It’s been almost a century and a half since Karl Marx’s death, and decades since the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. In the still nominally…View Post
there's been a big movement since like the 60s among anglo revisionist historians to re-evaluate the french revolution as not being a bourgeois revolution. it coincides with the postmodern/neoliberal domination of academia, the purging of anything vaguely marxist.
but yeah there's a plethora of evidence showing the french revolution was (largely) bourgeois, that an emerging bourgeoisie class existed prior to the french revolution. the revisionists base their rejection/ignorance of such on the lack of a clear bourgeois class-consciousness that differentiates it from other elites. but that's a misconception that conflates a lack of common signifiers (like the word bourgeois meaning specifically capitalist at the time, rather than simply meaning elite) for a lack of commonly-accepted concepts of a newly-emerging class centered around profit-seeking rather than rent-seeking. "Misconception" is too forgiving a word for some of the revisionists, who seem to deliberately avoid engaging with theorists from the period who clearly talk about a new "middle" class whose material interests clashed with the landed aristocracy.
also some of them argue that because there were still feudal characteristics-- economically, politically, and culturally-- that persisted before during and after the revolution, that disproves its primarily bourgeois nature. but that's a childish understanding of how the world works, of course there's gonna be vestiges and holdouts. of course people aren't going to instantly conjure agreed-upon words to signify newly-emerging phenomena, they're going to struggle to use the language of the old system to rationalize and understand the new.
the worst of them are the ones claiming the french revolution was simply a bunch of people got radical ideas in their heads and decided to overthrow the govt. treat it almost as a cautionary tale against getting too radical lmao. i doubt i have to explain the problems with this degree of idealism to anyone on this forum.
there's been a big movement since like the 60s among anglo revisionist historians to re-evaluate the french revolution as not being a bourgeois revolution. it coincides with the postmodern/neoliberal domination of academia, the purging of anything vaguely marxist.
but yeah there's a plethora of evidence showing the french revolution was (largely) bourgeois, that an emerging bourgeoisie class existed prior to the french revolution. the revisionists base their rejection/ignorance of such on the lack of a clear bourgeois class-consciousness that differentiates it from other elites. but that's a misconception that conflates a lack of common signifiers (like the word bourgeois meaning specifically capitalist at the time, rather than simply meaning elite) for a lack of commonly-accepted concepts of a newly-emerging class centered around profit-seeking rather than rent-seeking. "Misconception" is too forgiving a word for some of the revisionists, who seem to deliberately avoid engaging with theorists from the period who clearly talk about a new "middle" class whose material interests clashed with the landed aristocracy.
also some of them argue that because there were still feudal characteristics-- economically, politically, and culturally-- that persisted before during and after the revolution, that disproves its primarily bourgeois nature. but that's a childish understanding of how the world works, of course there's gonna be vestiges and holdouts. of course people aren't going to instantly conjure agreed-upon words to signify newly-emerging phenomena, they're going to struggle to use the language of the old system to rationalize and understand the new.
the worst of them are the ones claiming the french revolution was simply a bunch of people got radical ideas in their heads and decided to overthrow the govt. treat it almost as a cautionary tale against getting too radical lmao. i doubt i have to explain the problems with this degree of idealism to anyone on this forum.