Do You Hear the People Sing, Citoyen Burke?

It is the year 1832, and France is bleeding. King Louis Philippe has reneged on his promise to help the poor of Paris during a time when the economy has tanked and the hardships of disease and poverty bear down on the people of France more than ever. At this point, a brave group of revolutionaries decided that enough was enough. This group was known as the Society for the Rights of Man. Throwing up barricades throughout the streets of Paris that June, the rebels demanded the end of the French monarchy, democratic elections, and relief for the poor. Although the rebellion was crushed within three days, the rebels’ cause lived on to inspire a later rebellion that ended up overthrowing King Louis Philippe. The way most people today are familiar with the facts of this rebellion is through Victor Hugo’s groundbreaking work Les Miserables and the later musical of the same name.

Les Miserables is a unique work due to its portrayal of, well, what the title says it portrays. The miserables; the poor and oppressed people in society who suffer due to the socio-economic system. For two hundred years, readers and audiences have been moved by the struggles of an escaped convict trying to rebuild his life, Jean Valjean, an impoverished factory worker forced into prostitution, Fantine, and Cosette, Fantine’s orphaned daughter. The story’s portrays the June Rebellion as a tragic defeat of the heroic revolutionaries trying to make French society live up to its goals of liberté, egalité, fraternité. Political figures as diverse as author HG Wells and former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have praised Hugo’s work for its attention to the oppressed, and also for its defense of the right of citizens to change their society.

This attitude can be directly contrasted with the views of English Whig statesman Edmund Burke. While early in his career Burke defended revolutions such as the American revolution, by the time of the original 1789 French Revolution he had drastically shifted his position to that of a conservative traditionalist. In his 1790 work Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke attacked the French revolution for its willingness to drastically change society’s political and religious traditions. He argued that overturning France’s tradition of monarchy, aristocracy, and the Roman Catholic Church would lead to chaos. For Burke, society depended on rank and hierarchy, with a few at the top to command and many at the bottom to be commanded. Initially, from the way the revolution went, it might seem as though Burke was correct. The popular image of the French revolution is that of the reign of terror, the period during which the French guillotined many, including some innocents, whom they considered “enemies of the revolution.” But it is here that Burke commits a logical fallacy. He blatantly ignores the fact that under l’Ancien Regime of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, hundreds of thousands suffered in poverty and starved to death, or were executed for minor crimes. As Victor Hugo illustrated in Les Miserables, even after the monarchy was restored following the 1789 revolution, the abuses of the monarchy and aristocracy continued.

Burke was correct in that the revolutionaries committed many crimes, but the solution he offers is not based in any logical or well-reasoned thinking. Tradition is one of the stupidest reasons to continue to do something; the idea that “this is the way we’ve always done it” somehow justifies torture and extortion is absurd on its face. Following Burke’s logic, his friends the Americans would never have declared independence, because British imperialism and monarchy was their tradition. Even the Magna Carta of 1215, which Edmund Burke cites as a conservative document preserving English liberties, would never have been drawn up had the English of the time not challenged the tradition of the King having absolute power. Slavery would also have been laudable, as it was a tradition of Europeans since antiquity.

Thus, Burke’s logic falls flat on its face. As Victor Hugo and the Society for the Rights of Man (called the Friends of the Abaissé in Les Miserables) correctly pointed out, following tradition is pointless when that tradition causes harm. As such, the rebels of 1215, 1776, 1789, and 1832 all rose up against traditions that were abusive to the majority of society. Burke ignores the fact that, as Rousseau pointed out, humans have the ability to learn from their mistakes. The revolution of 1789 was bloody, and the revolution of 1832 failed, but the French revolution of 1848 that overthrew King Louis Philippe was far less bloody and was in fact successful. Using our reasoning abilities, people have the power to change the world for the better. Burke was right in one way: we can learn from the past. We can learn from our past mistakes what did not work, and in our next revolution, we can stop ourselves from making those same mistakes.

All of this is important because even in the modern United States we still face a lot of abusive traditions. From the stigma against homosexuality to the struggles of the modern poor, tradition helps promote a number of negative aspects of our society. This is very sad, because it would likely be much easier to get rid of these social ills if they did not have centuries of acceptance which make it hard for people to imagine any other way of social organization.

The final song of Les Miserables is a reprise of the musical’s most famous song, Do You Hear the People Sing, the rousing anthem of the Friends of the Abaissé. This song displays how, although the revolutionaries lost in 1832, the fight continues on. Even today, our fight against abusive traditions continues.

“Do you hear the people sing?

Singing the song of angry men?

It is the music of a people

Who will not be slaves again!”