What did the French Revolution achieve?

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A 1789 caricature lambasts the brutality of France's privileged classes the nobility, clergy and army officers who were enriched by riding on the back of the 'common man.' 6 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 1989 The tumultuous events of the French Revolution obviously had an immense impact on French and European society during the decade following 1789. But after the dust had settled, what had been accomplished? Had a fundamental social transformation occurred or not? Were there any positive and enduring results, and if so, what were they?

Historians have usually taken for granted the proposition that the French Revolution was "the great turning point of modern civilization." Since the 1950s, however, a school of "revisionist" historians has challenged this assumption. We shall consider their arguments in more detail in the third and final article in this series.

For now, let us restrict ourselves to noting that the primary focus of their attack is Karl Marx's contention that the French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution-the triumph of capitalism over feudalism.

According to the Marxist view, the essential causative factor underlying historical change is class struggle. In the case of the French Revolution, the struggle was between a hereditary nobility that had emerged as the ruling class in the feudal system and a rising bourgeois-or capitalist-class.

In earlier centuries the feudal system that the landed aristocrats presided over had been economically progressive, but by the 18th century it had run its course and was incapable of further expansion. Within the framework of feudalism, however, urban centers had developed and with them a new, dynamic social class based not on landed wealth but on "movable" wealth.

The two classes had irreconcilable interests; feudal property relations acted as a brake on capitalist development. As the wealth and social importance of the capitalists grew, the conflict intensified until a showdown was unavoidable.

Which of the counterposed social systems would prevail? The Revolution decided in favor of the bourgeoisie, and the way was cleared for the development of France-and much of continental Europe-along capitalist lines.

The critical reader will notice that this brief summary of the Marxist view is a series of generalizations without much reference to conditions as they actually existed in 18thcentury France. The revisionist historians have seized on such abstractions to claim that Marxists base their analysis not on historical evidence but on metaphysical principles.

The rest of this article will attempt to demonstrate the historical basis underlying the generalizations.

The bourgeois revolution What, precisely, was the "bourgeois revolution" that occurred in France at the end of the 18th century, and why did it make a difference?

Economic activity-the production of the necessities of life—is the basis of all human culture. Let us begin by considering how production was organized in France before the Revolution and who benefited from the way it was organized.

First of all, production was predominantly agricultural, and the producers were almost all peasants. Of France's total population of about 25 million, considerably more than 20 million were peasants. Non-agricultural production included the varied output of urban and rural artisans plus textiles, a small iron industry, and a small chemical industry producing such things as soap, dyes, and gunpowder.

In 1789, however, the industrial revolution was still three-quarters of a century in the future for France, so both agriculture and industry were characterized by very small productive units.

Feudalism in the 18th century In what sense was agriculture organized according to feudal relations of production? Just as capitalist rule has taken many forms-from totalitarian dictatorship to parliamentary democracy—so has the term "feudalism" covered a variety of social arrangements.

Classical feudalism legally bound the serfs to the land and subjected them to the arbitrary rule of local landowners. By the late 18th century, classical feudalism had vanished from large parts of Western Europe, although it had been maintained in varying degrees of rigidity in the East.

Generally speaking (and ignoring the Iberian peninsula), the farther east one looked in Europe, the harsher the lot of the peasant was—from Austria, through Prussia, to Russia, where serfs were virtual slaves well into the 19th century.

In France, the face of feudalism had changed considerably by 1789. Only about 5 percent of French peasants were still serfs in the classical sense; the rest were legally free. Almost three-quarters of peasant heads-ofhouseholds owned at least some of the land they cultivated, but because their holdings were so small, most also had to work as sharecroppers or tenant farmers on land they did not own. The one quarter who were completely landless worked as rural laborers.

That minority of peasant landowners who owned enough to survive without sharecropping or tenant farming were the furthest removed from classical serfdom. Even these freeholders, however, were far from free in their role as agricultural producers.

The peasantry suffers No one has ever surpassed Alexis de Tocqueville's description of the status of the landowning peasant in relation to his aristocratic "neighbors." This peasant, Tocqueville wrote, is:

"A man so passionately devoted to the soil that he spends all his earnings on buying land, no matter what it costs. To acquire it, he must begin by paying certain dues, not to the government but to other landowners of the neighborhood.

"When at long last he has gained possession of this land... the neighbors aforesaid put in an appearance, drag him away from his cherished fields, and bid him work elsewhere without payment. When he tries to protect his seedlings from the animals they hunt, they tell him to take down his fences, and they lie in wait for him at river crossings to exact a toll.

"At the market there they are again, to make him pay for the right of selling the produce of his land, and when on his return home he wants to use the wheat he has put aside for his daily needs, he has to take it to their mill to have it ground, and then to have his bread baked in the lord's oven.

"Thus, part of the income from his small domain goes to supporting these men in the form of charges which are inprescriptable and irredeemable. Whatever he sets out to do, he finds these tiresome neighbors barring his path, interfering in his simple pleasures and his work, and consuming the produce of his toil. And when he has done with them, other fine gentlemen dressed in black (tithecollectors) step in and take the greater part of his harvest.

"When we remember the special temperament of the French peasant proprietor in the 18th century, his ruling interests and passions, and the treatment accorded him, we can well understand the rankling grievances that burst into flame in the French Revolution." (Alexis de Tocqueville, "The Old Regime and the French Revolution," originally published in 1856.)

Feudal extractions in money, in kind, and in forced labor continued to define and delimit the economic activities of even these "free" peasants. One can only concur with Tocqueville's conclusion that, "even after it ceased to be a political institution, the feudal system remained basic to the economic organization of France."

The landowning peasants in particular had the glories of capitalist agriculture dangled before their eyes, but their hands were tied by all the encumbrances described by Tocqueville. Under those conditions, the incentive to improve their land or increase production was limited, since the benefits would go more to their hated "neighbors" than to themselves.

They could see, however, that if they could get the nobles off their backs—if they could take full advantage of the free market without the burden of feudal dues and taxes-greater crop yields would redound to their own profit. Aristocratic rule in the countryside, then, was the primary obstacle to the further development of agricultural productivity.

Despite their differing conditions, all of the peasants were united in their opposition to the feudal system because all faced the same enemy. The freeholder's "neighbor," the sharecropper's landlord, the agricultural laborer's boss, and the serf's lord were all members of the same aristocratic ruling class. The peasants, in alliance with urban revolutionaries, freed themselves by defeating their common enemy in struggle from 1789 to 1793.

A potential proletariat The most far-reaching result of the liberation of the peasantry was not its effect on agriculture but its impact on the production system as a whole.

The essential prerequisite for the development of a capitalist economy is the existence of a free labor force-a pool of propertyless proletarians. As long as the vast majority of the population is unable to leave the land, no such labor force is possible and capitalist development must necessarily be sharply restricted.

As we saw in last month's article in Socialist Action, the moderate revolutionaries of 1789 ended feudalism as a legal system, but proposed that the peasants compensate the nobles by paying a heavy price for their emancipation. Such an arrangement would have replaced the bonds of feudal law with debt bondage; the peasants would still have been tied to the land for a long, long timeas in Russia following the 1861 emancipation of the serfs.

The development of a modern proletariat would have been severely impeded. That is why the 1793 decree cancelling all of the peasants' obligations without compensation was the decisive act of the bourgeois revolution. It put an end to the feudal mode of production once and for all and transformed the peasantry into a potential proletariat.

Changing the tariff system The transformation of property relations in the countryside, then, was the key. to the bourgeois revolution. But the system of nonagricultural production was in dire need of change as well. Urban petty production was hamstrung by royal monopolies, internal tariffs, the guild system, and the lack of a uniform system of weights and measures.

The internal tariffs were economic obstacles in a very literal sense: The most notorious case involved a wall built around Paris to prevent smugglers from avoiding certain tariffs. Although smuggling was a capital offense, the death penalty was apparently an insufficient deterrent; it has been estimated that before the wall was built about 20 percent of the goods entering Paris entered as contraband.

A great deal of money was spent constructing fancy buildings along the wall to serve as customs posts. The whole project became a focus of popular odium. The customs posts were perceived as fortresses for the oppression of the people, and the tariffs were resented because they added appreciably to the cost of food and wine entering the city. During the insurrectionary days of July 1789, the Parisian sans-culottes systematically demolished 40 of the 54 customs posts.

The internal tariff system was much more than a wall around Paris, however; it formed economic walls separating all of the provinces of France. To sell a commodity more than a few miles from where it was made meant crossing a tariff barrier and paying a fee. It also meant paying exorbitant tolls for transportation on roads and rivers. The farther a manufacturer or merchant tried to extend the market for his product, the more tariffs and tolls he would encounter.

This system prevented the development of even regional, let alone national, markets and set sharp limits to economic growth and development.

In addition to these restrictions on commerce, the guild system directly hampered production by forcing artisans to pay heavy fees for the privilege of plying their trades.

In 1776, Jacques Turgot, Louis XVI's finance minister, tried to introduce reforms

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that would abolish these "arbitrary institutions" that " stifle industry."

Turgot issued an edict stating that "by means of the inordinate expenses artisans are compelled to incur in order to acquire the liberty of labor, by the exactions of all kinds they must endure, by the multiplied penalties for so-called offenses" the guilds "surcharge industry with an enormous tax" and "give rise to schemes whose effect is to increase beyond all natural proportion the price of commodities which are most necessary for the subsistence of the people."

Turgot's diagnosis of the problem was accurate, but his reforming efforts were to no avail; they led only to his removal from office.

Turgot was but one of the many would-be reformers who failed. It took the dynamite blast of the Revolution to dislodge the entrenched interests defending the status quo. By February 1791, the National Assembly had introduced a uniform system of weights and measures, abolished the internal tariffs, eliminated private tolls on roads and rivers, and suppressed the guilds.

"Open careers to talent!"

Another critical social problem in prerevolutionary France had affected what today are called "yuppies:" young urban professionals.

In spite of all the handicaps placed upon trade and production, capitalist wealth had continued to expand during the 18th century, primarily on the basis of international commerce. The distortion of the economy and the social restrictions of the old regime combined to generate a layer of educated bourgeois youth with limited prospects for employment. Some found occupations as lawyers, doctors, teachers, or writers—but many more remained on the fringes of the professions.

Success often depended upon finding noble patronage. The prestigious positions at the top of the professions-especially in politics, law, and the military-were reserved for nobles. As a result, the members of the marginalized intelligentsia became the most vocal proponents of the bourgeois democratic revolution, raising the powerful slogan: "Open careers to talent!"

Representatives of this social layerincluding Brissot, Marat, Danton, Robespierre—predominated in the leadership of the Revolution from 1789 forward.

And, in fact, the democratic aspects of the Revolution very quickly answered to the career interests of the bourgeois professionals. Freedom of the press stimulated employment in publishing and journalism; equality before the law and the extension of the legal system required an increase in the number of lawyers and judges; and of course vast opportunities in politics and administration were created with the birth of a parliamentary government.

Most important, the Revolution succeeded in "opening careers to talent" by breaking the social dominance of the nobility.

These, then, in summary, were the primary accomplishments of the bourgeois revolution: the peasants were liberated from feudal exactions, the guilds and internal tariffs were Church and emigré lands tended to retard that movement by strengthening the position of the rural petty producers. But again: regardless of the pace of capitalist growth after the Revolution, the Revolution was the indispensable action that cleared the way for capitalist development.

Contradictory democratic legacy Although the socio-economic transformation was the essential achievement of the Revolution, it was certainly not its only important legacy. Most bicentennial commentators, in fact, have concentrated more on the Revolution's democratic features as symbolized by the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen."

The old regime had been founded on the principle of natural inequality; that some people were by birth superior to others and thereby entitled to special privileges. The Revolution produced a social order based on the opposite premise of human equality. From this premise were derived the rights to equality before the law, representative government, and guarantees of civil liberties.

The importance of the democratic legacy of the French Revolution to the cause of human progress is undeniable. But those who focus solely on the democratic achievements are seeing only the surface of events and missing the underlying dynamic.

The Napoleonic experience bears this out. The export of the French Revolution to the rest of Western Europe began before Bonaparte came on the scene.

Sister republics were created in Holland, Switzerland, Northern Italy, Naples, and the Papal States by means of revolutionary action led by local "Jacobins" with the crucial support of French arms. Thus was the social transformation of Western Europe initiated, later to be consolidated and extended by the Napoleonic wars.

Bonaparte, however, was anything but a democrat. He did away with the republics and converted them into kingdoms ruled by his brothers, other relatives, and assorted sidekicks. At home he scrapped the French Republic, crowned himself Emperor, and even created a new titled nobility.

By naming his brother Jerome as King of Westphalia, his brother Louis as King of Holland, and his brother Joseph as King of Naples (and later Spain), he intended to create a new royal dynasty to rule Europe long into the future.

Nonetheless, the Napoleonic system differed in key respects from traditional monarchies. For one thing, the titles of his newly created nobility were not based on birthright or landownership but on merit: military, administrative, or scientific "talent." It is also significant that this aristocracy was only about one-seventh the size of the old Bourbon nobility.

Second, he imposed a unified body of law, the Napoleonic Code, on the conquered territories, based on the principle of equality before the law (i.e., the negation of legal aristocratic privilege).

But most important, he exported the bourgeois revolution to those areas he controlled: The essence of the Napoleonic Code was the principle of bourgeois property rights, which supplanted the old-regime system based on birthright and the feudal system of production.

In 1807 Napoleon sent a constitution for Jerome to impose on the newly created Kingdom of Westphalia. The main point, he wrote to Jerome, was "that every trace of serfdom, or of a feudal hierarchy between the sovereign and the lowest class of his subjects, shall be done away with."

Bonaparte's armies, in short, reproduced throughout Western Europe that new social order that was good for business. Again, Bonaparte's regime did not create capitalism out of nothing, nor did it produce fully developed capitalist economies, but it did liberate peasants and clear away obstacles to the future development of capitalism.

Spread of new social relations The spread of the dynamic new social system extended beyond the bounds of Bonaparte's conquests. After his victory over Prussia at Jena in 1806, he directly abolished serfdom in territories wrested from Prussian control.

But Prussia itself, which was defeated but not conquered or occupied, also experienced a social transformation. The Prussian Reform Movement came to power and abolished serfdom throughout its remaining territories. The French Revolution had created a new Europe, and Prussia was forced to modernize or cease to exist as a sovereign state.

What Bonaparte's armies carried with them of the French Revolution was not democracy or republicanism, but bourgeois social relations. That was the essential legacy of the French Revolution to human progress. Bourgeois democracy and stable republics were far in the future for most of Western Europe.

After Bonaparte's final defeat, the Bourbon monarchy was reimposed on France, and the Metternich era of reaction descended upon Europe. But for all the superficial, symbolic reversals, the essential achievements of the Revolution survived, both inside and outside France.

Some of the French aristocratic families got some compensation-hush money, really—but never got their lands back. Nowhere were freed serfs returned to serfdom; nowhere were the results of the peasant rebellion undone.

(These generalizations must be qualified with regard to two countries-Poland and Spain-where the bourgeoisie or "middle class" was relatively small and weak. In Poland, Bonaparte had emancipated the serfs but was unable to liquidate the aristocracy, so de facto feudal relations persisted. Spain was the only country where Napoleonic reforms were actually reversed after the final defeat of the Napoleonic empire.)

Revolution of 1830 Fifteen years of Bourbon restoration in France vanished with hardly a trace in 1830 as a relatively small insurrection dispatched the Bourbons once and for all and allowed Louis Philippe, the bourgeois king, to come to the