Tyler Cowen: evaluation

Transcript context

…Well, you’re talking about a very, very short space of time. That was the thing that struck me most, working on his life. You could say there was elements of luck and timing involved. He did have a very distinctive rhetoric, the rhetoric of speaking for the people, of sacrificing his personal interest for those of the people. That was powerful in the circumstances. It resonated with some of his fellow revolutionaries. But I think when you look at the period and you reconstruct it on a day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month basis, what you understand is this is a tremendous scrabble, and his ascendancy was always insecure. I don’t think it’s correct to ever describe him as a tyrant. He’s basically one of the people struggling to ride that revolutionary wave. If we think of the thought of Robespierre, it seems in some areas he was extremely radical, but in other areas, such as family and gender, he was remarkably conservative — arguably more conservative than the status quo ex ante. What’s the principle that delineates where he becomes radical and where he becomes conservative? It’s much easier for him, and I think for everybody else, to be radical in opposition. In the early years of the Revolution, he is an ardent critic of those people who are trying, for example, to defend some kind of distinction between active and passive citizens. He’s an advocate of more public surveillance of the debates. He’s a pioneer. He’s definitely a radical at that point. Once he is himself in power, once he is trying to stabilize the Revolution, then he becomes much less radical. He’s basically recognizing the need to impose order because he is now on the inside. He is a person who has taken on the role and the responsibility for trying to impose order on the Revolution.…

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