In the first half of the 18th century, the British-style limited monarchy and the freedom of the British were the envy and hope of emulation by the enlighteners of European countries. Voltaire and Montesquieu's praise of England was the result of their comparison of English freedom with the illiberality of the absolute French monarchy.
Britain's freedom lies in its constitution that limits power. In the 18th century, the main principle of the British Constitution was often the common idea that "government institutions can only protect political freedoms if abuses of power are stopped." The extent to which the British enjoyed exclusive political freedoms depended on the effective suppression by the constitutional order of arbitrary and brutal acts of power; In turn, the success of such a political system depends on the existence and coordination of a variety of disparate institutions and administrative procedures". [1]
British freedom is the freedom of the upper class.
However, by the last decade of the 18th century, the charm of popular liberties represented by the French Revolution had surpassed the British-style freedom, and the Whigs and many intellectuals in England were also supporters of the French Revolution.
In 1790, Burke published Reflections on the Revolution in France, marking the entry of British-style conservatism onto the stage of modern history and placing Britain in opposition to the French Revolution.
At this time, it was not Britain that led the trend of world freedom, but France.
From British-style liberal to British-style conservatism
In less than half a century from Voltaire's publication of the British Newsletter in 1733 to Burke's Meditations on the French Revolution in 1790, Britain has shifted from British-style freedom to British-style conservatism in Europe.
History is like this, what was previously considered radical, in a few decades, a hundred years it was considered conservative.
British conservatism seems to be opposed to the French Revolution, but more important is the idea behind it: moderation and non-aggression (the opposite is radical), emphasis on experience and common sense (the opposite is rationalism, abstraction), tradition and custom (the opposite is unconventional, completely reinvented), compromise and compromise (the opposite is radical), reform and evolution (the opposite is radical change or revolution). These ideas were directed to the realities of the French Revolution, not abstract political theories.
Since the 90s of the 20th century, into the 21st century, there seems to be an increasingly obvious trend in Chinese intellectuals to advocate British-style conservatism, from introducing political conservative theory, to highly praising the Scottish Enlightenment and admiring Hume, and a keen interest in Edmund Burke, all of which seem to see the British experience as the kind of enlightenment that China needs today. By contrast, interest in the French Enlightenment faded markedly, and discussing the French Revolution was nothing more than a negative comparison with the American Revolution, which was understood as a sign of victory for Anglo-Saxon political conservatism.
Russell Kirk's Roots Of American Order (1974), translated into Chinese half a century later, was immediately admired when published, seemingly confirming the historical impact of British conservatism on the American revolution.
In this book, Kirk discusses only four 18th-century thinkers who influenced the founding of the United States: Montesquieu, Blackstone, Hume, and Burke. One Frenchman, three Englishmen, in Kirk's own words, chose these four because Montesquieu "learned the bitter lessons of historical knowledge", Hume "despised the cult of reason", Blackstone's jurisprudence focused on "precedent and convention", and Burke "advocated traditions from medieval and Christian and classical faith". [2]
Their common characteristics are an emphasis on experience, common sense, tradition, and custom, and opposition to the cult of reason, abstraction, innovation, and utopian transformation.
This is the basic idea of Anglo-American conservatism, and it is also the tradition they have constructed and introduced as authority. This tradition is centered on individual freedom, formed by special historical factors, and has no conditions for other countries to replicate it. (Editor's note: partially abridged here)
The conservatism of 18th-century England had its own irreproducible particularities, and he was fascinated by the kind of freedom that Voltaire saw in England. He was a universalist who believed that there was indeed a universal model of rational society that transcended time and space. Therefore, it is recommended that other countries try to see if they can plant the coconut tree "British freedom".
But even at his time, there was already a widely circulated view that British freedom was ancient, so to speak, naturally flowing in British blood and land. Voltaire's dismissal of the British Magna Carta had to do with his downplaying of the peculiarities of British-style freedom. Montesquieu, however, was different, and although he believed in universal values, he believed that the English legal and political system was the product of special geographical and climatic conditions.
Montesquieu's view is more representative. The 18th-century German thinker Johann Gotfried Herder (1744-1803) believed that national character is like irreversible flowers and trees, born from the political culture of one country and difficult to transplant to another.
A 1904 cartoon featuring anthropomorphic Germany, England, and France
Taylor, a 20th-century French historian, admired Britain's stability and civilization, writing to his mother that the British obeyed the decisions of the majority, did not need to plan coups, and that the minority had freedom of speech and the press. He believed that France may have a smarter cultural atmosphere, and certainly more delicious meals and drinks, but the British political system was the best. The British are both free and conformist; Unlike the French, who are deeply oppressed, they can erupt into violent anarchy at any time. Britain was free, but not very democratic, and that was exactly what Tyner wanted. He found it absurd to think that a country could be based solely on reason. He believed that Britain's balance between freedom and order stemmed from its unique climate, its ethnic makeup, and its history.
Taylor believed in the idea of national character. People who generally hold this concept like to use the terminology related to nature. Not only did Tyner disagree with Voltaire's view of the coconut, but instead considered the results of emulating the British system in other countries "bizarre" except in the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries. He said that there can be no other result, because the state of a country is an organic phenomenon, like a living being. You can imitate its appearance, but you can never assimilate its essence. Laws, charters and customs depend on ancient customs, which are "like tangled, deep, invisible roots." The stability of the British government is "a delicate flower firmly rooted in the soil of the whole country, the ends of countless living fibers". [3]
II Conservative or moderate?
We certainly don't need to use the natural terms or metaphors of Herder or Taylor to describe the "British character" of British-style liberalism and British-style political conservatism, but one thing is certain, neither British-style liberalism nor British-style political conservatism applies to China. Therefore, I hope to use the "British experience" to save the decline of enlightenment in China, no matter how good the wish, it is just a flower in the mirror, a moon in the water. (Editor's note: partially abridged here)
Many Chinese scholars praised Burke, as well as the "abstract ideas" he opposed, the "complete reconstruction" and "all-powerful reason." It is worth noting that these opposites of conservatism have qualifiers: "radical", "abstract", "holistic", "thorough", "all-powerful", so it is only a degree adjustment on the issues of "revolution", "concept", "innovation", "reconstruction", "reason", etc., so it does not really tell us what "conservative" is opposing. The adjustment of degree involves only the difference between "intense" and "mild", not the difference in purpose.
However, conservatism is an insistence on an end, not just the adjustment of means and methods, conserve refers to retaining and guarding something, is an end, while moderate only involves methods and means. To treat moderation in means as "conservative" in the end is obviously to confuse the difference between moderation and moderation.
If, when he admires Burke's conservatism, only the "radical," "abstract," "holistic," "thorough," and "all-powerful" that he opposes, then "moderate" is a more accurate term than "conservative."
In this way, when domestic people praise Burke's conservatism, they actually regard him as a "moderate", and in fact, Burke's position and approach to conservative freedom are very fierce and not moderate at all. His "Meditations on the French Revolution" was criticized for being too intense.
The British social critic Raymond Williams argues in Culture and Society that the key to understanding Burke's more comprehensive ideas is to grasp the very thing he is attached to (that is, freedom), rather than just what he condemns (the French Revolution, the French National Assembly, the French Declaration of Human Rights, and so on). In Burke's conservatism, what matters is not what he opposes, but what he wants to keep.
Burke denounced the French Revolution not because he was attached to the Bourbons, but because he feared that the revolution that overthrew the Bourbons would destroy freedom if it spread to England. He opposed the French Revolution in order to preserve British-style freedom. [4]
Burke opposed the French Revolution because he believed that there was a real threat of the spread of the French Revolution to England. There were many Englishmen at that time who sympathized with and appreciated the French Revolution. In his Meditations on the French Revolution, he repeatedly denounced the Jacobin and Revolutionary Society clubs in London at the time, whose members were opposed to the monarchy, to the succession of power, and to church politics. They represented the political radical forces of the time. What Burke rejected was the core political theory they were trying to defend: the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Burke became their opponent and the target of their all. Among them were Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), both representatives of the new ideas of the era.
Today, we view the significance of the French Revolution from a different historical perspective than Burke, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, promulgated on August 26, 1789, that emerged during the liberal phase of this revolution. To this day, this declaration is regarded as an important spiritual and political legacy of the French Revolution to the people who fought for freedom and opposition. Of course, there is some academic controversy about its originality, but this does not affect the value it proclaims. For example, the German scholar Georg Jellinek believes that the Declaration of Human Rights is modeled on the laws of rights of the states of the United States, and even "basically copied from the laws of the North American states", but the French scholar Emile Boutmy believes that the Declaration of Rights is a French text, original to France, and the North American Bill of Rights is derived from the "spirit of the 18th century" in continental Europe.
Controversy aside, one thing is certain: the Declaration did adopt the 18th-century Enlightenment doctrine of natural rights and a number of new political concepts, the most important of which was the declaration that freedom, property, security and resistance to oppression were inalienable human rights, affirmed freedom of speech, belief, writing, and the press, and stated the principles of separation of powers, equality before the law, and the sanctity and inviolability of private property.
Burke has fiercely attacked these ideas as "abstract" theories rather than naturally developed and matured from real political traditions and experience. This is consistent with his outright rejection of the French Revolution and an important argument he used to support his position. However, today we know that the political ideas promoted by the Declaration of Human Rights, even such ideas as "human rights" and "civil rights", are not possible to develop and mature naturally in all national traditions, and they cannot be produced, let alone matured, unless they are first introduced as new ideas that are somewhat abstract, and they are alien to them. The introduction of new ideas by social change, no matter how abstract at the beginning, no matter how distant or even seemingly out of reach of reality, can have far-reaching consequences, and therefore can also be necessary and meaningful political enlightenment.
Burke apparently underestimated the global significance of the French Declaration of Human Rights and could not understand its impact on future generations. He could not have distanced himself from the Declaration of Human Rights as we do today. Burke died in 1797, two years after the horrors of the French Revolution had passed, leaving Napoleon to take over power in 1799. In fact, it was not even possible for him to make an objective and sober assessment at a sufficient distance from the French Revolution itself. It is not rigorous for us to directly use Burke's opinion on the French Revolution today to evaluate the entire historical process of the French Revolution.
III. How to understand the French Revolution
In his book Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, American political scientist Barrington Moore Jr. provides a comprehensive comparative study of different revolutions in France, the United States, China, and other Asian countries, and his basic understanding of "the origins, processes, and outcomes of the French Revolution" is:
"For France's long road to democracy, the violent destruction of the old regime is a crucial step. It is important to emphasize here that this step is crucial for France, which faces different obstacles to democracy than in Britain. French society did not and was unlikely to produce a parliament of landlords with bourgeois characteristics in the British way. France's past historical development turned the upper class into enemies of liberal democracy rather than part of the democratic camp. Therefore, if democracy is to triumph in France, concessions from certain institutions are required. Here, by asserting this link between democracy and the Ancien Régime, we do not mean that we subscribe to the view that French history is destined to develop into liberal democracy. There is ample evidence that the entire course of French history may lead to a completely different path. Moreover, it is for this reason that the French Revolution is the more decisive factor." [5]
Moore's point is clear: it would be good for France to automatically and smoothly produce British-style freedom and democracy, but it would not be possible. Britain had an upper elite counterweight to the absolute monarchy (aristocracy and bourgeoisie), while France eliminated this power very effectively. Therefore, when the popular revolution took place, the restriction of the monarchy's power could not become an effective option, and only the elimination of the monarchy was a single bridge. It is in this sense that, as Tocqueville said, the French monarch made his own gravedigger.
Moore pointed out that the French Revolution was not so much a "bourgeois revolution" as a mass uprising, which did not radically change the autocracy, but transformed the king's autocracy into a new one. This view is also consistent with Tocqueville's. In The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, Tocqueville pointed out that the conceptual force driving the French Revolution was equality, not freedom. It is precisely because of the lack of freedom that "the Ancien Régime gave the Revolution many forms of it, and the Revolution merely added its unique cruelty." [6]
He wrote bitterly:
The success of (revolution) is unheard of... The old ruler fell, but the most essential thing in his enterprise remained; Its government died, but its administration continued to live, and since then many attempts have been made to overthrow the despotic government, but only by placing the head of freedom on a slaved body. From the beginning of the Revolution to the present day, people have seen many times that the love of freedom has appeared and reappeared; In this way it will be repeated many times, forever inexperienced, mishandled, easily frustrated, intimidated, defeated, superficial and perishable. [7]
Centralized administration was the greatest political legacy left to the French by the Ancien Régime, potentially influencing the Revolution's transition from liberal demands to violent dictatorship, and was an important factor in the collapse of all subsequent changes of government in France.
The French Revolution may not have been the best way for France to move from autocracy to democracy, but the transformation of history has never been designed by man. Had it not been for the French Revolution, would this great historical shift have been possible, or how would this great historical shift have occurred? Although this is only a hypothesis, it has led Moore's historical thinking. He said:
"Without the French Revolution, the fusion between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie might have continued to lead France towards a top-down conservative path of modernization that took on contours similar to what happened in Germany and Japan". [8]
However, there are no "ifs" in history, and although France also has a bourgeoisie, "the French Revolution is not really a bourgeois revolution." ...... The past history of absolute monarchy has hindered the development of this group, making it unable to achieve such a historical mission on its own. On the contrary, it is another part of the bourgeoisie that depends on ... The radical movement of the common people of the city seized power". [9]
France had a revolution that was completely different from the English Glorious Revolution, in which those key factors revealed by Tocqueville and Moore were not found in Burke.
Today, admirers of Burke and his conservatives appreciate his anti-violence stance: the cohesion created by violence inevitably leads to the abuse of violence, typified by what they understand as the violent French Revolution. They also appreciate Burke's traditionalist position: tradition is essential to order and freedom, and if the Revolution destroyed the old system and order, the social cohesion function had to be carried out by violence, which would devour the enemy and its own children. Taken separately, both statements are very valid and have been repeatedly confirmed in history. However, when drastic social change occurs, the two situations are opposed to each other, forming two paradoxes, the first is, if violence has become a tradition and order, should it be preserved? The second is that if conservative anti-violence upholds such a violent tradition and status quo, then what is the point of counter-violence? These are the paradoxes that George Orwell saw in Gandhi's pacifism.
Orwell noted in Reflections on Gandhi: "The British have always treated Gandhi mildly, partly because the British found Gandhi useful to them. ”
Gandhi's use of power in this way may have been political wisdom. However, in 1942, Gandhi also used nonviolent resistance against the Japanese invaders, which was the wrong target. This is not to say that Gandhi's pacifism is completely meaningless, Orwell said, "Gandhi's pacifism was religious in motives, but he also argued that pacifism was a qualitative technique, a means, that could produce the desired political consequences."
Orwell was not opposed to ideal pacifism, but he argued:
"The question that every pacifist is obligated to answer is: 'What about the Jews?' Do you want to watch them wiped out? If you don't want to, then how can you save them without resorting to war? I must say that I have not heard an honest answer to this question from any pacifist in the West. They will only be perfunctory, and Gu will talk about him left and right. In 1938, Gandhi was also asked this question, and his answer was recorded in Mr. Lewis Fisher's book Gandhi and Stalin. Gandhi believed that German Jews should commit mass suicide so that they could 'awaken the world and the German people to Hitler's atrocities." After the war, Gandhi defended himself by saying: Jews would be killed anyway, so why not die strongly? Mr. Fisher was Gandhi's most ardent admirer, but he seemed to be stunned when he heard Gandhi's words. In any case, though, Gandhi was honest. If you are not prepared to kill yourself, you have to be prepared to die in other ways. In 1942, when Gandhi called for civil resistance against the Japanese invaders, he was ready to sacrifice millions of lives." [10]
Burke's opposition to violent revolution, like Gandhi's pacifism, is an ideal principle, and cannot be used as a technical means of solving all political problems, let alone a universal "conservatism." Burke's political-ethical critique of the French Revolution and its violence should not lead to deliberate avoidance or denial, but should focus on how to reduce dependence on violent means in political life before violence has occurred, and treat specific problems in an equal and respectful way. This is the key to political ethics.