A Green Robespierre? As the following posting was being sent to The Daily Blog, the Greens female co-leader, Metiria Turei, was announcing her resignation from both her position in the party and Parliament. The logic of uncompromising revolutionary virtue is inherently hostile to the notion of politics as the art of the possible - and to liberty itself.
THE JACOBINS, along with “Madame Guillotine” and
Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, will forever be associated with political
extremism. So, the mere suggestion that our very own Green Party might be
entering its Jacobin Phase is unlikely to be well received – especially by the
Greens!
The historical lessons of Jacobinism should not, however, be
dismissed unheard. The rise and fall of the Jacobins is instructive to all
pursuers of progressive change, precisely because it reveals the calamitous
consequences of elevating revolutionary virtue above all other considerations.
The tragic irony of the Jacobins is that, in the beginning,
they were the new French Constitution’s most avid defenders – most particularly
of its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It is only as the
French Revolution unfolded: each succeeding chapter bloodier and more
terrifying than the last; that the Jacobins, its most eloquent, energetic and
effective defenders, found themselves propelled relentlessly towards
increasingly extreme measures. Believing themselves to be the only reliable
champions of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, they found it easier and easier
to brand all those who opposed them as counter-revolutionary agents of the ancien régime.
Initially, the eloquence of the Jacobin deputies [MPs] and
the venom of their journalistic allies, was reserved for members of the more
moderate factions within the National Assembly. But, as the French people’s
enemies, both internal and external, multiplied, the Jacobins’ political
paranoia worsened. The number of executions rose sharply, causing even the
Jacobins’ own followers’ misgivings to grow. Undeterred, their leader, Maximillian
Robespierre, intensified the Reign of Terror. The man the people of Paris
called “The Incorruptible”, sent former friends and comrades to the guillotine
with the same cold resolve with which he dispatched members of the despised
aristocracy.
To quote his own, memorable, advice to the
Jacobin-controlled Committee of Public Safety: “the first maxim of your policy
ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people’s enemies by terror.”
As the realisation eventually dawned on what remained of France’s
revolutionary leadership that if Robespierre was not stopped they would all be
killed, the National Assembly was galvanised into action. Robespierre, himself,
was declared an “enemy of the people” and laid open to Madame Guillotine’s
sibilant kiss.
Thus does History instruct us. That any political movement
which abandons the reasonable pursuit of achievable objectives and embraces
instead a regime dedicated to the imposition and enforcement of a universal and
uncompromising “republic of virtue”, may begin by executing its enemies, but it
will end by making enemies of, and executing, its friends. Freedom can never be
secured by coercion. Every revolutionary movement which tried has ended up
devouring itself.
If the Greens have indeed entered their Jacobin phase, it is
likely to be their last.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Wednesday, 9 August 2017.
