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this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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chapotraphouse
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I once had to explain the french revolution to a "classical liberal" my man that's the ideology you say you are how have you not even heard of it
there's a good quote from Trotsky (yes, bare with me) about how liberals disavow the French revolution and Marxists are the true inheritors of that struggle's legacy.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp03.htm
oh boy, that thing. Safe to say most french people have a very poor understanding of that event, because schools here teach that Robespierre was basically Stalin and that Danton was like Obama. I wish I made this up but thats literally what I was taught back in High School. Also the whole "violence bad" bullshit, skipping the fact the french monarchy was atrocious for anyone who wasnt in the clergy or the nobility.
The "two reigns of terror" quote is evergreen, and one of the best parts is that it's from a popular non-leftist author (Twain), so libs can't even dismiss it out of hand.
Twain was pretty left, although not communist.
well the bourgeoise got so preoccupied with it'ss new class enemy the proletariat that it entirely forgot it's old enemy landlords
Shared interests in maintaining the system that puts both on top aligned them pretty quickly
well yes and no. The way the landlords charge the proletariat and bourgeoise rent massively harms capitalist profitability and productivity. People cannot afford as many commodities when they pay out all their income in rent and workers having this expense ultimately sets a floor on the minimum capitalists can pay while still having access to labour in an area
The bourgeoise didn't get to the top with the aid of landlords they took it by force from landlords
Yes, but then they either became small scale landlords or were too preocupied with the proles demanding a fair share to be too upset with the feudal dipshits once they gutted much of their power
not saying the bourgeoise are opposed to landlords I'm saying that if someone had a good understanding of capitalism and wanted to preserve it that person would be
More like it became the landlords. Rent extraction is just another business now.
It is also important however to be clear about what we mean when we say that it was a bourgeois revolution.
It wasn't a bourgeois revolution in the sense that there was a group of self-conscious bourgeoisie who specially carried out a revolution to create a bourgeois or capitalist society. The key figures and organizers, not to mention the masses who were essential to it, were not normally bourgeois. There were of course a lot of bourgeois who were sympathetic to the pushback of absolutist royal authority (as France by this period was not really feudal either in terms of its mode of production, political power no longer being parcelized but rather concentrated in the monarchy, though this can also been seen as an important and natural development of powerful feudal governments, as also happened to a lesser degree in England under the Tudors as a result of the degeneration of bastard feudalism). Nor did the French bourgeoisie organize itself into a specifically bourgeois political party for their own uniquely specific interests. People like Robespierre, Saint-Juste, etc. were normally lawyers or employed by the state, but were not really bourgeois, unless we really stretch the definition of bourgeois or petit bourgeois, though they were not engaging in rational profit-seeking activity for the functional purpose of capital accumulation. France would not truly succeed at capitalism development until after the 1830s/40s, and even until the late 19th century the French peasantry were not really living in capitalism fully, though of course they were deeply influenced by it and were increasingly dependent and coerced by its development.
There's similar things to say when people talk about the English Civil War as a bourgeois revolution, though I'd say that their 'Glorious Revolution' (i.e. the one where they invited a Dutchman to rule them, i.e. the most English Revolution of all time), is a more fully bourgeois revolution.
What it did do however it produce the conditions for a bourgeois-dominated capitalist society, through political revolution and then socio-economic transformations which the former made possible. It allowed for development of societies whose values were increasingly favorable to the breakdown of restraints on bourgeois and capitalist development. Liberalism as a ideology became more and more powerful, including many French liberals who admired English society, which was significantly further along the path of capitalist development than France.
That's also a reason why it was a genuinely politically revolution, as the brilliance of the series of events that make it up can be seen in that they did not live in a capitalist society yet, nor were the French bourgeoisie very developed as a class But that should no more make us think that this was not the key political event allowing for the eventual development of capitalism on the European continent, than should the fact that the Bolshevik revolution was led by people who were mostly not themselves members of the proletariat. Like when you read speeches by Robespierre, Saint-Juste and so on MFs are going off and do not read at all like modern libreals, because they were not, and they were genuinely revolutionary individuals.
Stalin speaks to that when talking with H.G. Wells
Wells: > But there were not a few lawyers at the head of the Great French Revolution.
Stalin: > Do you deny the role of the intelligentsia in revolutionary movements? Was the Great French Revolution a lawyers' revolution and not a popular revolution, which achieved victory by rousing vast masses of the people against feudalism and championed the interests of the Third Estate? And did the lawyers among the leaders of the Great French Revolution act in accordance with the laws of the old order? Did they not introduce new, bourgeois revolutionary laws?
for more https://redsails.org/stalin-and-wells/
in the Tudor case as I assume also in the french the centralisation of power in the crown rather than the lesser gentry was the feudal equivalent of Mao killing the warlords and thus no longer having the state precarious to being toppled by private ministates
I've seen that described in the sense that for the peasant very little changed. The poor did not gain anything, merely the barons and duchies lost something.
it did effect the peasantry in that it changed the way the state worked and the kind of policies that could then happen. The barons being broken made enclosure easier later for example
True, true. But I think the person's point was more that it wasn't something peasants had a part in. In the process of Absolutism they didn't have skin in the game, it didn't change their daily lives. The end result was cataclysmic for them as a class, but they didn't think of themselves that way. They were, as Marx said, a sack of potatoes.
yeah the political machinations of the Tudors didn't directly involve the peasantry in the decision making process which was typical for feudal politics
Peasants never get consulted. Its more that they didn't have much pressure one way or another. Compared to say the English Civil War in which they did influence the politics and their interests shaped events early on.
To a degree yes but the extent to which the Wars of the Roses leading to the Tudor dynasty were bloody is exaggerated from what I understand. The only battle which was very serious in terms of casualties was Towton (which might have actually been the most bloody battle on English soil we know of), but apart from that is was an on-and-off affair. The causality rate and absolute numbers were high in that battle, but not more so than other vicious battles which were more frequent on the European continent. It's not even certain that the numbers of the nobility were decimated that much or more than in other European wars of the time.
What it did do however was undermine the more decentralized power of late bastard feudalism in which there was concentration of power in the hands of certain very powerful houses and barons. This centralization of power had already been going on under Richard III, and was taken up by Henry Tudor. The Tudor did not kill all of their opponents, let alone dissolve the feudal aristocracy, as though Henry Tudor was of the House of Lancaster, he married into the House of York to create the Tudor dynasty in order to unite the houses descended from the Plantagenets, and it remained a society ruled by a land-owning military aristocracy, though with important developments in the English state.
yeah I don't think that the wars of the roses were very bloody but they did result in the barons having less power. The extent to which Henry the 8th was a very cunning political mind who pulled off a massive centralisation of power with very little actual explicit violence is underestimated given his rightful reputation as a frivolous murderer
Yeah I think we often forget just how brutal and ruthless you had to have been during Feudalism, especially earlier feudalism or the period prior to Feudalism proper i.e. during the early formation of the socio-economic and political structures that we would then call Feudalism, in order to succeed or survive politically. The violent competition between the aristocracy was very real. It's funny in the case of Henry VII and Richard III because obviously while the view of the latter as a deformed sociopathic tyrant and pervert has been influenced up to the current day by Tudor propaganda (of which the most famous example is the Shakespeare play Richard III), it's nevertheless hilarious that there has been moves to try and legitimize Richard III by claiming that everything bad claimed about him are Tudor lies, whereas you can literally just read contemporary or fairly accurate accounts of his reign to realize that mans was also a ruthless murdering bastard. So was Henry VII obviously. They all were frankly. If you weren't then you ended up like Henry VI.
I was reading Southern's Making of the Middle-Ages recently, and although it's definitely dated in a bunch of respects, it does emphasize how during the period of feudalism's formation in Northern France, there was real, extremely brutal and violent struggle, showing great political acumen and tact, by the brutal aristocratic warlords who were rising during the 11th century to form the Knightly class. It leaves little to doubt as to whether these people knew what they were doing. He also emphasizes their fascinating relationship with the university men, who during the High Medieval Renaissance were becoming more and learned, numerous, and essential to the construction and administration of feudalism's political and bureaucratic structures, and how they also played the role of providing moral justification and psychological care to the many deeply guilt-ridden, violent men of the nobility and warrior class.
I maintain the only real difference between William the conqueror and the Krays is scale
yh deffo makes me think of the fanciful story from St. Augustine of the pirate taken prisoner by Alexander the Great. Alexander asks him how he dares molest the seas, and the pirate asks him the same questiom: "I molest a small part with a few ships, and am called a pirate; you molest the whole world, and they call you emperor".
I know I'm late to the party here but I figure, if you didn't know, it might pique your interest, the shortly after banned KPD said to the constitution of germany
"We will not sign this. However, the day will come that we communist will defend it agains those who did"