Doing justice

Maximilien-Marie-Isidore de Robespierre

Nowadays many people are highly indignant when people are prosecuted only because they use their right of freedom of expression; because they expose abuses by the state; or because they want to live their own lives without interference by higher authorities who consider them a threat for the state just because of this. In modern society, it is the individual that comes first and not the state. I became again aware of this, when I read Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel, written more than a century ago; especially when I read chapter III-II, where Sorel explains why Robespierre used so much violence against his opponents. It made me clear that oppression by dictatorial regimes is not simply a matter of the exercise of power by tyrannical rulers in favour of themselves, but that it is a different way of thinking what is right. Since I think that it’s good to understand this other way thinking in order to be better able to fight against it, let me share with you what Sorel wrote.
Although in a democratic country, basically the state is subordinate to the individual, in France of the Old Régime, so in France before the Revolution of 1789, it was just the other way round: the individual was subordinate to the state. This meant that any action not supporting the state might be considered subversive and criminal. “One of the fundamental ideas of the Old Régime”, so Sorel, “had been the employment of the penal procedure to ruin any power which was an obstacle to the monarchy. … [P]enal law … was a protection granted to the chief and to a few privileged persons whom he honoured with special favour … and … the courts of justice [were] considered as instruments of royal greatness. … The king constantly demanded of his courts of justice that they should work for the enlargement of his territories. … Justice, which seems to us nowadays created to secure the prosperity of production, and to permit its free and constantly widening development, seemed created in former days to secure the greatness of the monarchy: its essential aim was not justice, hut the welfare of the State.” [italics by Sorel] And so it could happen that feudal manors were confiscated for arbitrary motives, or that individual acts were not judged from the point of view, whether the individual had the right to act so but whether they undermined the state. The State, not the individual, was central in law.
The French Revolution didn’t simply change this mentality. Such a mentality doesn’t simply change by a regime change. After the fall of the Old Régime the new leaders came from the same social layer of dignitaries that had applied the law before the Revolution. (also Robespierre was a lawyer) So, although the regime had changed, much remained the same. The ideas changed but the mentality didn’t. Following Sorel again: “The Revolution piously gathered up [the old] tradition that gave an importance to imaginary crimes …; it seemed quite natural to explain the defeats of generals by criminal intentions, and to guillotine people who had not been able to realise hopes fostered by a public opinion, that had returned to the superstitions of childhood. … [N]owadays it is not easy to understand how a citizen can be seriously accused of plotting or of keeping up a correspondence with foreign powers or their agents in order to induce them to begin hostilities, or to enter into war with France, or to furnish them with the means therefor. Such a crime supposes that the State can be imperilled by the act of one person; this appears scarcely credible to us. Actions against enemies of the king [before the Revolution] were always conducted in an exceptional manner; the procedure was simplified as much as possible; flimsy proofs which would not have sufficed for ordinary crimes were accepted; the endeavour was to make a terrible and profoundly intimidating example.” All this was also found in the new legislation after 1789, for example, as quoted by Sorel: “The proof necessary to condemn the enemies of the people is any kind of document, material, moral, verbal or written, which can naturally obtain the assent of any just and reasonable mind. Juries in giving their verdict should be guided solely by what love of their country indicates to their conscience; their aim is the triumph of the republic and, the ruin of its enemies.” [italics by Sorel]
So, although the Old Royal Regime had fallen and the citizens had taken power, this didn’t involve as yet a transition to a modern democratic state. Far from that. The regime had changed, but the personnel hadn’t. In a sense it was old wine in new bottles. After a promising start, soon the mentality of the Old Régime returned, leading to much chaos and bloodshed and to Napoleon’s restoration of the former autocratic France. It was a new “Cult of the State” (Sorel). The Old Régime had been replaced by a “democratic despotism”, in which “the Government would have been in theory the representative of everybody, controlled by an enlightened public opinion; practically it was an absolute master.” (Tocqueville)
Once I had read this section of Sorel’s Reflections on Violence, it was easy to see the similarities with present dictatorships. Then I think in the first place of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. You can see the same phenomena (less so, but they clearly are there) in several Eastern European countries. Also in countries like the Netherlands and modern France still relics of the old state mentality have been left. Comparing the Russian regime change in 1991 with the French Revolution: After the fall of the Soviet Union, first there was a period of (economic) chaos and then Putin’s Restoration followed. Look how there organisations that receive foreign money are considered “foreign agents”. Look how the press is curbed by the state. The structure of the country has changed after the fall of the Soviet Union, but the same personnel stayed and by that the Soviet mentality. Also in many other countries the state continuously tries to subject the individual. The Old Régime mentality keeps reigning everywhere. Often the law of the individual is still subordinate to the law of the state, while it should be the other way round. 

Source
All quotations are from section III-II in Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence.