Crane Brinton - The Jacobins : an essay in the new history

This study was made possible largely through a fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. The author wishes to thank that body, as well as the many archivists and librarians in France who have aided in this work. He is particularly indebted to M. Albert Mathiez, whose knowledge and willingness to help extend to the minutest details of revolutionary history; to M. Pierre Caron; and to M. Michel Lhritier. In America he is especially grateful to Professor A. M. Schlesinger for his continued interest in a subject not properly his own, to Professor E. S. Mason and Dr. S. E. Harris, economists not in the least responsible for the gaps in the authors knowledge of economics, and to Professor Penfield Roberts, who has aided in the work from the beginning. Some of the material incorporated in this book has appeared in the American Historical Review and in the Political Science Quarterly. The author thanks the editors of these reviews for permission to use this material.

CRANE BRINTON

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,

November, 1930.

The Jacobins was published in 1930, at the end of the first recognizably modern decade in American history, and at the beginning of the decade known for the worst economic disaster in that history. Both decades were revolutionary, each in its own manner, sparking the interest of then contemporary social scientists. Many of these intellectuals, already preoccupied by the events of the Russian Revolution, and by Joseph Stalins rise to power in the new Soviet state, were very much interested in theories of change in general, and more particularly, in revolution.

Indeed, other than, and, accompanying Brintons Jacobins, there were numerous books published within a few years of each other that looked deeply into violent means of change and ideological radicalism. In 1925, Brintons colleague at Harvard, Pitirim Sorokin published The Sociology of Revolution, soon followed by Lyford Edwards 1927 study The Natural History of Revolution. In 1929 and 1930 a host of now classic works on revolution and ideology were published. Among these were Karl Mannheims Ideology and Utopia, Harold Lasswells Psychopathology and Politics, Ortega y Gassets Revolt of the Masses, and Sigmund Freuds Civilization and Its Discontents. Another classic study of social change, albeit of a non-revolutionary sort, was Robert and Helen Lyndss Middletown, published in 1929. Besides these indispensible works on ideas and change, another of Brintons colleagues at Harvard, Talcott Parsons, brought out his English translation of Max Webers Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in 1930. Certainly Webers Protestant Ethic must be numbered among the greatest and most important studies of how ideas interact with and can change social, political, and economic structures. All told, these were a few very fruitful years in social science history.

Brintons book on Jacobinism was the first of three volumes that he wrote during the 1930s on revolution, which taken collectively helped him become the most prominent theorist of revolution for decades to come. The best known of these three books, The Anatomy of Revolution, published in 1938 was revised twice and continues in print today as one of the most highly cited works on the subject. The third of Brintons books on revolution, A Decade of Revolution, specifically about the revolutionary events in France beginning in 1789, was published in 1934, and remains a useful volume for those interested in the subject.

Brinton was fascinated by two strings of thought which he weaved together in The Jacobins. The first was the subject itself in its particular focus upon the Jacobins as a revolutionary party, and as a case study in how such parties are organized and how they operate. The second strand of thought was about how one can gather pertinent information to describe and analyze a political party such as the Jacobins.

As he worked his way through the material at hand, Brinton based much of his thinking on a narrow band of the available social science theories of the day. He only mentioned three social scientists, Vilfredo Pareto, James Bryce, and Moisey Ostrogorski (these last two were mentioned in passing). These three were emblematic because they crossed disciplinary lines easily and with intellectual alacrity, and because they each wrote definitively about things essential to understanding the Jacobin movement.

Although we might not think of him as such today, Pareto was the most well-known and discussed sociologist of the period beginning in the late 1920s through the decade of the 1930s. Today, Pareto is read and cited mostly by economists, among whom his Pareto efficiency, or Pareto optimality theory is considered to be an indispensible intellectual concept. In Brintons day, Pareto, who was ubiquitous in the sociological literature, as well as in the popular press, was best known for his theories of residues and derivations, which for lack of a coherent sociology of knowledge approach in American sociology back then set the stage for understanding the relationship between ideas and behavior. More important to Brinton was Paretos theory of the circulation of the elites, which helps us to make sense of much of the data about the revolutionary Jacobin party presented in this book.

Bryce, the author of what may be one of the two best books ever written about American political society, The American Commonwealth, was the first president of the British Sociological Society, and the fourth president of the American Political Science Association. His pioneering studies of public opinion, and of political parties had an obvious influence on Brintons thinking about the Jacobins. Ostrogorski was a lawyer, historian, political scientist and sociologist, whose