With recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, it may be time to turn to Crane Brinton’s 1938 work on The Anatomy of Revolution, which studied the English Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution, and found that revolutions tend to move from the Old Order to a moderate regime, and then — typically — to a radical regime:
The revolutions being studied first produce a “legal” moderate government. It vies with a more radical “illegal” government in a process known as “dual power”, or as Brinton prefers to call it “dual sovereignty”. In England the “Presbyterian moderates in Parliament” were rivals of “the illegal government of the extremist Independents in the New Model Army.” (p. 135) In France, the National Assembly was controlled by the “Girondin moderates”, while the Montagnard “extremists” controlled “the Jacobin network,” “the Paris commune,” (p. 136) and the Societies of the Friends of the Constitution. (p. 162) In Russia, the moderate provisional government of the Duma clashed with the radical Bolsheviks whose illegal government was a “network of soviets.” (p. 136)
The radicals triumph because they are
- “better organized, better staffed, better obeyed,” (p. 134)
- have “relatively few responsibilities, while the legal government “has to shoulder some of the unpopularity of the government of the old regime” with “the worn-out machinery, the institutions of the old regime.” (p. 134)
- The moderate are hindered by their hesitancy to change direction and fight back against the radical revolutionaries, “with whom they recently stood united,” in favor of conservatives, “against whom they have so recently risen.” (p. 140) They are drawn to the slogan `no enemies to the Left.` (p. 168)
- are attacked on one side by “disgruntled but not yet silenced conservatives, and the confident, aggressive extremists,” on the other. The moderate revolutionary policies can please neither side. An example is the Root and Brand Bill in the English Revolution which abolished the episcopacy, angering conservatives and established institutions without earning the loyalty of radicals. (p. 141-43)
- are “poor” leaders of the wars which accompany the revolutions, unable to “provide the discipline, the enthusiasm,” needed. (p. 144)
(Hat tip to Kalim Kassam.)
Anatomy is one of my favorite books!
So was the dual power period in the US the overtaking of the original government under the articles by the new government under the constitution?
The “tea party” is the initial obvious fit, but, but, but the present bifactional regime will not”‘go gentle into that good night.”
Thought I’d reproduce my response on a facebook thread where an interlocutor points out the American Revolution reversed the moderate to radical pattern:
Buckethead, the Wikipedia article has: