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.
