Here’s something that bugs me…
…about the current state of left intellectualism (not the Euston folks…). From the L.A. Times review (yes, not the book, and a cautionary note must be inserted) of Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book “Dancing In The Streets”
…[her] rhetoric reaches a fever pitch in her description of France in 1790; she gets caught up in the public celebrations on the first anniversary of the revolution, and her unabashed intellectual enthusiasm electrifies these pages. “With the shared wine and food, the dancing that wound through whole cities and out into the fields, this has to have been one of the great moments, in all of human history, to have been alive.”
Yup. 1790 in Paris. One of the great moments in human history to have been alive. See also ‘Romanticism and Terrorism’…
Robespierre was a pretty marginal figure in 1790, the last year in which optimistic hopes for the Revolution were still pretty much universal across French society. It was after the winter of 1791 that things began going south….
From Wikipedia on the “French Revolution”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution#Intrigues_and_radicalism
At that point in history, the Revolution was still on course to establish a constitutional monarchy. The Republic, and the Terror, would come subtantially later. Truly it must have been a heck of a party July 14 1790.
True Steve, but one could have forseen (and Edmund Burke did) as early as the storming of the Bastille what genie was being let out of the bottle in France. I’m sure one can argue that the revolution was “highjacked” by Robespierre in 1791. But those would be the same people who argue the Russian revolution was “highjacked” by Stalin. And that’s not taking into account the bloody results of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions as well. Somehow revolutions nearly always end up “highjacked” by some bloody-minded tyrant or other. Yet people like Ehrenreich keep thinking it can somehow be done without the bloodshed and tyranny. Acutally, more accurately, they think that if they were the tyrants their tyranny would somehow be benevolent.
Damn, you’re right. I thought the ‘Menshevik’ phase only lasted three or four months, and it obviously was far longer.
Hmmm. I need to think a bit about whether this completely negates my post – it may well.
A.L.
No it does not because the Revolution empowered the overthrow of one king and nobility for another.
That was the whole point.
No wonder Ehrenreich loved it, her kind of King supplanted the old kind of king.
That’s the whole point of Leftism — a new monarch and nobility to rule the people instead of the people ruling themselves.
Romanticism and terrorism are the same idiotic notion that just the “right” set of kings will change human nature.
Noble Savage? “Before the Dawn” details the ugly reality of primitive societies that engage in daily brutal bloodletting unimaginable to most comfortable suburbanites.
I’m not a great fan of Ehrenreich (from excerpts I’ve read), but from the amazon.com quips, she’s talking about something interesting: collective joy, expressed though dance, together with the family/clan/tribe/movement.
Historians William and Robert McNeill touched on this theme in “their recent survey of world history,”:http://www.amazon.com/Human-Web-Birds-Eye-World-History/dp/0393925684/sr=1-6/qid=1171245590/ref=sr_1_6/103-4935323-8562266?ie=UTF8&s=books
pointing out that the role of dance, movement, and kinesthetics have been largely ignored.
What Ehrenreich said and meant to say about the Revolution: I guess we’d have to read the book.
I suspect that Ms. Ehrenreich, unlike others, remembered her Wordsworth:
FRENCH REVOLUTION
AS IT APPEARED TO ENTHUSIASTS AT ITS COMMENCEMENT.
REPRINTED FROM “THE FRIEND”
OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!–Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress–to assist the work,
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playfellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
Their ministers,–who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it;–they, too, who, of gentle mood,
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves;–
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their heart’s desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;
Were called upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us,–the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all! 1805.
(blame strange formatting on the commenting software)
BTW, having skimmed her book, it seems to center on the premise that authorities, elites, and institutions have always tried to suppress–or at least control–outbreaks of popular feeling, enthusiasm, etc.
_authorities, elites, and institutions have always tried to suppress–or at least control–outbreaks of popular feeling, enthusiasm, etc._
Of course they do. Because when those outbreaks get out of hand you get the Terror, the Purges, the Holocaust, the Killing Fields, and the Cultural Revolution. Rouseau was wrong. Free man from his chains (of tradition, religion, and legitimate authority) and he builds death camps.
“That’s the whole point of Leftism — a new monarch and nobility to rule the people instead of the people ruling themselves.”
In the 1790s, the “people ruling themselves” was the most left-wing ideology there was. Democracy was a repugnant idea that necessitated virtually the entirety of Europe declaring war on France. Combining this external threat with the openly stated goals of many of the former ruling class to commit treason and side with the foreign invaders is what made the terror inevitable.
In addition, the terror is overblown. It killed about 50,000 poeple over several years. Many of those were indeed traitors who sought foreign aid in overthrowing the government so that they might execute those who overthrew the monarchy, though others were just political murders or personal vendettas. Compare it to the St. Bartholemew’s day massacre, where 20,000 innocent people were slaughtered in a single day on the monarchy’s order, just to make its marginally more secure.
No Njorl, the historical record contradicts your assertion.
The Committee was non-democratic, the “vanguard of the people” but accountable to no one but the new King in a different guise. Just as the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was just another king.
The French Revolution specifically rejected the idea of checks, balances, and limited power among any one branch of government and divided government in favor of Kingship in a new guise. It was Caesarism without a Caesar, and the advent of Napoleon so smoothly into the levers of power as Emperor only makes the point.
Moreover the threat of this new, universalist, ideological Caesarism recalling the Roman Empire and determined to spread it naturally caused a reaction by fearful regimes determined not to be overthrown. Much the way the Communist International provoked fear by it’s assertion of a universal and world-wide Communist empire.
The terror of course was NOT overblown because it targeted deliberately those who sought an “American” style government with limits on tyranny, by those who wished a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” As such intellectuals and scientists just as with Lenin and Stalin were the primary targets. The people were bought off with Caesarist bribes, though doubtless their time would have come eventually.
Lincoln had this to say:
“They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it.”
As for Ehrenreich, no doubt she liked the social engineering of Kingship (Stalin called writers the engineers of people’s souls, building a “new man”). The French Revolution was the first expression of building a “new man” by explicitly rejecting all traditions: from the Calendar to marriage and family (a pet project of Ehrenreich a hard-left feminist).
Ehrenreich herself has written of the ideal state of relations between men and women: abolition of the nuclear family and marriage, “short, passionate affairs” between men and women, with childcare explicitly NOT the province of parents but “the community” which presumably wants nothing more than to raise other rich and “special” people’s children. Communitarian Kingship at it’s worst. Which the French Revolution was the first exemplifier.
The American Revolution was all about the individual rights of men, while the French Revolution was about the communitarian re-invention of a people under a new king or Caesar.
ho ho ho ho Jim, that is the reason it is teached in Spain only the French and Russian revolutions!
I’d like to point out just two things: the kings of France were related to many other monarchs in Europe, a french dynasty ruled Spain since 1700 (with expected results). So the _traitors_ you say were simply supporting the cousing or the brother-in-law of his own king.
Secondly,
_ideological Caesarism recalling the Roman Empire_
Well, I think there has not been in Europe nothing as political advanced as the Roman Empire since the Roman Empire itself. Don’t forget that Caesar teached the word *Republic* _Res Publica_ to the ancestors of Napoleon and his subdits, a thing that they hate to heard. Maybe at the other side of the pond you’ve found something with a closer resemblance to what the Roman civilization was.
‘No Njorl, the historical record contradicts your assertion.
The Committee was non-democratic, the “vanguard of the people” but accountable to no one but the new King in a different guise. Just as the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was just another king.’
I’m not arguing that the committee was democratic. I am arguing that the reactionary forces that attacked France attacked it because they feared it would be democratic. The committee was the result. Checks and balances among the French revolutionaries almost certainly would have meant a gruesome and painful death for most of them at the hands of foreign soldiers. Show me a popular uprising that is not faced with exterminationist reactionary forces first, before you condemn them out of hand.
‘The terror of course was NOT overblown because it targeted deliberately those who sought an “American” style government with limits on tyranny, by those who wished a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” As such intellectuals and scientists just as with Lenin and Stalin were the primary targets. ‘
That’s ridiculous. There were no primary targets. Any who were considered threats to the state were likely to be killed. For every intellectual or scientist killed there were probably 100 farmers killed for hoarding grain.
And you’re about 50 years too early for the “dictatorship of the prolitariat”.
Well, if you want to be really technical, it was the dictatorship of the sans-culottes.
The Terror was, essentially, a radical center forcing itself on the rest of the country. Scores of thousands died, not because they felt threatened by democracy, but because they wanted to be able to rule themselves, without interference from the Parisian radicals: and the Parisian radicals refused to allow them the freedom to rule themselves. They wanted to worship God in the way they felt he should be worshipped, but the Parisian radicals demanded that religion be subordinated to the demands of the state.
And in the end, competing elites overthrew the Parisian radicals; and because it was against the interest of those new elites to continue the Terror, the Terror ended and the corruptions of the Directory began; and then the fall into Napoleonic Ceasarism began.
And (note to Senor Aguilar) there is nothing admirable in the politics and constitution of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, where exploitative conquest and government sanctioned bandrity (under the name of taxes) was the order of the day. [If you doubt me, refresh your knowledge of Spain under Roman rule.]
kishnevi,
Hispania before the Romans was divided in a bunch of tribes, fighting against each other, and after the Romans was a country by itself, with law, irrigation, roads and organization.
With all respect, I cannot help to remind Life of Brian, “scene 9”:http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-09.htm
Obviously, the _kittim_ were merciless with their enemies, otherwise they hadn’t built an empire.
There has to be something admirable with them when “their architecture”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome is so directly “imitated”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol
“And (note to Senor Aguilar) there is nothing admirable in the politics and constitution of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, ”
If you judge ancient governments by modern standards, they all fail miserably. Even democratic Athens sanctioned slavery, exploited its allies and started wars of aggression.
Judged against its contemporaries, the Roman Republic wasn’t too bad in theory. There were checks against tyranny, and mechanisms to balance the wishes of the propertied classes and the masses. Had they not conquered so many of their neighbors, their constitution might have been adequate. The influx of land to those who were already landed, and the influx of cheap labor via slavery, broke the system.
The Roman state was built on the premise of conquering and then exploiting the conquered. They butchered and looted when they came, and looted for as long as they stayed. Again, I direct your attention to how the Romans conquered Spain and its fighting tribes, and the way they ruled Spain–Spain to them was essentially a location for silver mines. Building aqueducts and nice looking buildings is nothing compared to that. There is nothing admirable about the Romans. Not even their architecture, which they simply took from the Greeks and improved with technology.
“True Steve, but one could have forseen (and Edmund Burke did) as early as the storming of the Bastille what genie was being let out of the bottle in France. I’m sure one can argue that the revolution was “highjacked” by Robespierre in 1791. But those would be the same people who argue the Russian revolution was “highjacked” by Stalin.”
No, it would be more like the folks who argue that the Russian revolution was hijacked by Lenin. The pre-terror revolutionaries, the followers of Lafayette (still honored with names of streets, towns, and colleges all over the USA) and even the Girondin Republicans were more like the Cadets and Kerensky SRs than they were like the bolsheviks, or even the mensheviks for that matter.
Did the revolution inevitably entail the terror? thats a reasonable historical question, one about which reasonable people may disagree. Not everyone has to agree with Burke, after all. Admiring the first stages of the revolution hardly makes one an admirer of Robespierre.
That said, Im not sure that the authoritarian state always suppresses public joy. It can also manipulate it, and of course can use it as part of a revolution to bring itself to power – call it the one dancer, one dance, once, problem.
“The Roman state was built on the premise of conquering and then exploiting the conquered.”
In the first 170 years of its existance, this state built on the premise of conquest didn’t manage to conquer anything.