p Theories of unabashed reaction appeared in the 19th century like a poisonous weed. They reviled the revolution, science and free thought and even questioned the importance of scientific and technical progress. They were reflected in the schemes of the reactionary philosophy of history. These saw the meaning of the 19th century as lying in the fact that “the tranquil harmony of a naturally formed social hierarchy was upset and overthrown by the restless, critical and levelling spirit of education and revolution; from the ruins was to rise a new world of harmony and order”. Among those who wrote about “harmony” were Fourier and Saint-Simon, but the spiritual leaders of reaction gave the term a different meaning. Reaction required the protection of “law and order”, with religion playing a great role in the process. “It was this 308 formula that determined for a long time historical concepts and interpretations, cutting them off from the philosophy of pure and uninterrupted progress put forward by Lessing, Herder and Condorcet.”  [308•1 

p Reaction, Professor Vipper says, “faced above all the ideas of progress”, and directed its first blows at it, anathematising revolutionary struggle, extolling religion and the church, and claiming that “order” was the basis of society, and that the key social function was to maintain it by political and ideological means and to put down the “trouble-makers”. The existing relations of domination and ownership, they claimed, constituted the social “order”, with “anarchy”, that is, revolution, its main enemy.

p The main content of the theories spun out by the reactionaries was a reappraisal of the events of the French revolution to extract from its experience the “lessons” that would help to prevent a repetition of any revolutionary storms. The revolution was reviled in every way, as diplomats, writers and churchmen set to give ideological substantiation to counterrevolution.

p In the history of social thought that was an attempt to show the harm of social change. A theorist of the period, Louis de Bonald, claimed, for instance, that revolution meant “disorder” when the “natural functions of the social body were disrupted and stopped"  [308•2  The “perfect society" was to be a monarchy, because men were unable to obey their equals. This kind of society had to resist all evolution and change, which could be only for the worse.  [308•3  Various philosophical, historical and legal “arguments” were aimed at maintaining the idea of “social stability”, immutability and immobility of social being. All innovation, even in science and technology, did more harm than good, any modification of the established order which changed its traditional form, were dangerous.

p Barruel sought in his voluminous History of Jacobinism to expose the “triple conspiracy" which had led to revolution in France and confused the minds of men all over Europe. He claimed that this was, first, a conspiracy of “men who claimed to be philosophers”, second, a conspiracy of “sophists against all the royal thrones" and third, a conspiracy against “all civil society, and also against every type of property".  [308•4  Such writings were intended to scare the already terrified bourgeois with the spectre of revolution.

p The political wisdom of reaction in that period was a very simple one. Social inequality was a natural human state, for some men were born to be slaves. The same law prevailed in relations between nations, for some nations were destined for colonial slavery. That was, in effect, the world “order”, which governments had to maintain, vigorously acting against any trouble-makers. Such views were adopted in one form or another by the slave-owners in the south of the United States, many Tory lords in Britain, the legitimists in France, the serf-holders in Russia and other reactionaries. Some reactionaries styled themselves as the “sons of the Crusaders" and proclaimed their “right” to interfere in the internal affairs of other states in order to re-establish the feudal-absolutist order by force of arms. This was first suggested during the preparation of the counterrevolutionary military coalition of 1791 against the bourgeois revolution in France. This “right” was subsequently arrogated by the Holy Alliance, a military and political coalition of feudal-absolutist states in the early 19th century.

p A congress of this ultrareactionary alliance held at Troppau in November 1820 proclaimed intervention in other states to be “legitimate" also when their state system was changed as a result of an uprising and when such change presented a danger to members of the Alliance. Naturally, the leaders of the Holy Alliance were to decide when these conditions were met. That was when the lame sophism of the “threat” was invented. At that time, Austrian soldiers ruthlessly trampled the cities of Italy on the pretext that some of its cities displayed a spirit of freedom thus presenting a “threat” to the Austrian monarchy. The Holy Alliance enshrined the practice of grossly trampling national sovereignty as a principle: whenever the reactionaries decided that there was a “threat” they resorted to armed force.

Actually, this kind of social and political philosophy was not new. It was a rehash of old reactionary views in new conditions. It marked an attempt to expunge the development of social and politicl thought over the centuries, to return to the ideas of the Roman slaveowners and St. Augustine, and to discard any progressive traditions in the development of bourgeois thought in the 18th century.