reflection

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Four Versions of Progress part 4

Radical Communitarianism

In 1794, French Revolutionaries dug up a coffin in northern France. They moved the body to the Panthéon in Paris. The Panthéon is a mausoleum, an impressive building for housing tombs. It had been a Catholic church before the Revolution. It was built a couple generations earlier and called the Church of Sainte-Geneviève. But the revolutionaries repurposed the church as a secular building, a mausoleum dedicated to the memory of French writers and leaders. Think about this: One way a society can liberate itself from its own history is to change the purpose and meaning of physical structures. Imagine if we changed the White House into a hotel and the Capital Building into a shopping mall. What would that say about the system of government we inherited from the past? The French revolutionaries did something like this. They sought to liberate themselves from inherited laws, institutions, and practices, including the religion of previous generations. They thus turned churches into secular buildings. The coffin they moved to the Panthéon in 1794 was that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The point was to elevate Rousseau to the status of an intellectual leader of the Revolution. Recall we introduced Rousseau in the previous lecture. Rousseau was a radical communitarian, the fourth Enlightenment way of thinking about society and politics. Rousseau wrote The Social Contract (1762), which began with the famous words:

• “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” As we said, Rousseau’s “chains” were a metaphor. They refer to the laws, institutions, and practices inherited from earlier generations. Rousseau’s radical communitarian version of progress promoted freedom from these things, liberation from what history has passed down to us. He thinks human reason can radically remake society without the human passions getting out of control and causing violence (or justifying violence in the name of liberation).

• This description sounds similar to Thomas Paine’s radical liberal version of progress.

• But important differences distinguish radical liberalism and radical communitarianism.

• We need to explore the distinct features of Rousseau’s thinking in order to see the distinct nature of the radical communitarian understanding of progress.

Rousseau’s Radical Communitarian Progress

As a basis for discussing Rousseau, let’s recall the following points about classical liberalism (Four Versions part 2). We said that classical liberals like James Madison promote a competitive commercial economy, which we described like this:

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• Individuals are born with equal natural rights, but unequal talents – what Madison calls “diversity in the faculties of men.”

• Individuals have an equal natural right to use their unequal talents to create things – to produce and sell goods and services – in order to acquire private property (money).

• These unequal talents prevent society from having one overall economic interest – the unequal talents, in Madison’s words, are an “obstacle to a uniformity of interests.”

• Modern society will thus have “various and interfering interests” – a competitive economy. Competition between producers and competition between sellers will lead to better goods and services for consumers – i.e., progress.

A competitive commercial society is part of the classical liberal understanding of progress. Classical liberals see individuals exercising their natural rights in civil society to pursue their own interests – including their commercial interests – as leading to progress. Classical liberals thus wanted a competitive commercial society to replace the Old Regime society of privilege and hierarchy discussed in the last lecture. Rousseau rejects this classical liberal thinking. He rejects a competitive commercial society. Rousseau argues the following:

• Humans are born roughly equal in talents, not unequal in talents as classical liberals say. Everyone might not have the exact same level of talents; there might be small differences. But those differences are not significant, not nearly as significant as classical liberals think.

• This rough equality in talents should lead to an egalitarian society. “Egalitarian” means social and economic equality. Like with talents, Rousseau does not envision perfect social and economic equality, but a rough equality.

But society was not egalitarian when Rousseau wrote The Social Contract (1762). No society in the world was. Why not? If people all had roughly equal talents, why didn’t that result in a roughly egalitarian society? Rousseau has several responses. He blames the Old Regime privileges discussed in the last lecture for preventing egalitarianism. He also blames what classical liberals wanted to replace Old Regime privileges with – a competitive commercial society. Rousseau argues that

• Competitive commerce brings corruption, not progress like classical liberals say.

• Modern commercial society corrupts human nature by teaching us to pursue our private interests (private property) rather than the collective interest of society.

• This pursuit of private interests, especially private property, is the root of society’s miseries. It leads to social inequality rather than an egalitarian society.

Rousseau seeks to remove from society what he sees as the corrupting influence of the pursuit of private property. He sees that pursuit as twisting the natural equality of humans into an unjust social inequality. Progress, for him, means liberating humans not only from Old Regime privileges, but also from modern commercial society, liberating people from focusing on their

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private pursuits in life. Such liberation will allow humans with rough equality in talents to build a roughly egalitarian society. But how, you might ask. How exactly will this liberation from modern commerce and the pursuit of private property happen? How will humans build an egalitarian society?

• Rousseau argues that individuals must surrender their rights to the community in order to build an egalitarian society.

• Individual rights are private rights, the rights for private pursuits.

• Rousseau wants to “liberate” people from focusing on private pursuits, especially but not only the pursuit of private property.

Here’s where Rousseau’s radical communitarian view of progress differs from Paine’s radical liberal view of progress. Although both Rousseau and Paine seek liberation from inherited laws, institutions, and practices, Rousseau argues that liberation requires surrendering individual rights, surrendering one’s focus on one’s own private pursuits in life. That’s what individual rights are – the rights for private pursuits. Here are a few quotes from Rousseau indicating the need to surrender individual rights to the community:

• “The individual member alienates [i.e., gives] himself totally to the whole community together with all his rights.”

• Giving up of one’s individual rights includes one’s property: “At the moment when the community comes into existence, each of its members gives himself to it, with any powers that he has, including all his possessions.”

The point of surrendering individual rights to the community is to build an egalitarian society. It is to liberate oneself from focusing on private pursuits, including the pursuit of private property, and to pursue the good of society instead.

• Rousseau has a name for when individuals surrender their rights. When all members of a community do this, they create what he calls a “General Will.”

• The General Will is the creation of one, overall collective interest in society. Individuals serve this collective interest. They have been liberated from focusing on their private interests.

• Recall that classical liberals like James Madison deny it is possible to create one collective interest in society. Classical liberals say modern society will have “various and interfering interests” because humans have various and unequal talents.

• But Rousseau thinks humans have roughly equal talents. And he views “various and interfering interests” not as natural, but the result of modern commercial society and the pursuit of private property.

Here’s an important point: Rousseau argues that surrendering individual rights and serving the General Will is “true freedom.” It is liberation from the focus on private pursuits and private property. Those who do not appreciate this liberation – this “true freedom” – might have to be forced to appreciate it. A quote from Rousseau:

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• “Whoever refuses to obey the General Will shall be forced to obey it . . . which means nothing else but that he will be forced to be free.”

Rousseau thinks that once humans are liberated from focusing on private pursuits, and pursue the good of society instead, their rough equality in talents will become more obvious and society will become more egalitarian.

“There Must be a General Will”

By the time French revolutionaries moved Rousseau’s coffin to the Panthéon in 1794, the French Revolution had become more radical.

• In 1792, revolutionaries had arrested the King.

• They put him and the Queen on trial for treason and executed them both in 1793. The guillotine was the method of execution.

• In the minds of the revolutionaries, the guillotine represented equality – an equal method of death for counter-revolutionaries.

The French Revolution had always included different groups or factions. Some revolutionaries were classical liberals; others were radical liberals; and others were radical communitarians. It is common in revolutions for different factions initially to cooperate as they fight the old system, in this case Old Regime privileges. As the old system fades, revolutionary factions begin to compete with each other for power. By 1792, the faction which gained increasing power in France was a group of intellectuals who liked the radical communitarian way of thinking. They were known as Jacobins. The Jacobins gained power by allying themselves with the lower classes who had been engaged in violence since 1789 (see Four Versions part 3). By presenting themselves as leaders of the lower classes – and often justifying the violence – the Jacobins developed popular support for their ideas, which included pushing the Revolution in a more radical direction. Many Jacobin leaders liked Rousseau and his radical communitarian view of progress.

• One Jacobin leader, Jean-Paul Marat, proclaimed his desire “to live simply and according to the precepts of Rousseau.”

• Another Jacobin leader was Maximilien Robespierre who said “Rousseau is the one man who, through the loftiness of his soul and the grandeur of his character, showed himself worthy of the role of teacher of mankind.”

At the end of 1792, Robespierre wrote, “there must be a General Will.” He and other Jacobins knew that different factions were competing for power in France – classical liberals, radical liberals, and even royalists who wanted to create a new king. The Jacobins used Rousseau’s ideas to try to overcome these competing interests and create one overall collective interest – a General Will.

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In reality, though, trying to create a General Will – trying to create one overall collective interest – means not overcoming competing interests but silencing or removing people who have different interests. This is an important point: It might sound good for a politician to claim to stand above competing interests and represent the General Will. But in reality such a claim often means silencing and removing those who disagree with the politicians in power.

• Remember, Rousseau argues that people must surrender their individual rights and be “liberated” from focusing on their own private pursuits.

• But what about those who do not want to surrender their rights? What about those who do not want to be liberated from their own private pursuits?

• Rousseau’s answer is that such people “will be forced to be free.”

• The Jacobins gave the same answer – force. Let’s look at Jacobin policies during 1793-94, the period known as the Reign of Terror.

The French Revolution’s Radical Phase, 1793-94

The Jacobins pursued radical communitarian progress. They promised liberation, freeing people from the past and radically remaking society to be more egalitarian. This pursuit of radical progress included rewriting the calendar. The Jacobins rewrote the calendar so that 1792 was the year 1 – year 1 of the French Republic (meaning France without a king).

• This rewriting of the calendar represented liberation from history.

• It represented liberation from the laws, institutions, and practices of the past by reordering the recording of time.

• Year 1 meant starting society and history over again, as if the past did not exist. Along with rewriting the calendar, the Jacobins sought to erase the culture of the past, the beliefs and values inherited from previous generations. France was a Catholic society, with cathedrals and churches throughout the country.

• The Jacobins sought liberation from this religious tradition.

• They destroyed the obviously Catholic parts of churches – altars, crucifixes, statues of saints, stained-glass windows, etc.

• They then converted church buildings into “Temples of Reason” – the name itself highlighted the Jacobins’ faith in the power of reason to remake society.

These were radical policies. Many Frenchmen and women had strong ties to their Catholics beliefs. Some formed a counter-revolutionary army called the Royal Catholic Army to fight to overthrow the revolution. The Jacobins, though, developed economic policies designed to build popular support for their ideas among the lower and working classes, and to push society in a more egalitarian direction. Here are examples of the Jacobins’ economic policies:

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• Public works projects – government paid jobs – to help the unemployed and needy. The Jacobins created public bread ovens and paid workers to “bake the bread of the Revolution.” The workers received jobs and those in need received food.

• Public assistance – financial assistance for those in need, an early version of what we today call welfare.

• Price controls – government controlling prices in the economy.

• Public pensions – government payments in retirement for those who had served the public. The Jacobins’ economic policies – their alliance with the lower and working classes – were not enough by itself to create a General Will. As we said above, trying to create a General Will – one overall collective interest – means not overcoming competing interests but silencing or removing people who have different interests.

• The Jacobin Robespierre had said “there must be a General Will.”

• The Jacobin Louis de Saint-Just explained how to create the General Will. He said, “We must not only punish traitors, but all people who are not enthusiastic.”

Think about what Saint-Just is saying. His point is that to create a General Will, it is necessary to silence and remove not only “traitors” – those against Jacobin policies – but also those “who are not enthusiastic,” meaning those who are not radical enough. We might ask how much revolutionary enthusiasm is required, how radical does one have to be to escape punishment. As you might guess, there is no clear answer to that question. But the Jacobins sought to find, silence, and remove Frenchmen and women who were not radical or enthusiastic enough. Here’s how they did it:

• Surveillance Committees – the Jacobins developed a secret police force (“committees”) to spy on (“surveil”) the French people. The point was to find those lacking in revolutionary enthusiasm and then to charge them with being a “counter-revolutionary.”

• Show Trials – put counter-revolutionaries on trial. These trials were not real trials. A real trial presumes the accused is innocent, requires evidence to prove guilt, allows the accused to cross examine witnesses, and the verdict only comes at the end after the jury weighs the evidence and decides guilty or not-guilty. Show trials are not like this. Show trials are pretend trials. The accused is assumed to be guilty (the verdict is known beforehand) and the trial’s purpose is to “show” the population what happens if you lack revolutionary enthusiasm – arrest, imprisonment, and possibly execution.

o Show trials were a means of terror. They struck fear in the hearts of the French people, with each person thinking that s/he could be next if they lacked revolutionary enthusiasm, if they were not radical enough.

o The point was to silence and remove those who stood in the way of “progress,” stood in the way of creating the collective interest of society – the General Will.

o The logic of the Jacobins’ revolutionary “justice” went like this: radical progress is not possible without silencing and removing those who are not enthusiastic for radical progress.

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As you might guess, this revolutionary “justice” got out of control. Revolutionary “justice” usually has no standard, no standard of evidence and due process, and no way of defining how enthusiastic or radical one has to be. The Jacobins’ attempt to overcome competing interests, to create a society that speaks with one egalitarian voice – a General Will – led to the silencing and removing of thousands. Being not enthusiastic enough meant being a “counter- revolutionary.” And that meant arrest, imprisonment, and possibly execution. The violence unleashed on counter-revolutionaries got out of control. This often happens with movements of revolutionary progress. The violence takes on a life of its own. The Jacobins executed tens of thousands with the guillotine. But the word “counter- revolutionary” could be applied to anyone. Anyone who was said to represent a competing voice, or competing opinion, could be portrayed as opposing the collective interest of the General Will. After a period of accusing others of opposing the General Will, the Jacobins began to turn on each other. They began to accuse each other. The Jacobin Georges Danton was arrested and executed in 1794. So too was Jacobin Jacques Hebert and many others. Eventually, other Jacobins, fearing they could be next, turned on the Jacobin leader Robespierre. He too was arrested and executed. The French Revolution had clearly gotten out of control, in the name of progress. As Jacobins began arresting and executing each other for suspicion of not being enthusiastic or radical enough, the violence and bloodshed reached a peak in the summer 1794. The Revolution almost seemed to exhaust itself with terror. More moderate voices tried to re-direct events by writing a Constitution of 1795. But radicals remained who sought to overthrow this constitution and establish what they called “real equality.” One such radical egalitarian was Francois-Noël Babeuf. He was part of the “Conspiracy of Equals” which wrote the Manifesto of Equals. The Manifesto promised the ending of private property and a future of common happiness. It also promised – read this one carefully –

• “to remove from every individual the hope of ever becoming richer, or more powerful, or more distinguished, by his intelligence.”

• Think about that – trying to create an egalitarian society by preventing individuals from using their intelligence to earn distinctions or money. That’s what Babeuf meant by “real equality.”

Members of the Conspiracy of Equals failed to seize power. They were arrested and executed. Others tried to restore monarchy to France. They too failed. The French Revolution ended with the French General Napoleon Bonaparte becoming dictator in 1799. He eventually crowned himself Emperor in 1804. The Revolution ended, as many revolutions do, with a military strong man in power. The pursuit of radical progress had led to dictatorship!