Favorite French Revolutionaries?

[Antonio the Sixth]

This doesn't alter the fact that 90% of the changes the Revolution brought were for the better.

I don't think this is even close to true, and this statement is absolutely mind-boggling to me. I suppose this is the point where we have to agree to disagree, because my ratio of positive to negative changes resulting from the revolution is not quite the inverse of yours, but fairly similar to it. As an opportunity to attempt to put in the ideas of the alleged "Enlightenment" into practice the Revolution merely showed how intellectually bankrupt that movement was, and I fail to see a France out of the intellectual hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church and monarchy and subject to this alleged "progress" you mention as a positive...that way lay the intellectual tyranny of the heirs of Voltaire known as laïcité, the repression of conscience and testaments of faith in exchange for propaganda and state-worship.

The idea that "laïcité" (intended as the sociopolitical movement that took hold in the late 19th century... I'm leaving out the silly excesses of the Revolution, "Supreme Being" and all. We can all agree that was nonsense) was ever "oppressive" toward Catholicism is absolutely ludicrous. Sorry, but there's no other way to put it. Sure, during the hardest days of the enforcement of the 1905 law some congregations or some individual priests were treated unfairly. But to say that the Catholic "conscience" has been "repressed" (whatever the hell that even means), as if it there was some kind of religious persecution ala USSR, is absurd. The fate of the Catholic Church in France is not worth shedding a single tear. Devout Catholics were perfectly free to continue practicing their religion in their private lives and in 99.9% of their public lives. Hell, they even kept going to their own schools despite the rhetoric about secular schooling. Laïcité has worked just fine for everyone involved at least until the late 1980s, when it first became embroiled in debates regarding Islam. Certainly the presence of a discriminated minority which tends to practice a different religion makes the application of the laïcité doctrine a lot more problematic, I'll give you that. However, as far as Catholics are concerned, everything they lost with laïcité are things that they never should have had to begin with.

And I'd take Laïcité any day over America's disgusting theocratic undertones, thank you very much.

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And my point is that, once again, while this course of action had certain unfortunate outcomes, it was clearly preferable to its opposite. Centralization is what allowed the French State to work effectively. If you think it had "dire consequences", I suggest you to have a look at where the opposite attitude led other countries.

[politicus]

Centralization is what allowed the French State to work effectively. If you think it had "dire consequences", I suggest you to have a look at where the opposite attitude led other countries.

True, but France included areas with a culture that was sufficiently different that they should have been allowed to develop their own version of a national culture. The revolution prevented a future Breton, Occitanian, Alsatian etc. nation building and crushed their culture.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Centralization is what allowed the French State to work effectively. If you think it had "dire consequences", I suggest you to have a look at where the opposite attitude led other countries.

True, but France included areas with a culture that was sufficiently different that they should have been allowed to develop their own version of a national culture. The revolution prevented a future Breton, Occitanian, Alsatian etc. nation building and crushed their culture.

I do agree with that, and I sincerely sympathize with these regions. Still, I would argue that the average Breton or Occitan could have been worse off in an excessively decentralized nation than they are in modern-day France.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Or they could have been getting along quite happily in a Breton Republic or State of Languedoc.

[The Mikado]

I fail to see how the average French person benefited at all from the sudden persecution of the local priest who was the only authority figure in the community that actually listened to their complaints. This followed by sudden orders that they were "free" from an abstract set of constraints that were replaced by a far more real sense of servitude when their sons were marched off in an unprecedented draft in a pointless and baffling war with Austria. In the meantime, Royal decrees are replaced by Republican ones written only in the French of Paris, which is absolutely unintelligible to you, and whole subsets of your friends and neighbors have suddenly become "counterrevolutionaries" for continuing to hear Father Jacques' sermons after he refused to take the Oath. Oh, and the tax burden you complained about to begin with? Still there, we need to supply the troops, including your dispatched son to the front lines in Belgium, because we need to "defend the Revolution," whatever that is.

I fail to see any benefit in this story for the vast, vast majority of people in the Kingdom of France. Just replacing the temporary suffering caused by depression and famine with the more long term suffering of 25 years of war and desolation. A war started by said revolutionaries, no less!

[Antonio the Sixth]

I fail to see how the average French person benefited at all from the sudden persecution of the local priest who was the only authority figure in the community that actually listened to their complaints. This followed by sudden orders that they were "free" from an abstract set of constraints that were replaced by a far more real sense of servitude when their sons were marched off in an unprecedented draft in a pointless and baffling war with Austria. In the meantime, Royal decrees are replaced by Republican ones written only in the French of Paris, which is absolutely unintelligible to you, and whole subsets of your friends and neighbors have suddenly become "counterrevolutionaries" for continuing to hear Father Jacques' sermons after he refused to take the Oath. Oh, and the tax burden you complained about to begin with? Still there, we need to supply the troops, including your dispatched son to the front lines in Belgium, because we need to "defend the Revolution," whatever that is.

I fail to see any benefit in this story for the vast, vast majority of people in the Kingdom of France. Just replacing the temporary suffering caused by depression and famine with the more long term suffering of 25 years of war and desolation. A war started by said revolutionaries, no less!

You can't properly weigh the pros and cons of the Revolution by only looking at its immediate consequences. The long-term is absolutely critical here. Were the revolutionary years in general a pretty tough time for a majority of French people? Sure. But without the Revolution, France (and, to some extent, Europe in general) would have been unable to move forward in the countless ways it did throughout the 19th century. France would never have enjoyed its longest period of peace, prosperity, and material and cultural progress until the end of WW2 from 1871 to 1914. The French wouldn't have been one of the first people in the world to experiment democracy (well yeah, white male democracy, but that's better than nothing) and develop a vibrant political life. And an overbearing, rotten Catholic Church would still be dictating morality to the entire population and control the political process (again, just look at Italy). So yes, going through a little rough time is sometimes necessary to move history forward. I'm sorry it had to be so violent, and it certainly would have been possible to make it much less violent, but ultimately that's not what matters most.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Or they could have been getting along quite happily in a Breton Republic or State of Languedoc.

Splitting up States in general (barring situations where its components are literally trying to kill each others, like Yugoslavia) is something I always oppose.

[The Mikado]

I fail to see how the average French person benefited at all from the sudden persecution of the local priest who was the only authority figure in the community that actually listened to their complaints. This followed by sudden orders that they were "free" from an abstract set of constraints that were replaced by a far more real sense of servitude when their sons were marched off in an unprecedented draft in a pointless and baffling war with Austria. In the meantime, Royal decrees are replaced by Republican ones written only in the French of Paris, which is absolutely unintelligible to you, and whole subsets of your friends and neighbors have suddenly become "counterrevolutionaries" for continuing to hear Father Jacques' sermons after he refused to take the Oath. Oh, and the tax burden you complained about to begin with? Still there, we need to supply the troops, including your dispatched son to the front lines in Belgium, because we need to "defend the Revolution," whatever that is.

I fail to see any benefit in this story for the vast, vast majority of people in the Kingdom of France. Just replacing the temporary suffering caused by depression and famine with the more long term suffering of 25 years of war and desolation. A war started by said revolutionaries, no less!

You can't properly weigh the pros and cons of the Revolution by only looking at its immediate consequences. The long-term is absolutely critical here. Were the revolutionary years in general a pretty tough time for a majority of French people? Sure. But without the Revolution, France (and, to some extent, Europe in general) would have been unable to move forward in the countless ways it did throughout the 19th century. France would never have enjoyed its longest period of peace, prosperity, and material and cultural progress until the end of WW2 from 1871 to 1914. The French wouldn't have been one of the first people in the world to experiment democracy (well yeah, white male democracy, but that's better than nothing) and develop a vibrant political life. And an overbearing, rotten Catholic Church would still be dictating morality to the entire population and control the political process (again, just look at Italy). So yes, going through a little rough time is sometimes necessary to move history forward. I'm sorry it had to be so violent, and it certainly would have been possible to make it much less violent, but ultimately that's not what matters most.

As a general rule, I'm deeply suspicious of any politician who advocates policies to make things tougher on the overwhelming majority of the current population for supposed benefits to posterity that does not yet exist when said benefits are illusory at best. The government sanctioning an idiotic war that led to one of the most disruptive drafts in human history up to that point (and only really eclipsed later by the world wars) and trying to turn society upside down during a time of great national need (largely due to said war which they recklessly launched) is a track record I cannot possibly condone. The irresponsible warmongering of the Girondins, the wastefully extravagant brutality of the Jacobins, and the explicitly undemocratic democracy of the Directory (too many royalists? Purge the legislature! Too many Jacobins? Purge the legislature!) is a track record that is completely incompatible with the ideals that the Revolution claimed to aspire to.

Judging a country's government by their track record towards their public is exactly what political history is about. You seem to be saying that Robespierre or Danton the symbols are too important to tarnish by remembering what Robespierre or Danton the men actually did when they were in power. How is Danton's reckless abandon when he was Justice Minister a valuable legacy towards modern French justice? Is letting mobs of people grab random well-dressed Frenchmen and put them on ad-hoc trials for crimes against the state and subject to the death penalty with no government officials present like the September Massacres entailed a valuable heirloom of the freedom of the French people?

The legacy of the French Revolutionaries involves equal parts incompetence and malice that isn't a legacy to celebrate or remember without shuddering.

[Antonio the Sixth]

My point is that the French Revolution is more than simply the governments that took form in that era. It sparked and gave form to a set of ideas and principles and a whole register of political discourse that inspired future generations to do great things. It is impossible to properly judge the Revolution as a whole (rather than this or that political player) without taking that into account.

Now, regarding the personal quality of Revolutionary figures, the accusation of incompetence is generally a fair one (but what else can you expect when an entirely new political class suddenly rises to the forefront, without any sort of preparation, and in a context that's dramatically different from anything they had seen up to that point?). And there certainly was a good deal of insane idealists (Robespierre), bloodthirsty sadists (Hébert) and other assorted lunatics among their bunch. But you can't deny there were also a good deal of sensible and principled people who struggled to do their best in a difficult situation. While the circumstances of the time doomed most of their efforts to failure, they also had notable achievements, especially in the realm of administrative organisation (and outcome you might dislike, but which was certainly an improvement over what had come before).

Also FTR, I don't consider the Directory to be part of the Revolution. It was certainly not a "revolutionary" form of government in any meaningful sense.

[The Mikado]

I just don't see how that's relevant to the question of whether the French Revolution was better than what preceded it. How can you judge the French Revolution on standards other than whether the governments of 1789-1794 better rose to the challenges facing France than the governments of the previous few decades? Whether they rose to the challenges of famine, insolvency, and foreign decline better than Louis' last few ministries? That seems the fundamental question, because after all, that's what they were put in power to do.

On the foreign decline issue, barring a few early victories like at Valmy, the Revolutionary army pretty much collapsed under the pressure of the Austrian and Prussian forces and many of its post talented officers defected. It was only after a more professional army not associated with the Revolution under the Directory took control that the French began to win the War of the First Coalition. Even then we must take into account that a significant chunk of the French army was devoted to the task of ruthlessly exterminating hundreds of thousands of peasants in the Vendee and "rebels" throughout Lyons and the south of France for protesting about the same issues that they took power claiming to address.

Speaking of those issues, while under the radical phase Paris got something of a grain dole due to the pressure of the local mob, this doesn't speak to the climate of economic suffering experienced throughout rural France during this period which created the tensions that the Revolutionaries used to seize power and which they did absolutely nothing to address. Instead, levees dragged young men off the fields and peasants found themselves shot for going to Church while struggling to understand how this bizarre new calendar correlated with their traditional farming techniques and had to do calendar conversions just to figure out when the harvest was.

How about insolvency? Well, executing creditors and going to war and a highly militarized setting is a good trick to get out of short term debt, but you can only really do it once.

I just can't see the Revolutionary governments as a more effective response to the challenges facing France than the royalist ministries that preceded them, and in some respects (yes, I keep dwelling on this) like the absolutely ill-conceived declaration of war on Austria made those problems far, far worse. I'm not sure how their espousal of rhetoric about liberty is supposed to pardon the absolute hash of a record that they made upon taking power. You can say that the Revolution was more than the new governments, but I don't see how that's really true. The Revolution replaced one set of ministries with another, generally far more incompetent one that failed to address the issues for which they were brought into power. How is this a positive turn of events?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Or they could have been getting along quite happily in a Breton Republic or State of Languedoc.

Splitting up States in general (barring situations where its components are literally trying to kill each others, like Yugoslavia) is something I always oppose.

Eh, define 'state', though. As I understand it Ancien Regime France was only a 'state' in that it had a strong (read: tyrannical) central government, not in any real sociocultural sense. By that definition, the Soviet Union was also a 'state'. If you oppose the breakup of the Soviet Union too I'm willing to concede and agree to disagree on this point--we established a while back that while we both adhere to the idea of subsidiarity in principle you see the level on which nation-states and federations exist as significantly more necessary than I do, didn't we?--but I'd be somewhat surprised if you did.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Why does it not surprise me to see posters defend Robespierre?

[Antonio the Sixth]

I just don't see how that's relevant to the question of whether the French Revolution was better than what preceded it. How can you judge the French Revolution on standards other than whether the governments of 1789-1794 better rose to the challenges facing France than the governments of the previous few decades? Whether they rose to the challenges of famine, insolvency, and foreign decline better than Louis' last few ministries? That seems the fundamental question, because after all, that's what they were put in power to do.

On the foreign decline issue, barring a few early victories like at Valmy, the Revolutionary army pretty much collapsed under the pressure of the Austrian and Prussian forces and many of its post talented officers defected. It was only after a more professional army not associated with the Revolution under the Directory took control that the French began to win the War of the First Coalition. Even then we must take into account that a significant chunk of the French army was devoted to the task of ruthlessly exterminating hundreds of thousands of peasants in the Vendee and "rebels" throughout Lyons and the south of France for protesting about the same issues that they took power claiming to address.

Speaking of those issues, while under the radical phase Paris got something of a grain dole due to the pressure of the local mob, this doesn't speak to the climate of economic suffering experienced throughout rural France during this period which created the tensions that the Revolutionaries used to seize power and which they did absolutely nothing to address. Instead, levees dragged young men off the fields and peasants found themselves shot for going to Church while struggling to understand how this bizarre new calendar correlated with their traditional farming techniques and had to do calendar conversions just to figure out when the harvest was.

How about insolvency? Well, executing creditors and going to war and a highly militarized setting is a good trick to get out of short term debt, but you can only really do it once.

I just can't see the Revolutionary governments as a more effective response to the challenges facing France than the royalist ministries that preceded them, and in some respects (yes, I keep dwelling on this) like the absolutely ill-conceived declaration of war on Austria made those problems far, far worse. I'm not sure how their espousal of rhetoric about liberty is supposed to pardon the absolute hash of a record that they made upon taking power. You can say that the Revolution was more than the new governments, but I don't see how that's really true. The Revolution replaced one set of ministries with another, generally far more incompetent one that failed to address the issues for which they were brought into power. How is this a positive turn of events?

Yes, the Revolution was much more than the governments that happened to hold power during its time. I'm pretty sure that my view is broadly shared. Ideas matter in history. Whether they were mere rhetoric or deeply held beliefs, revolutionary ideas changed Europe for the better throughout the 19th century. It would be absurd to leave that out of the equation.

I am certainly not denying that the revolutionaries screwed up big time, in several respects. The war was probably their most tragic mistake - a mistake born partly from a somewhat understandable paranoia, and partly from a typically French sense of pride and self-glorification. The war is ultimately what led to the Revolution's worst excesses and what crippled the French economy during that period. Without it, your whole narrative about the Revolution would have been at least somewhat different.

Still, if I had to choose, I would much rather take a brutal and dramatic crisis that eventually triggers a wonderful regeneration of French politics and society, over another century of social, political, economic and moral decline under the rotten French monarchy.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Or they could have been getting along quite happily in a Breton Republic or State of Languedoc.

Splitting up States in general (barring situations where its components are literally trying to kill each others, like Yugoslavia) is something I always oppose.

Eh, define 'state', though. As I understand it Ancien Regime France was only a 'state' in that it had a strong (read: tyrannical) central government, not in any real sociocultural sense. By that definition, the Soviet Union was also a 'state'. If you oppose the breakup of the Soviet Union too I'm willing to concede and agree to disagree on this point--we established a while back that while we both adhere to the idea of subsidiarity in principle you see the level on which nation-states and federations exist as significantly more necessary than I do, didn't we?--but I'd be somewhat surprised if you did.

I think States are generally defined as political entities, while "nation" is the sociocultural entity that may or may not correspond to it. The birth of modern European States is generally dated back to the Treaty of Westphalia, and, while that definition is obviously arbitrary, it still means that France had long crossed the point of statehood when the Revolution broke out. Indeed, as Mikado pointed out, the Bourbon dynasty (starting with Louis XIII and Richelieu at least) is responsible for a great deal of France's political and cultural centralization.

Regarding the USSR, if it had been possible to establish a peaceful, democratic and reasonably efficient federation of former Soviet States free of Russian hegemony, I would have had no reason to oppose it. Maybe if Gorbachev was given more time, an arrangement of this sort (though without the Baltic States) might eventually have emerged. Still, by 1991 that option was obviously already out of the table.

[The Mikado]

In what other context would you accept "This government failed terribly at its stated objectives and increased the suffering of the people it ruled over, but people nearly a century after in a different social context cited them as a forerunner and so their moves are retroactively positive" as a standard? If some weird set of neo-Maoists become prominent in the 2040s would that alter the context of what the actual Mao did in the 1960s?

As far as I'm concerned, the only standard by which to evaluate the figures of the 1790s is how their actions affected the 1790s, not 80-100 years later when they and their children had all been dead and buried.

[© tweed]

isn't the French Revolution (along w/ the British industrial revolution) of such a massive gravity that it is impossible to assess whether its consequences were ultimately "favorable to society"?  it's kind of like asking, has Plato had a positive effect on philosophy?

[The Mikado]

isn't the French Revolution (along w/ the British industrial revolution) of such a massive gravity that it is impossible to assess whether its consequences were ultimately "favorable to society"?  it's kind of like asking, has Plato had a positive effect on philosophy?

Demythologizing the Revolution and the definitive break from the past part of its mystique is a key part of understanding it. History is a series of ruptures and continuities, after all, and there are many, many continuities between Louis' ministries and the governments of the Revolution. The French Revolution is one more stage in French history, continuing and accelerating many of the processes already underway (the centralization of power in Paris, the shrinking of the roles of the provinces, the removal of the sword nobility real political power, the centuries-long feud with Austria) that had characterized France before the Revolution. Comparing the governments of the 1790s with those of the 1780s is totally possible.

EDIT: Especially in the context of comparing the Revolution's handling of the issues facing the monarchy that led to the summoning of the Estates General to begin with, i.e. the decline of French power abroad, the fiscal insolvency of the state, and the massive famine. In my mind, the success or failure of the Revolutionary government has to be the comparison to Louis' ministries as to how they handled those three matters on which they were put into power.

[Antonio the Sixth]

In what other context would you accept "This government failed terribly at its stated objectives and increased the suffering of the people it ruled over, but people nearly a century after in a different social context cited them as a forerunner and so their moves are retroactively positive" as a standard? If some weird set of neo-Maoists become prominent in the 2040s would that alter the context of what the actual Mao did in the 1960s?

As far as I'm concerned, the only standard by which to evaluate the figures of the 1790s is how their actions affected the 1790s, not 80-100 years later when they and their children had all been dead and buried.

There are plenty of historical experiences that, by all standards, can only be considered failures, but which still deserve to be regarded positively. To stay in revolutionary mood, you have the 1848 revolutions, or the February Revolution in Russia, are good examples. Or the Paris Commune. Salvador Allende is a major FF in my book, even though his actual policies were radically misguided. Or to take a less dramatic example, Jimmy Carter's presidency is generally regarded as a failure (and, as far as economic policy is concerned, it was) but I still look at it favorably, especially in light of what came next. I'm pretty sure history isn't simply about assessing the most narrow and immediate outcomes of a certain event, especially one as major as the French revolution. Every point in time has a present, but also a past and a future, and history is about understanding the articulation between these three.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

isn't the French Revolution (along w/ the British industrial revolution) of such a massive gravity that it is impossible to assess whether its consequences were ultimately "favorable to society"?  it's kind of like asking, has Plato had a positive effect on philosophy?

Nah. Compared to those two examples the French Revolution is overrated and not in the same league.

I fail to see how the average French person benefited at all from the sudden persecution of the local priest who was the only authority figure in the community that actually listened to their complaints. This followed by sudden orders that they were "free" from an abstract set of constraints that were replaced by a far more real sense of servitude when their sons were marched off in an unprecedented draft in a pointless and baffling war with Austria. In the meantime, Royal decrees are replaced by Republican ones written only in the French of Paris, which is absolutely unintelligible to you, and whole subsets of your friends and neighbors have suddenly become "counterrevolutionaries" for continuing to hear Father Jacques' sermons after he refused to take the Oath. Oh, and the tax burden you complained about to begin with? Still there, we need to supply the troops, including your dispatched son to the front lines in Belgium, because we need to "defend the Revolution," whatever that is.

I fail to see any benefit in this story for the vast, vast majority of people in the Kingdom of France. Just replacing the temporary suffering caused by depression and famine with the more long term suffering of 25 years of war and desolation. A war started by said revolutionaries, no less!

You can't properly weigh the pros and cons of the Revolution by only looking at its immediate consequences. The long-term is absolutely critical here. Were the revolutionary years in general a pretty tough time for a majority of French people? Sure. But without the Revolution, France (and, to some extent, Europe in general) would have been unable to move forward in the countless ways it did throughout the 19th century. France would never have enjoyed its longest period of peace, prosperity, and material and cultural progress until the end of WW2 from 1871 to 1914. The French wouldn't have been one of the first people in the world to experiment democracy (well yeah, white male democracy, but that's better than nothing) and develop a vibrant political life. And an overbearing, rotten Catholic Church would still be dictating morality to the entire population and control the political process (again, just look at Italy). So yes, going through a little rough time is sometimes necessary to move history forward. I'm sorry it had to be so violent, and it certainly would have been possible to make it much less violent, but ultimately that's not what matters most.

The problem with this line of argument is that it can be used to justify any action based on some teleological notion of progress. Basically your argument can be changed as such: Without the brutal actions of Lenin and Stalin, regardless of their actual intentions, the Soviet Union could not have achieved its economic boom of the 70s and 80s, its peace and prosperity in the 90s and the stable democracy and centre of world Communism that we know today. And if you think I'm being facetious by this example, I will remind you that the Soviets themselves based their idea of revolution and history on the example of the French and were not unwilling to apply the 'lessons' of that history to the Russia of their age.

[Antonio the Sixth]

isn't the French Revolution (along w/ the British industrial revolution) of such a massive gravity that it is impossible to assess whether its consequences were ultimately "favorable to society"?  it's kind of like asking, has Plato had a positive effect on philosophy?

Nah. Compared to those two examples the French Revolution is overrated and not in the same league.

I fail to see how the average French person benefited at all from the sudden persecution of the local priest who was the only authority figure in the community that actually listened to their complaints. This followed by sudden orders that they were "free" from an abstract set of constraints that were replaced by a far more real sense of servitude when their sons were marched off in an unprecedented draft in a pointless and baffling war with Austria. In the meantime, Royal decrees are replaced by Republican ones written only in the French of Paris, which is absolutely unintelligible to you, and whole subsets of your friends and neighbors have suddenly become "counterrevolutionaries" for continuing to hear Father Jacques' sermons after he refused to take the Oath. Oh, and the tax burden you complained about to begin with? Still there, we need to supply the troops, including your dispatched son to the front lines in Belgium, because we need to "defend the Revolution," whatever that is.

I fail to see any benefit in this story for the vast, vast majority of people in the Kingdom of France. Just replacing the temporary suffering caused by depression and famine with the more long term suffering of 25 years of war and desolation. A war started by said revolutionaries, no less!

You can't properly weigh the pros and cons of the Revolution by only looking at its immediate consequences. The long-term is absolutely critical here. Were the revolutionary years in general a pretty tough time for a majority of French people? Sure. But without the Revolution, France (and, to some extent, Europe in general) would have been unable to move forward in the countless ways it did throughout the 19th century. France would never have enjoyed its longest period of peace, prosperity, and material and cultural progress until the end of WW2 from 1871 to 1914. The French wouldn't have been one of the first people in the world to experiment democracy (well yeah, white male democracy, but that's better than nothing) and develop a vibrant political life. And an overbearing, rotten Catholic Church would still be dictating morality to the entire population and control the political process (again, just look at Italy). So yes, going through a little rough time is sometimes necessary to move history forward. I'm sorry it had to be so violent, and it certainly would have been possible to make it much less violent, but ultimately that's not what matters most.

The problem with this line of argument is that it can be used to justify any action based on some teleological notion of progress. Basically your argument can be changed as such: Without the brutal actions of Lenin and Stalin, regardless of their actual intentions, the Soviet Union could not have achieved its economic boom of the 70s and 80s, its peace and prosperity in the 90s and the stable democracy and centre of world Communism that we know today. And if you think I'm being facetious by this example, I will remind you that the Soviets themselves based their idea of revolution and history on the example of the French and were not unwilling to apply the 'lessons' of that history to the Russia of their age.

But that's not what I'm saying! Read my post again, I've never tried to justify the bad things that the revolutionaries did, nor to claim that they were necessary in any way. I oppose these things now and I would have opposed them then (though silently, in all likelihood). I'm simply claiming that all these bad things should be weighed against the Revolution's long-term legacy. If Lenin and Stalin's actions had achieved outcomes of similar magnitude, I would feel the same about them.

[The Mikado]

I'm unsure what sort of connection you're drawing from the reality of the French Revolution as it was and this "tradition" you think we should celebrate, especially since you seem unwilling to defend nearly any aspect of the Revolution itself. What of the 1789-1794 period is the source of this tradition you feel is so important to be preserved?

Are you saying that the idea of the French Revolution is more important than...the French Revolution?

Edit for clarity: do you just like the French Revolution because there was pretty rhetoric about liberty in the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen or do you actually think that the events of the Revolution had a positive impact?

[Antonio the Sixth]

especially since you seem unwilling to defend nearly any aspect of the Revolution itself.

I went on a long-winded rant about laïcité (which you apparently chose to ignore, but fair enough), and have (somewhat uncomfortably, but decisively) defended the positive aspects of administrative decentralization. What do you think I would say about the Abolition of aristocratic privileges, the Declaration of Human Rights, the establishment of one of the first parliaments in the world to be elected by universal male suffrage, the blooming of political pluralism and expression of multiple points of view that occurred throughout most of the era? Or heck, just abolishing the friggin' monarchy and attempting (in a botched way, but still), to put the power back in the hands of the citizenry. I could go on.

[The Mikado]

Yes, but those same long-term consequences include the legitimization of the form of slavery known as conscription (by the end of the Revolutionary era Prussia was copying the levees the Revolution made so famous) and mass conscription would continue to contemporary times. Those long-term consequences would include the legitimization of political violence to solve internal quarrels and disputes, which had quite a negative legacy in France. All this on top of the cultural extermination of France's minorities, the utter exclusion of the rural poor from this "universal" political debate when said rural poor were most of the population, and creating the "France as a cultural colony of Paris" dynamic it'd struggle with for the whole 19th century. Worst of all, the massive armies of the age built the sinister precedent of military dictatorship that Lafayette and Dumouriez flirted with and Napoleon embraced.

Do you really feel that forcing a few increasingly non-aristocratic "noblemen" to stop calling each other Monsieur le Baron after bribing the state out of their tax burdens was worth the normalization of mass conscription, an infringement of liberty unheard of in Louis' day?

It's worth remembering that we're in this argument because you took offense with my notion that the Vendee rebels were the figures of the revolutionary era I most sympathized with. How can I not sympathize with them after Paris decided that their province wasn't their province, their calendar wasn't their calendar, their priest wasn't their priest, their grain and sons were off to die in Belgium, and that this was Year I of a glorious new age of liberty promising more of these joys. Oh, but the crippling tax burden and starvation stay the same. I'd revolt too! They had far more legitimate complaints than Danton ever did.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

isn't the French Revolution (along w/ the British industrial revolution) of such a massive gravity that it is impossible to assess whether its consequences were ultimately "favorable to society"?  it's kind of like asking, has Plato had a positive effect on philosophy?

Nah. Compared to those two examples the French Revolution is overrated and not in the same league.

I fail to see how the average French person benefited at all from the sudden persecution of the local priest who was the only authority figure in the community that actually listened to their complaints. This followed by sudden orders that they were "free" from an abstract set of constraints that were replaced by a far more real sense of servitude when their sons were marched off in an unprecedented draft in a pointless and baffling war with Austria. In the meantime, Royal decrees are replaced by Republican ones written only in the French of Paris, which is absolutely unintelligible to you, and whole subsets of your friends and neighbors have suddenly become "counterrevolutionaries" for continuing to hear Father Jacques' sermons after he refused to take the Oath. Oh, and the tax burden you complained about to begin with? Still there, we need to supply the troops, including your dispatched son to the front lines in Belgium, because we need to "defend the Revolution," whatever that is.

I fail to see any benefit in this story for the vast, vast majority of people in the Kingdom of France. Just replacing the temporary suffering caused by depression and famine with the more long term suffering of 25 years of war and desolation. A war started by said revolutionaries, no less!

You can't properly weigh the pros and cons of the Revolution by only looking at its immediate consequences. The long-term is absolutely critical here. Were the revolutionary years in general a pretty tough time for a majority of French people? Sure. But without the Revolution, France (and, to some extent, Europe in general) would have been unable to move forward in the countless ways it did throughout the 19th century. France would never have enjoyed its longest period of peace, prosperity, and material and cultural progress until the end of WW2 from 1871 to 1914. The French wouldn't have been one of the first people in the world to experiment democracy (well yeah, white male democracy, but that's better than nothing) and develop a vibrant political life. And an overbearing, rotten Catholic Church would still be dictating morality to the entire population and control the political process (again, just look at Italy). So yes, going through a little rough time is sometimes necessary to move history forward. I'm sorry it had to be so violent, and it certainly would have been possible to make it much less violent, but ultimately that's not what matters most.

The problem with this line of argument is that it can be used to justify any action based on some teleological notion of progress. Basically your argument can be changed as such: Without the brutal actions of Lenin and Stalin, regardless of their actual intentions, the Soviet Union could not have achieved its economic boom of the 70s and 80s, its peace and prosperity in the 90s and the stable democracy and centre of world Communism that we know today. And if you think I'm being facetious by this example, I will remind you that the Soviets themselves based their idea of revolution and history on the example of the French and were not unwilling to apply the 'lessons' of that history to the Russia of their age.

But that's not what I'm saying! Read my post again, I've never tried to justify the bad things that the revolutionaries did, nor to claim that they were necessary in any way. I oppose these things now and I would have opposed them then (though silently, in all likelihood). I'm simply claiming that all these bad things should be weighed against the Revolution's long-term legacy. If Lenin and Stalin's actions had achieved outcomes of similar magnitude, I would feel the same about them.

Ah but the problem with that we don't know what would have happened otherwise. To commemorate the revolution means to pose a causal link between the revolution and the development of the French Republic as it is today. But is that really the case? Is it possible that France might have morphed into a constitutional monarchy without the revolution? That's a question only for real experts (who probably wouldn't agree). Were France's moves towards representative government really much more advanced than those in the UK or in the Netherlands, for example, despite the lack of revolutions in either of those countries? With universal manhood suffrage came earlier to France than the UK (don't know about NL) giving women the vote took a few decades longer. Where was 'the spirit of the revolution' then?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yes, but those same long-term consequences include the legitimization of the form of slavery known as conscription (by the end of the Revolutionary era Prussia was copying the levees the Revolution made so famous) and mass conscription would continue to contemporary times. Those long-term consequences would include the legitimization of political violence to solve internal quarrels and disputes, which had quite a negative legacy in France. All this on top of the cultural extermination of France's minorities, the utter exclusion of the rural poor from this "universal" political debate when said rural poor were most of the population, and creating the "France as a cultural colony of Paris" dynamic it'd struggle with for the whole 19th century. Worst of all, the massive armies of the age built the sinister precedent of military dictatorship that Lafayette and Dumouriez flirted with and Napoleon embraced.

I guess at this point the argument boils down to whether one thinks that the 19th and 20th centuries (World Wars and all the bad stuff included) were better or worse than the 17th and 18th centuries (feudalism and all the bad stuff included). As a progressive, my answer is clearly that they were better, and by far. You seem to think differently, but at this point we can only agree to disagree.

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Uh, the abolition of privileges was slightly more than a matter of formal titles. It was a quite radical shift in the social hierarchy with very real consequences. I'm sure you can find many history books that deal with this issue, if you're not familiar with it.

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Fair enough, I guess the term sympathy is acceptable in that context. If anything, your original post was a bit off-topic, since the title of this thread isn't "Which figures of the French Revolution do you sympathize more with?" I don't particularly sympathize with any French Revolutionary, tbh. However, if you ask me whom I admire, I certainly wouldn't pick the Vendée rebels.