Is revolutionary violence justified? A re-examination of the Robespierre case February 2016 A) Introduction Maximillien Robespierre (1758-1794) is without doubt one of the most controversial figures in world history. Admired by many, hated by much more, it is easily observed that in our post-ideological era he still provokes serious debates between the Right and the Left. Although, he is considered by many historians as a man with no extraordinary talents and abilities (Warwick, 1909) (unlike Danton) he had the chance to play an emphatic and decisive role in a world-changing event- the French Revolution- when he was only in his thirties. What is even more challenging to those who try to belittle him is that Robespierre is seen almost universally as the incarnation of the French Revolution itself (Doyle, & Haydon, 1999, p.13). In his speeches the principles of liberty, happiness, sovereignty, and virtue, were not rhetorical finery but the reasons and the same time the media for the establishment of the French Republic. However, the same man, the Incorruptible, is seen (again with few exceptions) as the incarnation of the Reign of Terror. It was Robespierre and his companions that were charged for all the extremities and atrocities that happened between 1792 until his death. Regardless of whether this is historically true (he certainly had some impact on the execution of his political adversaries, although he was not the bloodthirsty dictator which was the dominant image constructed by his living opponents), Robespierre provided in his speeches a justification of Terror. It is one of the many paradoxes of politics that it is worse to justify a morally reprehensible action than to actually do it; as Jordan (1999) argues: Politics as the art of force and fraud existed before Machiavelli wrote The Prince. But it is the Florentine republican whose name became synonymous with double-dealing, perfidy and political violence, rather than Ferdinand of Spain or Cesare Borgia, who actually did evil deeds (p. 32). In the present essay the main argument of the justification of revolutionary Terror is reconstructed by a re-reading of Robespierre’s speeches. The prominent view that for Robespierre Terror was just a necessary evil is challenged by proposing the view that a more positive conceptualisation of Terror as a regenerative force was much closer to his political vision. Then various approaches to Robespierre’s paradigm are considered, beginning from Marx and left-wing historians, to Hannah Arendt and revisionist historians such as Francois Furet. The question of whether or when revolutionary violence is or can be justified is still of great importance for 21st century political theory. What should people do when they consider a regime illegitimate and the only way to overthrow it is through violence? Should they revolt? Or should they try to reform it in the existent legal context? Are there any acceptable limits of revolutionary violence? However, another reason why the case of Robespierre and his practices are still of great controversy is that they pose serious questions of general ethico-political nature. Robespierre as every statesman that had to take crucial decisions and exercise power in critical moments faced dilemmas such at what level ends justify the means and to what extent should he adhere to his principles. In fact, we can be quite sure that he was convinced that he was on the right side of history, and anything that was considered as a compromise to his principles was a priori rejected. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the contradiction that it was the same man who supported the abolition of the capital punishment (Doyle, & Haydon, 1999, p. 8) and some years later guillotined (even implicitly) a lot of citizens whom he suspected as counter-revolutionaries. Another important dimension of the Robespierre case is that he provides a great example of the everlasting power of rhetoric in political struggle. Some of these issues will be considered in the following sections. B) Virtue and Terror Robespierre was not always the omnipotent man his enemies imagined him to be. Actually, “in traditional political terms he was a failure” (Jordan, 1999, p. 18) when we consider that most of his proposals for legislation in the National Convention were not adopted. Of course he was the dominant figure in the Committee of Public Safety for about a year (July 1793-July 1794) but even this year his power was constantly challenged. Indeed, the only place that the Incorruptible was the indisputable leader was the Jacobin Club (Scurr, 2006, p. 165). It was there that Robespierre’s speeches found their audience. An audience fascinated by his Spartan lifestyle (McPhee, 2012 p, 187), his love of the patrie and his constant concern with the principles that must guide the new Rome (Robespierre, 2007, p. 47). Despite the growing influence of Robespierre and other revolutionaries like Danton, the French Revolution was in grave danger. Almost all the monarchical powers of Europe, and especially England and Austria had decided to end the revolution and restore the monarchy which has ended officially in 10 August 1792. In addition, the newly founded First Republic (21 September 1792) had to deal with a civil war. To make matters worse there were vast differences and conflicts between the Girondins and the Montagnards ending to a failure to form a constitution. It was in this context of constant danger that Robespierre devoted his life to the revolution. There is no doubt that he perceived himself as a martyr (Robespierre, 2007, p. 131) and maybe this selflessness can be accounted for the demands that he made from others and explains how pitiless he was with his companions that were not willing to go as far as he went. Nevertheless, Robespierre had also a coherent political vision which inspired his practice and it was expressed in his speeches. Therefore, it would be inadequate to propose that everything Robespierre said was simply a justification of violence as a necessary evil due to circumstances and to forget that he never stopped developing his ideas about how the French Republic should be. What is more interesting is that both these dimensions of Robespierre’s politics (saving the revolution-establishing the republic of virtue) were going to be attained through the same means: violence. In respect of the first dimension, Robespierre, seems to adopt various strategies to defend the escalation of violence that everybody was seeing between 1792-1794. Sometimes he tends to underplay the importance of certain atrocities (“some few reprehensible acts”) (Robespierre, 2007, p. 44). Another strategy, still relevant today, is first to admit that crimes were committed but then to compare the relatively small number of these crimes with the endless murders of the Ancien Regime: “Let us keep back some tears for more touching calamities. Weep for a hundred thousand patriots immolated by tyranny; weep for our fellow-citizens expiring under their blazing roofs, and the sons of citizens massacred in the cradle, or in their mothers’ arms. Have you not also brothers, children, wives of your own to avenge?” (Robespierre, 2007, p. 47). A third strategy is to attribute specific extremities in the patriotic zeal of the people. Robespierre believed that patriotism is inherently avid (“who can love the homeland coldly”) (Robespierre, 2007, p. 101) and the national convention should be cautious not to pose limits to patriotism. A fourth strategy is to refer to the nature of the revolution per se as a violent event. In a famous speech, Robespierre trying to answer Louvet’s accusation of wanting to install a dictatorship expressed one of the most important remarks of his career: “Citizens, did you want a revolution without a revolution?” (Robespierre, 2007, p. 43). For the Incorruptible it was obvious (and here we have Machiavellianism at its purest) that a revolution cannot exist without violence and deadly sacrifices. Demanding a non-violent revolution is like demanding a victory without the means to attain it (Robespierre, 2007, p. 44). Another more offensive strategy was to question the motives of his political opponents, hence repudiating their opposition to violence as counter-revolutionary tendency. Robespierre, was constantly invoking the existence of conspiracies, enemies of the people plotting the restoration of the monarchy, counter-revolutionaries disguised as patriots and he was suspicious of everyone that opposed him: “A sensibility that wails almost exclusively over the enemies of liberty seems suspect to me. Stop shaking the tyrant’s bloody robe in my face, or I will believe that you wish to put Rome in chains.” (p. 47) Although the notion of strategy is useful, when we apply it to the rhetoric of a politician, it would be fallacious to consider that Robespierre did not believe what he said and simply used the abovementioned techniques as a mere rhetoric device to achieve his goals. Instead, all his value system was turned upside down to sustain the justification of the revolutionary violence. There is no better example than this: “to punish the oppressors of humanity: that is clemency; to forgive them, that is barbarity” (Robespierre, 2007, p. 117). It is easily observed that the consideration of forgiveness of any kind of criminal a barbarity rejected all the moral framework of his age. However, it is our contention that for Robespierre the necessity of violence was not obvious only for the safety of the French Revolution. Reading through his speeches it is established that violence was necessary for two other purposes: a) the destruction of the Ancien Regime; b) the creation of the republic of virtue. Shorten (2012, p. 192) argues that there seem to be two forms of justification of political violence: the first justifies violence –something generally morally unacceptable- in terms of promoting a more important good that will happen in the future (utilitarian); the second is related with the identity of the subjects. For Shorten (2012, p. 192) revolutionary violence acts as a “regenerative force” to overturn the shared victimhood that constructs the identity of the subjects: “cleansing, purifying, and cathartic” (Shorten, 2012, p.192). This dual conceptualisation of justification of political violence fits perfectly with Robespierre’s arguments. As far as the first (utilitarian) is concerned some thoughts have been exposed and will be exposed later. Nevertheless, the second dimension is even more important. While describing the second strategy that Robespierre adopted it was observed that he emphasised the endless number of crimes that the pre-revolutionary situation in France was responsible for, compared with the small number of atrocities that happened during the years since 1789. Generally, and this is what made Robespierre popular, he identified with the people as a victim of injustice, and this identification is one the reasons he sometimes turned a blind eye to violence that was unnecessary even by his own standards. Another critical notion is the idea of purification. In order to establish a virtuous republic everything that referred to the past had to be destroyed. A clean, purified ground was needed to build the new Rome. A great example of this rationale was Robespierre’s attitude towards the execution of the King. He was the one that said: “I utter this deadly truth with regret, but Louis must die, because the homeland has to live.”(Robespierre, 2007, p. 64). Hence, violence- Robespierre proposed the execution of the King without a trial- is the medium for the new beginning. However, violence is also justifiable in terms of the Incorruptible’s political vision. Despite remaining realist when he had to deal with practical issues, Robespierre never stopped imagining and describing how the years after the revolution should be. He expressed his goal as the enjoyment of liberty, equality and justice (Robespierre, 2007, p. 109-110) for the people as a whole, unified under the concept of virtue. Nevertheless, in Robespierre’s perspective such sublime goals may provide extreme strength to the revolutionaries (Robespierre, 2007, p. 114) but also lead to the collective hostility of all those who want to suppress the revolution. For Robespierre the answer is Liberty (which simply means the death of our enemies) or Death (our death): “We must stifle the internal and external enemies of the Republic, or perish with it; and in this situation, the first maxim of your policy should be that the people are led by reason, and the enemies of the people by terror.” (Robespierre, 2007, p. 114-115). C) In what terms is revolutionary violence justified? Generally, it is the radical tradition of the Left that tends to see revolutionary violence as a necessary evil (and sometimes as not an evil per se) in contrast with more conservative positions that reject revolutions because they can lead to violence. Therefore, if the aim is to examine if and how revolutionary violence is justified from a radical point of view it would be plausible to start with the opinions of Karl Marx. As Löwy argues- and we have no reason to disagree with him- Marx was fascinated by the French Revolution (1989, p. 111). Marx’s analysis of the French Revolution as a bourgeois revolution is well-known and it is not necessary to be repeated here. What is far more interesting is his stance towards the Reign of Terror (Löwy, 1989, p, 115). Löwy identifies three conceptions of Terror in the work of Marx. The first one, is that Terror is the outcome of the clash between the truly revolutionary Jacobinism and bourgeois society. What the Jacobins did, is to use the state to establish their political agenda (Löwy, 1989, p, 116). The second conception of the Terror refers to the main figures of the period (Robespierre, Saint-Just, and other Jacobins). For Marx, these men engaged themselves in the futile project of trying to transform a modern state which was ruled under the principle of representation into a republic that was more like the ancient Rome (Löwy, 1989, p, 116). A third conception of the Terror, which by no means can be considered in favour of it, is that Terror implicitly led to the establishment of the bourgeois society (Löwy, 1989, p, 117). In a famous article he mentions: “The entire French terrorism was just a plebeian way of dealing with the enemies of the bourgeoisie, absolutism, feudalism and philistinism.” (Marx, 1848). Nevertheless, the question remains: What did the greatest revolutionary theorist thought of Terror? There is no doubt that Marx rejected the model of Jacobin Terror for the future socialist revolution, although he admired the devotion Robespierre and Saint-Just gave to the revolutionary cause. However, his rejection was not based on moral standards. Marx did believe that revolutionary terror was necessary and a proof of that is his remark 1 in the Neue Rheinhishe Zeitung (1849): “there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror”. (Marx, 1849) 1 The remark was originally made in 1848 but it was impossible to find the relevant article of Marx. Marx repeats this statement when he is forced to shut down the newspaper. Other major exponents of Robespierre’s politics were, and even without the critical attitude of Marx, Albert Mathiez (1874-1932) and Georges Lefebvre (Friguglietti, 1999). Mathiez was a historian that challenged the view that Danton was the victim of Robespierre’s ambition and mediocrity (a view widely held still today) and through his work praised the Incorruptible’s revolutionary passion and vision. His main contribution remains the foundation of the Societe des Etudes robespierristes (Friguglietti, 1999, p. 217). It would be rather difficult to perceive his analysis as balanced. Lefebvre (1901-1991) was the man that replaced Mathiez when the latter died. Although a devoted communist Lefebvre was not as passionate as Mathiez. For him Robespierre remained an advocate of democracy but he had the burden to save the revolution from its enemies. Moreover, Lefebvre recognized the problematic character of the Law 22 Prairial, which lead to the escalation of Terror (Friguglietti, 1999, p. 218). Nevertheless, for him the Terror, Lefebvre was not the work of Robespierre, who sought to curb its excesses as well as to protect the innocent from its rigours” (Friguglietti, p. 219). We cannot help to note that it seems that it is more the personality of Robespierre that fascinated these two historians than his political vision or his practices. A rather different account of the Reign of Terror is presented in the book of Wahnich (2012) In Defence of the Terror: Liberty or Death in the French Revolution. Wahnich in an interesting analysis conceptualizes Terror not as an accidental outburst of violence, a kind of collective madness and abandonment of 1789’s principles but as a sustained effort to channel these tendencies in a more cohesive manner. The cornerstone of this rather unusual defence of the Terror is Wahnich’s point of emphasis which is the “emotional economy” (Wahnich, 2012, p. 20) of the revolutionaries and the people. For the latter, emotions of anger, fury, danger, and of course vengeance were uncontrollable and in order to avoid atrocities they had to be transformed into an institutional form (Wahnich, 2012, p. 30). Three were the main expressions of this people’s vengeance and one is tempted to ask what would have happened if the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Law of the Suspects and the Law of 22 Prairial of year II (Wahnich, 2012, p. 57) are considered the ‘moderate’ way to deal with people’s fury. However, what is interesting in Wahnich’s analysis is that in her own perspective Terror is conceptualized as neither the outcome of a necessity due to foreign powers’ invasion and civil war (although she admits that the emotion that the patrie was in danger played a crucial role) neither as the outcome of the passionate zeal of the revolutionaries to save the Revolution. Terror was not an overflow of Robespierre’s and Sainst-Just’s fanaticism ( some would rather say Machiavellianism) or what we could say in psychoanalytic terms, a passage a l’ acte, but a plan to make revolutionary violence disciplined. It is very important to cite what Danton once said about the formation of Revolutionary Tribunal which seems to approve this interpretation of the Terror: Let us do what the Legislative Assembly failed to do, let us be terrible so as to save the people from being so. Let us organize a tribunal- not well, for that is impossible, but as best we can, so that the sword of the law weighs over the heads of all its enemies…[and] so that all will be avenged. (Archives parlementaires, vol. 60, p. 62, as cited in Wahnich, 2012, p. 63). Although, Wahnich’s innovative approach is certainly very useful and cannot be ignored if we want to understand the relationship between the main revolutionaries and the people, it is not without its shortcomings. In spite of emphasizing the main role of the people’s uncontrollable, spontaneous deeds of vengeance (such as the September Massacres 1972) she does not take into consideration the first instance of this kind of political engagement, meaning the storming of the Bastille (1789) and the atrocities committed there. This is of great importance because it is still a matter of debate whether the seeds of the Terror were inherent in 1789. No one can blame Robespierre for what happened in the Bastille and of course no one equates this event with the Reign of Terror. Nevertheless, the fact that with the French Revolution the masses entered the political domain could mean that actually the Terror was not only Robespierre’s or the Committee’s of Public Safety fault. On the other hand, another problem with Wahnich’s analysis, is that she seems to underestimate the role of the revolutionaries in inspiring specific emotions to the people and hence, leading them as a political force. It is true that before Terror and because of the faction crisis there was a crisis of representation but in post-1789 Paris Robespierre, Danton, and certainly Marat exercised influence that was ever-growing. Wahnich (2012) uses their quotes only to support her main argument whereas most of them tried to justify revolutionary in wholly different terms: a) Robespierre both as necessity and as a regerative power; b) Danton as a necessity imposed by the war. In conclusion, despite its problems Wahnich’s book (2012) provides a left-wing defence of the Terror (although she admits it was a failed project) and its main contribution was the focus on the problem -although not so important as she thinks- that the revolutionaries had to deal with in the period 1792-1794. How to deal with people’s anger and vengeance? The solution they gave is well known and it came out to be disastrous. D) Why revolutionary violence is not justified Should one search for the most insightful critique of the revolutionary violence written in the 20th century, it would be certainly Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution (1963). Although we are in disagreement with most of its conclusions, this book provides a very substantial set of ideas about revolution, violence and freedom that should be taken into consideration when we think the French Revolution and its culmination to Terror. Arendt’s main argument is that the French Revolution was destined to become extremely violent when instead of founding freedom (Arendt, 1963, p. 107) sought to solve the social question. The term ‘social question’ is used simply to denote the problem of poverty and (this term should be used with some precaution) inequality. Although, no one can disagree that poverty is not an outcome of modernity it is in this era that the social question assumed revolutionary dimensions (Arendt, 1963, p. 15). It was in modernity that the people started to challenge the view that poverty is an eternal characteristic of human condition imposed by nature. For Arendt, however, “the whole record of past revolutions demonstrates beyond doubt that every attempt to solve the social question with political means leads into terror, and that it is terror which sends revolutions to their doom, it can hardly be denied that to avoid this fatal mistake is almost impossible when a revolution breaks out under conditions of mass poverty” (Arendt, 1963, p. 108). The fact that the American Revolution did not aim to solve the social question was the main reason for its success- according to Arendt- in contrast with the failed French revolution. Nevertheless, she admits that the former was based on slavery. The problem with this account of Terror is certainly that it is based in certain abstractions rather than historical events. One type of abstraction is the dichotomy between freedom and material interest. For example, it would be rather impossible to analyze a political situation as simply a matter of establishing freedom without posing the social question. Therefore, every time that the social question is ignored people are transformed into idealized neutral individuals whose only aim is political freedom. It is only in an abstract way that political freedom is not related with the material needs of those who are to be free, because, one substantial form of freedom is the freedom to live. A second type of abstraction is connected with Arendt’s failure to take into consideration the social and political environment of pre-revolutionary France. While the Court spent tremendous amount of money for extravagant amusements, people in Paris and other cities were starving. This poses a very serious challenge to Arendt’s argument. Was it really possible to avoid the question of poverty or was it inevitable? If it was the latter, that means also that the Terror was inevitable, which has specific consequences for the question of this essay. Another point of critique is certainly the assumption Arendt makes that every attempt (thus not only French Revolution) to solve politically the question of poverty leads into terror. The issue here is not whether this argument can have conservative implications –since every revolution leads into terror, it would be better to remain in the current state of affairs- but whether can exist a non-political means to solve the social question. However, this problem is beyond the scope of our essay. Moreover, it is without doubt a contradiction to conceptualize wars and revolutions as “outside the political realm” (Arendt, 1963, p. 10) and then, consider revolutionary violence political means par excellence. Despite this criticism, Arendt’s analysis is still relevant for a critique of Jacobin Terror. Arendt (1963) provides very useful theoretical tools for the understanding of Robespierre’s revolutionary practices. For her the Incorruptible was neither the bloodthirsty dictator who found a perverse enjoyment in sending innocents to the guillotine neither the victim of history who did things that were opposed to his principles. What is more interesting is that she seems to endorse the view that Robespierre personified the ideas of the revolution since his name is the most frequently mentioned amongst the other revolutionaries in her book (1963). Actually, it was Robespierre that provided the best evidence in favour of Arendt’s view about the connection between the social question, freedom and the French Revolution when he said in his last speech: “we will perish for having been unwilling to grasp a moment in human history for the foundation of liberty” (Robespierre, 2007, p. 138). This statement, according to Arendt (1963, p. 55), shows that the substitution of freedom for the happiness of the people was what made the revolution go off its course. Hence, the Reign of Terror was not just a case of extreme violence but an attempt to liberate the people from another master. For Arendt, the French Revolution succeeded in liberating France from tyranny but this was not translated into freedom for everyone, since the vast majority were poor and miserable (p. 69). What was to be done is a more difficult liberation, the liberation from “the yoke of necessity” (Arendt, 1963, p. 69). The extreme difficulty of such a project is that what previously seemed a universal (in the Third Estate at least) demand-overthrow of the tyranny- now was polarised. Robespierre’s concept of virtue, in Arendt’s perspective, had little to do with the Roman political philosophy. It aimed at the happiness of the people. Here we can see the great importance that Rousseau had on Robespierre (Blum, 1986). The concept of course is of ancient origins but it came back to political discourse with the writings of Montesquieu and Rousseau. The Incorruptible admired both of them (especially Rousseau, see the famous “Dedication to Jean-Jacques Rousseau” in Blum, 1986, pp. 156-157) and his speeches are full of references to the concept of virtue. For Robespierre virtue meant love of the homeland and its laws and could only exist in democracy (Robespierre, 2007, p. 111). But Rousseau’s influence is apparent in another major belief of the Incorruptible. The natural goodness of man or the “people” (Blum, 1986, p. 164). As already mentioned, Robespierre identified totally with the people (I am (the) people myself; Blum, 1986, p. 160) and by emphasizing this Arendt (1963, p. 93) moves towards a remarkable argument. Since virtue and patriotism were internal processes (“thing of the heart”) and every one could still pretend to be a patriot and be at the same time a hypocrite (even Robespierre himself) the republic of virtue could end up in two possible ways; the rule of hypocrisy (Arendt, 1963, p. 93) or the boundless struggle to disclose the enemies of the revolution something futile since every one could be considered a suspect. The similarities with the Stalinist Great Terror in this dimension are significant. An essay trying to answer whether revolutionary violence is justified or not by examining the case of Jacobin Terror cannot ignore the seminal work of Francois Furet (1927-1997). Furet’s main contribution was to challenge in the early seventies the dominant Marxist analysis of the French Revolution. However, he had also very important observations about the Reign of Terror. Furet did not agree with the theory that perceived Terror as an outcome of the circumstances. Actually, he believed that practices under the label of Terror created some circumstances such as the foreign war (Crouzet, 1999, p. 277). In addition, Furet thought that Terror was inherent in the ideology of the French Revolution and was not just a violent episode. He did not see any difference between the murders of 22 July 1789 (Joseph Foullon de Doué, Bertier de Sauvigny) and the atrocities of September 1792( Crouzet, 1999, p. 277). It is critically important that although Furet is usually mentioned for conservative purposes his main argument is against the common liberal conception of French Revolution as consisting two parts: one good (1789-1791); and one bad (1792-1794). Equally important is his conclusion that revolutionary violence is connected with extreme voluntarism (Furet, 1989, p. 149 as cited in Shorten, 2012, p. 196) meaning that Terror is the outcome of the difficulty to understand that things cannot actually change. E) Conclusion For two centuries, many historians, politicians and theorists perceived Robespierre’s justification of the Terror as either the outcome of his paranoia, fanaticism and hatred towards his political enemies or as the outcome of circumstances that imposed to him the abandonment of his values. Both these readings do not stand up to scrutiny. For the Incorruptible violence was a necessity but not only for the survival of the revolution but for the realization of his political vision, the republic of virtue. In the present essay, several interpretations of the Jacobin Terror have been discussed. Radical approaches that tend to be more positive about Terror and Robespierre specifically, always forget that Robespierre completely embraced the ideology of Terror and only when he was on the defensive side he tried to prove its necessity. 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