Part 5

Literature in late eighteenth-century France is overwhelmingly sociological. If you look in the yellowing remains of French eighteenth-century journalism, if you try to reconstruct the chatter of salons and clubs, you will find the same chorus of complaints and criticisms of existing institutions, the same search for Nature’s simple plan of perfection in politics. There is both a bitterness and a completeness in this chorus of complaint that you will not find in Victorian complaints. Statistically, one might establish the fact that there were proportionately more intellectuals “against the government” in eighteenth-century France than in nineteenth-century England. But the difference goes beyond statistics, and into what we have called the qualitative difference. The French have a tone, at once more bitter and more hopeful, quite different from the Victorians. That this is not altogether a national difference will be clear to anyone reading the pamphlet literature of the age of Milton. Then the English intellectuals had deserted, as they had not under Victoria.

Russia, too, is a clear example of this desertion of the intellectuals. There is certainly much more than political propaganda in the series of novelists who have made Russian literature a part of the education of us all. But there is unmistakably political and social criticism of Czarist Russia even in the work of the most Olympian of them, Turgenev. And the impression one gets from even a cursory view of Russian intellectual life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is unmistakable; to write, teach, or preach in those days meant being against the government. There are exceptions, and degrees of opposition, but the above statement would probably be accepted even by present-day Russian exiles.

America is not so neat an instance. In Boston, for instance, in the 1760’s and 70’s, a good many of the kind of people we are discussing--intellectuals will have to do--were as firmly as such people are now against so un-Bostonian an activity as sedition. It is clear that Harvard was by no means unanimous against the Crown, let alone in favor of the democratic machinations of her distinguished alumnus, Sam Adams. But if the literary and journalistic output in the colonies between 1750 and 1775--and even if we include the sermons--could be statistically assigned as either for or against the actual policies of the imperial government, there seems little doubt as to the very considerable balance against these policies. The Enlightenment, especially through Locke and Montesquieu, had come to the American colonies. The natural and inalienable rights of man were in this country, as in Europe, concepts introduced by intellectuals.

England may seem at first sight an exception to the desertion of the intellectuals. Lovelace, Suckling, even Donne seem hardly preoccupied with sociology. Yet at a second glance it is quite clear that English literature under the first two Stuarts is far from being the chorus of loyal praise it was in the days of Queen Bess. A glance into Professor Grierson’s _Cross Currents in English Literature in the Seventeenth Century_ will show how much that literature was a dissolvent of the merry England of the Renaissance. Even more important is the fact that in those days there were no real newspapers, and the pamphlet took their place. Now the pamphlet literature of the early seventeenth century in England, quantitatively enormous, even by modern standards, is almost wholly preoccupied with religion or politics--better, religion _and_ politics--about as good an example of the desertion of the intellectuals as could be found. Indeed, as Professor Gooch has written, in the reign of James I “proclamation followed proclamation against the sale of ‘Seditious and Puritan books’ and there was ‘much talk of libels and dangerous writings.’”

To what do these intellectuals desert? To another and better world than that of the corrupt and inefficient old regimes. From a thousand pens and voices there are built up in the years before the revolution actually breaks out what one must now fashionably call the foundations of the revolutionary myth--or folklore, or symbols, or ideology. Some such better world of the ideal is contrasted with this immediate and imperfect world in all the ethical and religious systems under which Western men have lived, and notably in Christianity. It is not quite accurate to assert that for medieval Christianity the other, ideal world is safely put off to heaven. Yet it is clear that with the Reformation and the Renaissance men began to think more earnestly about bringing part of heaven, at any rate, to this earth. What differentiates this ideal world of the revolutionaries from the better world as conceived by more pedestrian persons is a flaming sense of the immediacy of the ideal, a feeling that there is something in all men better than their present fate, a conviction that what is, not only ought not, but need not, be.

We shall later meet these revolutionary ideals in their fully developed forms. Here we need only notice that in the writings and preachings of the English Puritans--and to a lesser extent the constitutional lawyers--in those of the eighteenth-century _philosophes_, in those of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Marxists, the evil, and indeed illegitimate existing regime is very effectively contrasted with the good, and indeed inevitable, rule of right to come. In England, America, and in France, the essential principle to which men appealed against present conditions was Nature, with its clear and simple laws. Ship Money in England, Stamp Act in America, patents of nobility in France, were all contrary to the law of Nature. Even in England and America, where there was also much appeal to rights to be found in Magna Charta or the common law, the final appeal was always to a law of Nature “engraved in the hearts of men.” As the Puritan Henry Parker wrote in England, the common courts were “furnished only with rules of particular justice, which rules being too narrow for so capacious a subject [the relation of Crown to People] we must refer to those that the original laws of Nature hold out to us.” By the eighteenth century this kind of language had become almost universal among intellectuals. That Nature always counseled what the intellectuals in revolt wanted is an observation we must in these days feel bound to make. It seems likely, however, that for most of those who appealed to her Nature was as definite and explicit as God had once been, and as dialectical materialism was to be.

For the Russian writers and agitators of the Czarist regime, Nature did not play so prominent a part. Not that Nature is lacking in the pages of Tolstoy and his fellows, and the contrast between “artificial” society and “natural” instincts was not disdained even in Socialist propaganda. But the official ideology of most of the Russian radicals was Marxism, and Marxism finds that the existence of capitalists, the rule of the bourgeoisie, is altogether natural. Only, its destruction by the proletariat is also natural, and this destruction is determined by forces quite beyond capitalistic control. The inevitable march of economic forces would then for the Marxists accomplish what the English Puritan expected from God and the French _philosophe_ from Nature and Reason. The essential thing all these pre-revolutionary agitators have in common, the essential ingredient, intellectually at least, in the revolutionary myth, is this abstract, all-powerful force, this perfect ally.

One special point is here worth our attention for a moment. Not only does God, Nature, or dialectical materialism make the victory of the present under-dog certain. The present upper-dog can be shown--perhaps for propaganda purposes _must_ be shown--to have acquired his preponderance by an accident, or a particularly dirty trick, while God or Nature was temporarily off duty. Thus in the English revolution the royalists and indeed the gentry as a whole were labeled “Normans,” descendants of a group of foreign invaders with no right to English soil. John Lilburne, the Leveller, goes so far as to assert that the whole common law was a badge of slavery imposed upon the free people of England by the Norman Conquest. American hatred of absentee British government hardly needed such artificial fanning. The French were told by no less a person than Siéyès that all their trouble came from the usurpations of the Franks over a thousand years ago. French nobleman in 1789 were descendants of barbarous Germans, while French commoners were descendants of civilized Gauls and Romans. Revolution was but restoring the conditions of 450 A.D. Marxism explained the exploiting class without recourse to such pseudo-historical notions. And yet there is plenty of reference in Russian revolutionary agitation to the usurpation of land by the nobles, to their Varangian, or Tartar, or Western, or at any rate foreign origins.

Finally, a great deal of energy has been expended on the question as to whether this revolutionary ideology “causes” revolutionary action, or whether it is merely a sort of superfluous decoration with which the revolutionists cover their real acts and real motives. Most of this discussion is in the highest degree futile, since it is based on a crude notion of causation altogether untenable in fruitful scientific work beyond a very simple level. There is no more point disputing whether Rousseau made the French revolution or the French revolution made Rousseau than in disputing whether egg or chicken came first. We note that in our pre-revolutionary societies the kind of discontents, the specific difficulties about economic, social and political conditions that hard-boiled moderns focus on are invariably accompanied by a very great deal of writing and talking about ideals, about a better world, about some very abstract forces tending to bring about that better world. It is, indeed, the _expression_ of ideas, rather than particular ideas--which may vary enormously in different revolutions--that makes the uniformity. We find that ideas are always a part of the pre-revolutionary situation, and we are quite content to let it go at that. No ideas, no revolution. This does not mean that ideas _cause_ revolutions. It merely means that they form part of the mutually dependent variables we are studying.

_IV. Classes and Class Antagonisms_

Certain groups in our four societies of the old regimes nourished feelings of dislike, mixed or unmixed with contempt, for other groups. If we avoid the narrow economic connotations of the term, we may call these groups classes; if we realize the struggle was not simply one between two contending classes, feudal vs. bourgeois or bourgeois vs. proletariat, we may even speak of class struggles. This type of struggle in one form or another seems as endemic as many other kinds of violence in the stablest of Western societies. Here again we must not postulate for the normal society with which we contrast our pre-revolutionary societies, a lying down together of the lion and the lamb. But even so, it will soon appear that these class hatreds are stepped up, exacerbated in a noticeable degree in the old regimes. Class distinctions are seen, not as barriers the clever, brave, or ambitious can cross, but as unnatural and unjust privileges, established by wicked men against the express intention of Almighty God, Nature, or Science. These class struggles are by no means simple duels; there are groups within groups, currents within currents. We must try and analyze some of these currents.

In the first place, what may be called the ruling class seems in all four of our societies to be divided and inept. By ruling class we understand, it may be too generously, the people who run things, the people in the public eye--the politicians, the important civil servants, the bankers, the men of affairs, the great landowning nobles, the officers, the priesthood, perhaps even some of the intellectuals. Formal nobility of the blood has in the Western world usually been a much too narrow test of membership in a ruling class. Even in early modern times, the ruling class was something like what we have outlined above, the minority of men and women who seemed to lead dramatic lives, about whom the more exciting scandals arose, who set the fashion, who had wealth, position, or at least reputation, who, in short, ruled. Indeed, in a socially stable society it seems likely that the great masses of poor and middling folk, as also the obscure and unsuccessful people who by birth and training might seem to be in the ruling class, really accept the leadership of those at the top of the social pyramid, and dream rather of _joining_ them than of _dislodging_ them.

Now the ruling classes in our societies seem, and not simply _a posteriori_ because they were in fact overthrown, to have been unsuccessful in fulfilling their functions. It is unlikely that short of Sparta or Prussia the simpler military virtues alone are enough for a ruling class. Such a class ought not, however, to shrink from the use of force to maintain itself, and it ought not to value wit and originality in its own members too highly. Wit, at any rate, it can usually hire adequately enough from other sources. A mixture of the military virtues, of respect for established ways of thinking and behaving, and of willingness to compromise, is probably an adequate rough approximation of the qualities of a successful ruling class--qualities clearly possessed by the Romans of Punic War times, and the English of the eighteenth century, though the latter failed in relations with America.

When numerous and influential members of such a class begin to believe that they hold power unjustly, or that all men are brothers, equal in the eyes of eternal justice, or that the beliefs they were brought up on are silly, or that “after us the deluge,” they are not likely to resist successfully any serious attacks on their social, economic and political position. The subject of the decadence of a ruling class, and the relation of this decadence to revolution, is a fascinating and, like so much of sociology, a relatively unexplored subject. We can here do no more than suggest that this decadence is not necessarily a “moral” decadence if by “moral” you mean what a good evangelical Christian means by that word. Successful ruling classes have not infrequently been quite addicted to cruel sports, drinking, gambling, adultery, and other similar pursuits which we should no doubt all agree to condemn. It is a reasonable assertion that the virtuous Lafayette was a much clearer sign of the unfitness of the French aristocracy to rule than were Pompadour or even Du Barry.

The Russians here provide us with a _locus classicus_. To judge from what appears of them in print, Russian aristocrats for decades before 1917 had been in the habit of bemoaning the futility of life, the backwardness of Russia, the Slavic sorrows of their condition. No doubt this is an exaggeration. But clearly many of the Russian ruling classes had an uneasy feeling that their privileges would not last. Many of them, like Tolstoy, went over to the other side. Others turned liberal, and began that process of granting concessions here and withdrawing them there that we have already noticed in France. Even in court circles, it was quite the fashion by 1916 to ridicule the Czar and his intimates. As Protopopov, a hated Czarist minister, writes: “Even the very highest classes became _frondeurs_ before the revolution; in the grand salons and clubs the policy of the government received harsh and unfriendly criticism. The relations which had been formed in the Czar’s family were analyzed and talked over. Little anecdotes were passed about the head of the state. Verses were composed. Many grand dukes openly attended these meetings.... A sense of the danger of this sport did not awaken until the last moment.”

Finally, when those of them who had positions of political power did use force, they used it sporadically and inefficiently. We shall have more to say about this general problem of the use of force when we come to the first stages of actual revolution. In this connection it will be sufficient that the Russian ruling classes, in spite of their celebrated Asiatic background, were by the late nineteenth century more than half ashamed to use force, and therefore used it badly, so that on the whole those on whom force was inflicted were stimulated rather than repressed. The line in actual practice of government between force and persuasion is a subtle one, not to be drawn by formulas, by “science” or textbooks, but by men skilled in the art of ruling. One of the best signs of the unfitness of the ruling class to rule is the absence of this skill among its members. And this absence is recorded in history in the cumulated minor disturbances and discontents which precede revolution.

Russia remains the classic instance of an inept ruling class, but France is almost as good a case. The salons in which the old regime was torn apart--verbally, of course--were presided over by noblewomen and attended by noblemen. Princes of the blood royal became freemasons, and if they did not quite plot the overthrow of all decency, as witch-hunters like Mrs. Nesta Webster seem to think, at least sought to improve themselves out of their privileges and rank. Perhaps nowhere better than in France is to be seen one of the concomitants of the kind of disintegration of the ruling class we have been discussing. This is the deliberate espousal by members of the ruling class of the cause of discontented or repressed classes--upper-dogs voluntarily turning under-dogs. It is not altogether cynical to hazard the guess that this is sometimes an indication that there is about to be a reversal in the position of the dogs. Lafayette is in some ways a good example of this kind of upper-dog, since he seems to have been an unintelligent and ambitious man, whose course was largely determined by fashion. Lafayette tried to do what his own circle would most admire, and since he could not dance well--and his circle admired good dancing--he went to fight for freedom in America, which was also something his circle admired. But ruling classes cannot profitably fight for freedom--freedom, that is, for the other fellow.

In America this decadence of a ruling class is not a prominent symptom of the coming revolution. Our native ruling class was still young, still in the process of formation, and seen as a class exhibited none of the ineptness we have noted in Russia and France. But of course a large part of our ruling class espoused the American revolution, which is probably one of the reasons why our revolution stopped short of a full-blooded Reign of Terror. As far as the ruling class in England at the time of our revolution is concerned, it was very far from being capable of a resolute course towards America. It managed to hold on in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but only by granting concessions to the middle classes, concessions which its French counterpart refused to grant. Many of these Englishmen were, however, anything but defenders of the established order as regards relations with America. Fox, Burke, the Whigs in general, sided with the Americans even after 1775, and their attitude unquestionably helped give the rebellious Americans heart.

Even in seventeenth-century England this sort of symptom is to be discerned. In the English aristocracy of Jacobean times there is not, of course, exactly the same mixture of weariness, doubt, humanitarian hopes, and irresponsibility we have found in Russia or in France. Yet most of these elements can be found in the group later known as Cavaliers. Picturesque, romantic, appealing though the Cavaliers seem to us now in literature and tradition, it would be hard to maintain that they displayed the solidarity and balance necessary to a ruling class. And the Cavalier legend is not wholly a product of the years after the Great Rebellion. The Cavaliers were romantic even to themselves, and in a harsh world of Puritans and money-making had already begun that search for a golden past so characteristic of the émigrés of later revolutions. Nor are the enlightened or inspired, the Lafayettes or the Tolstoys, altogether lacking in the English ruling classes of the time. Even though you accept the nineteenth-century evaluation of the English as always hard-headed, practical, compromise-loving, you will do well to recall that a Tudor gentleman gave the word “Utopia” to political thought, and that Harrington’s famous Utopia, _Oceana_, is a seventeenth-century product.

Still, what conceals from us the extent to which many able and ambitious English gentlemen had deserted the established order in early Stuart times is that they deserted, not as did Lafayette, to America and the abstract rights of man, but to God and the way of salvation. Puritanism, in one or another of its many forms, proved attractive not merely to humble men, nor even to traders and bankers, but to many of the gentry and the nobility. Do not forget that Cromwell himself was a gentleman. Finally, what we may call the politico-legal opposition to the first two Stuarts--though separation of political and religious for that time is purely a matter of analysis, the two being inextricably mixed in the feelings of contemporaries--this politico-legal opposition was, as far as leadership went, almost wholly recruited from gentry and nobility. Men like Hampden and Essex resemble Washington in that they are essentially conservatives driven to rebellion by the ineptness of their immediate rulers; they are not, like Lafayette, sentimental deserters of their class.

Except perhaps in America, we find the ruling classes in the old regimes markedly divided, markedly unsuited to fulfill the functions of a ruling class. Some have joined the intellectuals and deserted the established order, have indeed often become leaders in the crusade for a new order; others have turned rebels, less because of hope for the future than because of boredom with the present; others have gone soft, or indifferent, or cynical. Many, possibly even most of the rank-and-file of the ruling classes, the English squire, the French and Russian country nobleman, retained the simple faith in themselves and their position which is apparently necessary to a ruling class. But the tone of life in the upper classes was not set by such as these. Fashion had deserted with the intellectuals. The sober virtues, the whole complex series of value-judgments which guards a privileged class from itself and others, all these were out of fashion at Whitehall, at Versailles, at the old court of St. Petersburg. _Esprit de corps_ is a subtle thing, difficult, indeed impossible, to analyze with the methods of the chemist or the statistician. The intricate balance of sentiments and habits which hold men together in any such group as those we have been discussing may be altered by changes apparently insignificant, and extremely difficult to trace. But the fact of the alteration is clear. The very wit, refinement, the cultural graces so evident in what we know of the Cavaliers, the French aristocrats of Versailles and the salons, the Russian upper classes of the ballet, the opera, the novel, are signs of the decadence, not necessarily moral, but certainly political, of a ruling class.