The great French revolution was to the Europe of the late eighteenth century and the first part of the nineteenth century what the Russian revolution is to the twentieth Century. It was the third major capitalist (bourgeois) revolution, preceded by the English revolution of the seventeenth century and the American revolution of 1776. But it had a much greater impact than its predecessors and was, up to then, the single greatest event in human history.
The immortal poet Shelley later wrote that it was ‘the master theme of the epoch’. It had a convulsive effect in Europe. It detonated movements of the black slaves in France’s colonial empire, and it even affected events in the young American republic. The tyrants of Europe, all the kings, princes and tsars feared for their thrones. Feudal and semi-feudal Europe ganged up with the British capitalists in a coalition to snuff out the contagious effects of the revolution.
The international effects
From its outset, the French revolution evoked the greatest interest and support throughout Europe. The majority of artists and intellectuals rallied to the revolution. Those like Edmund Burke, chief propagandist of the counter-revolution, who published his ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’ in November 1790, were initially drowned out in the chorus of support which seemed to sweep through Europe in the wake of the revolution. The great German philosopher Hegel hailed the revolution as that ‘superb sunrise over Europe’. He was joined by the philosophers Kant and Fichte, as well as the giant composer Beethoven.
The revolution seemed to sweep the whole of intellectual and artistic Germany before it. Only Bavaria, under the heel of the Jesuits, seemed to resist the attractions of the revolution. And it was not just intellectuals, but the masses of Germany who were touched by the revolution. Thus the bourgeoisie of Hamburg celebrated the fall of the Bastille in 1790. Strikes also broke out in the same city in 1791. In the Rhineland the masses, touched by the revolution and stirred up by famine, challenged the authority of the governing oligarchies. There were uprisings in many towns and the peasants, emulating the French provinces along the Rhine, refused to pay feudal fees. This movement spread into the very depths of Germany, in some areas resembling France’s earlier peasant uprisings, the jacqueries.
Belgium, which, before the French revolution, had witnessed uprisings of workers and peasants, rose after an initial delay. This started in Liege, under the leadership of Vonck, who took Ghent and Mons, and this in turn led to an uprising in Brussels. In December 1789, the Vonckists drove the Austrians from their Belgian provinces. The contagion spread to German Switzerland, to Geneva and to Savoy where peasants were refusing to pay redemption fees when manorial rights were suppressed.
Feudal reaction on a European scale took to the road of repression. The British bourgeoisie on the other hand initially took an ambivalent position. With that patrician arrogance for which they were famous, they offered to help the ‘lesser breed without the law’, in this case the French, in their ‘constitutional experiments’. Some of the bourgeois, like Fox, while expressing sympathy for the revolution, also drew up schemas with the French constitutional monarchist Mirabeau, for the transplanting of Britain’s constitutional system onto French soil. After all, the ‘constitutional monarchy’ was the quintessence of progress and enlightenment for the British bourgeois. Others, like the calculating Pitt, however saw France’s difficulties – ‘revolutionary convulsions’ – as England’s opportunity to steal markets, colonial possessions etc.
The earlier relatively neutral and benevolent approach of the British bourgeoisie was, however, to give way to implacable opposition as the revolution advanced. Its impact on the British masses – as well as in its own ‘backyard’ in Ireland – terrified the British bourgeoisie. Its attitude was summed up in the policies of William Pitt, who, in combating the French revolution, exercised a thinly veiled personal dictatorship.
Through Pitt, the British bourgeoisie was to learn invaluable lessons in combating the threat of revolution. It was in the struggle against the revolution that Pitt evolved those policies of combining repression with concessions which were to serve the British bourgeoisie so well in the future.
To begin with, as in other countries, British intellectuals and artists were in ecstasy over the French revolution. Wordsworth wrote his famous poem Prelude, Coleridge and the immortal Robert Burns joined in. Others were to turn their back on the revolution later, but Burns and the Scottish democrats remained firm. In 1792, Robert Burns purchased cannons to send to the French and on one occasion rose from a theatre seat to call for Ca ira. This was a revolutionary song, the words of which went: Ca ira, ca ira, ca ira! Les aristocrats à la lanterne! – ‘Here we go, here we go, here we go! Hang the aristocrats from the lamppost!’. The English poets such as Wordsworth continued to express support for the revolution even after the execution of the king. His sentiments were expressed in The Borderers, as were Southey’s in the play Wat Tyler. However, they were ostracised from ‘respectable society’, became discouraged, and eventually turned their backs on the revolution. By 1794 Coleridge and Southey ‘wept over their broken dreams’, while the former actually celebrated the fall of Robespierre. For this he earned the scorn of all British democrats. Shelley twenty years later excoriated him for his betrayal.
However, the British workers proved to be far more enduring than the intellectuals. At the outbreak of the revolution, clubs had mushroomed in Britain. By 1792, 30 popular societies existed in Norwich, and in Sheffield 5000 enrolled in these societies. Thomas Paine, veteran of the American revolution and future member of the French Convention, in which he supported the Gironde, wrote his famous reply to Edmund Burke, ‘The Rights of Man’. Paine annihilated Burke’s defence of the French court, summed up in the famous phrase: ‘He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird’. The book was published in 1791, but by 1794 it had sold over 200,000 copies and probably eventually reached the sale of a million. In 1791, a poor London cobbler, Thomas Hardy, had formed a workers’ group which met in local taverns. Then, on 25 January 1792, they founded the London Corresponding Society, with just eight members at the beginning, and dues of one penny a week. Groups were formed in Sheffield and other parts of the country. This was the first attempt of the working class in any country, in a fumbling fashion it is true, to organise itself into a political association.
Thus, one effect of the French revolution, of enormous historical importance, was to provoke the first faltering steps of British industrial workers to organise themselves politically. The Stockport club declared ‘By our labour are the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the clergy supported … We are not the swinish multitude described by Mr. Burke’. Club delegates at a meeting in Norwich in March 1791, called for all ‘friends of liberty’ to form a general union. This was interpreted b the British aristocracy as an attempt to emulate the French Convention.
The bourgeois closed tanks as the revolution threatened the foundations of their rule. The Whigs split, with the majority supporting the king and Pitt in a counter-revolutionary crusade against the revolution. The handful of Whig sympathisers of the revolution, such as Fox and Wilberforce, were isolated.
The bourgeois clamoured for the persecution of the democrats. Pitt took active steps to persecute the British ‘Jacobins’ and the democratic reform societies. The repression was more intense in Scotland than elsewhere. Reactionary bourgeois voluntary associations, involving so-called ‘watch committees’, and the search for ‘subversive’ pamphlets and placards, were encouraged by the government. The judiciary dispensed fines., the pillory and prison. Juries were packed in Scotland, prompting Fox to declare, ‘God help the people who have such judges’. The word of an agent provocateur was usually all that was required for the democrats to be found guilty. All propaganda on behalf of reform was considered sedition. The repression in Scotland was greater because the movement was more widespread and bolder there than in England itself. Muir was arrested just as he was about to leave for France. Together with Pastor Palmer of Dundee, these martyrs were sentenced to fourteen years transportation to Australia. Their crime had been to collaborate in organising a Scottish Convention of 35 societies in which York, London and Ireland were represented.
Despite the repression, juries did not always carry out the stipulations of the judges or the government. Thus, Hardy and others were arrested but were freed after a famous trial. The Republicans were further strengthened by the rise in unemployment and poor harvests in 1794-5 which resulted in riots in London, Birmingham and Dundee. In the rural areas, Justices of the Peace were threatened by the hungry population. The army itself became infected and executions for insubordination were introduced.
The crisis came to a head in October 1795 just when Parliament was opening. A huge meeting was held on 27 October 1795, when both the king and Prime Minister were insulted by rioters. This led to a wave of repression, the outlawing of all ‘seditious assemblies and publications’ and the bill which prohibited assemblies of more than 50 persons unless a declaration and the presence of a magistrate had been obtained beforehand. Huge protest meetings took place, and there was talk of an insurrection to overthrow the government, but this came to nothing. Feeling the ground tremble beneath their feet, the British bourgeoisie combined this repression with concessions including a kind of ‘minimum wage’ at the employers’ expense and at a cost of living index of articles essential for a worker. The radical movement therefore gradually subsided and lay dormant for a further 15 years.
However, it partially re-appeared in the mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797, which arose from the brutal discipline, foul food and low wages of the seamen. In Ireland, the revolution had the greatest impact. It stimulated the movement for national independence and a huge agrarian revolt against the Anglo-Irish landlords of the land hungry Irish peasantry. The first attempt of French troops to assist in an Irish uprising against the British in 1796-7 was abortive. The second attempt was made in the spring of 1798, but it met with defeat, and the government rounded up the leaders before they could leave for France. The peasant rebellion broke out in June before the French had arrived and was ruthlessly repressed. When General Humbert’s fleet landed in Ireland in September, it was too late. In the face of the threat of the French revolution, the British bourgeoisie used sectarianism on a mass scale for the first time. It was in this period that the Orange Order was organised by the British ruling class as a means of reinforcing sectarian divisions and of repressing the predominantly Catholic population. It was to serve the British ruling class as a valuable weapon in the next century and a half. Yet the revolution endured – and its effects are felt even now.
Re-writing history
The French ruling class, who rest on the foundations created by the revolution, have spared no effort to celebrate its 200th anniversary in July 1989. Millions of people thronged the streets of Paris to commemorate the fall of the Bastille on 14 July. Mugs, keyrings and all kinds of trinkets have flooded France. Plays, TV and radio programmes by the hundred, with raging debates as to the origins of the revolution, have combined with 800 ‘new’ books to push the events of 1789 to the fore. Why then produce another book which seeks to ‘rake over the coals’ of events which have been covered again and again? The answer to this question is to be partly found in the unfamiliarity of the present generation of workers with the sweep and impact of the mighty events of 200 years ago.
The Independent commented that a third of French people interviewed in an opinion poll were unable to record a single important social change introduced by the revolution. Things stand no better, if anything a lot worse, in Britain and other capitalist countries. Nor is this an accident. As the brutal mouthpiece of British capitalism, The Economist, put it: ‘who controls the past greatly influences the present’. Therefore, the great majority of historians are engaged in a giant exercise in obscurantism and dust blowing. Under an avalanche of so-called ‘facts’, right-wing historians have sought to bury the enormous significance, the processes and particularly the role of the masses in the revolution.
A ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ revolution?
Led by Francois Furet, a modern renegade from socialism, they ‘seek to distinguish a good revolution (1789) from a bad one (1793-4)’ (Economist 24 December 1988). Despite the plaudits heaped on him by the bourgeois press, Furet is not at all original. Plekhanov, father of Russian Marxism, gave a finished explanation of the bourgeois historians’ views of the revolution 100 years ago. He explained that the British capitalists take entirely different views to the revolution of the 1640s, which created the conditions for the spectacular growth in its system and power, and that of 1688. The first they describe as a ‘great rebellion’ and the second as ‘a glorious revolution’. In the first revolution, the plebeian masses – a term used to describe the unemployed, the artisans, small shopkeepers, comprising varying social classes – played a decisive role, while in 1688 they intervened hardly at all. In France, however, the process was reversed.
First came the ‘glorious revolution’ of 1789 and only later on in 1793-4 the ‘great rebellion’. In fact, even in 1789 the revolt of the Parisian masses was decisive. However, the difference between this, the first revolution, and the second revolution of 1793-4 was that the Parisian masses formed the backbone of the dictatorship of the Jacobins – the radical wing of the French revolutionary bourgeoisie. This was manifested partially through the controlled economy, which began to encroach on the rights of the bourgeoisie. Of course, in the final analysis, given the undeveloped level of the productive forces, and therefore of the working class, all that Jacobinism amounted to was, in the words of Karl Marx, ‘nothing but a plebeian way of settling accounts with the enemies of the bourgeoisie, with absolutism, feudalism and philistinism’. Yet, despite the historic debt which the French and the European bourgeoisie owed to the Jacobins, this did not prevent them – both at the time and subsequently – from calumny upon another against their leaders and against the heroic sans-culottes – the Paris poor, literally, those without trousers!
What the Bolsheviks were to the ruling classes of the twentieth century, the Jacobins and sans-culottes were to the ruling classes of the eighteenth. To Edmund Burke, chief propagandist of the counter-revolution of the time, they were ‘a band of rogues and cruel assassins, reeking with blood’. To Taine, ex-liberal of 1848 and terrified by the 1871 Paris Commune, they were ‘vagabonds, tatterdemalions, many almost naked and most armed like savages, of a terrifying physiognomy, they are “the kind one does not recall having met in broad daylight”.’
Even Thomas Carlyle, a romantic torn between admiration for the sans-culottes and horror at their alleged anarchy, they were ‘an enraged National Tiger’ for ‘Victorious anarchy’.
Contrast this with Lenin who, on the eve of the Russian revolution, could write:
Bourgeois historians see Jacobinism as a low point. Proletarian historians see Jacobinism as one of the highest peaks in the emancipation struggle of an oppressed class. The Jacobins gave France the best models of a democratic revolution and of a 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…
It is natural for the bourgeoisie to hate Jacobinism. It is natural for the petit 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 that is the essence of Jacobinism, the only way out of the present crisis, and the only remedy for economic dislocation and the war.
Yet it is not merely to defend the historical reputation of Jacobinism that the present generation needs to familiarise itself with the events of the French revolution and reexamine them.
This was a bourgeois, not a socialist revolution. The sans-culottes were not a movement of the industrial working class as some have claimed. The proletariat at that stage was largely undifferentiated from the journeymen and small masters. Nevertheless, the germ of the modern labour movement, as with the Levellers in the English revolution, is to be found in the movement of sans-culottism.
Above all, a study of the revolution, of the processes particularly between 1789 and 1796, is important also for understanding the revolutions which have characterised the twentieth century. Just as officers in a capitalist army cannot restrict themselves to the study of modern wars – in the military academies they ponder even the lessons of the battles of ancient Rome and Greece – no more can the modern generation of socialist and Marxist workers merely restrict themselves to the twentieth century. Indeed Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky worked out the laws of revolution and counter-revolution on the basis of an assiduous study of the French revolution. All the general features and stages of the French revolution are contained in their works.
The best of conscientious modern historical researchers thoroughly bear out their analysis. But these are now unfortunately in a minority, besieged by a growing band of right-wing historians. For every work of Georges Lefebvre, the giant historian of the French revolution, and the able modern works of those like George Rudé, there are a hundred which seek to bury the real lessons of the French revolution under an avalanche of lies and distortions. It is our task to reaffirm the real lessons of the French revolution. In so doing we can show the indissoluble link between the struggle of the masses of Paris in the last decade of the eighteenth century and the modern working class movement.
Is the French revolution over?
The French revolution left its indelible imprint on French society right up to the present. It has been the benchmark for left and right, polarised for the last two hundred years into two bitterly divided camps. Bourgeois historians wish to bury once and for all the French revolution. Like many before him Furet has declared ‘The revolution is over’. Reformist historians, on the other hand, have come largely to the same conclusion. Edgar Faure, for instance, at one time appointed by socialist President Mitterand to direct the official commission preparing the bicentennial celebrations, stated shortly before his death: ‘It is necessary now to achieve a reconciliation … to put the idea of doing away with right-left confrontation, which transforms France into two seemingly impenetrable blocs.’ He also stated ‘Today we are living in an open society, a society based on law. The revolutionary break is no longer necessary.’
The bourgeois historians would agree with the reformists, not just in relation to the present but also in relation to the past. French society in the eighteenth century, they argue, was doing nicely and needed just touching up here and there to fit it out for modern development. ‘Reforms’ on the pattern of the 1688 British ‘Glorious revolution’, the installation of a constitutional monarchy, was all that was required in the France of the late eighteenth century.
In combating the idea of revolution 200 years ago, they wish to put paid to the concept of revolution today. Yet, a conscientious examination of French society of the period will prove that all the conditions for revolution existed in 1789.
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