Robespierre

"That man will go far, he believes everything he says." ---Comte de Mirabeau

"I doubt that man has the sense to boil an egg" ---Georges Danton

A long time ago when I was much younger and had just started reading books other than text books; I came across Robespierre. What remained in my memory was the name “Incorruptible” given to him. I have rarely heard it being attached to politicians. Yet, I didn’t have enough resources (time and information) to find a biography of the man who appeared to be nothing less than a mystery to me. I read about him in Glimpses of World History and A People’s History of the World. It was a wiki article that I went through many times to understand the character of this individual who made a vain attempt to hold on to his ideals and principles, without any sign of compromise till his end. Politics without compromises is hard to imagine(See this article of  Isaiah Berlin). But how was it possible for a politician who rose to such prominence during such turbulent times of great French revolution, to push through his ideology, without caring for self. Or was he really a politician or some eccentric man charmed by the ideal society envisioned by Rousseau? Why is it that many still call him a blood thirsty dictator? These are the questions that pushed me to read Fatal Purity as soon as I came across it. Also I wanted to find the truth in the way people ridicule the utopian way of living as impractical. The hope that intellectuals of 20^th century had put on the evolution of utopian society has been fading in recent times  due to persistence of corrupt society around us. So it is interesting to see how people two centuries ago tried to build a just society.

Born to estranged parents, he lacked the benefit of proper parentage. Being the eldest among his siblings, he also had the additional burden to take care of his siblings. Attracted at a very young age to the writings of Rousseau, he used to read Rousseau’s banned writings secretly in the college run by Jesuit missionaries(There was a legend that he even undertook a personal visit to the ailing Rousseau). It was this association with Rousseau, whose effect was visible in his every action of in the future. During the course of revolution, almost all the major initiatives of Robespierre have their roots in the ideas espoused by The Social Contract.

A man of high principle, unconstrained by the need for pursuing self-interest and self-preservation, he always believed, “A man of high principle will be ready to sacrifice to the state his wealth, his life, his very nature - everything, indeed, except his honour". He envisaged a close connection between politics and morality. Indeed he always believed that an ideal society is formed only by association of virtuous citizens. Like Rousseau, he laid great emphasis on virtue, as a guiding principle for a happy life. He was intrigued by the idea of a virtuous man, who stands alone supported only by his conscience. He always tried to see himself as one such man. He believed in what Rousseau said, "…the laws of god need no other sanction than the natural consequences he himself has attached to, the audacity of those who infringe them and the fidelity of those who respect them. Virtue produces happiness as sun produces light. Crime results in unhappiness as certainly as filthy issue from the heart of corruption.” 

Robespierre advocated freedom of conscience and unlimited freedom of press. In times, when, even in contemporary democracies, proscribing and banning books was common, this was unprecedented. His views on why a public servant should not be deterred by constraints put by unlimited press freedom are interesting, and are relevant today when higher level of accountability and transparency is demanded from public servants. Thus he says, “Incorruptible men, who have no other passion besides the wellbeing and glory of their country, do not dread the public expression of the sentiments of their fellow citizens. They know only too well that it is not easy to lose their esteem, when one can counter calumny with an irreproachable life and proof of disinterested zeal; if they are sometimes victims of a passing persecution, this is, for them, the badge of their glory, the brilliant testimony of their virtue; they rest assured with gentle confidence in the suffering of a pure conscience and the force of truth which will soon reconcile them with their fellow citizens”. 

He was alone in advocating universal adult franchise in the first National assembly. Even the so called progressive revolutionaries of the time were unwilling to trust the poor and underprivileged people to give them the right to vote. His faith in people was immense, again an idea directly drawn from Rousseau’s social contract. To quote Rousseau, “It is the people that are good, patient and generous; the people ask for nothing but peace, justice and the right to live”. Thus Robespierre says, “It is not enough to have overturned the throne: our concern is to erect upon his remains holy equality and the imprescriptible Rights of Man. It is not in the empty word itself that a republic consists, but in the character of the citizens. The soul of a republic is vertu – that is love of la patrie, and the high-minded devotion that resolves all private interests into the general interest. The enemies of the republic are those dastardly egoists, those ambitious and corrupt men. You have hunted down kings, but have you hunted out the vices that their deadly domination has engendered among you? Taken together, you are the most generous, the most moral of all peoples…but a people that nurtures within itself a multitude of adroit rogues and political charlatans, skilled at usurpation and the betrayal of trust.”

Contrary to the bloodthirsty dictator as some call him, he actually spoke against death penalty before and even during the initial years of the revolution. As the author (of this book Fatal Purity) says, “He opposed it[death penalty] for two reasons: first its injustice; second its ineffectiveness as a deterrent. He thought it unjust because society could not have rights that individuals lacked, and individuals only have the right to kill in cases of self-defense”. But the society, as Robespierre himself says, “..which is capable of holding the culprit in chains, judge him peacefully, and use its limitless authority to chastise him and make it impossible for him to make himself feared in the future”, has no such right to kill a person. Robespierre further adds, “A conqueror that butchers his captives is called barbaric. Someone who butchers a perverse child that he could disarm and punish seems monstrous”. It was not deterrent because, “according to him, pride was the most dominant of human passions, stronger even than the desire to live”. Hence death penalty can hardly be a deterrent to a good citizen.

It is interesting to note that Robespierre was not an atheist (The concept of civil faith as a religion managed by state, as propounded first by Rousseau and later by other revolutionaries like Robespierre is in itself of remarkable interest today, especially when the Reason failed to occupy the vacuum created by the retreat of traditional religions). He recognized the immense social power of religion. He tried to use God as a tool to promote virtue in the society. He supported some kind of state managed civil religion. He quoted Voltaire, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create one”, in his speeches in National convention. While defending his conception of state managed religion, he said, “The French people pins its faith, not on its priests, nor on any superstition, or any ceremony, but on worship of such – that is to say, upon the conception of an incomprehensible power, which is at once a source of confidence to the virtuous and of terror to the criminal”.  While argueing against atheism as state policy, as was proposed by some Jacobins, he said, “Who commissioned you to announce to the people that God does not exist??  Oh you, who are so passionate about this arid doctrine, yet have no passion for your country! How does it help a man if you persuade him that blind force presides over his destiny and strikes at random, now at virtuous, now at criminal? Does it help him to believe that his soul is nothing but a thin vapor that is dissipated at the mouth of the tomb? Will the idea of annihilation inspire him with purer and higher sentiments than that of immortality? Will it give him more respect for himself than his fellow men, more devotion to his country, a braver face against tyranny, or a deeper disdain either for pleasure or for death? No…the dying breath of those poor people who die beneath the blows of an assassin is an appeal to the eternal justice! The innocent on the scaffold make tyrants pale in their triumphal chariots: would they have such ascendency if the tomb made the oppressor and the oppressed equal?...If the existence of god and the immortality of the soul were nothing but dreams, they would still be the most beautiful conceptions of the human spirit”.

More important is his advocacy of use of reason as the guiding principle to solve all the problems of the society. This conception also has its roots in the writings of age of enlightenment and particularly Rousseau’s social contract. To quote Robespierre, “It is not merely patriotism, or enthusiasm, or an ingrained love of freedom that sustains our efforts; it is reason, which will make the republic immortal; where reason reigns, the people is sovereign; and such an empire is indestructible”. When members of national convention accused him of tyranny, Danton got up and said, “M. Robespierre has never used any tyranny in this house, unless it is the tyranny of the reason”. But it is unfortunate to see that even after more than two centuries after the revolution which tried in vain to install ‘reason’ as guiding principle for the realization of a just society, most people still believe in regressive(and dumb) ideas like Astrology, Numerology etc. More importantly, reason failed to fill the vacuum created by the retreat of religion and there seems to be some kind of de-socialization, where members of society no longer respect their responsibility towards the society.

There is a similarity between Gandhi and him, in their passionate adherence to their principles and what they believed in, without compromise, and use of reason as guiding principle in all their decisions. But there is a fundamental difference between them. It is the same difference that Gandhi came to be identified with. Perhaps it is the same difference that made Gandhi successful in realizing Swaraj, and that killed Robespierre, before the establishment the ideal society envisioned by Rousseau. Robespierre believed that ends justify means, while Gandhi never did so. Robespierre, who, alone, vehemently opposed death penalty during the initial years of revolution, later supported organized state terror as a means to suppress aristocrats and the enemies of revolution. Thus he became part of the age of terror with which (with lot of injustice to him), the world came to identify him. Thus he claimed, “If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, its basis in a time of revolution is both virtue and terror – virtue without which terror is disastrous, and terror, without which virtue has no power…Terror is merely justice, prompt, severe, and inflexible, It is therefore an emanation of virtue, and results from the application of democracy to the most pressing needs of the country”. As the author of Fatal Purity adds, “In the hands of despots, Robespierre argued, terror was a weapon of oppression. But terror wielded by virtue was the refuge of the poor”. Thus Robespierre didn’t hesitate in using most repressive means to justify the ends he tried to achieve, to establish his vision of France, “…a prim society of patriotic, uncorrupted, serious equals. …and there would be only innocent pleasures, no frivolous distractions, no debauchery. No one would value money above honour, and honour itself would be defined as personal integrity just as Rousseau said it should be long before 1789”. Lot of ideological transformation took place between the days he rejected death penalty and the days when he justified state terror, which I do not wish to dwell on right now.

Finally, for a person like me, who holds Rousseau’s Social Contract in high regard, Robespierre’s idea of his nation is very inspiring. He says, “In our country we want to substitute morality for egoism, honesty for love of honour, principles for conventions, duties for decorum, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, the fear of vice for the dread of unimportance; we want to substitute pride for insolence, magnanimity for vanity, the love of glory for the love of gold: we want to replace good company by good  character, intrigue by merit, wit by genius, brilliance by truth, dull debauchery by the charm of happiness. For the pettiness of the so-called great we would substitute the full stature of humanity; in place of an easy going, frivolous and discontented people we would create one that is happy, powerful and stout hearted, and replace the vices and follies of monarchy by the virtues and astounding achievements of the republic”.

The questions the occupied my mind before reading the book, some of which I mentioned in the first paragraph are still unanswered. But I got a new perspective to look at things after reading the book. I still do not know if it is right to be uncompromising in following what one believes in. But I at least know that it is possible, and it needs strength, a strength that the weak cannot afford, and that often takes one to tomb as Saint-Just a close associate of Robespierre and also a very interesting personality of revolution who achieved so much in just 26 years.