WI: No Voltaire?

Skallagrim

Banned
I disagree. Either the reformists achieve nothing substantial or there will be a violent reaction that will force their hand, and if they fail you'll get a more violent reactionary terror in exchange for lacking a revolutionary one.

It's hardly material to the question at hand (the implications of Voltaire's non-existence), but I don't think historical evidence in any way supports your position here. Radical "revolutions" almost invariably lead to atrocities. More often than not, the very worst of people gain power in the chaos. Violent reactionary terror has historically been seen where revoltionary radicals have been defeated-- not when moderates implement gradual reform. The idea that gradual reform can't achieve anything substantial, or its "hand will be forced" is based on no evidence. The opposite is actually true.

Look at the way social legislation was implemented and the franchise was expanded, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Gradually. Step by step. And not by the all-too-radical socialist agitators, who often doomed themselves to the margins precisely by being so damned radical (and thus intolerable to too many people), but by broad coalitions of social-democrats and liberals, and sometimes even conservatives. And unlike the fruits of a radical revolution, which nearly always turn out to be poisonous in the end, the achievements of such gradual reform enjoyed broad support (by virtue of being so gradual) and caused no reactionary backlash (since no single step was too radical). And that is the way of true progress. If the generation that executed the French revolution in OTL had done things in that way, gradually reforming rather than revolting and overtrowing, a vast amount of completely needless death and suffering could have been avoided. Also, the ideas of progress wouldn't have gotten the stigma of being "revolutionary", so social progress would ultimately have been sped up if a "slow" approach had been adopted from the start. Festina lente?
 
Look at the way social legislation was implemented and the franchise was expanded, in the late 19th and early 20th century
Im sorry, are you trying to say that the struggle for oppressed people to vote, be represented, or have their own government created no violent backlash? Thats blatantly false, and even many of the reformists faced a ton of backlash, not just the radicals.

And when gradual reform fails to be implemented/enforced, you do get reactionary violence because those backwards elements know/feel they're threatened. And even still, reforms can and have been reversed, leaving everyone back at square one.

Also, the ideas of progress wouldn't have gotten the stigma of being "revolutionary", so social progress would ultimately have been sped up if a "slow" approach had been adopted from the start

lets not forget the fact all the while "gradual change" is going on, hundreds will suffer under the structural violence that maintain the existing social order while the gradualists make those tiny tweaks that they find agreeable. And how often had those gradualist been satisfied with the adjustments that made them more comfortable, and had to be pushed by radicals to do more because it wasn't enough? In the absence of pressure to actually change something the gradualists will sit back and do nothing more; reform has always had, in the background, those radicals pushing for more.

Whatever course may be taken violence will be faced: be it the unjust violence inherent in maintaining the social order, or the legitimate violence to end it.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Im sorry, are you trying to say that the struggle for oppressed people to vote, be represented, or have their own government created no violent backlash? Thats blatantly false, and even many of the reformists faced a ton of backlash, not just the radicals.

I'm saying that pensions, education laws, social security schemes, labour regulations and many other things were gradually developed, typically by democratic reforms within the existing system, without violent revolution. I'm also saying that this has yielded permenent, lasting change without pushing countless people into the meat grinders of radicalism.


And when gradual reform fails to be implemented/enforced, you do get reactionary violence because those backwards elements know/feel they're threatened. And even still, reforms can and have been reversed, leaving everyone back at square one.

No, you don't. If radical revolutions fail, you get major reactionary backlash. If reform fails, you just get... the status quo maintained a little longer. Your belief that "white terror" is some sort of inevitability instead of something that only ever emerged as backlash to revolutionary regimes, is simply incorrect. For instance: the attempt to create public education laws in the Netherlands failed three times. None of those failures caused backlash. In fact, in every successive attempt, the proposal was actually expanded and got more support from moderate conservatives. In your view, the first failure should have led the conservatives to pass, say, a law prohibiting the public financing of education forever or something. But no. The opposite happened.


lets not forget the fact all the while "gradual change" is going on, hundreds will suffer under the structural violence that maintain the existing social order while the gradualists make those tiny tweaks that they find agreeable. And how often had those gradualist been satisfied with the adjustments that made them more comfortable, and had to be pushed by radicals to do more because it wasn't enough? In the absence of pressure to actually change something the gradualists will sit back and do nothing more; reform has always had, in the background, those radicals pushing for more.

Whatever course may be taken violence will be faced: be it the unjust violence inherent in maintaining the social order, or the legitimate violence to end it.

Here you reveal a lot. Your assumption are that the gradualists are wrong by default, and can only do good if pushed. The notion that the gradualists might be right, and that the radicals may be, well... too radical... is something you clearly will not even consider. I find that in many cases, tiny tweaks are enough. Also, the idea that those pushing for maintaining the social order are automatically "unjust" and that violence for revolutionary ends is "legitimate" shows a bias on your side. One I find rather disturbing. I'm not what people would call a conservative, but i'll hardly deny that conservatives can sometimes be in the right.


I don't think we're going to come to agreement here. My position is that when the elite makes paeceful change impossible, that elite may and indeed must be overthrown (there being, after all, no better options). But if peaceful ways are fully available (like democratic reform), and radicals deliberately aim for revolution instead (even knowing what bloodshed that entails), then they are the true criminals. Simple fanatics, who will bring nothing good into the world.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Bringing it back to our man Voltaire: something else occurred to me. Might we see effects of his non-existence in... literature? While Voltaire didn't invent the whole idea of "let's place this story in a distant/fictional country while actually offering social critique I'd never get away with otherwise", he popularised it immensely, and was pretty widely imitated. Without him doing that, might that particular genre suffer a bit in comparison to OTL?
 
Im saying that the social democratic cause of the 19th and 20th century has failed, noble as its intention might have been, and that the rise of neoliberalism and its continuous attacks, underminings, and reversals of those reforms constitutes a reactionary backlash. And that while in a number of cases it takes the form of personal violence, more often and widespread is the institutional and structural violence. Those that wanted change, or were happy with the old reforms, are now put on the backfoot trying to keep what was "won" by reform. The conservative may not end public schools, but they will defund it and prop up private ones that are qualitatively worse and far less accessible by those who need it. Then the people are left in those churning meat grinders known as destitution and ignorance.

And let me make one thing clear: i am for change by any means. If it may be had by the legislatures then I'll accept it, and ask for more. And if it comes to the gun then I'll join the ranks. The distinction that i make is that there is a point where reform can go no further. I believe that france, in the period we're talking about, reaches that boundry when it comes to feudalism and the entrenched powers of aristocracy and church.
And I'll leave my position at that.


As for Voltaire's writing, from what i understand there was similar thing going on in England with "the gentlemans magazine". Reporting (and commentating) on the procedures in parliament was banned, so they called it Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput, and gave everyone fake names and such.
Though perhaps not identical to Voltaire's style, might it be extrapolated from there?
 

IFwanderer

Banned
Relevant to the discussion, Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yaqob had already reached many of the ideas we associate to the enlightenment in the early 17th century. So it's reasonable to argue many of the ideas commonly attributed to Voltaire could've been introduced by other thinkers.
 
Im saying that the social democratic cause of the 19th and 20th century has failed, noble as its intention might have been, and that the rise of neoliberalism and its continuous attacks, underminings, and reversals of those reforms constitutes a reactionary backlash. And that while in a number of cases it takes the form of personal violence, more often and widespread is the institutional and structural violence. Those that wanted change, or were happy with the old reforms, are now put on the backfoot trying to keep what was "won" by reform. The conservative may not end public schools, but they will defund it and prop up private ones that are qualitatively worse and far less accessible by those who need it. Then the people are left in those churning meat grinders known as destitution and ignorance.

First of all, this "reactionary backlash" mostly consists of tinkering with the reforms which the social democrats brought about. People might disagree about the best way to fund or run schools, for example, but nobody remotely mainstream is proposing that we abolish state education altogether. Even the most ardent modern neoliberal would be considered a lefty by 18th- and 19th-century standards. Secondly, claiming that the modern west suffers from "widespread institutional and structural violence" is just a ridiculous attempt at creating an equivalency where none exists. I'm as in favour of good schools as the next person, but underfunding education is not at all the same as murdering thousands of your political opponents, and frankly I think it takes a good deal of moral obtuseness not to see this.

And let me make one thing clear: i am for change by any means. If it may be had by the legislatures then I'll accept it, and ask for more. And if it comes to the gun then I'll join the ranks.

About the kindest thing I can say about this is that you're either deeply ignorant about history or extremely blinkered and self-righteous.
 
First of all, this "reactionary backlash" mostly consists of tinkering with the reforms which the social democrats brought about. People might disagree about the best way to fund or run schools, for example, but nobody remotely mainstream is proposing that we abolish state education altogether.

As another example, states in the 19th century would spend maybe 5-10% of their GDP; nowadays it's more like 40-50%, and nobody with a hope of getting elected is proposing to reduce that figure by more than a couple of percent. This seems difficult to square with the hypothesis that the social democrats failed, or that the modern west is in the grip of a violently reactionary backlash.
 
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