Right of revolution
In political philosophy, the right of revolution or right of rebellion is the right or duty of a people to "alter or abolish" a government that acts against their common interests or threatens the safety of the people without justifiable cause. Stated throughout history in one form or another, the belief in this right has been used to justify various revolutions, including the American Revolution, French Revolution, the Syrian Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Iranian Revolution.
History
Early examples
Ancient China
To justify their overthrowing of the earlier Shang dynasty, the kings of the Zhou dynasty of China promulgated the concept known as the Mandate of Heaven, that Heaven would bless the authority of a just ruler, but would be displeased and withdraw its mandate from a despotic ruler. The Mandate of Heaven would then transfer to those who would rule best. Chinese historians interpreted a successful revolt as evidence that the Mandate of Heaven had passed on. Throughout Chinese history, rebels who opposed the ruling dynasty made the claim that the Mandate of Heaven had passed, giving them the right to revolt. Ruling dynasties were often uncomfortable with this, and the writings of the Confucian philosopher Mencius were often suppressed for declaring that the people have the right to overthrow a ruler that did not provide for their needs.Ancient Rome
The populist leader Tiberius Gracchus tried to justify depriving power from tribune Marcus Octavius by arguing that a tribune "stands deprived by his own act of honours and immunities, by the neglect of the duty for which the honour was bestowed upon him". For Gracchus, he "who assails the power of the people is no longer a tribune at all".He strengthened his argument by highlighting the precedent of the overthrow of Tarquin the Proud "when he acted wrongfully; and for the crime of one single man, the ancient government under which Rome was built was abolished forever." As historian Edward Gibbon observes, after Tarquin's overthrow, "the ambitious Roman who should dare to assume their title or imitate tyranny was devoted to the infernal gods: each of his fellow-citizens was armed with the sword of justice; and the act of Brutus, however repugnant to gratitude or prudence, had been already sanctified by the judgement of his country."
After the death of Augustus, the soldier Percennius fomented mutiny in the legions of Pannonia. Believing they had the right to violently rebel to get better treatment and greater appreciation from the state, he rhetorically asked the common soldiery why they submitted to the centurions while military life entailed such low pay and so many years in service. Many soldiers shared his feelings. According to the historian Tacitus, "The throng applauded from various motives, some pointing to the marks of the lash, others to their grey locks, and most of them to their threadbare garments and naked limbs."
The Praetorian Subrius Flavus justified his right of revolution against Emperor Nero on the grounds that Nero's crimes meant he no longer deserved the love of the people: "I began to hate you when you became the murderer of your mother and your wife, a charioteer, an actor, and an incendiary."
In 285 C.E., Maximian suppressed a rebellion of Gallic peasants violently resisting exploitation by their masters. These fought for their natural rights against the miserable conditions they were placed under. Gibbon says that they "asserted the natural rights of men, but they asserted those rights with the most savage cruelty".
Medieval Europe
One example of the emergence of a right of revolution can be traced back to Þorgnýr the Lawspeaker, who in 1018 had a dramatic confrontation with the King of Sweden. The lawspeaker claimed the King of Sweden was accountable to the people and would be overthrown by them if he continued with his unpopular war with Norway.Another example were the semi-mythical Charters of Sobrarbe, allegedly issued in the Pyrenees in the 850s, which enshrined the Iberian legal principle that "laws come before kings." Specifically, the 6th charter of Sobrarbe specified that "If He should hereafter tyrannise the kingdom against the fueros or liberties, the kingdom should be free to choose another king, even if he were a pagan," thereby enshrining the right of rebellion against the King. During the High Middle Ages, the Charters of Sobrarbe were used both in the kingdom of Navarre and in the kingdom of Aragon to thwart royal authority, and in the medieval kingdom of Aragon to create the figure of the Justicia de Aragón, an office first mentioned in 1115, appointed by the Aragonese parliament, and with ample powers to veto any action of the King deemed to against the customs and laws of the kingdom; this provided a uniquely complete institutional and constitutional framework with which to disobey the King. The legal lemma "Obedezco pero no cumplo" found in Castilian law, likewise stemming from this tradition, was used to justify disobeying the King's orders that were deemed to go against the law; this legal principle was used in everything from bypassing censorship to justifying open rebellions, as e.g. was famously exploited by Hernán Cortés to justify his otherwise illegal invasion and conquest of Mexico against the explicit orders of the King of Castile and his officers in Cuba.
Another example is Magna Carta, an English charter issued in 1215, which required the King to renounce certain rights and accept that his will could be bound by the law. It included a "security clause" that gave the right to a committee of barons to overrule the will of the King through force if needed. Magna Carta directly influenced the development of parliamentary democracy and many constitutional documents, such as the United States Constitution. The Golden Bull of 1222 was a golden bull, or edict, issued by King Andrew II of Hungary. The law established the rights of Hungary's noblemen, including the right to disobey the King when he acted contrary to law. The Golden Bull is often compared to Magna Carta; the Bull was the first constitutional document of the nation of Hungary, while Magna Carta was the first constitutional charter of the nation of England.
Thomas Aquinas also writes about the right to resist tyranny in the Summa Theologica. He considers a law not to be a law at all, but an act of violence, if it contradicts either human or Divine good, overextends the power of the lawgiver, or hampers different parts of society unequally. For Aquinas, overthrowing a tyrant does not make a population seditious. Rather, the tyranny of tyrants means they commit "sedition", by which Aquinas means disturbance of those who work together lawfully for the good of the multitude:
Nicole Oresme, in his Livre de Politiques, categorically denied any right of resistance. John of Salisbury advocated direct revolutionary assassination of unethical tyrannical rulers in his Policraticus.
Early modern Europe
Theological notions of the right of revolution were elaborated in the early modern period. The Jesuits, especially Robert Bellarmine and Juan de Mariana, were widely known and often feared for advocating resistance to tyranny and often tyrannicide—one of the implications of the natural law focus of the School of Salamanca.John Calvin believed something similar. In a commentary on the Book of Daniel, he observed that contemporary monarchs pretend to reign "by the grace of God", but the pretense was "a mere cheat" so that they could "reign without control". He believed that "Earthly princes depose themselves while they rise up against God", so "it behooves us to spit upon their heads than to obey them". When ordinary citizens are confronted with tyranny, he wrote, ordinary citizens have to suffer it. But magistrates have the duty to "curb the tyranny of kings", as had the Tribunes of the Plebs in ancient Rome, the Ephors in Sparta, and the Demarchs in ancient Athens. That Calvin could support a right of resistance in theory did not mean that he thought such resistance prudent in all circumstances. At least publicly, he disagreed with the Scottish Calvinist John Knox's call for revolution against the Catholic Queen Mary I Tudor of England.
The Catholic Church shared Calvin's prudential concerns – the Pope condemned Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot, and Regnans in Excelsis was widely considered to be a mistake. Instead, the safest course of action for the people was to endure tyranny for as long as it could be borne, rather than run the larger risks of armed revolution.
The right of revolution was expounded by the Monarchomachs in the context of the French Wars of Religion, and by Huguenots thinkers who legitimized tyrannicides.
In the last chapter of The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli exhorts the Medici family to take up violent insurrection "to liberate Italy from the barbarians". He explains why contemporary circumstances justify the Medici's right of revolution:
Philosophical views
John Locke
Perhaps no other major philosopher wrote as much about the right of revolution as Enlightenment thinker John Locke. He developed the concept in his Two Treatises of Government, especially the last two chapters, "Of Tyranny" and "Of the Dissolution of Government". The right formed an important part of his social contract theory, in which he defined the basis of social relationships. Locke said that under natural law, all people have the right to life, liberty, and private property; under the social contract, the people could instigate a revolution against the government when it acted against the interests of citizens, to replace the government with one that served the interests of citizens. In some cases, Locke saw revolution as an obligation. For him, the right of revolution acted as a safeguard against tyranny.Locke defended the right of revolution in Two Treatises of Government in this way:
For Locke, these governments undid themselves by standing in the way of a citizen's right to property. He believed that "governments are dissolved" when "they endeavour to invade the property of the subject", since it is the right of the people to "choose and authorise a legislative" and accompanying institutions that act "as guards and fences to the properties of all society". In other writings, he used the analogy of a robber to explain why tyrannical infringement on property makes for unjust law: "Should a robber break into my house, and, with a dagger at my throat, make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title by his sword has an unjust conqueror who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown or some petty villain." Thus, according to Locke, if a government acts against a citizen's right of property, that citizen may exercise his right of revolution against that government.
Locke drew on the Old Testament story of Hezekiah's rebellion against the King of Assyria to make the case that God supported any people rebelling against unrighteous rule, saying that "it is plain that shaking off a power which force, and not right, hath set over any one, though it hath the name of rebellion, yet it is no offence before God, but that which He allows and countenances".
Like Aquinas, Locke believed that the truly seditious or rebellious individuals are not those who change the legislative to ensure public wellbeing, but the despots who violated public wellbeing in the first place with their illegitimate laws: "For when men, by entering into society and civil government, have excluded force, and introduced laws for the preservation of property, peace, and unity among themselves, those who set up force again in opposition to the law, do rebellare – that is, bring back again the state of war, and are properly rebels". Also like Aquinas, Locke considered it just for a subject to disobey any ruler overextending his political power. In A Letter Concerning Toleration, he argued that "if the law, indeed, be concerning things that lie not within the verge of the magistrates authority,... men are not in these cases obliged by that law, against their consciences."
However, Locke was not only a proponent of fighting tyranny through civil disobedience of unjust laws. He also suggested using violent insurrection in situations where an illegitimate centre of power, such as a rogue executive, has used force to subdue the supreme power in the land, that is, the legislature: