Barbara Ehrenreich Quote
The historian Michael Walzer has argued that modern revolution was a task for the kind of ascetic, single-minded, self-denying personality that Calvinism sought to inculcate, and certainly some of the successful revolutionaries of the West would seem to fill the bill. As we have seen, the English revolutionary leader Oliver Cromwell, a Calvinist himself, railed perpetually against the festive inclinations of his troops. The Jacobin leader Robespierre despised disorderly gatherings, including any group in which there is a tumult—a hard thing to avoid during the French Revolution, one might think.73 His fellow revolutionary Louis de Saint-Just described the ideal revolutionary man in terms that would have been acceptable to any Puritan: inflexible, but sensible; he is frugal; he is simple … honorable, he is sober, but not mawkish.74 Lenin inveighed against slovenliness … carelessness, untidiness, unpunctuality as well as dissoluteness in sexual life,75 seeing himself as a manager and controller as well as a leader.76 For men like Robespierre and Lenin, the central revolutionary rite was the meeting—experienced in a sitting position, requiring no form of participation other than an occasional speech, and conducted according to strict rules of procedure. Dancing, singing, trances—these could only be distractions from the weighty business at hand.
The historian Michael Walzer has argued that modern revolution was a task for the kind of ascetic, single-minded, self-denying personality that Calvinism sought to inculcate, and certainly some of the successful revolutionaries of the West would seem to fill the bill. As we have seen, the English revolutionary leader Oliver Cromwell, a Calvinist himself, railed perpetually against the festive inclinations of his troops. The Jacobin leader Robespierre despised disorderly gatherings, including any group in which there is a tumult—a hard thing to avoid during the French Revolution, one might think.73 His fellow revolutionary Louis de Saint-Just described the ideal revolutionary man in terms that would have been acceptable to any Puritan: inflexible, but sensible; he is frugal; he is simple … honorable, he is sober, but not mawkish.74 Lenin inveighed against slovenliness … carelessness, untidiness, unpunctuality as well as dissoluteness in sexual life,75 seeing himself as a manager and controller as well as a leader.76 For men like Robespierre and Lenin, the central revolutionary rite was the meeting—experienced in a sitting position, requiring no form of participation other than an occasional speech, and conducted according to strict rules of procedure. Dancing, singing, trances—these could only be distractions from the weighty business at hand.
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