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Social Science History for Budding Theorists |
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4: Can Theory Redesign Society?
Rousseau,
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(¶1)
The
French Revolution of 1789 sets itself apart from every
revolution that
had gone before by being a revolution centred on
theories. At its centre
was a
Declaration of the Rights of
Man,
drawn up by the French
Parliament, that focused the minds of the people on what the theorists
thought were the basic principles of good government. The declaration of
ideas enabled the revolution to spread out of the parliament into the minds
of the people, and explains why historians have never been able to agree on
when the revolution ended or what its boundaries were.
Where, asked
Carlyle, did the French revolution take place? Was it in the French
parliament or in the streets and fields of France?.
(¶2)
This essay first looks at the way that ideas generated by the theorists
John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau were applied in the French revolution
in 1789. It then looks at how these same ideas applied to two large
sections of society that were caught up in the revolution: women and
slaves.
EXPLAINING A LITTLE ABOUT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
French Absolutism
(¶3)
The States General of France was the equivalent of
parliament in England.
In England the parliament had waged war on the king
and, in
1649,
executed him.
In France the King did not call parliament
together - the States General did not meet once between
1614
and
1789.
When
reading about this period of French history you will come across references
to the parliaments of regions, like the parliament of Paris. These are not
parliament in the English sense. They are courts of law that were often in
conflict with the king.
(¶4)
The idea of a monarch ruling without a consultative body of the people
(Parliament or States General) to approve laws and thus limit the monarch's
power, was one aspect of what the philosopher theorists meant by
"absolutism". France was an
absolutist
monarchy, whilst England and
Scotland
were
constitutional monarchies. The power of their kings and
queens
was
limited by law-making assemblies of the people. They were not, however,
democracies. Most of the members of the English parliament were there by
heredity right, and those who were elected were only elected by a small
number of the people.
(¶5)
In the seventeenth century France was proud of being absolutist. The
English, on the other hand, called absolutism the French disease. (The
"French disease" was also the English name for the venereal disease,
syphilis. In France they called syphilis the "English disease").
The Sun King, Louis 14.
(¶6)
England had theorists of
absolutism, like
Robert Filmer and
Thomas Hobbes, and theorists of constitutional monarchy,
like
John Locke. In
January 1649, when Charles 1st of England was beheaded,
Hobbes was in France for his safety. The king of France was a boy - too
young
to rule. On
September 7th 1651
Hobbes watched from his window a ceremonial
procession that marked the point where the king became old enough to govern
(Evelyn, J.
1818 volume 1, p.268). This king, Louis 14, was to make France
very powerful by concentrating power in his own hands. From 1661, when he
threw his chief minister into prison, until his death in 1715, the king
ruled personally. "L'etat c'est moi" (I am the state), he said. Louis 14
gave absolutism new meanings. He established a system that meant the French
aristocracy were preoccupied with the social activities of his court, and
deprived of any real power. From the time of Louis 14, French absolutism
meant that power was concentrated in the king. In England much power lay
with the local government, dominated by the local aristocracy. In France it
was concentrated in Versailles, the town outside Paris where the king had a
magnificent palace. The French king ruled through a centralised
bureaucracy, an organisation of officials loyal to him. He did not share
power with a nobility.
Louis 16 goes bust.
(¶7)
The system of absolutism that Louis 14
established was expensive. The state apparatus had to absorb the nobility
in expensive social activities. The money to pay for the finery and the
power of the French state all came from taxes on the ordinary people, the
nobility and clergy paid no taxes. In the late eighteenth century, this
system went bust - and precipitated a revolution. The immediate origin of
the
French revolution was the recalling of the States General for the first
time in 175 years. The reason for that was financial. France entered the
war of independence on America's side in 1778. The king, Louis 16, called
the French Parliament (States General) together because the war had cost
too much. He hoped that it would enable him to raise new taxes. The
Parliament met in May 1789. It had three parts: the first estate (clergy),
second estate (nobles) and third estate (others). The three estates sat
apart, but the third estate argued that there should be only one assembly.
Their arguments were set out in a pamphlet by Abbe Sieyes which argued that
the Third Estate was the whole nation. The third estate renamed itself the
National Assembly. On June 20th they resolved to go on meeting (even if the
king dissolved them) "until the constitution of the realm is established"
On June 27th they won: the king ordered the first and second estates to
join the third. His power was now limited by a parliament. France had
become a constitutional monarchy.
(¶8)
The Declaration of the Rights
of
Man was published by the National
Assembly, or parliament, of France in August 1789. It is a set of abstract
philosophical principles addressed, not just to the citizens of France, but
to "man" in general. To the
German philosopher
Friedrich
Hegel
it was evidence that philosophy had entered into
history.
He agreed
with those writers who said that
Philosophy, he said, could now be described as
"world
wisdom".
It is not just truth - but truth exhibited in the affairs of the world
(Hegel, F./History).
The Enlightenment
(¶9)
Another German philosopher,
Immanuel Kant,
saw
the revolution as the evidence that the human race has grown up and is now
able to think for itself. It was evidence of enlightenment. In an article
called
What is
Enlightenment?
in 1784 Kant wrote:
What could lead you to do that? Hegel suggested that
we are stimulated to make our own theories when the stories we are told
contradict one another, or contradict our experiences. This is a useful
point
to bear in mind when you come across apparent contradictions in a writer.
The contradictions may be the most valuable part of their theory, because
they stimulate you to think for yourself.
Rousseau may have been the most
influential story teller, or theory maker, of the eighteenth century. On
first reading, however, he appears riddled with contradictions. Maybe one
of the reasons for his influence is that his apparent contradictions
shocked his readers into thinking for themselves.
(¶10)
The Enlightenment has become a term used to indicate the
period in
the history of ideas when Rousseau was writing. But it has been used
flexibly to refer to different periods in different countries.
"In general, may we not
say that the French revolution lies in the heart and head of every...French
man?"
(Carlyle, T. 1837/1839 Book 6, chapter 1, p.172).
His figures show
that he included every French woman, but he could have given them a
separate mention, women were in the forefront of the revolution in France.
He could have added that it spread from France to the slave plantations of
the West Indies. He might even have said that it fired the minds of women
and men generally, for the revolution there has been so persistent that it
is still going on.
"The consciousness of the
spiritual
is now the essential basis of the political fabric and philosophy has
thereby become dominant."
"the French revolution resulted from
philosophy".
"Enlightenment is
the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the
incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another."
(Kant, I. 1784)
He went on to say that Enlightenment is not just
understanding, but the will to understand by one's own efforts
rather than
by the guidance of another. We can think of it as being a process of
creating our own theories about the world, rather than simply accepting the
stories we are told.
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The English Enlightenment includes Hobbes and Locke and is thought to have happened in the 17th century, during and after the English Civil War. |
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The Scottish Enlightenment took place in the 18th century and included Hume and Adam Smith. |
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The French Enlightenment, which we are thinking about now, included Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot. Thinkers like these provided the intellectual climate for the French Revolution in 1789. |
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The German Enlightenment includes Kant and Hegel, and is partly a reflection on the French Revolution. |
The Philosopher's Parliament
(¶11)
The National Assembly became the
philosophers's parliament. It was like an enthusiastic college seminar
where everyone was discussing ideas and wanted to draw a blueprint for a
new society based on those ideas. If we read the first lines of the
Declaration of the Rights of
Man
we see that the Assembly wanted to
make the world accord with reason:
Slavery
(¶12)
If "men are born and remain free and equal in rights" what
can we say about slavery?
This issue arose very early in the philosopher's
parliament. In
July 1789
a delegation from French San Domingo (Haiti)
claimed 18 seats in the Parliament, based on the population of San Domingo.
The National Assembly's most powerful orator, the Marquis of Mirabeau,
attacked the claim because blacks (slave and free) were counted in the
population, but had no say in the election of representatives:
(¶13)
San Domingo was only allowed six deputies. This episode established
colonial representation, but at the same time made the issue of slavery an
issue for the revolution: thenceforth the history of liberty in France and
of slave emancipation in San Domingo is one and indivisible.
(James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.60)
THE REVOLUTION AND GENERAL POLITICAL THEORY
Constitutional Government
(¶14)
Perhaps you think of the French
Revolution as the guillotine cutting of the head of the king to make way
for a Republic. But this did not happen until four years after the
revolution started. At first the revolutionaries attempted to replace the
absolutist monarchy of France with a constitutional monarchy. A
constitutional monarchy is one where the monarch's powers are governed by a
constitution or laws.
(¶15)
A constitutional monarchy corresponds more to Locke's ideas of government
than to those of Hobbes. The important points are that the monarch's
actions are governed by laws and that the laws embody the general
principles by which the nation chooses to govern itself.
(¶16)
Jean Jacques Rousseau was born, in 1712, in the protestant
republic of Geneva, Switzerland. Later he moved to France and to Paris. In
Paris he met Voltaire and Diderot and was commissioned to write articles
(at first on music) for Diderot's Encyclopedie. The seventeen
volumes of this encyclopedia were the foundation stones of the
Enlightenment
in France. The first appeared annually from 1751 to 1757,
then they were banned. The final volumes appeared altogether in 1765.
Rousseau and Diderot were close friends until Rousseau left Paris in 1756.
After this, they fell out.
(¶17)
In 1750 a prize winning essay, called A Discourse on the Arts and the
Sciences (Rousseau 1750), made Rousseau famous because
he
argued that civilisation had
not improved the human condition. His replies to the many refutations that
were published, developed his ideas further, as did his A Discourse on
the Origin of Inequality
(Rousseau
1755(I))
and an article for the
l'Encyclopedie on Political Economy (Rousseau
1755(PE))
(¶18)
In 1756 Rousseau left Paris and, over the next few years, worked on
Julie, a novel published in 1761; Emile, a treatise on
education, and The Social Contract. These were published in
1762. His controversial views on religion led him to flee France and in
1766 and 1767 he lived in England under the protection of David Hume and
began to write his autobiographical Confessions (published 1782).
The last part of his life was spent in France, in poverty, with periods of
insanity. He died in 1778, eleven years before the French Revolution.
Rousseau and the General Will
(¶19)
Like
Locke and
Hobbes, whose works he
read, Rousseau is a
state of nature theorist. This means he starts his
argument with individuals wandering about in a state of nature and then
brings them together to show how society is created through their
"social contract".
One of the differences between Rousseau's theory and Locke's
theory is that Rousseau believes that reason comes into being with society.
Like most other state of nature theorists, Rousseau shows how society is
created through a "social contract". However, he sees human beings as
totally transformed by the passage from nature to society.
Reason, morality, imagination, memory and language are a consequence of
society. This miraculous transformation comes about through the formation
of the general will, and it distinguishes Rousseau's theory from
most
earlier state of nature theories.
(¶20)
The general will is the will of all when we are not thinking about our own
selfish interests but about the general interest. Rousseau calls selfish
interests particular interests.
Rousseau's General Will, and Locke on voting
(¶21)
The general will is
not the victory of the majority over a minority. It is not the result of a
vote. It is something that involves the will of every member who is
part of it. Rousseau argues that such a general will is fundamental to
every society and to every relation between human beings that treats the
other person as a person rather than an object.
We can approach what he
means by looking at what happens when people take a vote. Look at what
Locke says about the will of society in the following quotation and note
the points I have put in italics:
(¶22)
For Locke the society's will is the will of the majority expressed through
the legislature as law. We can imagine Rousseau accepting this in one
sense, but pointing out (as he does) that:
Reason and the General Will
(¶23)
One interpretation of Rousseau is that
the general will is what separates us from other animals. It is not just
the perception of what is in the general interest, it is also the form of
reasoning that separates humans from animals. I will point to the parts of
Rousseau's writings on which this interpretation is based. I will start at
the end, with a passage from
The Social
Contract, already quoted in
part, in which Rousseau summarises the miraculous change that takes place
when human beings pass from the state of nature to the state of society:
(¶24)
In an earlier draft
(Rousseau 1759)
of The Social Contract Rousseau
had quoted, with approval (but without acknowledgement), the two following
passages from an article by his friend Diderot that had appeared in the
same volume of the l'Encyclopedie as the article in which Rousseau
first used the idea of the General Will.
(¶25)
In an essay published the same year as l'Encyclopedie articles,
Rousseau analyzed reasoning in animals and humans. He argued that, in
nature, animals and people respond to things as particulars, not as
generalities and that the faculty to think in general terms is only
acquired through society. Thinking in general terms, and thinking in terms
of the general interest of all are thus associated. The words are
remarkably similar, although the concepts are different. Humans have two
wills: their particular (selfish) will and their general will. Animals
think in terms of particulars, humans think in general concepts.
(¶26)
It was the same for humans in the state of nature:
(¶27)
Thinking in general terms is only possible, Rousseau argues, when one uses
words rather than images.
(¶28)
Rousseau considers it must have taken an enormous length of time for human
beings to move from naming individual objects to classifying them as
general concepts; from calling each particular tree by a name, to having a
word and a concept for all trees (See
(Rousseau
1755(I)) p.68-70). This
process was accelerated by people being pushed together by circumstances,
thus encouraging the development of language. In two passages Rousseau
writes first of how such early societies encouraged the development of
language (and consequently general concepts) and then of how they brought
into being a concern for public esteem (and consequently, we might infer,
the general will).
(¶29)
Provocative though these passages are, it is not clear, to me at least, how
Rousseau related the acquirement of the human capacity to reason in general
terms with the general will that governs human morality. Both, however,
come into being when we become social, and it appears that Rousseau thought
of them as related.
Different ways of viewing the birth of the general will
(¶30)
We can view
the passage from nature to society in different ways. It could be
(¶31)
However we think of it, in society, man "deprives himself of some
advantages which he got from nature", but gains others:
Particular wills versus the
general will
(¶32)
Rousseau argued that
society had been corrupted, because social interests have been fashioned to
particular rather than general interests. There was a moral need to bring
society back to conformity with the general interest. The general will
became the national will or people's will.
Rousseau argued that:
(¶33)
Rousseau says that
Problem of the one undivided will: pluralism
(¶34)
Locke and Rousseau
were both concerned about freedom. However, they resolved the problems they
had with the concept in different ways. Locke preserved freedom in society
by limiting the power of the State. Locke's ideas placed the emphasis on
mechanisms for tolerating and coping with diversity. In 20th century terms,
the society he envisaged was "pluralistic", it allowed for a diversity of
interests in the one society.
(¶35)
Rousseau preserved freedom by arguing that the laws of the country should
be brought into agreement with the general will. If the laws carried out
the general will of the people, they would not interfere with the people's
freedom because they will be what the people want. By definition, however,
the general will is one and undivided. So there is a conflict between
Locke's version of liberty as the absence of constraint by the State and
Rousseau's version of the individual finding personal fulfilment by
participating in the management of a free society.
(¶36)
This conflict became a central issue for the revolution under the Jacobins.
The Locke version of freedom, with room for people pursuing different
objectives within a tolerant society came to be the view associated with
betraying the revolution. It was the view that "Federalists" held. A view
that stood in the way of the formulation of a national general will that
would form a France, "one and undivided". A France that through its unity
would have the strength to win its wars against foreign enemies and enemies
within. There were many people who went to the guillotine because they
adhered to Locke's version of freedom.
Rousseau versus Hobbes
(¶37)
Rousseau considered himself as someone
developing arguments for a war against absolutism. His intellectual allies
included Locke. His guns were trained on Filmer and Hobbes. Filmer he
dismissed quite quickly. Hobbes he fought tooth and nail in a guerilla
warfare that runs through much of his work. Two of the many points on which
he disagreed with Hobbes were
THE REVOLUTION AND THEORIES OF SLAVERY
Rousseau on freedom and slavery
(¶38) Rousseau discusses slavery in the
first chapters of The Social
Contract. An important objective of
The Social Contract was to show that Hobbes was wrong in believing
that the basis of society could be force. Rousseau argued that human
society is based on voluntary agreement between its members. Rousseau does
not discuss slavery for its own sake. He discusses slavery because the
concepts "slavery", "contract" and "freedom", are important to political
theories
based on the idea that we bargain our way out of a state of nature into
society by means of a social contract.
The argument of Hobbes (and, before
him, a Dutch theorist called
Hugo Grotius) swung on the case of slavery.
Grotius and Hobbes argued that if a people were conquered by force they
could bargain themselves into slavery in exchange for their lives.
(¶39)
Hobbes says that contracts exhorted by force are valid (Hobbes 1651 Chapter
14, Margin: Covenants extorted by fear are valid). Which means there
are two ways (equally valid) of setting up a Commonwealth: by force or by
agreement (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 17 last paragraph). In passing, Hobbes
applies this to slavery:
(¶40)
A contract by force is when a person or society is conquered and, instead
of being killed, imprisoned or put in chains, is allowed physical freedom
on condition that the conqueror can use the vanquished for his or her own
ends. This is the kind of `bargain for one's life' that Hobbes and
Grotius
used to show that people should obey those who conquered them by force. The
same argument was used by others to justify the slavery of people from
Africa in the West Indies. So, in arguing (against Grotius and Hobbes) that
legitimate political order can only be based on agreement, Rousseau found
himself arguing against slavery.
(¶41)
From
The Social
Contract
we will pick out the ideas on slavery that
Rousseau disagrees with from those that he agrees with.
Rousseau disagrees with Aristotle:
(¶42)
Aristotle said that human beings
are not equal naturally, but some are born to slavery, and others to rule:
(¶43)
Slavery, Rousseau says is "against nature".
Rousseau disagrees with Grotius
(¶44)
THE REVOLUTION AND THEORIES OF GENDER
(¶45)
Rousseau's theory of the general will appears to imply
Rousseau and women
(¶46)
According to Rousseau women are closer to nature
than men. They are caught up in their biology. Because of their attachment
to the family they are both the source of patriotic inspiration and unable
to make the generalisations necessary for (good) political reason.
(¶47)
In Emile, Rousseau divides human development into three stages:
childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Children, he argues, are concerned
with relations to things rather than people, but adolescence stirs
sexuality, awakening man's need for a mate.
(¶48)
But whilst biology makes politics possible, a partial freedom from biology
is necessary if politics is to be successful. Only men have this relative
freedom, according to Rousseau, because:
Reason and authority
(¶49)
Rousseau has a view of the world in which the
rational participants are men. But politics requires passion as well as
reason and the political role of women is that they arouse this passion in
men. The divided roles result in different reasons. According to Rousseau,
men and women reason differently.
(¶50)
It is as well that we understand how significant this is. In education
Rousseau was an opponent of dogma. He taught that boys should be shown the
reason for what is taught.
The
part of Emile that was the most controversial, a part called
The Creed
of a Savoyard Priest, was a demonstration
of how Emile might discover true religious principles by listening to the
voice of reason within him.
For men, Rousseau was suggesting, religious
authority is redundant. But for women we find the opposite is true. Her
religion should be
(¶51)
Let us look more closely at why Rousseau thinks that men should be taught
to think things out for themselves whilst women should be taught to obey
the authority of men. We will start by looking at what Rousseau means by
"reason".
Human reason, Rousseau says, is the art of comparing ideas one with
another. There are two levels of reasoning:
It is
"the reasoning of the
intellect"
that concerns us. This
"consists in
the
formation of complex ideas through the association of several simple
ideas"
Reason is not a passive reception of sense data.
It is based on an active comparison of ideas by the human mind.
Rousseau
says that we will not find
"that intelligent force which compares and
judges" in a being that can just sense data
(Rousseau 1762(E) par 4.309).
Reason is an
active process which requires strength of mind. Rousseau seems to think
that women are weak in body and in mind, and that this weakness serves a
purpose.
(¶52)
Whereas a woman has not got the strength of mind to work out basic
principles, she does have a special kind of reason. She has the mental
skills to seduce a man, without granting him so much favour that he stops
doing what she wants him to do.
(¶53)
Women develop their mental skills through guarding their virginity.
(¶54)
Women, it seems, have the mental skills needed to entrap someone. Only men
have the skills required to carry through a coherent line of reasoning. We
can create an image of the difference by imagining a domestic drama in
which a man is contradicting himself. Will his wife entrap or repel him by
pointing out the contradiction? If she thinks of the issue in this way she
will not care about the integrity of her reasoning, only about what secures
the man's good will. Perhaps she will decide that it is best to agree with
him when he says that black is white, and praise him for his insight when
he concludes that black is not white. If constantly involved in this kind
of dialogue she will develop complicated inter-personal skills, but her
powers of coherent reasoning will atrophy. This, according to Rousseau, is
the way that nature intended it. Women need the mental skills to please
men. Men need the mental skills to rule the world. The twist that Rousseau
puts into his argument is that he says that if woman succeed in pleasing
men, they will be able to twist them round their little finger, and so it
will be women who really rule the world.
Women and the devil - now and then
(¶55)
Rousseau is now the devil
himself
for most feminists. In his own time, however, he was an inspiration for
many women. This was because he appeared to restore them to their natural
role. Here is how Madame de Stael expressed her praise:
Wollstonecraft on education
(¶56)
Mary Wollstonecraft was born in London
in 1759. She soon became a major support to her family, earning her money
first as a companion and then setting up school in Newington Green near
Hackney. In 1787 she read Emile, with enthusiasm for its general
principles, but not for its ideas on education for girls. Rousseau's
emphasis on developing the natural potential of children spoke to
Wollstonecraft of her own potential. She was conscious that it was her own
energy and zest for learning that had educated her, and she felt better
educated than many who had spent richer childhoods with a family tutor. But
she could not accept what she saw as Rousseau's total condemnation of
culture. As things are, she says, education tends to deform. But it is the
essence of humanity that education ought to transform. She argued that what
distinguishes human beings from other animals is reason, and that reason is
the power to channel the passions into the paths of virtue. What is wrong
with education is that it teaches people the wrong morality. It is
necessary to teach a higher morality, not to abandon culture altogether.
(¶57)
Wollstonecraft was writing her own books on education. Thoughts on the
Education of Daughters was published in 1787 and Original Stories
for Real Life in 1788. From 1788 to 1793 she worked as a translator for
the bookseller and publisher, Joseph Johnson. Here she was at the centre of
England's radical intelligentsia. Tom Paine,
William Blake, Henry Fuseli,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth,
William Godwin,
Richard Price,
Joseph Priestley, Thomas Holcroft and many more were all linked
in some way
to Johnson's bookshop in St Paul's Churchyard.
Edmund Burke's
Reflections on the Revolution in
France, published in
1790, was an
attack on the kind of thinking that characterised these radicals.
Wollstonecraft was a quick writer. Within months she had written and
published a reply, her A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790/91).
A year later, irritated by French proposals for an unequal education of
boys and girls, she followed this with
A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman
(1792). Shortly
after she left for France, where she wrote an
Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (1794). Her other
works include two novels, Mary and the Wrongs of Women. She
died tragically in 1797 from medical problems connected with the birth of
her second child.
Mistakes are necessary
(¶58)
William Blake did the illustrations for two
of Wollstonecraft's books. In 1796 Blake illustrated the second edition of
Original Stories and one of her translations.
Blake and
Wollstonecraft had many similar ideas. Both thought that creation (God) had
brought into being a world in which evil has a positive purpose. They
argued that for human beings to develop it is necessary that they make
mistakes. Blake said this poetically in a work called The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell where he wrote that
It was a central thought for Wollstonecraft who wrote
Wollstonecraft's theory is a
theological theory in the sense that she constantly relies on God's wisdom
and providence as the evidence for the truth of what she is saying. She
understands our physical existence as a preparation or education for a
spiritual existence after death. But her theory is also based on an effort
to understand the material development of the human world as evolution, so
it can be read with equal benefit by religious and non religious people.
Neither is likely to find it comfortable.
Wollstonecraft on French absolutism
(¶59)
Wollstonecraft writes about the
position of women in society, and Rousseau's view of it, as one aspect of
her total view of hierarchy and power and their effect on the development
of human culture. She believes that power corrupts culture whether it is
exercised by man over man, or man over woman. In other words, she agrees
with Rousseau's general philosophy, but applies it to gender relations as
well. Her argument is aimed right at the centre of the absolutist politics
that Louis 14th developed in France:
Strong and weak reason
(¶60)
Rousseau had argued that men can develop
strong reasoning powers, but women develop the mental skills needed to
capture and hold men to their will. This dichotomy between types of reason
is the point at which Wollstonecraft begins her analysis. She does not,
however, ascribe one type of thought to men and the other to women.
Rousseau was wrong to "give a sex to mind" (Wollstonecraft 1792/Dent p.48),
but not wrong to think that mind has different strengths:
(¶61)
Wollstonecraft argued that wherever human beings are in a power
relationship the patterns of reason that Rousseau identified as female will
develop.
Does "an air of
fashion"
reveal that the person
"has not a strong
individual character"?
Wollstonecraft says it does. But she is speaking of
soldiers, not women.
Does observing the
"ceremonials"
of a subservient role
incline one to laziness and stupidity when off duty? Wollstonecraft says
that this is a characteristic of sailors who
"acquire a fondness for
humour
and mischievous tricks".
Soldiers when off duty are noted for their
"polite
simper"
in the company of women, sailors can be distinguished by their
"horse laugh".
But whatever breed of fashionable bird one observes
"mind is
equally out of the question". The army and the navy turn men
into what
today's comedians call brainless bimbos.
(Wollstonecraft 1792 chapter 1)
(¶62)
She also argues that the perversions of reason will be exhibited by the
ruler and the ruled. That is by kings and their subjects.
Discharging the
duties of a king requires
"
knowledge and strength of mind"
beyond the
ability of human beings to acquire. But instead of nourishing reason in
monarchs, society
stifles
his feelings with
"flattery", and
distracts him
from thinking by surrounding him with pleasure. If the ruler happens to be
strong minded,
he has problems enough; if he is weak minded he will be as rational as a
drunk leaving a pub, for
"all power inebriates weak
men".
Whilst those who
are ruled by irrational authority acquire
"artificial
manners"
and even a
"man of sense"
may only have
"a cast of countenance that
wears off as you trace his individuality". (Wollstonecraft 1792
chapter 1)
Gender and slavery
(¶63)
Wollstonecraft's view of reason and power
(generally) and gender and reason (as a specific example) matches
Rousseau's position with respect to slavery.
Psychoanalysis
(¶64)
The issue about whether one can give a sex to mind
divides modern theorists. Some follow Wollstonecraft's conviction that
reason is common to men and women. These theorists tend to believe that any
mental characteristics that are more frequently found in one sex rather
than another are the result of socialisation. Others believe that men and
women have different reasons. This seems, for example, to be the
consequence of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory. In this it is not
necessarily biology or socialisation that decides whether a person's
thinking will be male or female, but the way one goes through a necessary
childhood drama in relation to one's parents. From this we acquire a female
or a male personality along with their different ways of thinking. The
childhood drama becomes part of our unconscious mind and can only be
discovered by psychoanalysis, by dream analysis or by the analysis of
verbal mistakes that give us a clue to what we are thinking unconsciously.
Nowadays this division of thought is not between feminists and anti-
feminists. There are feminists who develop the psychoanalytic tradition as
well as those who develop Wollstonecraft's.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE REVOLUTION WITH RESPECT TO SLAVERY
AND GENDER
Revolution in the streets
(¶65)
The French revolution as we have discussed
it so far was an affair of parliamentary debate and the construction of an
academic paper on human rights and politics. It did not long remain that
way. On July 14th 1789 an event took place that has remained the symbol of
the revolution and has made July 14th the national holiday of modern
France. The Paris masses stormed the Bastille, a prison in which they
believed arms were being stored to suppress the revolution. A few days
later, on July 17th, the popular uprising spread to the fields of France.
In the countryside people began burning the records on which their lords
based their claims for "feudal" dues. C.L.R. James, a West Indian marxist
historian, does not date the start of the French Revolution from its
parliamentary stage, he says that the revolution started when the Paris
masses stormed the Bastille
(James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.61). Another
historian, Hilaire Belloc, divides the revolution into stages. His first
stage begins with the States General, the second on July 17th with the
peasants and the third stage on October 6th with the women of Paris.
(Belloc, H. 1911)
Women on the streets
(¶66)
Parliament was male, but when the revolution
took to the streets it often did so through women. On October 5th 1789
women marched from Paris to the King's palace at Versailles to complain
about the lack of bread. On the 6th October they marched back to Paris -
bringing the King and Queen with them. From then on the monarchy was
trapped by the people. Why were women so forward in street protest?
Olwen
Hufton and other historians have suggested that it was because
they were
women and because women were the centre of their families. When times got
tough the man might stay away from home or leave altogether. A mother would
almost certainly stay with the children and do everything in her power to
care for them.
(¶67)
What seems to have happened in the French Revolution is that traditional
forms of protest about food prices merged into new, political protests. The
traditional forms of protest were women's protests, and so women were in
the forefront of the new protests. Traditionally there was the idea of a
fair price for food and if the prices went out of reach of ordinary
families a blind eye was turned to riots in which women seized stocks and
sold them at the fair price. If the people who did this were mothers with
children depending on the food, they were rarely prosecuted.
(¶68)
The painful note of hunger ran through the revolution as a sombre undertone
to the high notes of politics. When bread was the issue, the mothers of
France led the protests. But affordable bread was demand that political
theory could not cope with. The revolutionary politicians of the National
Assembly saw free market economics as the progressive economics of the
future. Demands for price fixing sounded to them like an appeal for a
return to the bad old days . The arguments that arose from the streets of
Paris presented to the ears of the National Assembly a strange cacophony of
reactionary and radical. The music of the streets seemed to beckon back
into the past at the same time as it summoned the future.
Political women
(¶69)
As well as the large numbers of women whose bread
riots developed into revolution, there were a small number of women who
applied the principles of the revolution to women. We have already
discussed the English writer, Mary Wollstonecraft. In France, the woman
whose writings seem closest to Wollstonecraft's in this respect, was Olympe
de Gouges. Where Wollstonecraft moved from a Vindication of the Rights
of Man to a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Olympe de Gouges
moved from the Declaration of
the
Rights of Man
to a
Declaration
of the Rights of Woman.
(¶70)
Olympe de Gouges was a young widow who taught
herself to write. She began to write in
1780
and published her memoirs in
1784. She published
her first political pamphlet in
November 1788
and
numerous political writings followed. Her vivid imagination overcame the
disadvantages of her bad spelling and poor punctuation and her meaning
forced its way through her unorthodox prose. An enthusiastic writer of
plays, she was also a champion of freedom for slaves. In
December
1789
her
play on
The Slavery of Black People was performed in a Paris
theatre
(the Maison de Moliere), but the audience hissed it and it had to be
taken off after three performances
She believed passionately that the philosophy of natural freedom,
that inspired the
Declaration of
the Rights of Man,
should apply
equally to every human being. Her writings combine the image of family
embracing the whole of humanity with that of a social contract establishing
the law of reason for the whole of humanity. It was natural, therefore, for
her pamphlet on the rights of women to embrace the family, the nation as a
family, and human beings of all colours as one family. In relation to
slavery, she wrote
(¶71)
Like Rousseau, Olympe de Gouges was very aware of the link that people have
to biological nature through sex, child bearing and child-rearing. Unlike
Rousseau, however, she wanted the law to make both parents responsible for
their children. She wanted a "Social Contract Between Man and Woman". This
legally binding contract would say
In
other words, children conceived as a result of sex that either partner
engaged in with any person would have rights within the family, and a claim
on its common wealth.
Olympe de Gauges was officially the daughter of a
butcher. She believed, however, that she was biologically the illegitimate
daughter of a minor noble and man of letters. This consciousness of mixed
parentage made her particularly sensitive to the problems of people of
mixed parentage in the West Indies. Most of these were the descendants of a
white male slave owner and a black woman slave. They were called mulattos,
from the Spanish for a young mule, and it was their problems that received
the greatest publicity in Paris during the early years of the revolution.
The place of the mountains
(¶72)
In 1789 a large part of the wealth of
France came from the sugar plantations of French St Domingo in the West
Indies. This is the part of the island that is now Haiti. The other part of
the island was then Spanish St Domingo, and is now the Dominican Republic.
For simplicity's sake I will refer to French San Domingo as Haiti from now
on. Haiti is the original Indian name for the island. It means the place of
the mountains, and it was adopted as the name for the ex-French colony when
it declared independence in January 1804. Haiti was the first black-led
country to establish itself by breaking away from European colonial rule.
The children of black and white sex
(¶73)
At the time of the French
Revolution, society in Haiti was a pyramid of fear. The top of the pyramid
was rich white people, beneath them were poor white people and rich and
poor people of mixed race, beneath them were the black slaves. It was a
delicate structure in that the controls keeping people of mixed race in
their place could not be undermined without undermining the authority which
kept the black slaves in their place. And if the black slaves did not stay
in their place the people of France would have no sugar, merchants of
France would lose profits, and the government of France would lose taxes.
(¶74)
Nine out of ten people in Haiti in 1789 were slaves. Most of the slaves
were black, some were of mixed race. Of the remaining tenth, the free
people, roughly half were white and half were of mixed race, but there were
some free people who were black. Those white people who were rich tended to
have more tenuous links to Haiti than any other group. The planters who
owned the sugar cane plantations often returned to France on visits or to
retire, whilst government officials held their posts for a limited time.
(Logan, R.W. 1963 pp 17, 19, 21). The people of mixed race, the mulattos,
were largely the offspring of sexual relations between a white man and a
black woman. The degree of their blackness varied considerably, and Haiti
society had terms for a large number of variations. The smallest drop of
African blood made one a mulatto, and set one apart from white society.
Some mulattoes were very rich and owned many slaves. Mulattoes were said to
own a third of the land and the slaves in Haiti at the time of the
revolution. But however rich a mulatto was, he or she was treated as a
lower class of being to a white person. The numerous rules of conduct that
rubbed in this inferiority sustained the hierarchy of fear that maintained
the slavery of the majority black population. When black slaves belonging
to mulatto owners served at table, they would see that white visitors did
not eat at the same table as their mulatto hosts, however rich. If the
presence of a small amount of African blood could demean their masters so,
how much lower in the hierarchy of creation were they whose skins were
really black?
Mulattos claim rights
(¶75)
The first struggle over skin colour that
impressed itself on the minds of the people of France was not a struggle
between black slaves and their owners, but the struggle of the free
mulattos to be treated as the equals of whites. Black slaves were out of
sight in the West Indies, the free people of colour sent representatives to
Paris, in fact, some already lived there. On
October 22nd
1789, two
weeks
after the Paris women brought the king from Versailles, free people of
mixed race from Haiti came to the French Assembly to ask it to recognise
their rights as men. The leader of the delegation was Julien Raimond, a
distinguished Parisian lawyer of mixed race. Another member was Vincent
Oge, who led an insurrection on the island after the claims of the people
of mixed race were eventually rejected. The month after the mulatto
delegation was heard, a widespread persecution of people of mixed race
began in Haiti.
(James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.60, pp 64 following and 73
following)
(¶76)
In
May
1791,
during debates on a proposed Constitution for the French
colonies, the Assembly heard evidence from people of mixed race about the
evils of race prejudice in Haiti. Although there was growing support in
France for the claims for equality of mixed race people, there was also
much opposition to this from those who argued that, however unjust, the
discrimination against mixed race people was necessary to retain social
stability in the colonies. As one deputy put it later
(¶77)
In Haiti, the white population considered that France had betrayed them by
supporting the equality of free people of colour, and there was talk of
seeking an alliance with England. Before long, however, a far greater
challenge faced the white population of Haiti.
Flight to Varennes and Massacre of Champ de Mars:
(¶78)
On June 21st 1791
King Louis 16 attempted to escape from France. He was stopped at Varennes
and brought back to Paris. France divided into republicans and monarchists.
The monarchists, perhaps, believing the official line that the king had
been abducted, against his will, by the enemies of the revolution (Rude,
G. 1988 p.75). The streets of Paris were not convinced. The king's flight
led to popular protests calling for a new head to the executive. On July
16th a meeting in Paris calling, in effect, for the king's abdication, was
dispersed by the National Guard. About 60 petitioners were killed and 200
arrested. In the French Assembly the immediate result of this was to
strengthen the hand of those members who supported the king, and these
tended to be members who supported the status quo in the colonies.
(James,
C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.79, Rude, G. 1959 Chapter 6)
Revolution of the slaves
(¶79)
On
August 22nd
1791
there was an uprising
of the slaves in Haiti. For three weeks a negro uprising, burning the sugar
cane, killing all whites except priests and surgeons, and raping the white
women
(James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 pp 87-88). Toussaint L'Ouverture, a
slave
who had managed all the livestock on his master's estate, joined the negro
insurgents one month after the revolt had begun. He helped to give the
insurrection political and military direction.
(James, C.L.R. 1938/1980;
Stoddard, T.L. 1914; Tyson, G.F. 1973)
Mulattoes lose rights
(¶80)
On
24th
September
the decree of 15.5.1791,
which gave a vote to some people of colour, was rescinded by the
Constituent Assembly. The opponents of votes for mulattoes agreed that it
was unjust to deprive free people of colour of a vote, but argued that the
balance of power in the colonies was so delicate that any disturbance of it
would lead to a breakdown of order. They were too late. When the news of
the rescindment reach Haiti it fuelled the fire. In one province the
mulattoes aroused their slaves to insurrection against the whites. In
another the whites armed their slaves against the mulattoes (Davis, D.B.
1975 p.144).
Votes for men and a declaration of rights for women
(¶81)
In September
1791 the new Constitution was adopted. This gave a vote to men with a
minimum of income or property. Under it about 60% of French men had the
vote. Whilst the constitution was being debated,
Olympe de Gouges
was
writing her Declaration of the Rights of Woman. She was printing it
when the King was persuaded to accept the new Constitution, and she added a
paragraph to express her delight at this
[See extracts].
Olympe de Gouges
remained a constitutional monarchist for the rest of her life. In fact she
was executed two years later because of her monarchism.
(¶82)
These are some short extracts from Declaration of the Rights of
Woman:
Brissot
(¶83)
The new Legislative Assembly, elected under the Constitution
of 1791, first met in October 1791. One of the new members, Brissot, was
very influential in calling for an armed crusade against the kings of
Europe. Brissot was also a member of the Friends of the Negro, and a
strong supporter of equal rights for the free people of colour in the
colonies.
Toussaint L'Ouverture resolves to fight for all.
(¶84)
In November 1791
Commissioners from France arrived in Haiti to try to restore order. At
first the slave leaders, including Toussaint L'Ouverture, tried to bargain
their freedom for the re-enslavement of their followers. In December the
white colonial government refused the bargain and Toussaint L'Ouverture
resolved to fight for complete liberty for all, to be achieved by their own
strength.
(James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 pp 103-107)
The Brissotins wage war and grant rights
(¶85)
In March 1792 Brissot and
his friends, often called the Girondins, were called on to form a new
French ministry. Within days the Legislative Assembly, by a large majority,
had passed a decree giving full political rights to all men of colour in
the colonies, except slaves, and this became law on April 4th
(James,
C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.115). On April 20th France declared war on
Austria and
this led to war with Prussia as well.
The king imprisoned and most men get a vote
(¶86)
Once France was at war,
the influence of street demonstrations on government became more powerful
because of popular fear of traitors within the country. On August 10th 1792
the Paris masses stormed the Tuileries and imprisoned the royal family. As
a result of this people power, the Legislative Assembly was replaced (the
following September) by a Convention that was elected by (almost) universal
male suffrage. Every adult man apart from workers living in furnished rooms
and domestic servants had a vote. In early September 1792 the election of
the Convention, by almost universal male suffrage, took place at the same
time as the defeat of the French army at Verdun and at the same time that
crowds massacred over 1,000 prisoners in Paris. The new Convention, on
22.9.1792, abolished the monarchy and established a republic.
The move towards a more popular democracy had consequences both for French
feminists and for West Indian slaves. For slaves it was to mean their
liberation, for feminists, division and defeat.
Haiti whites split
(¶87)
Three commissioners from France arrived in Haiti
in mid September to enforce the decree of April 4th granting free men of
colour a vote. Early in October news of the imprisonment of the king
reached Haiti and the French fell out over it. The commissioners were loyal
to the republic, whilst the Colonial Assembly was loyal to the king. The
Commissioners dissolved the Colonial Assembly and assumed full control over
the colony. Haiti was becoming increasingly split by internal war and,
secretly, the British government began to consider taking it over.
1793: King executed
(¶88)
On January 21st 1793 Louis Capet, the ex-
king, was executed. For the Republic there was now no turning back.
The Street Theatre of Fear and Hunger
(¶89)
One of the ways that the
revolution became more popular, or closer to the people, was through the
multiplication of clubs for discussion and the participation (lawful or
otherwise) of the ordinary people in the activities of parliament, local
councils and the courts. In 1793 the activities of the revolutionary people
in clubs, on the streets, in revolutionary courts and before the local and
national parliaments became a leading feature of political development.
Paris became the stage for a daily political street theatre in which anyone
could participate. During 1793, Paris was faced by an acute shortage of
food brought on by the war and inflation. People called Les Enrages emerged
as leaders of the common people (the sans-culottes). Les Enrages, who
included a feminist actress Claire Lacombe, wanted the government to bring
in strict economic controls and to execute anyone profiteering from the
food shortages. Claire Lacombe, Pauline Leon and other women formed an all
women Republican Club which took aggressive action to promote the Enrage's
aims. Their aggressive action was often directed against other women. The
political action of women, arising out of the food crisis, was something
the authorities feared. In February, because of this fear, the Jacobin Club
refused the use of its meeting hall to women who wanted to discuss measures
against food hoarding and scarcity. The Jacobins were worried that a
massive women's protest could lead to "disorder in Paris". (Levy, D. 1979
p.144)
Revolutionary Government
(¶90)
On March 3rd 1793 a Revolutionary Tribunal
was set up to try people accused of counter-revolution, including offenses
against the unity and indivisibility of the Republic and plots tending to
re-establish the Monarchy. The war was going badly for France. During March
the French army was defeated in Belgium and its leader, General Dumouriez,
began a plan of his own to march on Paris and restore the Constitutional
monarchy under the Constitution of 1789. His army would not march, and in
early April General Dumouriez deserted to the Austrians. On April 6th a
Committee of Public Safety was formed to oversee the government of France.
The Convention elected it for a month at a time.
(¶91)
On 2 May a deputation of 10,000 people went to the Convention to demand
price control; women from Versailles rioted in the Convention and refused
to leave the building. Reluctantly the Convention voted the first law of
the Maximum which controlled the price of bread and flour throughout the
country (Rude, G. 1959 p.119). Popular societies had to be registered with
the municipal authorises. On May 5th The Society of Revolutionary
Republican Women was registered with the Commune of Paris.
Brissotins purged
(¶92)
Between May 31st 1793 and June 6th Brissot's party
(known as the Girondins) in the Convention was pushed out of power by the
party of Robespierre (known as the Jacobins). This was the result of a
planned insurrection coordinated by the Sections, the National Guard, the
Jacobin organisation, the popular societies and the Enrages. The Society of
Revolutionary Republican Women played prominent roles in these events. They
stood guard at the doors of the Convention, refusing to admit Girondins and
pursuing any who fled. (Levy, D. 1979 p.143)
One and undivided
(¶93)
The new Constitution of 1793 was voted in on June
24th: although it remained a paper constitution, and was never put into
practice. It provided for a popular democracy, with plebiscites for every
law. The separation of powers, which had been a feature of the Locke's idea
of political freedom, was replaced with the idea that the will of the
people, expressed through the constitution, was one and indivisible.
From Charlotte Corday to the Terror
(¶94)
During the spring of 1793, Jean
Paul Marat become the hero of the poorer people of Paris (Rude, G.1959
p.119). His newspaper promoted their cause with vehemence. In February,
when there were riots throughout Paris over the price of goods in grocer's
shops, Marat's paper recommended the rioters to hang a number of grocers by
the neck over their own doorsteps (Rude, G.1959 p.118). Such instant
execution were spoken of as "speedy revolutionary justice".
In June, Marat
had provided the rioters with the names of the Girondin deputies who were
to be purged. On 13th July 1793 Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday,
a young woman from Caen who had come to Paris to avenge the defeat of the
Girondins. She was guillotined, and the body of Marat was given a state
funeral. Marat's assassination was followed by the arrest of a large number
of "moderates", including that of Olympe de Gouges on 26th July.
(¶95)
Four weeks after Marat's funeral the Revolutionary Republican Women staged
their own procession to honour his memory (Kelly, L.1987 p.102). By
September 1793, several hundred members were meeting in their club. Levy
says that the Society had now reached the apex of its strength. In the
atmosphere of suspicion that ruled in Paris, the society promoted fear of
others and, at the same time, was suspected of harbouring traitors. On
September 16th a meeting of the Jacobin Club called on the Revolutionary
Women to rid themselves by a purifying vote of the suspect women who
control the Society, and an amendment was put that Citoyenne Lacombe should
be taken immediately before the Committee of General Security (Levy, D.
1979 p.146). The passage by the Convention, on the following day, of the
Law against suspected persons marks the legal start of what history
knows as The Terror. Part of the definition of a suspect was anyone
who has shown himself as a partisan of tyranny or federation; anyone who
cannot prove that he has performed his civic duties. Any such suspect could
be sent before the revolutionary tribunal (Lowes Dickinson, G. 1927 p.32).
Between October 1st 1793 and June 6th 1794, 1,165 people were condemned by
the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris and guillotined: An average of 32 a
week. Marie-Antoinette, the ex-Queen, appeared before the court on October
14th, she was guillotined on the 16th.
Symbols of patriotism
(¶96)
Conflict between women in Paris broke out on
the morning of October 28th 1793. Several women were in the market and
elsewhere wearing tight trousers and a red cap of liberty. It was said that
they wanted to force other women to wear the same costume. The women in red
caps provoked a larger counter-demonstration. Nearly six thousand women
gathered. All...in agreement that violence and threats would not make them
dress in a costume they respected but which they believed was intended for
men (Amar report: Levy, D. 1979 pp 213-214). The Convention on September
21st had passed a decree that all women should wear a ribbon with the three
colours of the revolution. Any who did not could be imprisoned for eight
days and then, on a second offence, taken before the Revolutionary Tribunal
as a suspect. The conflict, therefore, was over the symbols of loyalty that
women were to wear. In addition to the tricolour, the Revolutionary
Republican Women wore the red cap of liberty and trousers as symbols of
their loyalty to the Revolution. The majority of women saw this as cross
dressing. They were not going to appear in men's clothes! It is not clear
from the reports to what extent the conflicts were provoked by antagonism
from the majority to the cross-dressing of the minority, or by efforts by
the Republican Women to persuade other women to wear red caps. However,
some calm was restored and the mobs dispersed. That evening, however, the
same disturbance broke out with greater violence. A brawl started. Several
self-proclaimed Revolutionary Women were roughed up. Some members of the
crowd indulged themselves in acts of violence towards them which decency
ought to have proscribed. (Amar report: Levy, D. 1979 pp 213-214).
What is a woman?
(¶97)
Interesting though these conflicts are, the
significance of the events lies even more in the response of the
authorities. There was a general discussion of the role of women in society
and official decisions about what that role should be. The French
Parliament decided what a women should be.
(¶98)
On October 29th the National Convention discussed the participation of
women in politics and, in particular, the Society of Revolutionary
Republican Women. The Jacobin deputy Fabre d'Eglantine insisted that these
clubs are not composed of mothers of families, daughters of families,
sisters occupied with their younger brothers or sisters, but rather of
adventuresses, knights-errant, emancipated women, female grenadiers
(Hunt L. 1992 p.119)
Defeat for feminism
(¶99)
That night the Committee of General
Security, chaired by Jean-Baptiste Amar, spent the night receiving
deputations, listening to various reports which were made to it, and taking
measures to maintain public order. Amar must have been very tired when he
presented to the Convention, the next day (30th October), a report that not
only said what had happened, but elaborated, at length, the role that women
should play in society and made recommendations. Here is part of what it
said:
The deputies did not. They outlawed women's clubs. (Hunt L. 1992 p.119)
Death of Olympe de Gouges
(¶100)
On November 3rd 1793 Olympe de Gouges was
guillotined. As she mounted the steps she called out to the generations to
come:
1794: Victory for the slaves
(¶101)
C.L.R. James argues that with each
radicalisation of the revolution in France, opposition to slavery grew
stronger. He quotes a letter from Paris to San Domingo on August 11th 1794
which said that
(¶102)
On February 4th 1794 slavery was abolished in the French colonies. A deputy
called Levasseur said
(¶103)
The extent to which the freedom of slaves had become part of the drama of
the revolution in Paris is illustrated by its celebration, a few weeks
later, in the Temple of Reason (Notre Dame). The attorney general of Paris,
Anaxagoras Chaumette, embraced coloured citizens; someone raised a black
child high in the air as the drums rolled and the soldiers marched.
(¶104)
Early in May 1794 news of the abolition of slavery by France reached
Toussaint in Haiti and on May 6th he and his army deserted the Spanish to
join the French. In 1797 Toussaint L'Ouverture was made Commander in Chief
of the Island by the French Convention. He drove out British and Spaniards
and restored order and prosperity. Under Napoleon, however, his fortunes
changed. In 1802 he was arrested and taken to France, where he died in
prison in 1803. Napoleon's victory was temporary, however. When news
reached Haiti that the French were restoring slavery and the
discriminations against free people of colour, it precipitated a new
rebellion. In the Autumn of 1803 the French were forced to evacuate Haiti
by black led armies and on January 1st 1804 the first ever black republic
established: called Haiti as it had been before European conquest.
(¶105)
The theoretical issues that appeared to have taken over the world in 1789
are living issues today, so this is a essay without an end, and I must
leave you to continue writing it. The French revolution did not end with
the victory of the Haitian slaves, any more than it ended with the defeat
of feminism, or with the dictatorship of Napoleon 1st.
"The representatives of the French
people, sitting in the National Assembly considering that ignorance (etc)
of...the rights of man are the sole causes of public misfortune and the
corruption of governments...set out in a solemn declaration the
natural...and sacred rights of man, this declaration, constantly before all
members of the civic body, will constantly remind them of their rights and
duties, in order that acts of legislative and executive power can be
frequently compared with the purpose of every political institution. 1.
Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can
only be founded on communal utility."
"Have not the best minds denied the very utility of colonies? And even
admitting their utility, is that any reason for a right to representation?
These people wish a representation in proportion to the number of
inhabitants. But have the negroes or the free people of colour taken part
in the elections? The free coloured are landowners and taxpayers, -
nevertheless they have had no vote. And as for the slaves, either they are,
or they are not, men. If they be men, let the colonists free them and make
them voters and eligible as deputies; if they be not men, - have we, in
apportioning deputies according to the population of France, taken into
consideration the number of our horses and mules?" (Stoddard, T.L. 1914 pp
78-79;
James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.60)
"The passage from
the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in
man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his
actions the morality they had formerly lacked." "The voice of duty takes
the
place of physical impulses and...man...is forced...to consult his reason
before listening to his inclinations"
(Rousseau 1762(SC) pp 195-196).
"when any number of men have, by the
consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made
that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only
by the will and determination of the majority".
(Locke 1869 2nd
Treatise paragraph 96)
"The law of majority voting is
itself something established by convention, and presupposes unanimity on
one occasion at least."
(Rousseau 1762(SC) p.190)
Locke has acknowledged this
in the first phrase in italics above: by the consent of every
individual. It is this unanimous agreement that we need to look at
according to Rousseau. It is this that makes the minority feel that they
are bound by the majority decision and willing to follow it. There is a
sense in which we feel the general will as our own even if we voted (or
would have voted) for something different. We identify with the society
that is making the decision. So Rousseau perceives us as having within us
two wills: our own individual will and a general will that is our concern
for the interest of society.
"The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very
remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his
conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked.
Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and
right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find
that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason
before listening to his inclinations. Although, in this state, he deprives
himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return
others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas
so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted,
that, did not abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that
which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment
which took him from it for ever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative
animal, made him an intelligent being and a man."
(Rousseau 1762(SC) pp 195-196).
"the human race alone has the right to decide, for its only passion is for
the greatest possible well-being of all men. It is to the general will that
the individual must address himself to know how far he must be a man, a
citizen, a subject, a father and a child, and when it is fitting for him to
live and when to die."
(Rousseau 1759 p.174)
"the general will is, in each individual, a pure act of the understanding
which reasons, when the passions are silent, about what a man can ask of
his fellows and what his fellows have a right to ask of him."
(Rousseau 1759 p.174)
"When a monkey goes from one nut to another, are we to conceive that he
entertains any general idea of that kind of fruit, and compares its
archetype with the two individual nuts? Assuredly he does not; but the
sight of one of these nuts recalls to his memory the sensations which he
received from the other, and his eyes, being modified after a certain
manner, give information to the palate of the modification it is about to
receive."
(Rousseau
1755(I)) par.1.29)
"Every object at first
received a particular name without regard to genus or species, which these
primitive originators were not in a position to distinguish; every
individual presented itself to their minds in isolation, as they are in the
picture of nature. If one oak was called A, another was called B; for the
primitive idea of two things is that they are not the same, and it often
takes a long time for what they had in common to be seen; so that, the
narrower the limits of their knowledge of things, the more copious their
dictionary must have been"
(Rousseau
1755(I)) par.1.28)
"Every general idea is purely intellectual; if the
imagination meddles with it ever so little, the idea immediately becomes
particular. If you endeavour to trace in your mind the image of a tree in
general, you never attain to your end. In spite of all you can do, you will
have to see it as great or little, bare or leafy, light or dark, and were
you capable of seeing nothing in it but what is common to all trees, it
would no longer be like a tree at all."
(Rousseau
1755(I)) par.1.29)
"We can here see a little better how the use of speech became established,
and insensibly improved in each family, and we may form a conjecture also
concerning the manner in which various causes may have extended and
accelerated the progress of language, by making it more and more
necessary....It is readily seen that among men thus collected and compelled
to live together, a common idiom must have arisen much more easily than
among those who still wandered through the forests of the continent."
(Rousseau
1755(I)) par.2.14)
"They accustomed themselves to assemble before their huts
round
a large
tree; singing and dancing, the true offspring of love and leisure, became
the amusement, or rather the occupation, of men and women thus assembled
together with nothing else to do. Each one began to consider the rest, and
to wish to be considered in turn; and thus a value came to be attached to
public esteem."
(Rousseau
1755(I)) par.2.16)
"his faculties
are...stimulated and developed, his ideas...extended, his
feelings...ennobled, and his whole soul...uplifted... instead of a stupid
and unimaginative animal [he becomes] an intelligent being and a man
Society enriches us. Or it would do if "abuses of this new condition" did
not often degrade us below the condition we left."
(Rousseau 1762(SC) pp 195-196)
I will look briefly now to the source of this corruption that
Rousseau saw eating away at the root of society, and to his remedy for it
"the most general will is always the most just also,
and...the voice of the people is in fact the voice of God"
(Rousseau
1755(PE))
p.133).
"The first and most important rule of legitimate or popular
government, that is to say, of government whose object is the good of the
people, is...to follow in everything the general will. But to follow this
will it is necessary to know it, and above all to distinguish it from the
particular will."
(Rousseau
1755(PE)) p.135)
"one of them deeply interesting us in our own welfare and preservation, and
the
other exciting a natural repugnance at seeing any other sensible being, and
particularly any of our own species, suffer pain or death."
(Rousseau
1755(I)) Preface, p.47).
"Dominion acquired by conquest, or victory in war,
is that which some writers call despotical... And this dominion is then
acquired to the victor when the vanquished, to avoid the present stroke of
death, covenanteth, either in express words or by other sufficient signs of
the will, that so long as his life and the liberty of his body is allowed
him, the victor shall have the use thereof at his pleasure. And after such
covenant made, the vanquished is a servant, and not before: for by the word
servant...is not meant a captive, which is kept in prison, or bonds...,
such men, commonly called slaves, have no obligation at all...but one that,
being taken, hath corporal liberty allowed him; and upon promise not to run
away, nor to do violence to his master, is trusted by him." (Hobbes 1651
Chapter 20, Margin: Despotical Dominion how attained).
"For that which can foresee by the exercise of mind is by nature intended
to be lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such
foresight is a subject, and by nature a slave."
(Aristotle/Politics.
Against this Rousseau argues that Aristotle had taken the "effect
for the cause". It is not that some people are by nature slaves, but that
being born a slave makes one feel and act like a slave.
"Slaves lose
everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them."
(Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 2)
"Common liberty results from the
nature of man. His first law is to provide for his own preservation, his
first cares are those which he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches
years of discretion, he is the sole judge of the proper means of preserving
himself, and consequently becomes his own master." .
(Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 2)
"To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man,
to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties....Such a
renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from
his will is to remove all morality from his acts."
.
(Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter
4)
"Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow", Rousseau
says,
"and force creates no right, we
must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority
among men."
That is to say, the legitimate basis of a society is the
agreement of its members.
Grotius, however,
"denies that all human power is
established in favour of the governed, and quotes slavery as an example."
(Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 2)
He and Hobbes argue that the
"so-called right of slavery" can arise through war.
"The victor having, as
they hold, the right of killing the vanquished, the latter can buy back his
life at the price of his liberty."
(Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 4)
Against these arguments, Rousseau argues that
"Force is a physical power", and cannot have a "moral effect". "Force does
not create right, and.. we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers."
(Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 3)
From these two
premises one might have concluded that everyone who is a human being plays
an equal part in political society (at least once they are adults).
However, Rousseau makes a distinction between men and women. He has a
theory of gender that gives men and women different roles in society and
excludes women from active political life. Let us try to see if we can
understand this apparent contradiction.
"Man: is no longer an isolated
creature...All his relations with his species, all the affections of his
heart, come into being along with this. His first passion soon arouses the
rest."
(Rousseau 1762(E) p.175).
Sexuality makes humans social. Before
puberty children relate best to things, that is to nature outside them; but
at puberty nature within them leads them to couple: and this sexual union
arouses the passions that are the basis of society and politics. Sexual
desire leads to families, family affection makes the state possible:
"Will
the bonds of convention hold firm without some foundation in nature? Can
devotion to the state exist apart from love of those near and dear to us?
Can patriotism thrive except in the soil of that miniature fatherland, the
home? Is it not the good son, the good husband, the good father, who makes
the good citizen?"
(Rousseau
1762(E) par 5.25).
"The consequences of sex are wholly
unlike for man and woman. The male is only a male now and again, the female
is always a female...everything reminds her of her sex; the performance of
her functions requires a special constitution. She needs care during
pregnancy and freedom from work when her child is born; she must have a
quiet, easy life while she nurses her children; their education calls for
patience and gentleness, for a zeal and love which nothing can dismay; she
forms a bond between father and child, she alone can win the father's love
for the children and convince him that they are indeed his own. What loving
care is required to preserve a united family!" (Rousseau
1762(E)
par 5.19).
"The search for abstract and speculative
truths, for principles and axioms in science, for all that tends to wide
generalisation, is beyond a woman's grasp; their studies should be
practical. It is their business to apply the principles discovered by men,
it is their place to make the observations which lead men to discover those
principles."
(Rousseau
1762(E) par 5.109)
"If ever you substitute authority for reason he
will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's
thoughts."
(Rousseau
1762(E) par 3.14).
Girls and women, however, are to be
taught by authority. It is desirable that a woman should be the plaything
of another person's thoughts - either those of her husband or her father.
"ruled by authority. The daughter should follow her
mother's religion, the wife her husband's. Were that religion false, the
docility which leads mother and daughter to submit to nature's laws would
blot out the sin of error in the sight of God. Unable to judge for
themselves they should accept the judgement of father and husband as that
of the church"
(Rousseau 1762(E) par 5.76)
"the reasoning of the
child"
just
forms simple ideas through the associated experience of several sensations.
"A woman's reason is practical, and therefore she soon arrives at
given conclusion, but she fails to discover it for herself....If women
could discover principles and if men had as good heads for detail, they
would be mutually independent, they would live in perpetual strife and
there would be an end to all society. But in their mutual harmony each
contributes to the common purpose"
(Rousseau 1762(E)
par 5.75)
"Woman, weak as she is and limited in her
range of observations, perceives and judges the forces at her disposal to
supplement her weakness and those forces are the passions of man....She has
many levers which may set the human heart in motion. She must find a way to
make us desire what she cannot achieve unaided."
(Rousseau
1762(E) par 5.109).
"A woman's judgement develops sooner than a man's; being on the defensive
from
her childhood up, and intrusted with a treasure so hard to keep, she is
earlier acquainted with good and evil."
(Rousseau 1762(E) p.360)"
And when she
is a wife, a woman obtains more hold over her husband by withholding sex
than by indulging in it. The abilities she should develop, to control her
man, are virtue, wisdom and charm. A woman,
"who can only attract her lovers
by coquetry and retain them by her favours, wins a servile obedience in
common things; in...important matters she has no influence.... But the
woman who is both virtuous and wise, and charming, she who,...combines love
and esteem, can send them at her bidding to the end of the world, to war,
to glory, and to death..."
(Rousseau 1762(E) par 5.123)
"Rousseau has
endeavoured to prevent women from interfering in public affairs.... If he
wished to deprive them of some rights foreign to their sex, how has he for
ever restored to them all those to which it has a claim!...In aiding them
to descend from a usurped throne, he has firmly seated them upon that to
which they were destined by nature; and though...full of indignation...when
they endeavour to resemble men, when they come before him with all the
charms, weaknesses, virtues, and errors of
their sex, his respect for their persons amounts almost to adoration."
This
quotation is given by Mary Wollstonecraft (Wollstonecraft 1792 p.113), a
woman who disagreed with it profoundly. It is to her arguments for and
against Rousseau that we will now turn.
"The road of excess leads to the
palace of wisdom".
"
When that wise Being who created us and placed us here, saw the fair idea,
he willed, by allowing it to be so, that the passions should unfold our
reason, because He could see that present evil would produce future good
" (Wollstonecraft 1792 par. 1.14)
"Louis 14, in particular, spread
factitious [artificial] manners, and caught, in a specious way [attractive
on the surface], the whole nation in his toils; for establishing an artful
chain of despotism, he made it the interest of the people at large
individually to respect his station, and support his power. And women, whom
he flattered by a puerile [childish] attention to the whole sex, obtained
in his reign that prince-like distinction so fatal to reason and virtue. A
king is always a king, and a woman always a woman. His authority and her
sex ever stand between them and rational converse."
(Wollstonecraft 1792/Dent p.62)
Wollstonecraft is referring to the court manners and customs
developed by the absolutist monarch Louis 14 as a distraction from the
reality of his despotic rule. This culture of polite society, she argues,
undermines reason, and is contrary to nature (artful as distinct from
artless). She adopts this analysis of high society manners from Rousseau,
but she applies it to the power relations between men and women that
Rousseau argues are natural. In politics and in gender relations, she says,
artificial manners undermine reason and virtue. Flirtatious behaviour is
appropriate to the interaction between lovers. In that context it is
natural for us to use our skills to excite one another. The use of such
skills for conquests in other areas is unnatural:
"With a lover, I grant,
she should be so, and her sensibility will naturally lead her to endeavour
to excite emotion, not to gratify her vanity, but her heart. This I do not
allow to be coquetry; it is the artless impulse of nature. I only exclaim
against the sexual desire of conquest when the heart is out of the
question." (Wollstonecraft 1792/Dent p.62)
"The mind must be
strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual
cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it
by halves." (Wollstonecraft 1792 par.1.17)
Whereas the
common man, whose mind has been governed by authority, is so
"steeped"
in
it that his own
"faint spirit"
is too weak to be distinguished. (Wollstonecraft 1792 par.1,27)
"Aristotle...said that men are
by no means equal naturally, but that some are born to slavery, and others
for dominion."
Against this Rousseau argues that
"Slaves lose everything in
their chains, even the desire of escaping from them"
.
(Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter
2)
"A divine hand seems to spread liberty abroad throughout
the realms of man; only the law has the right to curb this liberty if it
degenerates into license, but it must be equal for all."
The National
Assembly must, she argued, count slaves as men who (according to its own
Declaration of the Rights of
Man)
were free by nature, and should be
set free by law.
"Liberty"
she said
"must hold the National Assembly to its
decree".
"We intend and wish to make our wealth
communal, mutually recognising that our property belongs directly to our
children, from whatever bed they come."
"This regime is
absurd, but it is established and one cannot handle it roughly without
unloosing the greatest disorder." (Barnave 23.9.1791 quoted
James, C.L.R.
1938/1980 p.80).
On
May
15th
the Assembly accepted a compromise. It
resolved that every mulatto whose parents were both free should have a
vote. There were about 400 of these. In explanatory notes the assembly
condemned slavery in principle but said that the
Declaration of the Rights of
Man
could not be extended to slaves without producing the
greatest evils. (Davis, D.B. 1975 p.144,
James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.78)
"The mothers, daughters, sisters,
representatives of the nation, ask to constitute a National Assembly.
Considering that ignorance,
forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of women are the sole causes of
public miseries, and of corruption of governments...".
"1 Woman is born free
and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions can be based only
on common utility.".
"2 The aim of every political
association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights
of man and woman...".
"3 The source of all sovereignty
resides essentially in the Nation, which is
nothing but the joining together of Man and Woman...".
"17 Ownership of
property is for both sexes, mutually and separately; it is for each a
sacred and inviolable right...".
"Postscript : Women, wake up!
The
alarm
bell of reason is making itself heard throughout the universe; recognize
your rights...O women! women, when will you stop being blind? What
advantages have you received from the revolution?"
.
"The private functions to which women are destined by nature itself are
related to the general order of society; this social order results from the
difference between man and woman. Each sex is called to the kind of
occupation which is proper for it...Man is strong, robust, born with great
energy, audacity and courage...In general, women are not capable of
elevated thoughts and serious meditations, and if, among ancient peoples,
their natural timidity and modesty did not allow them to appear outside
their families, then in the French Republic do you want them to be seen
coming to the bar, to the tribune, and to political assemblies as men do?"
"children of the fatherland, you will avenge my death."
She had often
written that the victory of her ideas would be the work of distant
posterity, and she died with the same conviction on her lips. The crowds
watching then, saw a monarchist who they thought had betrayed the republic.
They waved their hats in the air and shouted "Vive la Republique", as her
head was sliced from her body. (Levy, D. 1979 p.259)
"One spirit alone reigns here, it is horror of slavery and
enthusiasm for liberty. It is a frenzy which wins all heads and grows every
day".
On February 3rd 1794 three deputies from Haiti, a negro (Bellay), a
mulatto (Mills) and a white (Dufay), were admitted as members of the French
Parliament (the Convention). Bellay delivered a speech against the Counter-
Revolutionary nature of the white colonists, and ended by
"imploring the
Convention to vouchsafe to the colonies full enjoyment of the blessings of
liberty and equality."
"I demand that the Convention, yielding, not to a
moment of enthusiasm, but to the principles of justice, and faithful to the
Declaration of the Rights of
Man,
decree that from this moment
slavery is abolished throughout the territory of the Republic. San Domingo
is part of this territory; - nevertheless, there are still slaves.
"
Another
deputy, Lacroix, said
"When we drew up the Constitution of the French
people we did not direct our gaze upon the unhappy negroes. Posterity will
severely censure us for that fact. Let us now repair this fault. Let us
proclaim the liberty of the negroes...President, do not suffer the
Convention to dishonour itself by a discussion."
The Assembly rose by
acclamation and its President pronounced the abolition of slavery amid
great applause. After some discussion of the wording of the intended
decree, Lacroix got the following resolution carried:
"The National
Convention declares slavery abolished in all the colonies. In consequence
it decrees that all men, without distinction of colour, domiciled in the
said colonies, are French citizens and enjoy all the rights assured under
the Constitution."
(James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.141)
"With
tears in their eyes the people lifted the arms of the coloured citizens and
shouted Vive la Republique! Vive la France!" (Davis, D.B. 1975 p.148)
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Index:
authority: pars 44, 49, 50, 51, 59, 60, 62, 73,
force creates no legitimacy/right par. 37 - par. 44
general ideas par. 27
General Will:
pars
19 to 37
generalities (not particulars) par. 25
mutual harmony of men and women: par. 51
particular interests (particular will) par. 20 - par. 25
particulars (not generalities) par. 25
particular wills versus the general will par. 32
plaything of another's thought: par. 50
virginity: par.
55
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