Revisiting Revolutions, a Comparison

Luther could not succeed in his struggle without the support of secular princes. Which explains why the Lutheran Church remained always loyal to non-Catholic princes.

As an example, the revolutionaries of the “Peasants’ War”, erupted in Germany shortly after the Reformation, appealed to the Gospels for the relief of oppression. But Luther firmly opposed them, and inveighed against those who wish to “strike, smite, strangle and stab” established authority. And a “(reactionary) prince can better merit Heaven with bloodshed (of the peasants), than another prince who instead uses prayer.” He also added, “No one should think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.”

Tawney, author of “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” wrote,

“… the axe takes the place of the stake. The maintenance of Christian morality is to be transferred from the discredited ecclesiastical authorities to the hands of the state. Skeptical as to the existence of unicorns and salamanders, the age of Machiavelli and Henry VIII found food for its credulity in the worship of that rare monster, the God-fearing Prince.”

As a result of the Reformation, the Church ceased to exist as an independent power and it became part of the machinery enforcing submission to the secular government. Then, through its Calvinist strain, the Protestant Revolution further evolved and ended by giving social and theological grounds and reasons for the triumph of capitalism.

History has a long tail – it’s not hard to see a Calvinist connection in the addition of “under God” to the American dollar bill, in 1954.

The inventive Henry VIII, by making kings and queens of England the keeping equivalent of Rome’s pope and popesses, made religion secular and national, while keeping most of the rituals that previously helped maintain obedience to the Catholic Church among the masses.

It followed that in England the king could alter dogmas essentially at will and execute those who objected. The attendant dissolution of the monasteries increased the crown’s revenue, which also proved useful to repress revolts by rewarding the repressors.

Henry VIII: a dangerous and treacherous fellow, like most medieval potentates. Compared to modernity, things haven’t changed that much, as corruption and self-seeking continue to rule the power game albeit with a touch of democratic “dilution”.

In comparing the Church of England with the Church of Rome, the king was functionally equivalent to God, while the Archbishop (of Canterbury), performed the Papal function – in Rome the Pope served God, but in England the king was God. A setup that proved the job of any Archbishop of Canterbury to be quite hazardous to his life and safety.

Henry VIII’s penchant for changing wives, and his quarrel with the Pope for refusing to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, have obscured a more important issue. Namely the similarity or even identity, in England, of the root causes of the Reformation Revolution that had just occurred in Germany. Namely, the corruption of the Church, in turn associated with its wealth and the independent administration of that wealth.

But those who hoped that the English Reformation be true to its reforming objectives were sorely disappointed. The dissolution of the monasteries was similar (allowing for changes in time and circumstances), to the rape of the Soviet resources in 1991, literally stolen by sordid profiteers, instantly turned billionaires.

In England, the wealth of the dissolved monasteries attracted a similar strain of profiteers, thieves, greedy merchants, speculators and usurers, who drove the majority into poverty and despair, especially those employed in agriculture. Rebellions comparable to the Peasants Wars in Germany were quickly crushed in blood.

The original sincere Reformers could not believe their eyes. Martin Bucer,  tutor of Edward VI, Henry VIII’s son who briefly reigned before dying of illness, wrote a manual for the young king. Appalled at the turn of events, Bucer outlined in the manual what an orderly reformed kingdom should be. Just one quote is illustrative,

“It (the kingdom), is to take a high line with the commercial classes. For, though trade itself is honorable, most traders are rogues – indeed, next to sham priests, no class of men is more pestilential to the Commonwealth.”

Make minor lexical changes and it’s like reading about Wall Street.

Still, the religious arrangement with the King as God was shaky, but then with Elizabeth I, it became necessary to defeat Spain, a very Catholic empire – wherefore Church-of-England Protestantism become associated with a new form of nationalism.

A few decades later, the Left, represented by Cromwell, sprang into action, leading to the English Revolution and the Civil War of 1642-1648. Though Cromwell’s Protectorate was defeated and King Charles II returned, the situation could not satisfy the growing number of Independents who rejected both State and Church as theological authorities.

They claimed the right to private judgment and religious toleration. That ideological trail led to a revolt against secular despotism. Hence the Glorious (English) Revolution of 1688. ‘Glorious’ because England was still tired from the Civil War and the shift from the Stuarts to the  Hanoverian (German) royal dynasty was essentially bloodless.

But if everyone has a right to his own theological opinion, may he not have other rights as well? How far could a government intrude into the life of an individual? These ideas, developed and matured in the 18^th century, issued in the Rights of Man. Those very ideas, already carried across the Atlantic by Cromwell’s defeated followers, were embodied in the American Constitution by Thomas Jefferson, and were brought back to Europe via the French Revolution.

The British’s hatred and fear of Napoleon (shared by the rest of the crowned heads of Europe and passed on as a value to America) was like today’s hatred of communism by the privileged classes. Napoleon and the threat of spreading French revolutionary ideas, was for a while what Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro, represented to the wold’s plutocrats in our time. The anti-Napoleonic propaganda generated by the British against Napoleon has even informed several Hollywood movies.

In a sense, the French Revolution was the Revolution of the Rights-of-Man. It produced a bloody Civil War, just as the Civil War in Russia that followed the 1917 Revolution. And, just as in Russia, foreign powers gathered their forces to defeat the French and their new ideology.

They finally succeeded at Waterloo, but unlike in England immediately after Cromwell, the restoration of the old regimes did not go according to plan. For by 1848, the Rights-of-Man movement transformed itself into nationalism, in Germany and throughout Europe. And in the end, the idea of nationalism overpowered that of the Rights-of-Man. Overpowered, but not dead, for we still enjoy today the freedoms it helped to win. Including the principle that no man should be deprived of life or liberty without due process of law.

Similarly, the forces of reaction managed to end the Soviet Union and to reduce Russia for a while to the brink of starvation. But the spirit of egalitarianism that was the cornerstone of the USSR is not dead.

To ensure that it is, the usual spit-lickers, on the occasion of the 1917 anniversary, have resurrected the ghost of Stalin’s repressions, that caused “100 million victims” – one pundit said. Citing millions of unsubstantiated victims for political purposes is established practice.

Nor they spared nonsense and deformations about life conditions in Eastern Europe, as if they had been better before the Revolution, under Czarist, Hapsburg, or Ottoman autocracies. While conveniently omitting that currently, in Eastern Europe, there is some longing for the older times and remorse for having believed as true what proved false about the West.

Nor mention was made of the structure of advanced societies and the social protections developed during the XXth century. Protections and social advancements that owe their existence to the presence of a Communist entity. Entity powerful enough to frighten the ruling bourgeoisies into granting concessions otherwise impossible. Proof being that as soon the USSR was gone, the same bourgeoisies have launched a furious aggression against the previously conquered rights.

Looked-at in the same spirit adopted with those previously reviewed, the Russian Revolution preached doctrines, like early Christianity, which were international and, at least at the beginning, anti-national. Like Islam, but unlike Christianity, the Revolution was essentially political and it challenged Liberalism.

Paradoxically, until 1917, only reactionaries challenged Liberalism. Marxists advocated democracy, free speech and free press. But when the Soviet Government seized power, it adopted the teachings of the Catholic Church in its days of splendor. Namely that it is the business of authority to propagate truth, by positive teaching and by suppressing rival doctrines.

Invitably, this led to establishing an undemocratic dictatorship in the name of democracy. Though we should consider that the Western bourgeoisie kept Russia under siege, but for the short and brutal five years of WW2.

For what is worth, historians who make a living by repeating the establishment’s line, usually omit referring to the conditions arising from a siege mentality. Equally, they conveniently disregard some social and psychological traits, uniquely Russian, which had a significant weight in the prelude, the preparations and the denouement of the 1917 Revolution. Those interested may watch my video of the “Historical Sketches” series, “The Historical Roots of Russian Communism – part 1”

Also, new and unique to the Russian Revolution was the amalgamation of political and economic power, which gave unlimited rein to government control. On the other hand, the Revolution’s rejection of Liberalism was extraordinarily successful and enthusiastically imitated, in Italy at first and then in Germany, thanks to Mussolini and Hitler. And even in countries that remained ‘democratic’, Liberalism lost much of its popularity.

For example, true Liberals maintain(ed) that if terrorists destroy public buildings, a serious effort should be made by the police and the law courts to discover the actual culprits. The new political executive(s) of the 1930s believed that the guilt should be attributed, through manufactured evidence, to whatever party, personality or state they dislike. As it happened with the fire of the Berlin’s Reichstag.

But in similar circumstances, the American neo-Liberals, when dealing with 9/11, behaved very un-liberally – when they attributed to 19 Saudi bunglers the organization and implementation of the operation. An operation that could be conducted only by a State or Entity with a direct interest in its bloody and apocalyptic success – and with sufficient weight, power and cover, already established in the targeted country, to make the venture feasible.

In summary, we can say that, common to all revolutions, the impetus to reform springs in every age from realizing the contrast between the external order of society and the moral standards recognized as valid by the conscience or reason of the individual.

Finally, a (probably) neglected point of personal psychology. When Mark Twain said that “In all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane,” he said more than he thought he did in jest.

For it may happen that after reaching our personal conclusions on historical, social or psychological matters, we may say to ourselves, “yes… but,” or “yes… however.” That ‘but’ or ‘however’ are the Doors of Doubt. And here doubt is the tip of a curiously slippery slope.

It starts with “There is nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet). It continues with “Truth is in the eye of the beholder” (anonymous), “Truth is a matter of style” (Oscar Wilde), “There are no facts but only interpretations” (Nietzsche) etc. And at the bottom of the slide we find Pascal’s “To understand everything is to forgive everything.” Which, following Pascal’s discovery to its logical conclusion, makes a mockery of our established notions of good and bad, and of good and evil.

In a similar spirit, at the end of our brief meditation on past revolutions, readers may concur with the idea that history resembles the number π (‘pi’), where every new added digit increases accuracy without reaching precision, for π is an irrational number, with an infinite number of decimals.

Just like any new addition to our historical knowledge, augments perspective without nearing truth – one of the several paradoxes of life. Paradoxes that tend to fill an individual with uncertainty or anxiety, and at times make him feel “like one upon a rock, surrounded with a wilderness of sea, who marks the advancing tide grow wave by wave, expecting ever when some envious surge will, in its brinish bowels, swallow him.” (5)

Which may be why many prefer dogmatic certainty to articulate uncertainty, even when certainty is absurd.

Reference:
** 1. Macbeth
** 2. Coriolanus
** 3. King Henry V
** 4. Hamlet
** 5. from Titus Andronicus

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