Guerrilla History - *UNLOCKED* Intelligence Briefing: 1793 French Constitution

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

Guerrilla History- Intelligence Briefings will be roughly a twice monthly series of shorter, more informal discussions between the hosts about topics of their choice.  Patrons at the Comrade tier and above will have access to all Intelligence Briefings. This Intelligence Briefing will be an early-release episode for our patreon members, about the radical French Constitution of 1793, which was never implemented despite being ratified.  The guys discuss the historical context for this document, how it compares to US documents of the same period, and how it compares to the much more conservative French Constitution of 1795, which was implemented.  Here are links to read the French Constitutions of 1793 and 1795, in english: 1793- https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/1793-french-republic-constitution-of-1793  1795- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Constitutions_and_Other_Select_Documents_Illustrative_of_the_History_of_France,_1789%E2%80%931907/50  Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea. Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod.  Your contributions make the show possible to continue and succeed!  Please encourage your comrades to join us, which will help our show grow. To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter at @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter at @Red_Menace_Pod.  You can find and support these shows by visiting https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/. Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.                    

You don't remember Den Van Booh? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. Today we're going to be doing an intelligence briefing, which if you don't remember,

intelligence briefings are our Patreon episodes. Half of them are Patreon exclusive. Half of them are available on Patreon on early release before we put them onto our general podcast feed. This is going to be an early release episode. We're going to be talking about the French Constitution of 1793, which was never implemented. So I'm going to introduce us now. I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm well. Hi, Henry. Good to be with you. And also joined by Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you?

Hello, I'm doing good. so i'm really happy that we're getting the opportunity to talk about the french constitution of 1793 because the french the french revolution in general is a very interesting event but for me personally the two things that i always thought were the most interesting points were the constitution of 1793 which is perhaps the most radical constitution at least of its today but potentially all the way up until today it is quite a rapid document, although not quite as radical as it could have been, as I'm sure Brett's going to talk about in a bit. But the other aspect that I definitely want to be able to talk about

in the future on this show is Babouf, our favorite proto-communist. And I would really like to have a full episode on that. But in any case, I'm very excited to have the opportunity to talk about the Constitution of 1793. So just to lay the groundwork here, as I mentioned, this is during the French revolutionary period. During the revolutionary period, there was several constitutions that were formalized within the French, soon to be republic, both before and after the, you know, getting rid of the king. And as time went on, the composition of the government in France became more and more radical. And by 1790, the government was quite radical and was very committed to equality, egalitarianism,

or I guess we could just say liberty, equality, and fraternity, as the tripartate slogan goes. And they constructed this document based on the ideals of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which I'm going to have Brett introduced to us in just a second. But I find this document quite fascinating because it was made roughly at the same time as the United States' Constitution. And yet, while there are some similarities between the Constitution, in fact, there's quite a few similarities. This document goes far beyond what the United States' Constitution does in its scope and its ideals. And for that reason, I think it's an interesting document for us to look at. So, Brett, why don't I toss this over to you now to talk about the Declaration of the Rights of Man?

how they play into the Constitution of 1793, and then your initial thoughts on this Constitution as a document. Sure. So, you know, for people listening in the United States, there is very much a mere sort of thing going on. We know the Declaration of Independence of the United States, and we know the Constitution of the United States. And you can think of mere processes happening at roughly the same time in France

and under the sort of general umbrella. of a bourgeois revolution in both places. Also important, I think, to zoom out a little bit and talk about the three major revolutions of this time, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution, or all can be seen as these three versions of this moving away from feudalism and monarchism toward constitutional republicanism, et cetera. And you could think of, or some ways to think of it would be like the Haitian revolution being the most radical, the French Revolution being like the centrist

position, you know, less radical. than the Haitian in some ways, but more radical than the American revolution, which we've talked about with Gerald Horn as it can be seen as in some ways a counter-revolution. So it's sort of interesting to understand that context. And another thing to note also is Thomas Payne wrote the rights of man in 1791 two years before this, and that's obviously an influence. And Thomas Payne, I think, is somebody that talk about an intel brief we could do at some point. Thomas Paine's a really interesting figure and the only quote-unquote founding father that I personally have a certain affinity for. But regardless, the Declaration of Rights of Man is this sort

of boisterous assertion of these rights, right? And then the Constitution is going to take this declaration, try to put it into a legalistic framework and set up how a society would run given these declaration of the rights of man. But some of these declarations are pretty radical specifically compared to the to the u.s. declaration and one of the things that jumped out right away and we can get deeper into this but in the u.s you know we always hear you know life liberty and the pursuit of happiness these are the three things sort of guaranteed from the outset and that declaration and in this one it's a little different it's number two is well number one is the aim of society is the

common welfare so that's a little different right like especially in post-reganer in the u.s What's the aim of society? It's to defend liberty, right? From a sort of right-wing libertarian point of view. The idea that government is there to ensure the common welfare is something that I think the entire American right, for example, would more or less reject in various ways. So it's interesting to think about that's the number one declaration. And then the second one is instead of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,

these rights are equality, liberty, security, and property. So, of course, property is going to be in there because this is, a bourgeois revolution and property at that time or the the idea that regular people could have property, et cetera, was a reaction to feudalism and coming out of that, et cetera. So these are progressive for their time. We now know downstream what the effects of something like private property is. We can get into that a little bit. But the right of equality, unlike in the American Declaration, the right of equality, not just the stating that humans are created by God naturally, right, but that they have a right to equality. Now, what does that mean? What are the

contradictions between equality and liberty? I hope we can get into that a little bit. But, but yeah, so I don't know really what else to say other than to set up that relationship between the declaration and the constitution and then sort of mirror it to the American model so that we can come to understand a little bit better. Something that I think that I'm just going to add in very quickly before I turn it over to Adnan for his thoughts is that you mentioned Thomas Payne. And of course, Thomas Payne played a pretty critical role in both the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Thomas Payne also was the person who put in the Declaration of Rights of Man. But one interesting thing is that when they were making this Constitution, the Constitution of 1793, that is,

he was member of the Girondin Club. So we're not going to get too into the weeds of the French Revolution here. That's something for a future episode or a different podcast entirely. I recommend the revolutions podcast. You know, it's not a radical podcast by any means, but it does a very good job of getting into the weeds that we're going to try to avoid here. But the Gerondin Club was the, you know, they were both, the Geronans and the Jacobins were anti-monarchy, but the Gerandans and the Jacobins were opposed to each other. And Thomas Payne was a member of the Girondin Club, and Robespierre, who many of you have heard of, was the leader of the Jacobin Club at this point.

And they were in conflict with each other, but they did agree on these declarations of the rights of man. The interesting, the reason I bring this up and the reason it's interesting is the Girondon Club had basically fallen apart by the time that this Constitution was being ratified, meaning that the Jacobin Club was able to make the Constitution even more radical than it likely would have been if the Girondins hadn't fallen at that time. And actually, interestingly, Thomas Payne ended up in prison and was set to be executed. But based on some fluky luck and, you know, some narrow breaks, he ended up not being executed at that time. And hopefully we will be doing an episode on Thomas Payne in the future. and Adnan and I are both friends with Harvey J.K., who wrote a biography of Thomas Payne,

and I think that he'd be a good book, or a good guest for that episode. But Adnan, now that I just got that little bit of information that I think is interesting out there, why don't we get your thoughts on the situation that was unfolding and the Declaration or the Constitution of 1793, as well as Declaration of Rights of Man, if you want to talk about that? Sure, yeah. I think you did a good job of setting up one of the first. of the key principles that is perhaps in some ways interesting and mysterious about transformations

in France during this period, which is that the initial revolution is willing to accommodate some form of constitutional monarchy. So it starts out being far less radical. And as time goes on gathers greater and greater ambition for really reforming society and that there's a certain segment that becomes very powerful that has a much more radical vision. So if you compare, for example, the Declaration of the Rights of Man from 1789, which is the first statement of these principles, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen 1793 has many more provisions and seems to want to go a lot further in certain areas, like defining and expanding aspects, for example, of the principle of resistance to an unjust authority. So the Rights of Man in 1789, the second provision or the second article is,

The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. And that's stated there, but there isn't a lot further detail given to that relationship between people and the government and when that contract, as it were, in this sort of liberal ideal philosophical language, when that's dissolved and how. Whereas if you look at the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1793, there are quite a few provisions here that really are restricting.

I think they've already discovered that even bourgeois authority can be oppressive and inimical to these ideals of equality. And so they're still working out and thinking about how can you dissolve an unjust government if you need to. And so it enshrines provision Article 33 in the later declaration. is resistance to oppression is the consequence of the other rights of man so it follows from these that you have this right of resistance and then it says there is oppression against a social body when a single one of its members is oppressed there is oppression against each member when the social body is oppressed so they're kind of thinking about this problem or question and and

then it concludes sort of the last article is when the government violates the rights of the people and it's spent this time talking about all of these rights and enumerating them fairly carefully when the government violates the rights of the people insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties so it's not even just a right they actually make it a positive requirement that everyone should rise up it's actually a duty of human beings So that's kind of an interesting thing to see is that even at the ideological statement, there is further refinement and increasing radicalization.

And that's, of course, what we know is that we're on the cusp when this is passed of what will come to be known as the reign of terror, you know, that leads to the Gerondins being excised from government and, in many cases, you know, executed and so on, as counter-revolutionaries. But it also is the reason why, you know, that increasing radicalization also meant perhaps that this Constitution that follows in 1793 after this declaration is never actually put into effect legally

is partly because they feel that they have to defend the revolution as they increasingly radicalize the forces of reaction against them that oppose these increasingly radical demands are stronger or gain force and they can't actually put this into effect. So that's one interesting contradiction of this situation. But in terms of the actual constitution, it's not a very long document, but it has the skeletal shape of how government will be organized but I guess the one or two key things at first just initially jumped out at me was how the assembly is supposed to meet each year and only for that year you know there's elections every year on May day May 1st and you renew so nobody is really in power necessarily

is unceasing kind of elections so the terms of office are really only for a very brief period of time. And I think also the definition of citizenship, this might be interesting in contemporary debates about immigration and naturalization, these things that are such hot-button issues in contemporary U.S. politics, is that it was defined in a very interesting way, not by some mystical idea of who the French people are or anything like that. It's, you know, okay, we know who the French people are, but anybody else who's coming from outside. can quickly gain by working for a year you know and then even if you don't do that you know as long as you're not a person of ill repute and maybe a drag on

everyone else you can be essentially considered a French citizen and have the same rights but by the same token it's really interesting how you can lose citizenship is a very different concept of citizenship you can also lose citizenship and the rights of citizenship fairly I was a lot of I wouldn't say easily, but if you violate these provisions or the duties of citizenship, you can lose them as well. So it's kind of interesting. You can acquire them more easily and be part of the political community, and you can also lose them more quickly. So I like that you're bringing up components of the Constitution itself, Adnan, and I'm going to have both of you bring up some specific points within the Constitution that you find to be particularly interesting.

but I just want to, before we turn into the Constitution itself, to lay out something that you mentioned briefly, Adnan, is that this Constitution was never enacted. It was ratified, but it was not enacted. And I just want to make sure that this hits home for people that are listening. This document that was made that is with the express intent of trying to systematize the goals of the declarations of rights of man and to create the kind of society that they were fighting for never actually went into effect.

It never actually systematized those goals. It never had any bearing on the laws in France. And as Adnan pointed out, and again, this is worth driving home, is that one of the reasons why is because there was this almost paranoia at the time as they were trying to push the radical agenda, the the lofty goals, the righteous goals of the Declaration of Rights of Man, as they were pushing those to their conclusion, as they were pushing them to their end stage where you really do see their conception of egalitarianism, their conception. Again, this isn't necessarily true egalitarianism, but it's their conception of egalitarianism, their conception of brotherhood, their conception of liberty. And as they are increasingly pushing these goals towards

towards that, as they're continuing to push the revolution towards those goals, it made it harder and harder to try to systematize those goals in the short term. Because an increasing number of people of society, and again, I'm just reiterating the point that Adnan made, but it was an excellent point, Adon, so I commend you for laying it out. But as you as you continue to radicalize this document and add lofty goals to it, you are going to have more and more conservative and moderate members of society line up against what you are pushing for. And it is that lining up that makes, that made it so that the individuals that were pushing for these goals had to abandon the goals in order to concretize the gains of the revolution.

because as they were picking up enemies of the revolution by advancing these quote-unquote radical goals, they were picking up more and more enemies, which of course makes counter-revolution much more likely and in their eyes made it much more necessary to implement measures to crush any counter-revolution that in themselves actually run contrary to the goals that they were trying to advance with the Constitution of 1793. So it's this interesting dichotomy of the more that they're trying to push for lofty goals, the more they have to abandon those goals in order to try to push for those goals in the future. So it's just an interesting point to me that by pushing for these goals, they actually had to abandon them in the near term, and they never

ended up being able to implement them in the long term. Brett, why don't I turn to you now? And we'll start talking a little bit more about the contents of the Constitution of 1793 itself. was there anything in here that particularly jumped out to you or that you found interesting that we want to bring up for discussion and how it relates to both the time period at which it was enacted again remember this is around the same time that the U.S. Constitution was put in place maybe talk about how it related to the time period in general as well as how a lot of these things would be lofty goals even by today's standards Yeah, well, there's one thing I think that's interesting to think about just broadly and historically, which is it often comes up when you see like, you know, unrest in France is like, you know, why do the French seem so much more willing to go hard in the streets than other European countries or specifically the U.S.? And, you know, in Europe, you can sort of think like, you know, Germans had the philosophy and the British had the economics and the French had the radical politics.

And, of course, they're all intermingling, and, you know, it's not like just one has it exclusively, but there is this strain in French politics that goes back to this and beyond that has played out over and over again. And just a few decades after these struggles between these radical elements and reactionary elements, you had the attempt of the Paris Commune, which is trying to give expression to some of the best of these documents, while also sort of working through the contradictions of like the class dimensions that aren't really discussed in either of these documents. There is these gesturing toward equality, right? But what does equality mean in a class society? And so we often think on the Marxist left, you know, the Paris commune is this first properly proletarian revolution.

And it's interesting how it dialectically comes out of this period of time. And then what was it followed by, you know, Napoleonic reaction? And even to this day, French are still seemingly more willing to go much further in protest. And some of the stuff in this document, which would, you know, way too radical for its American counterpart, I think points to that. Now, where does cause and effect begin and end? That's a deeper question. And obviously, these impulses are already in French society. So it's not like these are the causal starting points.

But it's just interesting to look back through French. history with this in mind and compare it to something like the U.S., which loves to think of itself as like, don't tread on me, you know, we're against tyranny and depression, but at the same time are so, you know, these dominant strains of it, the strains of American society that want to make their politics about being anti-tire tyranny and anti-government are so often the foot soldiers for the status quo in various ways. And that contradiction is interesting, I think, speaks to something more conservative and counter-revolutionary even in the American spirit and the American project overall compared with the French. But that history aside, one thing this

did that's worth pointing is the abolishment of slavery, not overly surprising, but it'd take the U.S. many more decades in a civil war to come to that. It certainly wasn't included in their founding documents like it was here. And the other thing I noticed in the Constitution specifically was that there is a phrase that says that the French should not interfere with the governments of others. And I said, oh, oh, French colonialism. What about this?

You know, like if this were to be established, what would the implications be for French colonialism? But just the idea of putting that, not even just in the Declaration, but that made it, you know, word for word into the Constitution itself. That is very, very interesting. And with, you know, imagine in the American context

of putting something like that. And in our documents and then these constitution lovers, like how would you square that circle ideologically and with imperialism and everything? So I thought that was very interesting, of course, as you've all made clear many times, this was never put into practice. But the implications of something like that. And French colonialism wasn't something that happened after this. I mean, French colonialism happened centuries before this during and after this. So I just wondered what the framers of that phrase were thinking. explicitly with regards to French colonialism.

I don't have the answer to that, but it's interesting. I just want to pitch in one quick word before Adnan. I let you take it over, and Adnan, I hope that you'll talk about the citizenship laws a little bit more specifically because I also found them to be very interesting. But Brett, you mentioned French colonialism, and that's a very good point because an example of how this had an effect beyond the fact that it was not even implemented was,

remember, and you brought it up, there was three big revolutions at this time period, American, French, and Haitian. The Haitian revolution and the French Revolution were running concurrently with one another. And one of the things that really was a driving force in the Haitian revolution was the Declaration of Rights of Man, as well as the French Constitution of 1793. These documents were well known. And while, of course, there was a delay in the news, traveling from France to Haiti because, you know, everything had to go across the Atlantic on a boat. These documents made it over to Haiti. The Declaration of Rights of Man were in Haiti. They were read in Haiti. The French Constitution of 1793, despite not being implemented,

was red in Haiti. And a lot of the things, the goals that were being pushed in these documents were used as justification by the slave leaders in the Haitian revolution for their rising against slavery and they're rising against French colonialism. So as you said, Brett, these documents really run contrary to the development of France as an imperialist nation at this point. And if these documents with the French Constitution is 1793, if this had been systematized in France, what would that have meant for how France interacted with the rest of the world? Because the Haitians clearly saw it as an indication that if this was going to be systematized in France, Haiti should be for the Haitians. It should not be a colony of France. And I think that you're right,

thinking about if this had been put in place and if they had read that in the way that we are reading it, you know, it's hard to, it's hard to imagine what people 230 years ago, 228 years ago would have would have interpreted that as. But assuming that they have a similar interpretation to us, how do they interact with the rest of this world? And we don't No, Adnan, I'll turn it over to you now. Well, there's so many interesting things to talk about here. And also, I'm trying to think of connections to contemporary issues, just to see that contrast as well.

So we could go back and talk a little bit about that citizenship. I think that's the beginning of the document, and I think that's important because it establishes the political community. Who are we talking about? And then other things can flow from that. And it's really, as I said before, quite a radical characterization of who gets political rights and under what sorts of conditions. It's really very different from how we think of citizenship today, where it's almost

like it's not a malleable part of your identity. You are, you know, a politically constituted being, and that's very difficult to change. It's really very different here. And I think it's because it's sort of thinking more universalistically. because although the French Revolution was about the French state and French polity with these universalist documents of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and so on, there were some people who felt that this revolutionary change should be carried beyond France to other places.

I mean, we're partisans that thought that they should fight revolutionary war to spread the revolution. You know, that didn't necessarily happen, but it was something that perhaps Napoleon also tried to exploit in his own fashion and so that's why you see that um citizenship is every per well first it's every man i guess that's something we do need to say here is that as universalistic as there is a serious gendered component this is obviously of its time really thinking only about men of adult age which is defined as 21 years of age um but what is radical here is the idea that everybody every male person is a citizen whether or not they are a property holder and that's something that of course is not the case you know in the united states during this period

uh and but so it's every man born and living in france uh of 21 years of age and every alien who has attained the age of 21 and has been domiciled in france one year and lives from his labor so if you're living and working in a place you deserve political rights and then there's some additional components of this or has acquired property so maybe you didn't you've been living for a year but you you know bought something and you you know now have a house the fact that you have a house in this country that you've come to that gives you political rights or has married a French woman okay so you know this was a way you're incorporated into into the body

politic or has adopted a child or supports an aged man now this is these are interesting because this is very curious what's going on here what it is is that if you've made clearly it's some if you've made some kind of contribution to the welfare of the society and taken responsibility you know to support somebody who falls outside of that level of citizenship you know a child they're not of age so but if you take responsibility for them and you're making a contribution then you deserve you know established you you know, political rights, or supporting the elderly. So these are very interesting that you can gain citizenship,

basically by good works that supports a society. And then finally, every alien whom the legislative body has declared as one well-deserving of human dignity are admitted to exercise the rights of a French citizen. So in other words, if you're not a criminal or somebody who is a near-do-well, I don't know how they would determine this is a very interesting kind of point. But basically they're trying to expand who has political rights pretty maximally. And in our contemporary debate, so much of our concern is about limiting that community of people.

And if you connect this with provisions at the end that are about kind of foreign policy of the French nation, you can see that this idea that it should be welcoming to those who are outside of it is established there when it talks about how in provision Article 120 the French Republic should serve as a place of refuge for all who on account of liberty are banished from their native country. So if you come because you've been struggling for freedom in your country and you've been ejected as a result, And we think about wars, we think about, you know, what has caused the refugee crisis.

We're living in the greatest refugee crisis since World War II when there was cataclysmic world war going on. This is the largest, especially in terms of a percentage of the population, what we're dealing with now in the last decade or so has been a refugee crisis. And it's people who are fleeing oppression, economic oppression, war often created and fostered and fomented by U.S. in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, the wars that have taken place in Syria, that the U.S. has also supported, and Libya. So if we think about those kinds of conditions, how different is the ideal of the French Republic's idea of its foreign policy at this moment? That it is a nation that is the friend and natural ally of free nations. It does not interfere, as Brett are already mentioned, with the affairs of government of other nations.

It suffers no interference in other nations with its own, and that it serves as a place of refuge for people. And this is just such a radically different potential possibility for imagining how you should relate to the rest of the world. So those were quite interesting to think about how our ideal of the nation state now is really a, about limiting access and about enshrining exclusive rights, whereas this was defined in a much more expansive and fluid way, that the goal should be to include others, be a place of refuge. If somebody comes in as a productive member of society, they should have full political rights because the ideal is really meant to be universalizing.

I'm going to jump in with just a brief excerpt from this document and then I'm going to turn it over to Brett to have his say on this excerpt that I'm putting out there, the information that Adnan put out there about citizenship as well as anything else that Brett wants to say and then we'll just go around the horn one more time and I'll have our final thoughts on it before we wrap up. But I want to jump all the way down to the guarantee of rights within this document, which are clauses 122 through 124. And it reads, the Constitution guarantees to all Frenchmen. And again, Adnan already laid out how easy it was to get French citizenship status compared

to how it would have been prior to this document. Again, it hadn't been implemented, but how it would have been. guarantees to all Frenchmen equality, liberty, security, property, the public death, free exercise of religion, general instruction, public assistance, absolute liberty of the press, the right of petition, the right to hold popular assemblies, and the enjoyment of all of the rights of man. The French Republic respects loyalty, courage, age, filial love, misfortune. It places the Constitution under the guarantee of all virtues, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution

shall be engraven on tables to be placed in the midst of the legislative body and in public places. This really is a radical guarantee of rights. Of course, it's not all-encompassing, but for the time period, at least, this is a very, very extensive list of rights that are being guaranteed within this,

this constitution. And just to lay out a little bit further. So as we've, as we've said many times, this was never implemented. And a two years later, so in 1795, another constitution was made and was systematized. And that constitution rolled back many of these rights. Now, if I had planned ahead, I would have pulled those up. But while Brett is speaking, I will pull up the constitution of 1795 and we can compare the rights side by side on those. But Brett, why don't we turn over to you now and have your thoughts on the rights enshrined in the Constitution, the citizenship laws as well as anything else that you think is interesting in there? One thing that jumps out in contrast to the American Constitution and just the American mindset overall is this

tension between positive freedom and negative freedom. So in the in the U.S. version of these documents, they'll be much more like you shall not infringe upon, right, which is saying like you have freedoms that the government can't infringe upon. This is more robust and more directed toward positive freedom. And that's saying actually the government has a duty to provide with certain things. Now, this also opens up a huge amount of consternation and tension when it says something like the Constitution guarantees to all Frenchmen equality. what does that mean equality in what way because it's one thing to say that you're born equal everybody's equal because god or nature created us that way but if that were the case you wouldn't need to guarantee equality in this way it seems like it's saying something more but that bumps up with a whole bunch of tensions in class society more broadly as as regarding stuff like the equality of opportunity right which is something that liberals and conservatives both say that they support Right. We don't support a quality of outcome, but we support a quality of opportunity.

But of course, under capitalism, that can never exist. Wealth, to say nothing of something like the privileges of gender and race, get handed down generationally. And that's seen as somebody's liberty. I made that money. I can pass it down to my children. Well, from that starting point, you know, this kid is born into a millionaire's house. This kid is, you know, on food stamps.

Right there, a quality of opportunity is obliterated. So I would love to have seen this be implemented if nothing else. than to see how these contradictions and tensions would have been navigated and the parsing out of language that often happens in the modern day when we look back at our constitutional documents like with the second amendment it's like what does a well regulated militia mean right like we always parse over these words and try to figure out a re-originalist or is this a living diet right and so to have to deal with something like that is at least interesting um and then the the the idea that the french republic respects loyalty courage aid but misfortune am I right in interpreting that? Because I have a point to build off this. Am I right in interpreting that is saying like we acknowledge the fact that some people are subject to basically bad luck and that we have some sort of constitutional or governmental responsibility to help those people? Is that how you both interpreted that? Yes.

At least for me, that's how there was a section in the constitution and I'll have to scroll up. It's somewhere up above. but basically my my parsed down version of it is that people deserve the support of society when they can't support themselves i'll scroll up after i find this uh part in the 1795 constitution that i'm trying to find but but yeah you're that was my interpretation as well brett okay so then that that leads into this other point i want to make um which is going back to the declaration 21 and 22 gesture at this so 21 says in the declaration public relief is a sacred debt society owes maintenance to unfortunate citizens, either procuring work for them or in providing

the means of existence for those who are unable to labor. So that's basically like what disability insurance and or the guarantee to work, which is something like full employment, it's gesturing towards that. And then 22 is education is needed by all. Society ought to favor with all its power, the advancement of the public reason and to put education at the door of every citizen. Does that, you know, include higher education? Of course, it seems to be that. You know, if I should be able to explore my educational frontiers as furthest as I want and the government should be there to help me do that. That's very, very interesting. And this gets at something deeper and it goes back to the negative freedom and the positive freedom, which is this is setting up very early on the bare bones of at the very least something like a social democratic state.

And the French people to this day understand that and that, unlike Americans, they expect their government to actually do things for them. And not only when the government, you know, fails to protect their negative freedom, but when the government fails to do its job in providing or protecting the people, right, giving to the people, et cetera, on some level, that is cause for rebellion itself. And this goes also back to the last thing I'll say and I'll pass it off is the idea we talked about Thomas Payne, we definitely have to do. I think a full episode would be really fascinating because it's just this intersection of so many insane things

happening at once, seen through the lens of his life is interesting. But of course, Americans know him for writing common sense in 1775, just this argument against monarchy and like, you know, like, you know, meritocracy and like showing how the divine rights of kings is absurd, et cetera. And then in the French Revolution, his big contribution is the rights of man, which is more geared, I think, toward the French Republic and their current struggles, although it's obviously applicable to the U.S. and more broadly. But that was in 1791.

In 1797, right, 10 years before. he died. He wrote a document that I read as a teenager and was part of my radicalizing process, agrarian justice. And thinking about how in this French declaration and constitution, there's this attempt to say that the government needs to provide, Thomas Payne and agrarian justice, I encourage people to read it because it's succinct, it's understandable. And he's laying out these arguments in the 1700s for the government's duty to provide to old people to make sure like stuff like social security or medicare all those things were called those things at the

time he's arguing for that he's talking about something like a universal income he's talking about being able for when children turn 18 to have the government give them a certain amount of of money to help them along their way so this is a radically different um sort of trajectory that could have been taken and that was really there in the very beginning of these movements and that has i think has something to offer to much more radical and revolutionary projects today, not in the limited social democratic sense, but in the idea of wrestling with what it means to be able to provide people with the things they need, not only on terms of equality, but to facilitate the possibility of liberty. Because if you're poor, if you don't have

access to education, if you can get disabled and lose all your income and have no support whatsoever, what liberty do you really have? And so those tensions, I think, are incredibly interesting and continue to be, if not the highest, one of the highest contradictions and tensions in our society today, particularly here in the U.S., going through, you know, Black Lives Matter and income inequality and these reactions and don't tread on me right-wingers and different conceptions of what government's supposed to do. It's all just incredibly interesting to tie it back to this history. Adnan, I'll turn it over to you. I'm just scrolling down this document. It's about twice as long

is the Constitution of 1793, so it's taking me a while. But why don't we get your thoughts overall in the Constitution of 1793 before I'll pitch this and let Brett have his final say, and then we'll wrap this up. Yeah, I think something I should have mentioned before when I was talking about this understanding of rights of citizenship and how the French Republic should be a place of refuge is to note that I think despite the rhetoric of the current French far right about defending Republican values against the threat of immigrants and Muslims and the kind of fear-mongering that they're doing,

they're not defending at least this episode or this moment in French Republican ideals. I seem to have forgotten exactly these sort of attitudes. So that's one interesting and useful contradiction. So if there's any value in some ways to this document that was never really fully enacted, may have been ratified but never enacted and implemented, is at least that it represents ideals that gives a lie to contemporary cynical use of French republicanism to try and deny people rights and suppress. their freedom. So I wish they would read. I wish Le Pen would read this document and remember

the history of the French Republic and the French Revolution. And I guess an associated and connected point is that we often think of the doctrine of laicite and the idea of how secularism of the state is interpreted in this positive way, which is a little bit different from the First Amendment freedoms, freedom of religion that we're familiar with in. the U.S. as a result of the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution. But I think actually this document really suggests that maybe at the time there were more symmetries in the approach. So, for example, if we look at the Declaration of the Rights of Man from 1793,

you know, we notice that in Article 7, the right to express one's thoughts and opinions by means of the, the press or in any other manner the right to assemble peaceably the free pursuit of religion cannot be forbidden that's actually very much like the you know amendment one in in the bill of rights in language and I think also perhaps in conception of what it means for the state to be secular and if we think about the hostility to the established church and clergy you can understand you know that there was a need to disestablish it from the state it was was an oppressive element much more so than for example in u.s history where there wasn't a

centralized church that was established had a lot of control and resources the way in which the catholic church in france historically played this role as the first estate among the estates general right the first estate was the clergy they were a kind of governing sort of elite so i think somewhere along the line i should we should study the history a little bit more but somewhere along the line a different vision of laicite emerges that is not necessarily found in these documents but i guess the last thing last couple of things that i would note about this is in these revolutionary moments we also see that there is a revisibility in especially in these radical democratic and republican documents a sense that the governing documents themselves have to be open

to historical change and the democratic will of the people in a way that can seem unstable. You have 1790, you know, 1789, 1791, 1793, and then a constitution that you mentioned 1795, you know, within a short span of time, there are quite a number of major documents and rethinking of the political project of the revolution and how to guarantee a just and equitable society. What I'm amazed by is how long, for example, in the United States, we've gone without a fundamental revision of the document. And in the early history of the United States, you have the Declaration of Independence announcing these ideals, you have the articles of Confederation that are established, but then are sort of put aside because they felt that it didn't meet the needs of this emerging state. and so they revised it and you have a new constitution after you know a decade basically and then after that we treat these as if they are sacred texts that have been canonized rather than as

facilitations of you know democratic will and development and change there is revision with the amendment process but it's truly remarkable how difficult it is especially under current conditions to make fundamental changes to the governing document for the United States and if anything just looking back at this history it seems to me we should take a lesson that things change and you do need to rethink some of these you know some of these principles and test whether they're working or not and I would say in the United States there's a lot of fear about, well, what would happen if you actually had a constitutional convention? It might be completely uncontrollable. But on the other hand, what's the opportunity costs of having

used a document that is a product of a history, of a very unequitable society that we haven't really revised that much? I think it's interesting to look back and see how much people we're trying to think and rethink their polity and just the last thing you know this is a bourgeois revolutionary in a moment so it's going to have its limits and it also that history shows the fact that it wasn't ever really implemented also shows the dialectical nature of history and the fact that there are limits to what a bourgeois revolution really can achieve so until you have the people galvanized and able to critique this ideal of property that's one of the key contradictions here some of the other more radical provisions and democratic provisions seem like they will always

meet a kind of resistance that's difficult to overcome until you really rethink also what what does the right to property actually mean so anyway i'll just leave it at that it's a big kind of question i think for us to think about so i'm I'm just going to now go through some of the points that are in the Constitution of 1795 that compare and contrast with those individual rights guaranteed in the Constitution of 1793. I'll let you both have, you know, your last final thoughts on that and then we'll wrap it up. So again, we're going back to the Constitution of 1793 right now. And the guarantee of rights is very short because it's very all-encompassing, at least again,

compared to other documents of its day. You have the Constitution guarantees the all Frenchman equality, liberty, security, property, the public debt, free exercise of religion, general instruction, public assistance, absolute liberty of the press, the right of petition, the right to hold popular assemblies, and the enjoyment of all the rights of man. Okay, that's your guarantee of rights in 1793. If we go over to 1795, we're looking at several, a couple pages of text here in terms of these provisions. but I've highlighted a few to compare and contrast.

The law does not recognize religious vows nor any obligation contrary to the natural rights of man. No one can be prevented from speaking, writing, printing, or publishing his ideas. Okay, that's good. No one can be prevented from engaging in the worship, which he has chosen while he conforms to the laws. Okay, that's good.

There is neither privilege nor mastership nor Girond, nor limitation upon the proper liberty of the press or commerce, and the pursuit of industry and the arts of every kind. Okay, that's fine. But now we get done some interesting ones. We have corporations or associations contrary to the public order cannot be formed. Citizens cannot exercise their political rights except in the primary or communal assemblies. All persons are free to address petitions to the public authorities,

but they shall be individual. No association can present them collectively except the constituted authorities and only for matters appropriate to their province. Every armed mob is an attack upon the constitution. It shall be dispersed immediately by force. And lastly, this is the last point I'm going to raise up. Again, there's several pages.

Every unarmed mob shall likewise be dispersed at first by way of verbal command and if necessary by the display of armed force. So you can see here, they expand this one sentence that's pretty encompassing in terms of the rights that are guarantees towards French citizens into some several pages of legalese, some of which are good and carry on the spirit of the Constitution of 1793. But some of these are really bad. Citizens cannot exercise their political rights except in the primary or communal assembly. All persons are free to address petitions to the public authorities, but they shall be individual. No association can present them collectively.

Every unarmed mob shall likewise be dispersed at first by way of verbal command and if necessary by the way of armed force. You can really see the rollback of rights that took place here between 1793 and 1795, which is when the Terminatorian reaction occurred. But again, we're not going to get into the French Revolution's history. That's a different conversation for a different day. But the point is, is that what could have been instituted but was not instituted very rapidly became what was instituted. And it was not nearly the document that the Constitution of 1793 was. And that's just a few examples.

But like I said, it's about twice the length of the constitution of 1793. So final thoughts on that point, perhaps, or anything else that you want to say before we go out Adnan first, then we'll turn to Braddon. well just it's clear it fits the trajectory that we were talking about of a reaction it wasn't implemented and the reason why it's longer is I think because it takes a lot more words to try and hedge against clear assertion of rights in their principled form right so this is a pretty small a short document because it's announcing just the bare bones of what you need to establish these clear principles. And I think when you try and put limitations on it, that's why it burgeoned, you know, in length. But just the last points that I would make about this document is just the way in which

it understands military forces. There's an interesting section about that as well. I think in all of the U.S. context as well as in the French context, there was an understanding that executive power and in particular the military administration by an executive power were truly great threats to the liberty and equality of a free people. So you find that there isn't really an executive in this document. There's an executive council of 24. that are supposed to oversee people who are recruited as agents of administration but there isn't one person so it's almost like a committee it's it's an executive committee and likewise the military is is meant to be rather egalitarian there might be some ranks but those are not supposed

to be marks of distinction and subordination except for the time of service in a period of duration they don't want people emerging in exactly the way that did happen of course under napoleon of a military position leading to a social distinction right this is just supposed to be only in terms of military matters and that the you know all frenchmen are soldiers it says in 109 and all shall be exercised in the use of arms so this idea of having a civilian military is quite interesting the idea that you don't really all they do have a paid land in marine force there is this idea that every citizen is sort of responsible for the defense it's not something to be made into a specialized power or profession and

that's to guarantee you know the liberty so there's both the sense of rights but also sense of responsibilities that everybody has to be participating in it and that's the best guarantee of liberty so it's a very interesting document i'm i had never read it before um so it's really interesting to see how many aspirational points there are here that uh neither in the u.s nor in France in their subsequent history uh have they fulfilled this is you know probably the about the best you could get in a bourgeois sort of constitutional document yeah agree entirely with that odd none brett your final thoughts on this whole conversation that we've been having sure yeah um one thing that i just walked away kind of thinking about is the shift in tone from this to the u.s declaration

and constitution um to the reactionary uh french updated version of it which is like this move from you know things that the government society must do or owe to the citizens right in the front in this radical um posturing to the american version where it's like things the government can't do to the people right and then to the reactionary french version which is things people can't do so that move from what government must do to things government shouldn't do to what things people shouldn't do is like this declining increasingly reactionary approach to this whole project um anon said earlier that this really shows and highlights the limits of bourgeois revolution. And I think one way to think about it is how in this period and this attempt to fortify

these new ways of being and thinking, they generated these deep contradictions at the very outset. And the way that you had to work through these and the reaction from conservative elements shows those contradictions, but those contradictions continue to live on. And you could even see those contradictions as being contradictions within the Enlightenment itself, of which political movements like this are downstream manifestations, taking the Enlightenment values and worldview and applying it to political society. And this is also important. And the last thing I'll say is just it's important to remember that this attempt to implement a new way of being immediately generating new and for the most part unforeseen contradictions. is also true under socialism.

So when we see this shift from these early attempts at socialism, whether in China and Cuba and the Soviet Union, you see that they too generate their own set of contradictions. Part of those contradictions, of course, are generated by trying to live in a global world dominated by the old mode of production and being surrounded by Western aggression and imperialism and trying to live inside of a global capitalist marketplace. but some of those contradictions are generated in the process of trying to put into action

the ideas of what socialism could mean. And so to not be scared of that, to not run away from that, to not have an overly romantic ideal that socialism will be somehow different in its own generation of even today unforeseen consequences, I think it's just something to keep in mind. And to view these things historically and as protracted historical processes that play out and not as just sort of overnight events or checklists of things that you can accomplish or not. That's always something I like to remind people of, and we see that presented here as well. That's a perfect note to end on Breton.

That's really the goal that we're trying to advance here with this show is for people to view every event is a series of events that leads up to the event that we're looking at specifically, and that event's role in influencing the future. and how we can use those lessons from the past in order to influence our future. So, yeah, thank you for that message. And I think that that's the perfect note to end on. So thanks, guys, for coming in for this conversation. It was fun as always. And I'm looking forward to future conversations of the French revolutionary period.

I'm really looking forward to the conversation on Babouf that I want to organize at some point because Lenin drew a lot from Babouf, and I think that drawing out some of those parallels between the two of them and the differences, there were certainly differences between the two. But highlighting the similarities and differences between Babuf and Lenin might be interesting for a lot of our listeners. So that's something that I want to do.

But yeah, thanks, guys. And Brett, how can our listeners follow you and find the work that you're doing? You can go to Revolutionary LeftRadio.com, find all three shows that I participate in and everything, associated with them. Adnan, how can our listeners find you and your other podcast? You can find me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain-H-U-S-A-I-N. And I would encourage people to listen to my other podcast, The M-A-J-L-I-S, especially if you're interested in the Middle East Islamic world. We have monthly episodes sometimes twice a month, so check it out.

And as for me, you can find me on Twitter at Huck-1995. You can also find me on Patreon where I write about science and public health, Patreon.com, forward slash Huck-1995. And you can find our show, Gorilla History, on Twitter at Gorilla-Paw-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-Sk. And if you're listening to this on the general feed, you can help support the show and get early access to episodes like this one by joining us on Patreon at Patreon. forward slash guerrilla history. Until next time, solidarity. Thank you.