{"id":5758,"date":"2019-07-14T19:18:03","date_gmt":"2019-07-14T18:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/?p=5758"},"modified":"2019-07-14T19:20:09","modified_gmt":"2019-07-14T18:20:09","slug":"happy-bastille-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/?p=5758","title":{"rendered":"Happy Bastille Day!"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"po-hr prt-y\">\n<section class=\"po-hr-cn prt-y\">S\u0103 termin\u0103m ce am \u00eenceput cu PRIMUL VAL AL ILUMINISMULUI!!!&#8230; suntem pe creasta celui de-AL DOILEA VAL AL ILUMINISMULUI, \u015eI ULTIMUL!!!<br \/>\nACUM, ori NICIODAT\u0102!!!<br \/>\nHIPERUMANITATEA, sau EXTINC\u0162IA!!!<\/p>\n<p>Happy Bastille day, one of the most momentous days in human history. Let it be an inspiration to us as we fight to finish what it started.<\/p>\n<h1 class=\"po-hr-cn__title\">\n<p>A Guide to the French Revolution<\/h1>\n<div class=\"po-hr-cn__contributors\">\n<dl class=\"po-hr-cn__authors\">\n<dt class=\"po-hr-cn__byline\">BY<\/dt>\n<dd class=\"po-hr-cn__author\"><a class=\"po-hr-cn__author-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jacobinmag.com\/author\/Jonah%20Walters\">JONAH WALTERS<\/a><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"po-hr-cn__dek\">For Bastille Day, we have answers to a bunch of questions about the French Revolution.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<figure class=\"po-hr-im prt-x\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"po-hr-im__image\" src=\"https:\/\/images.jacobinmag.com\/2015\/07\/17004600\/Henry_Singleton_the_Storming_of_the_Bastille-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"611\" height=\"441\" \/><figcaption class=\"po-hr-im__caption\">\n<p class=\"po-hr-im__description\">Henry Singleton, &#8220;The Storming of the Bastille.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"po__container\">\n<div class=\"po__main prt-y\">\n<aside class=\"po-sr-sb po-sr--b prt-x\">\n<div class=\"po-sr-sb__container\"><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<div class=\"po-cn wp po-wp\">\n<section id=\"ch-0\" class=\"po-cn__intro po-wp__intro\">Today people all over the world celebrate the 1789 storming of the Bastille Saint-Antoine \u2014\u00a0a dramatic popular rebellion that sparked\u00a0the French Revolution.But what was the French Revolution, how did it reshape Europe and the world, and what relevance does it have to the workers\u2019 movement today? Here\u2019s a short primer, lovingly compiled by\u00a0<i>Jacobin<\/i>\u00a0to mark the occasion.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"ch-1\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h1 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">What was the French Revolution?<\/h1>\n<p>The French Revolution was one of the most dramatic social upheavals in history. In 1856,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/oldregimeandrev00tocqgoog\">French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville<\/a>\u00a0reviewed the so-called \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/history.hanover.edu\/texts\/cahiers3.html\">grievance books<\/a>\u201d \u2014 lists of demands made by the various social layers of France in anticipation of the Estates-General, the assembly that would undermine\u00a0Louis XVI\u2019s reign and lead ultimately to revolution. What he discovered startled him.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When I came to gather all the individual wishes, with a sense of terror I realized that their demands were for the\u00a0<i>wholesale and systematic abolition of all the laws and all the current practices in the country<\/i>. Straightaway I saw that the issue here was one of the most extensive and dangerous revolutions ever observed in the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The revolutionary process started with open rebellion in the summer of 1789 \u2014 including the storming of the Bastille on July 14. It would before long topple the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI, divest the nobility of their hereditary power, and completely undermine the political influence of the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n<p>This dramatic revision in French society unleashed a chaotic process of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Committee-of-Public-Safety\">revolutionary advance<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.britannica.com\/event\/Thermidorian-Reaction\">reactionary blowback<\/a>. The forces of property were unwilling to stand idly by as their enormous privileges were threatened; they attempted to undo all the radical changes brought on by the revolution and restore the old social hierarchies even as the revolutionaries worked to cohere an entirely different kind of society based on more egalitarian ideals.<\/p>\n<p>From this unstable crucible ultimately emerged\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/history.hanover.edu\/courses\/excerpts\/111napoleon.html\">Napoleon<\/a>, who would construct the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/trotsky\/1939\/05\/bonapartism.htm\">Bonapartist state<\/a>\u00a0through war and empire, ultimately leading to France\u2019s renewed subjugation by the old powers of Europe and the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.britannica.com\/event\/Bourbon-Restoration\">restoration of the monarchy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"ch-2\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h1 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">What was France like before the revolution?<\/h1>\n<p>The vast majority of people in France lived in destitution, with little chance of escaping their condition. Peasants were entirely at the mercy of the nobility, who had preserved much of the fundamental power relationship of feudalism. As\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/jaures\/1901\/history\/introduction.htm\">Jean Jaur\u00e8s<\/a>\u00a0described in 1901, the economic subjugation in the countryside was profound:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There was not one action in rural life that did not require the peasants to pay a ransom\u2026 Feudal rights thus extended their clutches over every force of nature, everything that grew, moved, breathed [\u2026] even over the fire burning in the oven to bake the peasant\u2019s poor bread.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This led to near-universal poverty in the countryside. English agriculturalist\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/oll.libertyfund.org\/titles\/292\">Arthur Young<\/a>\u00a0remarked at the time:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The poor seem poor indeed; the children terribly ragged, if possible worse clad than if with no clothes at all; as to shoes and stockings they are luxuries\u2026 One third of what I have seen of this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all of it in misery. What have kings, and ministers, and parliaments, and states, to answer for their prejudices, seeing millions of hands that would be industrious, idle and starving, through the execrable maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The urban population of artisans and journeymen laborers experienced similar hardship. Economic reorganizations in the kingdom threatened the apprenticeship system, jeopardizing the ability of craftsmen to control their own work. Day laborers \u2014 permitted to exist in the cities only when they could produce papers proving their employment \u2014 were stalked by royal police.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, a wave of immigration brought dramatic demographic changes to Paris. Historian\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.versobooks.com\/books\/1707-a-people-s-history-of-the-french-revolution\">Eric Hazan<\/a>\u00a0estimates that in 1789 immigrants numbered about two thirds of the city\u2019s population, and they each had to \u201crequest a passport in their region of origin to avoid being arrested en route as vagabonds and sent to beggars colonies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The clergy and nobility, together comprising about 1.6 percent of the population, were doing just fine \u2014 most nobles lived in extreme opulence and inherited their positions hereditarily. The Catholic Church controlled by some estimates 8 percent of total private wealth.<\/p>\n<p>But in the years immediately prior to the revolution, a new class of financiers \u2014 generally upwardly mobile craftsmen or landholding peasants \u2014 began to grow in the cities, threatening to replace the nobility as the most decadent of social layers.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the kingdom was in the midst of a catastrophic financial crisis. The king was broke, and the system of accounting that had developed chaotically during the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.history.com\/topics\/seven-years-war\">Seven Years War<\/a>\u00a0left the his functionaries\u00a0unable to account for the kingdom\u2019s wealth until it had almost disappeared. Foreign financiers were recalling their debts, the harvest of 1788 was decimated by a drought and a series of hailstorms, and the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/avalon.law.yale.edu\/18th_century\/paris763.asp\">free trade agreement<\/a>\u00a0brokered between France and Great Britain at the end of the Seven Years War flooded the French market with British textiles, ruining French garment production.<\/p>\n<p>Things were bad. Panicked about the financial crisis, Louis XVI squeezed the people even harder, demanding increased taxes from all layers of society.<\/p>\n<p>But there were rumblings of resistance, in the cities as well as the countryside. Elites like Louis-S\u00e9bastien Mercier expressed dismay at the insubordination of urban workers:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There has been visible insubordination among the people for several years now, and especially in the trades. Apprentices and lads want to display their independence; they lack respect for the masters, they form corporations [associations]; this contempt for the old rules is contrary to order\u2026 The workers transform the print shop into a real smoke den.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And peasants, still expected to sacrifice even their most basic of foodstuffs as tribute to king and church, took matters into their own hands as famine loomed. As one mayor of a rural district remarked, \u201cIt is impossible to find within half a league\u2019s radius a man prepared to drive a cartload of wheat. The populace is so enraged they would kill for a bushel.\u201d The starving peasants were unwilling to deliver flour to their feudal masters to satisfy the demands of an enormous war debt; they prefered to eat it instead.<\/p>\n<p>What other solution but\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacobinmag.com\/2014\/12\/yes-the-french-revolution-was-necessary\/\">revolution<\/a>?<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"ch-3\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h1 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">What happened on July 14, 1789?<\/h1>\n<p>The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 represents the popular revolution\u2019s inaugural moment. Encouraged by the rapid pace of reforms \u2014 and exasperated with the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.emersonkent.com\/historic_documents\/proclamation_national_assembly_1789.htm\">National Assembly<\/a>\u2019s unwillingness to take a harder line with the intransigent king \u2014 masses of artisans and laborers assaulted the Bastille de Saint-Antoine, seized its gunpowder, and released the handful of prisoners\u00a0held there.<\/p>\n<p>By claiming the fortress on behalf of the revolution, they sent a powerful message to the forces of old wealth that still dominated the kingdom \u2014 the upheaval in France would not be a simple legislative reorganization, but rather a social revolution. From this point forward, the French revolutionary process would, in many ways, take its lead from a volatile popular insurrection that surged again each time its gains\u00a0were threatened.<\/p>\n<p>Hazan\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.versobooks.com\/books\/1707-a-people-s-history-of-the-french-revolution\">describes<\/a>\u00a0it this way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The storming of the Bastille is the most famous event in the French Revolution, and has moreover become its symbol throughout the world. But this glory rather distorts its historical significance. It was neither a moment of miracle, nor a conclusion, nor a culminating point of the \u2018good\u2019 revolution before the start of the \u2018bad\u2019, that of 1793 and the Terror; the storming of the Bastille was one shining point on the trajectory of the Paris insurrection, which continued its upward curve\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Foreshadowing the dramatic seizure of Tuileries by thousands of\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0in 1792 \u2014 which would establish the insurrectional Commune and finally depose the king \u2014 the storming of the Bastille represents neither culmination nor catalyst of the French Revolution. Rather, it was a moment in which masses of oppressed Parisians thrust themselves into the process of reform already underway in France, challenging the king\u2019s absolutism as well as the authority of the overcautious legislative assemblies. In this way, they helped transform what could have been a period of cautious reform into a period of genuine revolution.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"ch-4\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h1 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">Who were the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>?<\/h1>\n<p>The\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0were the insurrectionary \u201cmovement of the laboring poor\u201d who, in historian\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/libcom.org\/files\/Eric%20Hobsbawm%20-%20Age%20Of%20Revolution%201789%20-1848.pdf\">Eric Hobsbawm<\/a>\u2018s words, \u201cprovided the main striking-force of the revolution.\u201d Named for their lack of the distinguished breeches worn by elites, the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0inhabited the political terrain of the street and the square as the bourgeois revolutionaries performed their political work in assembly halls and from within legislative bodies.<\/p>\n<p>Most fundamentally, the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0were concerned with establishing a system of direct, local democracy which could guarantee a consistent price of for vital provisions \u2014 the poor craved the same food security as the nobles, and resented the profound difference between the bread consumed by rich elites and the bread available to common laborers.<\/p>\n<p>A popular uprising ejected Louis XVI from his final hiding place in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/chnm.gmu.edu\/revolution\/d\/319\/\">Tuileries on August 10, 1792<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a tremendous victory for the armies of\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0who descended en masse upon the king, accusing him (quite rightly) of treasonous collusion with foreign monarchies to squash the revolution at home. Following this victory, the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>formed the Insurrectional Commune and proposed a sweeping reform: \u201cequality and bread.\u201d They wrote, \u201cWealth and poverty must disappear in a world based on equality. In future the rich will not have their bread made from wheaten flour whilst the poor have theirs made from bran.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Twin aspirations motivated the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>: freedom from tyranny and access to bread.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u2019 demand for fixed prices on foodstuffs offers insight into the development of the French economy in this period \u2014 as more and more artisans were stripped of their self-sufficiency and forced to accept wage labor, they discovered themselves unable to afford even simple consumer goods. For the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>, demanding lower food prices \u2014 not higher wages \u2014 was the intuitive response to the transition to wage labor.<\/p>\n<p>Often armed only with pikes \u2014 useful for parading the severed heads of food-hoarders or monarchists through the street, as was their habit \u2014 the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0did more than just pose a grave threat to the old hierarchies of the monarchy. They also forced formal revolutionary bodies like the Legislative Assembly to adopt more radical positions to meet the expectations of the unsatisfied and insurgent poor.<\/p>\n<p>Though historian\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books\/about\/The_Sans_culottes.html?id=SvxDQsze6r8C\">Albert Soboul<\/a>\u00a0tried to make the case that the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0were a peculiar kind of proletariat \u2014 as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/jaures\/1901\/history\/aug-10-1792.htm\">did<\/a>\u00a0socialist Jean Jaur\u00e9s \u2014 this category makes little sense in the context of eighteenth-century French society. Instead, the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0were a social coalition comprised of those who were pinched the hardest by the changing French economy, including day laborers constantly on the hunt for underpaid work, artisans (like the garment-makers) whose livelihoods were threatened by the transition to more industrial modes of manufacturing, and apprentices who were no longer permitted to form \u201ccorporations\u201d (trade associations).<\/p>\n<p>Consistently denied the democracy and plenty promised by the revolution, the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0repeatedly took things into their own hands, driving the revolutionary momentum forward each time the bourgeoisie proved hesitant to further challenge the status quo. Whatever their particular class position, their contribution to the revolution was profound. As Hazan writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is true that the notion [of the \u2018<i>sans-culotte<\/i>\u2019] is fairly elastic, sometimes conjuring up by metonymy the world of popular Paris, sometimes the crowds of the great revolutionary\u00a0<i>journe\u00e9s<\/i>, sometimes again the militants who dominated the life of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/archive.rc.umd.edu\/editions\/robespierre\/sections.html\">sections<\/a>. But the often violent confrontations with the assemblies and established authorities were not the work of a stereotypical ideal: they show the very real presence of this being of flesh and blood, the Parisian\u00a0<i>sans-culotte<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><i>Sans-culotte<\/i>\u00a0is as\u00a0<i>sans-culotte\u00a0<\/i>does. Constant confrontation with the privileged, often violently and in the street, demanding a world in which food is easily available and democracy simple and direct \u2014 this orientation, more than anything else, makes a\u00a0<i>sans-culotte<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"ch-5\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h1 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">Who were the Jacobins?<\/h1>\n<p>Following the mass insurrection of the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0that effectively dissolved the monarchy and brought the armed bourgeoisie to power, European monarchies feared the French example would destabilize their power in their own countries. Austria took the side of the deposed regime, as did Prussia. Revolutionary France responded with declarations of war in 1792.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0\u2014 having recently learned the power of armed mobilization \u2014 continued to make demands on the revolutionary government, threatening not only the old figures of the\u00a0<i>ancien regime<\/i>\u00a0but also the ascendant bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n<p>In response to this crisis, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/history\/france\/revolution\/robespierre\/1793\/defense-committee.htm\">Committee of Public Safety<\/a>\u00a0was formed as a bulwark against the aggression of the wealthy, both French and foreign. The Committee was convened under the leadership of the most militant section of the revolutionary bourgeoisie \u2014 the Jacobins.<\/p>\n<p>Officially called the Society of the Friends of the Constitution, the Jacobin Club in the period of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/history\/france\/revolution\/robespierre\">Maximillien Robespierre<\/a>\u00a0embodied the most radical response to the revolutionary crisis; to defeat the forces of reaction, they found themselves compelled to take radical measures \u2014 including price controls, food seizures, and the period of tactical violence that would come to be known as the \u201cReign of Terror.\u201d While in early periods the Jacobin Club had included\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Girondin\">more moderate actors<\/a>, the radical wing that cohered around Robespierre \u2014 known as the Montagnards \u2014 ultimately became the dominant tendency within the Jacobins\u2019 ranks.<\/p>\n<p>Politically, these Jacobins were radically different from the forces that held power in the earlier stages of the revolution \u2014 constitutional monarchists like\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/history\/france\/revolution\/rights-man.htm\">Lafayette<\/a>\u00a0(who despised the Jacobins, calling them \u201ca sect that infringes sovereignty and tyrannies citizens\u201d), liberals like the stargazing Parisian mayor\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/Jean-Sylvain-Bailly\">Jean-Sylvain Bailly<\/a>, and more conservative republicans like the militarist\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/w\/wsfh\/0642292.0034.006\/--uses-of-power-lafayette-and-brissot-in-1792?rgn=main;view=fulltext\">Jacques-Pierre Brissot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Although their leadership was drawn from the ranks of the intellectual bourgeoisie \u2014 not the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes\u00a0<\/i>\u2014 the Jacobins were committed to separating the right of political participation from property; Robespierre wrote in 1791, \u201cevery citizen has the right to cooperate in legislation, and hence to be elector or eligible, without distinction of fortune.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the Jacobin Club \u2014 along with the networks of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Club-of-the-Cordeliers\">fraternal organizations<\/a>\u00a0that sprung up to disseminate revolutionary teachings \u2014 had been instrumental in producing the very \u00a0layers of radicalized working people who would later come to be known as the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>. In the absence of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/cliff\/works\/1975\/lenin1\/\">political parties<\/a>\u00a0as we understand them today, the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0received their political education from revolutionary societies like the Jacobins, who produced newspapers and called gatherings where revolutionary propaganda was read aloud.<\/p>\n<p>The Jacobin Club, by virtue of its size and militancy, had even influenced discussions in the National Assembly during the revolution\u2019s early stages. As the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucpress.edu\/book.php?isbn=9780520241800\">Abb\u00e9 Gr\u00e9goire<\/a>\u00a0recalled:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Jacobins would take it [a question booed by the conservative majority of the Assembly] up in their circular invitations or their papers; it was discussed by four or five hundred affiliated societies, and three weeks later addresses poured into the Assembly asking for a decree on a matter that had initially been rejected, but which the Assembly then accepted by a large majority, since public opinion had been matured by discussion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Eric Hazan\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.versobooks.com\/books\/1707-a-people-s-history-of-the-french-revolution\">explains<\/a>, \u201cThe society and its branches operated as a system for spreading revolutionary ideas across the country. Nothing is more absurd than the idea of \u2018Jacobinism\u2019 as an authoritarian and meddlesome Paris dictatorship.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Above all else, the Jacobins were intensely concerned with translating the revolutionary\u00a0<i>fervor<\/i>\u00a0of 1789 into a durable and sustainable revolutionary\u00a0<i>society<\/i>. They saw their role as to strengthen and deepen the radical ideals of the Revolution while protecting it from attack. As Robespierre\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/history\/france\/revolution\/robespierre\/1794\/terror.htm\">wrote<\/a>\u00a0in 1794:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[W]hen, by prodigious efforts of courage and reason, a people breaks the chains of despotism to make them into trophies of liberty; when by the force of its moral temperament it comes, as it were, out of the arms of the death, to recapture all the vigor of youth; when by tums it is sensitive and proud, intrepid and docile, and can be stopped neither by impregnable ramparts nor by the innumerable armies of the tyrants armed against it, but stops of itself upon confronting the law\u2019s image; then if it does not climb rapidly to the summit of its destinies, this can only be the fault of those who govern it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"ch-6\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h1 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">What should we think about the \u201cReign of Terror\u201d?<\/h1>\n<p>The Reign of Terror was a period of intense violence led by Robespierre\u2019s Jacobins, during which the guillotine became the most potent political tool and repression the most vital political task. Though far fewer than the millions who lost their lives during the Napoleonic Wars, 17,000 people \u2014 counter-revolutionaries as well as dissident thinkers within the revolution \u2014 were executed by the guillotine. Tens of thousands more were killed without trial or died in jail \u2014 historian\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hup.harvard.edu\/catalog.php?isbn=9780674736559\">Timothy Tackett<\/a>\u00a0estimates a total death toll closer to 40,000.<\/p>\n<p>The legacy of this period is still much\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacobinmag.com\/2013\/01\/in-defense-of-jacobin-rage\/\">debated<\/a>. But it is hard to dispute that the terror emerged in response to the urgent need for political and military defense. The old figureheads of the\u00a0<i>ancien regime<\/i>\u00a0were more than mere symbols of opulence or historical tyranny; many were active antagonists of the revolution, working to dismantle its progress and assassinate its soldiers precisely at the time when the revolutionary transformation was most vulnerable.<\/p>\n<p>Robespierre\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/history\/france\/revolution\/robespierre\/1794\/terror.htm\">wrote<\/a>\u00a0in 1794:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If the spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of popular government in revolution are at once\u00a0<i>virtue and terror:\u00a0<\/i>virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country\u2019s most urgent needs.<\/p>\n<p>It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his brutalized subjects; he is right, as a despot. Subdue by terror the enemies of liberty, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is liberty\u2019s despotism against tyranny. Is force made only to protect crime? And is the thunderbolt not destined to strike the heads of the proud?<\/p>\n<p>. . . Indulgence for the royalists, cry certain men, mercy for the villains! No! mercy for the innocent, mercy for the weak, mercy for the unfortunate, mercy for humanity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One more thing seems nearly certain: sending political opponents within the ranks of the revolutionaries to the guillotine \u2014 the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/14030169\">Dantonists<\/a>, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/history\/france\/revolution\/hebert\/1790\/second-legislature.htm\">Hebertists<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 was a reflection of political weakness that left Robespierre isolated and ultimately\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/jaures\/1901\/history\/fall-robespierre.htm\">defenseless<\/a>\u00a0against the plots he so feared.<\/p>\n<p>With the benefit of hindsight, Engels\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1870\/letters\/70_09_04.htm\">wrote<\/a>\u00a0in a letter to Marx in 1870 that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>These perpetual little panics of the French \u2014 which all arise from fear of the moment when they will really have to learn the truth \u2014 give one a much better idea of the Reign of Terror. We think of this as the reign of people who inspire terror; on the contrary, it is the reign of people who are themselves terrified.<\/p>\n<p>Terror consists mostly of useless cruelties perpetrated by frightened people in order to reassure themselves. I am convinced that the blame for the Reign of Terror in 1793 lies almost exclusively with the over-nervous bourgeois, demeaning himself as a patriot\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Marx himself, though certainly critical of the particulars of \u201crevolutionary terror\u201d as it played out in France, took\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1848\/11\/06.htm\">a less ambiguous stance<\/a>\u00a0towards violence in the defense of revolution:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[T]here is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"ch-7\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h1 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">Who ruined the French Revolution?<\/h1>\n<p>By the summer of 1794 \u2014 five years after the summer of unrest that saw the convening of the Estates-General, the formation of the National Assembly, and the storming of the Bastille \u2014 the revolution was fragmented and Robespierre was increasingly isolated, left to occupy a left flank of the revolutionary leadership that was largely devoid of allies or support.<\/p>\n<p>Fearful of conspiracies against his life, Robespierre had argued for the execution of fellow revolutionary leaders like Hebert and Danton while presiding over the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Committee-of-Public-Safety\">Committee for Public Safety<\/a>. Perhaps predictably, Robespierre\u00a0<i>did<\/i>\u00a0fall victim to a conspiracy from his right, and the dearth of possible allies \u2014 the ranks of the moderates and of the left wing having been severely culled by Robespierre\u2019s own expeditions to the guillotine \u2014 sealed his doom.<\/p>\n<p>On 9 Thermidor (July 27) of 1794, the National Convention, following the lead of Jean-Lambert Tallien, sentenced Robespierre and three other radical Jacobins to death. After a short-lived insurrection against the National Assembly \u2014 led by the Paris Commune, the assembly formed by the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0and their bourgeois allies after the victory at Tuileries two years earlier \u2014 Robespierre and his allies were arrested. The next day, they were executed by guillotine.<\/p>\n<p>A violent purge of the Commune followed. Of its ninety-five leaders present at the time of Robespierre\u2019s capture, eighty-seven died on the guillotine. As Eric Hazan writes, \u201cA new Terror had begun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Filippo Buonarroti, a contemporary commentator and friend of Robespierre\u2019s, lamented the monumental defeat, interpreting it as the result of a vulgar alliance between the surviving elements of the old aristocracy and opportunistic revolutionaries on the right wing. To justify their actions, he claims, the leaders of the so-called \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.britannica.com\/event\/Thermidorian-Reaction\">Thermidorian reaction<\/a>\u201d had to distort the legacies of those they opposed, cynically warping\u00a0revolutionary principles in the service of privilege. He wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The interested professors of democracy, and the ancient partisans of aristocracy, were found to accord once more. Certain rallying cries that recalled the doctrines and institutions of equality, were now regarded as the impure howls of anarchy, brigandism, and terrorism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Eric Hazan, writing centuries later, is similarly pessimistic:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What was brutally concluded with Thermidor is the incandescent phase of the Revolution, in which men of government, sometimes followed and sometimes driven forward by the most conscious section of the people, sought to change material inequities, social relations and ways of life. They did not succeed, to be sure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Left unprotected by the popular insurgency of the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0that, in a previous era, may have come to his aid, Robespierre died without seeing the completion of the revolutionary project he embodied, and the French Revolution\u00a0died soon after.<\/p>\n<p>The weakened French state, stripped of so much of its democratic potential, could not deliver on the promises of the revolution, and was left in the control of those who would see the revolution\u2019s most radical advances overturned. From this political context soon emerged Napoleon Bonaparte, and the revolution soon mutated into the Bonapartist state, built through war and empire abroad and aristocratic tyranny at home. In perhaps the most perverse example of the inversion of revolutionary principles Buonarotti pointed out, the revolutionary agenda of liberty and equality became a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1852\/18th-brumaire\/\">doctrine of global domination<\/a>\u00a0through Napoleon\u2019s imperial expeditions.<\/p>\n<p>The revolution was in many respects defeated \u2014 though its memories still motivated democratic\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1871\/civil-war-france\/\">upsurges<\/a>\u00a0like the worker-led\u00a0Paris Commune decades later.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"ch-8\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h1 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">How did the rest of Europe view the revolution?<\/h1>\n<p>The insurrection of the\u00a0<i>sans-culottes<\/i>\u00a0and the liberalization of the French political system had profound effects on the surrounding monarchies. Predictably, the reaction of the monarchs was vastly different from the response of the masses.<\/p>\n<p>The monarchs of Austria and Prussia \u2014 including\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Leopold_II,_Holy_Roman_Emperor\">Leopold II<\/a>, a relative of the French royals \u2014 took immediate interest in the popular unrest destabilizing their neighbor kingdom, even colluding with Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette to orchestrate an inter-kingdom war to weaken the constitutionalist state.<\/p>\n<p>After Louis XVI was prevented from fleeing the nation by angry peasants and evidence of his treason was discovered in Paris, the French people were so outraged they seized the Tuileries and deposed the king, sparking skirmishes with the neighboring monarchs.<\/p>\n<p>But common people in neighboring regions saw inspiration for their own liberation in the French popular struggle. Swiss Guards \u2014\u00a0hired as mercenaries to defend Louis XVI \u2014\u00a0defected to the ranks of the\u00a0<em>sans-culottes<\/em>\u00a0en masse during the seizure of Tuileries, and there were similar incidents of side-switching along the border, as soldiers representing the French nation absorbed dissident foreign troops.<\/p>\n<p>Following the French Revolution, popular rebellions also occurred in Italy and Switzerland, citing the French struggle as an ideological and military example.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"ch-9\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h1 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">What was the relationship between the French Revolution and the Haitian one?<\/h1>\n<p>Between 1791 and 1804 \u2014 during the same period of revolutionary upheaval in the metropole \u2014 \u00a0slaves on the French island of Saint Domingue rose up against the plantation system that maintained their misery, demanding for themselves the rights of citizens. The rebelling slaves dispossessed the planter class of their wealth, executed the remaining planters on the island, abolished slavery, and established Haiti, the first free republic in the Americas.<\/p>\n<p>Among the new nation\u2019s inaugural documents was an appeal to that most fundamental of French revolutionary tracts: the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/thelouvertureproject.org\/index.php?title=Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen\">Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We would do well to remember\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1845\/holy-family\/\">Marx\u2019s warning<\/a>: \u201cIdeas can never lead beyond an old world order but only beyond the ideas of the old world order. Ideas cannot carry out anything at all. In order to carry out ideas men are needed who can exert practical force.\u201d So caution is essential to avoid overstating the role of French revolutionary ideology in the formation of the slave rebellion across the Atlantic \u2014 the most dramatic challenge ever posed to the hegemony of European slavery.<\/p>\n<p>But it is clear that revolutionary pamphlets from France \u2014 of which there were\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/beck.library.emory.edu\/frenchrevolution\/index.php\">many<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/286198?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents\">did make it<\/a>\u00a0into the hands of slaves in Saint Domingue. And certainly the demands of slaves to be incorporated into the revolutionary project of metropolitan France \u2014 not to mention the demand for inclusion in the commonwealth of so-called \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/books.upress.virginia.edu\/title\/3705\">Enlightenment values<\/a>\u201d\u00a0\u2014 shaped the revolution\u2019s development in Europe, challenging it\u00a0to expand its understanding of both man and citizen.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ouleft.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/CLR_James_The_Black_Jacobins.pdf\">C.L.R. James<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/james-clr\/works\/1939\/12\/negro-revolution.htm\">writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Excluding the masses of Paris, no portion of the French empire played, in proportion to its size, so grandiose a role in the French Revolution as the half million blacks and Mulattoes in the remote West Indian islands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"ch-10\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h1 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">What did the Bolsheviks think about the Jacobins?<\/h1>\n<p>They were fans.<\/p>\n<p>Even though the Bolsheviks were\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/lenin\/works\/1901\/witbd\/\">building<\/a>\u00a0a mass party of workers to usher in a socialist society, very different than what the Jacobins sought to accomplish, Lenin saw much to admire in their revolutionary example. He\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/lenin\/works\/1917\/jul\/07a.htm\">wrote<\/a>\u00a0in 1917:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Proletarian historians see Jacobinism as one of the highest\u00a0<i>peaks<\/i>\u00a0in the emancipation struggle of an oppressed class. The Jacobins gave France the best models of a democratic revolution and of resistance to a coalition of monarchs against a republic. The Jacobins were not destined to win complete victory, chiefly because eighteenth-century France was surrounded on the continent by much too backward countries, and because France herself lacked the material basis for socialism, there being no banks, no capitalist syndicates, no machine industry and no railways.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJacobinism\u201d in Europe or on the boundary line between Europe and Asia in the twentieth century would be the rule of the revolutionary class, of the proletariat, which, supported by the peasant poor and taking advantage of the existing material basis for advancing to socialism, could not only provide all the great, ineradicable, unforgettable things provided by the Jacobins in the eighteenth century, but bring about a lasting world-wide victory for the working people.<\/p>\n<p>It is natural for the bourgeoisie to hate Jacobinism. It is natural for the petty bourgeoisie to dread it. The class-conscious workers and working people generally put their trust in the transfer of power to the revolutionary, oppressed class for\u00a0<i>that<\/i>\u00a0is the essence of Jacobinism, the only way out of the present crisis, and the only remedy for economic dislocation and the war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"ch-11\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h1 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">How should we remember the French Revolution?<\/h1>\n<p>The French Revolution was an enormous social reorganization affecting some twenty-five\u00a0million people in France and countless others in regions as geographically distant as Haiti. During the five years of push-pull between the forces of reaction and the will of the revolutionaries, common people experienced great hardship, but also the largely unprecedented opportunity to intervene in matters of national politics and disrupt the exploitative power relationships that defined their lives. As Hobsbawm\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books\/about\/Age_Of_Revolution_1789_1848.html?id=aaOyLRezgKgC\">reminds us<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It was not a comfortable phase to live through, for most men were hungry and many afraid; but it was phenomenon as awful and irreversible as the first nuclear explosion, and all history has been permanently changed by it. And the energy it generated was sufficient to sweep away the armies of the old regimes of Europe like straw.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Eric Hazan concludes his book with another reminder \u2014 the French Revolution, in many ways, ended in defeat. The mainstream history is the history of the victors, the forces of reaction who succeeded in cauterizing the revolution on 9 Thermidor. So our task is to excavate the history of France\u2019s great revolution, now buried under over two centuries of permanent counter-revolution. He\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.versobooks.com\/books\/1707-a-people-s-history-of-the-french-revolution\">writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The heirs of the Thermidorians, who have governed and taught us continuously ever since, seek to travesty this history. Against them, let us keep memory alive, and never lose the inspiration of a time when one heard tell that \u2018the unfortunate are the powers of the Earth,\u2019 that \u2018the essence of the Republic or of democracy is equality,\u2019 and that \u2018the purpose of society is the common happiness.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Onwards towards the common happiness. Happy Bastille Day!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>S\u0103 termin\u0103m ce am \u00eenceput cu PRIMUL VAL AL ILUMINISMULUI!!!&#8230; suntem pe creasta celui de-AL DOILEA VAL AL ILUMINISMULUI, \u015eI ULTIMUL!!! ACUM, ori NICIODAT\u0102!!! HIPERUMANITATEA, sau EXTINC\u0162IA!!! Happy Bastille day, one of the most momentous days in human history. Let it be an inspiration to us as we fight to finish what it started. A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1593],"tags":[2697,400,2136,1596,1380],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5758"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5761,"href":"https:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5758\/revisions\/5761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassdu.mine.bz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}