Leo Casey enlists Gramsci for Laclau & Mouffe:
>Secondly, when Gramsci invokes the Jacobin tradition in his discussions of
>the political party, this is not a simple adoption of the more extreme
>moments of the French Revolution, an incorporation of the politics of the
>"Reign of Terror." To the contrary, Gramsci is interested in a very
>particular aspect of the Jacobin tradition -- its organization of what he
>calls the national-popular will. That is, he is interested in how the
>Jacobins articulated a particular set of class interests as the expression of
>the national interest. He is arguing that only when a working class party can
>do the same will it be able to exercise hegemony and rule.
Gramsci (SPN: 115): "restoration becomes the first policy whereby
social struggles find sufficiently elastic frameworks to allow the
bourgeoisie to gain power without dramatic upheavals, without the
French machinery of terror. The old feudal classes are demoted from
their dominant position to a 'governing' one, but are not eliminated,
nor is there any attempt to liquidate them as an organic whole;
instead of a class they become a 'caste' with specific cultural and
psychological characteristics, but no longer with predominant
economic functions. Can this 'model' for the creation of the modern
states be repeated in other conditions?" [For more on Gramsci's
thoughts on Jacobinism vs. Passive Revolution, see "Carl Cuneo's
Notes on Gramsci's Concepts of Passive Revolution" at
<http://www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/soc/courses/soc2r3/gramsci/gramprev.htm
>.]
Gramsci did _not_ think of the Jacobin Terror as senseless &
excessive violence (though moments of excess certainly did exist
during the period of Jacobinism). He thought of Terror as the use of
force against the Counter-Revolution. Further, he suggests above
that the absence of "dramatic upheavals...the French machinery of
terror" in countries (including England, America, and other nations
that underwent bourgeois "revolutions") other than France meant that
modernization in them was regrettably initiated through "passive
revolution," the policy of restoration in which the "old feudal
classes are demoted from their dominant position to a 'governing'
one, but are not eliminated, nor is there any attempt to liquidate
them as an organic whole." This failure to liquidate the old feudal
classes as an organic whole (big landlords, etc., especially in the
South) created economic, political, & cultural backwardness that laid
the groundwork for fascism (itself a kind of "passive revolution") in
Italy & elsewhere. The same _failure to liquidate the slave owners_
in the American South at the moment of independence eventually
necessitated the bloody Civil War in the mid-19th century (contrast
this sorry dithering in the USA with the decisively more democratic
French & Haitian Revolutions); and with the Counter-Revolution
against Black Reconstruction (removal of the federal troops &
reconciliation with ex-slave owners in the South), racial oppression
& economic backwardness became perpetuated, only transformed into the
form of share-cropping.
As for the Terror in France, excessive or otherwise, it dialectically
emerged from the violent struggles waged by the sans-culottes, which
were sublated (negated & incorporated at the same time) by the
Jacobins:
***** Lecture 13
The French Revolution: The Radical Stage, 1792-1794
Inflamed by their poverty and hatred of wealth, the sans-culottes
insisted that it was the duty of the government to guarantee them the
right to existence. Such a policy ran counter to the bourgeois
aspirations of the National Assembly. The sans-culottes demanded
that the revolutionary government immediately increase wages, fix
prices, end food shortages, punish hoarders and most important, deal
with the existence of counter-revolutionaries. In terms of social
ideals the sans-culottes wanted laws to prevent extremes of both
wealth and property. Their vision was of a nation of small
shopkeepers and small farmers. They favored a democratic republic in
which the voice of the common man could be heard....In other words,
and this is important to grasp, the social and economic ideas of the
sans-culottes were politicized by the Revolution itself.
On August 10, 1792, enraged Parisian men and women attacked the
king's palace and killed several hundred Guards. The result of this
journee was the radicalization of the Revolution. By September,
Paris was in turmoil. Fearing counter-revolution, the sans-culottes
destroyed prisons because they believed they were secretly sheltering
conspirators. More than one thousand people were killed. Street
fights broke out everywhere and barricades were set up in various
quarters of the city. All this was done in order to consolidate the
Revolution - to keep it moving forward. On September 21st and 22nd,
1792, the monarchy was officially abolished and a republic
established. The 22nd of September, 1792 was now known as day one of
the year one. In December, Louis XVI was placed on trial for
violating his subjects' liberty and on January 23rd, 1793, Louis was
executed like an ordinary criminal. From this time on, the
Revolution had no recourse but to move forward.
After the execution of Louis, the National Assembly, now known as the
National Convention, faced enormous problems. The value of paper
currency (assignats) used to finance the Revolution had fallen by
50%. There was price inflation, continued food shortages, and
various peasant rebellions against the Revolution occurred across the
countryside. France was close to civil war.
Meanwhile, the revolutionaries found themselves not only at war with
Austria and Prussia, but with Holland, Spain and Great Britain. As
the Revolution stumbled under the weight of foreign war and civil
war, the revolutionary leadership grew more radical. Up to June
1793, moderate reformers had dominated the National Convention.
These were the Girondins, men who favored a decentralized government
in which the various provinces or departments would determine their
own affairs. The Girondins also opposed government interference in
the economy.
In June 1793, factional disputes with the Convention resulted in the
replacement of the Girondins with the Jacobins, a far more radical
group. The Jacobins and Girondins were both liberal and bourgeois,
but the Jacobins desired a centralized government (in which they
would hold key positions), Paris as the national capital, and
temporary government control of the economy. The Jacobin platform
managed to win the support of the sans-culottes. The Jacobins were
tightly organized, well-disciplined and convinced that they alone
were responsible for saving and "managing" the Revolution from this
point forward. On June 22, 1793, 80,000 armed sans-culottes
surrounded the meeting halls of the National Convention and demanded
the immediate arrest of the Girondin faction. The Convention yielded
to the mob and 29 Girondin members of the Convention were arrested.
The Jacobins now had firm control not only of the Convention, but the
French nation as well. They were the government. And they now had
even more pressing problems: civil war was everywhere, economic
distress had not been lifted, they had to keep the sans-culottes
satisfied, they suffered continued threats of foreign invasion and
the nation's ports had all been blockaded. They lived, dreading the
possibility that if they failed, so too would the Revolution. Only
strong leadership could save the Revolution. The Committee of Public
Safety assumed leadership, in April 1793. As a branch of the
National Convention itself, the Committee of Public Safety had broad
powers which included the organization of the nation's defenses, all
foreign policy, and the supervision of ministers. The Committee also
ordered arrests and trials of counter-revolutionaries and imposed
government authority across the nation. What is amazing is that only
twelve men controlled the CPS, although the CPS was ultimately led by
MAXIMILLIEN ROBESPIERRE (1758-1794).
In Robespierre's utopian vision, the individual has the duty "to
detest bad faith and despotism, to punish tyrants and traitors, to
assist the unfortunate and respect the weak, to defend the oppressed,
to do all the good one can to one's neighbor, and to behave with
justice towards all men." Robespierre was a disciple of
Rousseau--both considered the general will an absolute necessity.
For Robespierre, the realization of the general will would make the
Republic of Virtue a reality. Its denial would mean a return to
despotism. Robespierre knew that a REPUBLIC OF VIRTUE could not
become a reality unless the threats of foreign and civil war were
removed. To preserve the Republic, Robespierre and the CPS
instituted the Reign of Terror. Counter-revolutionaries, the
Girondins, priests, nobles, and aristocrats immediately fell under
suspicion. Danton, a revolutionary who sought peace with Europe, was
executed.
The CPS also closed the numerous political clubs of the
sans-culottes. The CPS feared spontaneous action, that is, that the
revolutionary leadership might pass into other hands. About 17,000
people died as a result of the Terror. The choice instrument, was
the guillotine -- it was quick and humane. In 1794, there were mass
executions at Lyons. Boats were fired upon and sunk at Nantes -- 500
were killed in one execution. About 15,000 people perished
officially and over 100,000 people were detained as suspects.
Robespierre and the CPS resorted to the Terror but not because they
were blood-thirsty madmen. They did, however, wish to create a
temporary dictatorship in order to save the Republic (a Roman idea).
By the summer of 1794, there seem to be less need for the Terror.
The Republic seemed a reality, an aristocratic conspiracy had
subsided, the will to punish traitors decreased, and most
sans-culottes went home to tend to business. And, as the need for
the Terror decreased, so too did Robespierre's power and leadership.
Some members of the Convention, fearing for their own lives, ordered
the arrest of Robespierre. On July 27, 1794, (the 9th of Thermidor)
Robespierre was guillotined -- the sans-culottes made no attempt to
save him. With the 9th of Thermidor, the machinery of the Jacobin
republic was dismantled. Leadership passed to the property owning
bourgeoisie, that is, those men of the moderate stage of the
Revolution (see Lecture 12).
By 1795, the government had passed into the hands of the five-man
Directory. The new legislature sat in two chambers: the Council of
500 and the Ancients (or Senate). The Directory tried to preserve
the Revolution of 1789 - they opposed the restoration of the ancien
regime as well as popular democracy. They refused to leave the door
open for either the excessive radicalism of the Jacobins or the
spontaneity of the sans-culottes. The Directory muddled on until
1799. By this time the French Revolution was over and the French
tried to get back to business as usual. Radicalism had been
effectively thwarted as well. But France was still at war with the
rest of Europe. And because of the war, leadership began to pass into
the hands of generals. One of these generals would seize control of
the government in November 1799. And on December 2, 1804, this
general, Napoleon Bonaparte, would declare himself Emperor of the
French -- the new Augustus Caesar. As François Furet [The French
Revolution, 1770-1814, (Blackwell, 1996), p.215] has remarked:
Ten years after 1789, the French Revolution had largely become in
public opinion that very special something which eluded [Benjamin]
Constant's analysis: a universalist nationalism, in which the
historian can discern its component elements of anti-aristocratic
passion and rationalism, transfigured by the idea of the nation's
historico-military election. The Directory could no more identify
this mixture of sentiments than it could reassure those whose
interests were threatened. On both sides there was the implicit
demand for a king, but one who was radically different from other
kings, since he would be born of the sovereignty of the people and of
reason. This was where Napoleon Bonaparte, king of the French
Revolution, was born. In 1789, the French had created a Republic,
under the name of a monarchy. Ten years later, they created a
monarchy, under the name of a Republic....
copyright © 2000 Steven Kreis
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Last Revised -- August 08, 2000
<http://www.pagesz.net/~stevek/intellect/lecture13a.html> *****
Since we live in the period After the Autumn of the Patriarch, it is
no wonder that Laclau & Mouffe, as well as many others, have come to
prefer the Thermidor (e.g., the Third Way, humanitarian imperialism,
etc.) to the Terror (which exhausts, for L& M, Marxism as well as
Jacobinism):
***** ...Robespierre was dead and the Thermidorean Reaction had
begun. The new government that emerged, the Directory, abolished the
economic controls of the Terror, limited the franchise and stifled
every effort at political protest. The Thermidoreans, it is clear,
were trying to purge France of all revolutionary activity. By
emphasizing the principles of 1789, they accepted the
liberal-bourgeois gains of the Revolution, but certainly not the more
radical aspirations of the sans-culottes.... ("Lecture 17 -- The
French Revolution and the Socialist Tradition: Early French
Communists (1)" at
<http://www.pagesz.net/~stevek/intellect/lecture17a.html>) *****
Yoshie
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