I don’t even agree with your shit how am I better at it than you. How are you gonna jerk off over the rules based societal order and then claim you can ignore whatever highest court you have because you personally disagree. mfer you just reinvented feudalism again
there’s a good quote from Trotsky (yes, bare with me) about how liberals disavow the French revolution and Marxists are the true inheritors of that struggle’s legacy.
The Great French Revolution was indeed a national revolution. And what is more, within the national framework, the world struggle of the bourgeoisie for domination, for power, and for undivided triumph found its classical expression.
Jacobinism is now a term of reproach on the lips of all liberal wiseacres. Bourgeois hatred of revolution, its hatred towards the masses, hatred of the force and grandeur of the history that is made in the streets, is concentrated in one cry of indignation and fear – Jacobinism! We, the world army of Communism, have long ago made our historical reckoning with Jacobinism. The whole of the present international proletarian movement was formed and grew strong in the struggle against the traditions of Jacobinism. We subjected its theories to criticism, we exposed its historical limitations, its social contradictoriness, its utopianism, we exposed its phraseology, and broke with its traditions, which for decades had been regarded as the sacred heritage of the revolution.
But we defend Jacobinism against the attacks, the calumny, and the stupid vituperations of anaemic, phlegmatic liberalism. The bourgeoisie has shamefully betrayed all the traditions of its historical youth, and its present hirelings dishonour the graves of its ancestors and scoff at the ashes of their ideals. The proletariat has taken the honour of the revolutionary past of the bourgeoisie under its protection. The proletariat, however radically it may have, in practice, broken with the revolutionary traditions of the bourgeoisie, nevertheless preserves them, as a sacred heritage of great passions, heroism and initiative, and its heart beats in sympathy with the speeches and acts of the Jacobin Convention.
oh boy, that thing. Safe to say most french people have a very poor understanding of that event, because schools here teach that Robespierre was basically Stalin and that Danton was like Obama. I wish I made this up but thats literally what I was taught back in High School. Also the whole “violence bad” bullshit, skipping the fact the french monarchy was atrocious for anyone who wasnt in the clergy or the nobility.
skipping the fact the french monarchy was atrocious for anyone who wasnt in the clergy or the nobility
The “two reigns of terror” quote is evergreen, and one of the best parts is that it’s from a popular non-leftist author (Twain), so libs can’t even dismiss it out of hand.
well the bourgeoise got so preoccupied with it’ss new class enemy the proletariat that it entirely forgot it’s old enemy landlords
Shared interests in maintaining the system that puts both on top aligned them pretty quickly
well yes and no. The way the landlords charge the proletariat and bourgeoise rent massively harms capitalist profitability and productivity. People cannot afford as many commodities when they pay out all their income in rent and workers having this expense ultimately sets a floor on the minimum capitalists can pay while still having access to labour in an area
The bourgeoise didn’t get to the top with the aid of landlords they took it by force from landlords
It is also important however to be clear about what we mean when we say that it was a bourgeois revolution.
It wasn’t a bourgeois revolution in the sense that there was a group of self-conscious bourgeoisie who specially carried out a revolution to create a bourgeois or capitalist society. The key figures and organizers, not to mention the masses who were essential to it, were not normally bourgeois. There were of course a lot of bourgeois who were sympathetic to the pushback of absolutist royal authority (as France by this period was not really feudal either in terms of its mode of production, political power no longer being parcelized but rather concentrated in the monarchy, though this can also been seen as an important and natural development of powerful feudal governments, as also happened to a lesser degree in England under the Tudors as a result of the degeneration of bastard feudalism). Nor did the French bourgeoisie organize itself into a specifically bourgeois political party for their own uniquely specific interests. People like Robespierre, Saint-Juste, etc. were normally lawyers or employed by the state, but were not really bourgeois, unless we really stretch the definition of bourgeois or petit bourgeois, though they were not engaging in rational profit-seeking activity for the functional purpose of capital accumulation. France would not truly succeed at capitalism development until after the 1830s/40s, and even until the late 19th century the French peasantry were not really living in capitalism fully, though of course they were deeply influenced by it and were increasingly dependent and coerced by its development.
There’s similar things to say when people talk about the English Civil War as a bourgeois revolution, though I’d say that their ‘Glorious Revolution’ (i.e. the one where they invited a Dutchman to rule them, i.e. the most English Revolution of all time), is a more fully bourgeois revolution.
What it did do however it produce the conditions for a bourgeois-dominated capitalist society, through political revolution and then socio-economic transformations which the former made possible. It allowed for development of societies whose values were increasingly favorable to the breakdown of restraints on bourgeois and capitalist development. Liberalism as a ideology became more and more powerful, including many French liberals who admired English society, which was significantly further along the path of capitalist development than France.
That’s also a reason why it was a genuinely politically revolution, as the brilliance of the series of events that make it up can be seen in that they did not live in a capitalist society yet, nor were the French bourgeoisie very developed as a class But that should no more make us think that this was not the key political event allowing for the eventual development of capitalism on the European continent, than should the fact that the Bolshevik revolution was led by people who were mostly not themselves members of the proletariat. Like when you read speeches by Robespierre, Saint-Juste and so on MFs are going off and do not read at all like modern libreals, because they were not, and they were genuinely revolutionary individuals.
Stalin speaks to that when talking with H.G. Wells
Or take France at the end of the eighteenth century. Long before 1789 it was clear to many how rotten the royal power, the feudal system was. But a popular insurrection, a clash of classes was not, could not be avoided. Why? Because the classes which must abandon the stage of history are the last to become convinced that their role is ended. It is impossible to convince them of this. They think that the fissures in the decaying edifice of the old order can be repaired and saved. That is why dying classes take to arms and resort to every means to save their existence as a ruling class.
Wells: > But there were not a few lawyers at the head of the Great French Revolution.
Stalin: > Do you deny the role of the intelligentsia in revolutionary movements? Was the Great French Revolution a lawyers’ revolution and not a popular revolution, which achieved victory by rousing vast masses of the people against feudalism and championed the interests of the Third Estate? And did the lawyers among the leaders of the Great French Revolution act in accordance with the laws of the old order? Did they not introduce new, bourgeois revolutionary laws?
The rich experience of history teaches that up to now not a single class has voluntarily made way for another class. There is no such precedent in world history. The Communists have learned this lesson of history. Communists would welcome the voluntary departure of the bourgeoisie. But such a turn of affairs is improbable; that is what experience teaches. That is why the Communists want to be prepared for the worst and call upon the working class to be vigilant, to be prepared for battle. Who wants a captain who lulls the vigilance of his army, a captain who does not understand that the enemy will not surrender, that he must be crushed? To be such a captain means deceiving, betraying the working class. That is why I think that what seems to you to be old-fashioned is in fact a measure of revolutionary expediency for the working class.
as also happened to a lesser degree in England under the Tudors as a result of the degeneration of bastard feudalism
in the Tudor case as I assume also in the french the centralisation of power in the crown rather than the lesser gentry was the feudal equivalent of Mao killing the warlords and thus no longer having the state precarious to being toppled by private ministates
I’ve seen that described in the sense that for the peasant very little changed. The poor did not gain anything, merely the barons and duchies lost something.
To a degree yes but the extent to which the Wars of the Roses leading to the Tudor dynasty were bloody is exaggerated from what I understand. The only battle which was very serious in terms of casualties was Towton (which might have actually been the most bloody battle on English soil we know of), but apart from that is was an on-and-off affair. The causality rate and absolute numbers were high in that battle, but not more so than other vicious battles which were more frequent on the European continent. It’s not even certain that the numbers of the nobility were decimated that much or more than in other European wars of the time.
What it did do however was undermine the more decentralized power of late bastard feudalism in which there was concentration of power in the hands of certain very powerful houses and barons. This centralization of power had already been going on under Richard III, and was taken up by Henry Tudor. The Tudor did not kill all of their opponents, let alone dissolve the feudal aristocracy, as though Henry Tudor was of the House of Lancaster, he married into the House of York to create the Tudor dynasty in order to unite the houses descended from the Plantagenets, and it remained a society ruled by a land-owning military aristocracy, though with important developments in the English state.
