A Tale of Two Revolutions
by Robert A. Peterson
Sent by: K. Lobowitch
|
|
On the occasion of the 4th of July, American Independence Day, and July 14th the fall of Bastille and the beginning of the French Revolution, we address this article. Even though this article has been written awhile ago, it is still meaningful and will help us with the understanding of the two revolutions and their differences and outcomes.
*********************
The year 1989 marks the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. To
celebrate, the French government is throwing its biggest party in at least
100 years, to last all year. In the United States, an American Committee
on the French Revolution has been set up to coordinate programs on this
side of the Atlantic, emphasizing the theme, "France and America: Partners
in Liberty."
But were the French and American Revolutions really similar? On the
surface, there were parallels. Yet over the past two centuries, many
observers have likened the American Revolution to the bloodless Glorious
Revolution of 1688, while the French Revolution has been considered the
forerunner of the many, modern violent revolutions that have ended in
totalitarianism. As the Russian naturalist, author, and soldier Prince Petr
Kropotkin put it, "What we learn from the study of the Great [French]
Revolution is that it was the source of all the present communist, anarchist,
and socialist conceptions." 1
It is because the French Revolution ended so violently that many
Frenchmen are troubled about celebrating its 200th anniversary. French
author Leon Daudet has written: "Commemorate the French Revolution?
That's like celebrating the day you got scarlet fever." An Anti-89
Movement has even begun to sell momentos reminding today's Frenchmen
of the excesses of the Revolution, including Royalist black arm bands and
calendars that mock the sacred dates of the French Revolution.
The French should indeed be uneasy about their Revolution, for whereas
the American Revolution brought forth a relatively free economy and
limited government, the French Revolution brought forth first anarchy, then
dictatorship.
Eighteenth-century France was the largest and most populous country in
western Europe. Blessed with rich soil, natural resources, and a long and
varied coastline, France was Europe's greatest power and the dominant
culture on the continent. Unfortunately, like all the other countries of
18th-century Europe, France was saddled with the economic philosophy
of mercantilism. By discouraging free trade with other countries,
mercantilism kept the economies of the European nation-states in the
doldrums, and their people in poverty.
Nevertheless, in 1774, King Louis XVI made a decision that could have
prevented the French Revolution by breathing new life into the French
economy: he appointed Physiocrat Robert Turgot as Controller General of
Finance. The Physiocrats were a small band of followers of the French
physician Francois Quesnay, whose economic prescriptions included
reduced taxes, less regulation, the elimination of government-granted
monopolies and internal tolls and tariffs -- ideas that found their rallying cry
in the famous slogan, "laissez-faire, laissez-passer."
The Physiocrats exerted a profound influence on Adam Smith, who had
spent time in France in the 1760s and whose classic The Wealth of
Nations embodied the Physiocratic attack on mercantilism and argued that
nations get rich by practicing free trade. Of Smith, Turgot, and the
Physiocrats, the great French statesman and author Frederic Bastiat
(1801-1850) wrote: "The basis of their whole economic system may be
truly said to lie in the principle of self-interest. . . . The only function of
government according to this doctrine is to protect life, liberty, and
property."
Embracing the principle of free trade not just as a temporary expedient,
but as a philosophy, Turgot got the king to sign an edict in January 1776
that abolished the monopolies and special privileges of the guilds,
corporations, and trading companies. He also abolished the forced labor
of the peasants on the roads, the hated corvee. He then dedicated himself
to breaking down the internal tariffs within France. By limiting government
expense, he was able to cut the budget by 60 million livres and reduce the
interest on the national debt from 8.7 million livres to 3 million livres.
Had Turgot been allowed to pursue his policies of free trade and less
government intervention, France may very well have become Europe's first
"common market" and avoided violent revolution. A rising tide would have
lifted all ships. Unfortunately for France and the cause of freedom,
resistance from the Court and special interests proved too powerful, and
Turgot was removed from office in 1776. "The dismissal of this great
man," wrote Voltaire, "crushes me. . . . Since that fatal day, I have not
followed anything . . . and am waiting patiently for someone to cut our
throats."
Turgot's successors, following a mercantilist policy of government
intervention, only made the French economy worse. In a desperate move
to find money in the face of an uproar across the country and to
re-establish harmony, Louis XVI agreed to convene the Estates-General
for May, 1789. Meanwhile, the king's new finance minister, Jacques
Necker, a Swiss financial expert, delayed the effects of mercantilism by
importing large amounts of grain.
On May 5, the Estates-General convened at Versailles. By June 17, the
Third Estate had proclaimed itself the National Assembly. Three days
later, the delegates took the famous Tennis Court Oath, vowing not to
disband until France had a new constitution.
But the real French Revolution began not at Versailles but on the streets of
Paris. On July 14, a Parisian mob attacked the old fortress known as the
Bastille, liberating, as one pundit put it, "two fools, four forgers and a
debaucher." The Bastille was no longer being used as a political prison,
and Louis XVI had even made plans to destroy it. That made little
difference to the mob, who were actually looking for weapons.
Promising the guards safe-conduct if they would surrender, the leaders of
the mob broke their word and hacked them to death. It would be the first
of many broken promises. Soon the heads, torsos, and hands of the
Bastille's former guardians were bobbing along the street on pikes. "In all,"
as historian Otto Scott put it, "a glorious victory of unarmed citizens over
the forces of tyranny, or so the newspapers and history later
said." The
French Revolution had begun.
Despite the bloodshed at the Bastille and the riots in Paris, there was some
clear-headed thinking. Mirabeau wanted to keep the Crown but restrain it.
"We need a government like England's," he said. But the French not only
hated things English, they even began to despise their own cultural heritage
-- the good as well as the bad. On October 5, the Assembly adopted the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen -- a good document all
right, but only if it were followed.
Twenty-eight days later, the Assembly showed they had no intention of
doing so: all church property in France was confiscated by the
government. It was the wrong way to go about creating a free society.
Certainly the Church was responsible for some abuses, but to seek to
build a free society by undermining property rights is like cutting down
trees to grow a forest. Such confiscation only sets a precedent for further
violation of property rights, which in turn violates individual rights -- the
very rights of man and the citizen the new government was so loudly
proclaiming. By confiscating church property -- no matter how justified --
France's Revolutionary leaders showed that they weren't interested in a
true free society, only in one created in the image of their own
philosophers. As Bastiat later pointed out, they were among the modern
world's first social engineers.
Soon France began to descend into an abyss in which it would remain for
the next 25 years. In towns where royalist mayors were still popular,
bands of men invaded town halls and killed city magistrates. Thousands of
people sold their homes and fled the country, taking with them precious
skills and human capital. Francois Babeuf, the first modern communist,
created a Society of Equals dedicated to the abolition of private property
and the destruction of all those who held property. The king's guards were
eventually captured and killed. The Marquis de Sade, from whom we get
the term sadism, was released from prison. The Paris Commune took over
control of Paris.
The actions of the government were even more radical than those of the
people at large. In order to meet the continuing economic crisis, the
Assembly resorted to paper money -- the infamous assignats, backed
ostensibly by the confiscated church property. Although most of the
delegates were aware of the dangers of paper money, it was thought that if
the government issued only a small amount -- and that backed up by the
confiscated property -- the assignats would not create the kind of
economic disaster that had accompanied the use of paper money in the
past.
But as had happened again and again through history, the government
proved unable to discipline itself. As Andrew Dickson White put it in his
Fiat Money Inflation in France: "New issues of paper were then clamored
for as more drams are demanded by a drunkard. New issues only
increased the evil; capitalists were all the more reluctant to embark their
money on such a sea of doubt. Workmen of all sorts were more and more
thrown out of employment. Issue after issue of currency came; but no relief
resulted save a momentary stimulus which aggravated the disease."
Writing from England in 1790, long before the French inflation had done
its worst, Edmund Burke saw the danger of fiat currency. According to
Burke, issuing assignats was the government's pat answer to any problem:
"Is there a debt which presses them? Issue assignats. Are compensations
to be made or a maintenance decreed to those whom they have robbed of
their free-hold in their office, or expelled from their profession? Assignats.
Is a fleet to be fitted out? Assignats. . . . Are the old assignats depreciated
at market? What is the remedy? Issue new assignats." The leaders of
France, said Burke, were like quack doctors who urged the same remedy
for every illness.
Burke saw in the French Revolution not a decrease in the power of the
state, but an increase in it: "The establishment of a system of liberty would
of course be supposed to give it [France's currency] new strength; and so
it would actually have done if a system of liberty had been established." As
for the confiscation of property -- first that of the Catholic Church then
that of anyone accused of being an enemy of the Revolution -- Burke said:
"Never did a state, in any case, enrich itself by the confiscation of the
citizens."
But the issuing of assignats was only the beginning. In the spring of 1792,
the First Committee of Public Safety was established, charged with judging
and punishing traitors. Soon the streets of Paris began to run with blood,
as thousands of people were killed by the guillotine. The following fall, the
French government announced that it was prepared to help subject
peoples everywhere win their freedom. Thus, instead of peacefully
exporting French products and French ideas on liberty, the French began
exporting war and revolution . . . hence the saying, "When France sneezes,
the whole world catches cold."
As more soldiers were needed to "liberate" the rest of Europe, France
instituted history's first universal levy -- the ultimate in state control over
the lives of its citizens. Meanwhile, for opposing the Revolution, most of
the city of Lyons was destroyed. And Lafayette, who at first had
embraced the Revolution, was arrested as a traitor.
Soon a progressive income tax was passed, prices on grain were fixed,
and the death penalty meted out to those who refused to sell at the
government's prices. Every citizen was required to carry an identity card
issued by his local commune, called, in an Orwellian twist of language,
Certificates of Good Citizenship. Every house had to post an outside listing
of its legal occupants; the Revolutionary Communes had committees that
watched everyone in the neighborhood; and special passes were needed
to travel from one city to another. The jails were soon filled with more
people than they had been under Louis XVI. Eventually, there flooded
forth such a torrent of laws that virtually every citizen was technically guilty
of crimes against the state. The desire for absolute equality resulted in
everyone's being addressed as "citizen," much as the modern-day
Communist is referred to as "comrade."
Education was centralized and bureaucratized. The old traditions, dialects,
and local allegiances that helped prevent centralization -- and thus tyranny
-- were swept away as the Assembly placed a mathematical grid of
departments, cantons, and municipalities on an unsuspecting France. Each
department was to be run exactly as its neighbor. Since "differences" were
aristocratic, plans were made to erase individual cultures, dialects, and
customs. In order to accomplish this, teachers -- paid by the state --
began to teach a uniform language. Curriculum was controlled totally by
the central government. Summing up this program, SaintJust said,
"Children belong to the State," and advocated taking boys from their
families at the age of five.
So much of modern statism -- with all of its horror and disregard for
individualism -- began with the French Revolution. The "purge," the
"commune," the color red as a symbol of statism, even the political terms
Left, Right, and Center came to us from this period. The only thing that
ended the carnage -- inside France, at least -- was "a man on horseback,"
Napoleon Bonaparte. The French Revolution had brought forth first
anarchy, then statism, and finally, dictatorship. Had it not been for the
indomitable spirit of the average Frenchman and France's position as the
largest country in Europe, France might never have recovered.
Now contrast all of this with the American Revolution -- more correctly
called the War for Independence. The American Revolution was different
because, as Irving Kristol has pointed out, it was "a mild and relatively
bloodless revolution. A war was fought to be sure, and soldiers died in
that war. But . . . there was none of the butchery which we have come to
accept as a natural concomitant of revolutionary warfare. . . . There was
no 'revolutionary justice'; there was no reign of terror; there were no
bloodthirsty proclamations by the Continental Congress."
The American Revolution was essentially a "conservative" movement,
fought to conserve the freedoms America had painstakingly developed
since the 1620s during the period of British "salutary neglect" -- in reality,
a period of laissezfaire government as far as the colonies were concerned.
Samuel Eliot Morison has pointed out: "The American Revolution was
not fought to obtain freedom, but to preserve the liberties that Americans
already had as colonials. Independence was no conscious goal, secretly
nurtured in cellar or jungle by bearded conspirators, but a reluctant last
resort, to preserve 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'"
A sense of restraint pervades this whole period. In the Boston Tea Party,
no one was hurt and no property was damaged save for the tea. One
Patriot even returned the next day to replace a lock on a sea chest that
had been accidentally broken. This was not the work of anarchists who
wanted to destroy everything in their way, but of Englishmen who simply
wanted a redress of grievances.
After the Boston Massacre, when the British soldiers who had fired upon
the crowd were brought to trial, they were defended by American lawyers
James Otis and John Adams. In any other "revolution," these men would
have been calling for the deaths of the offending soldiers. Instead, they
were defending them in court.
When the war finally began, it took over a year for the colonists to declare
their independence. During that year, officers in the Continental Army still
drank to "God save the King." When the Declaration of Independence
was finally declared, it was more out of desperation than careful planning,
as we sought help from foreign nations, particularly the French. In the end,
it was the French monarchy -- not the Revolutionists, as they had not yet
come to power -- that helped America win its independence.
Through the seven years of the American war, there were no mass
executions, no "reigns of terror," no rivers of blood flowing in the streets of
America's cities. When a Congressman suggested to George Washington
that he raid the countryside around Valley Forge to feed his starving
troops, he flatly refused, saying that such an action would put him on the
same level as the invaders.
Most revolutions consume those who start them; in France, Marat,
Robespierre, and Danton all met violent deaths. But when Washington
was offered a virtual dictatorship by some of his officers at Newburgh,
New York, he resisted his natural impulse to take command and urged
them to support the republican legislative process. Professor Andrew C.
McLaughlin has pointed out: "To teach our youth and persuade ourselves
that the heroes of the controversy were only those taking part in
tea-parties and various acts of violence is to inculcate the belief that liberty
and justice rest in the main upon lawless force. And yet as a matter of plain
fact, the self-restraint of the colonists is the striking theme; and their
success in actually establishing institutions under which we still live was a
remarkable achievement. No one telling the truth about the Revolution will
attempt to conceal the fact that there was disorder. . . . [yet] we find it
marked on the whole by constructive political capacity."
In America, unlike France, where religious dissenters were put to death,
there was no wholesale assault on freedom of religion. At the
Constitutional Convention in 1787, there were devout Congregationalists,
Episcopalians, Dutch Reformed, Lutherans, Quakers, Presbyterians,
Methodists, and Roman Catholics. Deist Ben Franklin asked for prayer
during the Convention, while several months later George Washington
spoke at a Jewish synagogue. During the Revolution, many members of
the Continental Congress attended sermons preached by Presbyterian
John Witherspoon, and while Thomas Jefferson worked to separate
church and state in Virginia, he personally raised money to help pay the
salaries of Anglican ministers who would lose their tax-supported
paychecks. In matters of religion, the leaders of America's Revolution
agreed to disagree.
Finally, unlike the French Revolution, the American Revolution brought
forth what would become one of the world's freest societies. There were,
of course, difficulties. During the "critical period" of American history, from
1783- 1787, the 13 states acted as 13 separate nations, each levying
import duties as it pleased. As far as New York was concerned, tariffs
could be placed on New Jersey cider, produced across the river, as easily
as on West Indian rum. The war had been won, but daily battles in the
marketplace were being lost.
The U.S. Constitution changed all that by forbidding states to levy tariffs
against one another. The result was, as John Chamberlain put it in his
history of American business, "the greatest 'common market' in history."
The Constitution also sought to protect property rights, including rights to
ideas (patents and copyrights) and beliefs (the First Amendment). For
Madison, this was indeed the sole purpose of civil government. In 1792 he
wrote: "Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. . . . This
being the end of government, that alone is a just government which
impartially secures to every man whatever is his own."
Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, helped restore
faith in the public credit with his economic program. It was at his urging
that the U.S. dollar be defined in terms of hard money -- silver and gold.
(At the Constitutional Convention, the delegates were so opposed to fiat
paper money that Luther Martin of Maryland complained that they were
"filled with paper money dread.")
Hamilton's centralizing tendencies would have been inappropriate at any
other time in American history; but in the 1790s, his program helped 13
nations combine to form one United States. Had succeeding Treasury
Secretaries continued Hamilton's course of strengthening the federal
government, at the expense of the states, America's economic expansion
would have been stillborn.
Fortunately, when Jefferson came to power, he brought with him the Swiss
financier and economist Albert Gallatin, who served Jefferson for two
terms and Madison for one. Unlike his fellow countryman Necker, whose
mercantilist policies only hastened the coming of the French Revolution,
Gallatin was committed to limited government and free market economic
policies. Setting the tone for his Administration, Jefferson said in his first
inaugural address: "Still one thing more, fellow citizens -- a wise and frugal
government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave
them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and
improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has
earned."
For the next eight years, Jefferson and Gallatin worked to reduce the
nation's debt as well as its taxes. The national debt was cut from $83
million to $57 million, and the number of Federal employees was reduced.
Despite the restrictions on trade caused by Napoleon's Berlin and Milan
decrees, and the British blockade of Europe, American businessmen
continued to develop connections around the world. By the end of
Jefferson's first term, he was able to ask, "What farmer, what mechanic,
what laborer ever sees a tax gatherer in the United States?"
By 1810,
America was well on its way to becoming the world's greatest economic
power. France, meanwhile, still languished under the heavy hand of
Napoleon.
In his Report to the House of Representatives that same year, Gallatin
summed up the reasons for America's prosperity: "No cause . . . has
perhaps more promoted in every respect the general prosperity of the
United States than the absence of those systems of internal restrictions and
monopoly which continue to disfigure the state of society in other
countries. No law exists here directly or indirectly confining man to a
particular occupation or place, or excluding any citizen from any branch he
may at any time think proper to pursue. Industry is in every respect
perfectly free and unfettered; every species of trade, commerce, art,
profession, and manufacture being equally opened to all without requiring
any previous regular apprenticeship, admission, or license." 17
The American Revolution was followed by 200 years of economic growth
under the same government. By contrast, the French Revolution was
followed by political instability, including three revolutions, a directorate, a
Reign of Terror, a dictatorship, a restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy,
another monarchy, and five republics. Today, socialism has a greater hold
on France than it does in America -- although America is not far behind.
Even though they were close in time, it was the French Revolution that set
the pattern for the Russian Revolution and other modern revolutions, not
the American.
Frederic Bastiat clearly saw the difference between the two. The French
Revolution, he argued, is based on the idea of Rousseau that society is
contrary to nature, and therefore must be radically changed. Because,
according to Rousseau, the "social contract" had been violated early in
man's history, it allowed all parties to that contract to return to a state of
"natural liberty." In essence, what Rousseau was saying was, "Sweep aside
all the restraints of property and society, destroy the existing system. Then
you will be free, free to lose yourself in the collective good of mankind,
under my care."
The social architects who emerged out of the chaos of the French
Revolution included Robespierre and Napoleon. In his analysis of
Robespierre, Bastiat said: "Note that when Robespierre demands a
dictatorship, it is . . . to make his own moral principles prevail by means of
terror. . . . Oh, you wretches! . . . You want to reform everything! Reform
yourselves first! This will be enough of a task for you."
In Bastiat's opinion, the French Revolution failed because it repudiated the
very principles upon which a free society is based: self-government,
property rights, free markets, and limited civil government. The American
Revolution, however, brought forth the world's freest society: "Look at the
United States," wrote Bastiat. "There is no country in the world where the
law confines itself more rigorously to its proper role, which is to guarantee
everyone's liberty and property. Accordingly, there is no country in which
the social order seems to rest on a more stable foundation. . . . This is how
they understand freedom and democracy in the United States. There each
citizen is vigilant with a jealous care to remain his own master. It is by
virtue of such freedom that the poor hope to emerge from poverty, and
that the rich hope to preserve their wealth. And, in fact, as we see, in a
very short time this system has brought the Americans to a degree of
enterprise, security, wealth, and equality of which the annals of the human
race offer no other example. . . . [In America] each person can in full
confidence dedicate his capital and his labor to production. He does not
have to fear that his plans and calculations will be upset from one instant to
another by the legislature." 20
Bastiat did see two inconsistencies in the American Republic: slavery ("a
violation of the rights of a person") and tariffs ("a violation of the right to
property"). According to Bastiat, these were the two issues that would
divide America if they were not dealt with speedily.
What was the answer for America as well as France? "Be responsible for
ourselves," said Bastiat. "Look to the State for nothing beyond law and
order. Count on it for no wealth, no enlightenment. No more holding it
responsible for our faults, our negligence, our improvidence. Count only on
ourselves for our subsistence, our physical, intellectual, and moral
progress!" 21
On the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, Frenchmen and
Americans can truly become partners in liberty by working toward the
principles advocated by Bastiat, America's Founding Fathers and others:
limited government, private property, free markets, and free men.