The Jacobins by Karl Renner

Author:Karl Renner [Renner, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351480543
Google: wBw0DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-05T05:00:16+00:00

CHAPTER V

PLATFORM

I

Towards what purposes were Jacobin tactics directed? The answer might well be that each Jacobin had his own purposes, his own desires. Such an answer, however, would have the serious difficulty of making the new history wholly impossible, not merely as a science, but as an art. We must make some effort to draw up a kind of platform acceptable to the Jacobins who have left these records behind them. At one time, it might have been possible to call this chapter, “The Political Ideas of the Jacobins.” But, quite apart from the fact that one does not dare nowadays attribute a capacity for entertaining abstract thought to the man in the street, such a title would hardly answer our purpose. For it is pretty clear to us nowadays that political ideas and party platforms are not identical. The school of Taine is amply justified in attributing to the formal political philosophy of the eighteenth century an important part in Jacobinism. But if we start with a study of these philosophical elements in Jacobinism we run the risk of falling into the error of Taine, that of attributing to the Jacobins as an actual living political group a rigidity which they may not always, in the face of the event, have possessed. Under the headings of ritual and faith, then, we may study those elements of Jacobinism Napoleon liked to damn under the name of ideology. In the present chapter we must simply ask ourselves what did the Jacobins, as far as we can learn from their own words, seek in the way of concrete and personal satisfaction from their party? We shall for the moment forget eighteenth century philosophy, and consult the records of the clubs.

Now the terms, platform, ritual, faith which we have used to express different aspects of Jacobinism as a living abstraction, as an object of human loyalty, have all three this in common, that they are concerned with the indirect, or corporate, satisfaction of men’s desires. Examples are perhaps necessary to make this clear. X has an empty belly and a shabby wardrobe. He joins a Jacobin club with a clear, self-acknowledged desire to profit by his membership. He gets a good fat government position. Now this is a fairly simple case where a man directly satisfies a personal physical want by entering politics. Y, who also has an empty belly and a shabby wardrobe, joins a Jacobin club with a vague hope of getting a better lot. He gets no direct satisfactions. But he can vote for his deputy (platform), he can kiss the bust of the martyred Marat (ritual), and he can rejoice in his “purity” as a Jacobin (faith). Whether or not these two kinds of satisfactions, which we shall call the concrete and the abstract, correspond to two different kinds of desires is a matter we can hardly debate here. Nor does it matter very much to our argument. For assuming that certain simple wants of the sort we have

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.