committees
(Public Safety and General Security), the Public
Prosecutor, Representatives on Mission and the
Convention. The Convention was deprived of its
exclusive right of handing over deputies to the
Tribunal. This measure sent a shudder down every
spine in the Convention. It drove those who felt
themselves most menaced, Fouche, Ta]lien, Barras,
Freron, to desperation, and together with the
disagreements between the Robespierrists and
their colleagues, on the execution of
Saint-Just's laws of Ventose, on the
expropriation of the suspects and the
distribution of their property to poor patriots,
brought down Robespierre and his system on 9
Thermidor.
Although the Robespierrists were outdistanced in
sheer terrorist passion by those who destroyed
them, they were nevertheless among the chief
apostles of Terror. The redoubtable Bureau de
Police, the special and most exclusive department
of the Committee of Public Safety, set up to keep
a watch and prosecute in the first place civil
servants, was presided over by them, especially
Saint-Just. As early as August pith, 1793,
Robespierre formulated the philosophy of Terror
by demanding that the Revolutionary Tribunal be
freed from all encumbrances of old-fashioned
legal restraints to pass death sentences, the
only type of punishment appropriate in the
circumstances of treason. Jacobin dictatorship
rested on two pillars: the fanatical devotion of
the faithful, and stringent orthodoxy. The
combination of the two was the secret of Jacobin
strength, and a new phenomenon in modern
political history. Having started as a movement
for popular self-expression and permanent debate,
to share in joyous , communion the experience of
exercising popular sovereignty, Jacobinism soon
developed into a confraternity of faithful, who
must lose their selves in the objective substance
of the faith to regain their souls. Submission
became in due course release, obedience was
turned into freedom, membership to the Jacobin
clubs became the outward sign of belonging to the
elect and pure, participation in Jacobin fetes
and patriotic rites a religious experience.
Inside the clubs there was going on an unceasing
process of self-cleansing and purification,
entailing denunciations, confessions,
excommunication and expulsions. The dictatorship
of the Committee of Public Safety was thus no
mere tyranny of a handful of men clinging to
power and In possession of all the means of
coercion, no mere police system in a beleaguered
fortress. It rested on closely knit and highly
disciplined cells and nuclei in every town and
village, from the central artery of Paris to the
smallest hamlet in the mountains, composed of men
only waiting with enthusiastic eagerness for a
sign, no more to express their spontaneous urge
for freedom, but their Revolutionary exaltation
through obedient and fervent execution of orders
from the centre, the seat of the enlightened and
infallible few. In the way of pure improvisation
there grew up in Revolutionary France an
unofficial organization of French democracy,
duplicating as it were the official organism and
its parts, manning the Revolutionary armies, and
the Comite's de surveillance, engaging in the
task of what Robespierre called " colerer
" the sans-culottes, that is to say the task
of indoctrinating and making them ready to deal
with the wicked rich, the federalists and other
counter-revolutionaries, often, again as
Robespierre urged, especially staying behind,
when others had been sent to the front, to watch
the rear and fight the internal enemy; dominating
by their ceaseless vigilance all assemblies,
managing all elections, providing, as instructed,
the right Interpretation of all events. The
official dogma claimed that the Jacobins were the
people they could possible regulate as a partial
will, as just a party like other parties.
Robespierre had said that the " Jacobin
society was ' by its very nature incorruptible.
It deliberated before an audience of a few
thousand' persons so that its whole power lay in
public opinion, and it could not betray the
interests of the people."
Camille Desmoulins had earlier in the Revolution
called the popular societies the inquisitorial
tribunals of the people. He used the term with
fervent approval. What he meant to say was that
they were the open forum for ideas to be
scrutinized, clarified and purified through free
and continuous discussion. Desmoulins lived to'
realize to the full the horror of the popular
inquisition whichhe so enthusiastically helped to
build up. It was in the course of that dramatic
clash at the Jacobin Club, when Robespierre, who
earlier had half patronizingly, half menacingly
admonished him not to be so flexible and volatile
in his opinions, called for the burning of
Camille's Vieux Cordelier, the proofs of which
Desmoulins was in the habit of showing to the
Incorruptible for approval. " Burning is no
answer," whispered the darling of the
Revolution.
And so the postulate of plebiscitary popular
sovereignty came to fruition in the rule of a
small fraction of the nation; the idea of
unhampered popular self-expression in an ever
narrower path of exclusive orthodoxy, and a ban
on the slightest difference of opinion and
sentiment. It is enough to read the records of
the Jacobin Club in the last months before
Thermidor, the indicting speeches of Robespierre
and SaintJust or the references given by Crane
Brinton in his study on the provincial Jacobin
societies to realize to what lengths this process
had gone. To have remained silent on some past
and half-forgotten occasion, where one should
have spoken; to have spoken where it was better
to hold one's peace; to have shown empathy where
eagerness was called for, and enthusiasm where
diffidence was necessary; to have consorted with
somebody whom a patriot should have shunned;
avoided one who deserved to be befriended; not to
have shown a virtuous disposition, or not to have
led a life of virtue-such and other " sins
" came to be counted as capital opulence,
classifying the sinners as members of that
immense chain of treason comprising the foreign
plot, Royalism, federalism, bureaucratic
sabotage, food speculation, immoral wealth, and
vicious selfish perversion.
Special lists were drawn up for aspirants to
admission and affiliation to elicit answers as to
the attitude taken up in the past to, and as to
the present appreciation of, every event of the
Revolution. The ascendancy of Robespierre appears
from the Jacobin records to have become truly
religious. A disapproving word, a mere glance
from the Incorruptible were enough to ensure the
immediate expulsion of any speaker whom
Robespierre felt to have gone a little too far,
even though only a few seconds earlier the orator
had been wildly applauded. Virtue had been "
put on the agenda " to confound the wicked.
Robespierre and Saint-Just were the "
apostles of virtue ", as the insurrectionary
Manifesto of the Commune on 9 Therrnidor called
them. It is important to throw a glance at least
at the evolution of foreign policy in the
Revolution from the angle of the global war for
liberty. Similarities between the two spheres,
internal and external policy, abound. The
Revolution, bred on a humanitarian philosophy,
started on a most pacifist note. Men were deeply
convinced that the natural state among nations
was that of peace. All trouble came from the
dynasties in pursuit of selfish aggrandizement.
They divide nations and cause all wars. Hence the
famous declaration, which the realistic Mirabeau
viewed with such skepticism, that France
renounces war as an instrument of national policy
and expansion. The complex factors, political and
psychological, conscious and unconscious, which
created in France an almost universal desire for
war against old Europe, cannot be analyzed here.
Clearly, the dynamism of a Messianic creed was
spilling over. There was hardly a person among
the Revolutionaries who was not, when the war
broke out, convinced that Foreign Power had 'war'
lust and would do nothing but sublimate nations
and seize their territory. For the Revolution was
fighting a common global struggle for the
liberation of peoples from the yoke of dynastic
tyrannies, and for a harmonious union of nations.
When liberating alien territory, France would not
interfere with the wishes of the liberated
population, and would not impose any regime. .But
these good intentions were doomed to remain an
academic postulate. To free a people, to enable
it to make a free choice, which the Revolution
proclaimed its duty to do, obviously entailed the
immediate abolition of the feudal system,-and the
introduction of the principle of popular
sovereignty. -- Such an initial step could not be
termed non-interference. As the war was global,
France could not possibly leave feudal enemies in
power and at large to sabotage her war effort and
stab her in the back But also from the point of
view of the local Revolutionaries, who found
themselves in a situation similar to that of the
French Revolutionaries fighting their own
counter-revolutionaries, only aggravated by the
fact of collaboration with a foreign power, there
was the supreme necessity of suppressing the
counter-revolutionary enemy by all means. France
was shedding her blood, spending her energies and
impoverished resources; she was on the brink of
bankruptcy and famine, with inflation running
wild - who could demand from her that she should
also bear the costs of liberating other peoples ?
Indeed, it was only fair that they should pay for
their liberation themselves. " The war must
pay for itself" The foreign nations must
accept the dreaded worthless French assignat. The
feudal lords, the Church, the rich in general
must be soaked . The confiscated feudal property
would come into the hands of the lower orders,
while the poor would be spared impositions and
taxation. Whole classes would thus become vitally
interested in the victory of the Revolution, and
a tremendous social and economic Revolution would
have been achieved: " Guerre aux chateaux
paix aux chaumieres " was the famous formula
of Cambon. The war is global - this was the
underlying thesis of the famous Declaration of
November , 1792, that France pledges herself to
hasten to assist every people wishing to become
free. It was a blank cheque given to any
rebellion in any part of the world, and from the
point of view of old Europe, an imperialist
French provocation designed to foment rebellion
everywhere in order to justify French aggression
and conquest.
~ On December 1st came the extension of the
November VOLONTE UNE Declaration. It declared
that a liberated population, which failed to
adopt the institutions of liberty and popular
sovereignty, thereby declared itself a friend of
tyranny and an enemy of France in the global war.
A time limit was later set for the liberated
peoples to show convincingly where they stood.
And so the freedom of choosing liberty, which the
Revolution set out-to give to the nations, became
transformed into an obligation to choose liberty.
But the French were far from admitting to
themselves - or to others - that they were
violating the freedom of the liberated
populations. There could be no doubt about the
ultimate wishes of the peoples concerned. They
were terrorized by their old masters, timid and
backward, and they must be freed, without regard
to their inhibitions. Popular assemblies must be
summoned to adopt by acclamation the institutions
of liberty. Naturally, feudal and clerical
reactionaries must be excluded and prevented from
intimidating the people and falsifying its true
will. In Belgium and elsewhere Revolutionary
leadership was weak and inexperienced, and the
masses under the spell of the Church. French
commissars must therefore be sent to arrange
elections, and to take charge of affairs, till
the liberated people will have given itself a
free Constitution, and shown ability to live in
accordance with it. The global war, requiring a
Revolutionary regime at home, necessitated a
similar regime towards the peoples abroad, in
order to force the nations to be free: " Ce
pouvoir revolutionnaire qui n'est qu'un pouvoir
protecteur de la liberte politique a son
berceau," as Brissot put it.
In 1790, Edmund Burke lamented the disintegration
of the French body politic by the spirit of
anarchical individualism. In 1796, he stood
aghast before a wholly new phenomenon: a State as
an " armed doctrine ", quite unlike any
ordinary community, whose growth is haphazard,
whose movements are hampered by the inertia or
resistance of infinite interests, traditions and
habits, and " which makes war through
wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude
". Revolutionary France " struck out at
the heart . . . systematic . . . simple in its
principle, it has unity and consistency ~
perfection ; it is able to mobilize men and
resources and to subordinate all to the single
principle of its being-" the production of
force ", to further the cause of the
Revolution. " Individuality . is left out of
their scheme of government. The state is all in
all." .
Chapter Four ULTIMATE SCHEME
(a) THE POSTULATE OF PROGRESS AND FINALITY No
longer necessary as a defensive weapon, the
Terror was gradually becoming an instrument for
the enthronement of a positive purpose. This
purpose was the natural and harmonious system of
society prophesied by the philosopher. The
existence of such an order was a certainty. It
had been on the way since the first days of the
Revolution. It would have been there already, if
it were not for the selfishness and perversion of
some people. In fact to Robespierre victory in
the national war was not the main purpose. He
feared a too speedy and too victorious end to the
war. It would knock the bottom out of the Terror,
as " it is natural to slumber after victory
". The enemies of the people wishing to
detract popular attention from their crimes, were
endeavouring to concentrate all eyes on the
victories in the external war. But the real
victory will be the one which " the friends
of liberty will win over the factions".
" C'est cette victoire qui appelle chez les
peoples la paix, la justice et le bonheur."
A nation does not become illustrious by beating
down foreign tyrants and enchaining other
peoples. " Ce fut lo sort des Domains et
quelques autres nations; notre destinee, beaucoup
plus sublime, est de fonder sur la terre ltempire
de la sagesse, de la justice et de la
vertu." In brief, to enthrone the exclusive
Jacobin pattern... it is vital for the
understanding of Jacobinism to remember all the
time that the Jacobins sincerely and deeply
believed that their terrorist dictatorship, even
when maintained for no compelling reason of
defence, was nothing but a prelude to a
harmonious state of society, in which coercion
would become necessary. The regime of force was
merely a provisional phase, an inescapable evil
at a deeper level and within a broader context :
Jacobinism was nurtured on a deep
eighteenth-century faith in man, his essential
goodness and perfectibility, and on the belief of
continuous social progress, at the end of which
there was some terminus of social integration and
harmony. Not a permanently pessimistic conception
of man and society bred Jacobin Terror, but an
impatient hope, exasperated by obstacles, which
ardent faith refused to acknowledge as natural or
inevitable. The mixture of Messianic hope and
despairing doubt gives to the Jacobin attitude a
peculiar passionate urgency and poignancy. There
is grandeur in it, as well as monumental
self-deception and naivete. Robespierre and
Saint-Just seem to vibrate with the faith in a
short cut to salvation. " It is time to fix
clearly the aim of the Revolution and the
terminus (terme) at which we wish to
arrive," declared Robespierre solemnly in
one of his last speeches. He was proposing to
" take the universe into confidence about
the political secrets of the French people
", and to map out the goal across the maze
of pragmatic and so often contradictory moves and
incongruous happenings: " idee simple et
importance qui semble n'avoir jamais est
apercue".
When laying down the scheme of the Republican
Institutions for the Utopia of the future,
Saint-Just in the same spirit expressed his
astonishment that nobody had thought of the
scheme before. He could hardly believe that
truths so obvious, principles so salutary,
remedies so imperative, measures so practicable,
should not have occurred to anybody before. Both
he and Robespierre, like most of their
generation, firmly believed that legislation was
an easy science. All evils and all diversity of
regimes were the result of the mistaken view that
it was a difficult art. Men's hearts could be
formed by laws. Men were meant to realize their
destiny and achieve happiness in a harmonious
social system, easily brought about by
legislation and education. Their faith was,
however, checked by the disconcerting and dismal
fact that things so obvious, simple and necessary
failed to be applied throughout all the centuries
of man's career on earth. Robespierre paraphrased
Rousseau's famous opening paradox of the Social
Contract, declaring in his great speech on
Religious Ideas that while Nature was telling us
that man was born for liberty, the experience of
centuries showed him everywhere a slave; while
man's rights were engraved in his heart, his
humiliation was writ large across history.
Surveying the annals of man, Saint-Just similarly
concluded with dismay that " all arts had
produced their marvels, only the art of
government has produced nothing but monsters
". " D'ou vient melange de genie et de
stupidite ? " asks Robespierre in reference
to the wonderful progress of the arts and
sciences, and man's total ignorance of the
elementary notions of political morality, of his
rights and duties. Robespierre's answer is that
all the rulers of the past, bent upon nothing
else than upon retaining their power, had nothing
to fear from scientists and artists, but very
much from " philosopher rigides et
defenseurs de l'humanite ". They could
afford to encourage the former, but had to
persecute the latter. The Revolution was in this
respect an apocalyptic moment in history, the
most important event in the career of man upon
earth, totally different from such episodes as
the Cromwellian and American Revolutions,
outbreaks prompted by local grievances and driven
by limited aims. The French Revolution had as its
aim " to put back the destinies of liberty
in the hands of truth which is eternal, rather
than into the hands of men who pass". This
juxtaposition and this contrasting of an
objective and eternal truth with the passing
character of man should be noted. " Vous
commencez une nouvelle carriere ou personne ne
vous a devances." On more than one occasion
did Robespierre proclaim that Revolutionary
France was thousands of years ahead of all other
nations. " All must be changed in the moral
and political order," exclaims Robespierre,
and his words are re-echoed by Saint-Just. At the
moment of the Revolution, the world resembled the
globe, half of it was already enlightened, while
the other part was still plunged in darkness. And
here faith and desperate anxiety alternate. At
first there was boundless hope. Thus in his
speech in the Constituante on the unrestricted
freedom of the press, Robespierre claimed that
the time had come for all truths to be spoken
out- " routes seront accueillies par le
patriotisme ". As late as July 8th, 1792,
Robespierre hoped that the regeneration of the
French people could be accomplished without
bloodshed. After the execution of the King he
still hoped that after this " great
exception " the death penalty would no
longer be applied. As late as February, 1793, he
claimed that the new order was already so deeply
rooted in French society that no real reaction
was possible. Human reason had been on the move
for quite a time " slowly and by detours,
and yet surely ", and now the world was
witnessing the wonderful spectacle of " a
democracy affirmed in a vast empire ".
" Those who in the infancy of public law and
in the midst of servitude have been stammering
contrary maxims, did they foresee the marvels
accomplished in one year ? " Quite a
different mood is expressed in Robespierre's last
speech, where he confessed to see only dupes in
the world, and only very few generous men loving
virtue for its own sake and disinterestedly
desirous of the people's happiness. A similar
sentiment is expressed in a striking passage in
Saint-Just's Institutions of Republicans written
some time in 1794. Its epigrammatic style
breathes an uncanny air, the air of the Terror at
its height. " No doubt, the time to do good
has not yet come. The particular good that one
may do is a palliative. We have to wait for a
general evil that would be great enough for
public opinion to experience the need of proper
measures to do good. That which produces the
general good is always terrible, or appears
bizzare, when started too early. The Revolution
should halt at the perfection of happiness and
public liberty by the laws. Its tides have no
other objectives, they must overthrow all that
opposes them." " People speak of the
height of the Revolution. Who will fix it ? There
have been free peoples who have fallen from
greater heights." The elation at what had
been so miraculously achieved, the amazement at
ideas having become flesh, are matched by the
anxiety lest men falter, and " intrigue
" succeeds in overpowering virtue for
generations. It is " now or never", for
in case of failure the reaction would be
commensurate to the distance covered by the
Revolution, as if the Revolution were about to
reach the peak of a sharp slope. If there was no
advance to the summit, there would be a headlong
fall into the abyss. Passionate faith enmeshed in
anxiety and despair breaks forth time after time.
Repeatedly Robespierre and Saint-Just declared
that this or that decree or purge was the last,
the very last, and the one sure to inaugurate the
natural order. " If only they had thought of
that particular thing, the Institutions of
Republicans, all the evils might have been
avoided, all the crimes would not have happened
!" exclaims Saint-Just.
(b) THE DOCTRINAIRE MENTALITY
Here we are face to face with the Messianic
doctrinaire as a historic phenomenon. It is a
compound of two things, inner fanatical
certainty, and what may be called a pencil sketch
of reality. The pencil lines represent the
external facets of social existence, in fact the
sinews of the institutional framework. The flesh
of the intangible, shapeless living forces,
traditions, imponderables, habits, human inertia
and lazy conservatism are not there. They are
ignored. Left out of account are also the
uniqueness and the unpredictability of human
nature and human conduct, which result either
from the irrational segments in our being, or
from man's egotism. The Revolutionary
doctrinaires convinced that this pencil sketch is
the only real thing, that it sums up all that
matters. He experiences reality, not as an
inchoate static mass, but as a denouement, a
dynamic movement towards a rational solution. The
amorphous fleshy mass is unreal, and can be
brought into shape in accordance with the pencil
pattern. It is not something that is, but
something that fails to be, that is not yet what
it should be. Similarly, human idiosyncrasies and
peculiarities that interfere with the rational
working of the systematic, abstract pattern are
not something that must be taken for granted, but
an accident to be prevented, removed or avoided.
Nor is the fact that a triumphant doctrine is
after all embodied in the living personalities of
those in charge, and is thus bound to receive
their personal imprint and become distorted, ever
noticed. Hence patterns of Left totalitarianism
are so universalist in their character, and
ignore completely national and local
characteristics, just as they seem completely
unaware of the problem of the personal element in
leadership and oblivious of the place of the
actual human personality in the working of
politics. It is their nemesis and one of the
ironies of history that the personal leader, like
a 'deus ex machina', is thrown up by the movement
of realization to become its most vital factor
and its embodiment, the head of the militant
confratemity of the elect in its struggle against
all the powers of darkness. When the
Revolutionary doctrinaire is thwarted by the
inchoate, " unreal " mass of flesh and
the " irrational " egotistic behaviour
of men, his impatience turns into exasperation.
The resisting forces appear a dumb, stupid mass
that will not budge, for no other reason than
sheer obstinacy, or-in the case of individuals -
perversion and egoism. This resistance appears to
the Revolutionary the more baffling and
exasperating, because at the great moment of the
Revolutionary climax of popular self-expression
the enthusiasm appeared to be so general, so
active and so single-minded.
The fact is that the Revolutionary spasm is in
the emotional sense a magnificently simplified
formula of existence reduced to a single emotion,
as the pencil sketch is in the intellectual
sphere. The undiluted Revolutionary ecstasy is of
very short duration. Soon men drift back into the
morass of obtuse conservatism, selfishness or
neutral privacy. The impatience and violence of
the rationalist doctrinaire soon turns the
initial mass enthusiasm into resentful hostility
towards the Revolutionary pattern. It has always
happened in modern Revolutions that as the inner
dynamism of the pencil-sketch Revolution
continued to throw forth ever more extreme
doctrinaires, the inarticulate masses grew
increasingly more indifferent and hostile to the
Revolutionary endeavour. The case of religion in
the French Revolution is the classical example of
the clash between the rationalist doctrine and
the forces of irrational conservatism. No other
factor was so fatal to the Revolution as the
attack on the Church. The new, ever increasing
rigidity of the pattern has always resulted in
sharper and sharper clashes, greater fissures and
splits at the top. Fanatical dictatorship causes
the problem of human egotism to grow more acute
in relation to the advance of Gleichschaltung.
And so it happened that many a Revolutionary who
started with and put his trust in the
institutions of a pencil-sketch doctrine to solve
all problems, hoping that conditions and men
would fall in by themselves into the harmonious
whole, ended with a desperate determination to
create like Moses a new type of man and a new
people. At the beginning of the French Revolution
there was the Declaration of the Rights of Man,
at its height Saint-Just's 'Institutions
Republicaines' Robespierre's cult of the Supreme
Being and the Lepeletier scheme of Spartan
Education, adopted by the Incorruptible after the
Revolutionary martyr's death. The doctrinaire
never thinks of the pencil sketch in terms of
coercion. It is not intended to interfere with
freedom; on the contrary, it is designed to
secure it. Only the ill-intentioned, the selfish
and perverse can complain that their freedom is
violated. They are guilty of sabotage, refusing
to be free, and misleading others. They cannot be
given freedom to do their evil deeds, for they
are at war with the pattern of freedom that
continues to unfold itself till its full
realization. Liberty can be restored only after
this has come to an end, only when the enemy has
been eliminated and the people re-educated, that
is to say, when there will be no longer any
opposition. So long as there is opposition there
can be no freedom. " The Revolution will
come to an end ", said Robespierre in the
Speech on the Principles of Political Morality,
" in a very simple Nay, and without being
harassed by the factions, when all people will
have become equally devoted to their country and
its laws. But we are still far from having
reached that point.... The Republican Government
is not yet well established, and there are
factions." The Revolutionary Government has
two objects: the protection of patriotism and the
annihilation of aristocracy. The goal will never
be achieved as long as the factions continue to
sabotage the effort. " It will be an
impossible thing to establish liberty on
unshakable foundations as long as any individual
can say to himself: ' if to-day aristocracy is
triumphant, I am lost.' " The "
Institution's sages " of the Utopian pattern
can be founded only on the ruins of the
incorrigible enemies of liberty. Robespierre
used in this context the term democracy. It meant
to him, on the one hand, a form of government,
and on the other, a social and moral pattern.
As a form of government it signified, innocuously
enough, a state of things where the sovereign
people, guided by laws made by itself, was making
by itself all that it could do by itself, and
through chosen representatives what it could not
do by itself . Robespierre came out strongly
against direct democracy on this occasion. There
was no need for it any longer; the people had
trustworthy representatives. As a social and
moral pattern democracy was the only system
capable of fulfilling the wishes of Nature,
realizing the destinies of mankind, and making
good the promises of philosophy by the
enthronement of egalitarian virtue, which is
another name for the universal preference of the
general interest over the private good, for love
of country and equality and the death of egoism.
The reign of virtue could not be established as
long as there were parties, which were by
definition selfish factions. And so to obtain the
rule of virtue the war of liberty against tyranny
must first be brought to an end, the factions
annihilated, and the storm of the Revolution
overcome by the Revolutionary Government. "
Votre administration doit etre le resultat de
l'esprit du gouvernement revolutionnaire, combine
avec les principes generaux de la
democratic." Liberty has however no meaning
without freedom to oppose, and without there
being anybody to oppose. The vision of
unfettered freedom at the end of the day, and the
prophecy of the cessation of the conflict between
freedom and duty, in spontaneous obedience
without a sense of constraint, turns out to be a
fiction, wherever there is an idea of a fixed
pattern of things to be enthroned by a sustained
effort.
Saint-Just would have passionately repudiated any
suggestion of dictatorship as a permanent form of
government. It is baffling to read on the same
page expressions of the human liberal eighteenth
century spirit, juxtaposed with the most
bloodthirsty denunciations. What SaintJust had to
say on power might have come straight from the
pen of Lord Acton. " Power is so cruel and
evil that if you release it from its inertia,
without giving it a direction (regle), it will
march straight on to oppression.... One wants to
be rigid in one's principles, when destroying an
evil government, but it is rare that one should
not reject the same principles, to substitute for
them one's own will, as soon as one comes to
govern oneself" Saint-Just professed to be
particularly fearful of a provisional form of
government, since it was based upon the
suppression of the people, and not on law or
natural harmony. It was an invitation to any
usurper to establish a tyranny by the promise of
peace and order, and an excellent excuse to crush
all opposition. In the Constitutional debate he
warned the Convention that even the rights of man
and constitutional liberties could become a
weapon in the hands of a " gentle tyrant
" who had designs on the freedom of the
nation. Not force, but wisdom, should be used in
dealing with the people, for the people were
essentially good and just, and could be governed
without being enslaved or becoming licentious.
Man was born for peace and happiness and for life
in society. His misery and corruption were the
results of insidious laws of domination, and of
the doctrine of man's savage and corrupt nature.
Having let themselves be persuaded by the tyrants
that they would destroy each other if left free,
the peoples bent their heads to the yoke of
despotism and grew demoralized under its
corroding influence. " Every people is made
for virtue . . . it should not be forced it
should be led by wisdom. The French are easy to
govern; they want a mild constitution.... This
people is lively and suited for democracy, but it
should not be worn out too much by the
encumbrance of public affairs. It should be
governed without weakness, but also without
constraint." Fundamental in all this is
Saint-Just's conviction that there was an
inherent harmony in society. The task of a
government was not to unpose its own will or its
own pattern upon a society, but to remove the
impediments to that harmony, a purpose for which
to terror had been instituted. Harmony was bound
to come into its own, when all elements of social
existence had been put in their proper place.
" Le government est plutot un ressort
d'harmonie que d'autorite." The abolition of
tyranny was bound to bring man back to his true
nature. " Item la tyrannic du monde, vous y
retablirez la paix et la vertu." The people
would find its happiness by itself The
Government's task was not so much to make men
happy as to prevent them from becoming unhappy.
" Do not oppress, that is all. Everybody
will know how to find his own happiness." A
people once infected with the superstitious
belief that they owed their happiness to their
Government would not present it for long. Crowds
thronging the antechambers of tribunals and state
offices were eloquent evidence of the rottenness
of the Government. " C'est une horreur qu'on
soit oblige de demander justice." The
private lives of citizens should be interfered
with as little as possible. " The liberty of
a people is in its private life; do not disturb
it. Disturb no one but the evil-doers."
Force should be used only to protect the "
state of simplicity' against force itself, and
nothing should be imposed except probity, and
respect for liberty, nature, human rights and the
national representation.
There was meant to be a social order in which
men's sentiment and actions would by themselves
set themselves into so harmonious a pattern that
all coercion would be superfluous. With laws to
his nature, man would cease to be unhappy and
corrupt. Evil having become alien to his
interests, justice would become the permanent and
determining interest and passion of all, and
liberty would reign supreme. The Revolutionary
task is to make " nature and innocence the
passion of all hearts". Such a change can be
brought about earlier than people think, declares
Saint-Just. This faith is deeply rooted in the
eighteenth-century premises -- reaffirmed by
Robespierre in his speeches on the Revolutionary
order. The Revolutionary aim was to vindicate the
idea of pragmatism on earth, and so arrange
things that all that was good would also be
useful and politic, and what was immoral would be
impolitic, harmful and counter-revolutionary.
Robespierre distinguished - in line with Rousseau
- two kinds of self-love, one vile and cruel,
which seeks one's own exclusive good in the
misery of others, and the other, which, generous
and benevolent, confounds our well-being with the
prosperity and glory of the country. Of the
marriage of the natural order and man's virtuous
disposition there would be born the identity of
the personal and general good. Real democracy
would thus come into fruition, since men would be
obeying nothing but their own virtuous
disposition, and would not need the master, who
is indispensable where virtue is not natural and
spontaneous. The supreme aim of politics was
therefore, as Mably maintained, to direct human
hearts, to educate men, to repress the " moi
personnel " and the proclivity for small,
petty things. According to the direction given to
human passion, man could be elevated to the skies
or debased to the lowest pit. " Le but de
toutes les institutions sociales, c' est de les
diriger vers la patrie, qui c'est a la fois le
bonheur public et le bonheur privet" If
politics were to the eighteenth century a
question of ethics, the problem of the rational
and final social order was a question of attuning
hearts. This was the vital discovery made by the
Jacobins, after the disappointment with popular
sovereignty and its institutions as
virtue-releasing forces. the new and continuing
disagreements could not, or at least could no
longer or not fully, be explained in terms of the
conflict between Royalism and Revolution or
between ruling and ruled classes, and there were
many factors to obscure the social and economic
problem. " A quoi se reduit done cette
science mysterieuse de la politique et de la
legislation ? A mettre dans les lois et darts
l'administration les verites morales releguees
dans les livres des philosopher, et appliquer a
la conduite des peoples les notions triviales de
probite. Tous chacun est force d'adopter pour sa
conduite privee." All is reduced to a
question of morality, and consequently education.
All the rest will follow, claims Saint-Just.
Objective factors are left out of account, only
human consciousness matters. The irrational
anti-social, anarchical elements in man are
considered accidental; only the rational and
social part of human nature is acknowledged as
real and permanent. The former exist, for sure,
but can be made to efface themselves before the
latter. Man, and consequently society as a whole,
may be shaped anew-" Quel est but ou nous
tendons ? " asks Robespierre. His long
answer may be treated as mere verbiage and turgid
preaching. But, once more, Robespierre believed
that the vision he was spinning was of something
attainable, real, and full of precise, compact
meaning. The passage from crime to virtue "
to be accomplished by the Revolution meant to
Robespierre a real event, a turning point, new
birth, a definite date, like the passage from a
class society to classless society was to mean to
Communist Messianism. The aim is " the
peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality; the
reign of that eternal justice, the laws of which
are engraved not on marble or stone, but in the
hearts of all men, even in that of a slave who
forgets them or a tyrant who denies them. We want
an order of things where all base and cruel
passions would be chained, all the benevolent and
generous passions awakened by the laws, where
one's ambition would be to merit glory and to
serve his country; where distinctions have no
other source than equality itself; where the
citizen is subordinated to the magistrate, the
magistrate to the people and the people to
justice; where the country insures the well-being
of every individual, and where every individual
enjoys with pride the prosperity and glory of his
country; where all souls grow greater through the
continuous interchange of republican sentiments,
and by the need to merit the esteem of a great
people; where the arts would be the ornament of
that liberty which ennobles them, and commerce
the source of public wealth and not only of the
monstrous opulence of a few houses. We want to
substitute in our country morality for egoism,
probity.for honour, principles for habits, duties
for good manners, the empire of reason for the
tyranny of fashion, the contempt of vice for the
contempt of misfortune; pride for insolence,
greatness of soul for vanity, love of glory for
the love of money; good men for good company not
for intrigue, genius for the esprit, truth for
brilliance . . . a people magnanimous, powerful,
happy,amiable, not a people frivolous and
miserable, that is to say all the virtues and all
the miracles of the Republic for all the vices
and absurdities of the Monarchy."
Has there ever been such a state on earth ?
Throughout the centuries of uninterrupted tyranny
and crime, history knows only of one brief spell
of liberty in a tiny corner of the earth - Sparta
" brille comme un eclair dans les tenebres
immerses." This is the key to the
understanding of Robespierre and Saint-Just:
Sparta as the ideal of liberty. " Let us
beware of connecting politics with moral
regeneration -a thing at present impracticable.
Moralism is fatal to freedom "- wrote
Desmoulins. For the creation of this ideal
Robespierre falls back upon the civil religion
and Saint-Just upon a Utopian scheme of moral
legislation called by him Republican
Institutions. In both cases the motive is despair
in the spontaneous will of man as the sovereign
agent. More than disillusionment - desperate
fear. Man had to be remade.
(d) SAINT-JUST 'S INSTITUTIONS REPUBLICAINES
SaintJust developed a mystical faith in the power
of his Republican Institutions to check man's
anti-social arbitrary urges, to regenerate the
French people and to reconcile all contradictions
in a perfect harmony founded upon virtue. They
were to be the crowing of the Revolution, the
seal upon the Revolution. " Un etat ou ces
institutions manquent n'est qu'une Republique
illusoire." They were the essence of a
Republic, for the superiority of a Republic over
a Monarchy was precisely in this, that the latter
had no more than a government, while the former
also had Institutions to realize the moral
purpose. " C'est par la que vous annoncerez
la perfection de votre democratic . . . la
grandeur de vos vues, et que vous haterez la
perte de vos ennemis en les montrant difformes a
cote de vous." Clearly, he thought of the
Republic in terms, if not of the Church, at least
of a spiritual community, and of the Institutions
as inaugurating the " passage from crime to
virtue ". In Saint-Just's last and heroic
(undelivered) speech of 8 Thermidor in defence of
Robespierre the Republican Institutions appear as
the panacea that had fatally been ignored, and
which alone, as said before, can save the
situation, making all the difference between
total damnation and total salvation. The factions
will never disappear till the Institutions have
produced the guarantees, put a limit to authority
and put " human pride irrevocably under the
yoke of public liberty ". Saint-Just
implores Providence to give him a few days more
" pour appeller sur les institutions les
meditations du peuple francais". All the
tragedy they had been witnessing would not have
occurred under their rule. The speech ends with a
formal proposal for immediate consideration of
the scheme of the Republican Institutions.
Saint-Just's scheme of regeneration was intended
to offer a cure for the corroding influence of
power and the danger of the substitution of the
ruler's personal will for the law as well as to
shape a universal pattern of moral behaviour. The
proposed Institutions were to lay down so precise
and detailed a system of laws that no room would
be left for arbitrary human action, or indeed for
spontaneity. People would not be obeying men, but
laws, laws of reason and virtue, and therefore of
liberty. Politics would thus be entirely
banished. " We have to substitute with the
help of the Institutions the force and inflexible
justice of the laws for personal influence. The
Revolution will thus be strengthened; there will
be no jealousies, no factions any longer; there
will be no pretentious claims and no calumny . .
. we have . . . to substitute the ascendancy of
virtue for the ascendancy of men.... Make
politics powerless by reducing all to the cold
rule of justice." The Institutions would be
a more effective brake on anti-revolutionary
tendencies than the Terror. For the Terror comes
and goes according to the fluctuations of public
opinion and sentiment, and the reaction to terror
has normally been an excessive indulgence. The
institutional laws would secure " a durable
severity". The Institutions were calculated
to make the art of government simpler, easier and
more effective. For instance, more wisdom and
greater virtue would be needed for the exercise
of the only of censorship over conduct - an idea
particularly dear to Saints Just - in a weak
government than in a strong one, that is to say,
in a regime based upon Institutions. For in a
weak government all depended on the character of
the men in charge, whereas in a strong regime the
laws provided for everything and secured a
perfect harmony, in excluding all the
unpredictable elements in human behaviour. "
Dans le premier, il y a une action et reaction
continuelle des forces particulieres; dans le
second, il y a une force commune dont chacun fait
partie, et qui concourt au meme but et au meme
Lien."
In his fear of human egotism and, above all, of
the competition between personalities, SaintJust
devised a most paradoxical plan As there should
be fewer institutions and fewer men in charge,
and since it was essential that an institution
should operate by its own harmony and without
being thwarted by the interplay and clash of
men's arbitrary wills, it was - he thought -
important to reduce the number of people in the
institutions and the constituted authorities In
this connection Saint-Just called for a
re-examination of collective magistratures like
the municipalities, administrative bodies, Comity
surveillarnce, etc., to see whether the placing
of " the functions of these bodies in the
hands of a single official in everyone of them
would not be the secret of a solid establishment
of the Revolution ". Into this context have
to be set the nearly identical statements of
Barere, Prieur de la Cote-d'Or, Baudot and
Lindet, according to which Saintlust at a joint
meeting of the two Committees proposed the
setting up of a government by " patriotic
reputations (or deputations ?) pending the
establishment of the Republican Institutions
". Barere quotes him as saying that it was
imperative to hand over dictatorial powers to a
man " endowed with suffcient genius,
strength, patriotism and greatness of soul . . .
sufficiently imbued with the spirit of the
Revolution, the spirit of its principles, its
various phases, actions and agencies - to take
upon himself the full responsibility for public
safety and the maintenance of liberty . . . a man
enjoying the favour of public opinion and the
confidence of the people . . . " " Cet
homme, je declare que c'est Robespierre, lui seul
peut sauver l'Stat," SaintJust is reported
to have said, in the spirit, one may add, of his
famous statement-" il faut dans toute
Revolution un dictateur pour sauver l'Stat par la
force, ou des censeurs pour le sauver parla
vertu". From both statements there is only a
short step to the generalized theory of
Revolutionary dictatorship as formulated later by
Babenf and Buonarroti. A dictator " qui
puisse repondre . . . du maintien de la liberte .
. ."-the dictatorship of Robespierre would
have been a " dictatorship of liberty".
Fearing the competition of men, Saint-Just was
thus driven back to the idea of one man.
Believing in the power of institutions to achieve
everything and to eliminate the rule of men, he
had nevertheless to fall back upon the
single-mindedness and smooth efficiency secured
by a single mind. Saint-Just got himself involved
in the inevitable contradictions presented by the
two irreconcilable principles: sovereignty of the
people and an exclusive doctrine. While anxious
to expel the arbitrariness of man and all
opposition by an all-embracing yet exclusive
system of laws, Saint-Just was not less keen to
preserve the active interest of the people in
their own affairs. He abhorred nothing more than
the monopolization of public affairs by
bureaucracy, ambitious professional politicians
and seekers of office. He feared nothing more
than the indifference of the masses. He was to
see this happen, and to admit to himself that
very few people were interested in anything but
their private affairs, and that most people took
a " lache plaisir a se meter de rien ".
The magistrates were rapidly usurping the
Government, as well as the popular societies,
destroying the young French democracy, whose very
essence was the supremacy of the people and not
of
officials. " Ou donc est la cite ? " he
asked himself in despair. Who " est preside
usurpee par les fonctionnaires." A spirit of
clique and caucus was abroad. The Terror has
frightened away the citizens. La Revolution est
glacee; tous les principes vent affaiblis; il ne
reste que des bonnets rouges portes par
l'intrigue. L'exercise de la terreur a blase le
crime comme les liqueurs fortes blasent le
palais" Saint-Just's community of the future
is placed under the auspice' of the Supreme
Being. " The French people ", he
declares, " recognize the Supreme Being and
the immortality of the soul." The temples of
the civic religion, where incense would be burnt
for twenty-four hours a day, were to be the
communal centres of the Republic. All laws were
to be announced there and all civil acts apart
from special patriotic fetes-were to take place
there and be the character of religious rites.
Although all cults would be permitted, the
external rites other than of the civil religion
would be banned. The Institutions lay down a
detailed scheme of a Spartan type for the
education of youth by the State. The conduct of
young people as of civil servants was to be
publicly scrutinized every ten days in the
temple. Every person above the age of twenty-five
was to declare every year who were his friends
and his reasons for breaks friendships. Friends
would be held responsible for each other Disloyal
and ungrateful persons would be banished.
Prescription concerning marriage, military
discipline, were similarly spartan! Solemn
patriotic fetes were to inspire the people with
civic piety and national pride.
(e) THE CIVIL RELIGION AND CONDEMNATION OF
INTELLECTUALS
Individual spontaneity has thus been replaced by
the objective postulate of virtue; freedom by the
(uncoerced) acceptance or obligation; the idea of
liberty by the vision of an exclusive pattern.
The other vital value in eighteenth-century
philosophy, rationalism, was in the end made to
give place to mysticism. There was always the
unresolved ambiguity in the eighteenth century,
especially Rousseauist, juxtaposition of the two
qualities of the eighteenth-century ideal - its
objective, eternal character, and it's being,
engraved in human hearts. The unresolved
ambiguity seemed to resolve the question of
coercion. Since the objective truth was also
immanent in man's consciousness, there was no
external coercion in forcing him to follow it.
There was also another ambiguity; on the one
hand, the optimistic hope that man (or the
people) rendered free, and thus also moral, would
see the truth and follow it; on the other, there
was the fear of human arbitrariness and hubris.
It soon developed in the case of Robespierre into
a distrust of the intellect. We saw him demanding
that liberty be put into the hands of " the
truth that is eternal ", instead of being in
the hands of men who are passing creatures.
Robespierre and SaintJust grew suspicious of the
intellect, as well as of wit. The sophisms of the
brilliant debater, the flexibility and
individualism of the intellectual, appeared no
less dangerous than the partial interests in the
earlier days of the Revolution. Robespierre began
to dream of " a rapid instinct which without
the belated help of reasoning " would lead
man to do good and shun evil. " La raison
particuliere de chaque homme" was a sophist,
too easily yielding to the whisper of passion and
too easily rationalizing it. In one of his last
speeches Robespierre made a violent attack on the
intellectuals, the men of letters, who had "
dishonoured themselves " in the Revolution.
The Revolution was the achievement of the simple
people carried by their instinct and
unsophisticated natural wisdom. " A la honte
eternelle de l'esprit, la raison du peuple en a
fait seule tous les frais.... Les prodiges qui
ont immortalise cette epoque ont ete operes sont
vous et malgre vous." Any simple artisan had
shown more insight into the rights of man than
the writers of books, who, nearly Republicans in
1788, emerged as defenders of the King in 1793,
like Vergnizud and Condorcet. Robespierre takes
up the cudgels for Rousseau of the Profession de
foi d'un Vicaire Savoyard against the atheism of
the Encyclopacdists, and declares the battle to
be resumed. On his orders the busts of Helvetius
and Mirabeau in the Club are pulled down and
broken. A war is declared on sophists.
The only power that can still the pernicious
sophist is religion, the idea of an authority
higher than man, with the final sanction of
morality. " What silences or replaces the
pernicious instinct, and what makes good the
insufficiency of human authority, is the
religious instinct which imprints upon our soul
the idea of a sanction given to the moral
precepts by a power that is higher than man. A
crude Voltairian attitude has been read into
Robespierre by utterances on the subject. He laid
himself open to the charge of opportunist social
utilitarianism by his clumsy statement that he
was not interested in religion as a
metaphysician, but as a statesman and social
architect, to whom what was useful in the world
and good in practice was true, whatever its
metaphysical validity. What Robespierre wanted to
say was not that the populace would not be moved
by rational arguments to behave ethically, but by
the fear of God, and religion had to be simply
invented for the sake of the social order. He
wanted to say that in the light of cosmic
pragmatism, factual existencewas sufficiently
proved by logical and pragmatic coherence. The
postulate of justice and meaning in the universal
and social order was a sufficient proof of the
existence of Divinity. Without Divinity,
transcendental reward and punishment, the logical
and righteous structure of the universe and
society would be without a basis. The absence of
such a logical cohesion was unthinkable, God
therefore existed, and the soul was immortal. The
test of social cohesion was truer and more vital
than scientific, philosophical and theoretical
tests. The life of a community was too solemn a
fulfilment to be tossed about by blind forces,
which mete out the same fate to good and bad,
patriots and egoists, and leaves the oppressed
with no consolation, victims of triumphant evil
selfish ness: " this kind of practical
philosophy which, by turning egoism into a
system, regards human society as a war of
cunning, success as the criterion of justice and
injustice, probity as a matter oftaste "
Morality is what it is, not because God has
ordered it and we have to obey. We do not fulfil
ourselves in the fruition of God The starting
point and the sole and final criterion is the
existence of men in society; the absolute
postulate, the morality that sustains it The
fully integrated community becomes thus the
highest fulfilment, the highest form of worship.
Providence hovers over it. |
Chapter Five THE SOCIAL PROBLEM
(a) THE INCONSISTENCIES.
The great dividing line between the two major
schools of social and economic thought in the
last two centuries has been the attitude to this
basic problem: should the economic sphere be
considered an open field for the interplay of
free human initiative, skill, resources and
needs, with the State intervening only
occasionally to fix the most general and liberal
rules of the game, to help those who have fallen
by the wayside, to punish those guilty of foul
play and to succour the victims thereof; or
should the totality of resources and human skill
be ab initio treated as something that should be
deliberately shaped and directed, in accordance
with a definite principle, this principle
being-in the widest sense-the satisfaction of
human needs. Whereas the latter attitude puts
all stress on the injury caused to the weak, by
the cupidity of those who succeed in monopolizing
all the resources, and on the disorder and
confusion brought about by the lack of general
direction; the former maintains that
State-guaranteed social security would take away
all incentive to exertion-the fear of poverty and
the hope of gain and distinction- and thus cause
a lowering of vitality and a weakening of all
productive effort, in addition to the stifling of
freedom by centralized regimentation. At bottom
the whole debate centres round the question of
human nature: could man be so re-educated in a
socially integrated system as to begin to act on
motives different from those prevailing in the
competitive system ? Is the urge for free
economic initiative nothing else than
rationalized greed or anxiety, bound to die out
in an order guaranteeing equal economic
well-being, as the Collectivist ideology teaches
? It has been shown that eighteenth-century
thinkers, while holding fast to the idea of a
rational, not to say scientific, system of
society, fought shy of the latter conception of
the social-economic problem, which would appear
to have been inherent in the postulate of the
natural order. Jacobinism may be regarded as the
eighteenth century attitude on trial.
The Jacobin inhibitions on the subject of
property and their reluctance to face the
social-economic issue on their own general
premises were the main cause for the Utopian,
mystical character of their vision of the final
social order as the reign of virtue. In a sense
the evolution of Jacobin thinking on the question
of property throughout the Revolution would
appear as a gradual liberation from inhibitions,
effected under the impact of events, and leading
to a total liberation in those post-Thermidorian
Jacobins and Robespierrists who joined the plot
of Babeuf, and reinterpreted the idea of the
natural order into terms of economic communism.
The Jacobins were not abreast with the masses in
the Revolution. Carried away by the idea of the
rights of man and the Revolutionary hope of
salvation, and exasperated by famine and
shortage, the masses confusedly and passionately
clamoured that the Revolution should carry out
its promises, that is to say, should make them
happy. However anarchical and crude the agitation
of the Enrages under the leadership of Jacques
Roux and Varlet, however naive the socialism of
such pamphleteers as Dolivier, Lange of Lyons,
Momoro and others, the whole social movement in
the Revolution derived from the Messianic
expectation engendered by the idea of the natural
order, and went beyond the spasmodic social
protest and the clamour for instant relief. But
these agitators, with or without a programme,
successful or not as spokesmen of pressure
groups, did not make policies. The Revolution was
steered by the Jacobins at the vital period.
Their whole thinking dominated by the idea of a
rational and natural order, the Jacobins were
most reluctant to yield to the view that there
was an inconsistency between a rational
political-ethical system and free economics. The
Revolution forced upon them lessons against their
own grain. There was a definite social dynamism
in the idea of unlimited popular sovereignty. The
poor were the vast majority of the nation, and
thus entitled to dictate conditions to the small
minority of the rich. The issue received a
definite social complexion with the exclusion of
the poor from the active political life of the
nation. It created the consciousness and sealed
the fact of conflict. Moreover, owing to
reminiscences of antiquity, the democratic
popular ideal was always associated with the
social radicalism of the great legislators of
ancient Greece and Rome, Lycurgus, Solon, the
Gracchi, with the abolition of debts owed to
landlords, redistribution of land, and in general
the rule of the poor over the rich. Moral
asceticism had always glorified the austere
virtues of the poor, and condemned the vices of
wealth. The fact also was that as soon as the
feudal system was abolished and the rule of
wealth affirmed, the propertied classes, the
bourgeoisie and the richer peasantry, having well
benefited from the sale of confiscated Church
property, began to wish for a halt to the
Revolution. They felt their property and their
new gains in danger of attack from Revolutionary
dynamism. While they were turning against the
Revolution, the Revolution was becoming more and
more identified with the poor and propertyless,
above all in the mind of Robespierre. And yet,
the Jacobin attitude remained ambiguous and
inconsistent to the end. The incongruities in it
were only finally resolved in Babeufvism. And so
almost ironically the chain of laws and decrees
which led to the establishment of an economic
dictatorship, which violated every principle of
private property and free economics, was started
by the Convention on March I8th, 1793, with the
unanimous vote of the death penalty against
anyone proposing the lot agrarian or any plan
" subversive of landed, commercial and
industrial property ". As late as November,
1792, Saint-Just proclaimed in his famous and
most gloomy speech on Supplies his dislike of
" lois violentes sur le commerce ". He
came out firmly in favour of free trade, and
suggested that the Convention should place
freedom of trade " sous le sauvegarde du
people meme ", although he made the
reservation that unrestricted economic liberty
" une tres grande verite ", may require
some reinterpretation in the context of the evils
of Revolution. There was also the necessity of
teaching virtue to a people demoralized by the
crimes of the Monarchy. A year and four months
later, on February 26th, 1794 (8 Vent6se, an II),
Saint-Just made the meaningful statement that in
the social domain the force of circumstances was
leading the Revolution " a des resultats
aux-quels nous n'avons pas tense ". He was
proposing the confiscation of all the possessions
of the suspects and their distribution to the
poor on the ground that the right to property was
conditional on political loyalty. In the last few
months or weeks before their downfall the
Robespierrists began dimly and reluctantly to
perceive that their rational and final system, to
have any meaning and to last, must carry with it
a correspondmg change-over in the social and
economic conditions.
And so on the very eve of his execution (7
Thermidor, July , 1794) Saint-Just coupled
together in a flicker of comprehension the idea
of the Institutions with a Revolutionary social
programme: " creel des institutions civiles
et renverser l'empire de la richesse ". But
as will be shown, even in this resolve there were
inherent reservations that were calculated to
vitiate the general postulate.
(b) CLASS Policy Political rather than social
considerations gave rise to Jacobiu class
orientation. Thus SaintJust arrived at the
conclusion that the Revolution was menaced by a
fatal contradiction between the Revolutionary
form of government and social realities. He
discovered that the wealth of the nation was to
be found, in the main, in the hands of the
enemies of the Revolution. The working people,
the real supporters of the new regime, depended
for their existence on their enemies. The
interests of the two classes being
irreconcilable, the outcome could only be a class
policy favouring the class supporting the
Republic, and carried out at the expense of the
possessors of wealth. To Saint-Just such a policy
came to mean the realization of democracy.
Robespierre's thinking evolved in a similar way.
His famous Catechism opens with the question,
" What is our aim? " An answer is - the
execution of the Constitution in favour of the
people " Who are the enemies ? " The
answer is - the vicious and the rich, who are the
same. To the question on the possibility of union
of the popular interest and the interest of the
rich and (their) government, Robespierre gives
the laconic answer " never ". This last
question and answer was crossed out by the
Incorruptibles, as the very fact of it having
been jotted down shows where his thoughts were
wandering. In another of Robespierre's notes we
read that all internal dangers came from the
bourgeoisie. In order to defeat the bourgeoise
" il faut rallier le people ". The
people must be paid and maintained at the expense
of the rich: paid for attendance at public
assemblies, armed and maintained as
Revolutionaries are out of special levies on the
rich whom they were to watch, finally subsidized
and provided for by the Government at the expense
of the producers and merchants. These were the
premises of the economic dictatorship which came
into being alongside the political terrorist
dictatorship in 1793, and to the emergence of
which Robespierre and Saint-Just made a
substantial contribution, although in a way only
yielding to the violent pressure of the Enrages
and the inescapable necessities of the situation:
war, inflation and economic disintegration. The
first series of decrees were issued on May 4th,
1793, after the assembly of Paris mayors and
municipal officers had declared the people in
" a state of revolution " till supplies
had been secured, and demanded fixed prices for
corn and what amounted to an abolition of the
corn trade, in so far as mediation between
producers and consumers was concerned. The
decrees of the Convention ordered producers to
make declarations on their produce, under penalty
of confiscation. Private houses and stores were
opened to search. Corn and flour were to be sold
only on the public market. A " prix maximum
" was fixed. A forced loan of a milliard
francs, the first of the enforced loans and
levies on the rich, was launched. On July z7th,
1793, on a motion of Billaud-Varenne (his
Elements de Republicanisme deserve attention as
an exposition of Jacobin social philosophy
(alongside of Saint-Just's Institutions
Republicaines), the Convention voted the famous
decree on the suppression of food speculation.
This law put an end to freedom of trade and
secrecy of commerce in practically all
commodities except luxury articles. It was
followed by a decree on the greniers d'abondance,
which tumed all bakers into State employees,
although it failed to build up the State
granaries. On September 28th came the law on the
" general maximum ", fixing prices of
all commodities and wages, to be supplemented, at
least in Paris, by a system of rationing. In
forcing sellers to sell at a loss, and without
compensation, the law was no less a class measure
than the progressive tax, the forced loans, the
special levies on, and requisitions from, the
rich, all designed to pay for the war and to
maintain the poor. More than that, it was
calculated to reduce small tradespeople and
artisans to the position of wage earners. In
fact, on I5 Floreal a decree was passed allowing
for the mobilizing of all engaged in the
production and circulation of goods of prime
necessity. Penalties were provided for shirkers
as guilty of conspiracy. In October , the
three-man Commission des Subsistances was
appointed to take over the economic dictatorship
of the whole of France, and to put an end to the
alleged sabotage and incompetence of the local
authorities, who had been in charge of the
execution of the economic decrees till then. From
this there was only one step to the
nationalization of industries.
The idea was not indeed quite absent from the
minds of tholse responsible for the social
policies of the Revolution. So Chaumets urged the
Convention " to concentrate its attention on
raw material and factories, in order to place
them under requisition by fixing penalties for
those holding or manufacturing goods who allow
them to be idle; or even to place them at the
disposal of the Republic which has no lack of
labour to turn them all to a useful purpose
" As a Representative of the people on
mission Saint-Just displayed an example of
dictatorial action and class policy at their
highest He would order houses of speculators,
defaulters against the " maximum " and
hoarders to be razed to the ground, he would|
requisition in eight days thousands of pairs of
shoes and 15,000 shirts (" dechaussez tons
les aristocrates "), order the Mayor of
Strasbourg to deliver on the same day 100,000
livres of the levy imposed upon the rich for the
benefit of the poor patriots, war widows and war
orphans; he would have the richest individual who
had not paid his share of the nine million
enforced loan within twenty-four hours exposed on
the guillotine for three hours; double and treble
the amount to be paid for any delay; seize in
twenty-four hours hundreds of beds, requisition
all overcoats, and so on.
.
(C) FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS
~ A class policy provoked by a Revolutionary and
war-time emergency may be nothing more than an
empirical ad hoc police and need not entail
deliberate and planned shaping of the social and
economic life in tote. There are, however, clear
indications that Robespierre and Saint-Just felt
themselves, however reluctantly, driven beyond
such empiricism in the direction of integral
planning in accordance with a definite principle.
Thus in his speeches oil Supplies and on the
Declaration of the Rights of Man, Robespierre
made the emphatic distinction between the old
law, and the postulate of a new deal in the
economic sphere, which would correspond to the
great political change-over that had taken place.
Robespierre objected to the approach of the
Convention to the problem, on the grounds that it
accepted as the highest authority the
contradictions and vagaries of former royal
ministers. The legislation of the first two
Revolutionary Assemblies on this sulk had been in
the old style, because the interests and the
prejuce which were the basis of their policy had
not changed. The defenders of hungry citizens and
the spokesmen of the poor were in the eyes of the
earlier Assemblies dangerous agitators and
anarchists. The Assemblies and their governments
employed bayonets to calm alarms and to still
famine. Their idea of unrestricted freedom of
commerce put a premium on bloodsucking. It was an
essentially incomplete system, because it had no
bearing upon the " veritable principle
". What was this principle ? It was that the
question of supplies must be considered not from
the angle of commerce, that is to say of the rich
and the ruling classes, but from the point of
view of the livelihood of the people. The
distinction is of capital importance. It may make
the difference between free economics and planned
society. The awareness of the necessity of a
fundamental principle is what matters most here.
Thus in his speech on the Declaration, dealing
this time not with trade but with the more
fundamental problem of private property,
Robespierre declared: " posons done de bonne
foi les principes du droit de propriety." It
was the more necessary as prejudice and vested
interest had combined to spread a thick fog over
the issue. It was in connection with the social
problem that Saint-Just declared that those who
made Revolutions by halves were digging their own
graves, and spoke of the " quelques coups de
genie ", which were still needed to save the
Revolution, to make a " true Revolution and
a true Republic ", and to render democracy
unshakable, and Robespierre admonished the
Assembly to remember that they were starting a
new career on earth, " ou personne ne vous a
devances ". Re-echoing Robespierre,
Saint-Just spoke in the fragments on the
Republican Institutions of the need of a "
doctrine which puts these principles into
practice and insures the well-being of the people
as a whole ". He reached this conclusion
from another angle as well. He had realized the
insufficiency of ethics and politics alone to
insure a rational order. The enthronement of
Republican vertu must proceed on a par with
social and economic reform. These matters, he
realized, " were analogous, and could not be
treated separately ". The French economy,
shattered by inflation and war, could not be
stabilized, without the triumph of morality over
avarice. At the same time moral reform could not
be initiated in an atmosphere of general
distress, and a pauper would never make a self
respecting, proud, citizen. " Pour reformer
les moeurs il faut commencer par i contenter les
besoins et l'interest." The Revolution could
never be securely established as long as the poor
and unhappy could be incited against the new
order. The fundamental principle postulated by
the Robespierrists referred to a postulate which
was not concerned with the expansion of economic
activity and the increase of wealth-values not
much in favour with them, but with economic
security for the nation, which in fact came to
mean the masses. Robespierre declared that the
wealth of a nation was essentially common
property, in so far as it supplied the pressing
needs of the people. Only the surplus may be
considered as individual property, to be disposed
at will, speculated with, hoarded and monopolized
From this point of view food must be regarded as
being outside the sphere of free trade, because
it concerned the people's right to and means of
preserving their physical existence. Freedom of
trade in this case would be tantamount to the
right of depriving the people of their life: a
freedom of assassination. It mattered little
whether non-essential goods had a free market,
were hoarded and sold at a high price, for the
lives of the people were not dependent on them It
was quite natural for Robespierre to reject the
view that property was made sacred and legitimate
by the mere fact of its existence, its being
established and time-honoured. There was a need
for a moral principle as a basis for the idea of
property. Private property was not a natural
right, but a social convention. A declaration
consecrating all established property as natural
would be a declaration in favour of speculators
and the rich, and not for man and the people. The
right of property must at least (like the more
sacred, because natural, right to liberty) be
restricted by the rights and needs of others.
Property is a right to enjoy and dispose of that
portion of the national wealth which is
guaranteed by the law. Any possession or traffic
violating the security, liberty, existence and
property of others is illicit and immoral. The
poor and propertyless had a sacred claim on
society to a livelihood in the form of employment
- the 1848 right to work - or social assistance.
This was the debt the rich owed to the poor. This
debt should be shed through progressive taxation,
which would also tend to level possessions and
income For as Robespierre had said in an early
speech on the right of bequest, the Social
Contract, far from promoting equality, must be
designed to counteract the tendency towards
inequality and strive to restore by all means
natural equality. It is vital to realize that
what was meant here was not the right of the
unfortunate pauper to charity and the duty of the
Government to come to his assistance, but the
idea that the needs of the poor were the focus
and foundation stone of the social edifice.
" The bread given by the rich is
bitter," declared Saint-Just. " It
compromises liberty; bread is due to the people
by right in a wisely regulated State."
Economic dependence of man on man stands
condemned. The State must remove it. The State
has the authority to employ, make changes and
dispose of all the goods and assets which make up
the nation's wealth, if private property is
ultimately no more than a concession made by the
State. Saint-Just threw out a number of slogans
which were to become the catchwords of Babeuf.
" Les malheureux vent les puissances de la
te r re, its ont le droll de p arler en maitre s
aux go uverne men t s qui les negligent."
The welfare of the poor was the primary task of
government. " The Revolution will not be
fully accomplished as long as there is a single
unhappy person and pauper in the Republic."
Very significantly Saint-Just, usually the least
cosmopolitan of the Revolutionary leaders,
strikes a solemnly propagandist note when dealing
with the social problem. " Que ['Europe
apprenne que vous ne voulez plus un malheureux ni
un oppresseur sur le territoire francais, que cet
exemple fructifie sur la terre, qu'il propage
l'amour des versus et le bonheur ! Le bonheur est
une idee neuve en Europe !" This idea of
happiness, seized upon by Babenf and
nineteenth-century successors of Jacobinism up to
1848, was in its decant tone new and upon a
totally different plane from the right to
happiness of Locke and the fathers of the
American Constitution, as well as from the right
to social assistance recognized in the famous
Report of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld in the
Constituent Assembly. Saint-Just introduced a new
and additional consideration to the analysis of
the question of private property. He added to
Robespierre's moral and social arguments a
political consideration. The right to property,
as said before, became for him conditioned on
political loyalty. One who had shown himself an
enemy of his country, that is to say a
counter-revolutionary, had no right to possess
property. Only the man who had contributed to the
liberation of the fatherland had rights. The
property of the patriots was sacred, but the
possessions of the conspirators " vent la ,
pour tons les malheureux ". The practical
and immediate application of this principle were
Saint-Just's famous 'lois de Ventose' on the
confiscation of the property of the suspects and
its distribution among the poor patriots, the
carrying out of which was prevented by the events
of Thermidor, but which was designed to bring
about a vast transfer of property, indeed a
social revolution. And yet, the main feature of
Jacobin thinking on the social problem was its
lack of coherence. The Jacobin attitude shows
unmistakable signs of embarrassment throughout.
It has often been suggested that the more
"socialist" utterances of Robespierre
and Saint-Just were mere lip service, designed to
counteract the agitation of the Enrages, and paid
by men who were at heart typical representatives
of the bourgeoisie. This was not really the case.
Robespierre's statements expressing an
anti-bourgeois class policy are to be found in
his confidential notes, not intended for
publication. Words of appeasement and reassurance
directed to the possessing classes, in an
incidentally nonchalant and contemptuous tone,
appear in Robespierre's public utterances, but
have no counterpart in his carpet. If a person's
most genuine sentiments are those which he keeps
to himself, it follows that not Robespierre's
socialism but his conservatism is to be taken as
an expression of opportunism. This does not,
however, exhaust the case. What is quite clear is
that neither Robespierre nor Saint-Just felt
themselves to be part and parcel of the
proletarian class fighting for its liberation
against the propertied classes. On occasion
Robespierre, it is true, could adopt a vocabulary
not far removed from the language of the Enrages:
if the people are hungry and persecuted by the
rich, and can get no help from the laws which are
supposed to protect them, they are justified
" in looking after themselves " against
the bloodsuckers. He had nevertheless nothing but
words of condemnation for the tactics and
temperament of the Enrages, " who would cut
the throat of any shopkeeper because he sells at
high prices". He considered them crazy
anarchists and tools of a counter-revolutionary
conspiracy. The Robespierrist point of departure
was not class consciousness, but the idea of
social harmony based on the egalitarian
conception of the rights of man. The aim was not
the triumph of one class and the subjugation of
the other, but a people where class distinctions
have ceased to matter. The upper classes
constituted a factor violating these principles,
and had therefore to be brought to their knees.
The mass of the people was thought to have no
anti-social interests. It was virtuous and free
from hubris and the vices engendered by wealth.
Hence, on the one hand, what may be called the
patronizing attitude of Robespierre and
Saint-Just towards the proletariat and, on the
other, their anxiety not to drive things to a
breaking point. In a characteristic passage of a
late speech, Saint-Just expressed his impatient
disapproval of people of the artisan and working
class who, instead of sticking to their jobs like
their honest hard-working fathers, had completely
yielded to their passion for politics, were
thronging to public meetings and hunting for
political jobs. In one of his last speeches and
some time after the promulgation of the Laws of
Ventose, Saint-Just urged upon the Convention the
necessity of calming public opinion on the
question of the security of property, especially
ecclesiastical and emigre' property bought
recently from the State. " It faut assurer
tous les droits, tranquilliser les acquisitions;
it faut meme innover le mains possible dans le
regne des annuites pour empecher de nouvelles
craintes, de nouveaux troubles." Robespierre
felt a good deal of embarrassment that he, the
moralist contemptuous of money, was being driven
to make money appear the decisive factor in the
social order. In this embarrassment there was, of
course, also an element of fear, and a
subconscious wish to evade the issue. He
reassured the " ames de bone ", the
haves, that there was no need for them to become
alarmed for their property. The sans-culottes,
following eternal principles and not considering
the " chetive merchandise " a
sufficiently lofty aim, did not ask for equality
of goods, but only for an equality of rights and
an equal measure of happiness. Opulence was not
only the prize of vice, but its punishment.
" L'opulence est une infamie," said
Saint-Just. The children of a righteous and poor
Aristides, brought up at the expense of the
Republic, were happier than the offspring of
Croessus in their palaces, taught Robespierre.
Robespierre feared damning the propertied class
as a whole, and without reprieve, for the sole
sin of owning wealth. What mattered was the
disposition of a man. In the good old tradition
of Catholic homiletics Robespierre taught that a
man may own much wealth, and yet not feel rich.
He opposed on occasion a motion whereby members
of the Convention would have to declare their
fortune. He would not agree that that was the
final test of patriotism. The test was a lifelong
dedication to virtue and the people. Not even the
visible signs of service, such as taxes paid, and
guards mounted - Pharisaic phylacteries - were
the criterion, but the disposition externalized
in a general and continuous attitude. A very
elusive test indeed. On one occasion Robespierre
declared that " La Republique ne convient
qu'au people, aux hommes de routes les
conditions, qui ont une ame pure et elevee, aux
philosopher amis de l'humanite, aux sansculottes
". He condemned the factions who had just
suffered their doom for having tried to frighten
the bourgeoisie with the spectre of the agrarian
law and worked to separate the interests of the
rich from those of the poor, by presenting
themselves as the protectors of the poor. The
ultimate test was virtue; only, while the people
were virtuous almost by nature (and definition),
the rich must make a great effort. Saint-Just
endeavoured to give a more concrete meaning to
virtue in the social sense. He declared labour an
integral part virtue, and idleness a vice. There
was, according to him, a direct relationship
between the amount of labour and the growth of
liberty and morality in a country. The idle class
was the last support of the Monarchy: "
promene l'ennui, la fureur des puissances et le
degout de la vie commune." It must be
suppressed. Everyone must be compelled to work.
Those who do no work have no rights in a
Republic. " It faut que tout le monde
travaille et se respecte." The postulate of
a definite principle for the management of the
economic life of the nation voiced by Robespierre
and Saint-Just, although suggesting an effort at
overall planning and direction by the State,
turns out to be something very remote from State
ownership of the means of production, or
collectivism. It envisages social security and
the economic independence of the individual,
guaranteed and actively maintained by the State.
It is a mixture of restrictionism and
individualism. It denies freedom of economic
expansion out of fear of inequality and out of
asceticism, and yet is motivated by a secret wish
to restore freedom of trade. Robespierre rejected
complete equality of fortune quite emphatic ally
as a chimera, and a community of goods as an
impracticable dream, running counter to man's
personal interest. The lot agraere was a phantom
invented by the knaves to frighten the fools The
problem of social security was not to Saint-Just
a question of the dole and charity, not even of
pensions, but of legislation to' prevent
poverty'. Man was not born for the alms-house,
but to contented and independent citizen. In
order to be so, everyone ought to have land of
his own to till. Land should be provided for
everyone, either through the expropriation of the
opponents of the regime, or from the large State
domain especially built up for the purpose. Only
invalids should be placed in a position of
receiving charity. The duty of the State was to
give to all Frenchmen the means of obtaining the
first necessities of life, without having to
depend on anybody or anything but the laws,
" et sans dependence mutuelle darts fetal
civil". Security must be accompanied by
equality, it too enforced by the State with the
help of restrictive laws. There must be equality.
There should be neither rich nor poor. A limit to
the amount of property owned by one person would
have to be fixed. Only those should be considered
as citizens who possess nothing beyond what the
laws permit them to own. Excessive fortunes would
be gradually curtailed by special measures, and
their owners would be compelled to exercise
severe economy. Indirect inheritance and bequests
should be abolished. Everyone should be compelled
..... Idleness, hoarding of currency and neglect
of industry should be punished. Every citizen
would, in the scheme of the Institutions
Republicaines, render an account every year in
the cormmunal Temple of the use of his fortune.
He would not be interfered with unless he used
his income to the detriment of others. Gold and
silver, except as money, would never be touched
in Saint-Just's Utopia. No citizen would be
allowed to acquire land, open banks or own ships
in foreign countries. Austerity in food and
habits was to be observed. For instance, meat was
to be forbidden on three days of the decadi, and
to children altogether up to the age of sixteen.
The public domain, at Rousseau's advice made as
large as possible, was to serve as a national
fund to reward virtue and to compensate victims
of misfortune, infirmity and old age, to finance
education, to give allowances to newly married
couples and, as said before, to offer land to the
landless. " Land for everybody " -
this, if anything, sums up the Jacobin social
ideal: a society of self-suffcient small-holders,
artisans and small shopkeepers. The combination
of a small plot of land and virtue would secure
happiness. Not the voluptuous happiness of
Persepolis, but the bliss of Sparta. " Nous
vous offrimes le bonheur de Sparte et celui
d'Athenes de la vertu. . . de l'aisance et de la
mediocrite . . . le bonheur qui nait de la
jouissance de necessaire sans superfluity . . .
la haine de la tyrannic, la volupte d'une cabana
et d'un champ fertile cultive par vos mains . . .
le bonheur d'etre libre et tranquille, et de
jouir en paix des fruits et des mccurs de la
Revolution; celui de retourner a la nature, a la
morale et de fond la Republique . . . une
charrue, un champ, une chaumiere a l'ab~ de la
lubricite d'un brigand, voile le bonheur."
Land ownership was in Saint-Just's reactionary
Utopian vision the sole guarantee of social
stability, personal independence and virtue. The
reform envisaged in the Laws of Ventose on the
confiscation of the property of the suspects and
its distribution to poor patriots was to be a
first step in the direction of an overall reform
designed to give land (or some property) to
everyone. The latter idea was formulated in the
Institutions Republicaines written in Pluviose,
that is to say, before the Laws of Ventose. There
is no reference in the Institutions to the right
to property being conditional on political
allegiance. It would therefore be legitimate to
conclude that the Ventose project was not merely
another act of repression taken against the
suspects or an ad hoc demagogical measure
designed to take the wind out of the sails of the
Enrages, but was meant as a part of a
comprehensive social programme. It was
appreciated as such by contemporaries as well as
by the Baboufists. There is one aspect in
Saint-Just's doctrine of " land for
everybody", which had failed to receive the
attention it deserves, and which goes to prove
two important things. The first is the fact that
however Utopian and fanciful the plan, it
originated at least partly in the realities and
difficulties of the hour, above all in the crisis
in food supplies. Secondly, on closer scrutiny
the plan, while prima facie bearing the character
of a State-planned overall reform, turns out to
be a policy designed to create the conditions for
free trade. This is the measure of Jacobin
inconsistencies and grave inner difficulties in
the matter of property and economics. The
exposition of the reasons for the establishment
of a society of small-holders in the Institutions
Re'publicaines begins with the difficulties in
the circulation of corn. Easy circulation is
essential where few owned property and few had
access to raw materials In his inveterate dislike
of restrictions on trade and deep reluctance to
accept the fixing of" maximum" prices
by the State, Saint-Just declared that grain
would not circulate where its price was fixed by
the Government. If it was " taxed "
without a reform of conduct, avarice and
speculation would be the result.
In conduct, a start must be made to satisfy
needs and interests. Everyone must be given some
land. Should there be a distribution of land on
the lines of a lot agrarian principles, on the
principle that the State had the power to change
all property relations as it pleased ? No. Even
the Laws of Ventose did not contain an attack on
the principle of private property as such, but
made it conditional only on political allegiance.
Apart from his genuine faith in private property,
Saint-Just was too much of a responsible
statesman, too vitally interested in the success
of the sale of national property and the policy
of assignats, the Revolutionary paper money,
which had the national property as its cover
(ecclesiastic, emigre and other confiscated
property) and upon which the fate of the regime
depended, to frighten the potential purchasers of
national property into believing that their
property was insecure and might be taken away
from them. But Saint-Just himself gives the clue
to his intentions in the famous sentence found
among his papers: " ne pas admettre partage
des proprietes, mais le portage des
fermages." It appears that notwithstanding
his desire that everyone should have some landed
property in order to be happy and free, the
redistribution of land was less important to him
than its breaking up into small units of
cultivation, units not necessarily held as an
inalienable property, but as " fermages
" on rent. The multiplication of such units
seemed to Saint-Just the best guarantee of the
free circulation of grain and of its reasonable
price. The greater the number of sellers, the
fewer the buyers, the better the supply, the
lower the price. This reasoning is already to be
found in Mably, the bitter opponent of free trade
in grain, and in an article by Marat of September
, I79I, which must have influenced Saint-Just,
and which reveals striking similarities with
Saint-Just's treatment of the subject. Marat
suggested that landowners should be forced to
divide their large property into small-holdings,
without the Government resorting to the lot , and
to a redistribution of land. Marat's explanation
of his plan would probably fill in the details of
Saint-Just's thinking. Both seemed to be
primarily concerned with the actual crisis of
supplies, and the problem of satisfying the needs
of the poorer classes. Neither of them liked the
idea of keeping prices down by the law of
maximum, for such a law in the opinion of both
was calculated to ruin the producers and to
discourage agriculture. A remedy was to be found
in the law of supply and demand. Since the price
of a commodity was determined by the proportion
of buyers to sellers, it was essential to
multiply the number of farmers. Many journeymen
could be transformed into small farmers. The
number of sellers of agricultural produce would
be immensely increased, and the number of buyers
proportionately diminished. A healthy equilibrium
and prosperity would be restored. Marat insisted
that the State and not the landowners should have
the power to select the farmers. State control of
leases was probably also envisaged by Saint-Just.
Moreover, Marat envisaged a very large State
domain which would farm out to landless peasants.
In terms similar to those of Saint-Just (about
the correlation between the social realities and
the form of government) Marat thought that his
plan would bring the civil order nearer to the
natural order by a greater facility of
cultivation and a more equal distribution of the
fruits of the land. In addition, it would
re-establish the balance between the price of
food and the price of manufactured goods, and
finally abolish all monopoly in the fruits of the
land. The more farmers there would be, the fewer
the journeymen, and thus the wages of the
journeymen would increase. On the other hand, the
more farmers, the greater the competition in the
sale of produce. Furthermore, the people on the
land, assured of their needs, would be interested
in getting the best value for their surplus
"and the free trade in corn would be
restored by itself ". It was this freedom of
trade which most of the leaders of the Revolution
were grieved to be compelled to restrict, and
which, finally, by devious ways and State
interference, they hoped to restore.
CONCLUSIONS :
Totalitarian democracy, far from being a
phenomenon of recent growth, and outside the
Western tradition, has its roots in the common
stock of eighteenth-century ideas. It branched
out as a separate and identifiable trend in the
course of the French Revolution and has had an
unbroken continuity ever since. Thus its origins
go much further back than nineteenth-century
patterns, such as Marxism, because Marxism itself
was only one, although admittedly the most vital,
among the various versions of the totalitarian
democratic ideal, which have followed each other
for the last hundred and fifty years. It was the
eighteenth-century idea of the natural order (or
general will) as an attainable, indeed inevitable
and all-solving, end, that engendered an attitude
of mind unknown hitherto in the sphere of
politics, namely the sense of a continuous
advance towards denouement of the historical
drama, accompanied by an acute awareness of a
structural and incurable crisis in existing
society. This state of mind found its expression
in the totalitarian democratic Edition. The
Jacobin dictatorship aiming at the inauguration
of a reign of virtue, and the Babouvist scheme of
an egalitarian communist society, the latter
consciously starting where the former left off,
and both emphatically claiming to do no more than
realize eighteenth-century postulates, which were
the two earliest versions of modern political
Messianism. They not only bequeathed a myth and
passed on practical lessons, but founded a living
and unbroken tradition.. Totalitarian democracy
early evolved into a pattern of coercion and
centralization not because it rejected the values
of eighteenth century liberal individualism, but
because it had originally a too perfectionist
attitude towards them. It made man the absolute
point of reference. Man was not merely to be
freed from restraints. Thus the existing
traditions, established institutions, and social
arrangements were to be overthrown and remade,
with the sole purpose of securing to man the
totality of his rights and freedoms, and
liberating him from all dependence. It envisaged
man, per se, freed of all those attributes which
are not comprised in his Common humanity. It saw
man as the sole element in the natural order, to
the exclusion of all groups and traditional
interests. To reach man, per se, all differences
and inequalities had to be eliminated. Thus, very
soon, the ethical idea of the rights of man
acquired the character of an egalitarian social
ideal. All the emphasis came be placed on the
destruction of inequalities, on bringing down the
privileged to the level of common humanity, and
on sweeping away all intermediate centres of
power and allegiance, whether the social classes,
regional communities, professional groups or
corporations. Nothing was left to stand between
man and the State. The power of the State,
unchecked by any intermediate agencies, became
unlimited. This exclusive relationship between
man and State supplied conformity. It was opposed
to both the diversity which goes with a
multiplicity of social groups, and the diversity
resuling. from human spontaneity and empiricism.
In Jacobinism individualism and collectivism
appear together for the last time precariously
balanced. It is a vision of a society of equal
men, re-educated, and the State in accordance,
with an exclusive and universal pattern. Yet the
individual man stands on his own economically. He
conforms to the pattern of the all-powerful State
inevitably, but also freely. Communist Babouvism
already saw the essence of freedom in ownership
of everything by the State and the use of public
force to ensure a rigidly equal distribution of
the national income, and spiritual conformity.
Man was to be sovereign. The idea of men, per se,
went together with the assumption that there was
some common point where men's wills would
necessarily coincide. The corollary was tendency
to plebiscitary democracy. Men as individuals,
and groups, parties or classes, were called upon
to will. Even partially it was not the final
authority, for it was also a corporate body with
an interest of its own. The only way of eliciting
the pure general: will of men was to let them
voice it as individuals, and all at the same
time. It was impossible to expect all men,
especially those enjoying privileged position, to
merge their personalities immediately in a common
type of humanity. Unlimited popular sovereignty
was expected to offer to the unprivileged
majority of the nation, that is to say, to men
nearest the idea of man, per se, the power to
overrule the minority of the privileged by vote,
and if necessary by direct coercive action. This
is a conception of the sovereignty of the peon .
I was inspired not so much by the desire to
give all men a voice and a share in government as
by the belief that popular sovereignty would lead
to complete social, political and economic
equality. It regarded, in the last analysis, the
popular vote as an act of self identification
with the general will. This conception of popular
sovereignty asserted itself as soon as it began
to be seen that the will of the majority would
not necessarily be the same as the general will.
So the seemingly ultra-democratic ideal of
unlimited popular sovereignty soon evolved into a
pattern of coercion. In order to create the
conditions for the expression of the general will
the elements distorting this expression had to be
eliminated, or at least denied effective
influence. The people must be freed from the
pernicious influence of the aristocracy, the
bourgeoisie, all vested interests, and even
political parties so that they could will what
they were destined to will. This task thus took
precedence over the formal act of the people's
willing. It implied two things: the sense of a
provisional state of war against the antipopular
cements, and an effort at re-educating the masses
till men were able to will freely and willingly
their true will. In both cases the idea of free
popular self-expression was made to give place to
the idea that the general will was embodied in a
way leaders who conducted the war with the help
of highly organized bands of the faithful: the
Committee of Public Safety, governing in a
Revolutionary manner with the help of the Jacobin
clubs, and the Babouvist Secret Directory
supported by the Equals. In the provisional state
of Revolution and war, coercion was the natural
method. The obedience and moral support given by
a unanimous vote bearing the character of an
enthusiastic acclamation became the highest duty.
The suspension of freedom by the legalized
Violence of Revolution was to last till the state
of war had been replaced by a state of automatic
social harmony. The state of war would go on
until opposition was totally eliminated. The
vital Act is that the Revolutionary suspension
came to be regarded by the survivors and heirs of
Jacobinism and Babouvism as far from having come
to an end with the fall of Robespierre and the
death of Babouf, and the triumph of the
counter-revolution. In their view the Revolution,
although overpowered, continued. It could not
come to an end before the Revolutionary goal had
been achieved. The Revolution was on, and so was
the state of war. So long as the struggle lasted
the vanguard of the Revolution was free from all
allegiance to the established social order. They
were the trusted of posterity and as such were
justified in employing whatever mean`' were
necessary to the inauguration of the Millennium:
subversion, when in opposition, terror, when in
power. The right to Revolution I and the
Revolutionary (provisional) dictatorship of the
proletariat I (or the people) are two facets of
the same thing. Extreme individualism thus came
full circle in a collections pattern of coercion
before the eighteenth century was out.
Authoritarian elements and patterns of
totalitarian democracy emerged or were outlined
before the turn of the century. From this point
of view the contribution of the nineteenth
century was the replacement of the individualist
premises of totalitarian democracy by fraudulent
collectivist theories. The natural order, which
was originally conceived as a scheme of absolute
justice immanent in the general wit of society
and expressed in the decisions of the sovereign
people was replaced by an exclusive doctrine
regarded as objectively and scientifically true,
and as offering a coherent and complete answer to
all problems, moral, political, economic,
historical and aesthetic Whether approved by all,
by a majority, or by a minority, this doctrine
claimed absolute validity. The struggle for a
natural and rational order of society soon came
to be considered as a conflict between impersonal
and amoral historic forces rather than between
the just and the unjust. This tendency was
confirmed by the increasing centralization of
political and economic life in the nineteenth
century. The organization of men in the mass made
it far easier to think of politics in terms of
general movements and disembodied tendencies.
Nothing could be easier than to translate the
original Jacobin conception of a conflict endemic
in society, between the forces of virtue and
those of selfishness, into the Marxist idea of
class warfare. Finally, the Jacobin and Marxist
conceptions of the Utopia in which history was
destined to end were remarkably similar. Both
conceived it as a complete harmony of interests,
sustained without any resort to form although
brought about by force - the provisional
dictatorship. As a conquering and life-sustaining
force political Messianism spent itself in
Western Europe soon after 1870. After the
Commune, the heirs of the Jacobin tradition
abandoned violence and began to compete for power
by legal means. They entered parliaments and
governments and were incorporated by degrees into
the life of the democracies. The Revolutionary
spirit now spread east-wards until it found its
natural home in Russia, where it received a new
intensity from the resentment created by
generations of oppression and the pre-disposition
of the Slavs to Messianism. Its forms were
modified in the new environment, but no entirely
new patterns of thought or organization were
created in Eastern Europe. The vicissitudes of
the totalitarian democratic current in nineteenth
century Western Europe and then in
twentieth-century Eastern Europe are intended to
form the subject of two further volumes of this
study. The tracing of the genealogy of ideas
provides an opportunity for stating some
conclusions of a general nature. The most
important lesson to be drawn from this inquiry is
the incompatibility of the idea of an
all-embracing and all-solving creed with liberty.
The two ideals correspond to the two instincts
most deeply embedded in human nature, the
yearning for salvation and the love of freedom.
To attempt to satisfy both at the same time is
bound to result, if not in unmitigated tyranny
and serfdom, at least in the monumental hypocrisy
and self-deception which are the concomitants of
totalitarian democracy. This is the curse on
salvationist creeds: to be born out of the
noblest impulses of man, and to degenerate into
weapons of tyranny. An exclusive creed cannot
admit opposition. It is bound to feel itself
surrounded by innumerable enemies. Its believers
can never settle down to a normal existence. From
this sense of peril arises their continual
demands for the protection of orthodoxy by
recourse to terror. Those who are not enemies
must be made to appear as fervent believers with
the help of emotional manifestations and
engineered unanimity at public meetings, or at
the polls. Political Messianism is bound to
replace empirical thinking and free criticism
with reasoning by definition, based on a-priori
collective concepts which must be accepted
whatever the evidence of the senses: however
selfish or evil the men who happen to come to the
top, they must be good and infallible, since they
embody the pure doctrine and are the people's
government: in a people's democracy the ordinary
competitive, self-assertive and anti-social
instincts cease as it were to exist. AWorkers'
State cannot be imperialist by definition. The
promise of a state of perfect harmonious freedom
to come after the total victory of the
transitional Revolutionary dictatorship
represents a contradiction in terms. For apart
from the improbability - confirmed by all history
- of men in power divesting themselves of power,
because they have come to think themselves
superfluous; apart from the fact of the incessant
growth of centralize forms of political and
economic organization in the modern world making
the hope of the withering away of the State a
chimera; the implication underlying totalitarian
democracy, that freedom could not be granted as
long as there is an opposition or reaction to
fear, renders the promised freedom meaningless.
Liberty will be offered when there will be nobody
to oppose or differ - in other words, when it
will no longer be of use. Freedom has no meaning
without the right to oppose and the possibility
to differ democratic - totalitarian misconception
or self-deception on this point is the reduction
of absurdum of the eighteenth-century rationalist
idea of man; a distorted idea bred on the
irrational faith that the irrational elements in
human nature and even " different
experience: of living " are a bad accident,
an unfortunate remnant, a temporal aberration, to
give place - in time and under curing influences
- to some uniformly rational behaviour in an
integrated society. In the reign of the exclusive
yet all-solving doctrine of the totalitarian,
democracy runs counter to the lessons of nature
and history. Nature and history show civilization
as the evolution of a multiplicity of
historically and pragmatically formed clusters of
social existence and social endeavour, and not as
the achievement of abstract Man on a single level
of existence. With the growth of the Welfare
State aiming at social security, the distinction
between the absolutist and empirical attitudes,
politics has become more vital than the old
division into capital and social-security -
achieving socialism. The distinctive appeal of
political Messianism, if we leave out of account
the fact of America laissez-faire capitalist
creed,(it, too, deriving from eighteenth-century
tenets,) lies no more in its promise of social
security, but in its having become a religion
which answers deep-seated spiritual needs. The
power of the historian or political philosopher
to influence events is no doubt strictly limited,
but he can influence the attitude of mind which
is adopted towards those developments. Like a
psychoanalyst who cures by making the patient
aware of his sub-conscious, the social analyst
may be able to attack the human urge which calls
totalitarian democracy into existence; namely the
longing for a final resolution of all
contradictions and conflicts into a state of
total harmony. It is a harsh, but none the less
necessary task to drive home the truth that human
society and human life can never be in a state of
repose. That imagined repose is another name for
security offered by a prison, and the longing for
it may in a sense be an expression of cowardice
and laziness, of the inability to face the fact
that life is a perpetual and never resolved
crisis. All that can be done is to proceed by the
method of trial and error.
This study has shown that the question of liberty
is indissolubly intertwined with the economic
problem. The eighteenth-century idea of a natural
order, which originally shirked the question of a
planned rational economic order, assumed full
significance and began to threaten freedom only
as soon as it became married to the postulate of
social security. Is one therefore to conclude
that economic centralization aiming at social
security must sweep away spiritual freedom ? This
is a question which the progress of economic
centralization has rendered most vital. This
volume does not presume to answer it. Suffice it
to point out that liberty is less threatened by
objective developments taking place as it were by
themselves, and without any context of a
salvationist creed, than by an exclusive
Messianic religion which sees in these
developments a solemn fulfillment. Even if the
process of economic centralization (with social
security as its only mitigating feature) is
inevitable, it is important that there should be
social analysts to make men aware of the dangers.
This may temper the effect of the objective
developments.
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