of certain of our revolutionists to alter radically and quickly phases
of the law of the family. Le Play has shown that the uniformities of
the family are among the stablest and most persistent things in our
Western civilization. The ardent Leftist revolutionist in the last
few centuries has, therefore, naturally enough, tended to dislike
this monogamous Christian family, to him a bulwark of individual
selfishness, social snobbery, intellectual stuffiness, snarled up with
testamentary red tape, dedicated to the myth of masculine superiority,
hardened into rigidity by religious sanctions, a festering center which
must be cleaned up before men and women can live as God, Nature, or
Science intended them to live. The French revolution saw no widespread
attempt to destroy the family, and indeed its generally middle-class
course is filled with pious praise of the family virtues. But the
humanitarians did put through some far-reaching legislation in this
field, such as generous laws of adoption and other measures tending
to break down the rigid, almost Roman, family law of the old regime.
Notably they attempted to make illegitimate children absolutely equal
in every respect with legitimate children. As the law to put this
into effect was passed, a glowing orator remarked: “There are no more
bastards in France.” We need hardly add that he was mistaken. In a
monograph on _French Revolutionary Legislation on Illegitimacy_,
the present author has tried to show how even the good bourgeois who
passed this law were emotionally too entangled in the traditional
family feelings to try to put it into effect. They _said_ that bastards
were free and equal to legitimate children; but they could not bring
themselves to _act_ as if they really believed or wanted it to be
so. On the whole, the traditional family in its French form emerged
unscathed from the revolution.
Russia has seen a much more determined attack on the monogamous
Christian family, legislation making divorce even easier than in
Nevada, legalizing abortion, encouraging collective household
arrangements, establishing _crèches_ and kindergartens, bringing
children up as far as possible outside the home, and so on. Let there
be no misunderstanding. Russian idealists who sought to do all of
this were not nasty-minded folk seeking to make life easier for the
sensualist. Quite the contrary, they had, as we have tried very hard
to show, a strong streak of Puritanism. To this day, a young Russian
Communist would be shocked to the fibers of his being at the sight of
almost any American newspaper and periodical stand. These idealists
thought the bourgeois family corrupting, and agreed with Mr. Shaw
that marriage combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum
of opportunity. Their legislation was aimed at achieving the ideals
behind Christian monogamy though destroying what they regarded as the
corrupting family institutions within which it was hedged.
Here again we are not in the position of historians working with
good sources, but through the conflicting reports coming to us from
Russia of the 1930’s we can make out that the reformers have failed,
that the Christian monogamous family has survived the old Bolsheviks
in Russia. Recent legislation, as we have seen, has not only hedged
legalized abortion so much as to limit it to cases of the strictest
medical necessity, but has actually set up premiums for large families.
Divorce has been made more difficult. Filial piety and indeed all the
conventional bourgeois family virtues are now in high honor in press,
movie, stage, and school.
To take a very specific example, homosexuality was, for the old
Bolsheviks, an abnormality, possibly open to medical treatment, but not
of course a crime. They didn’t like it, but they were too consistent
and open-minded to treat it as a crime. Naturally they had no narrow
bourgeois disgust for the practice. But in March, 1934, homosexuality
was made a crime with a three- to eight-year prison penalty. We cannot
refrain from adding that the Webbs explain this with their usual
obligingness: “It is understood that this action followed the discovery
of centers of demoralization of boys, due to the influence of certain
foreigners, who were summarily expelled from soviet territory.” But
even with the foreigners expelled, Russia retains the law. The fact is
that Russian _sentiments_ on the subject of homosexuality are nearly
constant; only Russian _ideas_ on the subject are variable, and in the
long run the constant prevails.
The whole subject of change in the routines of the daily life of John
Jones, in the more intimate of his relations with his fellows and his
environment, is none too well explored. Here again common sense, with
its decisive “human nature doesn’t change,” is much too absolute. But
it does appear that our revolutions had but slight permanent effect on
the important little things of life for John Jones. What is perhaps
loosely called the “Industrial Revolution” had certainly a much greater
effect, forced John into a more difficult series of adjustments than
did our revolutions. And none of our societies seems to have undergone
changes as complete as those undergone by Turkish society since the
World War or by Japanese society in the last fifty years. It is
tempting to record the apparent paradox that Western society is in
some respects more slow to change than Eastern society. But the truth
is much more complex than any such paradox. Both the Turks and the
Japanese seem to have preserved intact through social and economic
change a series of national disciplines. In our Western societies,
family, moral and religious disciplines have in a similar way served as
a balance to very important social and economic changes, of which the
revolutions we have studied are only a part.
Modern Western society has indeed gone through in the last few
centuries changes so continuous that, if we adopt the very plausible
concept of social equilibrium, we must expect to find certain forces
pulling in the opposite direction, in the direction of stability. These
forces are not as a rule articulate. They do not seem to interest
intellectuals as much as do forces making for change. They are perhaps
a bit undignified, and certainly undramatic. Insofar as they do get
themselves translated into language, they appear in a variety of
logical disguises difficult to penetrate. But they are there, and
as we have seen, they set a definite limit to what the reformer or
revolutionist can do. Bastardy can hardly stand up against logic or
biology; but bastardy exists by virtue neither of logic nor of biology,
but by virtue of well-established, slow-changing human sentiments. Men
may feel tearfully sorry for poor children stigmatized from birth for
something clearly not their fault; but hitherto not even revolution
has prevailed against those perhaps ignoble but certainly persistent
sentiments behind the “man-made” and “artificial” distinction between
children born after a certain rite has been performed and those born
without benefit of such a rite. The rite seems fragile, changeable,
unimportant--a mere matter of trivial words and gestures. Actually it
has proved effective against much grander words and more striking
gestures, as well as against whole batteries of logic. For it is, to
use Pareto’s terminology, associated with the “persistent aggregates,”
patterns of sentiments and behavior very slow to change.
All this amounts to the statement that in our Western society men have
continued to hold certain sentiments and to conform to certain set ways
of doing things even after they have changed what they say about these
sentiments and these acts. Our revolutions seem in many ways to have
changed men’s minds more completely than they changed men’s habits.
This is by no means to say that they changed nothing at all, that what
men think is of no importance. Ideas are not quite magicians in this
world, or Robespierre would not have fallen, and Trotsky would today be
in Moscow and not in Mexico. But they are not to be dismissed as having
no part in the social change. Indeed, what our Marxist friends would
call the “ideological” changes effected by our revolutions deserve
careful consideration.
One may distinguish two contrasting roles played by these ideas born
of revolution. First, our revolutions in the end would seem to have
taken the sting out of the radical ideas and slogans of their early
days. They achieved the necessary miracle of reconciling aspiring men
to the substantial failure of their aspirations. They turned what were
originally verbal instruments of revolt, means of moving men to social
action against the existing order, into something we shall have to be
up-to-date and call the myths, folklore, symbols, stereotypes, rituals,
of their respective societies. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” which
once was the trumpet call to the storming of heaven on earth, is now
in the Third French Republic no more than a bit of national liturgy, a
comforting reminder that Frenchmen are the privileged heirs of a heroic
past. There are signs that in Russia even so explosive a phrase as
“Workers of the world, unite!” can be accommodated to the conservative,
restraining necessities of ritual. After all, as too-logical radicals
have pointed out, the Bible itself is full of good revolutionary
doctrine; what organized Christianity has done with the Bible organized
Communism ought to be able to do with a much simpler book like _Das
Kapital_.
A second role is a more positive one. Even in their use as ritual,
these ideas are not purely passive, mere bits of mumbo-jumbo. We cannot
here go into the important and involved question of the role of these
myths and symbols in a society. We certainly must avoid the stupid
question as to whether such symbols “cause” any kind of social change.
Here as almost everywhere in the social sciences the cart-and-horse
formula of causation is useless, and indeed misleading. Sufficient
for us that in all our societies we find that the memory of the great
revolution is enshrined in practices that seem to be an essential
part of the national state as a going concern. Insofar as men are
today in England, France, America, and Russia heartened by awareness
of membership in a nation, guided perhaps, and certainly consoled, by
the nobler and more abstract beliefs, made conscious of some kind of
security, of a status, by all sorts of ritualistic acts associated with
the State or with the Church as a department of the State, fortified
by the prospects still held out in the grand words of a Milton,
a Jefferson, a Danton, a Lenin--insofar as men are so moved, the
revolutions we have studied have given largely to the content of their
emotions. In England, in America, in France, the memory of their great
overturns has become a factor in the stability of existing society:
in Russia, unless all signs fail, a similar state of affairs has just
about been reached.
Yet our revolutions have also left behind a tradition of successful
revolt. What is to established, contented, conforming, conventional
men merely a ritualistic satisfaction, remains for discontented men a
spur to activate their discontent. Our modern Western revolutionary
tradition is to a certain extent cumulative, and the latest
revolutionists in the tradition, the Russians, have carried their
awareness of revolutionary history almost to an obsession. Trotsky,
for instance, though he naturally never uses the conceptual scheme of
the fever as we have employed it, seems constantly to be watching the
course of the Russian revolution almost clinically, constantly looking
for events to take courses observed before in France, in England,
or wherever men have revolted in the name of the many against the
few. If Mussolini and Hitler are equally interested in such clinical
observations, this is but proof of our modern assumption that there are
uniformities in history.
Again this tradition of revolt is an imponderable, but it seems to
have gone into the making of the Western democracies, and to be one
of the elements that is in its full form lacking in the development
of Italy and Germany, where democratic revolutions have been abortive
or at best unimpressive. To state the existence of this revolutionary
tradition is not necessarily to make a judgment of value. We bring
it forth as an observable fact, one not to be effectively denied by
partisans of any stripe. Its exact influence in the complex equilibrium
of our present societies we cannot here attempt to determine. Notably,
we find great difficulties in estimating how far it has taken root in
Russia. Possibly the Communism of Stalin is but “fascism of the Left.”
But the whole temper of the Western democracies is influenced, surely,
by the fact that they were born of one kind of revolution, with one
kind of “ideal”--that is still best summarized as “Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity.”
_II. Some Tentative Uniformities_
When all necessary concessions are made to those who insist that events
in history are unique, it remains true that the four revolutions we
have studied do display some striking uniformities. Our conceptual
scheme of the fever can be worked out so as to bring these uniformities
clearly to mind. We shall find it worth while, in attempting to
summarize the work of these revolutions, to recapitulate briefly the
main points of comparison on which our uniformities are based.
We must be very tentative about the prodromal symptoms of revolution.
Even retrospectively, diagnosis of the four societies we studied was
very difficult, and there is little ground for belief that anyone today
has enough knowledge and skill to apply formal methods of diagnosis to
a contemporary society and say, in this case revolution will or will
not occur shortly. But some uniformities do emerge from a study of the
old regimes in England, America, France, and Russia.
First, these were all societies on the whole on the upgrade
economically before the revolution came, and the revolutionary
movements seem to originate in the discontents of not unprosperous
people who feel restraint, cramp, annoyance, rather than downright
crushing oppression. Certainly these revolutions are not started by
down-and-outers, by starving, miserable people. These revolutionists
are not worms turning, not children of despair. These revolutions are
born of hope, and their philosophies are formally optimistic.
Second, we find in our pre-revolutionary society definite and indeed
very bitter class antagonisms, though these antagonisms seem rather
more complicated than the cruder Marxists will allow. It is not a case
of feudal nobility against bourgeoisie in 1640, 1776, and 1789, or
of bourgeoisie against proletariat in 1917. The strongest feelings
seem generated in the bosoms of men--and women--who have made money,
or at least who have enough to live on, and who contemplate bitterly
the imperfections of a socially privileged aristocracy. Revolutions
seem more likely when social classes are fairly close together than
when they are far apart. “Untouchables” very rarely revolt against
a God-given aristocracy, and Haiti gives one of the few examples of
successful slave revolutions. But rich merchants whose daughters
can marry aristocrats are likely to feel that God is at least as
interested in merchants as in aristocrats. It is difficult to say why
the bitterness of feeling between classes almost equal socially seems
so much stronger in some societies than others--why, for instance, a
Marie Antoinette should be so much more hated than a Barbara Hutton;
but at any rate the existence of such bitterness can be observed in our
pre-revolutionary societies, which is, clinically speaking, enough for
the moment.
Third, there is what we have called the desertion of the intellectuals.
This is in some respects the most reliable of the symptoms we are
likely to meet. Here again we need not try to explain all the hows and
whys, need not try to tie up the desertion of the intellectuals with a
grand and complete sociology of revolutions. We need state simply that
it can be observed in all four of our societies.
Fourth, the governmental machinery is clearly inefficient, partly
through neglect, through a failure to make changes in old institutions,
partly because new conditions--in the societies we have studied,
pretty specifically conditions attendant on economic expansion and
the growth of new monied classes, new ways of transportation, new
business methods--these new conditions laid an intolerable strain on
governmental machinery adapted to simpler, more primitive, conditions.
Fifth, the old ruling class--or rather, many individuals of the old
ruling class--come to distrust themselves, or lose faith in the
traditions and habits of their class, grow intellectual, humanitarian,
or go over to the attacking groups. Perhaps a larger number of them
than usual lead lives we shall have to call immoral, dissolute, though
one cannot be as sure about this as a symptom as about the loss of
habits and traditions effective among a ruling class. At any rate, the
ruling class becomes politically inept.
The dramatic events that start things moving, that bring on the
fever of revolution, are in three of our four revolutions intimately
connected with the financial administration of the state. In the
fourth, Russia, the breakdown of administration under the burdens of an
unsuccessful war is only in part financial. But in all our societies
the inefficiency and inadequacy of the governmental structure of the
society come out clearly in the very first stages of the revolution.
There is a time--the first few weeks or months--when it looks as if a
determined use of force on the part of the government might prevent the
mounting excitement from culminating in an overthrow of the government.
These governments attempted such a use of force in all four instances,
and in all four their attempt was a failure. This failure indeed proved
a turning point during the first stages, and set up the revolutionists
in power.
Yet one is impressed in all four instances more with the ineptitude of
the governments’ use of force than with the skill of their opponents’
use of force. We are here speaking of the situation wholly from a
military and police point of view. It may be that the majority of
the people are discontented, loathe the existing government, wish
it overthrown. Nobody knows. They don’t take plebiscites _before_
revolutions. In the actual clash--even Bastille Day, Concord, or
the February Days in Petrograd--only a minority of the people is
actively engaged. But the government hold over its own troops is
poor, its troops fight half-heartedly or desert, its commanders are
stupid, its enemies acquire a nucleus of the deserting troops or of a
previous militia, and the old gives place to the new. Yet, such is the
conservative and routine-loving nature of the bulk of human beings, so
strong are habits of obedience in most of them, that it is almost safe
to say that no government is likely to be overthrown until it loses the
ability to make adequate use of its military and police powers. That
loss of ability may show itself in the actual desertion of soldiers
and police to the revolutionists, or in the stupidity with which the
government manages its soldiers and police, or in both ways.
The events we have grouped under the name of first stages do not
of course unroll themselves in exactly the same order in time, nor
with exactly the same content, in all four of our revolutions. But
we have listed the major elements--and they fall into a pattern of
uniformities--financial breakdown, organization of the discontented to
remedy this breakdown (or threatened breakdown), revolutionary demands
on the part of these organized discontented, demands which if granted
would mean the virtual abdication of those governing, attempted use of
force by the government, its failure, and the attainment of power by
the revolutionists. These revolutionists have hitherto been acting as
an organized and nearly unanimous group, but with the attainment of
power it is clear that they are not united. The group which dominates
these first stages we call the moderates. They are not always in a
numerical majority in this stage--indeed it is pretty clear that if
you limit the moderates to the Kadets they were not in a majority in
Russia in February, 1917. But they seem the natural heirs of the old
government, and they have their chance. In three of our revolutions
they are sooner or later driven from office to death or exile.
Certainly there is to be seen in England, France and Russia a process
in which a series of crises--some involving violence, street-fighting
and the like--deposes one set of men and puts in power another and more
radical set. In these revolutions power passes by violent or at least
extra-legal methods from Right to Left, until at the crisis period the
extreme radicals, the complete revolutionists, are in power. There are,
as a matter of fact, usually a few even wilder and more lunatic fringes
of the triumphant extremists--but these are not numerous or strong
and are usually suppressed or otherwise made harmless by the dominant
radicals. It is therefore approximately true to say that power passes
on from Right to Left until it reaches the extreme Left.
The rule of the extremists we have called the crisis period. This
period was not reached in the American revolution, though in the
treatment of Loyalists, in the pressure to support the army, in some
of the phases of social life, you can discern in America many of the
phenomena of the Terror as it is seen in our three other societies.
We cannot here attempt to go into the complicated question as to why
the American revolution stopped short of a true crisis period, why the
moderates were never ousted in this country. We must repeat that we are
simply trying to establish certain uniformities of description, and are
not attempting a complete sociology of revolutions.
The extremists are helped to power no doubt by the existence of a
powerful pressure towards centralized strong government, something
which in general the moderates are not capable of providing,
while the extremists, with their discipline, their contempt for
half-measures, their willingness to make firm decisions, their
freedom from libertarian qualms, are quite able and willing to
centralize. Especially in France and Russia, where powerful foreign
enemies threatened the very existence of the nation, the machinery of
government during the crisis period was in part constructed to serve as
a government of national defense. Yet though modern wars, as we know
in this country, demand a centralization of authority, war alone does
not seem to account for all that happened in the crisis period in those
countries.
What does happen may be a bit oversimply summarized as follows:
emergency centralization of power in an administration, usually
a council or commission, and more or less dominated by a “strong
man”--Cromwell, Robespierre, Lenin; government without any effective
protection for the normal civil rights of the individual--or if
this sounds unrealistic, let us say the normal private life of
the individual; setting up of extraordinary courts and a special
revolutionary police to carry out the decrees of the government and
to suppress all dissenting individuals or groups; all this machinery
ultimately built up from a relatively small group--Independents,
Jacobins, Bolsheviks--which has a monopoly on all governmental action.
Finally, governmental action becomes a much greater part of all
human action than in these societies in their normal condition: this
apparatus of government is set to work indifferently on the mountains
and molehills of human life--it is used to pry into and poke about
corners normally reserved for priest or physician, or friend, and it
is used to regulate, control, plan, the production and distribution of
economic wealth on a national scale.