Reviews for Class, ideology, and the rights of nobles during the French Revolution

The average rating for Class, ideology, and the rights of nobles during the French Revolution based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-08-17 00:00:00 John Zoltanski A fascinating description of the first three years of the First Republic (the era of Robespierre), seen from the perspective of the bras nus, the "bare arms", the urban working class. By the end of the eighteenth century, the bourgeoisie had long prepared for the revolution, and they had some clear ideas about what they wanted to achieve (an Enlightenment representative republic in the mould of the United States) and what they wanted to avoid (a Cromwellian dictatorship). They knew their history and had talked about it for years. Their ideal was free market capitalism, respecting property and human rights, without the dead weight of the crown, the nobility and the church. It was to be a middle class paradise. On the other hand, no one had prepared the workers for revolution. They wanted cheap bread and a decent wage, but beyond that they had no idea of how to organise the state. As a result, they were easily tricked into doing the bourgeois dirty work and got nothing lasting in return. Throughout the many convulsions of nineteenth century, the workers were always used and discarded in this way. Later theorists and especially Lenin saw that the working class must be educated and enrolled in a definite program before the revolution broke out. The workers must be made to see that the bourgeoisie was always their enemy, and would always betray them. When the revolution came, it would not be enough to abolish monarchy, aristocracy and the church. They must demand the abolition of parliaments and property as well. These institutions would serve only the bourgeoisie and would always be used against the workers. But all that was in the future. Revolutionary theory was still very new, and in Robespierre's day, no one had seriously considered it from the point of view of the workers. And indeed, urban industrial proletariat that Lenin mobilised to such effect scarcely even existed. Instead, Paris was filled with self-employed artisans who did not yet know that they had nothing to lose but their chains. So what did the workers do? They organised into "sections", where they practised direct democracy and raised their own militias. When the bourgeois National Convention neglected their interests, they marched in and demanded action. They were fumbling towards the later Marxist orthodoxy that representative government would never meet their needs, because the representatives were always bourgeois and always put their own class interests before those of their voters. So instead the bras nus wanted a federation of sections and a federal parliament not of representatives but of delegates, who could be recalled if they failed to follow the instruction of their sections. The workers never quite managed to spell this out, because they had no political education. Nevertheless, they probably wanted legislation to be debated first in the sections, then delegates would be sent to the parliament to thrash out a national program, and finally (and this is the vital point) the legislation would be sent back to the sections for ratification. Parliament would not be sovereign. Sovereignty would lie with the sections. The bourgeois revolution had told the people that they were sovereign and granted them universal suffrage. So they saw themselves entirely within their rights in marching on the Convention, which they did at least half a dozen times. And the Convention had made an awful mess and it had neglected the needs of the workers. But the workers seldom demanded anything beyond wage increases and price restrictions on bread. So the Convention gave them empty promises and tied them up in legalisms, diverted their energy against the nobility and the church, and in the end suppressed the sections and the militias and abolished universal suffrage. Soon after Robespierre's death, government of the people by the bourgeoisie for the bourgeoisie was securely established in the land. And then came Napoleon.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-01-10 00:00:00 Pat Griffini [1,400 dead isn't very many by contemporary standards, but I ask you to bear in mind that the modern age was only just beginning, in the future people would do better. p242 Schama makes the argument that partial reforms succeeded only in alienating in particular the traditional financial backers of the government thus undermining the government and precipitating the revolutionary situation - if that is his view then most of the preceding 242 pages are redundant to his narrative keen to grab an american audience? capitalism and market economy as colonial venture into France profounde narrative an insidious form What is argument ie financial crisis - a failure of brinkmanship and people management? A long term crisis waiting to burst open, a failure of imagination/guts/ confidence? Some combination of these? when discussing the unrest on the streets in Grenoble got the feeling that he thinks that an initially resolute handing with soldiers - a flash of cold steel, the whiff of gunpowder and everything would have been fine... (hide spoiler)]