Jacobinism, Jacobins?

[S. Caserio]

Revolutionary sect.
Leading in the committee of public safety.

What where they?

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

fucking liberals

[Guardia Rossa]

Revolutionary bourgeoisie, fought with sans-cullotes, proto-socialists and moderates to end absolutism in France, installing a more bourgeois-friendly state. Went down when Napoleon rocketed with the moderates supporting him (and he supporting them)

[G4b3n]

fucking liberals

You say that like it is a bad thing?
They were the radical section of the progressive bourgeois who overthrew the old feudal system in France and lead one of the most progressive revolutions in history.

Why do some leftists hate bourgeois revolutionaries? It is paradoxical, contradictory and shows a failure of historical analysis.


Revolutionary bourgeoisie, fought with sans-cullotes, proto-socialists and moderates to end absolutism in France, installing a more bourgeois-friendly state. Went down when Napoleon rocketed with the moderates supporting him (and he supporting them)

The Jacobins went down but the bourgeoisie did not.
Napoleon was arguably one the first ruling lapdogs of the bourgeois. They said jump, and he asked how high.

[Rafiq]

The Jacobins were undoubtedly 'bourgeois' in character, however, French political and social conditions were similar to those in which resided in Communist states that underwent an organic internal revolution (i.e. China, the Soviet Union, Albania and so on). The French bourgeoisie was unable to partake in the transformation of the state apparatus to conform to the will of the bourgeoisie: That is to say, absolutism itself was characterized by compromise with the bourgeois classes, reconciling their interests with the crown and the nobility which, while perhaps making, or keeping many of them rich, inhibited capitalist development and the sophistication of productive relations. This led to great social, and political instability in what became debt-riddled France, leading to the three estates and so forth.

The bourgeois classes were organically, or directed represented by the Girodins, while the Jacobins, equally bourgeois in nature, had their social basis in the Sans-cullotes. The sans-cullotes were a class doomed to eventual non-existence, while at the same time being staunchly anti-monarchist, so they posed the the most convenient basis for the task which had to be at hand: The annihilation of the aristocracy and its social remnants to pave way for capitalist development. The Jacobins, while not possessing the full support of the French bourgeoisie, did what the French bourgeois could not do for them. They were radical romantic revolutionaries - and the legacy of the Jacobins is now forever ingrained into the history of socialism - not because they were socialists, but because as revolutionaries, they presented forth a radical egalitarian vision which could only destroy the remnants of feudalism completely. Within the Jacobins, if you will, resided not only bourgeois ideology as such, but the contradictions of bourgeois society, within them resided the force of Communism all the same bourgeois-liberalism. This is because the retrospective implications of defending the Jacobins means upholding revolutionary discipline and the recognition of the necessity of the price of freedom.

[Rafiq]

Why do some leftists hate bourgeois revolutionaries? It is paradoxical, contradictory and shows a failure of historical analysis.

Because they do not think. They don't understand that the dichotomy wasn't between Communists and bourgeois revolutionaries but between the possibility of both and the previous feudal order. the implications of condemning bourgeois revolutionaries is an insistence on behalf of the reaction and feudalism, because the only thing that made them historically distinct was their role in destroying it (feudalism's political remnants).

We know this because the only meaningful embodiment of what could be called Communism was after the Jacobins, with the conspiracy of the equals and Babeuf, of whom were very fond of Jacobins like Robespierre until their death.