The English Revolutions: from Cromwell to Montesquieu and Hegel

The First English Revolution

In 600 England was the protagonist of a great experiment divided into two phases: first and second revolution.

1646-49 first English Revolution:

it saw in particular:

Levellers not levelling out wealth, everyone has to make their own wealth.

Diggers communist claim of collective property, political criticism of the market, human degradation caused by market freedom.

Arbitrary political power criticism, criticism of forms of social domination (also for Levellers)

Cromwell and the Personal Dictatorship

Cromwell main exponent of the army of "model man", but in disagreement with radically democratic ideas that gave too much freedom to the people, according to him I vote only for landowners. He led the army against those who were monarchists. He captured Charles I, had him judged by popular court and had him put to death 19649 first Republican state in that England that we see today under the control of the crown. He then turned it into a personal dictatorship.

Montesquieu and the Second Revolution

Montesquieu supports the second revolution, says that the assassination of the king marks the beginning of the failure of the first revolution. He says it was a beautiful sight to see the efforts of the British to establish democracy. He is considered one of the fathers of modern democracy (he writes the spirit of the laws of 1748), but in this statement he takes up what Lucretius said in De Rerum Natura: whoever safe on the shore sees a ship wrecked not far away feels pain, but also relief to be safe. Montesquieu speaks of the first revolution as a very beautiful spectacle and also speaks of impotent efforts to pierce democracy, but how can he find all this beautiful if he was a democrat? Because that of the first revolution was an extremist democracy; he maintains that one could not fail to return to the constitutional monarchy with James the First, in the state of affairs the substance changes little, but it changes who holds the reins of power, that is, the great bourgeoisie. Locke and Hume also judge the first revolution negatively.

Hegel and the Vision of Revolutions

Hegel, on the other hand, will take a different view as a supporter of revolutions from below; he maintains that when a building empties and loses sense it is right that other forces come to power, it is not surprising that Hegel sees an intrinsic need in history. Unlike Montesquieu, he does not criticise democracy as such, despite what it is, in fact he sees the fragmentation of Germany dominated by the aristocracy of which he is the enemy, and he says that it is even worse than democracy, so every time a popular uprising makes advances against the aristocracy it is a good thing for him. These are all different ways of seeing a revolutionary process that, through different groups (the Diggers and the Levellers in the foreground), tried to dismiss a monarchist power, but then fell into it with the figure of Cromwell, the leader of the so-called New Model, an army, who after having captured King Charles I and established, in 1649, a Republican state, imposed his personal dictatorship, until his death in 1660, followed by the monarchical restoration by James.