A vocabulary justifying revolutions

Abstract

To my knowledge, the concept “vocabulary of motives” was first used in social science by the young C . Wright Mills (1940) . In my recent book, The Many-Splendored Society: Fueled by Symbols (Zetterberg, 2010, pp . 415-416), I suggest that vocabularies of motives are of two different kinds . We use ‘vocabularies of justifications’ to motivate our own actions . ‘Compelling vocabularies’ are what others use to motivate us, and what we might use to motivate others . The leverage of these small sets of words fascinates and mystifies . Our language brains use them in human encounters to shape and motivate individuals, and thereby also maintain and change social reality . In concluding my book, I found no place for a section with an example of a vocabulary justifying revolutions . I present it here instead, and thank the Editor of Sociologisk forskning for the opportunity . (I do not rule out that the piece might find a place also in some later volume of my writing project The Many-Splendored Society .) A revolution, a full and rapid change of political, economic, and other realms within a society, requires extraordinary justifications . Usually verbal attacks do not suffice as justification and the revolutionaries need to justify spontaneous and organized violence as well . The American Revolution contributed concrete compelling vocabularies such as the legislative principle “No taxation without representation,” meaning that a legislature elected by the people shall decide taxes paid by that people . It also created justifying vocabularies, such as the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 by Thomas Jefferson . The latter states that the Creator has given all men “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” . This phrasing has some well-known antecedents . John Locke had, at the time of the English revolutions, put forth three rights: “life, liberty, and property,” or, “life, liberty, and estate .” George Mason, Jefferson’s fellow-statesman, had written in the Virginia Declaration of Rights about “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety .” Jefferson dropped all references to property . He wrote “pursuit of happiness” and added “among these” to the text, implying that there were others . He apparently took liberties in editing the rights he thought given by God . He respected Benjamin Franklin, who believed that God helps those who help themselves . In Jefferson’s own life, there is little doubt that the pursuit of happiness was an umbrella covering his pursuits of money, power, knowledge, and artistic beauty, preferably centered on his stately family home, Monticello . His fortune included approximately 100 slaves who served his household, his farm, and a nail factory .