The Jacobin tradition

[Labor Shall Rule]

The Jacobins were the revolutionary element during the French Revolution; they were the most radical section of the petit-bourgeois within the urban centers, who exerted their actions through the support of the sans-culottes, the ill-clad and ill-equipped workers and artisans that wore their red-caps with pride. They acted as the vanguard, which lead the masses to not only wipe out an oppressive and outmoded social system, but to carry on necessary historical objectives through their dedication and determination. They carried with them an obsessive form of radical egalitarianism that was not yet witnessed in human history; Robespierre once said, "royalty has been destroyed, now the reign of equality is beginning", and attacked the rising bourgeoisie by continuing with how they saw "those goods which are necessary to keep people alive as nothing more than an ordinary item of trade".

They are not only remembered for their historical role however, but also for their ability to institute measures that, aside from representing the most consistent revolutionary tendency at the time, were also demanded out of their conditions that they were in. The Reign of Terror, along with the September Massacres, were actions implemented out of necessity; though unexcusable excesses arised out of them, they defeated both external and internal foes who would of most likely reacted more viciously and bloodthirsty if they won. The Thermidorian Reaction, accompanied with the rise of Napolean, signified the consolidation of the bourgeoisie as a class over the Jacobins.

The political tradition of Jacobinism has been it's service in providing a strategy for future generations of revolutionaries. It exposed the rules of power politics and utterly rejected the same spineless, Kantian morality that social democrats and liberals expouse today - bourgeois morality, call it what you will. As long as you play by rules that the bourgeoisie prescribes but does not itself follow, ever, you will be a loser, in a personal and historical sense. As so, Robespierre, and other Jacobins, should not be remembered for the heads that were sliced under their supervision, but rather their contribution to revolutionary politics.

Who doesn't associate with this Jacobin tradition, and why not?

[chimx]

But it was specifically their excesses, that you acknowledge, that resulted in the rise of the Thermidorian reaction. Institutionalized violence and state sponsored terrorism is not the same as a social revolution. The French peasants and sans-culottes knew the difference, and became alienated from Jacobin morality.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Not necessarily.

The sans-culottes became disconnected and alienated from the Jacobins due to their concessions that they gave to the big bourgeoisie; in response to the concuring demand of the enforcement maximum prices to assist feeding the famine-stricken urbanites that was echoed by the most radical sections, Robespierre tried and guillotined Herbert, head of the Enrages, along with closing down several clubs, such as the Society for Revolutionary Women, that were becoming louder voices than the Jacobins themselves.

[Tower of Bebel]

Most people who died during the reign of terror were farmers and workers. They had no program, they were idealists and -of course- were inable to stop the bourgeoisie as there was no control by the workers.

[rouchambeau]

I don't identify with such a tradition. It's outdated. I'd rather identify with something a little more 20th Century.

[syndicat]

the Jacobin tradition gave rise to the idea of an elite, a vanguard, seizing state power supposedly to act on behalf of the masses. it does not give rise to the idea of direct power exercized by the mass of the people through community assemblies (like the Parisian "sections" in the French revolution) and the workplace assemblies. workplace assemblies/organizations could only come to fore after larger enterprises were created, which happened through capitalist development. the idea of an elite seizing control of state power cannot liberate humanity since it won't get rid of the class system. it only empowers a bureaucratic class via the state.

[Tower of Bebel]

I have no problem with that. Only the word elite is vague.

[syndicat]

the Jacobins were enemies of the directly democratic neighborhood assemblies in the French revolution. These were called "sections". the Jacobins restricted the frequency of meetings and evolved them into committees to work with the police in fingering alleged "counter-revolutionaries". the Jacobin leaders were lawyers and writers and other relatively privileged elements. there was a socialist minority among the Jacobins that wanted a form of state socialism, e.g. Babeuf. this implies concentration of power into the hands of a more educated and privileged element, to direct the state and, through state control of the economy, the labor process as well. this tendency towards the consolidation of a bureaucratic dominating class became clearer in the Russian revolution. Lenin's political thinking was in the Jacobin tradition.

[Rawthentic]

syndicat, I have a bit of a problem taking you seriously here. First you come up with some ridiculous tripe that Lenin's thinking was parallel to that of the Jacobin's, and I recall that you called the Russian Revolution a "coordinatorist revolution." Get serious or do something for fuck's sake.

Oh yeah, and I've never heard of this "elite vanguard" before. Where did you get it from? And I also know you are using the anarchist definition of the state, not the materialist one.

[Tower of Bebel]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 08:58 pm
the Jacobins were enemies of the directly democratic neighborhood assemblies in the French revolution. These were called "sections". the Jacobins restricted the frequency of meetings and evolved them into committees to work with the police in fingering alleged "counter-revolutionaries". the Jacobin leaders were lawyers and writers and other relatively privileged elements. there was a socialist minority among the Jacobins that wanted a form of state socialism, e.g. Babeuf. this implies concentration of power into the hands of a more educated and privileged element, to direct the state and, through state control of the economy, the labor process as well. this tendency towards the consolidation of a bureaucratic dominating class became clearer in the Russian revolution. Lenin's political thinking was in the Jacobin tradition.
Don't divert this to the Russian revolution because otherwise we must go off topic. Socialism can only be interantional or wont be socialism.

Lenin's political thinking was not in the Jacobin tradition as it had a proletarian program. The Soviet-Union had to be a woker's state and it needed progress, not stagnation or decline.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Raccoon and Syndicat, I never doubted what you said. I never ignored their class influence, and the material conditions that they were working under that forced them to swerve between bourgeois influences, to that of the sans-culottes that they found their base in. It was not some idealistic proportion of how many heads they chopped off, but rather, the class forces that grew opposed to the Jacobin programme since it didn't suit to their interests, who in turn, overthrew their control over the National Assembly.

However, they accomplished certain historical objectives that advanced the productive forces further; most importantly, abolishing the feudal relations in production. As such, their actions are justified in that they played a progressive role in introducing capitalist production which, in turn, made it's future expropriation by the whole working class possible in the first place. You can dilude that reality by demeaning them with how they 'ran over direct democracy' or how they aspired to 'direct the state', but none of that matters since they fufilled their social stratum's goal - and that is the establishment of capitalism over feudalism.

[Rawthentic]

Raccoon, these people seem to think that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had some sort of conspiracy going on to gain power and terrorize the masses. But yeah, lets not divert this to the Russian Revolution, because syndicat will get owned like always.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 08:31 pm
Lenin's political thinking was not in the Jacobin tradition as it had a proletarian program. The Soviet-Union had to be a woker's state and it needed progress, not stagnation or decline.
Are you sure about that?


Can 'Jacobinism' Frighten the Working Class?, Vladimir Lenin:

Bourgeois historians see Jacobinism as a fall ("to stoop"). Proletarian historians see Jacobinism as one of the highest peaks in the emancipation struggle of an oppressed class. The Jacobins gave France the best models of a democratic revolution and of resistance to a coalition of monarchs against a republic. The Jacobins were not destined to win complete victory, chiefly because eighteenth-century France was surrounded on the continent by much too backward countries, and because France herself lacked the material basis for socialism, there being no banks, no capitalist syndicates, no machine industry and no railways.

“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.

Can 'Jacobinism' Frighten the Working Class (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/07a.htm)


The Enemies of the People, Vladimir Lenin
Plekhanov’s Yedinstvo (which even the Socialist-Revolutionary Dyelo Naroda justly calls a newspaper at one with the liberal bourgeoisie) has recently recalled the law of the French Republic of 1793 relating to enemies of the people.

A very timely recollection.

The Jacobins of 1793 belonged to the most revolutionary class of the eighteenth century, the town and country poor. It was against this class, which had in fact (and not just in words) done away with its monarch, its landowners and its moderate bourgeoisie by the most revolutionary measures, including the guillotine—against this truly revolutionary class of the eighteenth century—that the monarchs of Europe combined to wage war.

The Jacobins proclaimed enemies of the people those "promoting the schemes of the allied tyrants directed against the Republic".

The Jacobins’ example is instructive. It has not become obsolete to this day, except that it must be applied to the revolutionary class of the twentieth century, to the workers and semi-proletarians. To this class, the enemies of the people in the twentieth century are not the monarchs, but the landowners and capitalists as a class.

If the “Jacobins” of the twentieth century, the workers and semi-proletarians, assumed power, they would proclaim enemies of the people the capitalists who are making thou sands of millions in profits from the imperialist war, that is, a war for the division of capitalist spoils and profits.

The “Jacobins” of the twentieth century would not guillotine the capitalists—to follow a good example does not mean copying it. It would be enough to arrest fifty to a hundred financial magnates and bigwigs, the chief knights of embezzlement and of robbery by the banks. It would be enough to arrest them for a few weeks to expose their frauds and show all exploited people "who needs the war". Upon exposing the frauds of the banking barons, we could release them, placing the banks, the capitalist syndicates, and all the contractors “working” for the government under workers’ control.

The Jacobins of 1793 have gone down in history for their great example of a truly revolutionary struggle against the class of the exploiters by the class of the working people and the oppressed who had taken all state power into their own hands.

The miserable Yedinstvo (with which the Menshevik defencists were ashamed to form a bloc) wants to borrow Jacobinism in letter and not in spirit, its exterior trappings and not the content of its policy. This amounts in effect to a betrayal of the revolution of the twentieth century, a betrayal disguised by spurious reference to the revolutionaries of the eighteenth century.

The Enemies of the People (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jun/20b.htm)

Lenin, Trotsky, and the other Bolsheviks placed themselves in the Jacobin tradition, notwithstanding the necessary historical limitations of that analogy. Trotsky once said to Cadet leader Miliukov, after he equated them to the Jacobins, that "you may say of the Bolsheviks with still more justice what was said... about the Jacobins. They were adequate to the epoch and its tasks." To Lenin, proletarian leadership is analogous to the Jacobin Club, in that they both represent the most progressive class at two distinct points in the historical process, one being the town and country poor at the dawn of capital, and the other the industrial working class, and the radicalized elements of the peasantry at the dawn of socialism. Just as the Jacobins understood the necessity, under definite and specific conditions, for revolutionary terror, the Bolsheviks understood this also, which is where they associated themselves with the Jacobin tradition.

[Rawthentic]

In this sense I of course concur with comrade RedDali, that is to say, with the historical comparison.

Where I differed was with syndicat's crap about the Bolsheviks and Lenin believing some "elite" would emancipate the proletariat.

[Tower of Bebel]

Nice addition, Red Dhali, yet I'm not convinced. I see the Jacobines as "democrats", not ancestors of socialists. There were similarities and the bourgeois historians see even more similarities than Lenin did. They were indeed the most revolutionary group during the revolution, but not for long.

They were revolutionary and supported the masses against the king and bourgeoisie, yet when the massas radicalized they alienated from the masses. The reign of terror in my opinion was a struggle for survival of Jacobinism and therefor radical elements amongst the masses had to die also. That's why so many lower class people died during the reign of terror.

During the Belgian revolution and during the precarious situation thereafter (1830-1848) we had a similar group of "revolutionaries". Most of them were petty-bourgeois, ready to struggle for more democracy. They were excluded by the bourgeoisie from having influence on the constitution, and therefor these petty-bourgeois "radicals" - I call them democrats - joined the liberals. They wanted to be the dominant factor in the Liberal mouvement. When in 1885 the Belgian worker's party was created many of those democrats joined this party for the same reason as they joined the liberals. They were the reason why the BWP wasn't even revolutionary from the beginning.

Jacobinism cannot survive if it cannot eliminate the bourgeoisie indeed. The Jacobines had no idea of how to do this, except for the guillotine in France or the struggle for party dominance in Belgium. You can almost identify them with social-democrats (the "social patriots").
"Leninism" is by far better then jacobinism as it has a revolutionary program and the party must have it's roots in the working class.

I'm no expert, but I never found a convincing piece of text that I could agree with.

[Labor Shall Rule]

I never denied that they weren't socialists. They were not even in the correct historical epoch to style themselves with such a fancy adjective; though they used sentimental chat of 'liberty' and 'equality', their class was unable to establish such abstract notions due to their relationship to the means of production itself. I would also like to make clear that the Bolsheviks were indeed the most revolutionary group at that time, but not for long also.

I have merely attached myself to the historical reality that they advanced the productive forces by elevating the bourgeoisie to the position of the political power, and by doing so, they took on a role of strength and determination that was seperated from bourgeois morality that needs to be copied by genuine Marxist leadership also.

[BOZG]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 09:18 pm
I have merely attached myself to the historical reality that they advanced the productive forces by elevating the bourgeoisie to the position of the political power, and by doing so, they took on a role of strength and determination that was seperated from bourgeois morality that needs to be copied by genuine Marxist leadership also.
Exactly. Unfortunately, too many people on this site cannot look at a history from the standpoint of materialism and recognise what was necessary and what was achievable at a given historic period. Instead, they like to look back at history from the benefit of hindsight and apply the necessities of today to the past. The Jacobins were the revolutionary leadership of their own period and took the necessary steps to consolidate the bourgeois revolution, whether there were excesses or not. They did act in the interests of the workers and poor but in the interests of the bourgeoisie which was absolutely necessary. Socialism, workers' democracy and an end to classes was not on a possibility at that period.

[Tower of Bebel]

I see them as populists. but I can see that some have a more positive image of the Jacobines. Maybe I should read more on the subject, maybe I can convince myself.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 01:31 pm
Lenin's political thinking was not in the Jacobin tradition as it had a proletarian program. The Soviet-Union had to be a woker's state and it needed progress, not stagnation or decline.
Playing devil's advocate for a moment, but didn't Lenin actually praise the Jacobins and whatever group Cromwell led - specifically on the issue of terror (albeit turning out to criticize them for A) not rolling enough of the RIGHT heads and B) not doing significantly more besides rolling heads and thus preventing Thermidor, because terror alone doesn't solve anything)?

[Although I do agree with many other posters here in regards to the key difference: one group was conspiratorial, and the other group not.]



To me, the Jacobins probably understood the need at that time for a "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proles and peasants" - albeit under the heavy-handed leadership of the radical elements of the petit bourgeoisie. They just didn't know who amongst the petit bourgeoisie was for the revolution and who was for what would become Thermidor.

[Philosophical Materialist]

No I don't associate myself with it, though I find the concept interesting and meaningful. It was a product of a radicalised French bourgeoisie which fought the French aristocracy and saw the republic as the only way to secure bourgeois rule. The French Republic's secular nature was for its epoch progressive, but it laid to foundations for the class antagonisms between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Jacobinism elsewhere seemed to evolve into radical liberalism. The desire for manhood suffrage and secularism was there, but economic liberation and proto-communism was not. Jacobinism is very much a child of the Enlightenment (secularism) and the Romantic age (republican nation-states and citizenship).

Yes it is very much of its epoch, and it would be unfair and anachronistic to cry its lack of Marxist analysis, but I do nor relate to it. I prefer to start with Marx and scientific socialism.