Extract from the frontispiece of the Encyclopédie (1772). It was drawn by Charles-Nicolas Cochin and engraved by Bonaventure-Louis Prévost. The work is laden with symbolism: The figure in the centre represents truth—surrounded by bright light (the central symbol of the Enlightenment). Two other figures on the right, reason and philosophy, are tearing the veil from truth.
Samir Amin points to an understanding that there are two periods in history that have had a decisive impact on the formation of the modern world. The first of these periods involves the birth of modernity. It is the period of the Enlightenment . . .
Consequently Amin makes two propositions:
Proposition 1.The first concerns the definition of modernity, which is the claim that human beings, individually and collectively, can and must make their own history. This marks a break with the dominant philosophy of all previous societies, both in Europe and elsewhere, based on the principle that God having created the universe and mankind, is the "legislator" of last resort. The ethical principles based on this divine legislation are, naturally, formulated by historical transcendental religions or philosophies, thereby opening the door to various interpretations, but then it remains subject to the duty of reconciling faith and reason. Under modernity, people are freed from this obligation, without necessarily losing interest in the question of faith.
"History , while it no longer operates as a force outside of humanity, must be explained by other laws."Reason is called on, once again, in the search for the objective determinants of the development of societies. The new freedom which modern humanity gives itself, therefore, remains subject to the constraints of what is thought to constitute the logic of social reproduction and the dynamics of the transformation of societies.
Proposition 2.
The second concerns the bourgeois character of modernity, as expressed by the thinking of the Enlightenment. The emergence of capitalism and the emergence of modernity constitute two facets of the one and the same reality.
Amin continues . . .
Enlightenment thought offers us a concept of reason that is inextricably associated with that of emancipation. Yet, the emancipation in question is defined and limited by what capitalism requires and allows. The view expressed by the Enlightenment, nevertheless, proposes a concept of emancipating reason that claims to be transhistorical, whereas an examination of what is, in fact, is will demonstrate its strongly historical nature.
Adam Smith offers the most systematic fundamental expression of this view. Unfortunately he describes it as "utilitarianism", a questionable term, but understandable within the tradition of British empiricism. in this view of the human world, society is conceived as a collection of individuals, a view that breaks with the tradition of the estates of the Ancien Régime.
It is, therefore, indisputably an ideology that liberates the individual, again one of the dimensions of modernity. This individual, moreover, is naturally endowed with reason. The social order which must guarantee the triumph of this emancipating reason, and thus the happiness of human beings, is pictured as a system of "good institutions", to use the term in use up to now in American social thought. This system, in turn, is based on the separation of the political domain from the economic domain in social life. The "good institutions," which must ensure the management of political life through reason, are those of a democracy that guarantees the liberty and legal equality of individuals. In the management of economic life, reason demands that contractual freedom (in other words the market) be the basis of the relations of exchange and of organization of the division of labour between the individuals of which society is formed. The healthy working of the economy requires, in turn, the protection of property, henceforth considered a sacrosanct value in a "good society."
Emancipating reason is expressed in the classical triplet: liberty, equality, and property. This slogan was adopted in the early revolutions of the United Provinces and the English Glorious Revolution of 1688, before being adopted more systematically by the American Revolution and then by the French Revolution in its first phase.
The constituent elements of this triplet are considered to be naturally and harmoniously complementary to each other. Up until now, the claim that the "market" equals "democracy" has remained a cornerstone of bourgeois ideology. The continual conflict between those in favor of extending democratic rights to all citizens, men and women, bourgeois and proletarians, propertied or propertyless, and the unconditional defenders of the market is straight away excluded from the debate.
(pages 13-15)
From triplet to couplet . . .
A few fascinating paragraphs later Samir Amin writes:
But if falsely egalitarian liberalism is offered insistently as an ideological alternative to the the disarray of present day society, it is because the front of the stage is no longer occupied by utilitarianism (from which so-called egalitarian liberalism is scarcely distinguishable), but by the excess represented by right-wing libertarian ideology (the extreme Right in fact). This ideology substitutes the couplet of liberty and property for the Enlightenment's triplet, definitively abandoning the idea of giving equality the status of a fundamental value. Friedrich von Hayek's version of this new extreme right-wing ideological formula revives that of its inventors, the nineteenth-century liberals (Claude Frédéric Bastiat and others) who are at the root of this excess, starting as they did from a clear aversion to the Enlightenment.
(pages 16-17)
So, three become two - 'Way Down South'
Liberty, equality and fraternity
We have seen in the chapter of Amin's Eurocentrism, MODERNITY, and referred to above, how he identifies the first period in the emergence of modernity with the Enlightenment, and he continues:
The second decisive period opens with Marx's criticism of the Enlightenment's bourgeois emancipating reason. this criticism begins a new chapter of modernity, which I call modernity critical of modernity.
"modernity critical of modernity"Emancipating reason cannot ignore this second moment of its development, or more accurately the beginning of its reconstruction. After Marx, social thinking can no longer be what it was before.
Emancipating reason can no longer include its analyses and propositions under the triplet of liberty, equality and property. Having sized up the insoluble conflict between the possession of capitalist property and the development of equality between human beings, emancipating reason can only delete the third term of the triplet and substitute for it the term fraternity (which is stronger than "solidarity," a term proposed by some today).
Fraternity, obviously, implies the abolition of capitalist property which is necessarily that of the few, a minority, the real dominating and exploiting bourgeois class, and which deprives the others, the majority, of access to the conditions of an equality worthy of the name. Fraternity implies, then, substituting a form of social property, exercised by, and on behalf of the whole social body, for the exclusive and excluding form of capitalist property. Integration through democracy would be substituted for the partial and naturally unequal integration carried out within the limits of respect for capitalist property relations.
(pages 17-18)
From the Enlightenment . . .
. . . to revolution
As everyone knows well, Marx did not invent the slogan "liberty, equality and fraternity."
As everyone knows well, Marx did not invent the slogan "liberty, equality, fraternity." The French Revolution, like all great revolutions, was ahead of its time and projected itself far ahead of its immediate demands. It was both a bourgeois revolution (and it later achieved stability on this basis) and a more advanced breakthrough, a popular revolution, and can be interpreted today as starting the socialist criticism of the bourgeois system. In a similar fashion, the two other great revolutions of modern times - the Russian and Chinese - envisaged a communist society far ahead of the immediate demands and possibilities of their societies.
(pages 17-18)
Liberty, equality and fraternity in the Constitution of India
The preamble-page, along with other pages of the original Constitution of India, was designed and decorated by the renowned painter Beohar Rammanohar Sinha of Jabalpur.
The preamble is based on the Objectives which was drafted and moved in the Constituent Assembly by Jawaharlal Nehru on 13 December 1946. B. R. Ambedkar said about the preamble:
It was, indeed, a way of life, which recognizes liberty, equality, and fraternity as the principles of life and which cannot be divorced from each other: Liberty cannot be divorced from equality; equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things.As originally enacted the preamble described the state as a "sovereign democratic republic", to which the terms "Secular" and "Socialist" were later added by the 42nd Amendment.
However, a modern celebration of the Independence of India, such as this, is now more likely to include the word Secular and omit the word Socialist!
Update
The 42nd Amendment of the Constitution of India
The preamble has been amended only once so far, and this was achieved by the 42nd Amendment. On 18 December 1976, during the so-called Emergency in India, the Indira Gandhi government pushed through several changes in the Forty-second Amendment of the constitution. A committee under the chairmanship of Sardar Swaran Singh recommended that this amendment be enacted after being constituted to study the question of amending the constitution in the light of past experience. This resulted in the words "socialist" and "secular" being added between the words "Sovereign" and "democratic" and the words "unity of the Nation" were changed to "unity and integrity of the Nation".
Something to reflect upon in this sloganizing is that Jawaharlal Nehru, and in particular B. R. Ambedkar, who was responsible for drafting the Constitution of India, resisted the inclusion of these two "S" words (plus an "F" word) as he was opposed to declaring India's social and economic structure in the Constitution. During the Constituent Assembly debates on framing the Constitution in 1946, K.T. Shah proposed an amendment seeking to declare India as a "Secular, Federal, Socialist" nation. In his opposition to the amendment, Ambedkar stated:
"My objections, stated briefly are two. In the first place the Constitution... is merely a mechanism for the purpose of regulating the work of the various organs of the State. It is not a mechanism where by particular members or particular parties are installed in office. What should be the policy of the State, how the Society should be organised in its social and economic side are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances. It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether. If you state in the Constitution that the social organisation of the State shall take a particular form, you are, in my judgment, taking away the liberty of the people to decide what should be the social organisation in which they wish to live. It is perfectly possible today, for the majority people to hold that the socialist organisation of society is better than the capitalist organisation of society. But it would be perfectly possible for thinking people to devise some other form of social organisation which might be better than the socialist organisation of today or of tomorrow. I do not see therefore why the Constitution should tie down the people to live in a particular form and not leave it to the people themselves to decide it for themselves. This is one reason why the amendment should be opposed."Ambedkar's second objection was that the amendment was "purely superfluous" and "unnecessary", as "socialist principles are already embodied in our Constitution" through Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of State Policy. Referring to the Directive Principles, he asked Shah:
"If these directive principles to which I have drawn attention are not socialistic in their direction and in their content, I fail to understand what more socialism can be".Shah's amendment failed to pass, and the Preamble remained unchanged until the 42nd Amendment.
When President Kovind of India says . . .
“Our Constitution rests on three principles or pillars – liberty, equality and fraternity. It is critical to keep their intricate and delicate balance in mind when exploring the relationship between the three branches of the state,”. . . it actually means that the principle embedded in the term "fraternity" has been all but emptied of its revolutionary potential, and having been thus emptied, replaced by the notion of merely "belonging" to the national community, and this in a nation where the very diversity of communities itself is, perhaps, the greatest stumbling block to the realization of fraternity/sorority in Indian society.
Perhaps the struggle itself for independence from British colonial power was already to have set the agenda in the early years of the formation of the modern state of India, and agenda that was more about the "nation" more than it was about the goal and aspiration for social emancipation, for socialism?
Tragedy! Then farce?
The title of this work refers to the Coup of 18 Brumaire in which Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in revolutionary France (9 November 1799, or 18 Brumaire Year VIII in the French Republican Calendar), in order to contrast it with the coup of 1851
Marx's famous quote runs thus:
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire.Marx's sentiment echoed an observation made by Friedrich Engels at exactly the same time Marx began work on this book. In a letter to Marx of 3 December 1851, Engels wrote from Manchester:
.... it really seems as though old Hegel, in the guise of the World Spirit, were directing history from the grave and, with the greatest conscientiousness, causing everything to be re-enacted twice over, once as grand tragedy and the second time as rotten farce, Caussidière for Danton, L. Blanc for Robespierre, Barthélemy for Saint-Just, Flocon for Carnot, and the moon-calf together with the first available dozen debt-encumbered lieutenants for the little corporal and his band of marshals. Thus the 18th Brumaire would already be upon us.Yet this motif appeared even earlier, in Marx's 1837 unpublished novel Scorpion and Felix, this time with a comparison between the first Napoleon and King Louis Philippe:
Every giant ... presupposes a dwarf, every genius a hidebound philistine.... The first are too great for this world, and so they are thrown out. But the latter strike root in it and remain.... Caesar the hero leaves behind him the play-acting Octavianus, Emperor Napoleon the bourgeois king Louis Philippe....
The New Babylon
The New Babylon (Russian: Новый Вавилон) is a 1929 silent historical drama film written and directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. The film deals with the 1871 Paris Commune and the events leading to it, and follows the encounter and tragic fate of two lovers separated by the barricades of the Commune.
Composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his first film score for this movie. In the fifth reel of the score he quotes the revolutionary anthem, "La Marseillaise" (representing the Commune), juxtaposed contrapuntally with the famous "Can-can" from Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld.
Footage from The New Babylon was included in Guy Debord's feature film The Society of the Spectacle (1973).
Kozintsev and Trauberg found some of their inspiration in Karl Marx's The Civil War in France and The Class Struggle in France, 1848-50.
Emptying "fraternity" of its original meaning
The thing is that Amin's description of the Bourgeois machinations in France during the course of the 19th century, identifies a process that leads, in the end, to the emptying "fraternity" of the actual quality of fraternity/sorority, and which is then substituted by a notion of "belonging to the nation" in place of the emancipation from inequality for all.
This is what he says:
The popular property the French Revolution thought it could and must guarantee was that of millions of peasants and craftsmen. It declared that the market it protected must be authentically open and competitive, excluding monopolies and the profits they produced. but this popular property was already being threatened by the bourgeoisie, composed of the big entrepreneurs and capitalists, and symbolized by the famous "two hundred families" that owned the Bank of France. On its left, it was threatened by all the disinherited of the towns (insecure proletarians and paupers) and the country (poor and landless peasants). The convulsions of the French Revolution occupy the whole of the nineteenth century up to the very end, at which point the Republic was stabilized. It adopted the Revolution's slogan, but after having crushed the Paris Commune and emptied the term fraternity of its original content, replacing it with what can be expressed by the notion of belonging to the national community.
(page 18)
The supremacy and security of bourgeois property above all!
The independence movement in India was inspired by the promise of political and social emancipation, but since independence from British colonial rule in 1947, perhaps the framework of history that Amin identifies in the post-revolutionary context of France has its echoes in the context of India too?
Amin continues:
Bourgeois reason restored and placed back on its feet is not, and can no longer be, liberating. Moreover, it stands on only two feet: liberty and property. Henceforth, Bastiat and von Hayek, who show their open antipathy to any idea of giving the slightest importance to equality, are the real representatives of a degenerate reason, one which is foreign to the Enlightenment conception. As long as this bourgeois reason, reduced to liberty and property, is the reason of American ideology, the retreat from and the abolition in thought of the French Revolution, and, of course, the Russian and the Chinese Revolutions, are nothing other than the expression of what is really meant by the Americanization of the world.
(page 19)
Freedom, equality and fraternity/sorority in India?
When, on the Occasion of Inauguration of Constitution day Celebrations, President Ram Nath Kovind said that the Indian Constitution rests on three pillars, namely – liberty, equality and fraternity. What does it really mean?
When he added that the Constitution builds a superstructure of political, economic and social democracy, and that “Dr B.R Ambedkar had cautioned that these principles are not to be treated as separate and unrelated,”;
. . . are these principles more than a form of political window dressing?
When President Kovind added that the Constitution is not just an abstract ideal and has to be made meaningful to the lives of ordinary people in every street, village and mohalla of India. “It has to somehow connect with their everyday existence and make it more comfortable,”;
. . . how are these ideals made concrete?
When the President of India says the Constitution empowers the people as much as the people empower the Constitution;
. . . is this a fact?
When President Kovind says “When individuals and institutions ask what the Constitution has done for them and how it has built their capacities – they must also consider what they have done to uphold the Constitution. And what they have done to support its value system. The Constitution strengthens us, but we too strengthen the Constitution with our actions every day,” it is worth asking;
. . . is he speaking to India's 100 richest 2017, or the rest of the multiple fractions of modern Indian society?
The framework of nineteenth century history in France included the 200 families who owned the Bank of France. The framework of history in the seventy years of the modern Indian state since gaining independence from British colonialism will now include the 100 richest list 2017 who seem to own nearly everything.
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