"Thermidorian reaction"

[Os Cangaceiros]

It seems like Thermidor is generally considered to be the end of the French Revolution, and by leftists to be a reactionary event. I believe that Trotsky said that Stalin taking power was the Russian Revolution's Thermidor. Hardt & Negri in "Empire" also write about Thermidor in a similar way.

But my understanding of Thermidor was that it wasn't driven so much by reaction as it was by self-preservation, because Robespierre was killing everyone back then and people in the ruling clique were worried that they were next. Could someone shed some light on this event?

[Rooster]

Generally it means that the revolution is taken over by a more conservative group who abandon the revolutionary aims in favour of consolidating their own position within a new ruling strata.

Throughout the French Revolution, there was a struggle people the sans-culottes and the new class of capitalists, with the state trying it's best to mediate between the two. The ruling clique of Robespierre was kept in power mostly by it's connection to the sans-culottes who could be mobilised into a mass movement. Eventually the new class of bourgeoisie had to remove The Committee for Public Safety for their own class interest.

EDIT: Also

The revolution, as we know, did away with feudalism and the king. The thermidorean reaction resulted in the eventual restoration of the Monarchy. So it's helpful to have this in mind as well.

[Feodor Augustus]

Generally it means that the revolution is taken over by a more conservative group who abandon the revolutionary aims in favour of consolidating their own position within a new ruling strata.

This is perhaps the most common and major consequence of a 'Thermidorian reaction': but it is not its cause. Instead, and as you sort of recognised, the new bureaucracy arises out of the class conflict; and in particular, the inability of any one class to rule with authority. It was this balance of forces that enabled, as Marx put it, a gross mediocrity to strut around in hero's garb.

[Jose Gracchus]

The real reaction began with the assumption of the "revolutionary dictatorship", the suppression of the Parisian revolutionary sections and the Enrages and Herberists who actually represented the sans-culottes. Once they shuttered the masses and the class forces which, unleashed, had propelled Robespierre and his clique to power, it was inevitable that there would have to be a settling.

[Rakhmetov]

Robespierre instinctively saw that a new brood of vipers and flock of vultures were replacing the old feudal aristocracy.

In fact Robepierre said, "The internal enemy of France is the bourgeois ..." (from David Jordan's book The Revolutionary Career of Maximillian Robespierre).

Robepierre (from a Marxist Dialec. hist. perspective) was hindering the bourgeoisie from developing the new capitalist mode of production and killing their representatives at the Convention; therefore, the bourgeois eliminated him to make way for the new order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermidorian_Reaction

[Jose Gracchus]

By the above schema, I would say the closest thing to the "Robespierrean" period of the Russian Revolution was after the Bolshevik leadership and nascent state under their control moved to quash the soviets, factory councils, and other pro-soviet parties (like the non-terrorist Left SRs, Menshevik Internationalists, anarchists, and SR Marximalists) in 1918 until the victory of the Civil War.

1921, the crushing of Kronstadt and the Petrograd and Moscow strike waves, and banning of the party factions, the consolidation of the one-party state and the introduction of the NEP was Russia's Thermidor.

[Rowan Duffy]

The real reaction began with the assumption of the "revolutionary dictatorship", the suppression of the Parisian revolutionary sections and the Enrages and Herberists who actually represented the sans-culottes. Once they shuttered the masses and the class forces which, unleashed, had propelled Robespierre and his clique to power, it was inevitable that there would have to be a settling.

I basically agree with this, but I don't think the Herbertists represented the interests of the sans-culottes. I think they tended towards a world-view of the emerging state-bureaucracy.


1921, the crushing of Kronstadt and the Petrograd and Moscow strike waves, and banning of the party factions, the consolidation of the one-party state and the introduction of the NEP was Russia's Thermidor.

I don't think this is quite right because Thermidor was not a consolidation by the Jacobins.

[Kiev Communard]

I don't think this is quite right because Thermidor was not a consolidation by the Jacobins.

The majority of the Thermidoreans were actually members of Jacobin Club who abandoned their previous revolutionary radicalism. Such Thermidorean leaders as Joseph Fouché (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fouché), Francois Louis Bourdon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Louis_Bourdon), and Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis-Marie_Stanislas_Fréron), were in fact the left-wing Jacobins and supporters of strict governmental centralization before the fall of Robespierre.

[S.Artesian]

The majority of the Thermidoreans were actually members of Jacobin Club who abandoned their previous revolutionary radicalism. Such Thermidorean leaders as Joseph Fouché (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fouch%C3%A9), Francois Louis Bourdon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Louis_Bourdon), and Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis-Marie_Stanislas_Fr%C3%A9ron), were in fact the left-wing Jacobins and supporters of strict governmental centralization before the fall of Robespierre.

Comrade, KC is correct. Thermidor was conducted by Jacobins.

For all the rhetoric, and action, the triumvirate of Robespierre, Saint-Just [known as the archangel of death because of his physical beauty and his use of terror], and Couthon were the left of a class that was pushing up against, at its very emergence, the limits of private property.

And as left as these left Jacobins were, there were others, and other clubs, even more to the left than they-- my personal favorite of the clubs being the Cordeliers Club.

Still, Robespierre, in suppressing the commune, the sans-culottes set the stage for his own overthrow.

Let that be a lesson to all of us: Never suppress those who are to the left of you. Embrace them or die.

[Zanthorus]

Not entirely relevant, but if The Inform Candidate, Kiev Communard and S. Artesian are right about the Jacobin supression of those to the left of them then there are some obvious parrallels with the period in English history from 1647 to the restoration in 1660. Cromwell was able to purge parliament of the moderates and eliminate Charles I only by leaning on the Levellers and radicals in the army whose ideas were thriving thanks to the failure of the Presbyterians to pay arrears owed for the services of New Model Army soldiers in the fighting from 1642-45 (The Presbyterians saw the NMA as being full of 'sectaries' and Puritans hence their dislike of it). However in order to subjugate Ireland Cromwell was then forced to purge the Levellers and reorganise the army (Marx himself says in a letter to Engels that his studies of 17th century history led him to believe that the English Republican project floundered on the shores of Ireland). The elimination of both the Presbytarian moderates who favoured constitutional monarchy and the democratic republican Levellers led to the protectorate which was a restoration of the Monarchy in all but name (Cromwell was offered the crown in 1657 but refused because he knew it would spark renewed opposition within the Army ranks).

[S.Artesian]

Not entirely relevant, but if The Inform Candidate, Kiev Communard and S. Artesian are right about the Jacobin supression of those to the left of them then there are some obvious parrallels with the period in English history from 1647 to the restoration in 1660. Cromwell was able to purge parliament of the moderates and eliminate Charles I only by leaning on the Levellers and radicals in the army whose ideas were thriving thanks to the failure of the Presbyterians to pay arrears owed for the services of New Model Army soldiers in the fighting from 1642-45 (The Presbyterians saw the NMA as being full of 'sectaries' and Puritans hence their dislike of it). However in order to subjugate Ireland Cromwell was then forced to purge the Levellers and reorganise the army (Marx himself says in a letter to Engels that his studies of 17th century history led him to believe that the English Republican project floundered on the shores of Ireland). The elimination of both the Presbytarian moderates who favoured constitutional monarchy and the democratic republican Levellers led to the protectorate which was a restoration of the Monarchy in all but name (Cromwell was offered the crown in 1657 but refused because he knew it would spark renewed opposition within the Army ranks).

Great post, and it's relevant to the historical process of Thermidorean reactions.