The Psychology of Revolution Part 25

The psychological phenomena observed during the first Revolution were now to be witnessed again. Clubs were formed, whose leaders sent the people from time to time against the a.s.sembly, for reasons which were generally quite devoid of common sense-for example, to force the Government to support an insurrection in Poland, &c.

In the hope of satisfying the Socialists, every day more noisy and exigent, the a.s.sembly organised national workshops, in which the workers were occupied in various forms of labour. In these 100,000 men cost the State more than L40,000 weekly. Their claim to receive pay without working for it forced the a.s.sembly to close the workshops.

This measure was the origin of a formidable insurrection, 50,000 workers revolting. The a.s.sembly, terrified, confided all the executive powers to General Cavaignac. There was a four-days battle with the insurgents, during which three generals and the Archbishop of Paris were killed; 3,000 prisoners were deported by the a.s.sembly to Algeria, and revolutionary Socialism was annihilated for a s.p.a.ce of fifty years.

These events brought Government stock down from 116 to 50 francs. Business was at a standstill. The peasants, who thought themselves threatened by the Socialists, and the bourgeois, whose taxes the a.s.sembly had increased by half, turned against the Republic, and when Louis-Napoleon promised to re-establish order he found himself welcomed with enthusiasm. A candidate for the position of President of the Republic, who according to the new Const.i.tution must be elected by the whole body of citizens, he was chosen by 5,500,000 votes.

Very soon at odds with the Chamber, the prince decided on a coup d'etat. The a.s.sembly was dissolved; 30,000 persons were arrested, 10,000 deported, and a hundred deputies were exiled.

This coup d'etat, although summary, was very favourably received, for when submitted to a plebiscite it received 7,500,000 votes out of 8,000,000.

On the 2nd of November, 1852, Napoleon had himself named Emperor by an even greater majority: The horror which the generality of Frenchmen felt for demagogues and Socialists had restored the Empire.

In the first part of its existence it const.i.tuted an absolute Government, and during the latter half a liberal Government. After eighteen years of rule the Emperor was overthrown by the revolution of the 4th of September, 1870, after the capitulation of Sedan.

Since that time revolutionary movements have been rare; the only one of importance was the revolution of March, 1871, which resulted in the burning of many of the monuments of Paris and the execution of about 20,000 insurgents.

After the war of 1870 the electors, who, amid so many disasters, did not know which way to turn, sent a great number of Orleanist and legitimist deputies to the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. Unable to agree upon the establishment of a monarchy, they appointed M. Thiers President of the Republic, later replacing him by Marshal MacMahon. In 1876 the new elections, like all those that have followed, sent a majority of republicans to the Chamber.

The various a.s.semblies which have succeeded to this have always been divided into numerous parties, which have provoked innumerable changes of ministry.

However, thanks to the equilibrium resulting from this division of parties, we have for forty years enjoyed comparative quiet. Four Presidents of the Republic have been overthrown without revolution, and the riots that have occurred, such as those of Champagne and the Midi, have not had serious consequences.

A great popular movement, in 1888, did nearly overthrow the Republic for the benefit of General Boulanger, but it has survived and triumphed over the attacks of all parties.

Various reasons contribute to the maintenance of the present Republic. In the first place, of the conflicting factions none is strong enough to crush the rest. In the second place, the head of the State being purely decorative, and possessing no power, it is impossible to attribute to him the evils from which the country may suffer, and to feel sure that matters would be different were he overthrown. Finally, as the supreme power is distributed among thousands of hands, responsibilities are so disseminated that it would be difficult to know where to begin. A tyrant can be overthrown, but what can be done against a host of little anonymous tyrannies?

If we wished to sum up in a word the great transformations which have been effected in France by a century of riots and revolutions, we might say that individual tyranny, which was weak and therefore easily overthrown, has been replaced by collective tyrannies, which are very strong and difficult to destroy. To a people avid of equality and habituated to hold its Governments responsible for every event individual tyranny seemed insupportable, while a collective tyranny is readily endured, although generally much more severe.

The extension of the tyranny of the State has therefore been the final result of all our revolutions, and the common characteristic of all systems of government which we have known in France. This form of tyranny may be regarded as a racial ideal, since successive upheavals of France have only fortified it. Statism is the real political system of the Latin peoples, and the only system that receives all suffrages. The other forms of government-republic, monarchy, empire-represent empty labels, powerless shadows.

PART III

THE RECENT EVOLUTION OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES

CHAPTER I

THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRATIC BELIEFS SINCE THE REVOLUTION

1. Gradual Propagation of Democratic Ideas after the Revolution.

Ideas which are firmly established, incrusted, as it were, in men's minds, continue to act for several generations. Those which resulted from the French Revolution were, like others, subject to this law.

Although the life of the Revolution as a Government was short, the influence of its principles was, on the contrary, very long- lived. Becoming a form of religious belief, they profoundly modified the orientation of the sentiments and ideas of several generations.

Despite a few intervals, the French Revolution has continued up to the present, and still survives. The role of Napoleon was not confined to overturning the world, changing the map of Europe, and remaking the exploits of Alexander. The new rights of the people, created by the Revolution and established by its inst.i.tutions, have exercised a profound influence. The military work of the conqueror was soon dissolved, but the revolutionary principles which he contributed to propagate have survived him.

The various restorations which followed the Empire caused men at first to become somewhat forgetful of the principles of the Revolution. For fifty years this propagation was far from rapid. One might almost have supposed that the people had forgotten them. Only a small number of theorists maintained their influence. Heirs to the "simplicist" spirit of the Jacobins, believing, like them, that societies can be remade from top to bottom by the laws, and persuaded that the Empire had only interrupted the task of revolution, they wished to resume it.

While waiting until they could recommence, they attempted to spread the principles of the Revolution by means of their writings. Faithful imitators of the men of the Revolution, they never stopped to ask if their schemes for reform were in conformity with human nature. They too were erecting a chimerical society for an ideal man, and were persuaded that the application of their dreams would regenerate the human species.

Deprived of all constructive power, the theorists of all the ages have always been very ready to destroy. Napoleon at St. Helena stated that "if there existed a monarchy of granite the idealists and theorists would manage to reduce it to powder."

Among the galaxy of dreamers such as Saint-Simon, Fourier, Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, Quinet, &c., we find that only Auguste Comte understood that a transformation of manners and ideas must precede political reorganisation.

Far from favouring the diffusion of democratic ideas, the projects of reform of the theorists of this period merely impeded their progress. Communistic Socialism, which several of them professed would restore the Revolution, finally alarmed the bourgeoisie and even the working-cla.s.ses. We have already seen that the fear of their ideas was one of the princ.i.p.al causes of the restoration of the Empire.

If none of the chimerical lucubrations of the writers of the first half of the nineteenth century deserve to be discussed, it is none the less interesting to examine them in order to observe the part played by religious and moral ideas which to-day are regarded with contempt. Persuaded that a new society could not, any more than the societies of old, be built up without religious and moral beliefs, the reformers were always endeavouring to found such beliefs.

But on what could they be based? Evidently on reason. By means of reason men create complicated machines: why not therefore a religion and a morality, things which are apparently so simple? Not one of them suspected the fact that no religious or moral belief ever had rational logic as its basis. Auguste Comte saw no more clearly. We know that he founded a so-called positivist religion, which still has a few followers. Scientists were to form a clergy directed by a new Pope, who was to replace the Catholic Pope.

All these conceptions-political, religious, or moral-had, I repeat, no other results for a long time than to turn the mult.i.tude away from democratic principles.

If these principles did finally become widespread, it was not on account of the theorists, but because new conditions of life had arisen. Thanks to the discoveries of science, industry developed and led to the erection of immense factories. Economic necessities increasingly dominated the wills of Governments and the people and finally created a favourable soil for the extension of Socialism, and above all of Syndicalism, the modern forms of democratic ideas.

2. The Unequal Influence of the Three Fundamental Principles of the Revolution.

The heritage of the Revolution is summed up in its entirety in the one phrase-Liberty, equality, and Fraternity. The principle of equality, as we have seen, has exerted a powerful influence, but the two others did not share its lot.

Although the sense of these terms seems clear enough, they were comprehended in very different fashions according to men and times. We know that the various interpretation of the same words by persons of different mentality has been one of the most frequent causes of the conflicts of history.

To the member of the Convention liberty signified merely the exercise of its unlimited despotism. To a young modern "intellectual" the same word means a general release from everything irksome: tradition, law, superiority, &c. To the modern Jacobin liberty consists especially in the right to persecute his adversaries.

Although political orators still occasionally mention liberty in their speeches, they have generally ceased to evoke fraternity. It is the conflict of the different cla.s.ses and not their alliance that they teach to-day. Never did a more profound hatred divide the various strata of society and the political parties which lead them.

But while liberty has become very doubtful and fraternity has completely vanished, the principle of equality has grown unchecked. It has been supreme in all the political upheavals of which France has been the stage during the last century, and has reached such a development that our political and social life, our laws, manners, and customs are at least in theory based on this principle. It const.i.tutes the real legacy of the Revolution. The craving for equality, not only before the law, but in position and fortune, is the very pivot of the last product of democracy: Socialism. This craving is so powerful that it is spreading in all directions, although in contradiction with all biological and economic laws. It is a new phase of the interrupted struggle of the sentiments against reason, in which reason so rarely triumphs.

2. The Democracy of the "Intellectuals" and Popular Democracy.

All ideas that have hitherto caused an upheaval of the world of men have been subject to two laws: they evolve slowly, and they completely change their sense according to the mentalities in which they find reception.

A doctrine may be compared to a living being. It subsists only by process of transformation. The books are necessarily silent upon these variations, so that the phase of things which they establish belongs only to the past. They do not reflect the image of the living, but of the dead. The written statement of a doctrine often represents the most negligible side of that doctrine.

I have shown in another work how inst.i.tutions, arts, and languages are modified in pa.s.sing from one people to another, and how the laws of these transformations differ from the truth as stated in books. I allude to this matter now merely to show why, in examining the subject of democratic ideas, we occupy ourselves so little with the text of doctrines, and seek only for the psychological elements of which they const.i.tute the vestment, and the reactions which they provoke in the various categories of men who have accepted them.

Modified rapidly by men of different mentalities, the original theory is soon no more than a label which denotes something quite unlike itself.

Applicable to religious beliefs, these principles are equally so to political beliefs. When a man speaks of democracy, for example, must we inquire what this word means to various peoples, and also whether in the same people there is not a great difference between the democracy of the "intellectuals" and popular democracy.

In confining ourselves now to the consideration of this latter point we shall readily perceive that the democratic ideas to be found in books and journals are purely the theories of literary people, of which the people know nothing, and by the application of which they would have nothing to gain. Although the working- man possesses the theoretical right of pa.s.sing the barriers which separate him from the upper cla.s.ses by a whole series of compet.i.tions and examinations, his chance of reaching them is in reality extremely slight.

The democracy of the lettered cla.s.ses has no other object than to set up a selection which shall recruit the directing cla.s.ses exclusively from themselves. I should have nothing to say against this if the selection were real. It would then const.i.tute the application of the maxim of Napoleon: "The true method of government is to employ the aristocracy, but under the forms of democracy."

Unhappily the democracy of the "intellectuals" would simply lead to the subst.i.tution of the Divine right of kings by the Divine right of a petty oligarchy, which is too often narrow and tyrannical. Liberty cannot be created by replacing a tyranny.

Popular democracy by no means aims at manufacturing rulers. Dominated entirely by the spirit of equality and the desire to ameliorate the lot of the workers, it rejects the idea of fraternity, and exhibits no anxiety in respect of liberty. No government is conceivable to popular democracy except in the form of an autocracy. We see this, not only in history, which shows us that since the Revolution all despotic Governments have been vigorously acclaimed, but also in the autocratic fashion in which the workers' trades unions are conducted.

This profound distinction between the democracy of the lettered cla.s.ses and popular democracy is far more obvious to the workers than to the intellectuals. In their mentalities there is nothing in common; the two cla.s.ses do not speak the same language. The syndicalists emphatically a.s.sert to-day that no alliance could possibly exist between them and the politicians of the bourgeoisie. This a.s.sertion is strictly true.

It was always so, and this, no doubt, is why popular democracy, from Plato's to our own times, has never been defended by the great thinkers.