120 - Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith

Fire in the Minds of Men:
Origins of the Revolutionary Faith
By James H. Billington
New York, Basic Books, 1980. 677 pp. $25.00.

The "faith" in question is secular millennarianism, in the achievement of social salvation by force, on the assurances of some ideology such as nationalism or communism.

In Europe and elsewhere for the last century and a half, there have always been men and movements animated by such a faith [in some ultimate, logical, exclusively valid social order], preparing for the Day, referring all their ideas and acts to some all-embracing system, sure of some preordained final denouement of the historic drama, with all its conflicts, into an absolute harmony. Jacobins may, have differed from the Babouvists, the Blanquists from many of the secret societies in the first half of the nineteenth century, the Communists from the Socialists, the Anarchists from all others, but they all belong to one religion (p. 12).

This summary describes the work with which the present volume is sure to be compared: J. L. Talmon's Origins of Totalitarian Democracy "Political Messianism" might have been a better title than either Billington's "revolutionary faith" or Talmon's "totalitarian democracy" to specify the sense in which the authors describe "religions." Preferring "political Messianism" for his second volume, Talmon narrated the story from the French Revolution on through the climax in 1848 of "the revolution that failed to come off."

He casts his net wider, to include in principle all those sharing the ,.expectation of some pre-ordained all-embracing and exclusive order of things, which was presumed to represent the better selves, the true interests, the genuine will and the real freedom of men" (p. viii). Yet he does not insist on the appeal to force as an essential element. But Billington, who does include violence, cannot make his account coherent without sections of non-violent folk like Saint-Simon and the Saint Simonian school: Fourier and Owen, Hegel and the Hegelians. Here I am inclined to agree with Talmon, that those who "look for another City" belong to one religion, whether or not they intend to bring the Kingdom by force. Such was the kinship of the radicals of Münster with the Mennonites, and the Fifth Monarchy men with the Quakers.

122 - Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith

This work is divided into three -books." Book 1, Foundations of the Revolutionary Faith, considers the great paradigm of the French Revolution. its germination, exfoliation, and Napoleonic sequel. Here, as yet hardly unraveled, are the programs of three distinguishable revolutionary movements-liberal constitutionalism, nationalism, and social and economic egalitarianism. Individuals of action and theory are considered, as well as the tradition of secret conspiratorial organizations, whose origins are traced to Masonry and the Bavarian "Illuminists," and more remotely, to the Jesuits. In the nature of the case this derivation, however intriguing, is hard to prove.

Book II pursues the interplay of the three revolutionary programs from Napoleon through the Restoration. This period is dominated by romantic nationalism, typically French, Polish, and Italian. Like Talmon. the author excuses himself from pursuing the history of liberalism and constitutionalism-whoich largely eliminates the English-speaking world. The several social egalitarian programs finally are an important subordinate factor from the 1830s and 1840s. His Book II closes with the Paris Commune of 1870, the last explosion of the romantic mentality, in a now industrialized Western Europe.

This is as far as the parallel with Talmon may be taken. The first two "books" closely match Talmon's first two volumes, but we do not have Talmon's projected third volume on "Eastern Europe, Russia and the people's democracies from about 1860 till our own days, together with contemporary events in the Far East" (p. vii). In this work, on the other hand, while nationalism in the industrialized Western countries mutates into imperialism, Book III shifts the locale from Western to Eastern Europe, to Germany and its highly organized social democracy, and to the Romanov Empire and its anarchist assassins. With Lenin's fusion of German and Russian elements, we stand on the threshold of a new age as the scene becomes worldwide and Marxist communism has at last captured a major state. A code on the role of women features especially Rosa Luxemburg.

Within the corresponding sections of the two works some comparisons may be made. Talmon's approach is more intellectual, a study in political theory, with occasional analysis of the political and economic setting. This volume attends to the affective dimension of symbolism, songs, flags, trees of liberty, costume, theatre, and opera. A memorable picture of cafe life in the Palais Royale in the early French Revolution, and of student life in St. Petersburg and Moscow is painted. And the origin and usage of labels and party terms like nationalism, socialism, communism, and democracy are carefully traced. (In fact, the noting of scores and hundreds of "firsts" sometimes passes beyond a useful device to an irritating obsession.)

Talmon is too sweeping on the relation of the new secular faiths to Christianity: "All Messianic trends considered Christianity … as the arch-enemy'' (p. 25). Billington observes, in contrast, that the success of some of the early propagandists of communism, such as Weitling and

123 - Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith

Barmby, was partly due precisely to their admixture of Christian ideas (p. 258). The doctrinaire atheists were, of course, the dominant current in communism. I am inclined to argue that the parallels with Christian revolutionaries of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries are even closer than either author acknowledges. The present work, again, is not sufficiently discriminating in deriving political liberalism from an ideological opposition to Roman Catholicism and the development of a system of political parties (p. 204). Did not Prussian Protestantism nurture Marxism? There is a type of Protestantism with close affinities to liberal democracy, but it is not German Lutheranism. And as for "the first major break in the basic unity of European civilization since Luther" (p. 443), I would opt for the French over the Bolshevik Revolution.

In this volume not the least of the author's achievements is to have provoked these and many other lines of speculation and debate. He has given us a rich, fascinating, and sparkling account, generously--even intimidatingly--annotated with references (166 pages!) from Russian as well as West European scholarship. It is an unbelievable, spare-time achievement for the Director of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars and past Chairman of the Board of Foreign Scholarship.

James H. Nichols
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey