Home > Author > Bertrand De Jouvenel
41 " It withstands on occasion the mass whence it came, and it carries the day. It is hard in reality for private persons attending a meeting, taken up as they are with their own concerns and without having concerted among themselves beforehand, to feel the confidence necessary to reject the proposals which are cleverly presented to them from the platform, and in that necessity for which it is supported by arguments based on considerations of a kind to which they are strangers. There, too, we see the reason why the Roman people was able for so long to pass its laws on the public square: an examination of the procedure followed shows conclusively that their effective part consisted merely in ratifying what had been jointly determined by the magistrates and the Senate. In our times, the same methods are exactly produced at annual general meetings of shareholders, how could the managing class strong in competence and briefed to withstand opponents failed to grow convinced that they are the people apart, that only in their hands can the interests of society be safeguarded and that, in brief, society's strongest interest is to preserve and cherish its elite of managers? "
― Bertrand De Jouvenel , On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth
42 " The leveling process need find no place in its programme: it is embedded in its destiny. From the moment that it seeks to lay hands on the resources latent in the community, it finds itself impelled to put down the mighty by its natural tendency as that which causes a bear in search of honey to break the cells of the hive. How will the common people, the dependents and the laborers, welcome its a secular work of destruction? With joy, inevitably. Its work is that of demolishing feudal castles; ambition motivates it, but the former victims rejoice in their liberation. Its work is that of breaking the shell of petty private tyrannies so as to draw out the hoarded energy within; greed motivates it but the exploited rejoice in the downfall of their exploiters. The final result of this stupendous work of aggression, does not disclose itself till late. Visible, no doubt, is the displacement of many private dominions by one general dominion, of many aristocracies by one "statocracy." But at first, the common people can but applaud: the more capable among them are, in a continuous stream, enrolled in Power's army - the administration - there to become the masters of their former social superiors. "
43 " The English aristocracy knew better how to work together; the reason perhaps being that, whereas in France the parliament passed into the hands of the lawyers and so became an instrument of the crown, in England it remained an organ of the social authorities and a rallying-point for their opposition. So well did it understand the art of giving to its resistance a plausible show of public advantage that the Magna Carta, to take one instance, though in reality nothing more than a capitulation of the king to vested interests acting in their own defence, contained phrases about law and liberty which are valid for all time.Whereas the French nobles got themselves known to the people as petty tyrants, often more unruly and exacting than a great one would be, the English nobles managed to convey to the yeoman class of free proprietors the feeling that they too were aristocrats on a small scale, with interests to defend in common with the nobles. This island English aristocracy achieved its master-stroke in 1689. With Harrington rather than John Locke for inspiration, it riveted on the Power given the king whom it had brought from overseas limits so cleverly contrived that they were to last a long time.The essential instrument of Power is the army. An article of the Bill of Rights made standing armies illegal, and the Mutiny Act sanctioned courts martial and imposed military discipline for the space of only a year; in this way, the government was compelled to summon Parliament every year to bring the army to life again, as it were, when it was on the verge of legal dissolution. Hence the fact that, even today, there are the “Royal” Navy and the “Royal” Air Force, but not the “Royal” Army. In this way, the tradition of the Army's dependence on Parliament is preserved. "
44 " Bad tactics and the suicide of the French aristocracy: For France the 18th century was a period of aristocratic reaction, so badly handled, however, that instead of resulting in the limitation of the monarchial Power, it ended by destroying monarchy and aristocracy alike, and by exalting a Power which was far more absolute than that of the “Great King” had ever been. "
45 " Very different, however, is the case that the strength of power is in inverse ratio to its extent - which is what we see today, when the political controls which extend in all directions and leave nothing untouched, are liable to be given, whether simultaneously or successively, contradictory impulsions, and the master of a regimented society is not a single mind, but a confused jumble. It is in such a case as certain as anything can be that, unless there is curtailment of the state's activities, the reins of government will in the end be brought together into one imperial hand, whatever its name it takes and from whatever place in society it comes. What, then, will an egalitarian society, in which the high command no longer resembles an excited crowd look like? "
46 " Strong in services rendered, the now wealthy heirs of Power’s lawyer-servants claimed henceforward to control its actions, and assuredly there was no other body of men in the country better qualified to hold Power in check. If officers were bought the control over the sales exercised by this body hedged in the appointment of a new magistrate with guarantees which ensured that no senate was ever recruited better.If the members of the Parliament were not elected by the public, they deserved on that account more of the public confidence, as being less it's flatterers by design than its champions by principle. Taken as a whole, they formed a weightier and more capable body of men than those of the British Parliament. Was it right, then, for the monarchy to accept and sanction this counter-Power? Or did its dignity demand that it react against the pretension of Parliament? That was a policy of one party, which called itself Richelieu’s heir and it was in fact, led by d’Aiguillon, a great-nephew of the great Cardinal. But if the need was to smash now this aristocracy of the robe and extend that the royal authority even further, it had to be done as in former days to the plaudits of the common people and by employing a new set of plebeians against the present wearers of periwigs. Mirabeau saw as much, but that d’Aiguillon’s faction were blind to it.That faction consisted of nobles who had been more or less plucked by the monarchial Power and were now getting new feathers by installing themselves into wealth-giving apparatus of state which had been built by the plebeian clerks. Finding that offices were now of greater value than manors. They fell to on the offices. Finding that the bulk of the feudal dues had been diverted into the coffers of the state, they put their hands in them. And, occupying every place and obstructing every avenue leading to Power, they succeeded in weakening it both by their incapacity and by their feeble efforts to prevent it from attracting, as formerly, to its banners and the aspirations of the common people.In this way the men who should have served the state, finding themselves discarded, turned Jacobin. In the cold shades of a parliamentary opposition, which, if it had been accepted, would have transformed the absolute monarchy into a limited one, a plebeian elite champed at the bit; had it been admitted to office, it would have extended even further the centralizing power of the throne. So much was it part of its nature to serve the royal authority that it was to ensure its continuance even when there was no king. "
47 " The wish of the population was to be quit of the royal intendants and to administer itself by localities. The Constituent Assembly gave it a parent satisfaction by entrusting all departments of government to elected local assemblies. But simultaneously, it destroyed just those historical units which had the ability and the will to govern themselves. The geometrical intelligence of Sieyes conceived the idea of cutting up the country into twenty-four equal rectangles, themselves divided into nine equal communes, which, by the same infantile geometry, spawned nine cantons each. Though this crazy plan was not followed through, it remained at the ideal of the creators of the “departements.” It was safe enough after that to give these artificial creations an autonomous existence! As though there were danger of such as they feeling the breath of life under as though they were danger of such as a feeling the breath of a life on their own! "
48 " In the course of history, kings have welcomed more and more people to their courts, which became more and more brilliant. Is it not obvious that these courtiers and the "officers" were stolen from the feudal lords, who just lost at one fell swoop, their retinues and their administrators? The modern state nourishes a vast bureaucracy. Is not the corresponding decline in the staff of the employer patent to all?Putting the mass of the people to productive work makes possible at any given moment of technical advance the existence of a given number of non-producers. These non-producers will either be dispersed in a number of packets or concentrated in one immense body, according as the profits of productive work accrue to the social or to the political authorities. The requirement of Power, its tendency and its raison d'etre, is to concentrate them in its own service. To this task, it brings us so much ardour, instinctive rather than designed that in course of time it does to a natural death the social order which gave it birth.This tendency is due not to the form taken by any particular state but to the inner essence of Power, which is the inevitable assailant of the social authorities and sucks the very lifeblood. And the more vigorous a particular power is a more virile it is to the role of vampire. When it falls to weak hand, which gives aristocratic resistance a chance to organize itself, the state's revolutionary nature becomes for the time being effaced.This happens either because the forces of aristocracy opposed to the now enfeebled statocratic onslaught a barrier capable of checking it, or, more frequently, because they put a guard on their assailant, by laying hands on the apparatus which endangers them; they guarantee their own survival by installing themselves in the seat of government. This is exactly what did happen to the two epochs when the ideas of Montesquieu and Marx took shape.The counter-offensive of the social authorities cannot be understood unless it is realized that the process of destroying aristocracy goes hand in hand with a tendency in the opposite sense. The mighty are put down - if they are independent of the state; but simultaneously, a statocrcy is exalted, and the new statocrats do more than lay a collective hand on the social forces - they laid them on the lay them each his own hand; in this way, they divert them from Power and restore them again to society, in which thereafter the statocrats join forces, by reason of the similarity of their situations and interests, with the ancient aristocracies in retreat. Moreover, the statocratic acids, in so far as they break down the aristocratic molecules, do not make away with all the forces which they liberate. Part of them stays unappropriated, and furnishes new captains of society with the personnel necessary to the construction of new principates. In this way, the fission of the feudal cell at the height of the Middle Ages released the labour on which the merchant-drapers rose to wealth and political importance. So also in England, with a greed of Henry VIII had fallen on the ecclesiastical authorities to get from their wealth, the wherewithal to carry out his policies, the greater part of the monastic spoils, stuck to the fingers of hands, which had been held out to receive them. These spoils founded the fortunes of the nascent English capitalism. In this way, new hives are forever being built, in which lie hidden a new sort of energies; these will in time inspire the state to fresh orgies of covetousness. That is why the statocratic aggression seemed never to reach its logical conclusion - the complete atomization of society, which should contain henceforward nothing but isolated individuals whom the state alone rules and exploits. "
49 " The Revolution and individual rights:That the Revolution, however fine its language, worked for Power and not for liberty as strikingly proved by what happened to individual rights in the course of the upheaval which started in 1789. Never was more striking – or, no doubt more sincere - proclamation made of the intention to recognize that man, as man, had certain sacred rights. That was a great conception of the members of the Constituent Assembly; that is their title to fame. And in like manner the members of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, and the Thermidorians, all alike, even Bonaparte himself, claimed to have dedicated and guaranteed these rights. And yet the Revolution, obeying the stirrings less of the ideas which it proclaimed than of the unseen principle of life which gave in motion, wiped out all the rights which it had claimed to exalt, and effectively disarmed the citizen of every sure guarantee against the Power to which it had bequeathed an unlimited authority. "
50 " Imperium and DemocracyHistory, we have seen, is the picture of a concentration of forces growing to the hand of a single person, called the state, which disposes, as it goes, of ever ampler resources, claims over the community, ever wider rights, and tolerates less and less any authority existing outside itself. The state is command; it aims at being the organizer-in-chief of society, and at making its monopoly of this roles ever more complete. We have seen now, on the other hand, various social authorities defend themselves against it, and set their right in the opposition to its rights, and their liberties, which are often of an anarchic or oppressive character, to its authority. Unceasing war has been waged between these two forces, betweem the interest calling itself general and interests avowing themselves private.Power has its ups and downs, but, lookging at the picture as a whole, it is one of continuous advance, an advance which is reflected in the stupendous growth of its instruments, its revenues, its armed forces, its police forces, and its capacity to make laws.Next, we have seen the old Power cast out. But this revolution has not been followed by Power’s dismemberment; far from it. What has perished in the upheveal has been the social authorities which obstructed its advance. And the spiritual authority, too, which gave it rules of behavior, has suffered a great decline. But the complex of rights and powers which composed it has not fallen apart: it has only passed into other hands. "
51 " History is the register of the strife of authorities. "
― Bertrand De Jouvenel
52 " The uses to which Rousseau’s doctrine has been turned are a mater for amazement and provide a striking lesson in social history. All that has been taken over from it is the magic formula, popular sovereignty, divorced both from the subject-matter to which it was applicable and from the fundamental condition of its exercise, the assembly of the people. It is now used to justify the very spate of legislation which it was its purpose to dam, and to advance the indefinite enablement of Power – which Rousseau had sought to restrict!All his school had made individual right the beginning and the end of his system. It was to be guarantee by subjecting to it at two removes the actual Power in human form, namely the executive. The executive was made subject to the law, which was kept strictly away from it, and the law was made subject to the sacrosanct principles of natural justice. The idea of the law’s subjection to natural justice has not been maintained. That of power’s subjection to the law has fared a little better, but has been interpreted in such a way that the authority which makes laws has incoporated with itself the authority which applies them; they have become united, and so the omnipotent law has raised to its highest pitch a Power which it has made omnicompetent. Rousseau’s school had concentrated on the idea of law. Their labour was in vain: all that the social consciousness has taken over from it is the association between the two conceptions, law and popular will. It is no longer accepted that a law owes its validity, as in Rousseau’s thought, should be confined to a generalized subject -matter. Its majesty was usurped by any expression of an alleged popular will.A mere juggling with meanings has brought the wheel full circle to the dictum which so digusted our philosophers: “Whatever pleases the prince shall have force of law.” The prince has changed – that is all.The collapse of this keystone has brought down the whole building. The principle of liberty has been based on the principle of law: to say that liberty consists in obedience to the laws only, presupposes in law such characteristics of justice and permanenece as may enable the citizen to know with precision the demands which are and will be made on him; the limits within which society may command him being in this way narrowly defined, he is his own master in his own prescribed domain. But, if law comes merely to reflect the caprices of the people, or of some body to which the legislative authority has been delegate, or of a faction which control that body, then obedience to the laws means in effect subjection to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of men whoch give this will the form of law. In that event the law is no longer the stay of liberty. The inner ligatures of Rousseau’s system come apart, and what was intended as a guarantee becomes a means of oppression. "
53 " ...the French Revolution took away from justice the duty which it had previously performed of defending the individual against the encroachments of Power….the cribbing and cabining of justice and the baring of the individual were the work, not of the Reign of Terror, but of the Constituent Assembly. Also because this condition of things has been bequeathed by the Revolution to modern society, in which these principles are still in action.Just as the Revolution crushed any bodies whose authority was capable of limiting that of the state, so it deprived the individual of every constitutional means of making his right previal against that of the state. It worked for the absolutism of Power.The Russian Revolution offers the same contrast, but still more pronounced, between the liberty promised and the authority realized. It was not any particular Power, but Power itself, which was denounced and damned by the school of Marx and Engels, with a vigour nearly equal to that of the anarchists. In a justly celebrated pamphlet Lenin asserted that the Revolution must “concentrate all it forces against the might of the state; its task is not to improve the governmental machine but to destroy it and blot it out. "
54 " History is the register of the strife of authorities. Always and everywhere man takes possession of man to bend him to his will and adapt him to his designs; so that society is seen to be a galaxy of authorities which arise, grow, and fight each other. "
55 " No one supposes, when he sees a forester pruning a copse to help the trees to grow, or a gardener hunting for snails, tending young plants under glass frames, or exposing them to the health-giving heat of a conservatory, that these things are done from a feeling of affection for the vegetable kingdom. And yet care for it he does, much more so than cold reason would suppose. This affection, however, is not the motivating reason for his pains; it is rather their necessary accompaniment. "
