Revolutionary government

“ 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. ”

“ The nation would then have had a bond of union, and every individual would have known the line of conduct he was to follow. But instead of this, a revolutionary government, a thing without either principle or authority, was substituted in its place; virtue and crime depended upon accident ”

“ The governments had beautifully fallen like marionettes under the mass of the revolutionary devil, the country did not return to its ardent love of authority. However one began to suspect that some things are the instincts of power, other things the ideas of the people: but how to pass beyond government? ”

“ Rather than teaching the people to organize themselves, than appealing to their experience and reason, they demand power from them! How are they different from despots? So they are utopians as all despots: the latter leave, the former cannot take root.
It implies that Government can ever be revolutionary, and this for the very simple reason that it is government. Society alone, the mass imbued with intelligence, can revolutionize itself, because it alone can rationally deploy is spontaneity, analyze, explain the mystery of its destiny and its origin, change its faith and its philosophy ”

“ All these revolutions, which we have had in the last sixty years the moving spectacle, this succession of dynasties, this procession of ministries, these insurrectional movements, these electoral agitations, these parliamentary coalitions, these diplomatic intrigues, so much noise and so much smoke, all this I say, did not have any other purpose than to make known to our dumbfounded nation that elementary and always paradoxical truth, that it is not by their governments that people are saved, but that they become lost. ”

“ The revolutionary character of this period, then, pertains principally to the rapid movement of public opinion, and its action upon and through the Government. It finds its parallel in nearly every revolutionary event of modern times. A dominant power, the slaveholding aristocracy, long submitted to, attempts a glaring encroachment upon the rights of the most active and progressive element of society. The popular mind gradually rises to a clear perception and appreciation of the true nature of the conflict. ”

“ If fifty-nine men can make a revolution successful, they have the right of revolution. If one State wishes to break its connection with the Federal Government, and does it by force, maintaining itself, it is an independent State. If the eleven Southern States are resolved and determined to leave the Union, to secede, to revolutionize, and can maintain that revolution by force, they have revolutionary right to do so. I stand on that platform with the gentleman. ”

“ Revolution by the initiative of the masses is revolution by the concert of citizens, by the experience of workers, for progress and the dissemination of knowledge, revolution for liberty. Condorcet, Turgot, Robespierre, sought revolution from below, true democracy. ”

“ Is it certain that a revolutionary organization that has no vested interest in the ruling system, that has not established posts in the Labor Movement or the government, and that cannot lose these established posts as a result of a major crisis, would be able to seize State power out of the revolutionary situation? Or might there be elements in the revolutionary situation which would obstruct the seizure of State power even by such an organization? ”

“ The political revolution, the abolition of authority among men is the goal; the social revolution is the means.
That is why, says the philosopher, all parties, without exception, as they affect power, are varieties of absolutism, and there will only be liberty for the citizens, order for society, union among the workers, when the renunciation of authority will have replaced in the political catechism faith in authority. ”

“ The solution to our problem is total control of the politico-military apparatus of this country. We do not have the luxury of an alternative, for we are faced with dire necessity. —EVERYTHING FOR THE STATE; NOTHING AGAINST THE STATE; NOTHING OUTSIDE THE STATE. —The People's Liberation Army triumphantly sets up the People's Revolutionary Government, proving that it can be done here in Amerika—establishing a people's party and a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. —Political organization leads to power. ”

“ All revolutions, from the coronation of the first king to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, have been accomplished by the spontaneity of the people: governments have always prevented, always compressed, always struck down ”

“ So far the revolutionary movement has been nothing but a deliberate attempt on the part of a small minority to overturn the existing form of government, and to impose their own reforms by their own methods. ”

“ It means that government is by nature immobilist, conservative, refractory toward any initiative, we might say even counter-revolutionary, it is that a revolution is an organic thing, something creative, and that power is something mechanical or executive. ”

“ The democrats, seduced by the memories of our glorious revolution, decided to begin again in 1848 the drama of 1789: while they perform the comedy, let us try to make history. The Republic is no more than the guard of God. While a blind force trains power in one sense, can we not advance society in another? The direction of the spirits being changed, it would result that the government, continuing to make reaction, would then, without expecting it, make revolution... ”

“ Here, indeed, we arrive at the point where we, looking over the hundred and twenty five years of independence, can see that the simple government conceived by the revolutionary republicans was a foredoomed failure. It was so because of: 1) the essence of government itself; 2) the essence of human nature; 3) the essence of Commerce and Manufacture. ”

“ Driven by governmental prejudice, the people had nothing better to do than to remake first of all a government. Power fell into their toiling hands, was immediately handed by them to a number of men of their choice, charged with founding the Republic, and resolving the political problem, the social problem, the problem of the proletariat. ”

“ The firm attitude of the Government and the hostility of national opinion had daunted the revolutionary syndicats which inclined to join fortunes with the revolutionists of the public service, and the latter were left to confront official authority alone. ”

“ But if the revolutionary movements which have lately occurred in that Republic end in the organization of a stable government, urgent appeals to its justice will then be made, and, it may be hoped, with success, for the redress of all complaints of our citizens. ”

“ But revolt is not reform, and one revolutionary administration is not good government. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is an acknowledged fact, that every revolution requires a provisional power to regulate its disorganizing movements, and to direct the methodical demolition of every part of the ancient social constitution.— Such ought to be the revolutionary power. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An electronic chart system should be considered as an aid to navigation, one of many the navigator might have at his disposal to help ensure a safe passage. While possessing revolutionary capabilities, it must be considered as a tool, not an infallible answer to all navigational problems. The rule for the use of electronic charts is the same as for all other aids to navigation: The prudent navigator will never rely completely on any single one. ”

“ The cause of quiet and order, the preservation of the established state of things, the authority of rulers, the subordination of peoples, must be firmly maintained, and revolutionary disturbers must be put down with a strong hand. Such was the political dogma of the Congress. And yet, in spite of its assembled wisdom and the principles it promulgated, the nineteenth century has been especially the century of revolutions, actual or virtual, the result being an extraordinary growth in the liberties and prerogatives of the people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Revolution.—The revolution comes with all of its horrors. The church is humbled and crushed, the government razed to the ground, monarchy is beheaded, and the flower of nobility cut off. The wild mob at first seeks only to destroy; later it seeks to build a new structure on the ruins. The weak monarch, attempting to stem the tide, is swept away by its force. He summons the States-General, and the commons declare themselves the national assembly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Owing to the absence of political privilege and the comparative uniformity of social conditions, we do not as yet see any party, of sufficient importance to be taken into account, to which the term revolutionary could be applied. ”

“ In a word, you must generally understand, that the revolutionary system supersedes law, religion, and morality; and that it invests the Committees of Public Welfare and General Safety, their agents, the Jacobin clubs, and subsidiary banditti, with the disposal of the whole country and its inhabitants. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That the work of the fathers of the republic, that the most magnificent system of constitutional government which the wisdom of man has devised, should be turned from its object, changed from its order, rendered powerless to protect the unalienable rights and sovereignty of the people, and made the instrument by which to establish and maintain imperialism, is a revolution unlike any other that may be found in the history of mankind. ”

“ The horrors of revolution followed upon the blindness of the one, with its reactionary aftermath, while upon the other there was violence, it is true, and a revolution was feared, but through the wise measures of the liberal ministers no subversion of the government occurred. ”

“ In a revolutionary state there are two classes, the suspected and the patriots.
When the first are aroused, general measures are adopted towards them for the sake of security.
The oppression of the second class is a blow to public liberty. ”

“ No man insisted more strenuously that the participants in the rebellion must be punished and stripped of all political power and social influence, and that the government of the States, as well as of the Nation, must be confided exclusively to the tried and ever-faithful friends of the Republic. ”