The renewed controversy over the meaning of the French Revolution

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(Last of a three-part series)

As one of the seminal actions of human history, the French Revolution has been the subject of enough books to fill a library. The passions aroused by the event itself have never completely subsided; even today controversy continues over how to interpret the Revolution.

The main axis of contention is the interpretation of an author who was not primarily à historian and never wrote a book specifically devoted to the French Revolution: Karl Marx. The debate, ironically, centers on a proposition that did not originate with Marx: that the French Revolution was essentially a bourgeois revolution aimed at overturning a feudal society.

Those who lived through the Revolution themselves described their experience in those terms. Marx's contribution was to incorporate this view of the French Revolution into a comprehensive theory of history, thereby giving specific content to the words "bourgeois" and "feudal."

As Marx acknowledged, "It is not I who should receive the credit for having discovered either the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle." In particular, Augustin Thierry was identified by Marx as the "father of the class struggle in French historiography."

The first historian to arrive at a social interpretation of the French Revolution was Antoine Barnave, himself an active participant. In his "Introduction to the French Revolution," written in 1792, he explained that during the loth century artisan production and commerce had "succeeded in penetrating the people and created a new means to wealth" to such a degree that "all was ready for a revolution in political laws; a new distribution of wealth produced a new distribution of power."

Historians writing in the first half of the 19th century took Barnave's basic insight, the bourgeois character of the Revolution, for granted. Why did this concept, so solidly grounded in pre-Marx scholarship, later become controversial?

The answer lies in the fact that historians are not immune to the influence of their own political environment and have often incorporated their own political sentiments into their interpretations of the Revolution. The modern debate over the French Revolution was fueled by Cold War anti-Marxism.

Opposing political views

Writing history with the use of insights derived from later experience does not always yield negative results. When historians have projected their current social prejudices onto the past, however, their accounts have invariably been distorted. A prominent example is the way historians have portrayed the sansculottes, whose insurrections in Paris periodically drove the Revolution forward.

To Hippolyte Taine the Parisian masses were the scum of the earth, "the mob"beggars, thieves, and prostitutes. His extreme hostility to and contempt for the masses reflected his own conservative revulsion when confronted with the Paris Commune in 1871.

For Jules Michelet, on the other hand, the sans-culottes were not "the mob" but "the people," and they were the heroes of the First Republic. Michelet's interpretation reflected his own strong partisanship toward the Second Republic that was born of revolution in 1848.

What these opposite views had in common was that both were abstractions based on impressions and assumptions rather than on concrete evidence. More recently an English Marxist historian, George Rude, performed a careful analysis of documentary sources especially police records-and was able to construct a convincing picture of the participants in the great mass actions of the Revolution. Rather than "the mob" or "the people," Rude chose a more neutral term: "the crowd."

Rude was able to prove that Taine had been wrong about the social composition of the 16 SOCIALIST ACTION Parisian crowd. Virtually all of those arrested (who would presumably have been among the most conspicuous and militant of the insurrectionaries) were people who although often desperately poor, had fixed places of residence and steady occupations. They were not bums, drifters, or other lumpen elements. The Parisian crowd was of a transitional social character encompassing both petty bourgeois and proletarian elements.

Rude's work demonstrates that the use of modern political insights to interpret past events does not necessarily lead to distortion. The mass revolutionary movements of the 20th century have provided a rich resource of concepts and categories that can enrich historical understanding. Those historians who, like Rude, carefully test their hypo theses against the documentary evidence can apply the experience of more recent revolutions to their interpretation of the French Revolution without falling into anachronism and false analogy.

Rude's analysis of the Parisian crowd exemplifies a major shift of focus in historical studies that can also be traced to the influence of Karl Marx. Before Marx, history writing was almost exclusively of the "great man" variety, concerned only with the activities of monarchs, generals, and parliamentary leaders.

Marx's contention that classes and masses are the active agents of historic change required a new perspective. Historians began paying more attention to the lives of ordinary people, and social history-"history from below"-was born. While not all present-day SEPTEMBER 1989 social historians are Marxists, all owe a debt to Marx for laying the philosophical foundations of their discipline.

"Revisionism" vs. "Orthodoxy"

Marx's contributions to historical theory, however, have not been universally accepted or appreciated. In the 1950s, during the height of the Cold War, a group of historians in England and the United States devoted themselves to challenging the Marxist viewpoint. They came to be known as the "revisionist" school and their most prominent representative was the British historian Alfred Cobban. The revisionists' primary target was the Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution, which they attacked as an "outmoded orthodoxy."

It may seem peculiar that in any field of study Marxism could be viewed as orthodox in Western Europe and North America. Leaving aside the false imputation of rigidity or dogmatism, it is true that Marxist and Marxist-influenced historians had long dominated the study of the Revolution.

At the turn of the century the great French socialist leader Jean Jaures published his fourvolume "Socialist History of the French Revolution." Jaures looked to Marx for inspiration and produced the first serious treatment of the Revolution that focused on the actions of the masses rather than on the maneuvers of political leaders.

Jaures was somewhat inconsistent in his historical materialism. In the introduction to the "Socialist History" he described his approach as both "materialist with Marx and mystical with Michelet." In spite of the work's weaknesses, however, Jaures blazed a new trail for others to follow, and one who acknowledged Jaures as his master was the most important of the modern historians of the Revolution, Georges Lefebvre.

Lefebvre's first major contribution was to bring the great mass of the French population, the peasantry, into the historical picture. Lefebvre's research demonstrated that the rural rebellion was indispensable to the success of the Revolution. It follows that the French Revolution cannot be understood without adding the forces of the peasantry into the equation.

Lefebvre did not stop with the peasantry, however, but went on to develop a comprehensive picture that took into consideration all of the social classes and their complex interactions in the course of the Revolution. His masterful weaving together of all the disparate strands of social history is known as the "Lefebvre synthesis." It became the standard account—the "orthodox version," if you will-of the Revolution.

It was the Lefebvre synthesis that I briefly summmarized in the first article in this series. [See July 1989 Socialist Action.] Some of Lefebvre's works that are readily available in English are "The Coming of the French Revolution, " "The French Revolution" (in two volumes), "The Great Fear of 1789," and "Napoleon" (Vol. I: 1799-1807; Vol II: 18071815).

Lefebvre held the chair of the History of the French Revolution at the Sorbonne, the institutional reflection of his stature as the leading interpreter of the great event. He was not a Marxist in all aspects of his thinking and activity, but he certainly acknowledged the centrality of Marxism to his work on the French Revolution.

Lefebvre died in 1960; in 1967 his chair at the Sorbonne was occupied by another of France's most prominent Marxist historians, Albert Soboul, a long-time member of the French Communist Party. (In spite of the fact that his scholarly work on the French Revolution was in the best Marxist tradition, Soboul was a staunch Stalinist in his day-to-day politics. As such, he bitterly opposed the revolutionary upsurge in France in May-June 1968 and supported his party's betrayal of the general strike.)

"Revisionists" gain The virtually unchallenged dominance of the Lefebvre synthesis seemed to mock the Marxist axiom that bourgeois society is dominated by bourgeois ideology. For a Marxist interpretation to hold sway over an important academic discipline was an anomalous situation, especially in the extreme anticommunist political context of the 1950s. It is not surprising that many historians in the English-speaking world flocked to Cobban's revisionist banner when he raised it. (Cobban first articulated the revisionist theme in 1955. His major work is "The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution," published in 1964.)

Since then the revisionists have occupied a rather ambiguous position. Their influence is strong in English and American universities and they have even picked up a few adherents in France. The most prominent French revisionist, Francois Furet, is explicit in his political antipathies; he complains of "Leninist-Populist Holy Writ" and identifies Soboul's "Short History of the French Revolution" as "undoubtedly the best example."

Most recent books on the French Revolution published in the United States reflect the revisionists' anti-Marxist bias. Nonetheless, they cannot be said to have triumphed over the Lefebvre synthesis because they have been unable to offer a new synthesis of their own to take its place. Their attack on the Marxist view has consisted of a set of unconnected partial criticisms.

Anyone who seeks to understand the meaning of the French Revolution, then, will not find what they are looking for in the works of the revisionists. The only comprehensive picture of the Revolution in all its complexity is still the Marxist interpretation in the form provided by Lefebvre.

Some historians have sought to avoid the problem by way of a retreat from meaning.

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'Jaures looked to Marx for inspiration and produced the first serious treatment of the levolution that focused on the action of th masses rather than on the maneuvers of (continued from preceding page)

They do not address the question of the essential dynamics of the Revolution. The works of Richard Cobb, for example, are valuable for the wealth of information they assemble and present, but Cobb steadfastly resists drawing any conclusions as to the meaning of the Revolution.

Marxists, by contrast, are committed to the proposition that there is meaning and lawfulness in history and that with effort it is possible to shed some light on its meaning and its laws. That is not to say, as is often alleged, that Marxists seek absolute, deterministic laws on the model of Newtonian physics. Such notions have even been abandoned in physics. But the development of human societies has not been a random process; significant regularities can be identified by a careful study of history.

Marx's purpose in analyzing history, he declared, was not merely to interpret the world but to change it. Marx was a revolutionary. It is this aspect of his thought that is most unpalatable to the revisionists: the idea of learning from the past in order to revo lutionize the present simply has no meaning for them. It is not their job.

The revisionists, then, have no interest in constructing a superior theoretical vehicle that can outperform Marxism. Their aim is to weaken the vehicle that already exists. That is why their response to the Lefebvre synthesis consists solely of negative criticisms and why they are constitutionally incapable of developing a synthesis of their own.

The revisionists concentrate primarily on discrediting what Cobban called the "myth" of the bourgeois, capitalist, anti-feudal social revolution. "The "bourgeois revolution' is a metaphysical monster," says Furet, "that strangles historical reality."

The objections are many: There was no clear-cut bourgeoisie sharply distinguishable from the nobility. There was no feudalism left in France to overthrow. The people who led the Revolution were not bourgeois. There was a lot of capitalism in France before the Revolution and not very much more after it. Many of the individuals who were at the top of the social ladder before the Revolution were still on top after it. And finally, if anything really did change, it would have changed anyway in spite of the Revolution.

Glorifying violence?

The last objection is the most clearly politically motivated. The Revolution, according to this view, was simply gratuitous violence, at best irrelevant to the process of social change; at worst, counterproductive. The Marxists, it is said, glorify violence in the past in order to justify it in the present.

Revolutionists, of course, are frequently charged with advocating violence when in fact they are merely predicting it and preparing to defend themselves against it. To blame Marx for advocating violence in his writings on the Paris Commune, for example, is a case of blaming the messenger for the bad news.

Marx simply recognized as an objective fact that most social change has occurred as a political leaders.' result of class struggle, often including violent warfare between classes contending for power. The French Revolution, he believed, was a classic and obvious example.

Those who challenge that contention hold that France could just as well have achieved social progress by evolution rather than revolution. The abuses of monarchical power and aristocratic privilege could have been eliminated through reforms if, say, a more competent ruler than Louis XVI had been on the throne.

Such possibilities can never be absolutely ruled out, but the actual course of the French Revolution makes them seem unlikely in the extreme. The "reforms" demanded by the peasants threatened the very existence of most of the rural nobility; had the latter lost their fiscal privileges they would have been driven into poverty.

With their backs against the wall they chose to fight to the death. A compromise solution was attempted in August 1789, ending the nobles' privileges but at the expense of the peasants. The peasants refused the deal and fought on to total victory in 1793.

Given that history, it is very difficult to imagine any negotiated settlement that could have avoided the violent showdown. Furthermore, once the forces of the old regime coalesced throughout Europe in an effort to crush the Revolution by military violence, it is likewise difficult to imagine how the counterviolence of the Terror could have been avoided.

The revisionists' contention that feudalism had disappeared in France long before 1789 is based on a purely legalistic definition of feudalism. The fiefs that formed the original basis of the feudal order had indeed ceased to exist many centuries earlier. Ninety-five percent of the French peasants were not serfs.

Caricatures of Marxism

Nonethless, the peasants continued to be bound to the land by legal and economic restrictions that had survived from the feudal system. The revisionists insist that this should be called "seigneurialism" rather than "feudalism." To deny the social character of the Revolution by appealing to a definition of feudalism applicable to Charlemagne's time is not a compelling argument; it is simply playing with words.

Some of the other revisionist arguments against Marxist interpretation are not necessarily untrue, but they are based on a straw-man version of what is meant by "bourgeois revolution." A caricature of the Marxist view is presented and then demolished.

The revisionists' criteria for a bourgeois revolution require that the two classes be sharply delineated, that the wealthiest capitalists be the Revolution's staunchest supporters, that its political leaders come directly from the big-business class, and that the Revolution must be shown to have rapidly produced a flourishing capitalist economy.

Since all of these propositions are SOCIALIST ACTION demonstrably false, the conclusion follows naturally that there was no bourgeois revolution. After falsely attributing this simple-minded schema to Marxists, the revisionists will add insult to injury by accusing Marxists of schematism.

It is certainly true, for example, that the line dividing the nobility from the bourgeoisie was far from absolute; some nobles made money the capitalist way and some capitalists bought their way into the nobility. But what of it? What is at issue is not capitalists but capitalism; not biological individuals but their social role. The significant transformation was that of the mode of production from precapitalist to capitalist. Which individuals made up the capitalist class is beside the point.

In any event, the fuzziness of the boundary line dividing the nobility from the bourgeoisie does not invalidate the categories, as the revisionists imply. There was a noble class and there was a bourgeois class and they were not the same despite the fact that their memberships overlapped.

It is ironic that those who persistently bewail the "oversimplification" of the Marxist interpretation have such difficulty comprehending the real complexity of social classes. Definitions of social class that cannot in principle pigeonhole every individual lead to contradictions, they say, and therefore must be ruled out of consideration.

What they fail to understand is that the contradiction is not in the Marxist interpretation, but was a genuine aspect of the social reality of the French Revolution.

Debt of gratitude

Another "contradiction:" The fact that the wealthiest capitalists did not enthusiastically greet the Revolution does not call its bourgeois character into question. The upper bourgeoisie served as financiers to the monarachy; it was tied to the old regime by strong bonds of self-interest. But this exceptional group was by no means representative of the bourgeois class as a whole.

The revisionists' method, however, is precisely to seek out exceptional circumstances, label them "contradictions," and use them to deny the validity of any generalization they wish to discredit. Small wonder that these critics have been unable, by their own admission, to offer a comprehensive view to replace the Lefebvre synthesis.

The revisionists' ultimate goal was to cast doubt on the reality of the French Revolution itself, and by extension on all social revolutions, past, present, and future. If no significant social change occurred as a result of the French Revolution, then all of the fighting and suffering was in vain. The intended moral for the youth of today is clear.

In spite of their efforts, however, the French Revolution remains a vibrant source of inspiration to a new generation struggling for liberation. In this bicentennial year we should acknowledge our debt of gratitude to Marxist historians like Jaures, Lefebvre, Labrousse, Soboul, and Rude for preserving and defending the real legacy of the French Revolution.

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