Giuseppi Mazzini’s Political Theology on the Origin of Revolution

A rejection of the Marxist or materialist view that economic conditions drive history has been one of the most consistent aspects in my writings and views shared among colleagues who adopt the materialist view for many years. Revolutions indeed have their origin in the human mind and its guiding principles. A true revolution is not just a change of administration or a riot caused by material interests and right-based egoism, but a fundamental shift in the spiritual and intellectual order of society. This fierce opposition to materialism and belief that the true engine of human history are duties, association and spiritual evolution, not merely economic or physical factors is at the basis of Mazzini’s political theology.

“Ideas rule the world and its events. A Revolution is the passage of an idea from theory to practice. Whatever men have said, material interests never have caused, and never will cause, a Revolution. Extreme poverty, financial ruin, oppressive or unequal taxation, may provoke risings that are more or less threatening or violent, but nothing more. Revolutions have their origin in the mind, in the very root of life; not in the body, in the material organism. A Religion or a philosophy lies at the base of every Revolution. This is a truth that can be proved from the whole historical tradition of Humanity.”

Mazzini’s essay “Thoughts on the French Revolution of 1789” (Pensieri sulla Rivoluzione francese del 1789) in 1835 in The Duties of Man and Other Essays, trans. Ella Noyes, p, 251.

A brotherhood of man cannot be built on the foundation of rights and stomach-filling; it must be built on Duty (sacrifice for the greater good) and Spiritual Unity. The Universe operates on this law and duty, and it is the mission of humanity to improve ourselves and humanity at each step in the indefinite progressive development of our faculties. Duty is “the royal talisman” Blavatsky, Judge and Mazzini all equally taught, and Spirit is immanent in the People and all life. The reflection of the life-bearing fire is a unified vision, and within that vision live associations of families, nations and the cosmopolitanism of nations.

“Duty is that which is due to Humanity, to our fellow-men, neighbours, family, and especially that which we owe to all those who are poorer and more helpless than we are ourselves. This is a debt which, if left unpaid during life, leaves us spiritually insolvent and moral bankrupts in our next incarnation. Theosophy is the quintessence of duty. (Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, 229)

The failures of the materialist socialists and Marx have thus far demonstrated this, while social scientists ignorantly declared in the aftermath of the second world war, “the end of ideologies.” As certain ideologies keep circling just as energy of themselves amongst the People from Fascism to Socialism, the social scientists are proven to be wrong. Humanity is still in need of those who can translate or intuit this vision for the masses and who guide humanity. This world, our physical is but the precipitation of another. External events are but effects. Material interests, Mazzini thought, provoked risings, human passion and the reign of terror, and nothing more, by forcing the Idea through the guillotine. A Religion lies, he says, at the basis of every Revolution, and originates in the root of life. The Winds we become with it in the motion of history; itself, an Adorable and Imponderable Fire in which the world moves as it moves in us.

Les idées gouvernent le monde — IDEALISM MAXIM

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