the french revolution

he and robes: bros forever

this was a great poll. i wanted to vote in it but i don't know anything. i really wanna read that martel book but i keep telling myself i'll read a general history or two first. anyway, enough of this bourgeois shit:

We Must Do Away Once and for All with this Papist-Quaker Babble about the Sanctity of Human Life: a Russian Revolution Poll

dlh come vote in my to the Finland station poll

also I'm disappointed that this poll didnt generate as good a discussion of war and revolution as the thirty years war poll did

Famous British children's series ChuckleVision has featured Robespierre as a villain trying to steal the Countess and defeat the Purple Pimple. Citizen Robespierre calls himself "the best swordsman of France". Featured in Series 17 and 18 (2005/2006).

also I'm disappointed that this poll didnt generate as good a discussion of war and revolution as the thirty years war poll did

Was revolution possible without terror, y/n

American Revolution.

Does it matter that for the American revolution the king and ruling classes were not directly in the territory - and could lose that territory whilst retaining power in homeland + India?

Hannah Arendt's On Revolution, one of my desert island books:

"Nothing, indeed, seems more natural than that a revolution should be predetermined by the type of government it overthrows; nothing, therefore, appears more plausible than to explain the new absolute, the absolute revolution, by the absolute monarchy which preceded it, and to conclude that the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him."

early in her book she posits that in its early stages the American Revolution was really a counter-revolution: what Franklin and the Adams cousins wanted was a restoration of their rights as Englishmen, which Parliament had ignored bit by bit.

I've always assumed that British royal power, compared to the French equivalent, was weakened since the Civil War and Cromwell, in a way that the French wasn't. So yeah, that quote makes sense.

But I still think the American and French revolutions are more different than they are similar, because one is a colony fighting for independence, that leaves the metropolis intact, whereas the other is a complete shake-up of the homeland. I don't think the Americans needed a terror because in that case the English King wasn't as bothered as the French King.

Also French revolutionary terror vs slave trade and treatment of native americans, that's another angle.

oh yeah the thesis of the book is explaining the uniqueness of the American revolution -- and why the French, Chinese, and Russian ones were bloody, protracted, and lead to various kinds of 18 Brumaires.

glorious revolution deserves some mention also, esp to the extent the american revolution is just an extension of that made more radical thru ideological bottleneck created by geography (mangling gordon wood there but whatever). there's also a post-revolution purge w/ loyalists losing property and effectively exiled iirc (and who knows maybe treaty of paris moved the goalposts to 'yeah fuck that we're taking their land' from 'yeah fuck that we're taking their heads'). you eventually even have effective one party rule from jefferson (or at the very latest hartford convention) to whenever the whigs arise (like one election before william henry harrison i think?). also obv big difference between american and french/russian revolutions: george washington.

and John Tyler came out of the closet as a Dem as soon as the old man pooped.

I don't think the Americans needed a terror because in that case the English King wasn't as bothered as the French King.

Tell that to the loyalists who were forced to emigrate

The American revolution is hardly a revolution, though, is it? More like a fight for independence. More akin to India than France.

it could plausibly be argued that america had two revolutions -- the civil war being the second and much more radical one.

ironically the british 'terror' against british civilians under pitt the younger that happened during the french revolution era -- suspension of habeas corpus, mass arrests of radicals and dissidents -- was probably much worse than anything experienced by the american colonists under george iii.

Obviously Danton was kind of a cool dude too, though I think he gets a bit of a bad rap bcz of depardieu.

― doctor, doctor, what's in my shirt (askance johnson), Tuesday, February 26, 2013 3:52 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Was thinking about watching this. Bad?

also some classic zizek here on Robespierre (taken from a BBC docu on the bro which is a solid little hour of fun)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orv1kmkiEpk

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jun/05/robespierre/?insrc=hpma

hmm, can i enjoy that as poetry and hate it as history?

You have my approval :)

So Jonathan Israel has apparantly written a book about the revolution, in which he claims that Robbespierre and his cronies, rather than being thought of as left wing reformators run amok, should be thought of as proto-fascists, believing in mob rule and the ability of priviliged individuals to perceive and embody the will of the people. Then the girondists become the left wing intellectuals instead. And boy, do I want to believe in that, it makes so much sense, and put all the bloodshed on right-wing beliefs. But checking up on it, the girondists were the war-party, which really might be the central disaster of the period, as far as I can tell. So yeah, can't really get it to work out.

the ability of priviliged individuals to perceive and embody the will of the people

this is kind of the central aporia of The Social Contract tbf to the lads

Yes, Robbespierre was supremely Roussauian. Apparantly, that's a no-go in Israel's world.

Know nothing about the French Revolution, but Israel's not an interpreter I trust, judging from the previous books – I've read good chunks of the first two Enlightenment ones (Radical/Contested), and they feel like a lot of evidence shoved together to fit a sympathetic but not particularly tenable thesis.

Rousseau's been described as a proto-Fascist since Fascism happened, so Israel's stance here isn't uncommon

unfair, but not uncommon, i meant to add

dunno if Bertrand Russell originated this line of thought but he lays the tar and feathers onto Rousseau pretty severely in his History of Western Philosophy iirc

feel like the Queen thread is appropriate

so… in Israel's terms, would Robespierre be an inheritor of the 'moderate enlightenment' (which in his eyes is bad and wrong and not actually Enlightenment)? As opposed to the radical materialist/democratic/toleration package (which iirc, for israel, is monolithic & the actual only Enlightenment) coming down through Spinoza etc?

i have always considered Robespierre to be the pragmatist overcome by contingencies, i.e. Israel's "moderate enlightenment" backed up against a wall, i guess, whereas Saint-Just wd be yr hardcore rationalist. feel like Rousseau wants to be the latter but enjoyed the finer things too much to fully follow thru?

Yeah, woof, that would be my guess. Haven't read any of his books, just the articles written by the commentator in my newspaper, who is a big Israel-fan, and writes big articles on his thougts every couple of months. It sounds to me a lot like you described it: 'like a lot of evidence shoved together to fit a sympathetic but not particularly tenable thesis.'

Reading Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution last summer, I thought the only coherent parallel between Robespierre and Hitler was his abstemiousness. Otherwise his vision for France was closer to totalitarian necrocracy: "If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue,” Robespierre wrote, “its basis in a time of revolution is both virtue and terror — virtue, without which terror is disastrous, and terror, without which virtue has no power."

not a very good book btw. I wrote at the time that it boasted the stupidest sentence I've ever seen in a preface: "“I have tried to be his friend and to see things from his point of view."

that quote itself is wracked with desperation/maybe despair, i think

Robespierre = what a monster, killing people left right and centre, paranoid that they were agents of the monarchy! They were agents of the monarchy

― cardamon, Saturday, 13 July 2013 02:32 (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this is closest to the truth, and beautifully put

wtf with these results

robespierre and marat over condorcet and madame roland? we should just do a poll that is like, the girondins vs. the montagne.

babeuf was pretty interesting if you prefer a more radical figure.

well, I don't know a great deal about these particulars, but if there's any truth to the Georg Buchner play then I'd put Georges Danton miles ahead of Robespierre

Idk about the play but there is a lot of truth to the proposition that robespierre was infinitely shittier than danton

I'm listening to the Simon Schama Citizens audiobook at the moment. What fun!

Idk about the play but there is a lot of truth to the proposition that robespierre was infinitely shittier than danton

Danton? Overrated. Robespierre deserves this little victory. Some important omissions though: Saint-André, Hérault de Séchelles, both Prieurs.

The Buchner was made into a Play for Today (dir by Alan Clarke btw). The speeches and detail are accurate.

LOL wiki calls it "documentary theatre"

That's because Buchner nicked them verbatim, naughty boy.

Yeah couldn't recall whether it was nicked or not.

Can't blame him for that, it's dynamite material.

update: i finished Popkin’s “A New World Begins” - it was exactly the kind of overview i needed
and really well-written. he has a lovely light touch that i appreciated

thx for the recommendation Alfred!

now i am digging into RR Palmer’s “Twelve Who Ruled” and i am loving it

it’s surprising that his conversational-style narrative was written in the 1940’s. Quite a fresh take for the times!

Forgot about TWELVE WHO RULED.

omg it’s so freaking good!!
i’m halfway through