In the first part, we grounded reform in the Judeo-Christian conception of linear time that would climax in the Eschaton. History was a movement towards its fulfillment, its telos. The Reformation and the Age of Reason not only challenged institutional hierarchies but also flattened hierarchies of time and being resulting in the reduction of time from its higher order to the temporal and materialistic (secular) plane of existence. Reform within the secular sphere sets the stage for its violent sibling, Revolution.
American and French Revolutions
Historian Gordon S. Wood reminds us that
“Even if ideas are not the underlying motives for our actions, they are constant accompaniments of our action. There is no behavior without ideas, without language. Ideas and language give meaning to our actions, and there is almost nothing that we humans do to which we do not attribute meaning. These meanings constitute our ideas, our beliefs, our ideology, and our collective culture”1
Following Hume and Burke, Wood emphasizes that an idea does not necessarily directly cause behavior, but passions spur an action which drives the idea. One could say that a person embodies or interiorizes an idea and (as we know as Orthodox Christians) the passions, often misdirected, are exteriorized in the action. Burke is precise in his analysis when he asserts that the reasons often provided to justify political reform and revolution are merely pretexts.
“History consists for the greater part of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites which shake the public with the same— troublous storms that toss the private state, and render life unsweet. These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men are the pretexts. The pretexts are always found in some specious appearance of a real good. You would not secure men from tyranny and sedition by rooting out of the mind the principles to which these fraudulent pretexts apply? If you did, you would root out everything that is valuable in the human breast. As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors and instruments in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates, senates, parliaments, national assemblies, judges, and captains. You would not cure the evil by resolving that there should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the gospel; no interpreters of law; no general officers; no public councils. You might change the names. The things in some shape must remain.
Burke uses the word vice, and once again as Orthodox we can read this as passion. These vices are the reasons why there is corruption. Reform and revolution do not solve the problem. Tearing down the traditional institutions–and even worse, regicide–will not usher in the utopia in which the revolutionaries were placing their hope.2
Regardless of the chasm of centuries between the writings of Burke and Wood, they both speak to us about the idea of revolution and its consequences which unfold in two paradigm shifting events: The American and French Revolutions. The former influencing the latter. We will not cover the American Revolution here, since for many of you reading this are likely American and have grown up hearing the story. Although both were revolutions intending to throw off the shackles of monarchy and usher in a brave new world built upon the idea of the equality, reason, and freedom, the American Revolution, for all intents and purposes, was more successful, namely because it was not a revolution within a society. The great pond separated the king and the colonies, it was a fight to free themselves from being ruled from the old country. The French, and nearly all subsequent revolutions, were fought from within. It was a direct attack against the Ancien Régime and the Catholic Church. The American Revolution was still a revolution nonetheless, so the consequences of this still ripple down through history, and this ripple acts as a framing for all subsequent political discourse and action, as we will see later. For now, however, it is best to understand that the French Revolution became the basis for future revolutions in France. What started with the killing of Louis XVI, the setting up of the goddess of reason, and Robespierre’s Reign of Terror echoed down to Napoleon and so forth. The express purpose of the original revolution was to overthrow the established order, or in the words of Robespierre, “the king must die so the country can live.” Violence as means to justify the end is a precondition for all revolutionaries. And this belief will only come to fruition if one accepts the linearity of time moving towards a secular eschaton, the modern utopia. For all the arduous work at eradicating the religious from society, it has been shown that it is all in vain because there still exists religious language and zeal, namely that of the messianic, in the case of the French Revolution, the king must die so the people can have life.
Revolutions will happen when society is understood in terms of classes, one the oppressed and the other the oppressor, and this demonizing results in justified violence toward the other. As Robespierre says:
“Everyone seems to agree that there is in France a powerful faction which directs the maneuverings of the executive power with the objective of reviving ministerial influence at the expense of national sovereignty.”
After the overthrow happens and the destruction of the social order, revolutionaries often continue their revolution against those who they deemed as part of the problem, and the temporary government set up to usher in the new, will always continue to use violence to maintain power. In France this was the Reign of Terror, in Russia it was the Red Terror. Again Robespierre:
“The goal of constitutional government is to maintain the Republic; that of revolutionary government is to found it.”
This sounds well and fine, maybe…but one must understand that it rarely stops there, and that there will always be reasons to resort to violence, as seen here in yet another Robespierre quote:
“Under a revolutionary regime, public power is obliged to defend itself against all the factions that attack it.”
And herein lies one of the problems of revolutionary regimes: there will always exist groups that could undermine their authority, requiring the need to be met with force, and, therefore, creating the need for an enemy to legitimize authority.
Marxist Revolutions
The American and French Revolutions provided the model for future revolutions. The use of violence to change the social order was inherited by Marx and Engles and those who ascribed to Marxism in all of its varied forms. One of the fundamental tenets of nearly all revolutionary ideologies is collectivism, the early forms were understood in terms of class. Even the predecessors to Marx–the Founding Fathers and Robespierre–although professing a belief in individualism, they never fully avoided some form of collectivism, e.g. the lower class vs. aristocracy, colonials vs the Crown. Any hint of individualism was totally and completely extirpated by Marxists in favor of collectivism.
Marxism is a large topic and won’t be covered in great detail here. To get a fuller understanding of Marxist philosophy one needs to read Hegel. Now I’m of the opinion that there are multiple ways to read Hegel, and the more popular way of understanding Hegelian dialectic–thesis, antithesis, synthesis–although it originated with Fichte, was popularized by Marx. This is similar to how the ideas of social Darwinism and “survival of the fittest” are not to be found in Darwin’s works but from a reading of Darwin by Herbert Spencer, but most people assume that these originated with Darwin. Hegel’s dialectic is best understood as the experience and knowledge of the world conforming to the Subject’s notion of the world, it is a theory of epistemology, or one can also read this dialectic in terms of ontology, the grounding of being in itself as itself. This dialectic unfolds in history, or understood as a march of history, and it is totalitarian in terms of knowledge because it encompasses epistemology, metaphysics and history. Marx took up this march of history, this dialectic, and retooled it in terms of class.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression,new forms of struggle in the place of eh old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possess, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. 3
The thrust of early Marxism was to seize the means of production and all property from the bourgeois class, and this required a bloody revolutionary act. This is the socialist revolution. All goods and property will be consolidated and redistributed by the centralized State. The end goal for this project is the disintegration of all class distinctions and the ushering in of a communist utopia. However, before reaching that point (which they never do), the proletariat must become a political power, so they can abolish private property.
The immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of the all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat[….]The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property[….]In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. 4
Not only do Marxists seek to abolish private property but also bourgeois individuality, independence and freedom. To accomplish such a goal the centralization of power in the hands of the State is the sole means at the actualization of such an extreme end. The bulwark against such State tyranny is the traditions of family and education, but Marx intends to abolish the family (which he defines as private property, and the wife as a means of production) and education will be taken over by society (State funded indoctrination).
That’s Marxism in its early, unadulterated form. Some of the ideas of Marx took on other forms, some fought for better work conditions and others sought social reforms, and many did away with the revolutionary side of Marx. The central point to the varying types of socialism was what to do with the State, decrease or increase their power, they shared many other tenets of Marxism. Carroll Quigley tells us this:
The international Socialist movement was both a product of the nineteenth century and a revulsion against it. It was rooted in some of the characteristics of the century, such as industrialism, its optimism, its belief in progress, its humanitarianism, its scientific materialism, and its democracy, but it was a revolt against its laissez faire, its middle class domination, its nationalism, its urban slums, and its emphasis on the price-profit system as the dominant factor in all human values. This does not mean that all Socialists had the same beliefs or that these beliefs did not change with the passing years. On the contrary, there were almost as many different kinds of Socialism as there were Socialists, and the beliefs categorized under this term changed from year to year and from country to country 5
Believing that the “socialists” lost the true meaning of Marxism, Lenin called for a return to the revolutionary, and preferred the term Communism for his brand of Marxism. His State and Revolution even resembles the Communist Manifesto in terms of content and vision. Lenin strongly disliked the socialists who only wanted to reform things within the State. Lenin’s party, the Bolsheviks, started as a wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party almost a decade before they rose to power. 6 Lenin was critical of these people for “blunting its [Marxism} revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.” 7. For Lenin, they weakened Marxism. An analogy can be drawn from our own time in history when we compare the more moderate democrats (social democrats) with the far Left Antifa and BLM groups, the former want change and reform brought about by social programs, i.e. the use of government and NGOs, whereas the latter, seeing the problem within the structures and institutions themselves, want to destroy by any means necessary. It will come as no surprise to learn that these latter groups are influenced by the Marxist-Leninist ethos. And this variety, and one can argue that it is what Marx truly taught, sees the state as a product and manifestation of class antagonisms and, therefore, must be destroyed and a new state put in its place with the proletariat as the new ruling class 8. This ruling class that “abolishes the state as state” is the Vanguard in Leninist thought. Lenin echoes Marx’s idea of the “withering of the state”, contrary to the socialists and labor parties who merely want to reform the state. In Lenin’s own words, taken from State and Revolution:
The supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of the state in general, is impossible except through the process of “withering away”.
If one were to read Carroll Quigely, one will learn that the idea of Marxism was not the only driving force behind these revolutions, there is also the financial backing of certain very powerful groups, this idea cannot to ignored, but for our current purposes we will look only at the ideas behind revolutions. One of these connections that I wish to mention because it will be important later, was the support given to Mao by Yale University students (just research Yale-in-China). Although Marxism-Leninism was the idea behind Maoism in China, as is often the case, revolutionaries can’t come to power without support. We will circle back to this connection later.
Mao inherited the idea of violent revolution from his predecessors, Marx and Lenin. He believed that history is understood in terms of class struggle, and what moves history forward (the march of history) are internal contradictions of the old and new, where the old must be suppressed. 9 Sound familiar? This is Marx’s reading of the Hegelian dialectic. The difference in Maoism from the others is his Cultural Revolution, where he encouraged a “grassroots” revolution which spread to all the peasantry in the rural parts of China. Mao wanted to bring China out of the agrarian past and into the modern, urban, industrialized age. To accomplish this he needed to radically reeducate and to remove those who stood in the way. This required him not “abolishing” the state, he believed that the state needed to exist as the means to bring about his revolution. In time, the state will be abolished. Mao was more honest in the role of the state than Lenin, as history will testify the state was never abolished in the Soviet Union, it was highly centralized and tyrannical. Lenin’s and Mao’s revolutions resembled the Robespierre’s Reign of Terror because they needed to continue the use of violence directed at the ever shifting enemy to legitimize their power. And, as one is beginning to realize, there will always be enemies.
The Nature of Progress
During the revolution, the seeds of the next revolution are being sown. And now we arrive at the ouroboric nature of progress. As we have seen throughout this two part series, reform is often not enough for the revolutionary minded individuals, violence is always an eventuality. As seen in French history, the first revolution was not the last. As seen in Russia and China, violence and oppression lasted for decades so those in power can keep their power. One way to maintain a level of obsequiousness of the ruled class, education (indoctrination) becomes integral to the whole project. Many of these ideas start in universities and spill out into the streets. Progressive ideologies are ingrained in students at an academic level, eventually these students leave and become policy makers and entrepreneurs and, maybe worse, parents, and they bring these ideologies with them. (Remember Yale’s support of Mao.) This is currently happening in the United States, the Frankfurt School’s of use of Marxism (the variety that Lenin would balk at) retooled socialist ideas to include race, gender, sex, etc (critical theory). Their philosophy, along with postmodernism’s affinity for Marxism, is what has slowly permeated academia. There is also the influence of the Fabian Society who sought social changes in line with socialism and social Darwinism. These two groups have had an irrevocable impact on American society in more ways than most people realize.
Conclusion
We’re beginning to see the fruit of these groups and ideologies the last few years. There is the attempt to rewrite American history (1619 Project) and indoctrinate children in public schools and through media. One can easily draw comparisons to Mao’s Cultural Revolution, albeit it has not reached the widespread level of violence. The idea of revolution and veneration of the underdog in the American ethos has shaped many generations to accept revolutionary thinking, after all most Americans have been rather compliant or accepting of the eradication of despotic regimes around the world as long as we replace it with our brand of classical liberalism. In Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist, he demarcates two groups of people, those who are racist (and this includes people who are “not racist”) and those who are anti-racist. The latter are those who are always working to rid the world of racism (even at the micro level). Kendi was a dominate voice for the BLM movement. The acceptance of revolutionary thinking has become very much the norm; the BLM protests, and the ones that turned violent alongside Antifa, were all shockingly accepted or ignored or condoned by large portions of the citizenry. The concern is that since progress follows repeating patterns, that the violent side will emerge again. Eventually all revolutionaries turn on each other–that is the ouroboric nature of progress–and devour themselves. It happened in Soviet Russian: Stalin killed many of those that helped him to gain power. And it will happen again. Through revolutionary overthrow a new power is put in place, and eventually a new revolution will emerge to overthrow the current entrenched power. At the risk of sounding Hegelian, it is an implacable force of history. It is the horror of modernity.
- Gordon S. Wood, The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States (New York, The Penguin Press), 15
- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
- Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (Kindle version) p.2
- Ibid p.13,14
- Carrol Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (San Pedro, GSG and Associates) p. 375
- W. Bruce Lincoln, The Romanovs: Autocrats of All the Russias (New York, Anchor Books) p. 615
- Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution (Kindle version)
- Ibid
- Mao Zedong, Mao’s Little Red Book (Kindle addition)