Charles Tilly: European Revolutions, 1492-1992. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993.

Fernand Braudel: On History. Sarah Matthews translation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

 

In politics, ‘revolution’ is a metaphoric word. To understand it, one must know what it is that has revolved. The ancient Greek word for revolution, metabolē, means change, alteration; again, what has changed?

Aristotle explains that it is the regime of the polis that changes in a revolution. A regime or politeia is the organization of the most authoritative offices of the polis, the ones that shape the distinctive way of life of the polis, serving the purpose or telos of the polis. The system of authoritative institutions is founded and embodied by the politeuma or ruling body—those individuals who wield authority in the polis. [1] Aristotle famously classifies regimes into six types based on quantitative criteria (rule of the one, the few, the many) and qualitative criteria (the good and the bad).

A revolution, then, consists of a political change of rulers and institutions, a change of kind and not merely of degree: from oligarchy to democracy, democracy to tyranny, and so on.

In the ‘Europe’ of Aristotle’s time a revolution did not involve seizing something called ‘the state.’ There was little in the way of any institutional structure to seize. Typically in the Greek polis one faction would overthrow another, establishing its own institutions and replacing the previous rulers. The ancient Greeks did not conceive of anything quite like what we mean by a ‘state’; for example, ‘state’ had not separated from ‘society.’ The Latin term status in medieval times still mean ‘condition’—the status ecclesiae or the status regni. Americans still use the term in this older sense when they speak of ‘the state of the Union.’ This had nothing to do with regime, what Latin expresses as the politia or the ordo dominantum. As with the Greeks, politia refers to a ruling order, the ruler-guided and institution-guided way of life of the whole society. [2]

At a key point in his argument, Charles Tilly cites Hobbes, who fully develops the concept of the state as it became known in modern Europe. With regard to Great Britain, Hobbes saw, “the access of parliament to London’s commercial network, both internal and external, gave it crucial advantage in a world where military force had begun to depend on financial stability” (ER 135). At the same time, Hobbes was himself a monarchist, and (so to speak) rightly so: Monarchs not parliaments founded modern states, acquiring them in war, not through peaceful legislative activities States above all have been objects of conquest, of military acquisition, desired by acquisitive princes. The very process of acquisitive militarism has itself contributed to state-building.

The state complicates but does not erase classical regime theory. A state may still be tyrannical or monarchic, oligarchic or aristocratic, ‘mixed’ or democratic. But the state may persist throughout such regime changes, making for a remarkable sight: The political regime may undergo revolution but the state itself may as a consequence change or stay the same in size, strength, and degree of centralization. So, to use one of Tilly’s examples, the new, republican regime in France replaced the monarchic Old Regime, but the state did not shrink. On the contrary, both its governing apparatus and its territorial reach grew.

Moreover, when speaking of state organization, one needs a word in addition to ‘regime.’ Tilly identifies several kinds of states: city-states, federations, empires, and ‘national’ or ‘modern’ states. Unlike regimes, which (to repeat) refer to the quantity and quality of public offices, state ‘types’ (let us call them) refer to the extent of territory ruled(large, medium, small) and the relations between the periphery and the ruling center. Typically, city-states are smaller than ‘national’ states, which are often smaller than federations and empires; further, each state type exhibits a different structure with respect to the way authority is distributed throughout the regions: a federation grants considerable authority (Tilly, the Hobbesian, would say ‘power’) to the peripheries, whereas a ‘national’ state centralizes authority.

A territory and set of people(s) that are ruled, then, may be called (again, I am assigning a word) a polity. A modern polity exhibits two political forms: the regime and (what I am calling) the state type. Obviously, these classifications do not exhaust the formal characteristics of polities: there are economic orders, also—mercantilism, capitalism, socialism—crucial to the development of regimes and state types. In his discussions of the genesis of European states and of revolutions occurring within them, Tilly makes much not only of coercion but of capital, which he takes to be the two variables whose relations determine state type and, to some extent, regime as well.

This suggests that radical regime change, or revolution, becomes much more complicated with the invention of the modern state. ‘States’ are distinguishable, in a way not seen in European antiquity, from ‘societies’ states and societies influence each other. Matters are complicated still further by interstate relations. Europe is a system of many states, interacting commercially and martially in ways often conducive to revolution. These two sets of complications in turn interact with one another, complexly. It all begins to resemble the human genome project. The genesis and genetics, origins and forms, of states and states-in-system—and of state-systems with other state-systems, Europe with Asia, with the Americas—could easily spin out of conceptual control, even as the states and the systems in and with which they operate have in fact spun out of political control, resulting in catastrophic wars.

To clarify matters, Tilly distinguishes revolutionary situations—conditions pregnant with revolution—from revolutionary outcomes—the children born or aborted. Revolutionary situations result from a contending faction adhered to by “a significant segment” of citizens, a faction that the existing state apparatus cannot or will not suppress. Revolutionary outcomes result from defections from the ruling group, including military forces, and the acquisition of military force by the contending faction, leading to acquisition of the state apparatus by that faction.

Revenue and military force, operating both within states’ territories and within the state system of Europe, have combined in different ways and to different degrees, generating different kinds of states and different kinds of revolutions. Tilly outlines the principal possibilities in his case studies of the Low Countries, the Iberian peninsula, the Balkans, Great Britain, France, and Russia. Both economic and military institutions are to some extent shaped by the choices made by modern rulers, ‘states-men’; throughout his career, Tilly has been a prominent advocate of ‘bringing the state back in’ to historical studies, after at least two generations of economic and social historiography. His political history differs from the political history of early moderns in several ways. He is much more sociologically sophisticated, integrating the work of his immediate predecessors into his political account. His political history is also unconnected to the nationalist and often ‘teleological’/triumphalist narratives often favored in the nineteenth century. Tilly accounts for state-building, neither applauding it nor mourning what he evidently takes to be its likely and incipient demise. He likens statesmen to protection racketeers. He quietly rejects another teleology, as well: Marxism. He shows why class struggle did not lead to international proletarian revolution (ER 246).

With respect to historiography, one should emphasize that Tilly insists on the importance of comparison. Causal explanation in history, notoriously difficult (vide Marx, again), may be attempted by using comparisons (Britain and France, Britain and Iberia) to show “what did not happen as much as what did happen” (ER 126). To explain why and how the British state formed, why and how its revolutions occurred, compare and contrast it with paths not taken, paths that, fortunately, can be seen by looking at other European polities. Just as conflict among factions on a given territory and conflicts between states organized on those territories served to form and re-form states, so too can the examination of contrasts among states and the circumstances leading to their formation build up a reliable body of knowledge about revolutions.

Tilly reaffirms the importance of politics, which Aristotle esteemed as the comprehensive, architectonic art. In this (and borrowing from his own approach) he may be compared and contrasted to the great Fernand Braudel. The scope of Braudel’s achievement, the sheer orchestration of materials, puts him beyond Tilly and (one is tempted to say) just about everyone else in the past century or two.. But the very awe-inspiring vastness of Braudel’s project makes some of his categories seem to big for careful use. The longue durée is so very long that it is hard to see just how it operates. For example: “Some structures, because of their long life, become stable elements for an infinite number of generations….” (On History, 126). Well, yes, things that last a long time do have long lives. A tautology explains nothing. Political authority, on the other hand, explains a lot. It in turn needs explaining, and Tilly offers explanations. His project has some of the Braudelian sweep, but he splits his problems into governable pieces. One spends less time gaping, more thinking.

In his efforts at this reconstitution, Tilly leans too heavily on the Hobbesian concept of ‘power.’ ‘Authority,’ encompassing both coercion and persuasion, and also prudential understanding, pulls closer to both Aristotle and the truth. Statesmen are (at least sometimes) more than power-hungry ‘rational-choice’ maximizers. This goes not only for the admirable ones, the Washingtons and the de Gaulles, but also for the most loathsome. Pol Pot wanted more than power; he murdered at least a quarter of the people of Cambodia for a purpose, however vile that purpose was. One was better off under a mere despot, say, Louis XIV.

 

Notes

1. Among contemporary political scientists, Stephen Skowronek and David Plotke both use the term ‘regime’ or ‘political order’ to mean the ruling body, not Aristotle’s politeia but his politeuma. See Skowronek: The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) and Plotke: Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
2. On the status see Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.: Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), chapter 12.

Paper delivered at the 1997 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D. C., August 1997, in response to a paper by Paul Eidelberg: “A Constitution for the State of Israel: A Practical Proposal.” Eidelberg published a book-length version of his argument, along with the text for such a constitution, several years later: Jewish Statesmanship: Lest Israel Fall (Jerusalem: ACPR Publishers, 2000).

 

In advancing arguments for a written Israeli constitution, Paul Eidelberg causes us to think about the problems of constitutionalism that face many countries today, riven with religious and ethnic animosities. For this reason his argument has general and not only specific interest.

For Israel, the matter may be stated this way:

1. The purpose of the Israeli founding a half-century ago was to restore a homeland to the Jews, a people whose very homelessness had been held to be in some measure responsible for their near extermination in Europe only a few years before. European Jews learned, much more disastrously, what Americans had learned in the 1770s: If you want to be governed rightly, do it yourself. No one cares more about your unalienable rights than you do. All things being equal, no one else is likely to defend your rights as effectively as you are.

2. Israel is, or at least is usually said to be, a democracy, with the full panoply of civil rights associated with modern democracies, in addition to a generous selection of the social and economic rights associated with the modern ‘welfare state.’ Self-government in this sense means the government of all by all—justified on the grounds that some of your own people might tyrannize over you as brutally as a foreign people might.

Insofar as Israel is a democracy, a regime that respects the principle of (suitably qualified) majority rule, Israel’s Jewishness is at hazard. An increasingly Arab, largely Muslim population now wields considerable power in national elections. Conceivably, a larger Arab population could end Jewish self-government—government of, by, and for the Jewish people.

Alternatively, the Israeli government, building upon its already extensive state apparatus–an apparatus so extensive that Eidelberg denies Israel status as a true democracy—might become increasingly ‘Hobbesian’ or despotic—securing, or claiming to secure, Jewish rights by imposing Jewish rule ever more forcefully upon Arabs. Eventually, might such a powerful, sovereign state not turn its untender mercies upon Jews as well?

Eidelberg reconciles Israel’s Jewishness with democracy by availing himself of the principle of popular sovereignty required by Jewish law. As the American Founders recognized, popular sovereignty requires a written constitution. If the people are to govern themselves in any territory more extensive than a village, as a practical matter they will need government by elected representatives. But representatives meeting in regular legislative session, not being sovereign, cannot unilaterally enact the fundamental human laws governing the sovereign people. Such fundamental laws may be proposed by representatives, but must be ratified by the people themselves, either directly or by representatives meeting in a convention intended for that purpose alone. Further, if fundamental human laws are not to be merely long-established unwritten customs—if they are to be laws deliberated upon and chosen by the people (as the first Federalist has it)—they will need to be written down. That is, you first need to distinguish between constitutional law and mere statutes; your legislature cannot be, in effect, a continuous constitutional convention. Second, you need a written constitution that rationally limits the powers of the sovereign people over each individual among that people.

The Torah itself is a kind of written constitution—the father of all such. In it, God as Sovereign of sovereigns sets limits on His own conduct as well as the conduct of His people. By analogy, a sovereign people under the sovereignty of God will fit constitutional powers to constitutional duties and rights. But precisely because they are sovereign under God, the Jewishness of this sovereign people cannot be elided by the word, ‘democracy.’

This raises what Spinoza called the theologico-political question. Given the diversity of the (mis)understandings of God’s ‘constitution’ respecting the peoples of the earth, how is endless war to be avoided? If one function of government is to keep the peace, how can a religiously-based government do that? The ‘modern’ answer combines religious toleration with intolerance toward violations of natural rights—the rights of human beings as such, regardless of their religious convictions. In the United States, where this solution was first tried, it has worked fairly well. The current question in America is, Can natural rights be secured despite serious ‘cultural’ differences? (In contemporary language, ‘culture’ means a sort of religiosity without religion.) The answer to this question so far has been that in practice American makes anti-republican aspects of the various ‘cultures’ unattractive to all but a few. Busy with commerce and other forms of self-government, Americans embroil themselves ‘retail,’ but manage to live together ‘wholesale.’

For example, in the United States there is a vigorous and politically significant population of Muslims, including the ‘Black Muslims’ or Nation of Islam. It is not at all clear that Islamic law can be reconciled with modern republicanism; an ‘Islamic Republic’ is no democratic or commercial republic. In the United States, however, American Muslims generally conduct themselves as all other citizens do with respect to their civic duties. Muslims are free to do so because the United States was founded as a natural-rights republic, with civil rights designed to secure those natural rights. Although Americans of the founding generation were usually Christians, often secularists, and never Muslims, they did not found a Christian republic, much less an Episcopal, Quaker, Presbyterian, or Congregational one. This implies that a workable consensus exists with respect to what natural rights are. That is, democratic republicanism does require a certain sort of ‘culture.’ The regime allows substantial cultural pluralism, but it could not sustain thoroughgoing cultural relativism or nihilism. If American Muslims, or members of any other religion, were to reject the workable consensus that exists in America regarding the nature of natural right, they would present a serious problem insofar as they joined that rejection to political action.

In solving the problem of the apparent but not necessarily real contradiction between Jewishness and democracy in Israel, Paul Eidelberg must therefore address two further problems. Political solutions always exchange one set of problems for another, and the sensible question usually is, Are the new problems better problems to have than the old ones?

First: How can Israelis in a constitutionally democratic-Jewish regime ensure natural rights to non-Jews, without granting full citizenship rights to non-Jews? Eidelberg seems to propose a sort of Locke-like religious toleration, as distinct from the American system of religion as a natural right. How can Arabs be assured that stated guarantees will not be mere ‘paper’ guarantees? How will Arabs in an Israel with a written constitution that ‘establishes’ Judaism defend themselves legally, without the need of taking to the streets and having “a little rebellion now and then”? Given the comprehensive character of Islamic law, would Israeli Muslims in principle comply with Section E, Article 9 of the Eidelberg constitution, which stipulates that “Residents of Israel shall have the right to establish their own religious and educational institutions, provided that these are consistent with loyalty to the Jewish State”?

Second: Given the constitutionally-guaranteed Jewishness of the new Israel, two other questions from pre-modern times emerge. Who is a Jew? To answer this question you need to answer another: What is a Jew? In any regime where citizenship rights attach to a religious category, the definition of the category will become politically contentious, as seen in the history of Europe, which saw catastrophic warfare over the questions, Who is a Christian? and What is a Christian? Just as Eidelberg’s constitution would settle Israel’s “crisis of the house divided” in part by narrowing the citizenship rights of non-Jews, future factions within the Jewish population would surely attempt to draw those lines more narrowly still, for the sake of political advantage. Can a means be devised to prevent or at least dilute the problem of schism in a religiously-based polity?

In conclusion, the Eidelberg proposal consists of several elements, each of which deserves serious consideration. There is the proposal for a written constitution for Israel. I am inclined to think this an excellent idea. Israelis are not Englishmen, with the long, more or less unbroken tradition of self-government which enables the English to govern themselves with no written constitution. Although (as any American knows) a written constitution remains susceptible to interpretive manipulation, it does give citizens a more precise understanding of their rights and duties as members of a sovereign people.

Eidelberg also proposes to reconfigure the structure of the Israeli government, moving it away from parliamentary republicanism toward an American-style republic with separation of powers, including a strong executive branch. I am inclined to think this an excellent idea as well, on the grounds Charles de Gaulle invoked in his critique of French parliamentarism. Again, Israel is no island nation, like Britain. Executive dispatch will prove useful.

Finally, there is the proposal to make Israel a more exclusively Jewish country than it now is. Here is where the problems will arise. I want to learn more about how this would be done in a manner that would contain the bitter factionalism which will surely result. To say that Israel already is wracked by bitter factionalism is true but insufficient. Will the new factionalism be in some way preferable to the old factionalism it replaces? The old factionalism has proved sustainable for half a century. If it really is no longer sustainable, how sustainable will the new factionalism be? This is a question for Israeli citizens to answer, not some American commentator. Theirs are the lives that are on the line.

Albert Speer: Inside the Third Reich. Richard and Clara Winston translation. New York: Macmillan, 1970. Reissued by Simon and Schuster, 1997.

 

No founder of the American republic would not instantly have recognized Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler as loathsome tyrants. Albert Speer was less discerning. Speer could tell himself, and his prosecutors, that he did not know about Nazi death camps because he so much did not want to know that his knowledge stayed penumbric, a whiff of ash from distant crematorium. “Would you help me become a different man?” Speer asked the priest, not without reason but rather too late.

The Americans had been bred to politics, a politics of self-government jealous of encroachments, alert to the designs of despots. Speer grew up among a sort of gentry rendered useless by modern life. An apolitical youth left him susceptible to an all-consuming politics in maturity—precisely because he’d never matured at all. Had he been fortunate, he might have found his ‘missing’ father in God, but such wholesome devotion was less likely in the new Europe, the Europe of the Church Militant of Modern Ideology. Father Hitler—who so cared for, so loved, German youth, who had such power, omniscience, and glory—fulfilled Speer’s longings. Chesterton (whose record on these matters was far from spotless) writes that when men stop believing in God they don’t start believing in nothing; they believe in anything. Or (more relevantly here) anyone—even the implausible little Austrian with a suggestion of syphilis in his eyes. Hitler won Eva Brann too, that Gretchen with her sense of danger pithed, vulnerable to Mephistophelian seduction, and therefore not sufficiently good to save her Faustian friend, Speer. Speer’s real father sensed the evil on contact. Like most German liberals of the time, like the Weimar Republic itself, he shuddered and withdrew.

“All I wanted was for this great man to dominate the globe.” With so many good works behind him—the resurrection of German pride, a reinvigorated economy, a rebuilt military—and surely so many more ahead of him, to culminate in the reunification of the Germanic peoples at the geopolitical center of the World Island–only a fool or a coward would demur, yes? For who would oppose him? The decadent French? The slavish Slavs? The Bolsheviks? The nation of shopkeepers?

As for doubts, Hitler himself made “an absolute refusal to listen to bad news.” Neither does “the authoritarian state” itself seek to hear criticism. Nor do its subjects. Even the very minimally realistic Speer—who wondered, in 1943, whether it might be better to put the German economy on a war footing—could make little headway. (Fortunately so. Their mindset kept Hitler and his I-venture-to-say eccentric band well away from the potential applications of Einstein’s ‘Jewish physics.’) As for the Germans, “If we couldn’t believe in Hitler, what was there for us?” a woman asked, I suppose rhetorically.

He left the Germans behind, Speer among them. The Prince of War attaches his followers to himself by implicating them in the crimes that underlie his new modes and orders. When that regime crumbles and the Prince dies, so much of the worse—if, ultimately, much better—for the survivors. What there was for the Germans after Hitler was the potential to recover the self, in pain, or to find some new formula for self-deception. They did both. Speer did both. Thanks to the common sense of their conquerors from the west, they did so in the stable and decent regime of the German Federal Republic. From the east, conquerors came who were not so sensible.

Are we all Albert Speer? We all tend to believe what we want to believe, and to disbelieve things that reflect poorly on ‘our own.’ A main justification for the commercial republican regime is to make it harder for its citizens to do that, by making them know that they will do it, and by checking them from acting too comprehensively when they do. So we all are, and are not, Albert Speer. We share his inclinations but are less likely to act upon them so unimpededly.