A little-known figure today, despite a notable influence on the American and French revolutions, James Harrington (1611-1677) was a paradoxical republican, on the fringes of established parties, a promoter of a popular and egalitarian democracy.
“This poster was signed Harrington; it was long and vehement: the aim was to arouse fear, to alarm minds.” In the Paris of the Terror, as reported by Saint-Just, a text was circulating calling for an uprising against Robespierre and the Jacobins. Now, if the author was probably Aubert de Vitry, a moderate deputy and translator of Goethe, the pseudonym at the bottom of the placard is not insignificant. It refers to one of the recognized fathers of modern republican thought.
Who reads James Harrington today? In France, the last translation of his texts dates back to 1795. And if in the English-speaking world Oceanahis best-known text, enjoys a certain audience, nothing had been published on the author and his thought for sixty years. This new study by the historian of ideas Rachel Hammersley had in any case no equivalent, and one can only hope that this meticulous work, rich in new avenues of interpretation, inspires a certain renewal.
A popular government
It was in the context of the English Civil War that James Harrington, from a noble family related to the Stuarts, and once close to Charles Ier before his execution (pp. 31-35, 54-62), delivers his main political texts. Oceanapublished in 1656 (after being first censored by Cromwell), is a hybrid attempt. The author presents an ideal constitution in the form of a true fiction, a classic example of utopia with those of Thomas More and Francis Bacon (pp. 10-12, 122-124).
Five years after the Leviathan Hobbes, Harrington therefore gives in Oceana his own vision of Commonwealth (the State). Behind the formal and stylistic originality that leads it to mix literature and politics (pp. 124-135), contemporaries can easily identify the republic of Oceana with the Great Britain of the interregnum, and in its leader Olphaeus Megaletor recognize the portrait of Cromwell. About twenty other treatises and manifestos follow, more classical but just as clear.
Author of utopian fiction, Harrington is in no way a utopian. Although he is commonly described as a republican, he is not one of the most radical. Furthermore, he does not identify with any of the camps then constituted in Parliament and in the English elites. “I do not refuse and have never refused obedience to any government whatsoever,” he says, adding on the other hand: “I am not and have not been of any party” (p. 81).
An independent spirit, Harrington formulates above all a bold proposal. The Commonwealth that he defends is in fact a popular government. He proclaims its superiority by referring to Moses, the Greeks, the Romans and Machiavelli (pp. 71-72) – he ignores in this regard, it seems, the contribution of Marsilius of Padua. For him, “the laws and orders of a Commonwealthwhether enacted by a single legislator or a senate, can only derive from an authority received and confirmed by the vote or command of the people” (p. 71). Moreover, the popular regime is according to Harrington the only one which shows itself adapted to England, already, at XVIIe century.
The economic determinants of the political regime
For if Harrington comes to promote a popular regime, it is at the end of a reasoning on the foundations of politics, the underground forces which determine the form of a government (p. 84). He thus affirms, and this is perhaps his greatest innovation, the existence of a structural link between the distribution of wealth and the type of regime: “the Empire follows the balance of property” (p. 97). It is all the less surprising that Harrington was the object at XXe century of assertive Marxist readings (pp. 12-15).
From this fundamental link then follows a new typology of governments (p. 101): absolute monarchy is suited to nations where the majority of land belongs to one person; a form of mixed monarchy corresponds to nations where land is distributed among a few in the aristocracy and the clergy; and if land is distributed among a large part of the population, then it is the Commonwealth that must be recommended. If his gaze is focused on an agrarian and pre-industrial society, Harrington nevertheless extends it also to contexts where, more than land, money would be the main determinant of political power. Contemporary examples exist, of which Harrington draws knowledge from his numerous European travels: he mentions for this case the merchant republics such as Genoa or the Netherlands (p. 100).
Equal-commonwealth
A precursor of political economy, Harrington therefore defends, more than the republican form, the democratic principle itself. Using this notion abundantly in his texts, against a connotation still often negative for his contemporaries, he accomplishes according to Rachel Hammersley “a renewal and a reinvention of the concept of democracy” (p. 110). Also, for Harrington, the first condition for the success of his political project is equality (p. 77-79). Indeed, since the distribution of property determines the relevance of the Commonwealththen to strengthen it, it is certainly necessary to further improve the distribution of goods. If he deviates from the most radical of solutions, that is to say the abolition of property (contrary to Plato or Thomas More), he at least recommends preventing the concentration of wealth and the transmission of too large inheritances, by agrarian laws and the limitation of successions (p. 102-106).
More than the inability to make a system based on the multitude work – a concern so common already among the first modern republicans – what Harrington fears above all is in fact oligarchy, the confiscation of power and wealth by a few. The very possibility of extreme wealth is for him a source of corruption (p. 106). From this follows the importance of always favoring the distribution of goods, but also of opening the aristocracy to society, by making it based on principles other than heredity (p. 118), and of favoring social mobility, and particularly advancement through merit: “If a man of the lowest extraction cannot rise to the height that suits his incontestable merit, the Commonwealth is not equal” (p. 120).
Equivalent principles are applied by Harrington to the forms of the regime, to maintain a equal-commonwealth. The author ofOceana does not fear, moreover, the maintenance of a single individual, a prince, at the head of his ideal regime: what matters is that this executive power cannot become a legislator (p. 90-92). Similarly, the legislative power is divided, according to a model moreover criticized by the most radical as “elitist”. Preferring the Lacedaemonian model to Athens, Harrington thus affirms that “the true form of a Democracy (…) supposes that in legislative matters, the wisdom of the Nation proposes, and the interest of the Nation resolves.” (p. 114). Clearly, to the elected assembly, which he calls the senate, the power to propose laws and to deliberate; to the popular assembly that of adopting or rejecting them (p. 111-112).
In this democratic perspective, Harrington also insists on the importance of the secrecy of the vote, for which he formulates practical solutions (pp. 79, 139-141), or on the principle of rotation of offices, against the possibility for a parliamentarian to chain two mandates (pp. 78-79). Faced with him, the arguments seem ready-made: these anti-oligarchic measures would risk discouraging the most competent, or chasing them out of the country, while the inexperience of the newcomers would weaken government affairs (pp. 162-163).
Democracy through action
It takes more than that to shake Harrington’s convictions, and his definition of what a Commonwealthand more one Commonwealth free. This is diametrically opposed to Hobbes, and to the emerging liberal thought which only defines freedom negatively, as the absence of constraint. For Harrington, and following the Roman tradition, the freedom of an individual resides in his reason in the face of the enslavement of the passions. From then on, the freedom of the Commonwealth lies in the empire of its laws, the involvement of the people, and the measures capable of preventing tyranny (p. 73).
The aspects of his work in which democratic thought infuses are numerous. Religion, for example, since he defends a form of civil and state religion while supporting freedom of conscience and the election of priests by the faithful (pp. 192-200). The Rota Club is another illustration: founded by Harrington in 1659, it is one of the first political societies in Europe and, during the few weeks of its existence (pp. 249-259), constitutes for its members with diverse opinions a true democratic experiment, “the very type of inclusive political nation advocated in Oceana » (p. 257).
And it is in such examples that we can recognize the most spectacular aspect of Harrington’s democratic thought. In his work, the idea of a democracy through actions is strongly asserted. Seduced (like Hobbes) by the medieval metaphor of the political body (pp. 212-219), Harrington offers a very different interpretation: just as the body carries out its various functions without the soul understanding them all or even being aware of them, so the body of the people, organized and adequately led, functions simply without requiring any particular competence (p. 227). Not only should democracy not require citizens to have a prior level of education, but the best education for democracy is participation itself, and even more so for the poor and the less educated, who are thus able “to understand and appreciate political practices and procedures much more easily” (p. 118). Citizenship itself, for Harrington, is constructed through participation in collective tasks, military, political and religious (p. 226).
Aware of the resistance to his ideas, Harrington was involved in the debates and exchanges of pamphlets of his time (pp. 231-248), at least until the restoration of the monarchy which would brutally remove him (pp. 260-265). As Rachel Hammersley’s remarkable sum shows, Harrington constantly opposed those who, following the demagogue’s maxim in Oceanadoubt the ability of the people to inspire good government. They demand good, strong or competent men to make good laws: Give us good men and they will make us good LawsThe maxim of the legislator that Harrington opposes is quite different: Give us good orders, and they will make us good laws. Give us a good constitution, capable of hearing citizens and making them participate in political life: good laws will flow from it.