Revolution as a Social Instrument of Political Change
The Europe of absolute monarchy, whether in its classical or enlightened versions, could not prevent the disadvantaged classes (initially the bourgeoisie, and, century later, the proletariat) from seeking to take on the privileged classes dominant under the old order and to transform the economic, social and political structure of their states in their favor.
12.1.1 The Example of Prussian Social Inflexibility
It is significant that even a monarch as enlightened and capable as Frederick the Great of Prussia did virtually nothing to forge a more egalitarian society. As we know, Frederick clearly applied the principles of the Aufklarung (Enlightenment), promoted education for the people, abolished torture, streamlined the administration of justice, and put his jurists to work drafting an organized code of laws.
In the social sphere, however, he was a staunch defender of the existing order. In Prussia, in Eastern Germany (Brandenburg) and in the Ostelbien (lands lying to the east of the River Elbe) only the nobles and great landowners, known as Junkers (from the German juncherre, meaning “young gentleman”, or “son of a landowner”) were able to serve the state in public offices and positions.[569] [570] The burghers of the towns were engaged in industry or were merchants, while the peasants worked the lands of nobles, who stood as the authorities controlling the justice and administrative system.
Under this system, no one had the right to transcend the class or social group into which he was born. The son of a nobleman was forbidden from being a merchant, and that of a merchant could not work as a peasant. The alliance between the monarchy and the Prussian aristocracy would ultimately prove disastrous for the German state, as it significantly delayed the fall of the autocratic regime and slowed its move towards the kind of liberal regime which prevailed in Europe after 1848.
In fact, the parliamentary system would not appear in Germany until the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), whose constitution, significantly, still upheld the principle of the supremacy of the executive, inherited from the Prussian Constitution of 1850, specifically, in its famous Article 48, which allowed the government to seize full power “when overall security and the maintenance of order in the German Reich were in danger”. The article would be invoked frequently after 1930 by Chancellor Heinrich Briming. In fact, Adolf Hitler would employ it to legitimize the establishment of his dictatorship after 1933.412.1.2 The English Case: The Gradual Transformation
of a Political Constitution
The case of the UK, and, specifically England, stands in stark contrast to that of Prussia. As we know, the process of English social transformation began in the sixteenth century when the Tudors unconditionally supported the enrichment and rise of a merchant and financial class which ended up merging with the old nobility, thereby yielding the new English governing class, the gentry, 200 years earlier than the development of any comparable group in France. The truly significant aspect from the point of view of constitutional history is that ever since then the representatives of this new “aristocracy” began to exercise, through Parliament, a decisive influence on the kingdom’s policies. This is why, with the exception of the two English revolutions of the seventeenth century, there was no drastic regime change in England, but rather a gradual adaptation to new circumstances. The participation of English society in the government of the kingdom, as we saw in the last chapter, was decisively bolstered through the progressive expansion of the franchise between 1832 and 1928. The gentry proved flexible enough to gradually expand its social base—though this did not keep the U.K. from featuring a highly pronounced class structure into the early twentieth century.[571] The English elite continued to be educated at select institutions such as the “public schools” of Harrow and Eton, and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.[572]
12.1.3 Rupture as an Instrument of Change: The American
and French Revolutions
The transformation of political and legal systems to adapt them to social realities was much less peaceful in other western states, where one cannot speak of “evolution” but rather “revolution”.
Violent conflict would break out in Britain’s American colonies in 1776, in France in 1789, and revolutionary movements would shake Europe in 1820, 1830, 1848, 1868-1870, and as late as 1905, when Russia’s Ancien Regime was finally toppled. In each of these cases there came a break with the established order in a relatively short period of time as a result of armed actions of a revolutionary nature, with monarchies overthrown by bodies of representatives aspiring to speak for the people. These groups appealed to the theory of the social contract and, through the establishment of representativeassemblies, sought to wipe away the preceding system and create, ex novo, new regimes in which legislative power was the state’s supreme or only instrument.
We shall examine two specific examples crucial to western constitutional history: the American Revolution and the French Revolution, pivotal precedents which serve to explain most of the nineteenth century’s political struggles for reform and revolution. The two broke out for different reasons, but both led to revolutionary assemblies drafting social pacts recorded in written constitutions. The people, represented by these assemblies, created nations which claimed the power (sovereignty) to decide the type of political regime which they would adopt. The idea was to sweep away the old order (Ancien Regime) and usher in a new one.
In this chapter we focus on the American Revolution, which came first because, among other things, it was much easier to build a new society in a “New World” than in an old Europe marked by deeply rooted, ancestral social and political traditions.
12.2