Democratic revolution

“ For us who stand in the dusty matter-of-fact world of to-day, there is a touch of pathos in recollections of the ardor for democratic liberty that filled the air of Europe and America a century ago with such quickening influences. We may sometimes catch ourselves regretting that the inoculations of experience have closed our systems against the infections of hopeful revolution. ”

“ And now listen to what I have to say of the third possible result of the revolution through which we are passing, the only result which will restore the Union and save the spirit of its democratic institutions. The ambition, the aspirations of men grow from the circumstances in which they live. As these circumstances change, these aspirations will take a corresponding direction. A slaveholding population, wedded to the peculiar interests of their peculiar institution will, in their aspirations and political action, be governed by the demands of those interests. ”

“ And if you study our social problems without prejudice you will find that just this is one of the most valuable results of that Constitutional revolution which so sorely distresses the Democratic mind. ”

“ The suppression of the party machine in the purely democratic countries and of the official choice of the rich and privileged rulers in the more monarchical ones, by capable operative and administrative men inspired by the belief in a common theory of social order, will come about—peacefully and gradually as a process of change, or violently as a revolution—but inevitably as the outcome either of the imminence or else of the disasters of war. ”

“ Democratic principles are the result of equality of condition. ”

“ In practice the democratic ‘revolutionary’ type of discipline is more reliable than might be expected. ”

“ Certainly leveling influences were at work, and the people as a whole had moved one step farther in the direction of equality and democracy, and it was well that the Revolution was not any more radical and revolutionary than it was. ”

“ Whatever the struggle of parties, whatever the strife of factions, whatever the excitement and exaltation of the public mind, there has always been something in this country round which all classes and parties could rally, representing the majesty of the law, the administration of justice, and involving, at the same time, the security for every man's rights and the fountain of honour. Now, gentlemen, it is well clearly to comprehend what is meant by a country not having a revolution for two centuries. ”

“ All revolutions create alongside of the regularly constituted government their own unconstitutional, extra-legal revolutionary authority that unites the revolutionists, mobilizes their forces for resistance to the legal authority and forms the germ of the future government if the revolution succeeds. ”

“ But the leaders, even in the days before the war, had brought the idea of revolution to the masses and fostered it, and the Social Democracy had been, from time immemorial, openly hostile to the earlier, monarchical form of government, and had worked systematically toward eliminating it. ”

“ The only thing that is legitimate, now, and holy, and sacred, is the Revolution. By this article, the government was declared revolutionary; power put under the feet of the people; authority subordinated, not to its own principles, but to the judgment of opinion. ”

“ The aim of the Revolution was to abolish privileges and establish rights,— to give every man lot and part in shaping the government under which he lives. These republican ideas and principles have, on the whole, notwithstanding repeated reverses, gained ground; for revolutions never move backward. ”

“ We must create a power which will be recognised by the whole democracy. If the Congress wishes to be the voice of the revolutionary democracy it must not sit with folded hands before the developing civil war, the result of which may be a dangerous outburst of counter-revolution.... ”

“ I wish it therefore to be considered as my humble opinion, that what, in political slang, is termed Radical Reform, is, in reality, proximate revolution:—Universal Suffrage, inextinguishable uproar:—and Annual Parliaments, periodical bloodshed. ”

“ Finally, when the state becomes a democratic organisation and co-operates with the individual in all spheres of his activity, the movement for political democracy has ripened and has produced its natural social fruits. ”

“ We all know that civil institutions are established for the public benefit, and that when they cease to answer the ends of their existence they may be changed. But I do not understand the doctrine now contended for to be that, which, for the sake of distinction, we may call the right of revolution. ”

“ Office-seekers are full of tricks and intrigues of every kind to get an office, and then the people may—and be damned.
The progress of revolution is quite considerable in every government of the world. But is the revolution for the constitutional rights of the people in progress? ”

“ There is a wide diversity in social situations, from rock-ribbed stability, to entire communities teetering on the brink or plunging over the brink into the maelstrom of revolution. Such diverse situations have existed again and again during the 1750-1970 revolutionary epoch. 4. When a revolutionary situation develops, a revolutionary leader well-established in a community trembling on the brink of a revolutionary overturn may seize the reins of power and establish a regime founded on opposition principles, dedicated to another set of principles and practices. ”

“ The sole and utmost success of your policy would be that it might raise up a strong opposition to the condition of things which it would be your function to uphold; but most probably such opposition would still be outside Parliament, and not in it; you would have made a revolution, probably not without bloodshed, only to show people the necessity for another revolution the very next day.
Will you think the example of America too trite? Anyhow, consider it! A country with universal suffrage, no king, no House of Lords, no privilege as you fondly think ”

“ I can see no hope for a better day until our elections shall pass into the hands of men and women of culture and refinement—until some leader shall arise with powers and abilities to bring about a revolution. ”

“ You will have it largely in your power to relieve the people of the morbid apprehensions that the passage of the Government from one party to another involves all the perilous chances of a great revolution. ”

“ If peace and unanimity are cherished, and the equalization of liberty, and the equity and energy of law maintain by harmony and justice, the present representative government may stand for ages, a luminous monument of republican wisdom, virtue, and integrity. ”

“ It is astonishing that there should have been any intelligent persons among you who did not perceive that political democracy was but the pioneer corps and advance guard of economic democracy, clearing the way and providing the instrumentality for the substantial part of the programme--namely, the equalization of the distribution of work and wealth. So much for the main, general, and necessary cause and explanation of the great Revolution--namely, the progressive diffusion of intelligence among the masses from the sixteenth to the end of the nineteenth centuries. ”

“ This system of popular government, in all matters directly connected with the daily business of the citizens, is a wise arrangement, and it has proved a powerful engine for the preservation of order amidst a population accustomed to anarchy, revolution, and despotism ”

“ Thus the party of Order was in possession of the Government, of the Army, and of the legislative body, in short, of the total power of the State, morally strengthened by the general elections, that caused their sovereignty to appear as the will of the people, and by the simultaneous victory of the counter-revolution on the whole continent of Europe. ”

“ The official orators of the Sesquicentennial will portray the revolutionary fathers as demigods, the revolution as a glorious vindication of the eternal rights of man, the institutions created as classless and eternal and unimprovable. ”

“ Run radical candidates in the elections? Turn the hippies into Provos? The answer to all these questions is 'Yes' (No little doubt remains that America needs to be fundamentally changed.) We need to move from protest to resistance; to dig in for the long haul; to become full-time, radical, sustained, relevant. In short, we need to make a revolution. ”

“ A political and national revolution cannot win, therefore, unless the political revolution becomes social, and the national revolution, by the very fact of its fundamentally socialistic and State-destroying character, becomes a universal revolution. ”

“ The struggle for mass democracy against the illusions of representative government and benevolent bureaucracy cannot be abandoned if the transition from reform to revolution in popular consciousness is to be secured. ”

“ According to our definition of the term, as stated in our statement in the Assembly Bomb Case, revolution means the complete overthrow of the existing social order and its replacement with the socialist order. ”

“ It is not a reform in our government that we need, but a revolution — an overthrow of the present one, and the establishment of a new one. Supposing a few individuals should be hung as traitors, would not that create a sympathy for us among the governments of the old world? ”

“ And how many efforts I have made, and make each day, to support the executive power, and combat the distrust which induces the national assembly to go beyond the mark! For the rest, we must judge of the revolution by the good and evil of its result, not by the license which prevails at present, which forms a state too violent to be durable. I am reassured with regard to the future, by the consideration, that the revolution, be it injurious or beneficial, is, in fact, consummated. The most enlightened men feel that they must assist the change, to lessen its violence ”

“ If then, with us, you desire to put an end to all the defilements of the past; if you desire that the new social compact, consented to by citizens, equals in rights as in duties, shall assure to each of you peace and liberty, equality and work; if you want to affirm the Social and Democratic Republic, the best means as we see it is either to refuse to vote or else vote against the constitution—and this without excluding the other modes of protestation. ”

“ To save ourselves from a revolution which, in its silent but rapid progress, was about to place us under the despotism of numbers, and to preserve, in spirit as well as in form, a system of government we believed to be peculiarly fitted to our condition and full of promise for mankind, we determined to make a new association, composed of States homogeneous in interest, in policy, and in feeling. ”

“ The work of the political philosophers of the eighteenth century, the establishment of a new political ideal by the leaders of the American Revolution, and the drastic sweeping-away of ancient abuses in Church and State in the Revolution in France, applied a new spirit to government, ushered in the rule of the common man, and began the establishment of democracy as the ruling form of government for mankind. ”

“ We stand in the presence of a revolution — not a bloody revolution, America is not given to the spilling of blood — but a silent revolution whereby America will insist upon recovering in practise those ideals which she has always professed, upon securing a government devoted to the general interest and not to special interests. ”

“ It would be gross stupidity, indeed, to assume that the most profound revolution in the history of mankind, the first transfer of power from the hands of the minority, the exploiters, to the hands of the majority, the exploited, can be accomplished within the structure of the old bourgeois parliamentary democracy, without great upheavals and the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions, new conditions for their functioning, etc. ”

“ Just so does a revolution, or any great civic precedent, become a deflecting influence, whose operations widen with the course of time. Communities obey their ideals; and an accidental success fixes an ideal, as an accidental failure blights it. ”

“ It is a revolution in the state of civilization that will give perfection to the revolution of France. Already the conviction that government by representation is the true system of government is spreading itself fast in the world. ”

“ The intensity and the direction of the social changes which radiate out from the climax of a revolutionary situation and the consequent, subsequent attempts at counter-revolution, are the outcome of active, purposive intervention by all of the social groups present at the center of revolutionary activity. ”

“ The task will never be entirely achieved, but the tedious and laborious advance will for every generation be a triumphant affirmation of the nationalized democratic ideal as the one really adequate political and social principle. ”

“ But the problems this generation has to solve render the development of honest self-criticism and individual independence inside of parties peculiarly indispensable. We have just issued from a social and political revolution which has essentially changed the relations of the elementary forces of society and the distribution of political powers. The political rights of the individual, formerly at the mercy of the States, have been in a great measure placed under the safeguard of the National authority. ”

“ The social revolution is the goal; the political revolution (that is to say the displacement of authority) is the means. What this means is: Give us the power of life and death over your persons and your property, and we will set you free!..... There have been more than six thousand years of kings and priests telling us this!
Thus Government and the Parties are reciprocally to one another Cause End and Means. They exist for one another; their destiny is common: it is to summon every day the peoples to emancipation ”