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Reflections on the “World Revolution” of 1940*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Robert C. Brooks
Robert C. Brooks*
Affiliation:
Southmore Collage
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Extract

So controversial is the subject of thai address–“Reflections on the ‘World Revolution’ of 1940”–that a few words of justification in in order. You may be assured that it was not chosen without considerable thought and trepidation. To begin with, I made a study of the addresses of my thirty-four predecessors, as presented in the pages of the American Political Science Review. Without exception, these papers impressed me as wise, scholarly, finely stated, and cogently argued. Occasionally they were lightened by the lambent play of humor. On the other hand, several of them wen decidedly dry–a quality lees refreshing in discourses than in wines. Many of my predecessors dealt penetratingly and profoundly with topics taken from the fields of specialisation wherein they were masters, often the greatest of American masters. Others discussed broadly and philosophically the nature of political science, its relations to the social sciences in general, or the problems encountered in teaching this science.

Of course so brief a summary cannot do justice to the almost infinite variety of materials presented by past presidents of our Association. There was, however, one type of subject which as a rule they avoided—that of contemporary, controversial political affairs. Even during the years of the First World War and immediately thereafter, this proved to be the case with only one or two exceptions. No doubt the motive which prompted most of my predecessors to avoid issues of the day was a sound one.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , February 1941 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1941

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Footnotes

*

Fresidestial address dealivered before the American Political Science Association at tat thirty-sixty annual meeting, chicago, Illinoise, December 28, 1940.

References

1 Edmund Burke might hare raised the same question, but did not, when in 1700 he published bis famous Reflection an the Revoluation in France. If a definition of revolution in the political sense ha desired, the following la hasarded: A political revolution ia the sudden overthrow of one type of government and the setting up of a distinetly different type in its plaes, by violenoe or the threat of violenes coming largely from internal sources.

2 Rauschning, H., The Revolution of Nihikism; Worning is the West (1939)Google Scholar; Franklin D Roosevelt's speech, July 19, 1940, quoted later in the text.

3 Aristotle's great tolersanes is revealed in his dictum (The Polotics, translated by William Mills, Bk. III, oh- ix) that “in all disputes upon government each party says something that is just.” Unfortunately, bowarer, this provides neither for quantitative measurement dor for oocaideration of the negative as well as of the poaitive factor involved. To illustrate: we must all repeat with Aristotle the phrase “something that la Just,” but the question Immediately rises: How mach of what a given party to any dispute upon government says is Just. The next question. Involving the negativa factor—certainly a much more pertinent one in the each of a party arguing in favor of dietatorship—must be: How much of what it says is unjust My own estimate based upon long reading of the apologists for totalitarienism would be that they say lee than five pee osat that to just and more than ninety-five per osat—perhaps exactly 99 44/100—that ia unjust.

4 The Spirit of the Laws. Bk. III, ch-10; Bk. VIII, ch. 10; Bk. V, ch. 15. Two other passages are also pertinent: “A despotic government does all the mischief to itself that could be committed by a cruel enemy, whose arms it were unable to resist” (Bk. IX, ch. 4); and “when the savages of Louisiana are desirous of fruit, they cut down the tree to the root, and gather the fruit. This is an emblem of despotic government.” These last two sentences constitute the whole of Chapter 13, Book V, which is one of the shortest in a great book of mercifully short chapters. Doubtless Montesquieu made it thus brief for purposes of emphasis. What he said therein came true for France after the fall of Napoleon. It will be true of Germany after the fall of Hitler.

5 Rousseau's writing, for example, is one long protest against despotism. Characteristic is the following passage from The Origin of Inequality: “It is from the midst of … disorder and … revolutions, that despotism, gradually raising up its hideous head and devouring everything that remained sound and untainted in any part of the State, would at length trample on both the laws and the people, and establish itself on the ruins of the republic…. At length the monster would swallow up everything, and the people would no longer have either chiefs or laws, but only tyrants. From this moment there would be no question of virtue or morality; for despotism cui ex honesto nulla est spes, wherever it prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner speaks than probity and duty lose their weight and blind obedience is the only virtue which slaves can still practice.” And Locke, in his Second Tretatise of Government, ch. xv, writes: “despoticall power … is a power which neither Nature gives, … nor compact can convey…. Absolute dominion, however placed, is so far from being one kind of civil society that it ia as inconsistent with it as slavery is with property.”

6 The Prine. ch. XVIII. The good qualities referred to are mercy, faithfulness, humane feeling, uprightness, and religion.

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