Ideas about
democracy following the French Revolution:
Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism
The following texts deal with some
of the ideas about democracy following the most decisive event in Europe's political
history - the French Revolution that began in 1789. The three central 19th
century ideologies will be highlighted drawing on the work of their most influential
theorists: Conservatism (Burke), liberalism (Mill) and socialism (Marx).
Overview:
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Introduction
The French revolution was the most
decisive political event in modern Europe. While some regarded it as a disaster,
for others it was a call to action. A common thread running through this period was a rethinking of traditional positions.
European nations during the second
half of the 18th century were very heterogeneous. In England a parliamentary monarchy
had been in place since the Glorious Revolution (1688) and was well on
its way to becoming a democracy. Prior to the revolution, France had been a
centralized state governed in an absolutist way with a mercantilist controlled and
agriculture-based economy. Most of the German states' rural population were
dependent on feudal sovereigns and estate owners, who, in turn, were ruled over by a
monarch. Therefore, it is perhaps not so surprising that very different solutions were
developed to deal with the problems that arose.
The intertwining strands of
these practical-political movements and the related theoretic-philosophic
formulations, whose ideological distinguishing features are now commonly described as
conservatism, liberalism and socialism, have had a large impact on ideas
about modern democracy. The following passages will address the theories from these three main
schools of thought as expressed by Edmund Burke,
John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, with the focus being placed upon the relevance
of their theories and arguments for democracy.
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Edmund Burke
In his publication entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France von
1790, Edmund Burke criticized the French Revolution and predicted the Jacobinic
Reign of Terror. According to Burke, the French population, incited by "500
advocates and country vicars", was sweeping aside its king and the whole
system of inherited order, trampling over its own tradition and forcing a completely
new beginning, rather than taking its own political experience seriously. In order to understand this
statement, a few details about
Burke's theories have to be given.
Burke considers the state as being
an entity based on history, specific traditions and standards, customs and
needs.
The political system of a particular country is an expression of these
inherited aspects, and requires them for its legitimization. Indeed, it is in relation
to this that he uses the word "prejudice" in the sense of
there being certain necessary pre-given common values and ideas about the way in
which society should be structured in every community, that are reflected in
society's characteristics, behavior patterns and institutions. This prejudice enables the
virtue of man to become his way of life.
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The events in France meant a break
with the contract theories expressed during the 17th and 18th centuries. According to
Burke, a natural state as argued by Hobbes or Locke does not exist. Instead, all
nations that uphold their traditions are indeed in their permanent "natural state".
The nature of man, therefore, is to be an historically and socially determined
being; he is neither good nor bad, but merely a result of his socialization.
Outside of the state freedom and
rights do not exist. Only in the state as a representation of historically based
values and ideas about how society should be structured can the freedom of man
be secured. The purpose of the state, according to Burke, is to increase the benefit
from its citizens as created by God. This takes us to the core of Burke's conservative
views. Burke is an extremely religious person, who assumes that the
world was created by God and that the state is God's way of slowly reaching a
morally perfect human entity. As far as he was concerned, the revolution in
England was nothing new, but a return to older traditions, or, in other words, a
restoration of the earlier order.
For Burke the class system
represented good order. He was vehemently against making a clean break with the
past, which perhaps implies his belief in the existence of a "divinely-ordained"
aristocracy, a class of people that naturally gives rise to the best.
Understandably, when bearing in mind his way of thinking, Burke regarded the spirit
of reform as a characteristic of small personalities and limited minds. And in
coming full circle it is clear why this conservative reformer, traditionalist and enlightener found it
necessary to express himself in this way
about the French Revolution.
In addition to conservatives,
Burkes arguments were also taken up by Catholic counter-revolutionaries and
romantics in the period which followed and, actually, even Hegel's "list of reason"
might have been encouraged by Burke. Some of his arguments remain partially
relevant today and are sometimes raised during debates on democratic theory, but
on the whole his stand is, for the most part, outdated.
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John Stuart Mill
The beginnings of English and
European liberalism were created out of an argument between Burke and his parliamentary
rival, Charles James Fox. While Burke nailed his colors to the flag
of traditionalism and in doing so founded conservatism, Charles James Fox was
more concerned with freedom of the individual against state reactionary forces
and all forms of repression. Over the long-term liberalism was able to establish
itself, partially because of Burke's complete blindness to economic questions. The
founders of liberalism include James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, and Jeremy
Bentham. However, it was John Stuart Mill
who provided the finishing touches to liberalism.
John Stuart Mill assumes that it
is man's ability to consider carefully and rationally and to decide on the means
and goals of his action that sets him apart from other living beings. By
highlighting man's spontaneous and creative nature, Mill presents individualism as being the ideal towards which society should
strive. But to reach this ideal state, freedom must be guaranteed: The freedom to express opinions and desires
and to examine them. The aim of improving the individual is to improve society,
because the more individuality society's individuals have the
higher the degree of civilization and with it "the highest
degree of contentment for the largest number of people". Rather than man's
contentment being directed at individual contentment, it is directed at the
contentment of others
and with it mankind. Since this morality is not (yet) universal, a system has
to be created using education and laws in which freedom is established and the
population agrees to be led by the virtuous. As the number of virtuous people
increases, society improves increasingly until such a day that
leadership is no longer necessary. Mill now dedicates his time to the question of
how a provisional, relatively best state might be structured.
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Mill regarded English society's fundamental
problem as lying in its conformity, expressed in
apparently similar interests, similar hopes and similar work. In order to avoid
this implied mass tyranny, which is one of the fundamental problems of democracy, precautions
would have to be taken to protect both the minority and this group's freedom. To this end,
Mill has faith in democracy, yet while every society has not reached its ideal
state, he believes that a representative democracy represents the best
provisional state system. Participation and responsibility have to be enshrined in order that the individual and society may
improve. Participation is achieved
by giving everyone the right to vote regardless of sex and social standing. Yet
Mill entrusts responsibility to the wise, the virtuous and educated only,
regardless of their assets. Only this group is felt fit to represent the people
in the parliaments, the public places in which contradicting opinion is discussed
and truth established. Mill's representative government, then, is characterized
by rule of an elite class, whose period in office would be determined by fixed
durations. He also advocates a plural right to
vote in which the educated would be awarded more votes according to their relative
skills.
This approach has often been criticized,
especially because of its belief in salvation in the here and now. Nonetheless,
in contrast to many of the liberals who followed, John Stuart Mill had foreseen
that a liberal ideology, which made all ideas about a good life into a private
matter, would pave the way towards a consciousness directed at technical and
economic
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Karl Marx
Karl Marx is also concerned with
human freedom but, other than Mill, his focus is on finally ending man's alienation
from himself in a just society, rather than on individual freedom from external
forces. While Marx is not a theorist on democracy in the narrowest sense,
central aspects of his criticism about capitalism and the bourgeoisie are very
relevant for democratic theory. His most important works include Manifest der kommunistischen Partei
(The Communist Manifesto), which he wrote together with Friedrich Engels on
a commission from the Communist League, and Critique of Political Economy on
which he worked until his death in 1883. Engels, who died 12 years after Marx,
attempted to complete systematically the "scientific socialism"
explored by Marx, which only resulted in setting the foundations for misinterpretation
of Marx's manuscripts and notes, something that is still with us today. To this
end, the fundamental problems involved with dealing with Marx's theories are
clear: Firstly, the incomplete and non-critical editions and secondly, the
creative reception of his work by the socialists and communists that followed.
In addition to this, rather than Marx's publications forming a closed philosophical
and theoretical system, they demonstrate developments and gaps. A brief
description, then, can only deliver an overview of the issues at the centre of
his work and his stand on them.
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As early as
1844 in an article criticizing Hegel's law philosophy,
Marx demands a social, material and philosophic upheaval of the
conditions prevailing in Germany. He also states that religion is
created by man as a comfort and justification for a world of alienation,
"the opium of the people"
His philosophy provides
the intellectual weaponary for a radical revolution, but the main problem
lies in the fact that the necessary precondition, namely a class with
"radical needs", does not yet exist. Set against a background
of a progressive industrial revolution, however, this precondition would
be created.
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Although man's consciousness
remains in the foreground, Marx increasingly concentrates on the material
preconditions necessary to facilitate an upheaval in prevailing conditions. In The
Communist Manifesto he writes that "the history of all society has been
one of class struggle", which "has always culminated in either a revolutionary
upheaval of the whole of society or the joint demise of the struggling
classes". Just like Hegel's history of the spirit, Marxist history of class
struggle also reaches a conclusion: A revolutionary upheaval of society's last
antagonistic system - capitalism.
Marx and Engels describe the
demise of capitalism in the following way: Capitalism leads to the degeneration of the working
class, who are alienated from the product of their work and therefore also from
themselves, into nothing other than instruments and factors for production. As
the process of industrialization continues, a large section of society is
oppressed and the "proletariat", which has developed into a
revolutionary class, keeps on expanding until the provocation reaches a critical
point, sparking a proletarian revolution, which will go down as the last
revolution in world history. The communists, as the only group with an insight
into the conditions, the course and the general results of the proletarian
movement are merely the promoters and accelerators of this historically necessary
development. Just how the shape of such a society following history's last
revolution might look, however, is not revealed in any of Marx's writing.
Disappointed in the way in which
the 1848 revolution had developed, Marx turned his attention to economics and
tried to develop development laws for capitalism. In doing so, he defined terms
such as capital, property, work, money, goods and market. The problem of man's alienation
and the search for a way of reversing it through abolishing property, however,
remains at the centre of his work.
Several of Marx's assumptions were
certainly false. Examples of this are his historical philosophy, which
concentrates on class struggle and materialism, and his proletarian revolution
as a way of solving antagonistic aspects of a capitalist society. Nonetheless,
his theories about the necessity of continuously expanding markets and the
problem of alienation remain relevant today
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