POL1: The Modern State And Its Alternatives (POL1)
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POL1: Benjamin Constant - The modern state and it's alternatives
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POL1: The Modern State And Its Alternatives (POL1)
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Cambridge University (CAM)
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Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
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1. Benjamin Constant
Context to Constant’s writing – French revolution, who he is speaking to, summarised
essay intros
Lecture notes
• Constant considers Hobbes’ sea monster, the leviathan, to be the problem of modern politics. For
Constant the worst thing that could happen is the tyrannical sovereign.
• The French revolution – Constant is born in 1767. French revolution takes place in 1789. There is a
debt crisis where the King wants to raise taxes. By August 1789, the declaration of the rights of man
and the citizen = published, which proclaims universal human rights.
o October 1789 = property of the catholic church is seized – and there is a SLAVE REBELLION
that year, because you have proclaimed all humans have natural rights. (1791 = Saint
Domingue uprisings)
o 1791 – slave rebellions in Saint Dominigue
o 1792 – Jacobians take power and forms a french republic
▪ This leads to the revolutionary wars, the execution of the king and the start of the
terror.
o 1793 – A cult of reason is initiated to replace Christianity
o 1794 – Abolition of slavery and slave trade in France and French colonies
• The rise and fall of Napoleon –
o 1795 – the directory took power (weak executive + a legislative)
o 1804 – Napoleon crowned emperor
o 1815 – final defeat of Napoleon + French monarchy is restored
Benjamin Constant
• Initially supported the republic, initially backed Napoleon and was his advisor in 1815. He delivers the
speech in XXX.
• Constant had 5 key themes for his critique of government:
o 1. Old French monarchy – French monarchy had no constraints/check on their power, and
used their power in an arbitrary way, unconstrained by the rule of law. Constant noted the
last French king has led ‘vicious governments…repressive in their efforts’. Unlike Hobbes,
Constant recognised the dangers of arbitrary power.
o 2. Terror of the Jacobins – the revolutionaries inherited a state and accrued massive coercive
power. The leviathan was not broken up. They couldn’t be trusted with this unchecked
power any more than monarchs could, it remained tyranny → they wanted to restore the
ancient idea of virtue, without regard for the beliefs of the French citizens. They wanted to
make them have new beliefs. To be ethically good in a roman sense. → New Calendar;
Called Republic; Roman numerals → tyranny because the French people want to be
Christian.
o 3. Critique of the nation – he argues the ‘great empire’ does not exist independently of its
provinces → to defend the rights of the nation will lead to there being no nation. France
introduced conscription, and though it did not do well initially in defending France from her
enemies, eventually conscription meant France was militarily successful. There hadn’t been
citizen armies since the ancient times. Other states then started to copy France. In contrast,
Hobbes thought people became the state,
o 4. Napoleon as a conquering emperor – he felt Napoleon did not belong in the modern
world → “are we here only to build with our drying bodies, your road of fame?’ Chapter 15;
Napoleon wanted empire beyond Europe whereas for Constant, the modern world was
about Peace > Empire.
, o 5. The application of ancient political ideas in the modern world → the problem is the
modern world is fundamentally different – in monarchy, there are large states, rather than
city-states where monarchy is absent; Athenian democracy & Roman Republic depended on
slavery ; Commerce was replacing war in modern world; Liberty now meant something
different (ancient liberty had = participation)
▪ Context of modern world is fundamentally different
▪ Slavery has no place in the modern world; Napoleon is a man OUT OF HIS TIME, he
reintroduces slavery
▪ Ancient world was a world of war → Napoleon’s wars were problematic for
commerce, which Constant thought the natural successor of war as it facilitated
more gentle human qualities.
▪ Ancient man is different to modern man, and liberty now means something
different. In Ancient times, you were free if you could participate in the decisions
of the state. Modern liberty by contrast is the freedom to live according to your
private tastes, beliefs (religious) + pleasures. Constant thought France wanted
freedom to choose, not the right to engage in decisions of the state.
▪ If we don’t respect individual choices → this is dangerous.
• Why does something bad happen when we mix the ancient and the modern world? Ancient liberty
in the ancient world was not seen as dangerous. Ancient Athenian assembly did not have the same
COERCIVE apparatus behind it as the modern state did; the ancients saw choosing own religion as
sacrilege; ancients wanted ancient liberty;
o Imposing ancient liberty on France (modern state) – for constant, the revolutionaries
ignored the actual wants and beliefs of the French people → big mistake;
o Most French people didn’t want ancient liberty + they COULDN’T EXERCISE IT → too big
o Revolutionaries asked French people to make sacrifices which, for most of them, were for
things they did not value;
o The outcome was TYRANNY.
• So the revolution for Constant was founded on a mistaken ideal. It would always end in violence
because a small group of people with huge coercive + unchecked power were imposing their ideas
on people who didn’t believe in the ideal = therefore tyranny.
• The moderns need representative government: representation is ‘a discovery of the moderns’; a
system where a nation charges a few individuals with what it cannot/doesn’t wish to do itself; must
remain vigilant otherwise representatives will abuse the system; protection of modern liberty is the
PURPOSE of representative government → need constant surveillance
• Moderns have introduced and are protected by commerce. Argued they had a strong tendency to
commerce and peace in the modern world. The small amount of commerce in the ancient times was a
lucky accident, in modern world commerce + peace is the natural state of things. It inspires men to
develop a ‘vivid love of individual independence’; arbitrary power of the modern state threatens this
liberty however;
o Property in modern commerce = circulates & hard to seize
o Credit makes representatives dependent + constrains war – as money would ‘flee’
o Assumes credit acts rationally – what if the creditors possess extreme ideas? What if the
benefit from conquest
• Constant offers a critique of utopian politics → he understands the impulse of trying to recover
what has been lost from antiquity they had “such a feeling of energy and dignity”; but there has
been a PROFOUND change between ancient and modern man → but this profound change must be
understood, ‘otherwise well-intentioned men caused infinitive evils during our long and stormy
revolution’
o Social power in the revolution destroyed individual independence but NOT the need for it
= the terror
,The soviet revolution as a deadlier repetition of the French → many Russian revolutionaries thought of
themselves as inheriting or imitating the French; had a far deadlier shift from representation to tyranny; Tsar
monarchy collapses in Feb 1917; October 1917 the Bolsheveiks seize power; 1917-1920 Civil war between
Bolsheviks + opponents which draws in other states. The Bolsheviks sought to export their revolution east until
their military were defeated in Poland. Under justification of war the Bolshevils organised a revolutionary
policy to eliminate the ‘class enemies’. Under Stalin, 15m died including a state-imposed famine on Ukraine
• Bolshevik revolution and new beliefs → tried to make citizens atheist; Soviet state appropriated
property of the Russian Orthodox Church & many Christians killed/persecuted; After Nazi invasion,
Stalin reverses this viewing Orthodox church as a source of patriotism; After Stalin’s death,
Khrushchev reverses back to state atheism; 1988 USSR turned the 1000th anniversary of Christianity
coming to Russia into a state event
But was Napoleon an out of place ancient in the modern world? Slavery and conquest in Americas →
Napoleon used the language of liberty and yet reintroduced slavery into Haiti; in losing war against Haiti
napoleon was defeated in his aim of acquiring a north American empire, he then sold the territory he did not
control to the Americans ‘Louisiana Purchase’ bought by Jefferson. This was critical to American western
expansion
• Imperial war was now unnecessary (i.e. ancient war imposed on modern states); and they were self-
defeating → but this omits that 19th C war WAS commerce, not commerce v war ➔ first opium war
opened China by British naval forces to European commercial powers; Suez Canal – changed transit
of trade and so became a centre of geopolitical conflict leading to Britain occupying Egypt in 1882
• France and Empire → Constant had an ILLUSION that modern sates in the industrial age were self
sufficient and “placed on a territory large enough for their needs’
o Constant died 6 months after French conquest of Algeria;
o Some Frenchmen who opposed France’s conquests in Europe did not oppose French
Monarchy’s conquest of Algeria.
• WW1 → perhaps evidences Constant’s ideas, with conscription of armies, modern technology and
immense destruction. This takes place 100 years after Constant → There was a path from empire,
commerce and war under modern conditions which led there (Britain sought to control middle east)
So what is modern liberty in modern politics → modern liberties and specific liberties are NOT natural
rights; instead something which moderns had come to value; but what is what moderns value so much
materially depends on extraction and that leads to empire and war by leviathans? → Is war and modern
liberty mutually exclusive?
PRINCIPLES OF POLITICS APPLICABLE TO ALL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS
(Fontana 1988)
Context
• Constant is reviewing the ‘present constitution’ noting that even though it has been accepted by
the French people, it is ‘still open to improvement’. Constant argues the constitution guarantees
liberty & therefore anything to do with liberty = a constitutional matter
• It must not be overly detailed, this would create ‘traps’ but it must contain ‘broad principles’ which
no national authority can act in any way incompatible with said principles.
• This document was published in 1815 → seen as an expression of his political
experience/philosophy
• Freedom = an organic phenomenon, to attack any element of it was to attach it more widely.
• He argues France is no longer in extreme danger, which he noted we are ‘tempted to believe in’ →
instead, these threats have lost ‘most of their gravity’. He argues France in 1815 sought her ‘domestic
independence’ only, the French people he argues have 2 feelings: desire for liberty, and abhorrence
of foreign rule (which would be against interests of the French people’
, Chapter 1 – on the sovereignty of the people – the constitution ‘formally recognises the principle of the
sovereignty of the people’ ➔ this means supremacy of general will > individual will which Constant asserts
‘cannot be contested’. When you do not rule with the general will, this becomes illegitimate force. There are
therefore 2 forms of power to constant: Illegitimate (force) and legitimate (general will) – this is the
sovereignty of the people. He notes men are ‘always reluctant to limit sovereignty’ but the sovereignty of the
people needs defining, otherwise it will cause ‘calamity’.
• If you state sovereignty of the people is unlimited → then you ‘toss at random into human society, a
degree of power which is too large in itself and which is bound to constitute an evil’ → this is
regardless of who holds the power (i.e. French revolution) ➔ Leviathan is the problem of the modern
state. It is ‘degree of force’ which is the problem, not form of gov. It will always cause evil.
• Therefore society cannot have ‘unlimited authority over its members’ – its sovereign because to
group of people can claim sovereignty to itself, unless delegated, but this doesn’t mean you can
‘dispose sovereignly of the existence of individuals’ → individual must remain independence.
• Sovereignty has ‘a limited and relative existence’ → where the individual existence starts
‘jurisdiction of sovereignty ends’ → to overstep this is for society to become despotic. This means
there are acts which cannot be sanctioned, regardless of the support by the majority.
• He argues this is where Rousseau was mistaken – he claimed the individual gives himself entirely to
the sovereign – but Rousseau has forgotten that everything given to the sovereign originates from the
individual. It therefore isn’t a condition ‘equal for all’ as we give ourselves to an individual/few → this
therefore means Rousseau is incorrect when he says nobody has an interest in making conditions
more onerous for all, because some are ‘above the common condition’ ➔ Rousseau claimed
sovereignty couldn’t be ‘alienated, delegated or represented’ which to Constant meant it couldn’t be
exercised and the principle was thus destroyed.
• He contests Hobbes’ argument that the sovereign, to protect from external aggressors must have
the absolute right to punish, declare war and legislate “nothing could be more false than these
conclusions’ → Constant reasons he has these rights when provoked/just (ie. To make war when
attacked, to imprison a guilty party) → the authority, regardless of regime type, must be limited to
‘authority necessary for the safety of the association’
• “When sovereignty is unlimited, there is no means of sheltering individuals from governments’ →
even if you divide powers, if the power is unlimited this will not ‘remedy…despotism’ → power must
have limits.
• Constant therefore states the individual possesses ‘individual rights independently of all social and
political authority’ which no authority can violate without ‘destroying its own credentials’:
o Rights of: individual freedom, religious freedom, freedom of opinion (which includes the
right to express oneself openly); enjoyment of property; and guarantee against ALL
arbitrary power ➔ ergo sovereignty of the people ‘is not unlimited’
o ‘no duty binds us’ to corrupting laws which threaten ‘the most noble parts of our
existence’ → with these rights, the individual does not possess the right to infringe upon
them, they therefore cannot delegate this to anyone else
o If a law seems unjust, we must ‘avoid becoming its executor’ → constant terms this ‘passive
resistance’
• IN SUM: sovereignty of people is not unlimited; it is limited by justice & rights of individual; will of
entire people cannot make something unjust just; will of the people cannot legitimate what is
illegitimate (use of force) as they never possessed these rights and therefore cannot delegate them.
➔ the constitution is then about HOW you limit sovereignty through political institutions. Limit of
sovereignty can be ensured through ‘public opinion’
Chapter 2 – the nature of royal power in a constitutional monarchy – there must be a neutral power.
Constant cites the constitutional monarch, which is a neutral and ‘inviolable’ power. Ministers in contract have
a ‘power which properly belongs to them’ it is active. There are 3 competences which need to cooperate:
executive, legislative and judicial. Should they clash, neutral power can resolve, as their interest is in them
supporting & understanding eachother. → in constitutional monarchy he argues there are 5 power: royal
(make laws), executive (make laws), representative power of long duration (hereditary assembly), rep power
of public opinion (elective assembly) & judicial.
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