[Rabble Rouser]

I am reading a book about the French Revolution at the moment, and so would like to begin a discussion on the topic. Here are some potentially interesting questions to consider:

Was the French Revolution a success or a failure? Or, perhaps, did the revolution have mixed results? Which factions were the most progressive? Was Robespierre an admirable political leader or a bloodthirsty butcher?

[C.J. Griffin]

This should answer some of your questions:

Why Robespierre Chose Terror

During Robespierre's short, bloody reign so many thousands were guillotined in Paris that blood contaminated the city's water supply. And the vast majority were guilty of absolutely nothing.

Bloodthirsty butcher? You bet.

[The Immortal Goon]

I disagree. Robespierre was solidifying the revolution and doing what needed to be done in order to keep an even more severe reaction than Thermidor from occurring. Hell, the moment he fell from power his replacements wasted little time in establishing a tyranny under an emperor.

This subject always reminds me of James Connolly:

The French Reign of Terror is spoken of with horror and execration by the people who talk in joyful praise about the mad adventure of the Dardanelles. And yet in any one day of battle at the Dardanelles there were more lives lost than in all the nine months of the Reign of Terror.

Which is pretty much it. Anyone that has even bothered to participate in or take a glance at any kind of revolution will tell you the same.

I could quote Jefferson all day:

It is unfortunate that the efforts of mankind to recover the freedom of which they have been so long deprived, will be accompanied with violence, with errors, and even with crimes. But while we weep over the means, we must pray for the end."

In the struggle which was necessary [in France], many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent. These I deplore as much as anybody, and shall deplore some of them to the day of my death. But I deplore them as I should have done had they fallen in battle.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather-bed

Or Clifford:

There is nothing very unusual in the oppressors of a people failing to get their just deserts [sic]. It is a thing that only happens when a state is destroyed and those who operated its regime are punished by those who destroyed it and declared to be fit objects for popular vengeance.

That happened in France in the early 1790s and in Russia in 1917. British historians deplore both of these events, and draw the lesson from subsequent developments in those countries that historic acts of justice or vengeance are always deplorable, and never lead to good results. Their reasoning implies that great historic acts of injustice become just by virtue of having become accomplished facts of the established order of things.

Or CLR James:

Yet when the masses turn (as turn they will one day) and try to end the tyranny of centuries, not only the tyrants but all 'civilization' holds up its hands in horror and clamours for 'order' to be restored. If a revolution carries high overhead expenses, most of them it inherits from the greed of reactionaries and the cowardice of the so-called moderates."

Or anyone else that even has a vague understanding of the French Revolution and they'll tell you the same. Yeah, that shit got nasty. But the Jacobins found themselves in a war they had opposed with the creeping Thermidor of reaction on one side being fed by foreign troops and foreign gold on the other. If they made a mistake it was going after the Enrages and attempting to keep stability at the expense of letting the revolution move forward. Was there due process? In most cases no. But then again, show me a soldier in any war that received the same, or a civilian casualty that was asked about his politics before being powderized.

Further, the people who oppose such a thing are considering only the fate of white, Christian, somewhat moneyed men. I guaran-fucking-tee you that the blacks in colonies where slavery had been illegalized by the Jacobins and the blacks allowed to participate in society were a hell of a lot happier before Thermidor when the troops returned to reshakle their chains. Women were taking the first steps to suffrage, and the poor were allowed the prospect of prosperity before being reduced to Napoleon's cannon fodder.

The fact is people hold a double standard to such things without even thinking about it. You need to look at the situation, the methods, the goals, the environment, and the conditions and draw a net conclusion. The Jacobins, while ultimately succeeding in birthing the republic - not just in France but Haiti and Ireland owe the foundations of their republics to the Jacobins - but failed to avert the tyranny that set them back, failed to keep the emancipation of the slaves, and failed to grasp the solution to inequality they were looking for. Ultimately, in that sense probably a mixed bag.

[Rabble Rouser]

The book I'm currently reading is The French Revolution and the People by David Andress. Has anyone heard of or read this book? What did you think of it? Are there any other books on the topic that you would recommend?

[Rabble Rouser]

Sorry. Accidental double post.

[The Immortal Goon]

The Black Jacobins by CLR James is about Haiti at the time and was simply amazing.

I've read several but I can't remember the authors off the top of my head and I shipped a lot of my non directly thesis related books back to Cascadia recently.

[fris_ke]

Was the French Revolution a success or a failure?

It was a success in the sense that it finished feudalism for good in france and it provided fear for the other rulers of europe.

Was Robespierre an admirable political leader or a bloodthirsty butcher?

He was a butcher, but an inevitable and needed butcher, just as Napolean was inevitable.

[C.J. Griffin]

I disagree. Robespierre was solidifying the revolution and doing what needed to be done in order to keep an even more severe reaction than Thermidor from occurring.

But it was the terror and killings practiced by the revolutionaries that provoked the Thermidorian reaction in the first place, no?

What did you think of it? Are there any other books on the topic that you would recommend?

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama
A French Genocide: The Vendée by Reynald Secher

[stalker]

I wrote a 3000 word paper on the French Revolution once.

"The FR was first and foremost a class struggle". To what extent is this view historically valid?

The bougeois was growing in strength prior to the FR and there the border between nobility and bourgeois was highly permeable. The FR, in the short-term, was a disaster for the commercial bourgeois and only a boon for those focused on state service. The ancien regime bigwigs of the nobility largely retained their influence and social conditions worsened for the urban poor.

My conclusion was that 'it was a revolution primarily inspired and fuelled by ideas, not the dynamics of class conflict'.

[PredatorOC]

Robespierre was solidifying the revolution and doing what needed to be done in order to keep an even more severe reaction than Thermidor from occurring. Hell, the moment he fell from power his replacements wasted little time in establishing a tyranny under an emperor.

I find myself in complete agreement with Comrade Goon here. Robespierre was a precursor defender of the workers. While not a proper socialist, he certainly set the bar and ground rules for future solidification of socialist revolutions.

[stalker]

I disagree. Robbespierre was bourgeois through and through.

Maxima, forced loans, laws against hoarding, Vendome Laws were all measures designed to appease the sans-culottes through economic Terror.

The Jacobins destroyed their champions (Roux, Danton and the Hebertists). Their ideal was a Republic of Virtue, and the only way it could be built was through political Terror and those who stood in its way were to be smitten down (as happened with the Hebertists, Enrages, dechristianizers and proto-feminists). Even as the Vendome laws were being passed plans were floated to deport French vagrants to Madagascar.

Hell, the moment he fell from power his replacements wasted little time in establishing a tyranny under an emperor.

Thermidorians were ideologically varied and unified only in their fear of the Jacobins. Consequent reprisals against the Terrorists were a matter of vengeance.

[stalker]

The Jacobins were more proto-fascists than anything else, IMO (in the same way the Enrages and later Babeuf were proto-socialists).

[PredatorOC]

I disagree. Robbespierre was bourgeois through and through.

Neo-liberal lies! A proper analysis of the context through dialectical materialism and through Marxist-Leninist theory of history, will show us that Robespierre and his relations to the proletariat was exceedingly impervious to existing class differentiations.

[The Immortal Goon]

I disagree. Robbespierre was bourgeois through and through.

Agreed. But I would argue he was bourgeois in the progressive sense of the word, he abolished the feudal system in France and her colonies and largely, as a result of this, it spread elsewhere. That's, of course, not to say that it wouldn't have happened anyway - the English Civil War was largely the same thing but unsuccessful, and the Americans had done the same thing already.

The Jacobins were more proto-fascists than anything else, IMO (in the same way the Enrages and later Babeuf were proto-socialists).

The Jacobin/Fascist thing is overplayed I tend to think. The Jacobins were, as implied above, a progressive bourgeois party. Really, I would say that the Radical Republicans and National Union Party in the US were largely the same stripe - if in different conditions.

I would certainly agree that the Enrages and Babeuf werre proto-socialists, going so far as to say that they were socialists, just not scientific socialists.

[stalker]

Agreed. But I would argue he was bourgeois in the progressive sense of the word, he abolished the feudal system in France and her colonies and largely, as a result of this, it spread elsewhere.

The abolition of feudalism (or rather, the remnants that were still left of it) happened in the 1789 August decrees, when Robespierre wasn't even an actor. (I do give you that slavery was abolished under him in the colonies, though).

Erm, the point I want to make being that bourgeois 'progressives' were already an ideological force in 18th C France and the whole FR (let alone one of its actors) did not change much of this fundamentally.

The Jacobin/Fascist thing is overplayed I tend to think. The Jacobins were, as implied above, a progressive bourgeois party. Really, I would say that the Radical Republicans and National Union Party in the US were largely the same stripe - if in different conditions.

Jacobinism displayed a strain of political extremism, mass nationalism and millenarianism that was unmatched by any mainstream parties in the US or Britain. I stand by my assertion that it was proto-fascist phenomenon.

[The Immortal Goon]

The abolition of feudalism (or rather, the remnants that were still left of it) happened in the 1789 August decrees, when Robespierre wasn't even an actor. (I do give you that slavery was abolished under him in the colonies, though).

Fair enough. I suppose I should have said that he protected those gains and spread them to the colonies.

The fascist thing goes in to the definition. I would argue that fascism is something very specific - a reactionary regime aimed at crushing a worker's movement.

Your points are quite valid. I don't disagree with you, I'm mostly splitting hairs.

[Alchemy]

Definately a success. The concept of nations governing themselves within their own geographical areas came about after the event of the French Revolution.

[Ombrageux]

Goon - Of course, Haiti is not exactly the best place to live in today. Much much worse than those who stayed under French rule, Martinique and Guadeloupe. I am not condoning slavery or colonialism, but lets say, sometimes the means of removing a tyranny can be more costly than the tyranny itself. It says something, I think, when we consider the end result of so many of the more 'successful' revolutions: Haiti, Russia, China, Algeria, Angola... The militaro-bureaucratic class that tends to emerge victorious from these types of revolutionary wars tends to be very bad at actually governing (especially in the wretched state the country tends to have been left in once these wars are over).