Vive la revolution!

It is interesting what is happening in Tunisia at the moment, with a rioting in the streets and the resignation of a dictator after over 20 years. The country is hardly mentioned in the UK news – the last time was when a plane from Germany, or carrying German tourists, crashed there (I think). But it is clear that the country is going through one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments.

I often think that we Brits need some kind of mass violent protest and riot against the authorities and a wholesale change of system. I thought that was going to happen in 2009 when the Telegraph was going drip-drip feeding us with MP’s expenses. Then I thought that last year’s student protests was going to be the start of something big. But as yet nothing. (Of course, if ever something like what’s happening in Tunisia happens here, I will probably lock the doors and hide behind the sofa, rather than be in the thick of it.)

In Hegel’s 1827 essay, The Magistrates should be elected by the People, he wrote about the need for a popular uprising in his home state of Wurttemburg (Germany). But it is amazing how much of what he says is applicable today.

Hegel is writing as a time when there is a clear groundswell of opinion and feeling that the traditional political edifice of the day could no longer be sustained.  He says that “a vision of better, juster times has come to life in the souls of men [and women], and a longing and yearning for a purer and freer destiny has moved all hearts and alienated them from the present reality.” It almost feels as if Hegel were writing in the present, post-credit crunch day. The longer that change and the “satisfaction of hopes” is put off, the more intense will become the “urge to remedy a genuine need, and any delay will make that longing eat more deeply into men’s hearts, for it is not just a fortuitous attack of light heartedness which will soon pass away.”

But it’s not just that the current “political climate” is universally and profoundly seen as unsustainable. There is also a universal anxiety that it may “collapse and injure everyone in its fall”, as indicated by the massive bailouts of banks considered too big to fail and the fear that we are reaching the point of no return in the battle against climate change. It’s almost as if the fear is so overwhelming, so powerful, that “it will be left to chance to decide what shall be overthrown and what shall be preserved, what shall stand and what shall fail”. Hegel argues that whatever “cannot be sustained” should be abandoned and the “dispassionate eye” of justice is the only yardstick to examine what make something unsustainable.

He says that it is “blind…to believe that institutions, constitutions and laws which no longer accord with men’s customs, needs and opinions” can be justified and sustained. Any attempt to “restore confidence” in these elements in which people no longer trust or have faith is likely to lead to a “much more terrible outburst in which vengeance will ally itself to the need for reform and the ever deceived, ever oppressed mass will mete out punishment to dishonesty”. Of course, Hegel is writing towards the end of the French Revolution which saw a change in the French political system from an absolute monarchy to a republic. One can only wonder whether we are going through a similar period, as people call for a shift from free market capitalism to something kinder and to a new form of politics. Is anti-capitalist violence at recent international summits, the rise of the far right with accompanying racial attacks and MPs jailed for fraudulent expenses or punished for lying in an election indications of a vengeance of the masses? One must also wonder whether attempts to regain public trust of politicians and Parliament and reforms of the financial services sector will be counterproductive and that what is required is a renunciation of power, manifested by a transfer of power from the centre to the masses and a breaking up of banks. “To do nothing when the ground shakes beneath our feet but wait blindly and cheerfully for the collapse of the old building which is full of cracks and rotten to its foundations, and to let oneself be crushed by the falling timbers, is as contrary to prudence as it is to honour.”

Those who are driven by the fear that something must change – those saying it is the only option – will weakly “try to hold onto everything they possess”, like a “spendthrift who is obliged to cut his expenditure  but cannot dispose with any article he has hitherto required and has now been advised to do without”, like cars, foreign holidays and centralised power. On the contrary, they “should not be afraid to scrutinise every detail…the victim of injustice must demand the removal of whatever injustice they discover, and the unjust possessor must freely give up what he possess.”

It is interesting what Hegel ascribes as the “primary cause of all troubles” in the legislature. As far as the members of the legislature were concerned, the majority were happy to follow whoever had the “key to the hayloft, who could tempt them with fair words and more able to conceal his wolfish nature beneath his sheep’s clothing.”

What I think is particularly interesting is the use of the word ‘revolution’ in the context to refer to a sudden, significant change. But at the same time, in mathematics, revolution means 360 degrees or a full circle. In other words, revolutions – while not an every day occurrence – are inevitable. Furthermore, a revolution doesn’t come out of nowhere. As Hegel suggests, it follows 359 degrees.