Nancy Pelosi's Darkest Hour

I've been wondering about our Democratic friends for a while, really going back to the 2000 election when Al Gore didn't concede a normal change election. By that I mean that it's normal for the voters to think it is Time for a Change after one party has had two consecutive terms of the presidency.

The exceptions merely prove the rule, where Michael Dukakis, he of the tank photo, lost to George Bush I.

My point is: what is their problem? Of course the other guys are going to win elections, the bums, especially after we've been in office for a couple of terms. But wait until next time. We'll show 'em, the bums.

Obviously, in 2000, and again in 2016, our Democratic friends didn't approach losing a normal change election in this quintessential male way.

My feeling is that this is explained by a deep and existential understanding in our Democratic friends that something has gone wrong in the political universe. The stars are no longer moving in their accustomed courses.

I think they are getting more and more desperate to hang onto power. Because they feel it slipping away. They don't know why. They just know that Republicans and white oppressors are evil and that Gaia wants them dead.

So now we come to Our Nance: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Speaker of the House of Representatives.

What's it all about Alfie Nancee? 

What's the deal with endless committee investigations of Donald Trump and two abortive impeachment efforts? What in the world do you think you are doing with these nukings of the political system, Madam Speaker?

Well, I have a few ideas, based partly on my eevil sexism, and my understanding of the difference between honor in men and women, after Honor: a History by James Bowman.

According to Bowman, honor among men is the reputation for courage, and I think it issues from the necessity for men to stick together in battle and not run for the exits.

But honor among women is the reputation for chastity, he says. You can see why. There are enormous advantages for a woman in not spreading her favors around, for any number of reasons. But I think this culture of chastity in women goes way beyond sex, and especially applies to the reluctance of women to admit when they are wrong.

Yeah, I know. Men hate to admit when they are wrong. But women are worse, in my opinion.

When women lose an argument, or are exposed as less than pure in heart, they tend to lie about it, and they tend to be vindictive towards their opponents.

Oh, sure, men do that too, but with men vindictiveness is considered "bad sportsmanship."

I have extended this into a whole philosophy, that women do not like, do not relate, and cannot thrive in the "public square." Because women do not communicate in a kind of public "open outcry" of a public meeting. They communicate one-on-one over coffee, and judge the world through "I can't believe she said/did that" of "Much as I hate to say it..."

Also, I think that women are very bad at revising their world view when it starts collapsing about them. This is because I believe that very few women have "strategic minds." They are good at the tactics of manipulating the family and the community of women in the neighborhood on a day-to-day basis. But, with some remarkable exceptions, women just don't get strategy.

So, to me, all this explains Our Nance to a tee. Nancy grew up in a Democratic world, scion of an Italian political family in Baltimore, Maryland. It just does not compute that America is now 50-50 and Democrats can't just take the white working class for granted like in the Good Old Days.

It explains all her shenanigans, especially now in the Trump era, when the white middle class (and increasingly the East Asian middle class) is rebelling against half a century of vindictive ruling-class anti-white racism. At a strategic level, I just don't think Nancy understands what to do. So she does what comes naturally to a woman, which is to say nasty things about the other women in the neighborhood and "stop talking" to the women that offend her.

Miranda Devine has some nice takes in the NYPost on this.

If anyone is to blame for the hyper-partisanship in Washington these days, it’s the spiteful House speaker.

Everyone in Congress — and, by extension, the nation — has been sullied by the spite and vitriol she has injected into the political sphere. There is no grace or Christian charity, just the barren wasteland of the zero-sum game, power for power’s sake. 

Of course, the January 6 committee is at the center of this, and the unassailable fact is that Nancy Pelosi is the boss of Congress, and she "commands" the Capitol Hill police. So, if there weren't enough police on hand to defend the Capitol, Nancy is to blame. Period, end of story, no need for a commission.

Guess what: the one person that should not be running the January 6 investigation is Nancy Pelosi!

Now, the point is that the most difficult thing for a politician to do is to admit blame and, I would say, particularly so for a woman politician for the reasons articulated above in respect of honor in women.

There is a strategic reason why it is a good thing to admit when you are wrong. It clears the decks. It lets you get on with life. It lets you say: wow, we screwed that up, so let's make sure we don't do it again.

But if you don't admit when you are wrong you are trapped using all your energy to twist the facts around to absolve yourself of guilt and blame other people when you should be figuring out how to avoid the same mistake in the future.

So really, for me as a racist-sexist-homophobe, it is a Good Thing that Nancy Pelosi is tying herself in knots with her spitefulness and vindictiveness. It means that she will lead the Democrats into the wilderness, and let the rest of us figure out how to avoid the stupid Nancy Pelosi mistakes in the future.

One thing I, as a profound racist, wonder about is what happens when the current White-as-Snow Democratic leaders retire and are replaced by the quota People of Color and Gender. Just between you and me, I don't think the next generation of Democrats are up to snuff. Can you spell K-A-M-A-L-A?

Anatomy of Revolution: Thermidor and Summary

After a revolution reaches the peak of ideological fever, writes Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution the fever breaks, and things return, relatively, to normal. This retreat from frenzy is called "Thermidor" after the fall of Robespierre, the director of the Reign of Terror, in the revolutionary month of Thermidor.

In the English Revolution, Brinton reckons that Thermidor arrived in April 1653 when Cromwell dissolved the Rump parliament and became Protector. Then,

In 1657 Cromwell became Lord Protector, half a king at least, and with the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 the great English Revolution may be said to have ended.

In France the fall of the "incorruptible" Robespierre was brought about in 1793 by a conspiracy among apparently orthodox Jacobins that were involved in war profiteering and the like. Although the conspirators had not intended to end the Terror, the public reaction communicated to the government that the ordinary people were done with it, and the Terror slowly subsided through the Convention and the Directory, until Bonaparte's coup d'état in November 1799. 

In the Russian Revolution, Thermidor is more complex. The New Economic Policy of 1921 certainly counts as a relaxation in revolutionary frenzy, but Lenin's death in 1924 led to a rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky and a revival of revolutionary tension. But the enforcement of Five Year Plans and the Great Purge in the 1930s count not as revolutionary but as the normal acts of tyrannous rulers.

The striking commonality in the post Thermidorean period is that the establishment of the monarchical rule of a tyrant.-- even Washington was regarded as a tyrant by some -- should be regarded as normal. 

[W]hen "the "silken threads" of habit, tradition, legality are broken, men must be held together by the "iron chains" of dictatorship. 

Thus the frenzy of terror is replaced by the more reliable rule of an uncontested ruler that inherits the revolution.

As time goes on, the pressures of the Terror applied to ordinary men are relaxed: the special tribunals give place to more regular ones, the revolutionary police are absorbed into the regular police... and the block, guillotine or firing squad are reserved for more dramatic criminals.

Ordinary people can get on with their ordinary lives, and slowly the politically proscribed are amnestied, or are allowed to return, and even allowed back into public life. The new governing class tend to be "a very miscellaneous lot," but they slowly get the country some sort of normalcy, "once more working."

However, Thermidor does not mean a return to economic normalcy.

One of the most striking uniformities... notably in France and Russia, but to a certain extent in the England of the 1650's and the America of the Articles of Confederation, there was more widespread economic suffering, especially among the poorest classes, than during the Terror, or during the last years of the old regime.

Another thing: the messianic universalism of the revolution and the Terror gets replaced by ordinary nationalism, not excluding a little ordinary war and conquest.

Thermidor also means the rehabilitation of the old church. In England, France, and Russia the established church was cruelly persecuted by the revolutionaries. But in the reaction, the persecutions were relaxed, and the old religion allowed to resume its place in the national culture.

Thermidor meant a return to pleasure, especially in England and France. That is what "Restoration Comedy" was all about in England.

[I]n the frank return to the pleasure of the senses, to gambling, drinking, dancing, open love-making, to a light and cynical literature, to a frank joy in clothes and other vanities, the two countries present a very close parallel.

Even in Soviet Russia, in the New Economic Policy period, the "Nepmen" were seen as exceptionally vulgar, and prostitution and gambling returned to Moscow. Of course, Russia seems to be an exception -- even in 1964 in the revised edition of Anatomy -- in that it maintained a "continuous pressure" for decades on the individual to conform or else. There are many reasons that can be found to explain this, but Brinton worries about straying into the realm of "prophecy." Still, he suggests,

The ideas, the promises of orthodox Marxism as now embodied in Russia  may well prove in the next few years almost as embarrassing in Russian internal politics as useful in Russian external politics.

Still, despite the inevitable end of revolutionary frenzy, we cannot say that "revolution has changed nothing." Life in all the post-revolution regimes was different. But what did the revolutions change?

Some institutions, some laws, even some humans habits, the clearly changed in very important ways;

 Other institutions, etc., not so much.

In the case of France, it can be said that the revolution ended "the worst abuses, the worst inefficiencies of the old regime, that resulted from a "thousand year struggle between the centripetal forces of the Crown and the centrifugal forces of the feudal nobility." The achievement of government efficiency is the most striking common achievements of the revolutions. And the metric system. It is curious that revolutions all launched in the name of freedom ended up merely promoting the efficiency of government. All the revolutions took property from at least some of the previous upper class, and brought some new men into the ruling class, while throwing out some at least of the old ruling class.

And yet how much did the revolutions change life for the ordinary man? The revolutions had grand plans to change the family, religion, and "personal habits," but after the Thermidor the average man stands "on certain matters about where he stood when the revolution began."

What is loosely called the "Industrial Revolution" had certainly a much greater effect, forcing John [Jones] into a more difficult series of adjustments than did our revolutions.

But the revolutions turned "verbal instruments of revolt" into the new myths and rituals or their societies, a mere recitation of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." 

Finallt Brinton offers the following uniformities in the four revolutions.

First, the revolutions occurred in societies on the upswing, from the discontented who felt restraint from the old order.

Second, there were "bitter class antagonisms" in each of the prerevolutionary societies.

Third, there is the "transfer of allegiance of the intellectuals" over to the revolution.

Fourth, in a rapidly changing society the old-regime "governmental machinery is clearly inefficient... [and] laid an intolerable strain on governmental machinery adapted to simpler, more primitive, conditions."

Fifth, the old ruling class starts to "lose faith in the traditions and habits of their class". It "becomes politically inept."

Thus, Brinton ends with three major conclusions:

First, there seem to be uniformities between the four revolutions; second, that there is a difference between men's deed and words, for in the crisis they may say one thing and do another; third, that it is not easy to change society, and that the vast effort of revolution and terror fails, and that, after the Thermidorean reaction, society is "not greatly altered."

Anatomy of Revolution: Accession of the Extremists and Reign of Terror

Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution now looks at the details of the successful seizure of absolute power by the extremists and its culmination in the Reign of Terror.

The simple reason the extremists succeed is that they acquire control of a parallel, but illegal, government alongside the legal government run by the moderates. It turns out that the moderates are weak, but the extremists are strong.

The extremists are able to bring off their coup d'état because they have steadily managed to oust any and all opposition to them in the organizations they control, such as the New Model Army, the Jacobin clubs, and the various soviets throughout Russia. Typically they learned the techniques needed for this from years of secret organizations, plotting, and underground conspiracy.

And they were few. They were not leaders of a widespread movement, but conspirators in a small minority that advertised themselves as representing the Inevitable Future. And they "were very sure that they were superior to the inert and flabby many." It is also true that, as a revolution proceeds, ordinary people drop out of participation, whether in voting in elections or in keeping their heads above the parapet. Of course, the extremists encourage this non-participation, beating up notables, "starting riots at polling places and electoral assemblies;" making it difficult for the hum-drum to support and cast their votes for hum-drum moderates. The extremists are few, but "they are fanatically devoted to their cause" and put their whole energy into seizing power, "acquiring the technique of any pressure group." This even occurred in the English Revolution when a crowd of apprentices appeared at the House of Commons demanding it vote on the extremists' agenda.

The great leaders of the Terrors are fitted for their task by a genuine vocation, a vocation which in ordinary times would exclude them from political power.

And they learned their trade on the job as their pressure groups transformed into an illegal parallel government, usurping government functions and issuing administrative orders and laws as the opportunities offered.

The extremists are not, then, politically innocent or inexperienced; they have a long experience of oppression, and a briefer, but very intensive, training in actual government before they come to power.

Armed with their basic training in governance, they extremists created governments with a rough-and-ready centralization executed through a central committee, and executed through an extemporized bureaucracy and revolutionary tribunals. Plus a secret police: Cheka, comité de sureté générale, and in England through parish clergy! This centralized administration extended to the economy, whether or not self-consciously socialist. And inefficient. 

Indeed, one of the reasons why the governments of the Terror seem so tyrannical and hard to bear, even retrospectively, is precisely that they were so inefficient.

And yet there was one ray of hope: ordinary criminality seems to be reduced. Possibly because the petty thief on occasion got lynched when the normal authorities became disorganized.

With respect to the Reign of Terror the important thing is to understand its pervasiveness.

During the Terror, politics becomes as real, as pressing, as unavoidable to John Jones or Jacques Dupont or Ivan Ivanovich as food and drink, wife or mistress, his job and the weather. Political indifference, that mainstay of the modern state, becomes impossible for even the most selfish, the most unworldly.

It is all very hard on the outsider, the man who gets on the bandwagon, but then has to put up with endless celebrations of revolution -- processions, festivals of reason. Then there are the renamings, "that tend to confuse and annoy the outsider." In France it extended from renaming the Place Louis XV to the Place de la Révolution, changing the calendar and the names of the months. And you never know when "lightning is going to strike him and his household," to be haled into court as a counterrevolutionary. In France there was a concerted effort to shut up brothels, gaming houses, and eliminate drunkenness. There is a "saturation point in large-sclae, obsessive political propaganda after which such propaganda actually backfires."

For the devoted insider, the experience is close to what we call "religious," in the sense that 

men work very hard and excitedly in common to achieve here or somewhere an ideal, a pattern of life not at the moment universally -- or even largely -- achieved.

But humans cannot be transformed overnight, for human behavior changes "with glacial slowness," and so Brinton writes that

the violence... of the Terror is in some sense an overcompensation for the inability of the extremists to carry their ordinary brothers along with them. The Terror is a desperate overshooting of the mark.

Of course.

Our revolutionists are convinced that they are the elect, destined to carry out the will of God, nature, or science... The opponents... are not just political enemies, not just mistaken men... they are sinners, and must not just be beaten -- they must be wiped out.

And even though these revolutions became progressively secular, from English, to American, to French, to Russian, they all seek a heaven "here, now, on earth...to conquer evil once and for all."

But what explains the Terror? Brinton has seven explanations:

First, the "habit of violence" cultivated in the revolutionary process.

Second, most importantly, "the pressure of a foreign and civil war" that justifies the total mobilization and disciplining of the people.

Third, "the newness of the machinery of this centralized government... that works in fits and starts, and frequently jams badly."

Fourth, the "economic crisis... the shortage of the necessities of life."

Fifth, "class struggles" and the polarization between the extremists and the rest of society.

Sixth, the fact that the leaders have been selected "almost in a Darwinian sense... to push on to extremes, to use their special influence to heighten the already high tension of life in society."

Seventh, the element of religious faith shared by the extremists in each revolution.

And then it all comes tumbling down.

[L]arge numbers of men can stand only so much interference with the routines and rituals of their daily existence... The outsider in the crisis period is pushed to the limit of his endurance by interference with some of his most prized and intimate routines[.]

And so comes the Thermidorean Reaction.

Next: Thermidor. and Summary.

More In Common's "American Fabric"

The research outfit More in Common gets funding by, among others:

Luminate (UK), Social Change Initiative (UK), Robert Bosch Foundation (Germany), European Climate Foundation (France), Open Society Foundations (US/Europe) and Ford Foundation (US).

But here is its social fabric of "Hidden Tribes" in America:

Tribe Name	Percent in America
Progressive Activists	8%
Traditional Liberals	11%
Passive Liberals	15%
Politically Disengaged	26%
Moderates	15%
Traditional Conservatives	19%
Devoted Conservatives	6%

Here is how More In Common defines the Hidden Tribes (yes, More In Common is clearly Progressive Activist):

Progressive Activists are deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America's direction today. They tend to be more secular, cosmopolitan, and highly engaged with social media. 

Traditional Liberals tend to be cautious, rational, and idealistic. They value tolerance and compromise. They place great faith in institutions.

Passive Liberals tend to feel isolated from their communities. They are insecure in their beliefs and try to avoid political conversations. They have a fatalistic view of politics and feel that the circumstances of their lives are beyond their control.

The Politically Disengaged are untrusting, suspicious about external threats, conspiratorially minded, and pessimistic about progress. They tend to be patriotic yet detached from politics.

Moderates are engaged in their communities, well informed, and civic-minded. Their faith is often an important part of their lives. They shy away from extremism of any sort.

Traditional Conservatives tend to be religious, patriotic, and highly moralistic. They believe deeply in personal responsibility and self-reliance.

Devoted Conservatives are deeply engaged with politics and hold strident, uncompromising views. They feel that America is embattled, and they perceive themselves as the last defenders of traditional values that are under threat.

Here is how the Hidden Tribes and generations and races feel about "Pride in Being American."

Tribe Name	Pride in being American
Progressive Activists	34%
Gen Z 1997-	52%
Passive Liberals	60%
Asian	62%
Millennials 1981-96	62%
Traditional Liberals	65%
Black	70%
Gen X 1965-80	73%
Females	73%
All	74%
Politically Disengaged	75%
White	75%
Male	76%
Hispanic	76%
Baby Boomers 1946-64	85%
Moderates	87%
Silent Gen 1926-45	94%
Traditional Conservatives	96%
Devoted Conservatives	100%

Just Sayin'.

Anatomy of Revolution: The Rule of the Moderates

Having described the different types of revolutionists, Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution now looks at the rule of the moderates, and why it always seems to be doomed to failure.

At the outset of revolution, the moderates seem to be just the right people to take over; even in Russia in February 1917 when moderates, led by Prince Lvov, took power.

The problem is that the moderates are faced with an impossible task: keeping a government going, writing a new constitution, and usually confronted with a foreign war. And they are confronted with the extremists,

who insisted that the moderates were trying to stop the revolution, that they had betrayed it, that they were as bad as the rulers of the old regime -- indeed, much worse, since they were traitors as well as fools and scoundrels.

And the result is that the radicals end up taking power. Even in the American Revolution, it was the radicals that won, in the Declaration of Independence. There is something about the revolutionary process that leaves moderates in the dust.

In the English Revolution the revolutionaries, the Parliamentarians, were divided roughly into three: an Episcopalian group that were almost Royalists: a moderate group, "Presbyterian in religion, puritan in ethics," constitutional monarchists at heart; and extremists, the Independents, extreme Calvinists. They Indpendents made themselves effective through their control of the New Model Army. The Independents were the most ideological, and under Cromwell they won the revolution.

In the American Revolution there were Loyalists that really didn't have a problem with the royal government, the moderate merchants that started the agitation with their opposition to the Stamp Act, and the radicals with their committees of correspondence and committees of safety "exhibited extraordinary technical skill in the practical politics of revolution" and organized the Continental Congress. in 1774.

In the French Revolution the Royalists were dispatched almost immediately, Moderates like Mirabeau, Lafayette, and the Lameths were opposed by radicals Pétion, Robespierre, Danton, and Brissot. But then war broke out with Austria and Prussia, France was invaded and the radicals threw out the monarchy in an attack on the Tuileries Palace in August 1792. When it came to try the King, the moderates were divided, and so the radicals, "better organized, more aggressive, and perhaps more unscrupulous," won absolute power.

In the Russian Revolution the first government was supported mostly by Kadets, the left-wing of pre-revolutionary Russia. But it fell over the question of continuing the war to support the "imperialist" allies. It was followed by a Socialist government, accused by the Bolsheviks of being "compromisist," certainly moderate compared to the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks almost lost when they backed a "rising of workers in Petrograd" in July, but got their mojo back in the October Revolution when they "took over Petrograd with astonishingly little difficulty and almost no bloodshed."

Brinton explains the victory of the radicals according to a theory of "dual sovereignty," that a parallel illegal government was growing alongside the official, legal government, and eventually acquired enough power to stage a coup and take over. This occurred twice in the English Revolution where the legal government of King Charles was overthrown by the Long Parliament, and again, the Parliament was overthrown by the New Model Army. In the American Revolution this is obscured somewhat because men adhering to the illegal government often served in the legal town councils and colonial legislatures. In the French Revolution the radicals slowly increased their control of Jacobin Clubs. In the Russian Revolution the Bolsheviks slowly gained control of the various soviets -- literally "councils" -- set up after the 1905 rising that ended up constituting a rival government. The point is that in each revolution the extremists were able to construct a rival illegal government network that, at the critical moment could seize power from the legal government.

The weakness of the moderates derives mostly from the difficulty of suppressing the radicals without seeming to be the enemy of the revolution, a situation that all the radical groups exploited, up until the radicals seized power and declared and enforced an end to politics. In other words, if you want to win a revolution, then opposition politics ends on the day that you take power. If you are a moderate and believe in a fair and free discussion of the issues, this is impossible to bring off.

Next: Accession of the Extremists and Reign of Terror.

Anatomy of Revolution: First Stages and the Types of Revolutionists

Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution now looks at the events surrounding the breakout of revolution, the combination of factors that lead to open defiance and replacement of the old regime.

He begins with Figaro, the barber of Beaumarchais' plays, and his devastating critique of the old regime in Marriage of Figaro. He notes that, "after much vacillation, the censor did not stop Beaumarchais' play."

But in all four revolutions, the old regime, with its vacillations and half-hearted attempts at putting down revolution rather indicate the regime lacked the tyrannous instinct it was reputed to have.

But how did the revolutions begin? With a bang or with a whimper? The revolutionaries preferred the bang theory.

History has tended to mark the battle of Concord as the shot heard round the world, and people marveled at the Fall of the Bastille, but it is not clear just when those revolutions began. But the fall of the Czarist regime following riots in Petrograd in March 1917 seems to be the unquestionable start of revolution. 

The English revolution exhibits more of a rolling start, with King Charles dissolving Parliament in 1629 and disastrously summoning it in 1640 when he was going bankrupt. Pretty soon one thing led to another and in 1642 both Parliament and the King were raising armies.

In America there is a good argument that revolution began with the Stamp Act in 1765 which led to "a series of clashes with increasingly well-organized groups of Americans." Or perhaps it began with the Continental Congress in 1774 or the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 or the glorious Fourth of July in 1776.

In France there was no Parliament to focus resistance, but there was the Parlement of Paris, a kind of aristocratic supreme court, that led to "a dramatic defiance of royal power and the forced exile of the judges." Then the Assembly of Notables in 1787 led to the summoning of the Estates-General in 1789. But the Third Estate decided not to conduct business unless the Estates-General were called the "National Assembly." And then the King yielded.

Was it all planned by committees of malcontents, or a nation rising spontaneously to smite its oppressors? Brinton opts for a bit of both. The Bolshevik narrative is that it was all carefully planned, the other revolution narratives propose a spontaneous uprising. 

Clearly, the occasion of revolution arose when "the existing government attempted to raise money from people who refused to pay." Also, it is clear that after the first clash between the old regime and the party of opposition, there ensues a "brief period of joy and hope... the... charming honeymoon of that impossible pair, the Real and the Ideal." Yet was the Bastille a spontaneous response to the dismissal of Necker, or the scheming of freemasons, philosophes, and professional agitators? Brinton proposes a gardening metaphor, that

revolutions do grow from seeds sown by men who want change, but that these men do do a lot of skillful gardening, but that the gardeners are not working against nature but rather in soil and in a climate propitious to their work; and that the final fruits represent a collaboration between men and nature.

What is weird is that in all four revolutions, when it came to the first outbreak of violence, the old regime government was caught flat-footed. Each government totally flubbed its response to the provocation. The authorities responded to the violence, of course,

but in each case with a striking lack of success. Those of the ruling class responsible for such responses in all our societies proved signally unable to make adequate use of force.

In the case of the English revolution, King Charles didn't really have an army to put down the rebellious Parliament. In the case of America, the attempts to put down the rebels actually encouraged them. In the case of the Fall of the Bastille, numerous soldiers actually joined the rioters. In the case of the Russian revolution the soldiers joined the rioters as well, and the railway workers refused to allow the Czar to travel by train.

When the first stages of the revolutions were successful, enlightened people all over the world were delighted. But having won the first battle, 

It has now become the government, and is facing a new set of problems. When it actually gets to work on these problems the honeymoon is soon over.

Because there are all kinds of different revolutionists. And, although both supporters and opponents of revolutions tend to imagine revolutionaries as uniquely good or uniquely bad, they are not that different from ordinary people. 

Brinton himself wrote a book about The Jacobins in the French Revolution and found that and found that about two-thirds were middle class, a quarter were working class, and less then 10 percent were peasants. Average age of members was about 40, They represented, the abler, more ambitious, and successful."

In the English revolution the revolutionists were often merchants, great lords, and small landowning gentry, like Cromwell himself. They were not riffraff. In the American revolution, it was the merchants that first organizes opposition to the Crown. There were disreputable street fighters, but also respectable yeoman farmers. In Russia almost everyone from liberal noble to businessman to professional to working man and kulak was eager to see the back of the Czar.

The leaders of the French revolution ranged from nobles like the Duc d'Orleans, lawyers, scientists, journalists. In the American revolution over half the signers of the Declaration of Indpendence had college degrees. Sam Adams, scion of a merchant family, went to Harvard. The leaders of the English revolution pretty well all came from the highest ranks of society. The leaders of the Russian revolution also included nobles and professionals. Lenin was the son of a school inspector, and Stalin, of peasant-artisan stock, went to a seminary for a while.

The revolutionists were not uniquely successful men or desperate failures. They came from all walks of life, and displayed a whole range of talents.

In other words, 

it makes almost as many kinds of men and women to make a revolution as to make a world...They certainly create a number of empty spaces to fill, and give an opportunity to clever young men who may also be unscrupulous... But they do not re-crate mankind, nor so they eve make use of a completely new and hitherto suppressed set of men and women.

The rank and file are ordinary men and women, and not "riffraff, scoundrels, scum of the earth." The ability of the leaders "is certainly very high." The fact that in the crisis periods of revoluion some very nasty stuff happens, is probably the effect of the emergency on men rather than men creating an extraordinary emergency.

Next: The Rule of the Moderates.

Anatomy of Revolution: The Old Regimes

After setting up his "conceptual scheme" that revolution is a "fever" Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution looks at the Old Regimes of the four revolutions under analysis: British, American, French, and Russian.

Disorder and conflict are not uncommon in all societies. Brinton cites Sorokin in his Social and Cultural Dynamics who cites in England "one hundred and sixty-two 'internal disturbances in intragroup relationships' between 656 and 1921." That's one every eight years. In other words there are likely to be too many symptoms of breakdown in any society to please the analyst of revolution.

First of all, what about the economic situation? The main item of contention was government finances. In England they argued about "Ship Money, benevolences, tonnage and poundage"; in colonial America, they didn't want to pay for the Seven Years War; in France the revolution-friendly Estates-General was called because of the government's financial problems; in Russia "the Czarist regime had achieved an all-around collapse in all fields of government activity." And everyone thought their government was incompetent.

Notice it is the government that was in trouble. In all four societies, the people were doing OK economically: Stuart England was definitely more prosperous than Elizabethan England; in America "the early years of the 1770 were distinctly years of prosperity"; "France in 1789  was a very striking example of a rich society with an impoverished government"; even in Russia, aside from the government breakdown, things were looking up.

But plenty of people thought that the government was hindering them: in America the Stamp Act and Navigation Act and the incorporation of the lands west of the Allegheny into Canada; in France tax-reform offended the privileged and the un-privileged, and tariff reductions with England increased unemployment in Normandy.

Of course, the intellectuals were all against the government. But then they usually are. Victorian intellectuals were "united apparently in nothing but a profound dislike for their environment." But no revolution. But in ancien régime France,

One has the impression of immense numbers of intellectuals... all convinced that the world, and especially France, needs making over from the tiniest and more insignificant details to the most general moral and legal principles.

In Russia, being a writer or teacher "meant being against the government." In America, there was no such unity. But the Enlightenment, with Locke and Montesquieu, introduced the "natural and inalienable rights of man." England in the Stuart era was drenched in pamphlets -- in an era before newspapers -- all busy discussing "religion or politics," or both.

What these intellectuals were selling was "another and better world than that of the corrupt and inefficient old regimes." In England they called the ruling class "Normans" after the Norman Conquest; in France they liked to brand the nobility as Franks, descendants of barbarous Germans; in Russia the nobles were all "Varangians, or Tartar or Western": foreigners.

But did the intellectuals cause the revolutions? Brinton is clear: "No ideas, no revolution." But that does not mean that the ideas caused the revolution.

What about class conflict? Such "feelings of dislike" occur in all societies, but are seldom as simple as "bourgeois vs. feudal or bourgeois vs. proletariat." But there is no question that "the ruling class seems in all four of our societies to be divided and inept." In a healthy society the lower orders probably "dream rather of joining them rather than dislodging them." And when members of the ruling class "begin to believe that they hold power unjustly, or that all men are brothers," etc., they are probably not long for this world.

In Russia, the nobility had been "bemoaning the futility of life, the backwardness of Russia," and so on. And when they used force, "they used it sporadically and inefficiently." In France ruling class members "discussing the cause of discontented or repressed classes -- upperdogs voluntarily siding with underdogs." And in Stuart England there were the Cavaliers, "romantic even to themselves."

Except perhaps in America, we find the ruling classes in the old regimes markedly divided, markedly unsuited to fulfill the functions of a ruling class.

 Also, many in the ruling class were in a shaky economic position. They had opted for "finer houses, finer clothes" but still lived off their agricultural rents.

And the middle classes hated the upper class. They "felt morally superior to their aristocracies" and, in France by the end of the 18th century, no longer wanted to join the aristocracy, but abolish it. In England this was partly the effect of the artisan classes being "won over to Puritanism."

The lower classes seemed to hate the upper class more than usual. But "trustworthy materials... are scarce."

Was there any particular resistance to talent rising to the top? There is some indication of the French nobility "tightening its lines." In Russia, the nobility "closed the very highest social honors to plebeian talent." Still, the expanding economies permitted plenty of people to rise.

But not to the top.

[T]he countries were "run" by other, and privileged beings, and from the highest social distinctions the bourgeoisie as a class were hopelessly excluded.

"Where wealth... cannot buy everything.. you have a fairly reliable preliminary sign of revolution." Still, "The actual revolution is always a surprise."

Next: First Stages and Types of Revolutionists.