Simone Weil on Nationalism and Rootedness

Simone Weil's The Need for Roots contains some complicated and occasionally contradictory thoughts on nationalism. (Like the similarly complicated thoughts on equality). Early in the book, in her section canvassing the fundamental "needs of the soul," she emphasizes the need for "honor" that goes beyond ordinary, interpersonal respect. The key feature of honor is that it ties people to great traditions of the past: "This need is fully satisfied where each of the social organisms to which a human being belongs allows him to share in a noble tradition enshrined in its past history and given public acknowledgment" (19).

We need to have heroes--socially recognized heroes--with whom we identify. She aptly notes the difficulty of this need when combined with the pressures of cultural assimilation and immigration:

Had France been conquered by the English in the fifteenth century, Joan of Arc would be well and truly forgotten, even to a greate xtent by us. We now talk about her to the Annamites and the Arabs; but they know very well that here in France we don't allow their heroes and saints to be talked about; therefore the state in which we keep them is an affront to their honour (20). 

The need for honor connects to the master topic of her book, the need for "rootedness." She defines rootedness as "participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future" (43).

One thinks here immediately of Burke's famous reworking of social contractarianism:

Society is indeed a contract.... but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. 

The "rootedness" our souls require entails a recognition of the connection between our lives and the treasures of the past and future. The rootlessness of the modern world is in large part a consequence of violent conquest and even more damning capitalist economic dislocation. On this latter point:

Money destroys man roots wherever it is able to penetrate, by turning desire for gain into the sole motive. It easily manages to outweigh all other motives, because the effort it demands of the mind is so very much less. Nothing is so clear and so simple as a row of figures. (44).

A friend of mine flagged this passage to me. He noted that this broad point--the complaint about a rising "cash nexus" society in which we only relate to one another via self-interested contract--is well known. What's striking about Weil's version is her focus on the mechanism. A rich, rooted social life is complicated, characterized by competing, overlapping sources and sorts of authority. It is much easier to wipe that all away and think only in terms of cash contract. Adam Smith might think something similar--this is why he is so keen on the aesthetic appeal of an orderly, simple system. I'm reminded too of Chesterton's definition of the madman: "The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."

Weil's next section is about the rootlessness brought about by the modern economy. Much of her discussion is persuasive, broadly in the vein of a utopian socialist/distributist communitarian criticism of modern industrial capitalism.

My main interest here, however, is in Weil's section on the nation as a source of rootedness. She begins that discussion by noting that the State is effectively the only institution we have left that connects us to the past and future (99). Neither the family nor the village nor the professional guild can do that anymore.

This is where things get confusing. Weil is ferociously critical of the modern French state. Forged out of the brutal conquests of early modernity and the revolution of 1789, modern France's claim to unity comes out of a violent rejection of the past. Democratic popular sovereignty in modern times has become the essence of French patriotism. (The only alternative to that is a LARPy legitimism that ignores France's present and its future). Consequently, modern France is unlovable. The French "hunger for something to love which is made of flesh and blood" (114).

The political Right clings to nationalism, but has turned it into a kind of idolatry. Weil associates this idolatrous nationalism with the legacy of Rome: "The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism" (140).

The political Left rejects nationalism and turns instead to a cosmopolitan justice. This too is a mistake. It entails an abandonment of the past, which is essential for rootedness: "Loss of the past, whether it be collectively or individually, is the supreme human tragedy, and we have thrown ours away just like a child picking off the petals of a rose" (119).

(As Weil wryly notes, it's not really possible to reject nationalism. The cosmopolitan left has really just turned the Soviet Union into the locus of its national pride).

So Weil wants us to reinvent patriotism. Unpatriotic citizens are contemptible and infantile. They are like children always making demands and always refusing to obey (154). A healthy patriotism cannot be held with unmixed pride, for that way leads to neo-Roman, pagan, fascism. Nor can patriotism just be dedication to a set of principles, for that is too bloodless to satisfy the need for rootedness.

Weil's solution for all this is a Christian patriotism (as opposed to the Roman patriotism):

One can either love France for the glory which would seem to ensure for her a prolonged existence in time and space; or else one can love her as something which, being earthly, can be destroyed, and is all the more precious on that account (170).

We cannot ignore past sins (as the neo-Romans do). Nor can we tell noble lies to deceive ourselves about what we have done. But dwelling on past crimes should not destroy our sense of patriotism. On the contrary, in a strange sense we must love our country all the more because of its faults. This is the key difference between the Roman patriotism of glory and the Christian patriotism of compassion:

Let no one imagine either that a love of this [compassionate] nature would run the risk of ignoring or rejecting what there is of pure and genuine grandeur in the past history of France, or in the country's present hopes and ideals. Quite the opposite. Compassion is all the more tender, all the more poignant, the more good one is able to discern in the being who forms the object of it, and predisposes one to discern the good. When a Christian represents to himself Christ on the Cross, his compassion is not diminished by the thought of the latter's perfection, nor the other way about. But, on the other hand, such a love can keep its eyes open on injustices, cruelties, mistakes, falsehoods, crimes and scandals contained in the country's past, its present and in its ambitions in general, quite openly and fearlessly, and without being thereby diminished; the love being only rendered thereby more painful. Where compassion is concerned, crime itself provides a reason, not for withdrawing oneself, but for approaching, not with the object of sharing the guilt, but the shame. Mankind's crimes don't diminish Christ's compassion. Thus compassion keeps both eyes open on both the good and the bad and finds in each sufficient reasons for loving. It is the only love on this earth which is true and righteous (171).

Importantly, this patriotism of compassion is more STABLE than the Roman patriotism of glory. For glory can only hold a people together in times of war and crisis. It collapses in times of peace as "people cannot feel themselves at home in a patriotism founded upon pride and pomp-and-glory" (174).

But the patriotism of compassion begins from the flaws and fragility of the state. Teaching people to love the state that way produces a more enduring patriotism:

if their country is presented to them as something beautiful and precious, but which is, in the first place, imperfect, and secondly, very frail and liable to suffer misfortune, and which it is necessary to cherish and preserve, they will rightly feel themselves to be more closely identified with it than will other classes of society (175).

This is how we must reimagine the sanctity of the state. The state is not an idol to be blindly obeyed. The state is sacred in a different sense, and sacred enough to command legitimately that we sometimes make the ultimate sacrifice (162). Another familial metaphor:

We must obey the State, however it happens to be, rather like loving children left by their parents, gone abroad, in the charge of some mediocre governess, but who obey her nevertheless out of love for their parents" (177).

(The difference here between the parents and the governess, tracks a difference Weil deploys throughout between the nation and the political state).

The state is not sacred as an idol--holy in itself. Rather, it is sacred as a "vital medium" (160), as serving a sacred purpose, as something through which holy and good things emerge (180).

This does not entail an absolute duty to obey the state. We have a duty to obey the mediocre governess, but not the abusive one. Weil is appropriately fuzzy on the boundaries of this duty:

It is certainly not an unlimited obligation, but its only valid limit is a revolt on the part of conscience. No criterion can be offered indicating exactly what this limit is; it is even impossible for each of us to prescribe one for himself once and for all: when you feel you can't obey any longer, you just have to disobey. But there is at least one necessary condition, although insufficient of itself, making it possible to disobey without being guilty of crime; this is to be urged forward by so imperious an obligation that one is constrained to scorn all risks of whatever kind. If one feels inclined to disobey, but one is dissuaded by the excessive danger involved, that is altogether unpardonable, whether it be because one contemplated an act of disobedience, or else because one failed to carry it out, as the case may be. Besides whenever one isn't strictly obliged to disobey, one is under the strict obligation to obey. A country cannot possess liberty unless it is recognized that disobedience towards the authorities, every time it doesn't proceed from an overriding sense of duty, is more dishonourable than theft. That means to say that public order ought to be regarded as more sacred than private property (177).

A stark choice, without much room for prudence. You are either under a strict duty to obey or a strict duty to disobey. Woe to him whose conscience demands disobedience, but whose fear keeps him in line.

Simone Weil on Equality

One of the fundamental human needs Simone Weil identifies in The Need for Roots is equality. As she puts it:

Equality is a vital need of the human soul. It consists in a recognition, at once public, general, effective and genuinely expressed in institutions and customs, that the same amount of respect and consideration is due to every human being because this respect is due to the human being as such and is not a matter of degree.

In other words--all human persons qua human persons deserve to be treated with respect, that respect is not contingent on social rank, and that respect must be manifested through public recognition. All seems straightforward enough.

Weil goes on to distinguish her understanding of equality from the leading liberal account: Equality of opportunity, or meritocracy. The problem with meritocracy is not that it is impossible to deliver as an ideal. The problem is the moral perversity of the ideal itself! A true meritocratic society would distribute social rewards as a function of moral desert or effort or talent. But this implies that those at the bottom deserve their social inferiority, or at the very least are social inferiors in virtue of their incompetence:

For a man who occupies an inferior position and suffers from it to know that his position is a result of his incapacity and that everybody is aware of the fact is not any consolation, but an additional motive of bitterness. 

Weil's basic critique of meritocracy is quite familiar. It was probably given its best statement in John Schaar's phenomenal critique of the equality of opportunity, and the theme is found in the Michael Young book that gave us the word. But the worry is much older than that! It runs through Augustinian critiques of moral desert. Consider this example from the neo-Augustinian Pierre Nicole, who notes that IF we justify social inequality on the basis of moral desert, we are going to produce immense social discontent:

If one became Great only by desert, the height of the great would be a continual noise in our ears, that they were prefer'd to the prejudice of others, whom we fancy more deserving than they ... But thus joyning Greatness with Birth, the pride of inferiours is allaid, and Greatness itself becomes a far less eye-sore. There is no shame to give place to another, when one may say, 'Tis his Birth I yield to. This reason convinces the mind without wounding it with spight or jealousie. ... Another advantage that accrues from this establishment is, That Princes may be had without pride, and Grandees found that are humble. For it gives no occasion of pride to continue in the rank where God's Providence has plac'd us, provided we use it to the ends he prescribes.

The second problem with equality of opportunity as an ideal is that it destroys social stability. The meritocratic utopia is a permanently churning society, with rich falling and poor rising constantly. What many liberals take as an ideal strikes Weil as a reductio: "that sort of equality, if allowed full play by itself, can make social life fluid to the point of decomposing it."

I think this egalitarian vision of a radically dynamic society--which struck Plato and perhaps Marx as the definition of democratic freedom--is distinctively American. Of particular importance is its insistence not simply on upward social mobility, but on the mathematically necessary downward mobility. (My old boss Richard Reeves' hobbyhorse).

Here's one example from Jacksonian America:

Money and property, we know, among us, are constantly changing hands. A man has only to work on, and wait patiently, and with industry and enterprise, he is sure to get both. The wheel of American fortune is perpetually and steadily turning, and those at bottom today, will be moving up tomorrow, and will ere long be at the top. The rich man of this year, may be poor the next, and the wealthy family of this generation, is likely to dissipate its fortune in the next. Scarcely ever does it remain in the same line to the third generation. ... All property, among us, tends to the hands of those who work and wait for it. They are as sure to get it, as the sun is to rise and set.

And another example:

A very important and striking feature in our political and social system, which indeed is the result of our institutions and laws, is, that there is no aristocracy amongst us--not even an aristocracy of wealth. An aristocracy cannot exist without peculiar and exclusive privileges and rights, recognized, sanctioned, and upheld by law. There cannot be, in this country, even a confederacy or combination among the rich men to acquire peculiar privileges. They have none to defend. ... They are not like the hereditary nobles of Europe, whose names are enrolled in a heraldic college, set apart from the rest of mankind, designated by titles, marked by badges of honor, bound together by intermarriages, by a commuity of interests and of feelings, a distinct order in the state; nothing of all this, and they are as mutable besides as the motes that float in the summer air. Death is every busily at work in dismembering all overgrown fortunes.

... If a line could be drawn between the two classes, at any given moment, and then five years pass away, I doubt whether the smaller portion could be recognized as the same. Hundreds on hundreds would be found to have changed places. And to speak of a clan of men thus constituted as an aristocracy, is as sound and sensible a philosophy as to point to the insects of summer as the emblems of eternity. 

There's a nice contrast between the American meritocratic faith and Nicole's argument for the superiority of hereditary aristocracy.

But anyway--Simone Weil rejects the ideal of equality of opportunity. She offers two positive suggestions for manifesting the genuine need for equal respect. The first is that punishments ought to be given out in proportion to rank:

an employer who is incapable or guilty of an offence against his workmen ought to be made to suffer far more, both in the spirit and in the flesh, than a workman who is incapable or guilty of an offense against his employer. ... the exercise of important public functions should carry with it serious personal risks.

This seems eminently sensible to me.

Weil's next suggestion is less plausible. She argues that much of the difficulty in inequality comes from inequalities of degree. If we can force ourselves to understand social differences not as ranked inequalities along some scale, but simply as fundamental differences, then perhaps we might be able to experience social differentiation without inequality. Separate but equal, in other words:

Equality is all the greater in proportion as human conditions are regarded as being, not more nor less than one another, but simply as other. Let us look on the professions of miner and minister simply as two different vocations, like those of poet and mathematician. And let the material hardships attaching to the miner's condition be counted in honour of those who undergo them. 

There is certainly something true here. Weil is right to insist that a modern capitalist economy in which money forms the only social bond makes it impossible to think in terms of differences of kind, but always in terms of differences in monetary rank. But her proposal strikes me as wildly psychologically naive. It will not do to tell ourselves that these differences just represent different social roles, but not ranks of inequality. I think that's clear with Weil's next example:

In wartime, if an army is filled with the right spirit, a soldier is proud and happy to be under fire instead of at headquarters; a general is proud and happy to think that the sucessful outcome of the battle depends on his forethought; and at the same time the soldier admires the general and the general the soldier. Such a balance constitutes an equality.

Yes, there might be some important way of LEGITIMIZING the obvious inequality between general and soldier. Perhaps a reciprocal appreciation of the distinctive role each plays might contribute to a fuller sense of the web of mutual dependence in which we find ourselves. Perhaps too that appreciation might render legitimate and even positively valuable the reality of social inequality. But it's too much to suggest that we have done away with inequality as such. The soldier is obviously inferior to the general.

Weil makes this same mistake in her brief discussion of the human soul's need for hierarchy. She says obedience and a "certain devotion towards superiors" are necessary. Weil loves obedience. Later in the book she claims that the soldier whose bravery comes from an internal constitution or the pursuit of glory "is very inferior in human quality to that of the soldier who obeys the orders of his superiors." Only direct revelation from God is more praiseworthy than following orders.

Yet she insists that this obedience is a devotion to the superior as a SYMBOL of the transcendent chain of being. I don't think the human mind is capable of such abstractions. We obey our superiors as HUMAN BEINGS, either in virtue of their office or their person (usually some combination of the two). With some philosophic distance we might recognize that the master I obey is not naturally superior to me, but that seems besides the point. Authority is not simply a symbolic nod to the structure of the universe, it is an ineradicable social reality.

Berlin on Rousseau: The Philosopher of the Lower-Middle Class

Isaiah Berlin has probably one of the best readings of Rousseau (as in most philosophically exciting AND most in line with the authentic spirit of that lunatic great). From "The Idea of Freedom," included in his Political Ideas in the Romantic Age (emphasis mine):

This outlook and these opinions in their abraded, inflamed and morbid condition took the form - as so often both before and after him - of a violent, piously philistine attack on all that is refined, distinguished and unique in society, against that which could be considered in some sense withdrawn, esoteric, the product of exceptional elaboration or unique endowments, not immediately intelligible to the casual observer. Rousseau's furious onslaughts upon the aristocracy, upon refinement in the arts or in life, upon disinterested scientific enquiry, upon the lives and characters of all but the most immediate purveyors of objects useful to the average man - all this is not so much the cry for justice or understanding on the part of the representative of the insulted and injured helots, as something far more familiar and less respectworthy: the perennial distrust of moral or intellectual independence and freedom on the port of those spurious representatives of the middle class who found their voice in Rousseau, and who became progressively more influential in the nineteenth century - the believers in a solid, somewhat narrow, morally respectable, semi-egalitarian, privilege-hating, individualistic ideal, with its respect for work, success and the domestic virtues, its sentimental materialism and intolerance of differences - in short the great middle class of the nineteenth century, which becomes the enemy and the butt of all the révolté writers of that period, and which has survived so much more powerfully in America than in Europe today. Rousseau, so far from being the protagonist of the artist or the sans-culotte or the preacher of moral freedom, turns out to be an early and indeed premature champion of the lower middle class - the common man of our century - against not merely the aristocracy or the masses, but the uppers sections of the middle class, with its artistic and intellectual aims and demands and ideals, which prosperous peasants and industrious artisans - the 'common' men - obscurely feel to be a menace to their own more conventional, more deeply traditional, more rigidly set moral and intellectual values and decencies, with their solid protective crust of prejudice, superstition and faith in the sound, the kindly and the commonplace, concealing beneath a solid surface an elaborate network of social sensibilities and snobberies, passionately clung to, and a jealous consciousness of precise status and position in a profoundly hierarchical society. Rousseau is a poor, or rather deliberately self-blinded, sociologist, who threw dust in the eyes of many generations by representing as a rustic idyll or Spartan simplicity - the immemorial wisdom of the land - what is, in fact, an expression of that small-town bourgeois and class-conscious outlook, admittedly in an abnormal and diseased condition, which made him peculiarly aware of the vices and errors of the last days of a collapsing feudal order, and peculiarly blind to the deficiencies of that social outlook and those ideas which his own fiery genius did so much to enthrone in their place. In short, he was a militant lowbrow and the patron saint of the enemies of intellectuals, long-haired professors, avant-garde writers and the intelligentsia - the advanced thinkers - everywhere.

Of course this is all said with an Oxford sneer. But nevertheless, I think Berlin has captured much of the spirit of Rousseau. He's a great critic of luxuriating intellectual elites and a ruthless defender of entrenched popular prejudice. Does this make him a champion of the lumpenproletariat? Of the Trump voter? 

James Kent on Alexander Hamilton

Some interesting remarks from James Kent's "Memories of Alexander Hamilton."

What first struck Kent was Hamilton's "masterly" efforts "to reanimate the powers of the Confederation, and to infuse life, vigor, and credit into that languishing system" (283). This is all clear from Hamilton's early efforts beginning in 1782 to centralize the fiscal state of the nascent Confederation and to raise revenue for the national government. Hamilton was just 25 years old at the time:

it will abundantly appear, in the subsequent history of his life, that his zeal for the establishment of a national government, competent to preserve us from insult abroad and dissensions at home, and equally well fitted to uphold credit, to preserve liberty, and to cherish our resources, kept increasing; and that his views grew more and more enlarged and comprehensive as we approached the crisis of our destiny ... he did more with his pen and tongue than any other man, not only in reference to the origin and adoption of the Federal Constitution, but also to create and establish public credit, and defend the government and its measures, under the wise and eventful administration of Washington" (288).

Kent is effusive on Hamilton's talent as a lawyer (though he notes the competence of American lawyers at that time was nothing inspirational). When he was arguing before the Supreme Court of NY, Hamilton was just 27.

On Hamilton's role in the constitutional convention, Kent writes that Hamilton's "avowed object was to make the experiment of a great federative republic, moving in the largest sphere and resting entirely on a possible basis, as complete, satisfactory, and decisive as possible" (299). It is clear that in Kent's judgment, Hamilton was the indispensable figure in the crafting and ratification of the constitution. Particularly notable, I think, is the praise of Hamilton's oratorical skill in dominating the ratifying debates in New York state.

I think the most interesting discussion is of Hamilton's role as Treasury Secretary.

Summarizing the report on manufactures:

He contended that the encouragement of manufactures tended to create a more extensive, certain, and permanent home market for the surplus produce of land, and that it was necessary, in self-defense, to meet and counteract the restrictive system of the commercial nations of Europe. IT was admitted, however, that if the liberal system of Adam Smith had been generally adopted, it would have carried forward nations, with accelerated motion, in the career of prosperity and greatness. The English critics spoke at the time of his report as a strong and able plea on the side of manufactures, and said that the subjects of trade, finance, and internal policy were not often discussed with so much precision of thought and perspicuity of language (314-5).

Kent also brings to my attention Hamilton's pseudonymous pamphlets in favor of neutrality written under the names "No Jacobin" and "Pacificus." Kent thinks especially highly of Hamilton's "Camillus" pamphlets defending the Jay treaty. Kent predicts these will be long read, but I'd never heard of them.

By 1798, Hamilton's stance of neutrality had turned somewhat more bellicose, as he demanded a far firmer military response to potential French aggression.

Kent also quotes Washington's praise of Hamilton, which I hadn't seen before:

He declared Hamilton to be his 'principal and most confidential aid; that his acknowledged abilities and integrity had placed him on high ground and made him a conspicuous character in the United States and even in Europe; that he had the laudable ambition which prompts a man to excel in whatever he takes in hand; that he was enterprising, quick in his perceptions, and that his judgment was intuitively great.' (320)

After his tenure in government, Hamilton returned to the law, where many of his most important cases dealt with libel and defamation:

While he regarded the liberty of the press as essential to the preservation of free government, he considered that a press wholly unchecked, with a right to publish anything at pleasure, regardless of truth or decency, would be, in the hands of unprincipled men, a terrible engine of mischief, and would be liable to be diverted to the most seditious and wicked purposes, and for the gratification of private malice or revenge. Such a free press would destroy public and private confidence, and would overawe and corrupt the impartial administration of justice. (325) 

Kent also recounts a dinner he had with Hamilton in April, 1804, where Hamilton expressed disappointment that he had not fully developed a systematic account of jurisprudence built "upon the principles of Lord Bacon's inductive philosophy. His object was to see what safe and salutary conclusions might be drawn from an historical examination of the effects of the various institutions heretofore existing" (328).

And here's quite a remark! "I have very little doubt that if General Hamilton had lived twenty years longer, he would have rivalled Socrates, or Bacon, or any other of the sages of ancient or modern times" (328).

Orwell on the National Anthem

George Orwell's complex if deep sense of nationalism is well known. (Even if his distinction between patriotism and nationalism is less than convincing).

Here are the final paragraphs of "My Country Right or Left." Perhaps of some relevance in understanding the boiled rabbits of our day: 

If I had to defend my reasons for supporting the war, I believe I could do so. There is no real alternative between resisting Hitler and surrendering to him, and from a Socialist point of view I should say that it is better to resist; in any case I can see no argument for surrender that does not make nonsense of the Republican resistance in Spain, the Chinese resistance to Japan, etc. etc. But I don’t pretend that that is the emotional basis of my actions. What I knew in my dream that night was that the long drilling in patriotism which the middle classes go through had done its work, and that once England was in a serious jam it would be impossible for me to sabotage. But let no one mistake the meaning of this. Patriotism has nothing to do with conservatism. It is devotion to something that is changing but is felt to be mystically the same, like the devotion of the ex-White Bolshevik to Russia. To be loyal both to Chamberlain’s England and to the England of tomorrow might seem an impossibility, if one did not know it to be an everyday phenomenon. Only revolution can save England, that has been obvious for years, but now the revolution has started, and it may proceed quite quickly if only we can keep Hitler out. Within two years, maybe a year, if only we can hang on, we shall see changes that will surprise the idiots who have no foresight. I dare say the London gutters will have to run with blood. All right, let them, if it is necessary. But when the red militias are billeted in the Ritz I shall still feel that the England I was taught to love so long ago for such different reasons is somehow persisting. 

I grew up in an atmosphere tinged with militarism, and afterwards I spent five boring years within the sound of bugles. To this day it gives me a faint feeling of sacrilege not to stand to attention during ‘God save the King’. That is childish, of course, but I would sooner have had that kind of upbringing than be like the left-wing intellectuals who are so ‘enlightened’ that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions. It is exactly the people whose hearts have never leapt at the sight of a Union Jack who will flinch from revolution when the moment comes. Let anyone compare the poem John Cornford wrote not long before he was killed (‘Before the Storming of Huesca’) with Sir Henry Newbolt’s ‘There’s a breathless hush in the Close tonight’. Put aside the technical differences, which are merely a matter of period, and it will be seen that the emotional content of the two poems is almost exactly the same. The young Communist who died heroically in the International Brigade was public school to the core. He had changed his allegiance but not his emotions. What does that prove? Merely the possibility of building a Socialist on the bones of a Blimp, the power of one kind of loyalty to transmute itself into another, the spiritual need for patriotism and the military virtues, for which, however little the boiled rabbits of the Left may like them, no substitute has yet been found.

Ernest Renan's Liberal Nationalism

I recently had occasion to read Ernest Renan's famous 1882 lecture, "What is a Nation?" I'm told that this is something of a canonical text in the history of liberal nationalism, and reading through it makes sense why. The lecture is beautiful, learned, and forceful. Renan's commitment to some kind of liberalism resonates all the way through, and his warnings of the terror that accompany illiberal nationalism read prophetic at times.

I take it this lecture is most famous for three points: (1) The rejection of any "metaphysical" nationalism founded on race, language, and religion (as well as economic interest, military necessity, and geography); (2) The insistence that nations must forget their origins and construct a new shared memory; and (3) The claim that nations depend on popular consent, and so can easily be redrawn or deconstructed.

Those three central claims make it easy to see a continuity between Renan's liberal nationalism and, for example, Habermas' "constitutional patriotism." Such views contain a clear hostility to tying political citizenship to any pre-political identity (race, religion, language), and hope instead for a national identity built on some other kind of shared beliefs. Liberal nationalism is always a contingent nationalism. The "homeland" only exists insofar as people continue to consciously will it into existence. Why should it be anything more!

We have driven metaphysical and theological abstractions out of politics. What remains after that? Man, his desires, his needs. Secession, you will say to me, and, in the long run, the disintegration of nations will be the consequence of a system that places these old organisms at the mercy of oft scarcely enlightened wills. It is clear that, in such a field, no principle must be taken to extremes. Truths of this order are only applicable as a whole and in a very general fashion. Human wills change; but what does not, here below? Nations are not something eternal. They had their beginnings, they will end. A European confederation will probably replace them. But such is not the law of the century in which we are living. At the present time, the existence of nations is a good thing, a necessity, even. Their existence is the guarantee of liberty, which would be lost if the world had only one law and one master. 

I think it's notable that Renan begins with the objection from secession (if the nation is just a matter of will, won't you have lots of secession?), he grants that voluntary exit is always a possibility, but he suggests finally that history well tend toward a "European confederation" rather than micro-states.

The question of referenda and national determination is present throughout the lecture. Renan makes it explicit in one famous passage: "A nation's existence is (if you will pardon the metaphor) an everyday plebiscite, just as an individual's existence is a perpetual affirmation of life."

It's tempting to read that line literally, and perhaps that's how it should be read. Perhaps Renan is arguing that provinces should just periodically hold plebiscites to determine to what nation they belong. That's probably what Renan favored in the case of Alsace! But I think that reading misses the second half of the quotation: "a perpetual affirmation of life." This is clearly a consent theory, but not necessarily a crudely majoritarian one. At least, I don't think that my daily decision to continue living just arises from a quick balance of the pros and cons. The will to remain a people emanates from somewhere deeper than can perhaps be captured by a momentary opinion poll or plebiscite.

In rejecting essentialist conceptions of the nation, Renan impressively goes through each candidate (race, religion, language, etc) to argue that none can provide a satisfactory account of what constitutes a nation. Still, if I may be pedantic, I think what he's doing here is introducing a difference between the efficient and formal cause of the nation. The form of the nation is not tied to any of these essential characteristics, but that doesn't mean the efficient cause of a national identity is always unrelated to such essentialism. This is why Renan emphasizes that we must forget the true origins of our national identity!

The act of forgetting, I would even say, historical error, is an essential factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for nationality. Indeed, historical enquiry brings back to light the deeds of violence that took place at the origin of all political formations, even of those whose consequences have been the most beneficial. Unity is always achieved brutally"

(Recall Burke on this point: "There is a secret veil to be drawn over the beginnings of all governments. They had their origin, as the beginning of all such things have had, in some matters that had as good be covered by obscurity. Time in the origin of most governments has thrown this mysterious veil over them. Prudence and discretion make it necessary to throw something of that veil over a business in which otherwise the fortune, the genius, the talents and military virtue of this Nation never shone more conspicuously." Hastings impeachment speech 2/16/1788).

So part of what it is to have a national identity is a requirement that we forget the vicious efficient cause of our nation. Yet essential for having a nation is having a new sense of shared historic memory. Here's a famous passage from the lecture:

A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things that, in truth, are but one constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form. 

The reason these two things--historic memory and present consent--are really just one thing is because "A heroic past, great glory ... this is the capital stock upon which one bases a national idea."

And what kind of memories in particular are required? Memories of historic sacrifice! Those are the only memories that lead us to will to perform new glorious deeds in the future.

All this is certainly, I think, a kind of liberal nationalism. But what's so interesting about it to me is how much more demanding it is than contemporary liberal nationalisms! What liberal nationalists today would dare suggest that the nation is a "spiritual principle," or that the essence of national identity is a willingness to sacrifice oneself for others?

Sometimes, I think, language not so different from the "spiritual principle" is deployed by some of the more ambitious democratic theorists, who seek to conceive of democratic life as truly a collective venture. I have some sympathies for thinking that way. And some liberal nationalists might also be inclined to write in the language of sacrifice. For David Miller, I believe, the language of sacrifice makes an occasional appearance. But "sacrifice" has been thoroughly sanitized! No longer is it meant to evoke heroic literal death for the nation, but rather a willingness to pay higher taxes to support the poor. When most contemporary liberal philosophers speak of sacrifice, they really just mean reciprocity. But I don't think that fits the language of glory Renan insists on using.

If anything, the closest instantiation of Renanian liberal nationalism I can think of is Lincoln! The political theology of the Gettysburg Address is designed specifically to construct a new shared historic memory to ground the American national identity. The (not so political) theology of the Second Inaugural is doing something a bit different: dwelling on shared sin and divinely ordained punishment, not historic sacrificial glory. The Lyceum Address also seems relevant, as there Lincoln laments the disappearance of a shared historic memory of the founding. But there too, Lincoln thinks it is impossible to hold on to a memory of a founding, for it will be inevitably levelled by the "silent artillery of time." Still, the youthful Lincoln's solution of constitutional reverence (even if lacking in some historical rigor) fits well with Renan's account of common sacrifice creating a shared will to construct a glorious future together.

Jacob Viner on Providence and the Invisible Hand

I recently read Jacob Viner's The Role of Providence in the Social Order. The obligatory first thing to say about this work is how unimaginable it would be today to see anything like this historic erudition in a contemporary economist. That's just part of the larger tragic story of the discipline of economics abandoning its own intellectual history.

Viner wishes to bring out the connection between the founding ideas of modern economics and a long tradition of Christian providence. Frankly, as intellectual history, the lectures are a bit unsatisfactory. They lack the depth of Funkenstein's book on the topic (see here), and they lack the philosophical elegance of Hirschman's The Passions and the Interests.

The book is extremely sketchy in its grand portrayal of Christian natural theology, but that's not really its main target, so perhaps Viner can be forgiven. (I think the lectures would have been better if he just began with Newton and Leibniz. Viner is much more interesting on how they played with watchmaker metaphors of divine causation than he is on Augustine). 

The core thesis is that providentialism underwrites fundamental tenets of the modern economic worldview. The first is that a new conception of providence justifies the hitherto universally scorned practice of global commerce:

(1) providence favors trade between peoples as a means of promoting the universal brotherhood of man; (2) to give economic incentives to peoples to trade with each other providence has given to their respective territories different products. (32)

According to an ancient and venerable tradition, nothing breeds more vice than commerce. Merchants travelling to distant lands bring back threatening foreign vices. The luxury goods themselves sold by the merchants are sources of great moral corruption. And the impulse to conquer the world with trade represents the height of human hubris--just think of Ulysses' wanderlust that lands him in Dante's inferno. 

This ancient view began to be inverted in late antiquity through the influence of a Stoic pagan, Libanius, on his Christian students (St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom). The new view that emerges is that God has deliberately distributed resources in different countries so as to induce global commerce and human fraternity. 

Viner cites a wonderful example of this argument being made in 1894 as part of a Congressman's argument in favor of free trade. Unfortunately with a quick google I couldn't find the full cite:

God could have made this world, if He had wanted to, with exactly the same climate and soil all over it, so that each nation would have been entirely independent of any other nation. But He didn't do that. He made this world so that every nation in it has got to depend for something upon some other nations. He did that to promote kinship among the different people. Let us drop this unnatural business. There is no end to the ingenuity of man. You can fix up a scheme, if you want, for raising oranges in Maine, but a barrel of those oranges would make William Waldorf Astor's pocketbook sick. . . . You can raise polar bears on the Equator if you spend money enough, but it would take a king's ransom to do it. 

The providential defense of global trade was also somewhat cynically tied to interpretations of the Genesis account of the Tower of Babel. The common reading of that story--God's condemnation of cosmopolitan hubris--was used by some as a patriotic critique of the universalist tendencies of global trade, but by others as evidence for that God sought to promote global trade by dividing up the world into different nations. 

One final intriguing point here is that the entirety of Hechsher-Ohlin trade theory can be found in these providential arguments! Thomas Hutchinson, of all people, is credited with a deeply prescient account of H-O international trade equilibrium.

Hutchinson: "The great creator of the universe in infinite wisdom has so formed the earth that different parts of it, from the soil, climate, &c. are adapted to different produce, and he so orders and disposes the genius, temper, numbers and other circumstances relative to the inhabitants as to render some employments peculiarly proper for one country, and others for another, and by this provision a mutual intercourse is kept up between the different parts of the globe" (52-3).

The second contribution of providence theory to modern economics is the theodicy-based defense of economic inequality. A long tradition of British philosophy reacted against Hobbes' challenge that natural self-interest led to anarchy, and needed to be held in check by a powerful sovereign. The sentimental school--led by Shaftesbury and later Hutcheson--argued that disinterested benevolence is a far more powerful motivation than Hobbes accepted. The selfish school--led by theological utilitarians like John Gay and William Paley--reject any innate moral sense, but argued that an enlightened pursuit of self-interest will lead us to act in an ethical manner. The most blunt version of this self-interest comes not from some neo-Platonic account of the harmony of the soul, but from the explicit threat of eternal condemnation for vicious conduct. (Eighteenth century Anglican theology debates sound extremely crude on Viner's presentation).

Adam Smith's account of moral sentimentalism from TMS comes out of this tradition. For Smith, our reason is fallible, but God has fortunately planted in us natural sentiments that incline us to benefit our family, friends, neighbors, and countrymen. This is what leads Viner to conclude: "Smith's system of thought, including his economics, is not intelligible if one disregards the role he assigns in it to the teleological elements, to the 'invisible hand'" (82).

Viner finishes with some broader reflections on how the modern economic apology for inequality flows from these theodicy accounts. Since Aristotle it had been argued that communal ownership of property was deeply inefficient. A new line of argument (the one Viner claims was very rarely advanced) was that economic inequality mirrored the transcendent hierarchical order of creation. Another neo-Stoic line of argument was that inequality of wealth will not lead to the inequality of happiness, but indeed if anything the poor should be happier than the wealthy! (You can think here of Smith's parable of the poor man's son).

With that--and with some charming if boilerplate comments on how intellectual history teaches economists to be humble--Viner concludes. The lectures raise some interesting issues, and the discussion in particular of the providential tendency of trade to produce human fraternity is illuminating. But the canvassing of views on inequality is quick and somewhat superficial, and Viner doesn't do much to advance beyond my guess of what the common-sense understanding of this history already was.

Funkenstein on Indeterminacy and Law

I recently read Amos Funkenstein's chapter on divine providence and the invisible hand in his massive Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Funkenstein has plenty of interesting things to say--though I must confess I don't quite follow the arc of the chapter as a whole. It reads more as a series of episodic looks into distinct though connected accounts of providence and the philosophy history from late antiquity to Vico, with suggestive nods to Smith and Marx. 

One section I found especially interesting, however, was Funkenstein's treatment of the place for indeterminacy in law. Funkenstein begins this section with a discussion of Christian and Jewish attempts to deploy a principle of accommodation to understand the role of sacrifice in the Old Testament. The suggestion through all this is that modern accounts of historical progress (from Grotius/Smith's stadial theories of history, to Kantian providentialism) come out of exegetical debates over apparently inconvenient Old Testament descriptions of God and the Jewish law. The broad interpretive principle was that the "bible speaks the language of man," and that these passages must be understood as communicating to the primitive Jewish people in a way they could understand. 

Ritual sacrifice is a particularly striking example. Augustine follows a long Jewish tradition in concluding that religious sacrifice was appropriate in a particular time given the prejudices and sensibilities of the Israelites. Today, however, modern Christians have reached a stage of development  that allows them to more fully understand and worship God without reliance on such religious practices. For Augustine, the crucial break was of course the incarnation, while Jewish commentators relied on a historic narrative of religious monotheistic maturation. Here's Augustine in one of his letters (see p. 223 of Funkenstein):

The divine institution of sacrifice was suitable in the former dispensation, but is not suitable now. For the change suitable to the present age has been enjoined by God, who knows infinitely better than man what is fitting for every age, and who is, whether He give or add, abolish or curtail, increase or diminish, the unchangeable Governor as He is the unchangeable Creator of mutable things, ordering all events in His providence until the beauty of the completed course of time, the component parts of which are the dispensations adapted to each successive age, shall be finished, like the grand melody of some ineffably wise master of song, and those pass into the eternal immediate contemplation of God who here, though it is a time of faith, not of sight, are acceptably worshipping Him.

They are mistaken, moreover, who think that God appoints these ordinances for His own advantage or pleasure; and no wonder that, being thus mistaken, they are perplexed, as if it was from a changing mood that He ordered one thing to be offered to Him in a former age, and something else now. But this is not the case. God enjoins nothing for His own advantage, but for the benefit of those to whom the injunction is given. Therefore He is truly Lord, for He does not need His servants, but His servants stand in need of Him. In those same Old Testament Scriptures, and in the age in which sacrifices were still being offered that are now abrogated, it is said: I said to the Lord, You are my God, for You do not need my good things. Wherefore God did not stand in need of those sacrifices, nor does He ever need anything; but there are certain acts, symbolic of these divine gifts, whereby the soul receives either present grace or eternal glory, in the celebration and practice of which, pious exercises, serviceable not to God but to ourselves, are performed.

Ritual sacrifice has to be understood as a legal practice appropriate to a particular historic time and place. The development of appropriate religious practices is just a part of the great beauty (notice the aesthetic language) of God's providential plan for history.

Funkenstein turns to Maimonides, who further develops this philosophy of history. Maimonides emphasizes that every law is BOTH a commandment of reason and obedience. This means that the commandments of the Old Testament no longer observed by modern Jews were not instituted simply to teach obedience, but were built around a core rational principle.

This interpretive approach--that we can and should identify the underlying reason for even obsolete religious laws--combines with Maimonides' philosophy of science. (Here I don't entirely follow Funkenstein). On Maimonides' view all natural laws must contain some degree of contingency. This principle is Maimonides' way of explaining features of the dietary/ceremonial law that always had a rational purpose, but no longer bind practicing Jews. I'll quote Funkenstein at length:

What do we really look for when we ask for the reason of a commandment? Must a rationale for a specific law cover every part and detail of that law? In a preliminary answer, Maimonides draws a strict analogy between laws of nature and social laws. In the second part of the Guide, Maimonides developed one of the most original philosophies of science in the Middle Ages. There he proved that not only are laws of nature (the ordering structures of nature) in themselves contingent upon God's will; but that each of them must include, by definition, a residue of contingency, an element of indeterminacy. No law of nature is completely determining, and no natural phenomenon completely determined, not even in God's mind. To illustrate the matter, allow me to invent an example. Assume that tables should all be made out of wood; assume that the kind of wood most suitable for tables is mahogany, and that the best mahogany can be found only in a remote forest in Indonesia. A carpenter who wishes to make a perfect table has good reasons to choose mahogany and to travel all the way to the said forest. But there and then he will ultimately be confronted with two or more equally reasonable possibilities. Should he choose the tree to his right or to his left? He must choose one, and both are equally suitable. The purpose can never determine the material actualization in all respects, down to the last particular; a "thoroughgoing determination" is ruled out by the very material structure of our world. In the very same way, there may (indeed must) be a purpose to the universe, but it does not govern all particulars. The purpose of the universe may require the circular orbit of the celestial bodies. But it does not account necessarily for the different velocities or colors of the planets (Funkenstein p 229).

So if I understand correctly, for Maimonides a law as a whole has a clear rational purposes (a rational final cause, I suppose), but that purpose need not explain every detail of the law. (What I find tricky about this is that Funkenstein contrasts Maimonides' position to that of Sa'adia, who argued that many divine commandments were simply irrational in their content, but existed merely for the ultimate purpose of inculcating obedience to God. Maimonides' rejects the strong claim that any of these laws themselves were irrational, but that there is simply a degree of free, contingent choice built into the nature of law itself. I see the difference, but it's worth thinking it through).

This Maimonidean philosophy of science (and therefore philosophy of law) is an extension, Funkenstein argues, of a principle always found in Aristotelian metaphysics. It also interestingly maps onto post-Newtonian physics: "In a sense, Maimonides' principle of indeterminacy is closer to modern than to classical physics: modern physics likewise assumes a principle of indeterminacy not as a limit to our knowledge, but as an objective indeterminacy within nature itself." Miracles and special providence, on this view, are not violations of the natural law, but free occurrences within the reservoir of contingency preserved by the nature of laws.

If it is true that indeterminacy is built into the nature of laws themselves, then we must reject Paley-style divine watchmaker arguments. (Newton and Paley always go together). If the universe was indeed governed by perfectly necessary laws that necessarily explained every single event, then there would be no reason for a creator God! The very fact that there is indeterminacy built into the nature of things is evidence that the order of the universe does not derive from the nature of matter itself, but from an imposition by the Creator. (Funkestein says this argument draws from Kalam, and is repeated by Kant).

This, ultimately, is Maimonides' explanation for the rational purpose of sacrifices that are no longer required. The final cause of these sacrifices is perfectly intelligible even today. But the particular matter of the sacrifices was always less important. Again, here's Funkenstein quoting Maimonides:

We may be able to explain, in view of their purpose, why sacrifices should have been instituted in the first place; "but the fact that one sacrifice is a lamb and another a ram; and the fact that their number is determined-to this one can give no reason at all, and whoever tries to assign a rationale enters a protracted madness." Rather than looking for an always determining principle for each law, we should look for a contingent rationale. Maimonides found such a contingent rationale in the concrete historical circumstances under which these laws were given to the nascent Israel. (Funkenstein 231)

Unsurprisingly, the contingent rationale for the particular sacrifices demanded of ancient Israel was tied to their particular historical situation. The relative closeness to polytheistic sacrificial rituals was a deliberate pedagogic method to wean the Jewish people away from such idol worship.

This is all very interesting philosophy of science and intellectual history (Funkenstein goes on to sketch the various reactions to this Maimonidean hermeneutic principle, focusing on those who condemned Maimonides for relativizing the truths of the bible). But the major upshot for my more parochial interests is the connection between these debates and later conceptions of the nature of positive law.

Thomas Aquinas, for example, partly embraces Maimonides' method, both as a matter of interpreting the Old Law, as well as a method of understanding the distinction between general precepts of reason derived from the natural law, and the particular instantiations/institutions of positive law and divine law.

The ceremonial and judicial precepts of the Old Law were not rationally necessary in their particular content, but rather in their general purpose. The nature of law permitted a space for contingency with an eye toward guiding the Jewish people in their particular situation. (This is not so, of course, for the moral law precepts of the Old Testament, which are perfectly rational in themselves, and which are accordingly always binding).

As it relates to the distinction between natural and positive law, this indeterminacy in the essence of law proves quite useful to Aquinas. It allows him to make sense of the institution of private property, for example. Private property derives from the natural law itself--it is natural for man to own property. But against a Lockean natural-law theory of property, this natural-law precept remains thoroughly under-specified. It is natural that man have some form of private property for the sake of their own private development, but more importantly for the sake of the common good. (Also, if theft is a violation of the natural law, it seems necessary that some kind of ownership is required by the natural law).

Two important implications fall out of this account of the natural-law right to property. First, because the natural right to property is ultimately oriented towards the common good, whenever any positive-law right to property runs contrary to the common good, it ceases to obtain. This is the reasoning behind Aquinas' famous argument that theft for the sake of survival is, strictly speaking, not theft at all: "It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need."

And second, this account allows for extensive discretion in the positive-law imposition of private property rights. Here's Aquinas on the general principle:

But it must be noted that something may be derived from the natural law in two ways: first, as a conclusion from premises, secondly, by way of determination of certain generalities. The first way is like to that by which, in sciences, demonstrated conclusions are drawn from the principles: while the second mode is likened to that whereby, in the arts, general forms are particularized as to details: thus the craftsman needs to determine the general form of a house to some particular shape. Some things are therefore derived from the general principles of the natural law, by way of conclusions; e.g. that "one must not kill" may be derived as a conclusion from the principle that "one should do harm to no man": while some are derived therefrom by way of determination; e.g. the law of nature has it that the evil-doer should be punished; but that he be punished in this or that way, is a determination of the law of nature.

The particular determination of the form private property should take is left to the free discretion of sovereign authorities. (Notice the similarity in this metaphor of the craftsman and the house with Funkenstein's example of the table. I'm fairly confident the craftsman/house metaphor comes from Aristotle, but I'm not sure).

Anyway, this is a long way of noticing something interesting about law for Aquinas and Maimonides: The essential room for free discretion. This is an echo, in part, of the ancient principle that law is always second best, precisely because free discretionary judgment will always be necessary. Consider, for example, the Eleatic Visitor in Plato's Statesman:

Now in a certain sense it is clear that the art of the legislator belongs to that of the king; but the best thing is not that the laws should prevail, but rather the kingly man who possesses wisdom ... [This is because] law could never accurately embrace what is best and most just for all at the same time, and so prescribe what is best. For the dissimilarities between human beings and their actions, and the fact that practically nothing in humana ffairs ever remains stable, prevent any sort of expertise whatsoever from making any simple decision in any sphere that covers all cases and will last for all time. (294a-b in the C.J. Rowe translation).

Something similar is true of Aristotle's discussion of the relationship between law and convention in his treatment of justice in the Nicomachean Ethics. (Is justice like money, different from society to society, or is justice like smoke, which no matter where you are flows upward from fire in the same way?)

Also worth noting here that there's a kind of double application of this principle of indeterminacy-in-law for Aquinas: (1) There is discretion in establishing human laws to instantiate requirements of the natural law; and (2) There is discretion in the application of the human law in the interest of promoting the common good. This second caveat derives from the fact that positive laws exist for generalities, not particulars, but that particular circumstances may derive a departure from the strict letter of the law. The famous example:

For instance, suppose that in a besieged city it be an established law that the gates of the city are to be kept closed, this is good for public welfare as a general rule: but, it were to happen that the enemy are in pursuit of certain citizens, who are defenders of the city, it would be a great loss to the city, if the gates were not opened to them: and so in that case the gates ought to be opened, contrary to the letter of the law, in order to maintain the common weal, which the lawgiver had in view.

It's striking just how different all this is from the characteristically modern view of the rule-of-law (as opposed to the rule-of-men). We've already seen how Aquinas' natural-law right to property is radically unspecified compared to Locke's. The former view reserves extensive discretion to the political authorities in instituting property rights in accord with the common good. Locke, on the other hand, believes that the natural-right to private property establishes what Nozick called "side constraints" on authority.

A similar difference can be found with Hume. Unlike Locke and Aquinas, Hume thought property rights derived from convention/construction, not nature. Yet despite their artificial character, laws of justice are extraordinarily inflexible! (See my earlier post on this).

Marx and Engels on Napoleon and Babeuf

From Engels' "Progress of Social Reform on the Continent," published in the Owenite, Chartist journal The Northern Star in 1843:

The French Revolution was the rise of democracy in Europe. Democracy is, as I take all forms of government to be, a contradiction in itself, an untruth, nothing but hypocrisy (theology, as we Germans call it), at the bottom. Political liberty is sham-liberty, the worst possible slavery; the appearance of liberty and therefore the reality of servitude. Political equality is the same; therefore democracy, as well as every other form of government, must ultimately break to pieces: hypocrisy cannot subsist, the contradiction hidden in it must come out; we must have either a regular slavery--that is, an undisguised despotism, or real liberty, and real equality--that is, Communism. Both these consequences were brought out in the French Revolution; Napoleon established the first, and Babeuf the second. I think I may be short upon the subject of Babouvism, as the history of his conspiracy, [written] by Buonarroti, has been translated into the English language. The Communist plot did not succeed, because the then Communism itself was of a very rough and superficial kind; and because, on the other hand, the public mind was not yet enough advanced.

(Marx and Engels praise Babeuf in the Communist Manifesto as a rare example of someone who has "given voice to the demands of the proletariat.")

Marx and Engels elaborate further on these themes--the opposed possibilities of Napoleon and Babeuf, the immaturity of the French Revolution, the contradictions of bourgeois democracy etc.--in The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism. See these passages from the critique of Bruno Bauer--in an extension of Marx's earlier "On the Jewish Question." (A professor of mine is fond of quoting these passages. He thinks they are key to understanding Marx's assessment of liberal democracy and the French Revolution.

Ideas can never lead beyond an old world order but only beyond the ideas of the old world order. Ideas cannot carry out anything at all. In order to carry out ideas men are needed who can exert practical force. In its literal sense the Critical sentence is therefore another truth that is self-evident, and therefore another"examination".  

Undeterred by this examination, the French Revolution gave rise to ideas which led beyond the ideas of the entire old world order. The revolutionary movement which began in 1789 in the Cercle social, which in the middle of its course had its chief representatives Leclerc and Roux, and which finally with Babeuf's conspiracy was temporarily defeated, gave rise to the communist idea which Babeuf's friend Buonarroti re-introduced in France after the Revolution of 1730. The idea, consistently developed, is the idea of the new world order.

... 

Robespierre, Saint-just and their party fell because they confused the ancient, realistic-democratic commonweal based on real slavery with the modern spiritualistic-democratic representative state, which is based on emancipated slavery, bourgeois society. What a terrible illusion it is to have to recognise and sanction in the rights of man modern bourgeois society, the society of industry, of universal competition, of private interest freely pursuing its aims, of anarchy, of self-estranged natural and spiritual individuality, and at the same time to want afterwards to annul the manifestations of the life of this society in particular individuals and simultaneously to want to model the political head of that society in the manner of antiquity! 

The illusion appears tragic when Saint-Just, on the day of his execution, pointed to the large table of the Rights of Man hanging in the hall of the Conciergerie and said with proud dignity: “C'est pourtant moi qui ai fait cela” [Yet it was I who made that]. It was just this table that proclaimed the right of a man who cannot be the man of the ancient commonweal any more than his economic and industrial conditions are those of ancient times. 

... 

Profane history, on the other hand, reports: After the fall of Robespierre, the political enlightenment, which formerly had been overreaching itself and had been extravagant, began for the first time to develop prosaically. Under the government of the Directory, bourgeois society, freed by the Revolution itself from the trammels of feudalism and officially recognised in spite of the Terror’s wish to sacrifice it to an ancient form of political life, broke out in powerful streams of life. A storm and stress of commercial enterprise, a passion for enrichment, the exuberance of the new bourgeois life, whose first self-enjoyment is pert, light-hearted, frivolous and intoxicating; a real enlightenment of the land of France, the feudal structure of which had been smashed by the hammer of the Revolution and which, by the first feverish efforts of the numerous new owners, had become the object of all-round cultivation; the first moves of industry that had now become free — these were some of the signs of life of the newly emerged bourgeois society. Bourgeois society is positively represented by the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, therefore, begins its rule. The rights of man cease to exist merely in theory. 

... 

Napoleon represented the last battle of revolutionary terror against the bourgeois society which had been proclaimed by this same Revolution, and against its policy. Napoleon, of course, already discerned the essence of the modern state; he understood that it is based on the unhampered development of bourgeois society, on the free movement of private interest, etc. He decided to recognise and protect this basis. He was no terrorist with his head in the clouds. Yet at the same time he still regarded the state as an end in itself and civil life only as a treasurer and his subordinate which must have no will of its own. He perfected the Terror by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution. He fed the egoism of the French nation to complete satiety but demanded also the sacrifice of bourgeois business, enjoyments, wealth, etc., whenever this was required by the political aim of conquest. If he despotically suppressed the liberalism of bourgeois society — the political idealism of its daily practice — he showed no more consideration for its essential material interests, trade and industry, whenever they conflicted with his political interests. His scorn of industrial hommes d'affaires was the complement to his scorn of ideologists. In his home policy, too, he combated bourgeois society as the opponent of the state which in his own person he still held to be an absolute aim in itself. Thus he declared in the State Council that he would not suffer the owner of extensive estates to cultivate them or not as he pleased. Thus, too, he conceived the plan of subordinating trade to the state by appropriation of roulage [road haulage]. French businessmen took steps to anticipate the event that first shook Napoleon’s power. Paris exchange- brokers forced him by means of an artificially created famine to delay the opening of the Russian campaign by nearly two months and thus to launch it too late in the year.

Screwtape on Historicism

From C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, letter 27:

The Historical Point of View, put briefly, means that when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true. He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books, and what phase in the writer's development or in the general history of thought, it illustrates, and how it affected later writers, and how far it has been misunderstood (specially by the learned man's own colleagues) and what the general course of criticism on it has been for the last ten years, and what is the 'present state of the question'. To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge--to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behaviour--this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded. And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another. But thanks be to Our Father and the Historical Point of View, great scholars are now as little nourished by the past as the most ignorant mechanic who holds that 'history is bunk'