The Theory of Social Revolutions - Brooks Adams
Danton died on the 5th April, 1794; about three months later Jourdan won
the Fleurus campaign. Straightway Thermidor followed, and the Tribunal
worked as well for the party of Thermidor as it had for the Jacobins.
Carrier, who had wallowed in blood at Nantes, as the ideal Jacobin,
walked behind the cart which carried Robespierre to the scaffold,
shouting, "Down with the tyrant;" but that did not save him. In vain he
protested to the Convention that, were he guilty, the whole Convention
was guilty, "down to the President's bell." By a vote of 498 out of 500,
Carrier was sent before the Tribunal which, even though reorganized,
condemned him. Therezia Cabarrus gaily presided at the closing of the
Jacobin Club, Tallien moved over to the benches on the right, and
therefore the court was ruthless to Fouquier. On the 11 Thermidor,
seventy members, officers, or partisans of the Commune of Paris, were
sent to the guillotine in only two batches. On the next day twelve more
followed, four of whom were jurymen. Fouquier's turn came later. It may
also be worth while for Americans to observe that a political court is
quite as effective against property as against life. The Duke of Orleans
is only the most celebrated example of a host of Frenchmen who perished,
not because of revenge, fear, or jealousy, but because the party in
power wanted their property. The famous Law touching Suspected Persons
(loi des suspects) was passed on September 17, 1793. On October 10,
1793, that is three weeks afterward, Saint-Just moved that additional
powers should be granted, by the Convention, to the Committee of Public
Safety, defining, by way of justification for his motion, those who fell
within the purview of this law. Among these, first of all, came "the
rich," who by that fact alone were to be considered, _prima facie_,
enemies to their country.
As I stated at the beginning of this chapter, history never can repeat
itself; therefore, whatever else may happen in the United States, we
certainly shall have no Revolutionary Tribunal like the French Tribunal
of 1793, but the mechanical principle of the political court always
remains the same; it is an administrative board the control of which is
useful, or may be even essential, to the success of a dominant faction,
and the instinctive comprehension which the American people have of this
truth is demonstrated by the determination with which they have, for
many years, sought to impose the will of the majority upon the
judiciary. Other means failing to meet their expectations, they have now
hit on the recall, which is as revolutionary in essence as were the
methods used during the Terror. Courts, from the Supreme Court downward,
if purged by recall, or a process tantamount to recall, would, under
proper stress, work as surely for a required purpose as did the tribunal
supervised by Fouquier-Tinville.
These considerations rather lead me to infer that the extreme complexity
of the administrative problems presented by modern industrial
civilization is beyond the compass of the capitalistic mind. If this be
so, American society, as at present organized, with capitalists for the
dominant class, can concentrate no further, and, as nothing in the
universe is at rest, if it does not concentrate, it must, probably,
begin to disintegrate. Indeed we may perceive incipient signs of
disintegration all about us. We see, for example, an universal contempt
for law, incarnated in the capitalistic class itself, which is
responsible for order, and in spite of the awful danger which impends
over every rich and physically helpless type should the coercive power
collapse. We see it even more distinctly in the chronic war between
capital and labor, which government is admittedly unable to control; we
see it in the slough of urban politics, inseparable from capitalistic
methods of maintaining its ascendancy; and, perhaps, most disquieting of
all, we see it in the dissolution of the family which has, for untold
ages, been the seat of discipline and the foundation of authority. For
the dissolution of the family is peculiarly a phenomenon of our
industrial age, and it is caused by the demand of industry for the cheap
labor of women and children. Napoleon told the lawyers who drafted the
Code that he insisted on one thing alone. They must fortify the family,
for, said he, if the family is responsible to the father and the father
to me, I can keep order in France. One of the difficulties, therefore,
which capital has to meet, by the aid of such administrative ability as
it can command, is how to keep order when society no longer rests on the
cohesive family, but on highly volatilized individuals as incohesive as
grains of sand.
Meditating upon these matters, it is hard to resist the persuasion that
unless capital can, in the immediate future, generate an intellectual
energy, beyond the sphere of its specialized calling, very much in
excess of any intellectual energy of which it has hitherto given
promise, and unless it can besides rise to an appreciation of diverse
social conditions, as well as to a level of political sagacity, far
higher than it has attained within recent years, its relative power in
the community must decline. If this be so the symptoms which indicate
social disintegration will intensify. As they intensify, the ability of
industrial capital to withstand the attacks made upon it will lessen,
and this process must go on until capital abandons the contest to defend
itself as too costly. Then nothing remains but flight. Under what
conditions industrial capital would find migration from America
possible, must remain for us beyond the bounds even of speculation. It
might escape with little or no loss. On the other hand, it might fare as
hardly as did the southern slaveholders. No man can foresee his fate. In
the event of adverse fortune, however, the position of capitalists would
hardly be improved by the existence of political courts serving a
malevolent majority. Whatever may be in store for us, here at least, we
reach an intelligible conclusion. Should Nature follow such a course as
I have suggested, she will settle all our present perplexities as simply
and as drastically as she is apt to settle human perturbations, and she
will follow logically in the infinitely extended line of her own most
impressive precedents.
FOOTNOTES:
[42] In these observations on the intellectual tendencies of capital I
speak generally. Not only individual capitalists, but great
corporations, exist, who are noble examples of law-abiding and
intelligent citizenship. Their rarity, however, and their
conspicuousness, seem to prove the general rule.
[43] By the Law of November 27, 1790, priests refusing to swear
allegiance to the "civil constitution" of the clergy were punished by
loss of pay and of rights of citizenship if they continued their
functions. By Law of August 26, 1792, by transportation to Cayenne.