Revolution and Other Writings by Gustav Landauer & Gabriel Kuhn & Richard Day

Revolution and Other Writings by Gustav Landauer & Gabriel Kuhn & Richard Day

Author:Gustav Landauer & Gabriel Kuhn & Richard Day
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781604864137
Publisher: PM Press


As we have already seen, each revolution remembers its predecessors and becomes their child at the time of its eruption. However, in the case of the 18th-century French Revolution, the country’s 16th-century revolution was completely forgotten. This revolution had to be rediscovered in our times. The reason is that there had been a decisive change within Christianity that did no longer allow the 18th-century French to understand the ways and means of the fight for freedom and a constitution two centuries earlier. If Chamfort returned, he would see that the free constitution that the revolutions of the 16th and 17th centuries aspired to, and that the revolution of the 18th century was able to realize, exists; however, the chaos he described remains as well.

The second wave of state revolutions consists – not considering the prelude of the Fronde – of the American War of Independence, the 18th century French Revolution, and the revolutions that followed the French example everywhere in the 19th century. Essentially, the ambition of these struggles remained fighting absolutism and the arbitrariness of power, and implementing a constitutional state and a code of law. There were changes, however. The struggles did not – at least not as exclusively as before – focus on the king. They focused less on his brutality and arbitrariness, and more on the incompetence and ignobility of his servants. From the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th , the king increasingly found himself on the sidelines. Many no longer considered him particularly relevant, and viewed him with indifference. The contents of politics became more important than its form or its representatives. The struggle was no longer a struggle against one person only. Its ambitions could no longer be summarized in one notion. Complexity had replaced simplicity. Revolutions had become specific. The king needed to make horrendous mistakes in order to raise particular attention and ignite a republican movement.

The revolutions of today are but intermediate revolutions; no matter how strong their spirit appears. They are revolutions that no longer focus on the absolute king, but do not yet turn against the new form of totalitarian power: the absolute state. In fact, the revolutions of today support the absolute state, they want to expand and participate in it. The king as the main enemy has been replaced by the estates on which the monarchy rests: the clerics and the aristocracy. It is the estates of the realm that are under attack; in other words, the republican basis of many former revolutions.

The bourgeoisie has become strong through trade and manufacturing. The third estate wants to complete the process of atomization and individualism. There remain remnants of the times of ordered multiplicity and federations in form of privileges and other obstacles to social change. The estates of the realm, however, are as much gone as the guilds; collectively owned and maintained lands (remnants of old commons) are divided; trade alliances are abolished and prohibited. Today’s ambitions are not reduced to freedom of conscience and equal participation in the state’s affairs.



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