Throughout all of recorded human history, the poor, working class and lower-middle classes have almost entirely supported movements dedicated to their economic well-being and improvement, but there have been exceptions. In a nutshell, these exceptions occurred due to liberal/left-wing insensitivity to local cultural traditions, whether for good or ill. This exception is best exemplified by the conservative/right-wing reactionary counter-revolutionary movement of France that took place shortly after, and in opposition to, the French Revolution of 1789.
The French Revolution was one of the most radical left-wing events in world history. While the American Revolution of 1776 was primarily a political revolution, concerned only with a change of government and maintaining much of the pre-existing British-style economic, legal and social order, the French Revolution was concerned with the radical restructuring of society as a whole, the elimination of the Catholic Church, the liquidation of the feudal nobility and aristocracy, the abolition of hereditary title, the annihilation of hereditary nobility requirements as a prerequisite for entry into various professions, universal male suffrage and the widespread redistribution of land and wealth.
Yet, despite its lofty progressive aims, the great society envisioned by the Revolution did not enjoy widespread support and much of France was divided as to its merits and legitimacy. Great violence occurred, both within and without. The urban Parisian poor, urban middle classes and the professional classes or Bourgeoisie of the cities and villages, tended to support the Revolution. The urban poor lived in squalor and were experiencing massive unemployment due to the French Free Trade Treaty with England of 1786 (J.H. Clapham, The Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815-1914, Cambridge University Press, 1966 at p. 71). (see also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_Agreement.) They were also starving, due to diminished charity/social welfare from the government, due to its bankruptcy (caused by low taxes on the rich, high taxes on the poor and middle classes and the crippling costs of two successive wars with Great Britain). Living in close proximity to the conspicuous consumption of the upper-orders, the anger and jealousy of the urban poor erupted into violent upheaval.
Allied with the urban poor were the urban and village professional classes. These were people of modest education and income, such as small shop-owners, lawyers, doctors, accountants and clerks. They had the intelligence, wealth and learning to advance in a truly meritocratic society, but were barred from the right of meritocratic advancement, due to the stringent hereditary requirements of French Society. As such, these professionals could only rise so-far, before they found themselves subject to de-jure discriminatory taxes, professional glass ceilings and limited opportunities, due to their lack of hereditary noble title. As a result, they hated the status quo and seeked to overturn it, at first, because of their own economic interests, but later, because of solidarity with the urban proletariat.
Unlike the urban poor and professional classes, many members of the rural, agricultural poor and middle classes tended to oppose the Revolution. This opposition was greater in some places than others, but as a whole, it was of a cultural basis. The rural peasantry and middle classes were strongly conservative. They lived their lives in the same manner as their ancestors had, with little change. They faced neither the nightmarish, extreme deprivation of the urban poor, nor the lofty, ambitious dreams for social and economic advancement enjoyed by the urban middle and professional classes. Their lives were static, constant and unchanging. The Church and clergy gave them a sense of order, predictability and stability, a sense of comfort in an unforgiving world. They enjoyed religious and royal rituals. They respected the nobility and “the natural order of things,” as can only expected by a people whose lives were so dependant upon the natural order of flora and fauna and the predictable cycles of seasons and weather.
When the Revolution began and threatened the traditional way of life enjoyed by countless millions of French farmers, when their sacred institutions—the Church, the Royalty, the proper place of women—were challenged, the rural peasantry took to the barricades and formed the vanguard of Counter-Revolution. Nowhere was this current strongest, more potent and more violent, than in the revolts experienced in the Vendée, a region in the western/coastal part of France, halfway between Normandy and Bordeaux. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e.
After the King and Queen were executed, the French Republic was invaded on all sides. The British, Spanish, Austrians, Prussians, Bavarians and countless other tiny German states and principalities declared war on France and invaded her, lest their own peasant populations be encouraged by the French Revolutionary example, and organize revolts of their own. As the newly formed Republic was invaded, it enacted the first military draft in modern history, which caused further unrest in traditional, conservative rural, agricultural regions throughout France, as they felt that they were being forced to defend, through force of arms, a government that was hostile to the Church and not, as hereditary monarchs were, “representative of God on earth.” From 1793-1796 the conservative counter-revolutionaries fought against the Leftist Jacobin regime in Paris and were eventually defeated. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the Vendee and similar such rural, counter-revolutionary peasant revolts throughout France, and the French Republic aptly learned its lesson: they passed laws protecting freedom of worship, and prohibited their armies from interfering in the local religious and cultural practices of people throughout the nation. In doing so, they could focus on their policy of economic and political reform, as well as national defense, without having to simultaneously fight a “culture war” at home.
In the years following the French Revolution and the establishment of the First Empire under Napoleon, French armies invaded countless countries around them, abolishing anti-semitic statutes and hereditary prerequisites for occupational advancement (whether noble prerequisites for advancement in medicine, law or the military, or more common hereditary prerequisites, such as being born to a carpenter in a carpenter guild, in order to pursue a career as a carpenter), while at the same time enacting universal education, and universal male voting rights. Although opposed from the outset by the rich, the privileged and the noble aristocracy, these economic rights won countless supporters among the common people, artists, intellectuals and the like. Romantic poets, artists and intellectuals throughout Europe, from Beethoven to Lord Byron, praised the Revolution and Napoleon, believing that they would pave the way to a brighter and more promising tomorrow. Even when Napoleon made himself a monarch and destroyed French democracy, many Europeans did not care, as his monarchy was the most progressive, economically, socially and politically, than any Europe had ever seen, Great Britain included.
Yet the French failed to learn the proper lessons from the Vendee and the peasant revolts they experienced during the early days of the Republic. They failed to remember that people forget about economic rights and social equality, if they feel that their cultural, religious beliefs and traditions are being violated and tread upon. The French failed to remember that economic justice, more often than not, takes a back seat to cultural considerations.
The French, inheritors of the great French Enlightenment intellectual tradition, had become not only militarily arrogant, proud from twenty years of continuous military victory, but culturally arrogant as well, willing to grant religious and cultural freedoms to rural peasants in the Vendee, but not to the Spanish, Germans, Italians, Dutch and countless other national groups they “liberated” from feudalism. This was a suicidal mistake, as the aristocrats and nobility of these nations, unable to persuasively refute the logic of French economic, social and political reform, exploited the “cultural insensitivity” issue as a means of not only rallying popular support against the French and using said popular unity as a means to drive the French from their homelands, but also as a means of suppressing, forever, any local, popular call for similar such economic, social and political reform.
By associating French cultural and religious insensitivities with the progressive economic, political and social philosophy of the French Enlightenment, the aristocracies of occupied Europe hoped to delegitimize the Enlightenment, and prevent their populations from ever revolting, rebelling or challenging the authority of the monarchy and nobility. From 1809 to 1814, peasant populations throughout Europe joined their monarchs and nobility in massive “Wars of Liberation,” dedicated to defeating not only France and Napoleon, but all of the political, economic and social principles that Napoleon and the Revolution represented. By stoking the fires of religious and cultural fundamentalism, the Spanish, Germans, Prussians and Austrians were able to create massive armies that formed the vanguard of the forces that ultimately defeated Napoleon.
After Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, the conservative, monarchist regimes of Europe thought that they would be able to use the populist, religious and cultural fundamentalism they had created as a tool to further their own economic and political dominance in Europe, as tools to perpetuate the conservative social order. They created the “Holy Alliance,” as a means of promoting monarchy and Christianity throughout Europe, and opposing democracy, secularism and populist economic/social/political revolt wherever it reared its head. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Alliance. Yet, in so doing, these monarchs and noblemen had stoked dangerous embers, the flaming of ethnic and religious-based hatred and intolerance which would sow the seeds of violent, racist, fundamentalist, anti-democratic and authoritarian regimes to come. Ironically, the conservative classes that had largely created the faux-populism of authoritarian nationalism and racism would be consumed by their creation, as the Frankenstein monster of fascism and Nazism would turn on the aristocratic classes that helped give birth to them and anyone else that would oppose them…
The history of the French Revolution and Napoleon is important, because it shows us the competing forces at work in any massive undertaking for social, economic and political progress. Progressives justly oppose the “Old Order” or “Ancient Regime” on economic, social and political grounds, yet in so doing, they either inadvertently or intentionally attack the cultural and religious beliefs of large numbers of socially/religiously conservative people, people who would otherwise have supported the economic/political/social reforms of the Progressives, had they not had their cultural/religious beliefs infringed upon. Aristocrats and Oligarchs, unable to refute or rebut the economic/social/political arguments of the Progressives, notice the cultural/religious hubris, arrogance and insensitivity of the Progressives. Using the vast capital resources at their disposal, the Aristocrats and Oligarchs spin the macro-level debate. No longer is the debate about a “Progressive Economic/Social/Political Order” versus an “Oppressive, Feudalistic Economic/Social/Political Order.” Instead, the debate is changed, and it becomes one of “Traditional Culture and Religious Values” versus “Arrogant Atheistic Cultural Elites Trying to Impose Their Alien Way of Life Upon Us.”
This cyclical cultural narrative repeats itself, over and over again, throughout Western history, much to the benefit of the economic/political/social Elites, and to the detriment of Progressives, who are usually unaware of its occurrence until it is too late.
This phenomenon has occured in the United States at numerous times during our history, phenomena which I will discuss, at length, in subsequent posts, in the hope of developing a more nuanced and culturally sensitive progressive/leftist/populist approach to economic/social/political reform within the United States.
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Comments
Thank God we have television now. We'll never need a revolution ever again.
-- Most excellent observation, my friend!
Rated -- and up with Bastille Day, too. :-)
You obviously put a lot of work into this, and I agree with many of the conclusions you draw. However, I don't think the reasons for the failure of the French Revolution are quite as simple as you suggest, Napoleon, like Alexander and Caesar before him, fell victim to his own megalomania -- and a gross over-extension of his military forces. His militarymisadventures in Egypt and Russia were incredibly expensive, so emptying the state treasury that Napoleon was forced to sell the vast Louisiana Territory at a fire-sale price in a vain attempt to continue his wars.
Thus, there was no money available to provide for the commonweal, and that was what got the royals in trouble in the first place. That, as much as anything, led to the disaffection of the rural poor. Again, "Ridicule" offers some interesting insights into some of this -- tho' it predates the Napoleonic era.
As for religion, Napoleon certainly understood the purpose and the necessity of religion to keep the teeming masses placated, and said as much with an infamous quipL "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."
All that said, I understand the parallel you were trying to draw with today, and there is much merit in the comparison. You are quite right that it is the rural poor and religious fundamentalists who most fervently supported the very govt that undid them over the last three decades, a govt of, by and for the wealthy -- our landed aristocracy.
However, the parallel doesn't hold when it comes to the military. The poor, and especially the rural poor and religious fundamentalists, make up a disproportionate part of our military forces because they tend to be more blindly patriotic and, frankly, because the military offers them jobs.
Like Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon, Bush/Cheney were undone by megalomania -- and they may well have taken us down with them. The trillions wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan could have bought much progress in this country, and not just in healthcare reform. Infrastructure and education have deteriorated badly in the three decades since the Reagan Revolution, and like France, greed and guns may well have planted the seeds of destruction for our own revolution.
I feel the same way when we analyze the Second World War. Much of the analysis is on Hitler and his megalomaniacal thirst for world conquest and his strident, murderous anti-semitism that resulted in the Holocaust. This is fine, but we must also look at the role economics, sociology and politics played, not only in early German victories, but also in their later defeats. Ascribing these wholly to “Hitler’s over-reaching ambition” is insufficient, as it makes it appear that he could have won and/or lost the war wholly due to his own decisions, as if the Allies would have been unable to stop him, absent his mis-steps. This is clearly incorrect, particularly when you look at how German industry was being vastly outmatched by American and Soviet industrial manufacturing by as early as 1942, and how the US and USSR utilized women both on the battlefield and in factories, whereas the Germans totally refused to do so, throughout the course of the war. Focusing purely on Hitler as the cause of the war is also wrong, in that it takes the focus, spotlight, and perhaps any potential consequential blame, on the corporate and aristocratic interests that brought him and the NSDAP into power in the first place, not so much because these interests were militaristic or anti-semitic, but because they were afraid of the threat posed by the socialism of Rosa Luxemburg and others like her, and saw the Nazis as the greatest hedge against a socialist revolution which would, as its first order of business, confiscate and redistribute the property of the wealthy industrial class in Germany. Focusing exclusively on the “Great Man Theory of History,” allows the crimes and responsibility of these other characters to go un-noticed.
I think that many liberals today like to draw comparisons between George W. Bush and Napoleon, in an effort to discredit the former’s campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly from an “imperial overstretch” point of view, such as that put forward by Paul Kennedy in his book, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.” This is fine, and I agree with the comparison, but I think there are many more comparisons and lessons that can be learned, aside from the oft-quoted instance of “imperial overstretch.” However, by so generalizing, we often miss the more sublte, substructural forces at work, particularly the tactics, economics and political methods used by Napoleon’s enemies, in helping cause both his demise, and the demise of French Revolutionary ideals, most of which he kept in place. In a sense, Napoleon (as well as Caesar, for that matter) was more analogous to Hugo Chavez or Stalin, than he was to Alexander and Hitler, at least in terms of the domestic social, political and economic policies pursued by him, which put him at odds with the economic, political and social status quo prevalent at the time. Napoleon, like Caesar and unlike Bush, was a left-of-center authoritarian. He was not, in any sense of the word, seen as conservative, moderate, reactionary or in any way looking to uphold the established social and economic order of the day. His movement and role was just as revolutionary as that of Robespierre.
I also think it is improper to generalize that Napoleonic France was “pro-Church,” from the existence of various pro-Catholic quotations attributed to Napoleon during his famous 1801 Concordat with the Vatican, in which Catholic Church property was returned to the Church, the clergy re-admitted to France and the like. Napoleon did this as First Consul in an attempt to assuage the anger and hatred of the émigré French nobility, and to calm down the peasants in the Vendee. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordat_of_1801
He also admired the social order brought forth by the Church, and wished to curb the populist excesses of the Revolution.
What many fail to realize, though, was that Napoleon’s concordat fell apart in a few years, as he severely limited the power and influence of the Vatican and Church hierarchy in French life, forced the clergy to take loyalty oaths to the state, and put state loyalty and loyalty to the secular regime above loyalty to the Vatican. Eventually, Napoleon so infringed upon Vatican rights and Church interests in France, that there was an enormous rift between Napoleon and the Pope, Pius VII. Eventually this rift was so bad that Napoleon sent his troops to Rome, occupied the Vatican City and arrested the Pope, bringing him back to France in chains and kept him in a prison until his liberation by allied forces in 1814. These acts resulted in Napoleon’s excommunication from the Catholic Church and the Church officially labeling him as the Anti-Christ, something the Church has not done since, not even in regard to Hitler or Stalin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_and_the_Catholic_Church. The greatest obstacle to Napoleon’s order in Europe was not his aggressiveness, but the French nation’s hostility to local culture and the Church. One cannot maintain the loyalty of strongly Catholic countries such as Spain, France, Italy and Austria, while one has the Papal See in a French dungeon. This much is clear.
Finally, while it is true that Napoleon’s ambitions and aggressiveness led to his downfall, it is, as I mentioned above, too simplistic to merely attribute his downfall and the concomitant collapse of French Revolutionary doctrine to his ambition. Napoleon kept much of the legal and political reform of the Revolution in-tact under his reign. Indeed, it was the ideological threat posed by this maintenance of the Jacobin Reforms, that spurned many of Europe’s monarchs to declare war on him. Throughout the entire course of the Wars of Napoleon, he never once declared war on his enemies, except in the case of Spain and Russia. Prior to this, he was almost always attacked first, mostly by an alliance of Britain, Prussia and Austria. Indeed, it was the conflict with Britain, and its financial attempts to dominate Europe, that led to his ill-considered invasion of Spain, Portugal and later, Russia. While Napoleon was a highly aggressive dictator, most of his wars were defensive in nature, as the monarchies around him constantly sought his downfall, the restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy, and the elimination of French Enlightenment ideas. This is very similar to how the US and its western allies sought to discredit and delegitimize communism and socialism throughout the Cold War, where Russian military actions, while aggressive, never posed as much of a threat to the security of the US and Britain, as did the threat of communist/socialist revolutionary ideology posed to the economic interests of the Anglo-American aristocracy. Their principal concerns were, first and foremost, the preservation of their economic interests and class-position, rather than “saving the world for freedom.”
The principal failure of liberals and progressives in the US has been their antagonistic behavior toward moderate and socially conservative Americans, of all races. Democratic Party positions on abortion, gay marriage, and radical liberal attitudes toward issues like the teaching of Western Civilization on university campuses, such as Stanford, or even the playing of Schubert’s Ave Maria in public high school music productions, have been the PRIMARY AND PRINCIPAL method by which the Republicans have been able to defeat the Democrats, and in so doing, preventing social, economic and political reform from taking place. This is why the Tea Party exists. This is why Pat Buchanan exists. It is the principal method by which the Democratic Party is defeated, time and again. The Democrats win, when they focus on the economy and don’t fall for the traps set by the GOP on the abovementioned cultural/religious issues. When the Democrats abandon populist economics, and side with the GOP on economic issues, and try to win votes through radical positions in the so-called “CULTURE WARS,” they lose, constantly. The “culture war” was what helped Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush win. It was the fuel that enabled the Gingrich-led Republican Revolution in the House. The wealthy pump money into these debates and get folks to vote on cultural/religious issues, rather than economic ones. The culture-wars are what have destroyed the Democrats in this country and their continued failure to realize and neutralize this canard, used by the GOP, is what will cost them the next election. The Tea Party could be so easily neutralized by the Democrats, but they lack the intelligence and/or inclination to do it, because they have a deep distaste for social conservatives and the populist approach favored by the poor and lower-middle classes.
It's all well and good to immerse yourself in history, but how about the present? What national figure on your side speaks for you? And who on the other side do you think progressives should be listening to? McConnell? Boehner? Newt? Either Cheney? W? Grassley? Rove? Palin? Ensign? Vitter? Giuliani? Mostly what I hear from the other side is little more than hypocritical tripe like that from Eric Cantor, arguing "the other guys are doing it, too" or "the other guys did it first/worse".
These are not the arguments of grown-ups or people truly interested in dialogue. And the few on the other side who dare to speak the truth -- people like Chris Buckley and David Frum -- are drummed from Conservative ranks. It appears to me it is the Right, not the Left, that has lost its mind -- and its soul.
The Democrats have 3 options, but only one of them will work. 2 of them have been tried, and both of these have failed. The first option is the George McGovern approach. Obama represents this school. It consists of minorities, upper middle class white liberals, professionals and college students working together for moderate economic and social reform. It does not seek real political reform, as it tends to view the Constitution and the system as "holy," if only the corrupting influences are purged. In a sense, it a secular version of the puritanical rhetoric of Cotton Mather and the like, which makes sense, since its roots are in Massachussetts. The problem with this approach is that (a) it often forgets the problems faced by real poor people and (b) they often attack cultural and religious traditions valued by the Great Silent Majority, such that they alienate the voters. If they win, it is only slightly. Obama would have lost the election, or would have only slightly won it, had the economy not tanked. He only won it, due to the economic problems of Ohio and PA and the white, working class voters who revolted from the GOP and voted for him in those states.
The second option is the approach favored by Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council. This approach espouses radical and/or moderate social reform, but economic and political conservatism. It basically mimics the GOP on economic issues. This approach favors NAFTA, more restrictions on Unions and the like, but vocally embraces strong rhetoric on issues like women's rights, minority rights, civil rights, gay rights, etc....This approach has blended, to a degree, with the McGovernite approach mentioned above. This is especially so, given George McGovern's traditional antipathy toward unions and his traditional pro-corporate and anti-working class stances. It is different from the approach mentioned above, in that the former has a tendency to distrust the "Establishment" more, whereas the latter (the DLC), tends to love the economic establishment, and wishes to "bribe" them into accepting civil rights and social justice, provided the economic interests of the rich aren't threatened. This is unsustainable for obvious reasons.
The Third Approach is the one I advocate. It is the policy of the radical agrarian populists in the late 19th century, the policy espoused by Teddy Roosevelt, of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. It is the Democratic Party that is unabashadly pro-Union, pro-Working Class. A party which espouses Economic Nationalism. A party which pays rhetorical and ritualistic homage to the cultural and religious beliefs of the Great Silent Majority, but is not strangled by them, such that meaningful reform on issues like gay rights, women's rights, civil rights and the like can take place. Michael Moore is of this persuasion, as was Paul Wellstone, but they were a rarity after the mid-1980s among the Democrats, because many Dems wrongly thought that Reagan won power because of his economic ideas. They misinterpreted the GOP victory in the 1980s, and forgot that Reagan won because of masculine foreign policy hawkishness and culture-war issues on the domestic front. The Dems, like the French in 1919, drew the wrong lessons from the past conflict and organized a platform and strategy that would be fatal in the conflicts to come.
If the Democratic Party wishes to stay in power, it must become much, much more economically populist. It should push for progress on civil rights, the environment, gay rights and abortion, but do so within a rhetorical paradigm that does not threaten the paradigmatic beliefs of the Great Silent Majority. As such, gay rights should be marketed as a way to grant freedom and equality to hard-working, patriotic Americans, men and women who have served and died in all of our nation's wars. It must be packaged in a patriotic, nationalistic narrative.
All great Progressive Presidents have won, because they package left-leaning policies of progress within the conservative rhetorical constructs of the Great Silent Majority. Teddy Roosevelt was a master of this. He made socialism sound like a patriotic duty. John F. Kennedy did this. He was a war hero, macho and seemed like a movie star war hero. His challenges to the nation, although progressive and Wilsonian, were all phrased and articulated within the nation's conservative, messianic worldview. Lincoln did this, marketing abolition as a religious and nationalistic duty during the last year of the war. FDR passed many of his programs because he made the Big Companies appear Un-American and Un-Patriotic by putting their greed, selfishness and wealth ahead of the interests of the Great Silent Majority.
Democrats do not do this today, because we have not properly analyzed history and because we are scared. Obama succeeds when he is more populist and folksy. All politicians do. He has the rhetoric of patriotism down, too. But he is too hesitant to do this, compromises too much. Granted, his upbringing and education may make him disdain the populist approach, but even FDR, blueblood that he was, adopted it in his later campaigns. Obama should, too.
Democratic Party rhetoric shouldn't be populist to win the nutjobs on the right over, but to assuage the fears of the moderates and independants, and pursue policies that will help them most in an economic, social, political sense. You co-opt the fire, if you will, neutralize their potency, such that it doesn't harm you. You use a populist shield to defend yourself against the Republican Fire, but then use an ecomomically populist sword to stab the GOP in the heart.
Remember--the Xtian right, before the Cold War and Red Scare, was strongly in the camp of the Progressives, Abolitionists, Populists and the like. They were anti-corporation in a big way. It was the cultural threat posed by Communism (its atheism), and the perceived military threat it posed abroad, that pushed strongly religious folks into the arms of the Big Companies. It is not a necessary or permanent alliance. It can easily be ripped assunder.
Regarding instinctual resistance to change, I agree with you. Some people cannot be reasoned with. Instead, we should hit them with sticks. 8)
Look at the fundamentalists who refuse the teaching of evolution. Sure, I have no problem teaching the various creation myths and folklores of various cultures, in a history or anthropology class. But forcing the Judeo-Christian creation story on kids, for fear of evolutionary science, is simply madness, I think. This sort of nonsense should not be tolerated, at all.
As for where we agree, in a recent post, A Tale of Two TeddysI praised TR. He was too militaristic in my view, but he was otherwise a true progressive, which is by my definition a true conservative, that is to say, someone who understands Hobbesian conservatism -- the notion that the only legitimate function of govt is to promote the commonweal.
Today's conservatives are what I call consumatives, and there's nothing conservative about their "me-first, get it while you can" ideology. That ideology owes more to Ayn Rand than to Hobbes or Adam Smith. I've explored all this in any number of posts which you'll find links to on the lower left-hand column of my blog.
R