REVOLUTION. - Great uncertainty still reigns over the exact definition of the term. The revolutionary event is so complex in its causes and in the elements composing it that it becomes very difficult to determine the constants to be included in a univocal concept. The not always uniform use of the word and its similarity to other neighboring terms considerably complicate the scientific inquiry. Nevertheless, it seems that at present a certain agreement exists in understanding r., not in the sense of any political upheaval, but in the more specific sense of a movement that tends substantially to change the social, political and juridical order of a country, in order to replace it with a new one, which in the preparatory phase represents the goal toward whose attainment the movement is directed.
I. GENERAL NOTIONS AND RELATED TERMS
According to this concept, which seems the most scientifically exact, revolution presupposes a political and social order no longer corresponding to the needs of the community; a movement destined to sweep it away; a new order, once achieved which the motion settles into equilibrium. Thus it does not prove so difficult to distinguish revolution from other similar social events, which generally lack the specific element of the establishment of a new order. Sedition, in fact, can arise from particular causes and be exhausted in the solution of limited problems, without affecting the existing order. A greater distance separates revolution from rebellion, an uprising of popular masses or of discontented portions of the population against the provisions of authority, and therefore substantially an act of violent insubordination. Without doubt these forms can be mingled with the revolutionary movement, but they do not constitute its dominant and proper note.
It is commonly held today that the use of violence, which always accompanies sedition and rebellion, is not intrinsic to revolution, which can unfold in forms that are even peaceful and no less transformative matrices of the social order. Such, in fact, was the Christian revolution. However, outside this singular case, in political revolutions an act of force almost always accompanies their affirmation and is usually its instrument, for breaking the resistances that the old order opposes to the rising tide of new currents. One can therefore affirm that, although violence is not intrinsic to the concept of revolution, it is hardly ever found disjoined from it. A revolution, without the use of force, could be brought about, in the political field, only if the social transformation comes about through the work and influence of a strong personality, who uses the political power legally possessed to put it into effect, as, for example, Peter the Great of Russia did.
The expressions passive and active resistance, used commonly by Catholic writers, do not coincide with the more modern meaning of revolution. The first includes only a refusal of obedience to the imposed law, in certain cases not only lawful but also obligatory: the second has a greater resemblance to revolution and could almost be reduced to it, when active resistance opposes the powers of the State. However, although this marked resemblance must be taken into account in order to proceed to a moral and juridical evaluation of revolution, among Catholic theorists the expression has a limited sense, which derives from the particular question of tyranny, in connection with which it is used. Revolution is still not the coup d'état, a transformation of the order brought about by an act of force by the public organs themselves, which act beyond the limits permitted by the constitution in force. The coup d'état too can be part of a revolutionary process, but in itself it is not a revolution, from whose specific notes one must perhaps also exclude the suddenness and rapidity of the movement. The fact that it usually manifests itself as a sudden explosion of forces long held in check can indicate only that in ordinary cases this is the culminating point of a vast process, which has had a period of psychological preparation and will have one of settling for the establishment of the new order. Overwhelming is the moment of organized violence, but this does not belong to the intrinsic elements of the concept of revolution.
II. CAUSES AND MORAL AND JURIDICAL CONTENT OF REVOLUTION
The causes that usually produce these abrupt upheavals in the history of peoples are many and of diverse nature. One must beware of adopting in their investigation the system of monovalence, as happens when their outbreak is attributed to the economic factor alone.
The French Revolution, for example, was predominantly the work of the Enlightenment, which first undermined the moral and juridical foundations on which the old regime rested, and propagated the new ideals of liberty and equality. As in every social phenomenon, so too in revolution the ideological and spiritual element can never be absent, since a new political and social order cannot be constituted unless there exists a nucleus of ideas, perhaps obscurely and vaguely intuited at the beginnings of the process, but always present at its base. In general terms it may be said that a revolution is not prepared and does not enter its propulsive phase until a profound rift has opened between the ruling class and the body of society.
Opinions differ concerning the moral and juridical content of revolution. The revolutionary theory resting on the concept of popular sovereignty, as it was imagined and described by Rousseau, must be considered superseded. Having configured the holders of social authority as mandataries of the people, removable by a contrary expression of the so-called general will, it declared legitimate every revolution, in which it saw nothing other than the exercise of a political power on the part of the sole subject that by nature would have been invested with it in an inalienable manner. Though starting from different principles, Fichte arrived at the same conclusion. According to him the people would never be rebellious, inasmuch as it represents in fact and in right the supreme power. Any form of historicism, and particularly idealistic historicism, is constrained to legitimize any revolutionary movement, as a moment in which the rationality of history is realized or the physical and biological forces of society assert themselves. Sound criticism has by now dissipated the myth of popular sovereignty in the sense attributed to it by the philosopher of Geneva, and to historicism it has objected that the latter destroys moral values and denies any trace of normative virtue to the essential principles that regulate human coexistence. Against the revolutionary consequence of such currents, the condemnation pronounced in his time by Pius IX in the Syllabus is still valid: "To deny obedience, nay rather to rebel against legitimate princes is lawful" (prop. LXIII).
The solutions that presently hold the field regarding the problem of the ethical content of revolution can be reduced schematically to two, the first sociological in basis, the second rather juridical in nature. Some think that revolution finds its justification in that right which, in a subterranean manner, is continually renewing itself in the social conscience and which, at a determinate historical moment, comes to stand in irreducible contrast with the political form and the institutions in force. Revolution would heal this dissension, a sign at once of grave illness in the social organism and its remedy. The second solution, on the other hand, claims to rest on genuinely juridical elements. Revolution in itself would be nothing but a pure fact, juridically not evaluable, since it opposes the right existing at that moment, that is, the right of the State. In the event of success, however, the entire revolutionary process would be legalized through a kind of reaction that the effect exercises upon the cause, or through a kind of retroactive efficacy that the new order would have upon the acts to which it owes its origin. Revolution itself would elaborate within its bosom a right of its own, imperfect, vague and defective; a right, if you will, unjust, but a true right, like that which arises in any association on the margins of the State's order.
With regard to these theories it must be observed, first of all, that the sociological origin of right is debatable. Although it must be admitted that the social conscience re-elaborates with continual deepening the norms of coexistence, one cannot maintain that it is a true source of right, or at least of all right, without falling into moral and juridical relativism. The proximate source of the most fundamental norms of associated life is human nature, and its herald is the individual conscience. In these, and not in a supposed right variable in time and space, must the criterion of evaluation of revolution be sought, otherwise one returns to the thesis of its unconditional legitimacy. Nor can it escape notice how in the second opinion the justification of revolution is founded solely on the accomplished fact, on victorious force, to which right would affix its seal of legitimacy only because it has succeeded in triumphing. A pure fact, however, does not transform itself into right, nor can it give rise to right by virtue of the principle that requires proportion between cause and effect. That unjust right which revolution would elaborate within its bosom still contains a contradiction in terms, since right and justice are ontologically joined and correlative.
III. CATHOLIC DOCTRINE
Catholic doctrine is not in agreement on the solution of the problem just mentioned. Particularly after the French Revolution, some theorists began to lean toward wholly rigid positions, excluding in any case and supposition the legitimacy of revolutionary insurrection against the constituted authority. Of this number was, for example, Taparelli, according to whom, even in the case of unbearable despotism, the citizen would have no other recourse than to turn to God, in whose hands lie the will and the life of tyrants. Leo XIII showed himself favorable to this solution in the encyclical Quod apostolici muneris, of 28 Dec. 1879, where he wrote: "Yet if it sometimes happens that the public power is exercised by princes in a ca-
reckless and excessive manner, the doctrine of the Catholic Church does not permit private individuals to rise up against them at their own discretion, lest the tranquility of order be still more disturbed, and greater harm thereby befall society. And when matters have reached such a point that no other hope of salvation smiles upon us, it wills that the remedy be hastened by the merits of Christian patience and by instant prayers to the Lord."
Nevertheless the majority of Catholic theorists has remained faithful to the old tradition, which goes back to John of Salisbury and along its course encounters the names of St. Thomas Aquinas, Suárez, Bellarmine, De Lugo and in more recent times Cathrein, Meyer and Cardinal Zigliara along with others (cf. D. Bañes, In Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃx, q. 64, a. 3, concl. 1; Sylvius, In Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃx, q. 64, a. 3, concl. 2; C. Billuart, De iure et iustitia, diss. X, a. 2 ad 3; R. Bellarmine, De conc. auct., l. II, cap. 19; F. Suárez, Defensio fidei, l. VI, cap. 4 § 15 etc.). The problem debated by them concerns properly the lawfulness or otherwise of active resistance against tyranny and despotism, but the principles established by them can very well be adapted to revolution accompanied by the use of violence, which is the more frequent case. Schematically their thought is as follows. Social life, the juridical and institutional order, authority are nothing other than means ordered to the good of the human person, so that the latter may attain the greatest abundance of temporal well-being. Their immanent end and their reason for being consists, therefore, in the common good of the political body, to which remains organically directed both the social activity of individual citizens and of lesser associations and that of the powers of the State. Now the common good, besides having a stable part, corresponding to the more universal and deeper needs of human nature, also has a mutable one, which derives from the ceaseless movement to which collective life is subject. To a dynamic social life there must therefore correspond, according to the thought of St. Thomas (De regimine principum, l. I, cap. 6), a dynamic order and a flexible authority, which interprets its needs. The tendency of the latter, however, is to stiffen into static forms, so that fractures open between the new exigencies and the institutions in force. As the fracture widens through the rigidity of the system, the danger of a conflict between the citizens and the power of the State takes shape. When such circumstances come about, the first duty of the citizens and of the authority is to provide, through the ordinary and peaceful ways and with the legal means at their disposal, for the structural reforms necessary to prevent the widening of the contrast, adapting the social order to the imperious demands of political reality. If the authority, on the other hand, persists in the defense of institutions that have become wholly or in part anachronistic, the specter of the violent rupture of the false equilibrium is raised.
Even in this supposition revolution does not yet become lawful, if possibilities remain for a legal reform and the evils are not so grave as to place the common good in serious danger. Revolution can be compared to war, the use of violence in the international field, to which morality and law grant recourse only as an extrema ratio, when, peaceful means having been exhausted, no other way presents itself for obtaining reparation or respect for a certain and proportionately grave right. If, therefore, society threatens to go to ruin, because of the grave prejudice brought to the common good by the unjust attitude of the ruling class, and no possibility remains of bending it through the use of legal means, revolution can be considered lawful, provided, it must be added among the conditions of such lawfulness, that it is not foreseen that it will bring to the community more evil than that which it intends to repair.
The more ancient writers supported this conclusion on the democratic conception of power, according to which the people, the original subject of authority, transmits it to those who must exercise it, by means of an explicit or implicit pact, on condition that it be used for the promotion of the common good. If this good, instead of being promoted, is gravely compromised by the inertia or ill will of those who are constituted in authority, and every legal way is precluded for preventing social collapse, the political power returns to rest upon the people, which has preserved it radically, and the people has the right to provide for its own destinies. Some more modern moralists, not accepting the theory of the democratic origin of power, base the same conclusion on the right of legitimate defense. The social entity as a moral person possesses the right to defend its own life and integrity, and therefore if the unjust resistances of the authority or its oppressive measures should reduce it to such extremes as to place its essential goods in serious and grave danger, so as to lead it to the brink of ruin, it has from the natural law the faculty to repel the unjust aggression proceeding from the abuse of political power.
According to the most common Catholic doctrine not every revolution is, therefore, intrinsically unlawful. However, its justice or injustice depends neither on its triumph, nor on a false posthumous legality, but on the motives on which it rests from its very birth, that is, on its conformity or otherwise to the natural and rational juridical order, to whose norms any social action must submit. Now such an order is not always and in every supposition a guardian of authority: it defends it when it fulfills the function that is its reason for being; it abandons it when it betrays it through incapacity or through malice. The recent Spanish revolution, declared legitimate by the entire episcopate of that country, offers the freshest example of the value of the principles and conclusions set forth up to this point.
On the principal of these, that is, on the prevalence of the common good considered as a permanent norm of social life, is founded the solution of the other question, no less important than the preceding one from the moral and juridical aspect, raised by the triumph of an unjust r. and by the consequent establishment of a de facto government. However the speculative problem may be resolved as to whence the binding force of the laws issued by it derives, it is certain that citizens are obliged to obey its injunctions, directed at maintaining order for the regular conduct of collective life, provided that they are not unlawful. Nor does such submission imply a recognition of legitimacy for the de facto government. This, however, can with time be transformed into a legitimate one through the influence of the same fundamental norm of the prevalence of the common good. That good requires, in fact, that, in order not to disturb the order established by the revolutionary government now consolidated in power, the same government continue to guide the community with full power to dispose of everything for its well-being, and therefore either by a kind of prescription, as some have called it, or by custom, or better still by virtue of a moral exigency whose precise form it is not worth determining, it communicates to it effective sovereignty with all the rights connected to it. When the moment arrives, not determinable in a mathematical way, in which the common good postulates the stability of the political and social order achieved by the r., natural law seals the de facto government with the seal of legitimacy, not converting the pure fact into right, but superimposing upon the fact a juridical faculty that derives from another source.