What class did the Jacobins of the French Revolution represent?

[heiss93]

Marx himself described the Reign of Terror as an attempt to establish bourgeois capitalist democracy led by plebeian elements. Most Jacobin leaders came from pett-bourgeoisie professions such as lawyers. There were strong wage and price controls but even the Ancien Regime had employed such measures. In fact the lifting of economic regulations was one of the sparks that precipitated the economic crisis. The Jacobin Republic had elements of left state-capitalism, but the degree of economic planning was laissez-faire compared to the economies of capitalist nations from 1914-1970s. As far as welfare & labor go Bismarck's Germany was more socialized. On the labor question, I'm unaware of any attempts by the Jacobins to raise the liberal's ban on guilds.

So do you see Robespierre as simply the most progressive of the liberal democrats or as some sort of proto-socialist?

[Adil3tr]

The Jacobins were revolutionaries fighting to end feudalism and bring about parlemntary capitalism. The socialists among them organized after their defeat in the
Conspiracy of Equals

[graymouser]

The Jacobins were the revolutionary democratic petty-bourgeoisie, which relied for support upon layers of the Parisian underclass (the sans-culottes). Having seized the reins of the bourgeois-democratic revolution for defensive reasons, they proceeded to go further than the bourgeoisie were willing to go and wound up reaping the whirlwind of Thermidor and reaction.

Were they socialists? Not really, the groundwork of capitalism had not yet been laid thoroughly enough to form a coherent socialist movement. Of course Babeuf was the inspiration of the socialists who were around in the day of Marx and Engels, so there is some continuity, but in the main the Jacobins' ideas of equality were only partly developed, as had been those of the Levellers before them.

[S.Artesian]

The Jacobins were the revolutionary democratic petty-bourgeoisie, which relied for support upon layers of the Parisian underclass (the sans-culottes). Having seized the reins of the bourgeois-democratic revolution for defensive reasons, they proceeded to go further than the bourgeoisie were willing to go and wound up reaping the whirlwind of Thermidor and reaction.

Were they socialists? Not really, the groundwork of capitalism had not yet been laid thoroughly enough to form a coherent socialist movement. Of course Babeuf was the inspiration of the socialists who were around in the day of Marx and Engels, so there is some continuity, but in the main the Jacobins' ideas of equality were only partly developed, as had been those of the Levellers before them.

That's not entirely accurate. The Jacobins turned against the "extreme left," the Hebertists because of the greater popularity of the latter in the commune. Robespierre had 19 Hebertists beheaded. The Jacobins also turned against Desmoulins and the Club Cordelier, having the former beheaded in April 1794.

Four months after decapitating the leadership of the commune, it was Robespierre's turn beneath the blade.

Word.

[graymouser]

That's not entirely accurate. The Jacobins turned against the "extreme left," the Hebertists because of the greater popularity of the latter in the commune. Robespierre had 19 Hebertists beheaded. The Jacobins also turned against Desmoulins and the Club Cordelier, having the former beheaded in April 1794.

Four months after decapitating the leadership of the commune, it was Robespierre's turn beneath the blade.

Word.
Correction accepted gladly, it's been a couple years since I read up on the French Revolution. Danke.

[S.Artesian]

Correction accepted gladly, it's been a couple years since I read up on the French Revolution. Danke.

You're welcome. I admire Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just to a point-- the point being the historical limits of the French Revolution. Saint-Just was only 24, and was known as the arch-angel of death for his intractability in both combat and the Terror.

But one of the great lessons to be learned is what inevitably follows the purging of the "ultra-lefts" by the "lefts," namely the retreat of the revolution. Makes me think we truly have to "cultivate" the "ultra-lefts," those who aren't afraid to tell every self-proclaimed "vanguard" to fuck off.

Soboul's work on the sans-culottes is the best of read [replacing my previous favorite, Mathiez's books-- Mathiez was an unrepentant fan of Robespierre].

[Jimmie Higgins]

But one of the great lessons to be learned is what inevitably follows the purging of the "ultra-lefts" by the "lefts," namely the retreat of the revolution. Makes me think we truly have to "cultivate" the "ultra-lefts," those who aren't afraid to tell every self-proclaimed "vanguard" to fuck off.

This seems a bit too easy. I think there is a specific reason that some of these past revolutions went sour. Revolutions generally pull all groups in society into the conflict - the Jacobins and realized that the revolution would go to the conservative elements that wanted to sort of accommodate with the aristocracy unless the other lower groups were brought into the struggle. But, because this was a bourgeois revolution, they also needed to make sure the revolution didn't go "too far" because they still needed to make sure that rent would be paid to landlords eventually and so on.

At the risk of derailing this thread into yet another Stalin debate*, a similar thing happened with the Russian Revolution when the emerging class represented by Stalin began to become aware that, in order to secure its own needs, it would need to take a different path from the one the workers and revolutionaries had set off on. So there were purges of many including many of the surviving Bolsheviks from before the Revolution. Then other repression in order to get the population to accept a new economic order being built on their backs.

Since workers do not need lower classes to base their wealth and power on - and instead need self-organization and cooperation - a genuine working class revolution would have no need for purges and so on.

(*this is based on my view of how the Russian Revolution, so if you disagree, please help us all by only responding with "Stoopid Trot!" so we can focus the discussion on the French Revolution.)

[S.Artesian]

This seems a bit too easy. I think there is a specific reason that some of these past revolutions went sour. Revolutions generally pull all groups in society into the conflict - the Jacobins and realized that the revolution would go to the conservative elements that wanted to sort of accommodate with the aristocracy unless the other lower groups were brought into the struggle. But, because this was a bourgeois revolution, they also needed to make sure the revolution didn't go "too far" because they still needed to make sure that rent would be paid to landlords eventually and so on.

I think it's important to NOT look at the French Revolution through the lens of the Russian Revolution.

First things first... the Jacobins did not bring the "lower groups" into the struggle. The lower groups, the sans-culottes were in the struggle from the getgo.

While the Jacobins were not a monolithic organization, I don't know of any case where Jacobins enforced rent payments to landlords.

[Jimmie Higgins]

First things first... the Jacobins did not bring the "lower groups" into the struggle. The lower groups, the sans-culottes were in the struggle from the getgo.
Right, that was a poor way to phrase it: I meant that the Jacobins NEEDED the support of the sans-culottes and other parts of "the masses" in order to push forward their bourgeois revolution.

I did not mean to suggest that other social groups were passive until the Jacobins told them what to do or whatever. Just that they realized that, as representing the interests of a minority class of the society, they had to win the other groups to their cause. Every bourgeois revolution has had to do this and often this is where intital bourgeois rights for the entire population come from. It is also the reason that there is a period of reaction following their consolidation of power.

In the US, a similar thing happened where the revolutionaries brought in popular demands in order to bring lower-class anger to the side the revolution. Once the British were gone, local state judges, as one example, replaced British judges in defending rich landowners interests over the interests of small farmers. This led to social conflicts and uprisings that led to the strengthening of post-colonial government and the founding of a federal power that could raise an army and so on (the post-revolution repression to ensure that the new minority ruling class could rule over the rest).

As far as rent - I just mean that the interests of peasants and lower merchants and craftspeople and so on went beyond the interests of the emerging bourgeois class who do need inequity and so on and so that is why these minority ruling classes then have to try and put the revolution "genie back in the bottle" and usually this comes through a combination of some extension of rights as well as repression to secure the new ruling class hegemony over society. The French revolutionaries could not just allow the revolution to continue, because they need people to go back and pay rent and go to work at some point.

A working class revolution would not need this kind of repression, because they don't need to force a majority of society to work for them and accept their system and inequality and so on.

[S.Artesian]

Right, that was a poor way to phrase it: I meant that the Jacobins NEEDED the support of the sans-culottes and other parts of "the masses" in order to push forward their bourgeois revolution.

I did not mean to suggest that other social groups were passive until the Jacobins told them what to do or whatever. Just that they realized that, as representing the interests of a minority class of the society, they had to win the other groups to their cause. Every bourgeois revolution has had to do this and often this is where intital bourgeois rights for the entire population come from. It is also the reason that there is a period of reaction following their consolidation of power.

In the US, a similar thing happened where the revolutionaries brought in popular demands in order to bring lower-class anger to the side the revolution. Once the British were gone, local state judges, as one example, replaced British judges in defending rich landowners interests over the interests of small farmers. This led to social conflicts and uprisings that led to the strengthening of post-colonial government and the founding of a federal power that could raise an army and so on (the post-revolution repression to ensure that the new minority ruling class could rule over the rest).

As far as rent - I just mean that the interests of peasants and lower merchants and craftspeople and so on went beyond the interests of the emerging bourgeois class who do need inequity and so on and so that is why these minority ruling classes then have to try and put the revolution "genie back in the bottle" and usually this comes through a combination of some extension of rights as well as repression to secure the new ruling class hegemony over society. The French revolutionaries could not just allow the revolution to continue, because they need people to go back and pay rent and go to work at some point.

A working class revolution would not need this kind of repression, because they don't need to force a majority of society to work for them and accept their system and inequality and so on.

OK, but I wish I could share your optimism about the lack of need for repression, and the lack therefore, of conservative tendencies wishing for "order," for "bringing the revolution to an end" in a working class struggle. Hasn't exactly worked out that way, has it? I mean besides the Bolsheviks attempts at the militarization of labor.

The Marxist movement historically has been pretty well shot through with those only too eager to bring a revolution to an end. And forcibly.

[Jimmie Higgins]

OK, but I wish I could share your optimism about the lack of need for repression, and the lack therefore, of conservative tendencies wishing for "order," for "bringing the revolution to an end" in a working class struggle. Hasn't exactly worked out that way, has it? I mean besides the Bolsheviks attempts at the militarization of labor.

The Marxist movement historically has been pretty well shot through with those only too eager to bring a revolution to an end. And forcibly.Well, what then, are the material reasons that a successful worker's revolution, where workers set up their own collective means of running things, for workers to oppress themselves? The only explaination you have provided is "Marxists" are baddies and that's not a useful materialist explanation.

In capitalist revolutions and in Russia, it seems clear to me that the repression came from the needs of a small group to exert its power over the rest of society. In the US this group needed a state with repressive powers to maintain the laws necessary for trade and commerce. Since the farmers and small crafts people and slaves and servants greatly outnumbered the large landowners and major merchants, repression was sometimes needed to keep that social imbalance intact. In Russia's "socialism in one country" it was the need of an emerging bureaucratic group to build industry rapidly on the backs of the working class.

The form of the state follows the needs of the ruling class: the capitalist state in the US now is much different than it was before the civil war and industrialization. The form of the military is different with the emergence of imperialism. So I don't know what kind of organizations workers will build for themselves, but as long as the workers are collectively the ruling class, then the form will reflect whatever needs they have at different times.

[S.Artesian]

Well, what then, are the material reasons that a successful worker's revolution, where workers set up their own collective means of running things, for workers to oppress themselves? The only explaination you have provided is "Marxists" are baddies and that's not a useful materialist explanation.

In capitalist revolutions and in Russia, it seems clear to me that the repression came from the needs of a small group to exert its power over the rest of society.

You accuse me of doing the very thing you do in that last paragraph. I simply pointed out how avowedly Marxist, communist, [and anarchist] have at times turned their guns around on the proletariat.

To say that in capitalist revolutions and in Russia, repression stems from the "needs of a small group to exert its power over the rest of society" qualifies as perhaps the single most unmaterialist explanation I've ever read. That's how you explain what took place in Russia after 1921? That's how you explain the destruction of the Spanish revolution? That's how you explain the collaboration of official "communists" in the restoration of colonial power in Indochina at the close of WW 2? A small group needs to exert its power?



In the US this group needed a state with repressive powers to maintain the laws necessary for trade and commerce. Since the farmers and small crafts people and slaves and servants greatly outnumbered the large landowners and major merchants, repression was sometimes needed to keep that social imbalance intact.

This supposedly profound statement amounts to: in order to govern civil society a [indeterminate] "group" [whatever the fuck that means] requires a state to regulate and enforce the conditions of trade and commerce. No shit? Really? Who would of thunk that?

And we get more-- the lumping of slaves, farmers, small crafts people, together as if there was some sort of common interests to these groups that required the state to repress them against the landowners and merchants. Really? Mind explaining to me the common interests of plantation slaves and New England farmers in pre-1815 USA?



In Russia's "socialism in one country" it was the need of an emerging bureaucratic group to build industry rapidly on the backs of the working class.

Sorry, you really don't know what you are talking about. Socialism in one country was the ideological talisman well before Stalin broke with Bukharin's "socialism at a snail's pace," well before the first of the 5 year plans.


The form of the state follows the needs of the ruling class: the capitalist state in the US now is much different than it was before the civil war and industrialization. The form of the military is different with the emergence of imperialism. So I don't know what kind of organizations workers will build for themselves, but as long as the workers are collectively the ruling class, then the form will reflect whatever needs they have at different times.

Tell me, when did imperialism emerge in the US? And how did the organization of the military change based on this imperialism, rather than the form, and use of the military before the imperialism... say in the Mexican-American War?

The changes that occurred in the military where changes dictated not by imperialism but by the transformation of the US into an industrial economy. Imperialism, such as it was, has been a constant feature of developing industrial capitalism and represents no new stage.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I'm sorry that you are taking my comments as an attack - I am merely asking you to clarify your counter-argument to have a debate about it but instead you are responding with hostility yet not really answering the questions or providing a counter-argument.


You accuse me of doing the very thing you do in that last paragraph.I was not trying to be accusatory, I am trying to understand your points.


I simply pointed out how avowedly Marxist, communist, [and anarchist] have at times turned their guns around on the proletariat.Yes, and why this has happened is the question. I provided my ideas for why this happened in bourgeois revolutions and tried to like that idea which how and why repression happened in the USSR.


To say that in capitalist revolutions and in Russia, repression stems from the "needs of a small group to exert its power over the rest of society" qualifies as perhaps the single most unmaterialist explanation I've ever read. That's how you explain what took place in Russia after 1921? That's how you explain the destruction of the Spanish revolution? That's how you explain the collaboration of official "communists" in the restoration of colonial power in Indochina at the close of WW 2? A small group needs to exert its power? You are avoiding providing your counter-explanation for why repression might happen while demanding that in this forum I provide a detailed and dynamic account of how the Russian revolution failed?! I am not trying to explain the failure of the revolution, I am only making a general point on why state repression comes out of a minority class ruling society.


This supposedly profound statementWhere did I say this was profound. You are being silly and petty and not helping the discussion.

amounts to: in order to govern civil society a [indeterminate] "group" [whatever the fuck that means] requires a state to regulate and enforce the conditions of trade and commerce. No shit? Really? Who would of thunk that?


And we get more-- the lumping of slaves, farmers, small crafts people, together as if there was some sort of common interests to these groups that required the state to repress them against the landowners and merchants. Really? Mind explaining to me the common interests of plantation slaves and New England farmers in pre-1815 USA?You are not providing any alternative and you are totally misunderstanding or mischaraterizing my post. I didn't say that these lower classes had a common interest, just that they outnumbered the ruling class. As you condescendingly point out in the previous quote of yours, it is a simple point.


Sorry, you really don't know what you are talking about. Socialism in one country was the ideological talisman well before Stalin broke with Bukharin's "socialism at a snail's pace," well before the first of the 5 year plans.I am not trying to imply some formula... at X point Y theory was adopted because the new ruling class demanded it. I don't believe that everything would have been fine with the Revolution if only evil Stalin had fallen down a well in 1920 or something - it was a process that developed through the problems of the situation - I only mean that the course Russia took became due to the needs of a new emerging ruling class and that is the reason that there was repression.


Tell me, when did imperialism emerge in the US? And how did the organization of the military change based on this imperialism, rather than the form, and use of the military before the imperialism... say in the Mexican-American War? Again, we are talking in generalities here, so stop demanding that each example be explained with an entire history and theory. History is a development, you can maybe identify significant points where shifts can be seen, but most of the time it develops - so it's not like the US was uniformly in one mode between the year X and Y. You can generally say that the US became industrial after the civil war because this is what allowed for even greater expansion of industrial capitalism - though this process had been developing long before the civil war.

I don't disagree on your point about the changes being dependent on industrialization... the needs of an industrial based US were different that the needs of the plantation owners who wanted to clear the land of natives, not necessarily control ports and the trade of other nations.

Again, the simple point here is that the particular form of the state was pushed by the needs of capitalism at the given time - so in 1810, there would have been no need by the state for an urban police force, because the working class had not developed yet as it would over the next few decades.


The changes that occurred in the military where changes dictated not by imperialism but by the transformation of the US into an industrial economy. Imperialism, such as it was, has been a constant feature of developing industrial capitalism and represents no new stage.Again, how does this relate to why revolutions sometimes become repressive? Or how the form of the state is connected to the needs of the ruling class at a given time. I am not here to debate imperialism, you are missing the forest for the trees. As I see it, modern imperialism developed out of the needs of industrial capitalism, so yes, the changes in the form of the state were due to changes in the nature of capitalism irregardless of our different views on the specifics of modern imperialism. How imperialism developed is beside the point I was trying to make.

What is your argument about the nature of the state and repression by the state in this thread? This is the question we are debating... not how imperialism developed and so on. Is your argument that the capitalist state has been constant and not changing based on the needs of the ruling class? The state develops it's own agenda not connected to the relationship of classes in society? I don't know because it you have not provided a counter-explanation, only nit-picking.

[S.Artesian]

This thread is not about the nature of repression in revolution, but about the class basis of the Jacobin Club during the French Revolution. You determine that the Jacobins, and not just any Jacobins, but the Jacobins of Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, had an interest in bringing the revolution to an end, of "making sure" that the revolution didn't go "too far."


Your assessment of the Jacobins is wrong; of their intentions is wrong, of their relations to the other classes is wrong, of their relation to the revolution is wrong . That's my only point, comrade.

I suggest we not look at the French Revolution through the lens of the Russian, but you continue to do so, which makes it clear that your real interest is the Russian Revolution, not the French, and clearly not the Jacobins.

So if you don't want to consider the Jacobins, start another thread.

The consolidation and distortion of the Russian Revolution has nothing to do with the interests of a small group, raising itself to power "on the back of the worker..." or more precisely, that group does not distort or consolidate the revolution-- the material conditions in Russia, as they reflected the world markets do that as the international revolution fails. The small group is raised to power by that ebb of international revolution; not by its need to secure its own mode of accumulation.

The point here is to try and avoid making false analogies between historical struggles simply because we call the different struggles by the same name-- revolution. The point is to quit talking in generalities-- like imperialism dictated a change in the military without providing a bit of content to support such claims.

[Buffalo Souljah]

Well, if I may chime in--this may not be in keeping with the original topic, but it is apparent in reading factual accounts of the period (in particular letters and addresses written by Jefferson at the inauguration of the United States) that imperial ambitions were "on the docket", so to speak, from the get-go, particularly in the Caribbean and in Latin America, which remain a fundamental concern to the present. However, this has nothing to do with eitherr the Russian Revolution, or the French, which I believe was the original topic of discussion (not that I think there is anything wrong with a bit of "drift" in a conversation, mind you).

It may do us well to state the original question:



So do you see Robespierre as simply the most progressive of the liberal democrats or as some sort of proto-socialist?

to which I would respond that anyone who would carry out purges and mass murders against dissident political groups does not deserve any title other than tyrant.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Your assessment of the Jacobins is wrong; of their intentions is wrong, of their relations to the other classes is wrong, of their relation to the revolution is wrong . That's my only point, comrade."You're wrong" with no explanation is not an argument and not conducive to a discussion. I don't know if you are intentionally trying to be hostile or are just not very good at discussing things with people, but I have no interest in discussing this topic any further with someone who has no interest in a sincere exchange.

[Dave B]

Well you don’t have to imply, post factum, that the Bolsheviks were Jacobins when the historical actors admitted it themselves


Leon Trotsky Twenty Years After 1905 A speech by Leon Trotsky (December 1925)


1793 has remained in the memory of humanity as one of those years, when under the leadership of the Jacobins, those Bolsheviks of the 18th century, plebeians, sans-culottes, artisans and semi-proletarians, the ragamuffins of the Paris suburbs, established an iron dictatorship and meted out unforgettable punishment to the crowned and privileged rulers of the old society.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1925/12/1905.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1925/12/1905.htm)

That was almost Twenty Years After 1904 when Trotsky called the Bolsheviks Jacobins, so I suppose you couldn’t accuse him of ‘inconsistancy’.

Leon Trotsky Our Political Tasks (1904)

Part IV: (http://www.revleft.com/vb/ch05.htm) Jacobinism And Social Democracy


http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1904/tasks/index.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1904/tasks/index.htm)

Lenin was also of course happy to identify the Bolsheviks with Jacobinism as he was in "What is to be Done" in 1902.


Can "Jacobinism" Frighten the Working Class? 1917




"Jacobinism" in Europe or on the boundary line between Europe and Asia in the twentieth century would be the rule of the revolutionary class, of the proletariat, which, supported by the peasant poor and taking advantage of the existing material basis for advancing to socialism, could not only provide all the great, ineradicable, unforgettable things provided by the Jacobins in the eighteenth century, but bring about a lasting world-wide victory for the working people.

It is natural for the bourgeoisie to hate Jacobinism. It is natural for the petty 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.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/07a.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/07a.htm)

Not everybody is a Marxists of course; but when it comes to "analogies" Marxist theory goes a bit further than that, and accidental historical turns of events.


Given the same or similar basic "material" circumstances eg a feudal society at a point of economic crisis history will repeat itself. In a manner that is predictable in a formulaic way from scientific observations of previous ‘experimental’ situations.

Just like apples falling to the ground.

The details or the political costumes that people may wear may vary but the fundamentals remain the same. Including people aping the Jacobin mistakes and the ‘borrowed language’ of their predecessors.


The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx 1852




Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire.


Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language
.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm)

Pants!

Theory is predictive or nothing.

Russian pseudo socialists (Blanquists) calling themselves Jacobins overthrowing a Tasrism and making a mess of it due to circumstances beyond their control!


Engels to Vera Zasulich (http://www.revleft.com/glossary/people/z/a.htm#zasulich-vera) In Geneva London, 23 April, 1885



What I know or believe about the situation in Russia impels me to the opinion that the Russians are approaching their 1789. The revolution must break out there in a given time; it may break out there any day. In these circumstances the country is like a charged mine which only needs a fuse to be laid to it. Especially since March 13. This is one of the exceptional cases where it is possible for a handful of people to make a revolution, i.e., with one small push to cause a whole system, which (to use a metaphor of Plekhanov's) is in more than labile equilibrium, to come crashing down, and thus by one action, in itself insignificant, to release uncontrollable explosive forces.

Well now, if ever Blanquism--the phantasy of overturning an entire society through the action of a small conspiracy--had a certain justification for its existence, that is certainly in Petersburg. Once the spark has been put to the powder, once the forces have been released and national energy has been transformed from potential into kinetic energy (another favourite image of Plekhanov's and a very good one)--the people who laid the spark to the mine will be swept away by the explosion, which will be a thousand times as strong as themselves and which will seek its vent where it can, according as the economic forces and resistances determine.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885/letters/85_04_23.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885/letters/85_04_23.htm)

Trotsky also accused the Bolsheviks of Blanquism, again the final missing chapter of Our Political Tasks;



We repeat: the Ural Comrades are perfectly consistent in the replacement of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the dictatorship over the proletariat, of the political rule of the class by the organizational rule over the class. But this is a consistency not of Marxians, but of Jacobins, or of their translation into the "Socialist" language, of Blanquists… Of course, with the peculiar aroma of the culture of the Urals.

Thus we have charged our Ural Comrades with Blanquism. And we recalled at once that it is Bernstein who also charges the revolutionary social democrats with Blanquism. This is entirely sufficient to get the people from the Urals classed as revolutionary social democrats, and ourselves as Bernsteinians.

That is why we consider it highly useful to quote Engels on the question of the role which the Blanquists ascribe to themselves at the moment of the socialist revolution.


"Trained in the conspiratorial school, accustomed to the strict discipline required in a conspiracy, they acted on the view that a relatively small number of determined and well organised people may, under favourable circumstances, not only capture the power, but through the application of powerful merciless energy maintain it until they succeed in rallying to the revolution the masses of the people and grouping them around the small handful of leaders. This requires, above all, the strictest dictatorial centralization of power in the hands of the new government."


(Marx "The Civil War in France", Engels’ Preface to the third German Edition).


Yes life is but a stage with walk on parts and a predictable script; enter Macbeth, Napoleon Stalin………..


.

[Zanthorus]

The French Revolution didn't occur in the middle of an international crisis of capitalism and wasn't followed a year later by the November revolution and Spartacist uprising in Germany or the biennio rosso in Italy so any tired analogies with Jacobinism are questionable at best. As for the charges of "Blanquism", well why don't we ask Rosa Luxemburg...


We would dispute comrade Plekhanov’s reproach to the Russian comrades of the current “majority” that they have committed Blanquist errors during the revolution. It is possible that there were hints of them in the organisational draft that comrade Lenin drew up in 1902, but that belongs to the past – a distant past, since today life is proceeding at a dizzying speed. These errors have been corrected by life itself and there is no danger they might recur. And we should not be afraid of the ghost of Blanquism, for it cannot be resuscitated at this time.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/06/blanquism.html

[S.Artesian]

"You're wrong" with no explanation is not an argument and not conducive to a discussion. I don't know if you are intentionally trying to be hostile or are just not very good at discussing things with people, but I have no interest in discussing this topic any further with someone who has no interest in a sincere exchange.

Nice job ignoring what I said specifically was wrong with your remarks on the Jacobins--

I said:


You determine that the Jacobins, and not just any Jacobins, but the Jacobins of Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, had an interest in bringing the revolution to an end, of "making sure" that the revolution didn't go "too far."

That's where you are wrong. Robespierre was neither an extreme liberal nor a proto-socialist. And he was not organizing an end to the revolution. Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just were not Thermidoreans. They weren't the Directory.

[Jimmie Higgins]

That's where you are wrong. Robespierre was neither an extreme liberal nor a proto-socialist. And he was not organizing an end to the revolution. Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just were not Thermidoreans. They weren't the Directory.

I never argued that they were proto-socialist or defending the aristocracy (or trying to keep aristocratic privileges for the elite of the bourgeois like some of the conservatives).

Your argument seemed to suggest that the Jacobins turned on those to the left of them for no particular reason:


But one of the great lessons to be learned is what inevitably follows the purging of the "ultra-lefts" by the "lefts," namely the retreat of the revolution. Makes me think we truly have to "cultivate" the "ultra-lefts," those who aren't afraid to tell every self-proclaimed "vanguard" to fuck off. Maybe I am misunderstanding who you are speaking of, but I read that as an argument that the terror and retreat of the revolution came out of... I don't know... "power corrupts" or something.

And so my response is simply that I don't think that is a very material way to explain the repression that has almost always followed bourgeois revolutions.

My argument was simply that bourgeois revolutions draw all classes into society, but that bourgeois revolutionaries don't want, say, the levelers, to come to power and so at some point, the revolution needs to be reigned in... so in my reading of history, this is why at some point the "lefts" (bourgeois revolutionaries) turn on the ultra-lefts.

I was speaking in generalities, because I thought you were speaking of "lefts" and "ultra-lefts" in general. So please clarify the argument above if I am misinterpreting it.

[Dave B]

First of all I don’t want to appear to be just derailing this thread back to the Russian revolution, however Marxists are obliged as part of their theory to place any analysis of history in the material context of historical precedents, and not in isolation as accidents.

Even Kropotkin had the sense to view the Russian revolution within the context of the classic bourgeois French revolution.

On Rosa’s contemporary support of the Bolsheviks, and others of the ‘left’ in general including the Anarchists ie Berkman and Goldman. I in fact have some sympathy for them at that time.


What they thought or would have thought about things later after the initial rush of blood to the head of "leftist" revolutionary enthusiasm is a matter of record only for those that lived to see how things turned out and regret or learn from it.


An early example of somebody who started looking at the Russian revolution from an orthodox Marxist position as a re-run of the classic bourgeois French Revolution was Otto Rühle in 1924, an interesting ‘post’ from somebody who knew his stuff.

Eg.




Otto Rühle From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution 1924



Not last is a striking expression of bourgeois politics, the dictatorship of the Communist Party leaders set up in Russia, which is falsely described as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Behind this pseudo-revolutionary protective screen hides, as everyone knows, the omnipotence of a small handful of people who are the commanders of the authoritarian, centrally organised commissariat-bureaucracy. As inverted tsarism this party dictatorship is a completely bourgeois concern.

These few contentions show and prove that the Russian regime, contrary to its doubtless honest intention to pursue proletarian socialist policy, has been pushed step by step by the power of facts into bourgeois capitalist policy.

………..

It was an historical error to believe that the Russian Revolution was the start of a social revolution. And it amounts to a demagogic fraud to awaken and maintain this belief in the heads of workers.

When the socialists in the Russian government, after the victory over tsarism, imagined that a phase of historical development could be skipped and socialism structurally realised, they had forgotten the ABC of Marxist knowledge according to which socialism can only be the outcome of an organic development which has capitalism developed to the limits of its maturity as its indispensable presupposition. They had to pay for this forgetfulness by a wide, troublesome and victim-strewn detour which brings them in a space of time to capitalism.

To institute capitalism and to organise the bourgeois state is the historical function of the bourgeois revolution. The Russian Revolution was and is a bourgeois revolution, no more and no less: the strong socialist admixture changes nothing in this essence. So it will fulfil its task by throwing away, sooner or later, the last remnants of its "War-Communism" and revealing the face of a real, genuine capitalism.
The struggles within the Bolshevik party are preparing this conclusion, and with it the end of the Bolshevik party dictatorship. The line of development - whether that of a party coalition which hastens and alleviates the launching phase of capitalism, or that of a Bonaparte who protracts and aggravates it - is not yet clear; both are possible.


The parallelogram of forces will find its correct diagonals.




http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1924/revolution.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1924/revolution.htm)

And From Cajo Brendel who accurately I think summed up Council Communist position, slowly and retrospectively arrived at; for some.

Cajo Brendel Council Communism & The Critique of Bolshevism 1999



At the same time the Council Communists grew up. They had learned that the Russian Revolution was nothing more than a bourgeois revolution (history repeating itself) and that the Russian economy was nothing more than state capitalism. They had a clearer understanding of things which were ripe for new research. Other things not analyzed before, stood now in a clearer light.

In the same way, that is to say, pointing to the similarities of the social relations in Russia before the revolution and those in the pre-revolutionary France, the Council Communists pointed to the fact that Lenin and the members of his party claimed the name Jacobins for themselves. They meant that their party in the Russian bourgeois revolution had the same function as the French Jacobins.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/brendel/1999/communism.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/brendel/1999/communism.htm)


The theoretical discussions based on Marxist theory that the council communist types were engaging in the 1920’s and 30’s did not go unnoticed by the Trotskyist intellectuals.

Realising that the whole Bolshevik experiment was unravelling under the scrutiny of their own Marxist theory; they drew a line on state capitalist theory.


So Ted Grant , with his tongue in his cheek, stated that if Trots like Cliff admitted that Bolshevik Russia was state capitalism then, as it goes on;

Ted Grant Against the Theory of State Capitalism Reply to Comrade Cliff






Cliff himself points to the fact that in the bourgeois revolution the masses did the fighting and the bourgeois got the fruits. The masses did not know what they were fighting for, but they fought in reality for the rule of the bourgeoisie. Take the French Revolution. It was prepared and had its ideology in the works of the philosophers of the enlightenment, Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. However, they really did believe in the idealisation of bourgeois society. They believed the codicils of liberty, equality and fraternity which they preached. As is well known, and as Cliff himself quotes Marx to prove, the French Revolution went beyond its social base. It resulted in the revolutionary dictatorship of the sans culottes which went beyond the bounds of bourgeois society.

As Marx explained, this had the salutory effect of completing in a few months what would otherwise have taken the bourgeois decades to do. The leaders of the revolutionary wing of the petty bourgeoisie which wielded this dictatorship - Robespierre, Danton, etc, sincerely believed in the doctrines of the philosophers and attempted to put them into practice.
They could not do so because it was impossible to go beyond the economic base of the given society. They inevitably had to lose power and merely paved the way for bourgeois society. If Cliff’s argument is correct, one could only conclude that the same thing happened with the Russian as with the French Revolution. Marx was the prophet of the new state capitalism. Lenin and Trotsky were the Robespierres and Carnots of the Russian Revolution. The fact that Lenin and Trotsky had good intentions is beside the point, as were the good intentions of the leaders of the bourgeois revolution. They merely paved the way for the rule of the new state capitalist class.


http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm (http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm)


Incidentally the ideology French revolution was based around the ideas of Rousseau.

Now if you want you hack your way through Rousseau’s ‘social contract’ etc you can but his basic idea was familiar enough and is best expressed elsewhere.

in the Ideal Household of the Wolmar's in the love story `La Nouvelle Heloise';

`

There is never either sullenness or discontent in obedience because there is neither haughtiness nor capriciousness in the command (of the master). Because nothing is demanded which is not reasonable or expedient, and because the master and mistress sufficiently respect the dignity of man, even though he is a servant, so as to employ him
only with things that do not debase him."

"the servants know well that there most assured fortune is attached to that of their master and that they will never want for anything as long as the house is seen to prosper. In serving it, therefore, they are taking care of their own patrimony and increasing it by making their service agreeable; this is to their greatest self interest."

Letter X-to Lord Bomston


It’s the idea of a special elite, with their hearts in the right place, overseeing and supervising the greater good of humanity.

And what is a Blanquist?

Works of Frederick Engels 1874
The Program of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune



From Blanqui's assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class( "or embracing the whole of that class"), the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals.

We see, then, that Blanqui is a revolutionary of the preceding generation.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm)

Does the Bolshevik/Blanquist hat fit?

V. I. Lenin THE TRADE UNIONS, THE PRESENT SITUATION AND TROTSKY'S MISTAKES




But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard


http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/TUTM20.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/TUTM20.html)


.

[S.Artesian]

I never argued that they were proto-socialist or defending the aristocracy (or trying to keep aristocratic privileges for the elite of the bourgeois like some of the conservatives).

And I never said you did. I said you thought the Jacobins had an interest in bringing the revolution to an end. When the Jacobins beheaded the Hebertists, essentially beheading the commune, they were not doing it out of the need to bring the revolution to an end-- to ensure that rent was paid to the landlords, etc.


Your argument seemed to suggest that the Jacobins turned on those to the left of them for no particular reason:

Maybe I am misunderstanding who you are speaking of, but I read that as an argument that the terror and retreat of the revolution came out of... I don't know... "power corrupts" or something.

And so my response is simply that I don't think that is a very material way to explain the repression that has almost always followed bourgeois revolutions. .

You are misunderstanding what I am stating, and you are misunderstanding it because you're looking at the French Revolution through the lens of the Russian Revolution.

There's a lot of ore to be mined from the history of the Jacobin Clubs, and the history of the Jacobin Clubs' relations with the communes, but that history is not going to establish your claim that the Jacobins of the triumvirate needed to bring the revolution to an end. The Jacobins, the Robespierrist Jacobins were absolutely convinced of their own discipline, incorruptibility, purity, and unique capability in guiding the Revolution. The Hebertists represented something undisciplined, impure, an incapable to that task.

The Jacobins counted Danton as a member; it counted members of the Directory among its members, so what's needed is an exploration of rise, peaking, and fall of the Jacobins-- not assertions that they had to bring the revolution to an end. That analysis is not some formulaic response that says "The French revolutionaries could not allow the revolution to continue, because they need people to go back and pay rent and go to work at some point."

I was trying to draw a lesson for us. Behead those you think are "ultras" and it won't be long before your own head will be beneath the blade, as there are those who really do want to bring the revolution to an end. When revolutionists undermine their own most militant base in order to preserve the power of the revolutionary government, that revolutionary power exposes its own flank.


My argument was simply that bourgeois revolutions draw all classes into society, but that bourgeois revolutionaries don't want, say, the levelers, to come to power and so at some point, the revolution needs to be reigned in... so in my reading of history, this is why at some point the "lefts" (bourgeois revolutionaries) turn on the ultra-lefts.You were arguing a bit more than that. "Bourgeois" revolutionaries are not all of one sort, of a type. There's a certain historical materialism to the development of a revolutionary leadership. Certainly Cromwell didn't want the levelers to take power, but the levelers themselves didn't want to challenge for power, swearing fidelity to the very same private property Cromwell defended; wanting "equity" in private property, rather than the abolition of private property as the diggers, from whom the levelers made strenuous efforts to distinguish themselves, advocated.

Actually, I don't even think the Directory wanted the revolution to come to an end. Three of the five of the Directory were strong Jacobins.

Now Napoleon's coup of 18 Brumaire, that was bringing the revolution to an end, and while many people, again looking the wrong way through the telescope of the Russian Revolution, look at the Thermidor overthrow in 1794 as the "bringing an end to the revolution," or "consolidating" the gains of the revolution by limiting them, that is not what took place, IMO, in the Thermidorean reaction in France.

What had occurred is that there was no social class capable of extending the gains of the revolution, of carrying it forward to the next stage. The "material basis" for such extension did not exist.

Now if everybody would rather draw analogies to the Russian Revolution than regard the French Revolution in its own right-- well, I can play it that way, too, and point out that Terror of the triumvirate in the French is analogous to the period of "war communism" in the Russian, with Trotsky, and Lenin's, advocacy of the militarization of labor, with "shock armies" of workers, and trial and imprisonment for "labor crimes" creating colonies of penal laborers representing a revolution that has lost its connection to any social class capable of extending that revolution.

The Thermidor in this analogy is probably better represented by the period after the 10th Party Congress, after Trotsky has sealed his own fate by embracing, and glorifying, the assault on the workers, sailors and soldiers of Kronstadt.

Lenin, astute politician that he was, much more sensitive to what actually was going on, had withdrawn his support from the "militarization of labor" campaign in late 1920, and was more than happy to let the anger and consternation both inside and outside the party rain down on Trotsky [who acted a bit like a petulant brat] while Trotsky dutifully led the attack on Kronstadt.

BUT-- if we don't want to go into the history of the Jacobin Clubs in the revolution they actually participated in, led, and changed, then someone should start another thread. I for one find nothing more pointless than trying to explain one revolution by and through analogies to another from which it is separated not by years, but by economic and social world historical conditions.

[Zanthorus]

I was trying to draw a lesson for us. Behead those you think are "ultras" and it won't be long before your own head will be beneath the blade, as there are those who really do want to bring the revolution to an end. When revolutionists undermine their own most militant base in order to preserve the power of the revolutionary government, that revolutionary power exposes its own flank.

Best lesson drawn from the past ever :thumbup1:

[S.Artesian]

Best lesson drawn from the past ever :thumbup1:

Thanks. The rule of the triumvirate, of the Committee of Pubic Safety, is pretty close to being a true tragedy-- "heroes" felled by the excessive quality, the excess of qualities that made them heroes in the first place.

2nd lesson-- the stronger the class, the fewer the heroes; the less the need for heroes.

[heiss93]

Well actually Marx did not consider the Revolution to be over even after Brumaire. He argued that Napoleon's campaigns were a continuation of the Reign of Terror and the liberal bourgeoisie despised him as much as they did Robespierre.

Marx's use of the phrase permanent revolution originally referred to Napoleon's forceful revolutionizing of occupied Europe.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_3_c.htm

"
Napoleon represented the last battle of revolutionary terror against the bourgeois society which had been proclaimed by this same Revolution, and against its policy. Napoleon, of course, already discerned the essence of the modern state; he understood that it is based on the unhampered development of bourgeois society, on the free movement of private interest, etc. He decided to recognise and protect this basis. He was no terrorist with his head in the clouds. Yet at the same time he still regarded the state as an end in itself and civil life only as a treasurer and his subordinate which must have no will of its own. He perfected the Terror by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution. He fed the egoism of the French nation to complete satiety but demanded also the sacrifice of bourgeois business, enjoyments, wealth, etc., whenever this was required by the political aim of conquest. If he despotically suppressed the liberalism of bourgeois society — the political idealism of its daily practice — he showed no more consideration for its essential material interests, trade and industry, whenever they conflicted with his political interests. His scorn of industrial hommes d'affaires was the complement to his scorn of ideologists. In his home policy, too, he combated bourgeois society as the opponent of the state which in his own person he still held to be an absolute aim in itself. Thus he declared in the State Council that he would not suffer the owner of extensive estates to cultivate them or not as he pleased. Thus, too, he conceived the plan of subordinating trade to the state by appropriation of roulage [road haulage]. French businessmen took steps to anticipate the event that first shook Napoleon’s power. Paris exchange- brokers forced him by means of an artificially created famine to delay the opening of the Russian campaign by nearly two months and thus to launch it too late in the year.
Just as the liberal bourgeoisie was opposed once more by revolutionary terror in the person of Napoleon, so it was opposed once more by counter-revolution in the Restoration in the person of the Bourbons. Finally, in 1830 the bourgeoisie put into effect its wishes of the year 1789, with the only difference that its political enlightenment was now completed, that it no longer considered the constitutional representative state as a means for achieving the ideal of the state, the welfare of the world and universal human aims but, on the contrary, had acknowledged it as the official expression of its own exclusive power and the political recognition of its own special interests."

[S.Artesian]

Well actually Marx did not consider the Revolution to be over even after Brumaire. He argued that Napoleon's campaigns were a continuation of the Reign of Terror and the liberal bourgeoisie despised him as much as they did Robespierre.

Marx's use of the phrase permanent revolution originally referred to Napoleon's forceful revolutionizing of occupied Europe.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_3_c.htm

"
Napoleon represented the last battle of revolutionary terror against the bourgeois society which had been proclaimed by this same Revolution, and against its policy. Napoleon, of course, already discerned the essence of the modern state; he understood that it is based on the unhampered development of bourgeois society, on the free movement of private interest, etc. He decided to recognise and protect this basis. He was no terrorist with his head in the clouds. Yet at the same time he still regarded the state as an end in itself and civil life only as a treasurer and his subordinate which must have no will of its own. He perfected the Terror by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution. He fed the egoism of the French nation to complete satiety but demanded also the sacrifice of bourgeois business, enjoyments, wealth, etc., whenever this was required by the political aim of conquest. If he despotically suppressed the liberalism of bourgeois society — the political idealism of its daily practice — he showed no more consideration for its essential material interests, trade and industry, whenever they conflicted with his political interests. His scorn of industrial hommes d'affaires was the complement to his scorn of ideologists. In his home policy, too, he combated bourgeois society as the opponent of the state which in his own person he still held to be an absolute aim in itself. Thus he declared in the State Council that he would not suffer the owner of extensive estates to cultivate them or not as he pleased. Thus, too, he conceived the plan of subordinating trade to the state by appropriation of roulage [road haulage]. French businessmen took steps to anticipate the event that first shook Napoleon’s power. Paris exchange- brokers forced him by means of an artificially created famine to delay the opening of the Russian campaign by nearly two months and thus to launch it too late in the year.
Just as the liberal bourgeoisie was opposed once more by revolutionary terror in the person of Napoleon, so it was opposed once more by counter-revolution in the Restoration in the person of the Bourbons. Finally, in 1830 the bourgeoisie put into effect its wishes of the year 1789, with the only difference that its political enlightenment was now completed, that it no longer considered the constitutional representative state as a means for achieving the ideal of the state, the welfare of the world and universal human aims but, on the contrary, had acknowledged it as the official expression of its own exclusive power and the political recognition of its own special interests."

Thanks for that. Been so long since I read the Holy Family I forgot about that...not that I totally agree with it anyway.