Reasons for Revolt

This week’s texts are quite diverse, and yet they are each interesting to look at and think about in their own right, so I’ll do my best to cover all of them.

First off, we have Thomas Jefferson’s “Tree of Liberty” Letter. Reacting to Shay’s Rebellion, which saw a group of rebels attempt to seize control of the state of Massachusetts, Jefferson surprisingly doesn’t seem too alarmed by those events. On the contrary, he seems glad it took place, and further writes in his Letter to James Madison that armed rebellion is “a medicine necessary for the sound health of government”. Revolt for Jefferson is thus a means of strengthening democratic governance, which I suppose makes when we consider how he helped found the United States on the back of a violent revolution, and in the name of democracy.

Maximillien de Robespierre expresses a somewhat similar notion in his “Justification of the Use of Terror”, although rather than discussing the people revolting against the state, he advocates for partisans of the revolution using violence against counter-revolutionary forces. In fact, this is so vital for safeguarding the revolution that Robespierre sees such violence not only as justifiable, but as morally righteous. I found this text interesting to juxtapose with Robespierre’s historical reputation in France. Even nowadays he’s often described as having been amoral and bloodthirsty; taking advantage of his powers during his Reign of Terror to execute anyone he disagreed with. Even though this position is still somewhat defendable, I believe this text at the very least brings nuance to the portrait of this heavily debated historical figure. It also brings to light just how messy and chaotic the French Revolution truly was, with no clear leader or ideology aside from the overthrowing of the monarchy. Unlike the case of the American Revolution, it is difficult to bring out a clear legacy, or any kind of lesson regarding revolution from these events.

Lastly we have Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, without a doubt the most famous and influential revolutionary text ever published. Through their concept of historical materialism, both authors describe how the proletarian working class is engaged in a class struggle with the bourgeoisie, a class of capitalists who possess both the means of production and overwhelming political power. Marx and Engels foresee the proletariat, who find themselves oppressed in the age of industrial capitalism, overthrowing the bourgeoisie and taking control of the means of production. While it is a very powerfully written text – the critique of capitalism it delivers still stands up today – I don’t think it would fare too well as a current day revolutionary handbook. Marx and Engels themselves wrote in the Preface to the German Edition of 1872 of the Manifesto that they would probably have expressed certain things differently if they had had to rewrite it. However, they then pointed out that “the Manifesto has become a historical document which we no longer have any right to alter” and this is all the more true nowadays.