The Psychology of Revolution - Gustave le Bon (the beach read .txt) 📗
- Author: Gustave le Bon
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Between the indifference of the people and the hostility of the nobles, who had remained faithful to the legitimate dynasty, the new king relied chiefly upon the bourgeoisie. An electoral law having reduced the electors to less than 200,000, this class played an exclusive part in the government.
The situation of the sovereign was not easy. He had to struggle simultaneously against the legitimist supporters of Henry V. the grandson of Charles X., and the Bonapartists, who recognised as their head Louis-Napoleon, the Emperor’s nephew, and finally against the republicans.
By means of their secret societies, analogous to the clubs of the Revolution, the latter provoked numerous riots at various intervals between 1830 and 1840, but these were easily repressed.
The clericals and legitimists, on their side, did not cease their intrigues. The Duchess de Berry, the mother of Henry V., tried in vain to raise the Vendee. As to the clergy, their demands finally made them so intolerable that an insurrection broke out, in the course of which the palace of the archbishop of Paris was sacked.
The republicans as a party were not very dangerous, as the Chamber sided with the king in the struggle against them. The minister Guizot, who advocated a strong central power, declared that two things were indispensable to government—“reason and cannon.” The famous statesman was surely somewhat deluded as to the necessity or efficacy of reason.
Despite this strong central power, which in reality was not strong, the republicans, and above all the Socialists, continued to agitate. One of the most influential, Louis Blanc, claimed that it was the duty of the Government to procure work for every citizen. The Catholic party, led by Lacordaire and Montalembert, united with the Socialists—as to-day in Belgium—to oppose the Government.
A campaign in favour of electoral reform ended in 1848 in a fresh riot, which unexpectedly overthrew Louis-Philippe.
His fall was far less justifiable than that of Charles X. There was little with which he could be reproached. Doubtless he was suspicious of universal suffrage, but the French Revolution had more than once been quite suspicious of it. Louis-Philippe not being, like the Directory, an absolute ruler, could not, as the latter had done, annul unfavourable elections.
A provisional Government was installed in the Hotel de Ville, to replace the fallen monarchy. It proclaimed the Republic, established universal suffrage, and decreed that the people should proceed to the election of a National Assembly of nine hundred members.
From the first days of its existence the new Government found itself the victim of socialistic manoeuvres and riots.
The psychological phenomena observed during the first Revolution were now to be witnessed again. Clubs were formed, whose leaders sent the people from time to time against the Assembly, for reasons which were generally quite devoid of common sense—for example, to force the Government to support an insurrection in Poland, &c.
In the hope of satisfying the Socialists, every day more noisy and exigent, the Assembly organised national workshops, in which the workers were occupied in various forms of labour. In these 100,000 men cost the State more than L40,000 weekly. Their claim to receive pay without working for it forced the Assembly to close the workshops.
This measure was the origin of a formidable insurrection, 50,000 workers revolting. The Assembly, terrified, confided all the executive powers to General Cavaignac. There was a four-days battle with the insurgents, during which three generals and the Archbishop of Paris were killed; 3,000 prisoners were deported by the Assembly to Algeria, and revolutionary Socialism was annihilated for a space of fifty years.
These events brought Government stock down from 116 to 50 francs. Business was at a standstill. The peasants, who thought themselves threatened by the Socialists, and the bourgeois, whose taxes the Assembly had increased by half, turned against the Republic, and when Louis-Napoleon promised to re-establish order he found himself welcomed with enthusiasm. A candidate for the position of President of the Republic, who according to the new Constitution must be elected by the whole body of citizens, he was chosen by 5,500,000 votes.
Very soon at odds with the Chamber, the prince decided on a coup d’etat. The Assembly was dissolved; 30,000 persons were arrested, 10,000 deported, and a hundred deputies were exiled.
This coup d’etat, although summary, was very favourably received, for when submitted to a plebiscite it received 7,500,000 votes out of 8,000,000.
On the 2nd of November, 1852, Napoleon had himself named Emperor by an even greater majority: The horror which the generality of Frenchmen felt for demagogues and Socialists had restored the Empire.
In the first part of its existence it constituted an absolute Government, and during the latter half a liberal Government. After eighteen years of rule the Emperor was overthrown by the revolution of the 4th of September, 1870, after the capitulation of Sedan.
Since that time revolutionary movements have been rare; the only one of importance was the revolution of March, 1871, which resulted in the burning of many of the monuments of Paris and the execution of about 20,000 insurgents.
After the war of 1870 the electors, who, amid so many disasters, did not know which way to turn, sent a great number of Orleanist and legitimist deputies to the Constituent Assembly. Unable to agree upon the establishment of a monarchy, they appointed M. Thiers President of the Republic, later replacing him by Marshal MacMahon. In 1876 the new elections, like all those that have followed, sent a majority of republicans to the Chamber.
The various assemblies which have succeeded to this have always been divided into numerous parties, which have provoked innumerable changes of ministry.
However, thanks to the equilibrium resulting from this division of parties, we have for forty years enjoyed comparative quiet. Four Presidents of the Republic have been overthrown without revolution, and the riots that have occurred, such as those of Champagne and the Midi, have not had serious consequences.
A great popular movement, in 1888, did nearly overthrow the Republic for the benefit of General Boulanger, but it has survived and triumphed over the attacks of all parties.
Various reasons contribute to the maintenance of the present Republic. In the first place, of the conflicting factions none is strong enough to crush the rest. In the second place, the head of the State being purely decorative, and possessing no power, it is impossible to attribute to him the evils from which the country may suffer, and to feel sure that matters would be different were he overthrown. Finally, as the supreme power is distributed among thousands of hands, responsibilities are so disseminated that it would be difficult to know where to begin. A tyrant can be overthrown, but what can be done against a host of little anonymous tyrannies?
If we wished to sum up in a word the great transformations which have been effected in France by a century of riots and revolutions, we might say that individual tyranny, which was weak and therefore easily overthrown, has been replaced by collective tyrannies, which are very strong and difficult to destroy. To a people avid of equality and habituated to hold its Governments responsible for every event individual tyranny seemed insupportable, while a collective tyranny is readily endured, although generally much more severe.
The extension of the tyranny of the State has therefore been the final result of all our revolutions, and the common characteristic of all systems of government which we have known in France. This form of tyranny may be regarded as a racial ideal, since successive upheavals of France have only fortified it. Statism is the real political system of the Latin peoples, and the only system that receives all suffrages. The other forms of government—republic, monarchy, empire—represent empty labels, powerless shadows.
THE RECENT EVOLUTION OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES
THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRATIC BELIEFS SINCE THE REVOLUTION
1. Gradual Propagation of Democratic Ideas after the Revolution.
Ideas which are firmly established, incrusted, as it were, in men’s minds, continue to act for several generations. Those which resulted from the French Revolution were, like others, subject to this law.
Although the life of the Revolution as a Government was short, the influence of its principles was, on the contrary, very long-lived. Becoming a form of religious belief, they profoundly modified the orientation of the sentiments and ideas of several generations.
Despite a few intervals, the French Revolution has continued up to the present, and still survives. The role of Napoleon was not confined to overturning the world, changing the map of Europe, and remaking the exploits of Alexander. The new rights of the people, created by the Revolution and established by its institutions, have exercised a profound influence. The military work of the conqueror was soon dissolved, but the revolutionary principles which he contributed to propagate have survived him.
The various restorations which followed the Empire caused men at first to become somewhat forgetful of the principles of the Revolution. For fifty years this propagation was far from rapid. One might almost have supposed that the people had forgotten them. Only a small number of theorists maintained their influence. Heirs to the “simplicist” spirit of the Jacobins, believing, like them, that societies can be remade from top to bottom by the laws, and persuaded that the Empire had only interrupted the task of revolution, they wished to resume it.
While waiting until they could recommence, they attempted to spread the principles of the Revolution by means of their writings. Faithful imitators of the men of the Revolution, they never stopped to ask if their schemes for reform were in conformity with human nature. They too were erecting a chimerical society for an ideal man, and were persuaded that the application of their dreams would regenerate the human species.
Deprived of all constructive power, the theorists of all the ages have always been very ready to destroy. Napoleon at St. Helena stated that “if there existed a monarchy of granite the idealists and theorists would manage to reduce it to powder.”
Among the galaxy of dreamers such as Saint-Simon, Fourier, Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, Quinet, &c., we find that only Auguste Comte understood that a transformation of manners and ideas must precede political reorganisation.
Far from favouring the diffusion of democratic ideas, the projects of reform of the theorists of this period merely impeded their progress. Communistic Socialism, which several of them professed would restore the Revolution, finally alarmed the bourgeoisie and even the working-classes. We have already seen that the fear of their ideas was one of the principal causes of the restoration of the Empire.
If none of the chimerical lucubrations of the writers of the first half of the nineteenth century deserve to be discussed, it is none the less interesting to examine them in order to observe the part played by religious and moral ideas which to-day are regarded with contempt. Persuaded that a new society could not, any more than the societies of old, be built up without religious and moral beliefs, the reformers were always endeavouring to found such beliefs.
But on what could they be based? Evidently on reason. By means of reason men create complicated machines: why not therefore a religion and a morality, things which are apparently so simple? Not one of them suspected the fact that no religious or moral belief ever had rational logic as its basis. Auguste Comte saw no more clearly. We know that he founded a so-called positivist religion, which still has a few followers. Scientists were to form a clergy directed by a new Pope, who was to replace the Catholic Pope.
All these conceptions—political, religious, or moral—had, I repeat, no other results for a long time than to turn the multitude away from democratic principles.
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