The Absurdity Known As The Right to Resist or Overthrow

Everyone is familiar with the refrain that there is a right to resist tyranny. If a government is tyrannical, then the people have the right to resist it or overthrow it. The doctrine of the "right to resistance/overthrow" contains a contradiction that is worth thinking about. The rights that people are never squeamish about praising as "natural" actually have to be conferred upon the people by the sanction of a public law granted by a state. However, if the state then turns around and says, "well, this is really tentative upon the whims of the people we rule over", then this completely undermines the basis of law. In other words, the most authoritative legislation (a constitution) would contain within itself a denial of its own supremacy and sovereignty if the right to resistance were actually enshrined and taken seriously, not just as a sop to popular stupidity.

It's a basic tenet of liberalism -- and doubtlessly many other ideologies --  that there is such a thing as a "right to resistance". The argument goes something like this: if authority gives an "unlawful command", it is to be regarded as a capricious action, and may be disobeyed by every subject. But what is the law? It is just what the state codifies and enforces. An example to mull, today people say, "no one is illegal" as a protest against the brutal way the democratic (i.e. bourgeois) states treat immigrants who lack legal status. As much as I am sympathetic to the ethos behind the cry, this is just factually not true because the state's authority confers it the power to sort its human material, to decide what rights a person has or doesn't. This goes all the way down the line to the point where the state determines who belongs to the nation and who doesn't. It determines who is an "us" and who is a "them." Liberals are just so invested in the positivity of legality that they imagine a person would be bad if they lacked the state's blessing. But, of course, there are plenty of "good" people who do not have legal status. And it goes in many other directions: there are shitty people who are legal, there are shitty people who don't have legal status. But that is neither here nor there. So, the liberals just deny facts to fit their moral worldview.

My point would be that this argument about a right to resistance is a petito princippii. Fundamentally, the questions is who is to decide whether a decree or law is in accordance with the Constitution or not? That is what legality consists in. The outcome of the liberal doctrine, in both theory and practice, would be to make the individual subject sovereign over the public authority. This is setting the pyramid of the state on its apex, as if commands were shifted from the rulers to the ruled. It has it backwards, as if the ruled were really the ones handing out the commands.

The argument about the right to overthrow is so wide-spread today because every person wants to believe in the moral and legal justification for their disobedience. And one also knows that it was a refrain that played a fundamental part in the American Revolution itself. The founding fathers justified their own actions by saying they had a right to it. No one wants to say that they do not have legality or morality on their side, especially if they have the brass to fight for something as grand as a revolution. And no one wants to admit that if you make a call for revolution against the existing orders, then you have given up your rights and will obviously be treated as an enemy of the state. Instead, people make the absurd claim that they are just following a "higher morality" that hasn't been realized yet, but will eventually be retroactively vindicated. Such a right is not thinkable at all if you take the time to think through the nature of sovereignty and its basis. There simply can never be a law to set aside the law, nor can there ever be a right to perpetrate a wrong. The state has to assume that its existence, its most fundamental basis is right all the way down. Imagine a state that assumed its basis for ruling was wrong. It's an absurdity. There really simply is no law of resistance to actions taken by state authorities which runs with the grain of the law. The state already establishes its authority and sovereignty which means that what is says goes. What it says and makes publicly available to all is what counts as a "right".

Of course, I am not claiming that citizens never find a situation so unbearable that a revolution breaks out. There are all kinds of reasons for discontent. There clearly have been rebellions and revolutions-- one only has to look at any history book. My claim is that revolutionaries who want to overthrow the present state of affairs can never have the blessing of legality. They will never have the blessings of the state. People can dare a revolution, but this can never be law. People always try to justify their revolution by saying it is justified by history, god, morality, law, et al. (everyone always looks for some universally binding justification outside of their own needs), but this can never be justified upon the ground of law. I'd say the best way to illustrate this point is to take a look at the relationship between ruler and ruled. (Side note: this was much clearer during feudal times or during times of slavery. Like the bourgeois relation between capitalist/worker, this political relation in democracy between subject/subjected often obscures things.)