The Great Revolution of 1789: French masses changed the face of Europe...and the world

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"The French Revolution was an explosion of massive action against an oppressive status quo...a death blow to the traditional social structure in Europe..?

SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1989 (Part 1 of a 3-part series)

In Paris on July 14 of this year, the world Will be treated to a surrealistic spectacle: a coterie of counterrevolutionaries—including George Bush, Margaret Thatcher, and Helmut Kohl--are scheduled to gather in celebration of the Great Revolution of 1789.

This festival of hypocrisy will dishonor the French Revolution, but it should not be allowed to obscure the real legacy of that event. The French Revolution was an explosion of mass action against an oppressive status quo. It dealt the death blow to the traditional social structure in Europe and cleared the way for the transformation of the continent and the world.

Although we, as revolutionary socialists, can identify with the men and women of 1789 much more sincerely than can Margaret Thatcher and her ilk, it is not quite "our" bicentennial, either.

The conservative historian Francois Furet has correctly pointed out that participants in and interpreters of the French Revolution can be divided into two groups: "'89ers" and '''93ers." The '89ers are the revolutionaries of 1789 and those who identify with them. Like Furet himself, they believe the Revolution would have been much better if it had been more moderate; if it had been satisfied with what had been done in 1789 and stopped with that.

The '93ers, on the other hand, are the radical Jacobins and their latter-day sympathizers, who believe that turning the world upside down in 1793 was absolutely necessary to consolidate the Revolution's achievements. Revolutionary socialists today are in the latter category; for us the real bicentennial will occur four years from now.

But without 1789, of course, there could have been no 1793, so let us commence the celebration now. Let us honor our revolutionary forebears by recalling what it was they fought for and what they ultimately accomplished. Our interest in these events does not derive from antiquarian curiosity, but from the desire to learn from historical experience.

Rebellion of the aristocrats We celebrate July 14, Bastille Day, as the date on which the Revolution broke out with a major insurrection in Paris. But the revolutionary process had been developing beneath the surface for many years.

The beginning of any chain of historical causation is impossible to pinpoint, but a good case can be made for starting with the American Revolution. The expenses of France's involvement in that war stretched the royal government's finances to the breaking point. The monarchy was so deeply in debt that 50 percent of its budget was going for interest on its loans.

Louis XVI's advisors began desperately seeking new sources of revenue. The peasants were already so heavily taxed that squeezing them harder could only produce minimal returns. The crown's frantic search for new financial resources forced it to turn to the aristocracy, which had traditionally enjoyed extensive exemption from taxation.

In spite of their privileged social position, the nobles had long been excluded from a direct political role in governing the country. The threat to their economic interest prompted them to begin agitating for political rights as a means of defense.

The aristocratic rebellion succeeded in shaking the monarchy, but in doing so it opened the door for other social layers to begin raising demands as well. And thereby hangs the tale of the French Revolution. One of the great ironies of 1789 is that the social class that began the Revolution was the one that was ultimately destroyed by it.

Georges Lefebvre, in his brilliant book "The Coming of the French Revolution," described how the process unfolded in 1789 as a succession of four overlapping revolutionary waves crashing against the monarchy. The nobles initiated the turmoil, followed by the bourgeoisie, the peasants, and the urban "crowd"-the sans-culottes.

The Estates General The nobles' drive for political rights led to the demand for reconvening the Estates General, a medieval parliamentary body that had last met in 1614—more than a century and a half earlier.

The Estates General was hardly a democratic institution, since the three estates were to have equal weight in the assembly but represented vastly unequal numbers of constituents. In the population as a whole the First Estate (the clergy) numbered about 100,000, the Second Estate (the nobility) about 400,000, and the Third Estate (everybody else) about 25 million people.

Since the clergy could generally be counted upon to vote with the nobles, the assembly would effectively be under aristocratic control. Nonetheless, because the nobles' call for an Estates General was seen as a challenge to the oppressive monarchy, it gathered broad support among the population at large.

Louis XVI's government, pushed to the wall by the fiscal crisis, was forced to accede; the Estates General was set to be held at the beginning of May 1789. The leaders of the Third Estate, however, had another kind of Estates General in mind; one that would more clearly reflect the real numerical strength of their following.

When the nobles, with the King's backing, refused to consider their demand, the representatives of the Third Estate held their own meeting and on June 17 declared themselves the National Assembly. France had a new potential focus of governmental power in competition with the existing royal regime. While the leaders of the Third Estate—and now of the National Assembly— were almost uniformly bourgeois, they enjoyed broad popular support.

(What is the meaning of the term "bourgeois?" This and the allied term "feudalism" have been the focus of no end of confusion and debate; they will be discussed in the second article in this series: "The French Revolution and the Historians.")

The insurrection begins The Parisian sans-culottes-especially the petty-bourgeois masses of artisans and tradespeople-were on the verge of open revolt. The spark that ignited the conflagration was the dismissal of an undeservedly popular finance minister, Jacques Necker, on July 12. The insurrection had begun.

Angry crowds began arming themselves by looting gunsmiths' shops. Revolutionary-minded bourgeois political leaders attempted to bring order to the rebellion by organizing a citizens militia, the National Guard. The royal troops withdrew to their barracks; their ranks had been strongly affected by the spread of revolutionary ideas.

After two days, on July 14, the mass action in the streets came to a climax with the famous assault on the Bastille. The old prison had been used as an armory, and the crowd proceeded to liberate its guns and ammunition. The old municipal administration was swept aside and a new city government, the Paris Commune was formed.

Louis XVI recognized the triumph of the Revolution by accepting the tricolor cockade-to the cheers of the Parisian masses. The insurrection had legitimized the rule of the National Assembly and initiated a period of de facto constitutional monarchy.

While Paris led the way, it was by no means the only urban revolution. As news of July 14 spread, insurrections occurred in cities throughout France and established the role of revolutionary committees.

Meanwhile, in the countryside, the peasants were engaged in their own revolution. During July and August, they rose up against their landlords all over the country. Oppressed for centuries by feudal dues, taxes, tithes, and forced labor, they took advantage of the weakness of the royal regime to redress their own grievances.

Manor houses were sacked and burned, some seigneurs were chased away, but most importantly the peasant revolts-coming right at harvest time-were able to forcibly block the collection of dues, taxes and tithes. As the peasants set their fires, their main targets were the archives where records and documents defining their obligations were kept.

Fait accompli

On Aug. 4-less than a month after Bastille Day—a most peculiar session of the National Assembly took place. Aristocrats stood up, one after the other, to voluntarily renounce their privileges.

This was not a case of belated generosity or guilty consciences as might be supposed if the remarkable session were viewed in isolation from its social context. For one thing, the nobles were renouncing rights and privileges that had already come under sharp attack by the peasants' revolt. They were in a sense putting the best face possible on a fail accompli.

More importantly, the aristocrats were hoping by their action to win compensation for the privileges they were "giving up" and, indeed, the National Assembly backed their requests.

The peasants would be expected to pay for their emancipation. Feudal dues were to be legally done away with, but only in exchange for large cash payments. Since hardly any peasants were able to pay such amounts, they were faced with being perpetually in debt to their former landlords. Instead of feudal dues, they would now be making payment on their "loans."

The peasants, understandably, were not at all satisfied. Their struggle continued (often in open rebellion to the point of civil war) from 1789 until their complete victory in 1793, when the Jacobin Convention declared the peasants' redemptive debts null and void.

Meanwhile, back in Paris after the fall of the Bastille, the democratic aspects of the French Revolution began to manifest themselves very directly. The monarchy's repressive apparatus ceased to function, and Parisians began to exercise long-denied democratic rights of free assembly and free expression.

The breakdown of royal censorship resulted in an immediate explosion of publication. In Paris alone, 180 new journals appeared in 1789; by the end of the following year the number had risen to 355.

These newfound liberties were codified by the National Assembly on Aug. 26 in its Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and religious freedom became the law of the land.

In addition to these basic democratic rights, the Declaration affirmed the inviolability and sacredness of property rights, underlining the bourgeois character of the Revolution. Its aim was to promote personal liberty and civil equality, not social equality.

At the beginning of October another major mass action occurred, stimulated by the continuing high price of bread and the fear of (continued on next page)

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King Louis XVI is guillotined; the terror begins against the Ancien Régime.

SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1989 19 (continued from preceding page) an aristocratic plot to militarily crush revolutionary Paris.

The King's court at Versailles, about 15 miles from Paris, was assumed to be a nest of reactionary intrigue. A seemingly spontaneous movement erupted with the aim of marching to Versailles, "rescuing" the King from his treasonous advisors, and bringing him and his family to live in Paris under the watchful eyes of patriotic citizens.

On Oct. S, a huge crowd—largely made up of women armed with broomsticks, pitchforks, swords and muskets—set out on foot to march to Versailles. Later about 20,000 men, including large numbers of National Guards, set out after them. General Lafayette was at their head but it would not be accurate to say that he was leading them; he was straining to keep up.

The royal forces were overwhelmed and the King had no choice but to obey the demand of the crowds. He and his family were escorted to Paris and installed in the Tuilleries palace.

With the King pretending to accept his constitutionally limited role, the Revolution entered a phase of relative calm that lasted a year and a half. Throughout 1790 and the first half of 1791, mass actions subsided and the class struggle seemed to have dissolved into a pervasive mood of social unity.

The spell was broken, however, on June 20, 1791, when the King attempted to make a run for it. In the dark of night he and his family hid themselves in a carriage and sneaked out of the palace, heading for the border-where they hoped to join up with counterrevolutionary emigrés and their Austrian-backed armed forces.

Many of these dispossessed aristocrats had gained military skills in the officer corps of the royal army. Their object now was to reconquer France and destroy the Revolution. Upon them Louis XVI pinned his hopes for a return to full autocratic power.

The disguised King's flight was interrupted close to the border in a small town named Varennes. The strange entourage attracted attention, the King was recognized by local patriots, and he was forced to return to Paris under armed guard.

The illusions of social unity that had prevailed over the previous year and a half rapidly dissipated. The mass radicalization deepened significantly; the influence of Jean Paul Marat and other radical agitators increased by leaps and bounds. Nonetheless, another year would pass before the tension would once again explode in insurrection in Paris.

The monarchy is overthrown On Aug. 10, 1792—more than three years after the original Bastille Day—the most powerful insurrection to date took place. The sans-culottes emerged as a more independent political force, seeking ever more radical leadership. Lafayette attempted to march on Paris to restore bourgeois order, but his troops deserted him and he fled to join the Austrians. The monarchy was overthrown and the Republic was proclaimed the following month.

A National Convention was elected on the basis of adult male suffrage, making the new Republic far more democratic and popular than the ousted constitutional monarchy.

Meanwhile, France had been at war since April against a coalition of old-regime powers determined to crush the Revolution. The government had appealed to revolutionary internationalism by calling on oppressed people throughout Europe to rise against their monarchs, pledging French armed support.

But in the field the ragtag French armies, shorn of their traditional officer corps, seemed no match for the professionally led Austrian and Prussian forces. Before long the revolutionary enthusiasm of free French soldiers fighting in their own interests would begin to turn the tide, but at first the Revolution appeared to be in grave danger of military defeat.

A chest of Louis XVI's correspondence was discovered that proved what had been suspected since his flight to Varennes: the King was neck-deep in collaboration with the counterrevolutionary armies invading France. In Jan. 1793, citizen Louis Capet—formerly King Louis XVI-was tried, condemned to death, and guillotined for his treason.

The execution of the ex-King stood as a powerful symbol of the irreversibility of the Revolution. It threw down the gauntlet to the counterrevolutionary forces inside France and throughout Europe. In the following months England, Holland, and Spain joined the war coalition against France, and a major counterrevolutionary revolt erupted in the Vendee in western France.

With the Revolution under siege from all sides, the class struggle intensified apace. The mood of the Parisian masses was white-hot with revolutionary fervor. They began to perceive the new republican leaders as too moderate and too conciliatory toward the Revolution's enemies; as a result, the radical July 14. 1789: The insurrection begins ' liberate' guns and ammunition. Montagnard faction gained in influence within the Convention.

The Girondins, the moderates, were ousted from power and replaced by the Montagnards, led by Robespierre, Marat, Danton, and other popular left-wingers.

(The name "Montagnards," men of the Mountain, derived from the seating arrangements in the hall that housed the Convention; the radicals occupied a bank of high seats overlooking the others. The name "Girondin" reflected the fact that a number of the moderate leaders hailed from the Gironde region. "Girondins" was not a contemporary term; at the time they were known as "Brissotins" after their leader, Jacques-Pierre Brissot.)

Beginning of the Terror The revolutionary crisis continued to deepen throughout the summer as the counterrevolutionary armies drew closer. On Sept. 5, yet another popular insurrection in Paris brought Robespierre to the head of a much more centralized government and marked the onset of the Terror.

The climax of the Great French Revolution was at hand. The radical petty-bourgeois government, in alliance with the rebellious peasants and sans-culottes, dealt the final, mortal blows to the aristocracy as a class.

Moralizing conservative historians have labored long to discredit the French Revolution by portraying Robespierre and other members of the Committee of Public Safety as bloodthirsty paranoids who used the guillotine to intimidate the masses and eliminate their factional opponents. But in fact, the danger to the Revolution was no paranoic fantasy; its external and internal enemies were numerous and powerful.

The Terror was a justifiable policy necessary to the defense of the Revolution. The need for unity and security, however, led to abuses of power. Numerous individuals— including dissident revolutionaries such as Danton, Hebert, and Desmoulins—were unjustly condemned to death.

The dangers of war and counterrevolution pressed the Jacobin government to bring the turbulent mass movement under strict control. In doing so, it suppressed the revolutionary energy of its own political base and sowed the seeds of its own downfall. The execution of ultraradical leaders like Hebert "Law of the Maximum"

The Jacobins' problems reflect the fact that the sans-culottes were not a homogeneous social class, but combined elements with different, and at times opposing social interests. When bread prices rose to the crisis point, artisans and wage-workers alike hit the the masses storm the Bastille to Robespierre streets-and sometimes hanged the baker from the nearest lamppost.

A socialist solution to this problem, including nationalization of production and a planned economy, might have appealed to the proletarian part of the urban crowd but not to its more active petty-bourgeois part. The Jacobins instead attempted to impose equality of consumption-socialization of distribution rather than of production.

To that end, the radical government of 1793 instituted the "Law of the Maximum," which fixed price ceilings on necessary commodities—in the first place, bread-and threatened speculators and hoarders with the guillotine.

Such policies made production less profitable and inevitably lead to a drop in production, growing pressure to raise prices, and an increasing scarcity of goods. The Law of the Maximum, far from solving the problem of bread prices, only exacerbated it.

This was the bind that radical revolutionaries like Robespierre found themselves in; the low level of productive forces in late 18th-century France prevented them from transcending the bounds of a bourgeois, or capitalist, revolution. Since the masses' demands for social and economic equality were unrealizable, their demoralization was inevitable.

Moderates return to power By the middle of 1794, the military tide had turned and the threat from the counterrevolution had eased considerably. With the primary justification for the Terror disappearing, a moderate faction in the Convention was able to isolate and defeat Robespierre and send him and his supporters to the guillotine. Revolutionary organizations called an insurrection in defence of the Jacobin leaders, but this time the demoralized Parisian masses failed to respond.

The fall of Robespierre, according to the revolutionary calendar, occurred on the 9th of Thermidor; hence this event marking the end of the radical phase of the Revolution became known as Thermidor.

The Thermidorian reaction brought the moderates back to the fore—the '89ers and the remnants of the Girondins. It was their task to begin the process of stabilizing French society on a capitalist basis; in 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte would take over the job.

Who "won" the Kevolution? At the beginning of this article I distinguished the '89ers, the moderates, from the '93ers, the radicals, and stated that the really definitive revolutionary acts that accomplished lasting social change were those of 1793. But the final result of the Revolution fulfilled the program of the moderates, not the radicals; in that sense, the '89ers were the real winners.

The radicals' goal was a society neither bourgeois nor socialist. They tried to create a petty-bourgeois utopia—an egalitarian demo cracy of small producers that would combine private property rights with social justice.

Although they failed, it was the struggle of the '93ers for their impossible dream that mobilized the urban and rural masses to destroy the old regime, clearing the way for the development of bourgeois society. The '93ers, it might be said, made the revolution, but the '89ers came out on top.

The Revolution succeeded in ridding France of a class whose right to rule was based upon aristocratic birth and traditional privilege. The new ruling class based its claim to social dominance on wealth and wealth alone. The problems of poverty and social inequality remained.

Was the game worth the candle? The next article in this series, in the August issue of Socialist Action, will attempt to define the positive accomplishments of the Great Revolution.