France
The French revolution affected fundamentally the mode of
development through which the transition to government by
consent throughout Europe would progress but took place in
less favourable circumstances than its American antecedent.
No habitable virgin territory exists on the continent, and
whereas the American revolution was in fact the third
British revolution, and sprang from a tradition of self
government that had existed for over a century, there was
no such precedent in France. Craft skills and industrial
innovation were less widely developed and tended to revolve
mainly about the production of toys for the aristocracy.
Religious toleration - central objectives of both the
English and American revolutions - was less developed, and
papal orthodoxy accordingly commanded more dogmatic support
among the educated population.
Political theory in France and generally throughout Europe
had not kept pace with British advances in breaking fully
with the methods of scholasticism and idealism. For these
reasons French radicals held common sense in lower esteem
than their English counterparts, and never fully grasped
the practical orientation of philosophical realism which
had comprised the guiding inspiration of Anglo-American
radicalism. A further consideration is that a more
virulently extremist and secretive form of freemasonry
played, it has been suggested, a significant role in the
French revolution. In France the standpoint of the
revolutionary leadership in relation to the people was
complicated by these considerations and did not directly
correspond with Jefferson's division of the political
spectrum between aristocracy and democracy. The social
basis of the revolutionary movement was narrower, less
mature and restricted mainly to the urban poor in Paris.
The community of shared experience and understanding
between the natural aristocracy of virtue and talent
necessary to organise and lead the struggle against
conservative intransigence and the people themselves was
accordingly also less stable and developed.
Rousseau well understood Montesquieu's point that random
selection is the essence of democracy, and that election of
representatives should only be adopted as a complement to
sortition. Indeed he correctly regarded elective
aristocracy alone as essentially a legacy of feudalism. He
failed however, as did French radicalism generally, to
reconcile an idealised theoretical abstraction of
prehistorical man with the organisational tasks of
democratic development confronting the people. Rousseau was
disturbed and confused by Hume and, unlike Jefferson, had
not fully grasped Reid's command of common sense:
accordingly like most French intellectuals, his trust in
the people was in any case somewhat ambivalent, for all his
idealising about the noble savage.
In America Jefferson's natural aristocracy of virtue and
talent could rely on a theoretical leadership which held
fast to the enduring principles of English philosophical
realism and probably the most politically experienced
social basis of support in the world. American radicalism
was predominantly agrarian because it was presupposed by
vast expanses of virgin territory, with all that this
implied for freedom of spirit, independence of mind, and
the promise of democratic progress. In relatively
favourable material circumstances it both acquiesced and
conspired in a viable though exploitative alliance with the
slavocracy in the expectation of achieving further advance
following victory against British imperialism. In Europe
revolutionary leaders, including Robespierre, were unsure
of philosophical realism yet dealt more directly with
demands for radical change from a less politically
experienced movement of the urban poor in more economically
difficult and hence more volatile circumstances.
In France the tasks of transition to government by consent
were therefore posed in their sharpest form: the general
population had no experience of self government yet
economic crisis precipitated by war expenditure forced the
pace of change and made constitutional reform a matter of
urgent necessity directly connected to the welfare of the
people. It was due chiefly to these circumstances that the
leadership problematic facing French radicalism arising
from conservative opposition to democratic progress became
so acute and, as it transpired, insoluble.
French revolutionary leaders failed to devise a practical
strategy to deal with these contingencies in their relation
to international diplomacy and constitutional reform,
certainly as compared to American radicalism. The unstable
nature of their tactics in dealing with the resulting
dilemmas of conflict and reform reflect this, including the
way Robespierre changed his approach on the question of war
and peace, the death penalty, and the personal fortunes of
Tom Paine. Robespierre's final approach settled on an
attempt to resolve these problems by adopting a more
authoritarian approach to political change on the basis, as
he openly acknowledged, of essentially Machiavellian
notions of political power. In dire and difficult
circumstances French radicalism attempted to force men to
be free, and in so doing set out on a reckless path that
would lead not to clarity of strategy and ultimate victory,
but to confusion, division, and defeat.
The French Declaration of Rights both engenders and
reflects this confusion, and despite its more lengthy form
mentions neither the right to trial by jury nor the right
to bear arms. The condition that free speech meet the
interests of the 'general will' amounts ultimately to the
abolition of this right in its genuinely democratic meaning
because it substitutes force of argument by force of law as
a means to resolve conflict between the ideals of whatever
elite holds power and common sense.
This antidemocratic tendency, which reached its high,
Machiavellian point in Robespierre's infamous and
grotesquely bizarre attempt to invent a new, state religion
for purposes of indoctrination and social control (and
about which the left have ever since remained noticeably
silent) comprises the original point of departure for
totalitarian ideology. This step was not taken simply as a
response to the objective difficulties confronting the
revolution; it was also presupposed by an erroneous
conception of the relation between politics and common
sense. Frustrated by the intractable nature of the
leadership problematic arising from conservative resistance
in the transition to government by consent, French
radicalism succumbed to a temptation known to and
anticipated by Jefferson: 'I know of no safe depository of
the ultimate powers of the society but the people
themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to
exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the
remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their
discretion by education. This is the true corrective of
abuses of constitutional power.'
French radicalism did not possess a stable grasp of this
thoroughly correct understanding of the relation between
politics and common sense and as a result crossed the
rubicon between democracy and tyranny in their attempts to
resolve the leadership problematic. This went beyond a mere
tactical error in difficult conditions: it sprang from
political philosophical confusion and is reflected in the
failure of the French Declaration to guarantee those rights
which common sense knows to be fundamental to government by
consent: trial by jury and the right to bear arms.
In 1861 Lincoln demonstrated how flexibly, ruthlessly,
intelligently and consistently the tactical parameters of
common sense understanding can be interpreted when
protecting the general democratic interest on the basis of
natural law by suspending habeus corpus to round up elected
representatives suspected of making further moves towards
confederate secession following the attack on Fort Sumpter.
When the Supreme Court chief justice objected he made plain
his intention to do likewise with the Supreme Court if
necessary. French radicalism however sought to take power
from the people and concentrate it in their own hands on a
strategic foundation in order to force the people to be
free in ways which they believed only they themselves could
determine, up to and including matters of religious belief.
This distorted the relation between a necessary but natural
aristocracy of virtue and talent able to lead the people
against the rule of force to ensure the victory of
democracy and the ultimate sovereignty of common sense. The
French revolution in this way transformed the necessary
role of an aristocracy of virtue into a new form of radical
aristocracy which, despite its supposed intention to force
men to be free, could not be relied upon to do so because
freedom ultimately must incorporate deference to the
sovereignty of common sense. French radicalism, as has most
radicalism since, did not consistently understand the
relation between democracy and common sense and could not
therefore lead the transition to government by consent.
Robespierre tried to invoke the cause of virtue to justify
his excessive use of dictatorial powers in a fairly
incoherent final speech, but he had by then already gone
too far in the arbitrary exercise of force in the eyes of
the people. The French revolution attempted to accomplish
in five years what had taken one hundred years to
accomplish in America. In this process the tendency to
force the pace of development gained hegemony in the
radical movement, informed by an obtuse and scholastic
understanding of the relation between faith, reason, common
sense, aristocracy, tyranny and democracy. Saint-Simon's
theories still bear the mark of this confusion, and as
supposed founding statements of socialist doctrine
demonstrate how this weakness affected the early labour
movement and general democratic solidarity on an
international scale. Despite an almost identical approach
to Tom Paine on inheritance tax, banking and social welfare
these theories still demonstrate how wide is the gulf
between Anglo-American common sense and European
radicalism: the former could successfully separate faith
and reason, the latter could not. Saint-Simon's religious
fervour was succeeded by the atheist obsessions of
Blanquism, but neither doctrine could properly emulate the
American example.
This flawed approach to political philosophy and the
leadership problematic in the transition to government by
consent has since further evolved but has nevertheless
proved to remain a generic problem in regard to the left,
and helps explain why radical and conservative standpoints
on a number of issues appear as if they have subsequently
been inverted in regard to fundamental questions of human
rights, and why the origins of totalitarianism can be
traced, as J.L.Talmon and others have correctly recognized,
to the French revolution.
The general will epitomises the failure of the French to
properly grasp the Anglo-American understanding of common
sense, and with this, the distinction between self evident
truth and those truths which can be derived from it. The
goal of democratic struggle for American radicalism denoted
the sovereignty of common sense, and with this, the
establishment of constitutional rights which directly
reflected its basic truths. The goal of democratic struggle
for French Enlightenment intellectuals was never properly
clear: first it assumed form as the general will, a formula
so vague as to denote, ultimately, anything at all. This
was the context in which various historicist schemas gained
increasing currency among the European left, all of which
share the common trait of failing to distinguish the self
evident from that which can be derived from it. Anarchism,
socialism, communism, and the fake scientism of speculative
dialectics make their appearance in the labour movement
against this background.
Common sense, scientifically understood, partially
triumphant but isolated in the United States, was literally
on the march in Europe in unorganised form as the
industrial revolution gathered pace and the proletarian
masses clamoured for reform and the organisation of a just
society. European radical intellectuals searched for ways
to organise these demands but at the same time were faced
with repression, disruption by agent provocateurs and an
aristocracy increasingly alert to the need to make
concessions. These were the circumstances in which the 1848
revolutions began in Paris, and in which the Left
subsequently entered the first elections based on universal
male suffrage. No European radical movement then or since
had adopted a programme incorporating the method of common
sense realist analysis with a comparative assessment of
democracy in its both ancient and American form in respect
of modern requirements. By 1848 the Left was generally in
favour of inheritance tax, but this was presented as a more
or less minor policy component of general programmes which
failed to challenge the formal constitutional status of
representative democracy and instead concentrated on
panacea schemas of economic reform concerned with social
welfare. There was no radical critique of representative
democracy in regard to sortition and payment for citizen
participation; instead the American model was simply
transposed to France, and, in regard to its constitutional
status and form, accepted without any informed challenge by
European labour.
The reform programme of French radicalism in 1848 did not
present any coherent constitutional alternative to the
representative democratic elections modelled on the
American example. Instead, and following the mode of
approach indicated by the French Declaration of Rights, the
Left were preoccupied by economic programmes of social
welfare. Radicalism wavered between Blanc's untested faith
that social ownership would meet these needs, and Blanqui's
suspicion that the revolution had been fixed to suit the
ruling power and that elections would be a sham to give
legitimacy to a disguised form of monarchy. This view,
essentially, has been proved the more correct. Social
conflict in France has been presupposed by the
unwillingness of conservatism to cooperate with radicalism
in seeking impartial solutions to the problems of social
development, but the economic determinist hope that
socialism would transcend such intransigence by its sheer
efficiency has proved misconceived. After demonstrations
held to protest the rapid timing and dates for the
election, Left parties duly took part, and lost. A later
protest was crushed by force, and Blanqui, only recently
released, locked up again for many more years.
Louis Blanc's economic determinist hopes were shared by
Marx and have remained in place on the Left ever since in
various forms, including even the 'Third Way.' Economic
determinism is methodologically flawed because it makes no
systematic distinction between truths which are self
evident and those truths which can be derived from them. It
is also correspondingly flawed because it fails to
challenge the narrow parameters of representative democracy
in regard to the practice of sortition and payment of
ordinary citizens to take part in the political process.
Blanqui knew there was a problem of reformist collaboration
with the electoral rules laid down by the ruling power, and
of utopian wishful thinking in regard to blueprints for a
socialist society, but had no clear idea of what programme
to advocate himself, other than militant statements about
proletarian state power and atheism.
These weaknesses in strategy coupled with the clear intent
of conservative forces to take the initiative, taking
account also of the hidden aspect of conspiratorial
duplicity and aristocratic interference which was
manifestly present in regard to these events, explain why
radicalism lost its most important opportunity to shape the
development of democracy on the basis of common sense
understanding in Europe. The Paris defeat of 1848 cast the
dye for Europe as a whole, as Marx himself very clearly
recognized. French radicalism was the only left force in
Europe capable of using armed force with any realistic
prospect of victory, and armed force was necessary.
Chartism had been defeated essentially by physical force:
since 1848 the British working class has in consequence
'delighted more in servitude than in freedom.' Blanqui had
understood the need for organisation and arms, but had no
clear strategy of reform other than trust in his own
commonsensical judgement, which unlike Jefferson's, was not
informed by a clear grasp of scientific method. Marx had
collaborated with Blanc but now, largely to save his
radical reputation, fervently concluded the laws of history
must involve a 'dictatorship of the proletariat.' These
experiences subsequently informed Russian revolutionary
plans to seize state power and suppress resistance by the
bourgeoisie, 'if there are any of them left.'