Rev Left Radio - [BEST OF] The French Revolution: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

ORIGINALLY RELEASED Aug 29, 2022   The rallying cry of liberty, equality, and fraternity echoed through the streets of revolutionary France—and still reverberates through history. In this episode, we examine the French Revolution as a foundational rupture in world history, one that shattered the old feudal order and set the stage for modern capitalism, liberal democracy, and the revolutionary tradition from which subsequent socialist and communist movements would draw inspiration. From the class uprising of the sans-culottes to the radical egalitarian vision of the Jacobins, and from the fall of the monarchy to the rise of Napoleon, we follow the dialectical unfolding of hope and horror, progress and betrayal. What did the revolution achieve, where did it fall short, and what lessons can today’s revolutionaries draw from the fire that consumed the Ancien Régime?   Stella joins Breht to discuss (and put a unique communist spin) on the great French Revolution!   Check out our Haitian Revolution episode HERE   Check out our Paris Commune episode HERE ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE Outro Beat Prod. by flip da hood

At the height of the 18th century, the most glorious kingdom in Europe would face a mighty foe, the power of its own people. One man would rise to inspire the nation, would cast aside a reluctant king and a hated queen. And a new republic would be born in blood, the blood of the French Revolution. Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. Today I genuinely have a treat for you. We had a wonderful guest on, my friend Stella, to cover the French Revolution in detail and to make an argument that the French Revolution is fundamentally a part of our socialist, communist, and revolutionary left-wing tradition.

And we should embrace it as such. this is a really fascinating period in history and we go through it in great detail I could not have asked for a better guest to just summarize this stuff with such accessibility and such fluency it really was an impressive feat on behalf of my guest I loved prepping for this episode

I loved having the conversation I want to do more work on this front I would love to do entire episodes on like Rousseau who we mentioned as a sort of prelude thinker to the French Revolution as well as what came after the French Revolution, namely Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, that entire piece of history is utterly fascinating to me, and I have a great guest to cover it.

And as always, if you like what we do here at RevLeft Radio, you could always support us by going to patreon.com forward slash RevLeft Radio, becoming a member, and in exchange for a couple dollars a month, basically the cost of one cup of coffee, you could support the show and get access to not only bonus monthly content, but also our entire back catalog. And we're actually going to release an interview I did, interestingly, with the 2020 presidential nominee,

in the primary, at least, Marianne Williamson. We have fascinating conversation with her on the Patreon. So if you're interested in hearing me talk with her, I think I know it's our first ever person who we've interviewed who's actually ran for president of the United States of America. So I think that's very interesting. And she's a wonderful person.

And although we have political disagreements, the conversation was really interesting. So if you're interested, that's on Patreon. If you don't have money, we totally understand. You can help us by sharing this episode with friends, posting about it online, or leaving a positive review, which really helps RevLeft Radio jump up in the search engines of podcast apps when people are looking for various topics. So with all of that out of the way, here is my conversation with Stella on the fascinating intricacies of the French Revolution. Enjoy. Hey everybody, my name's Stella. I'm a Marxist and a historian who used to study the French Revolution,

specifically the life and legacy of Maximilian Robespierre, or Robespierre, he's kind of more commonly known in English. Left academia a couple years back wasn't really a great fit for me ideologically, but I do still consider myself a historian of the period. So, yeah, it's my goal to day to try and condense six years of pretty complex, dense history into less than two hours of talking. So hopefully I'm successful with that. And, yeah, thanks for having me on, Brett. Absolutely, welcome.

It's an honor. You know, we were talking before we started recording that we go back a long way online. Before the show, which is crazy. Absolutely. Yeah, and I think you said it was when Fidel does. side. We found each other in a common section, just fighting off, fighting off reactionaries from every side. So it's very. I was going to say this at the end, too, but I truly, I really owe so much of, you know, my radicalization to you. Because I think when we started talking, I was probably,

like I wouldn't have called myself like a stock damn. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I definitely have come very far in my politics because of you in the show. So just wanted to say thanks for that too. Well, thank you so much. That's awesome. And yeah, I'm sure at that time, I was, you know, not even calling myself a Marxist or anything, but we're just, we're We're both on the path, you know, developing. It's all you can ask. So, yeah, today we're going to be covering the French Revolution. And I just wanted to say a couple things up top before we get into the questions from my end and, you know, get your thoughts on them as well.

But I actually am fascinated by the French Revolution. And I really want to stress that, you know, to socialists and communists and people on the Revolutionary left listening today, although the French Revolution was clearly a bourgeois revolution against monarchy and feudalism, it was a left-wing egalitarian radical revolution against feudalism, and I think it is very clear that we on the left can claim this as our history, as our tradition, and as a precursor to so many things that we clearly care about and identify with. For example, the revolutionary government within Paris from like 1789 to 1795 during these heady years that we'll be covering in this episode, the government of Paris was called the Paris Commune. And then so, you know, 70, 80 years later, the first properly proletarian uprising named themselves, you know, after the Paris Commune, after this revolutionary government of the French Revolution. And of course, Marx, you know, took and analyzed the French Revolution. And we see it as the first properly proletarian one.

So even they saw themselves in the tradition of the French Revolution. So I just really wanted to stress that and stress my love, really, for Robespierre, for, Jean-Paul Marat for the Sands Coulette. You know, this is a revolution that was, you know, from the bottom up, that mobilized the commoners, the lower classes, the Sands Coulette, turned them into, you know, militant revolutionaries. And any time a left-wing revolution of any sort is going to be successful, it is going to require the mass mobilization of regular people. And the French Revolution, unlike in many ways, the American Revolution did that.

the American Revolution might have had some mass mobilization for sure, but this underclass rising up to topple, you know, power is really different. And the last thing I'll say is if the, you know, the American Revolution in contradistinction to the French one, I would say it was a conservative rebellion or separatist movement. It was a revolution in that it broke with monarchy, but it was conservative. It was led by aristocrats and slavers. And I think the way that revolution played out and the privities of American society today can be kind of traced back to the deeply conservative nature of that revolution. And in comparison, the French Revolution was far to the left, was deeply egalitarian, deeply radical. And today, the French have things like amazing universal health care, one of the most robust public transportation systems in the world.

I was just in Paris, you know, a few weeks ago. And so I got to see these things up close and personal. And I think the difference is between the French and American. American society for all their many faults, you know, they can be traced back, I think, to these fundamentally different revolutions. So, yeah, what are your thoughts on any of that? Absolutely. Yeah, I'm going to get into that kind of more towards the end, just in terms of, you know, what we as leftists can take away from and learn about the French Revolution, because I do get the sense from a lot of leftists that there's almost, it's actually

it's kind of divided, I guess, but there is this kind of feeling that the French Revolution, because it was a bourgeois revolution there really isn't anything that we can kind of glean or learn from it and everything that you just said is exactly how I feel and I completely agree there was a truly radical revolution it was an aberration it was very short but there was a truly radical moment that happened here that I think is really worth exploring for us as leftists and Marxists definitely really quickly I just wanted to say on on guerrilla history it might be a Patreon episode but it will be released maybe publicly at some point but we did an episode on like the early constitution from the French Revolutionaries, what it could have been. And it never

actually got put into practice. But it was a wildly egalitarian, deeply radical, especially for the time, but even in like modern America, it would be seen as a radical left-wing agenda. Yeah. So yeah, it was very interesting how ahead of the curve they were. Absolutely. And I'll get into this when we talk about Bedbuk as well. But one of the things that he was promising along with his other kind of comrades when they were trying to launch a revolution, was bred in the Constitution of 1793 because people identified with it so much and it was such an egalitarian revolution. And like you said, even compared to what we have now in the U.S. especially, it was, you know, wildly to the left. Absolutely. And, you know, just for what it's worth, the Bolsheviks, the revolutionaries of, you know, the Russian revolution, they saw themselves as connected to the French Revolution.

They would name like streets after like Jean-Paul Marat, who will get into. So, you know, the Soviets were certainly aware of this continuum. And I think today, we should be as well. So with all of that said, I'm sorry for that prelude, that was indulgent of me. No. You are the person that we're here to ask questions and learn from. So I guess the best way to start this conversation is to talk about the conditions that led up to the French Revolution. So can you kind of talk about the situation in France leading up to the French Revolution and what the depravities that, you know, commoners or the lower classes had to endure in the lead up?

Absolutely. Yeah, so I would say the biggest catalysts for the French Revolution were kind of, there's many, but I'll get into them kind of like piece by piece. So the first biggest one was France's financial situation, coupled with a completely in equal distribution of wealth and power in the country. So prior to the revolution, France was in just incredible amounts of debt. And this was partially because of the monarchy's very lavish lifestyle and their financial mismanagement at Versailles. But it was also because of France's involvement. in the seven years war and the American Revolutionary War, which they kind of got invested in just to spite the British. There really wasn't a whole lot of other motivation for that. But as a result of that, the monarchy wasn't really sure how to resolve the debt crisis at a time when feudalism was kind of rapidly approaching its end across Europe. And capitalism was really starting to ascend. So you have the financial situation at the top. And then at the bottom, you have a couple years and months of bad harvest across France, which really increase destitution, starvation, and infant mortality for regular people in pretty much all areas of the country. And then you also have the

stifling taxation and feudal privileges inflicted upon peasants by the nobility. So peasants had to pay tax not only to the state, but also to the church and also to their lord. And then they had to suffer like the further indignity of not even being able to like hunt or fish on their own land, without having a noble privilege. So as Alexis de Toteville pretty famously put it, it felt like everything in a peasant's life cost them a ransom. So it was very restrictive, repressive kind of lifestyle. There's also really poor pay and working conditions in cities,

along with just overall very poor standard of living and total political disenfranchisement for like 99% of France's population, all of which sounds very familiar to where we are right now in the United States. I was about to say. Yeah, just a coincidence. And then throughout all of this, you also have the total reluctance of like the monarchy, the nobility, or the Catholic Church to relinquish any shred of their power or their wealth to resolve these problems. And this is something that's going to cause a lot of tension and really radicalize people during the revolution itself. And then finally, you have what's usually, I guess traditionally cited as the key influence on the French Revolution, which to me is it's a big part of it, but it's not the full picture.

And that's the ideological influence of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution on a new professional class of like lawyers and scientists, journalists, mathematicians who would come to overwhelmingly make up the French revolutionaries. And they would start to ask the very obvious question, which was, you know, why the hell are we putting up with any of this? And how can we kind of bring France into the 19th century? So those are just some of the main factors that really get the revolution going. Yeah. Those are very crucial to understand. but, you know, they're very common situations, pre-revolutionary or just insane inequality, you know, an unaccountable system that does not serve the regular people, serves only the elites, etc. This is a story as old as time.

1794, Francis Conciergerie prison, an impenetrable fortress on the banks of the Stain River. Dank, rat infested. It is known as Death's Antichamber. Inside, the voice of a young nation is about to be silenced. As his hair is shorn and his neck laid bare for the blade of the guillotine, Maximilian Robespierre prepares to pay for the cataclysm left in his wake. The explosion of events that became the French Revolution. French Revolution is this extraordinary moment when people began to believe. People began to believe that you could actually recreate almost everything in a society.

You could not only change the politics, the institutions, but you could change human nature itself through political action. The French Revolution really does constitute the crossroads of the modern world where everything begins to turn in a different direction. The Revolution saw a feudal land turn its back on aristocratic tradition and chart a violent new course for the future. It would shake the very foundation of Europe, and its impact would be felt across the seas.

The French Revolution is the most important event in Western history. There are developments that can rival it, like the Industrial Revolution, like capitalism. But if you mean an event, I can't think of anything more important. It was the revolution that upset things the most. I mean, again, when you consider that it got rid of the Catholic Church, it got rid of Christianity, it got rid of the nobility, it got rid of the king, got rid of all these things. The French Revolution would bring bread to the poor, democracy to France, and would establish a whole new order of society.

But progress would come at a price. I just wanted to touch on the Enlightenment really quick. Certainly, of course, we all know the Haitian, the American, the French Revolution were in some sense informed by this movement that preceded it called the Enlightenment. But, you know, a figure in France in particular that is worth noting is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I was able to visit his grave site in the Pantheon in Paris on my trip, and it was a very fascinating one to just be able to stand next to his final resting place. And Robespierre, in particular, was deeply influenced by Rousseau. I kind of want to write a book. I mean, I don't know.

This book might probably already exist, and if it does, maybe somebody or you yourself could tell me, and I can go get it. but like a rousseau to robespierre sort of breakdown yeah how rousseau lived his life and his ideas and how they went on to influence robespierre in particular who made explicit use of them so you know the enlightenment isn't yeah the enlightenment isn't yeah the enlightenment is not the whole story but enlightenment figures specifically rousseau was crucial i think to the entire worldview of somebody like robespier yeah absolutely and you kind of have that war in the enlightenment between you know rousseau and voltaire and rousseau exactly like you identify was definitely much more impactful on the French Revolution. And it's Robsphere specifically. And there's some debate over whether or not this is true, but there is a possibility that Robsfair actually did meet Rousseau at one point. But yeah, there is an absolute, you know, direct line of lineage there for sure. Wonderful.

All right. So let's go ahead and move on. So now that we know the conditions that led to it, what events officially kicked off and defined the revolution in 1789? And who were some of the major players? Yeah. So going into 1789, there's a lot of infighting among the nobility about how to really resolve France's financial crisis. And this leads to King Louis the 16th, calling for the Estates

General at Versailles in May. And the Estates General was basically a meeting of France's three established feudal orders. They're kind of like social classes at that point, with the first estate being the clergy, the second estate being the nobility, and the third estate being literally everyone else in the entire country, which was, again, about 99% of the population, but 25 million of those people being peasants. So it's the vast majority of France is in the third estate. And this is a really big deal for everyone in the third estate, because it's really the first opportunity that many of them have ever had to be able to address their grievances with the monarchy directly. And again, this is all happening at a time when you have this enlightenment, an American revolution-inspired

professional class who really see this as a major opportunity to reform France. and kind of, you know, continue to push it away from feudalism. But unfortunately, things don't really go to way that these very idealistic third estate deputies are originally hoping that they will. And the third estate is slighted from pretty much the very beginning when Louie decides that each estate will get one vote, even though the population of the third estate, you know, vastly outnumbered the population of the first and second estate. Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure the nobility made up 2% of the population. So it's just, it's not even close. So in response to this, the third estate break away, and they declare themselves a national assembly, which they considered the France's true representative body, and they then invite members from the other states to join them for the good of France. And of course, Louis and a monarchy never intended for this process to actually be any kind of democratic system at all.

It was really just about how they could kind of lower taxes for nobles. So Louis is really outraged by this kind of failure to obey his authority, and he responds by having the third estate deputies locked out in their meeting hall. to which the third estate basically just says, well, okay, fuck you too. And they just go across the street to meet in what we very crudely in English call a tennis court. It's kind of more like a pickleball court. And it's in this tennis court where they really doubled down on the idea of the assembly. And they swear to not break up until they've written a new kind of reformist constitution for France. And the tenacity of the National Assembly actually ends up convincing members of the other states to join them.

And eventually, Louis has no choice but to kind of cave and accept the. National Assembly, all while he's also calling in like military backup to make sure that things don't get too wildly out of hand, but he just kind of publicly puts a good face on it. So this is essentially how the revolution gets started at the top. But throughout 1789, we're going to see the formation of like three key factors from below that are going to really sustain and radicalize the revolution as it goes along. So the first of these is the growing role of the crowd or the popular movement in the revolution. So even though the calling of the Estates General was, you know, by all accounts of a pretty, pretty restrictive event and no peasants or like working people are really allowed to be elected to it, many deputies to the third estate are elected because they promise to address the many grievances of these groups, so the peasants and the workers.

So as a result, regular people kind of see themselves as included in the revolutionary process from pretty much the very beginning. And we see this most famously, you know, with the storming of the Bastille in July, which is in response to Louis Sacking the popular, like, reform-minded finance minister, Jacques Nacare. It wasn't really about freeing the people in the Bastille because at that point, there were only like six people that were left in there, although after it is, you know, kind of stormed, it does become a symbol of feudalism decaying. And then we also see this phenomenon known as the Great Fear in the Countryside. And this is where we see peasants begin taking these really radical actions. They're storming chateaus. They're destroying documents proving

feudal privilege. And they're doing this to physically prevent aristocrats from being able to stop the progress of the revolution. And then in the fall of 1789, we see the Women's March on Versailles, where approximately like 7,000 armed market women march from Paris to Versailles, which, if you've ever taken that trip, it's about an hour on a train. So it's a pretty significant distance to walk. And they do this to demand bread and the move of both the royal family and the National Assembly to Paris so that they're more accessible and accountable to the people. So the role of regular people in the revolution is huge from pretty much the very beginning. And particularly one group that really emerges is a group that you already identified,

which is the Saint-Coulou. And the Sankoulo are essentially the armed street radicals of Paris, who are made up of everyone from like small-time artisans to wage labor, to market women. and there were Sankulo of what we're thought of at that time as both genders. And so primarily the Sankulo are people who work with their hands. And they're focused on three things. The first is an improvement in their material conditions. The second is the creation of a society in which wealth and poverty will disappear,

so the equalizing of society. And then the third is the implementation of radical and popular democracy. And this kind of goes hand in hand with the second growing factor in 1789, which is the rise of journalism and particularly the rise of one radical journalist in particular named Jean-Paul Mara. And I know you already mentioned Mara by name. Most people are familiar with Mara

because he is the subject of a very famous painting called The Death of Mara where he's basically painted after he was assassinated, kind of like sprawled out like Jesus in his bathtub, which we'll get into it a little bit later. But unfortunately, thanks to a lot of very reactionary or liberal history, Mara has kind of gotten the popular

reputation of being this like Leverstey conspiratorial maniac this kind of like Alex Jones almost figure but he was actually a doctor and a scientist and he was just extremely passionate about the plight of France's lower classes and he's really credited by many socialist and

Marxist historians as being responsible for giving the nascent proletariat class like class consciousness in France so Mara has his paper La Mie de Puffla or Friend of the People and this becomes the voice of the Sanculo and what's going to become known as the popular movement, especially in Paris. And this is something that Mara really believes in very strongly, and he's constantly reinforcing in his paper.

And I just have one quote from issue 667. He has like, there's so many issues. But he wrote, the revolution was made and is maintained only by the lower classes of society, by the workers, the artisans, the petty traders, the farmers, the peasants. In short, by the entire submerged class, by those unfortunate ones whom the impudent rich called a rabble, and whom the insolent Romans term the proletariat. But what we never imagined was that it would be made only in the interest of petty landowners, lawyers, or the henchmen of deception.

So that's just a pretty cool quote for Mara. And as you can probably imagine, he had to just kind of be on the run from the state a lot because at this point, the revolution is fairly a revolution. I mean, there's some disagreement with the monarchy, but the assembly is very moderate. So Mara kind of ends up making up what's at this point, point the fringe left. And then I was just going to move into the final part of 1789, the final

kind of formation that we see. And that's the rise of popular societies and political clubs in Paris. And these are primarily spaces where the revolutionary members of the third state will come and they'll just like debate and discuss different issues of the day. So like the revolution itself, these clubs start out very moderate and restrictive, but they become progressively less So as this very elitist Breton club, which is the kind of original incantation, becomes the more radical and open jacobin club, which would grow to have, you know, thousands of affiliated chapters across France. And we also have the formation of the more working class Cordilliers political club,

which Mara and other radicals like Georges-Denton and the radical journalist Camille de Moulin have a lot of influence. And what's significant about book of these clubs is the level of participation that they encourage from the general population. So regular men and women can come to these clubs and they can observe in the galleries, they can present petitions, and if they're men, they can even pay the small membership fee to join. So these clubs are really where we see the symbiotic relationship between the radical revolutionaries in the government and the popular movement in the streets start to form.

But unfortunately, like I mentioned before, this relationship at this point isn't something that the National Assembly really wants or is encouraging, because again, at this point, the assembly is primarily made up of moderates, so a lot of nobles, a lot of reactionary clergy, and this kind of nascent bourgeoisie class. And all of these groups are focused on being reformers and not revolutionaries, and they're really pushing for a constitutional monarchy that will lessen lose power while also increasing their own, which is vastly more important to them. So they agree to grant the people some concessions by abolishing fuel privileges and crafting the very, you know, well-known declaration of rights of man.

in reality, they don't really have an interest in creating a system that gives power to anyone who isn't, you know, a property-owning white man. And they repeatedly try to outlaw like insurrection, for example, and Claire Marshall Law to kind of prove that they're really, you know, they're not fighting this revolution for the people, basically. And economically, they're also pursuing a very liberal policy of market deregulation, which actually just increases scarcity and price gouging of essential goods for the regular people of France. But one of the few exceptions, too, is this very moderate reactionary assembly is Robespierre, who at this point is seen as very similar to Mara, such a radically like left thorn in the side of the assembly that the royalist press

actually starts this rumor that he's descended from like a king's assassin, which like, you know, huge of true. It's not true, but it would have been really cool if it was. But unlike many of the other third estate deputies, Robespier is a lawyer and he is very influenced by the Enlightenment, but he has a reputation in his hometown for taking on cases for like the poor and the disadvantaged. And he really shares both Mara and the Sankulo's vision of creating, you know, an egalitarian society in which wealth and poverty disappear. And all of these groups, like you mentioned before, are very influenced by Rousseau. So in the assembly, Ropes Fierre would just frequently get shouted down and get harassed by the other members for doing things like defending people's rights to insurrection, advocating for rights for Jews and free people of color, criticizing the wealth of the church and the aristocracy, and especially for advocating

for universal manhood suffrage. And these things really make Roep Speer despised by the assembly, but they have the opposite impact on the popular movement and Mara, who end up dubbing Robs Pier the incorruptible, and they really begin to form kind of a support base around him. But again, Robs Pier is just, you know, a very vocal minority at this point, and the rest of the assembly is really working to move France towards a British-style constitutional monarchy with very limited civil and political rights for anyone who doesn't own property. And even though this sounds like it would be a pretty sweet deal for the monarchy, they get to continue to exist. There are very few limits put on their power. Louis and Marie Antoinette still are not happy about this because they don't

want to give up any of the power that they have or any of their authority because they believe that they've been given this divine right to rule. So they really begin playing a double game where they pretend to support the revolution in public while also quietly working with these very royalist deputies in the assembly, as well as outside monarchs in Europe to try and destroy it from the outside. So, yeah, that's kind of just 1789 in a nutshell. So you can already see that the rest of Europe, you know, looking askance at France, like what the hell's going on over there? Conservatives all over Europe are going to absolutely melt down over the coming years. So that's something to keep in mind. To talk about,

a rope spear really quickly as this progressive lawyer that would take cases that would defend the poor or people that you know were marginalized in society there's a little echo of Castro there who similarly started off as a progressive lawyer and became a revolutionary and in the case of Jean-Paul Maraugh I know we'll talk about him more but just to kind of put some stuff on the table if you want to go look at this famous painting on on Google right now it's called the death of Mara by Jacques Louis David and it's just fascinating we'll get to how he died and that painting will make more sense when we get there, but just to get kind of

a beautiful portrayal of him as a revolutionary figure and then I just wanted to, after he passed, the Marquis de Sade did a little eulogy for Jean-Paul Marat and he said something who's comparing him to Jesus and I kind of want to read this quote just to give people more of a sense

of who he was and how loved he was by the people. The Marquis de Sade talked about Mara saying quote, like Jesus, Mara loved ardently the people and only them. Like Jesus, Maraah hated kings and nobles and priests and rogues. And like

Jesus, he never stopped fighting against these plagues of the people. So he was seen as a rabid fanatic by the more conservative or moderate elements, but by the militant people and by the real left wing of the revolution, he was seen as a hero.

So I was one of the lay those things on the table. And he had this debilitating skin condition that basically forced him to spend most of his time in a bathtub full of various medicinal minerals and salts to to alleviate the pain of this, you know, pretty grotesque and intense skin condition. So when you look at the death of Mara, the painting, he's in a bathtub. And that's, and that's why. So I just think all that stuff is very interesting. That's amazing. Yeah. And just to touch on Fidel to,

Fidel when he was imprisoned after the 26th of July movement, the initial failure at the Montcada barracks, the French Revolution was something that he became very obsessed about, and he actually wrote a letter. I can't remember to who it was, but in the letter he says, what Cuba needs is many ropes fears. So just a direct connection, and that's pretty cool. And I will say, what America needs right now is many ropes spears. Yes. I could not agree more. All right.

So we are taking this year by year, because this. This is really a five or six year period where the intensity of the revolution really, you know, reaches its peak. So we just covered kind of the conditions and then we covered that led up to it. And then we covered 1789. So now let's move into 1790 through 1791. What were the major events and who were the key players in this moderate phase of the revolution? Yeah. So luckily I can kind of go through these years a little bit quicker because they're really this plateau period for the revolution where we see the constitution, the original.

Constitution, not the more radical one of 1793, finally beginning to take shape. And the Assembly is just continuing to cave on giving more and more power back to Louis. And this includes allowing him to maintain an executive veto basically anything that they can come up with as legislators. So we're really not progressing very far here. But the most significant thing about these kind of two years is that we start to see the first drawings of the Haitian Revolution, which you have a fantastic episode on that I really recommend people check out. But on the continental side, it just cannot be overstated how dominated the assembly is by the colonial lobby at this point. Now, slavery is already abolished like in continental France, and there are

some abolitionists on the far left, like this guy, the Abbe Gregor, Jacques Pierre Brousseau, who's going to become more important later, and Robespierre, who opposed slavery's continuation in the colonies. But most of the deputies in the assembly either have no interest in this, or they only want to abolish the slave trade, but not the institution of slavery itself. And that position only hardens once we see these slave revolts break out in Haiti. And those really begin, you know, staring the shit not only out of the colonial lobby, but also out of the assembly. And they respond by proposing that an amendment to the Constitution be added that essentially will maintain slavery in the colonies. And this is totally unacceptable to a lot of these abolitionists, these far left folks in the

assembly, and especially Ropes Pierre, who actually starts a minor scandal by getting up and proclaiming that quote, the moment that you pronounce in one of your decree, the word, you'll be pronouncing your own dishonor and the overthrow of your constitution. You're endlessly citing the rights of man, the principles of liberty, but you believe in them so little yourself that you decreed slavery constitutional. Perish your colonies if you're keeping them at that price. Yes, if you had either to lose your colonies or to lose your happiness, your glory, your liberty, I repeat, perish your colonies. So this is received about as well as you can possibly imagine, which is not well. And the Assembly officially responds to Rep Speer saying this by taking the very small step of just changing

the language and the amendment from slave to unfree. Like that's not all what he was talking about. So it doesn't really change much. And this really gives you a sense of how, you know, literally skin deep these kind of ideas of liberty and equality were to some of these so-called, you know, revolutionaries at this point. And then being back to P. Paris. 1791 really starts off with a bang when we see the royal family actually take the very drastic step of trying to flee France to seek help from the monarchs of Europe in person. And thankfully, this attempt fails thanks to the vigilance of revolutionary, like, peasants and workers in the countryside. But once Louis is brought back to Paris, all the assembly really

does is just kind of give him a slap on the wrist and send him on his way. So this leads to a move by the political clubs and the popular movement to organize a petition to demand Louis removal at the Champ de Mars, which is kind of just like a Parker pavilion in Paris. And unfortunately, the petitioners are met by the Marquis de Lafayette, who, again, some listeners might be familiar with because in the United States, he's seen as this hero of the American revolution, who came over to help us fight, you know, the British, well, not us, I'm Puerto Rican, but the people that were here. And he is kind of a revolutionary, like, in air quotes, noble, and he's also the head of the Revolutionary National Guard.

So there's some confrontation between Lafayette and the Guard and the protesters at the Champ de Mars. Not really sure what happens, but what ends up occurring as a result of this is that the National Guard opens fire on the crowd, and they kill anywhere from like 50 to 100 innocent protesters. So the massacre at the Champ de Mars not only widens the gap of distrust between radical revolutionaries, the popular movement, and the assembly, but also, between these groups and the monarchy, which is looking increasingly untenable and, you know, untrustworthy. And things don't really get much better when the Constitution is finally ratified. And it includes these very discriminatory tiers of citizenship, which give better rights and

privileges to property owners who are referred to as active citizens and pretty much jack shit to everyone else who are referred to as passive citizens. And the radical revolutionaries are also, you know, really disgusted with the way that the Assembly continues to cave to the colonial lobby, and they actually end up reneging on the equal rights that they had promised free men of color to keep them from being like a dangerous influence on the revolutionaries. And in response to this, Rob Spirritus has another great outburst where he says, quote, it was not difficult to foresee that a law which wounded the egos of a class of colonists would cause discontent. Who is the man with some feeling of justice who can lightly say to several thousand men?

you recognize that you had rights. We looked at you as citizens, but we're going to plunge you back into misery and degradation. I declare that I have four such systems and that I claim justice, humanity, and the national interest in free men of color. So again, really awesome from Robs Fair, but he is a very, very small and vocal minority. So the vast majority of the assembly is not interested in any of the hypocrisy that he's very, you know, rightfully pointing out. And then the royal family, on the other hand, is still trying to find a way to totally restore their power. So they come up with a new idea, which is to fan the flames of war that are kind of already existing between France and Austria, hoping that this will create a false pretext for Austria, which at this point is ruled by Marie Antoinette's brother, to invade France, help them restore the monarchy and essentially crush the revolution. And unfortunately, this plan works pretty well on like one wing of the Jacobin party who are concentrated around this very hyper-nationalist Jacobin named Jacques Pierre-Brusso, who starts advocating for like a patriotic revolutionary war

in which the French will basically invade the rest of feudal Europe and like free it from servitude, which is pretty funny because a lot of them didn't even want to free their own colonies but they're worried about the rest of Europe, which is so goofy. But Robs Fier again is one of the only kind of anti-war voices in the Jacobin Club. And he argues in a series of really brilliant debates with Brousseau that nobody loves armed missionaries as kind of his like famous quote. that wars are really only fought to enrich war

profiteers and that fighting an offensive war with the rest of Europe is basically playing directly into the monarchy's hands, which should have been very obvious at that point, but apparently wasn't. And unfortunately, nobody really listens to Robspierre, and at this point, Brousseau and his faction have a lot more poll in the assembly after Robspier just disgusted with the whole thing,

essentially votes himself out of it. So France begins gearing up for war with Austria, which brings us right into 1792, which is kind of like the turning point year for the radical revolution. Yeah. And, you know, the fucking up of Europe in Austria, that was a, you know, that's a prelude to the Napoleonic years where Napoleon actually did go out and fuck up Austria and the rest of Europe multiple times, but we're not there yet.

There's a little echo there in Robespierre of Lenin as well in, you know, World War I telling the people, like, we do not side with our governments in this war. We side with the working classes of the world. And, you know, we need to oppose. our governments in their attempt to go to war. But obviously, you know, and especially in highly unequal societies, oftentimes, war and the attendant, you know, fostering of rabid nationalism is a way that, you know, unpopular leaders can sometimes get back on track or, you know, or put up in a corner such that they move in that direction. And we've seen that throughout history. So that's just

something to point. And another thing I wanted to mention, you mentioned the active versus passive citizen in this in this new arrangement and just to break that down a little further the active citizens were those that paid taxes and thus bought their right to vote and the rest of the citizens too poor to pay taxes were basically you know you don't you don't pay into the system you shouldn't have a say and so that's the active versus passive dichotomy that is going to be confronted and toppled by the revolutionaries yeah exactly all right well now that we've covered 1789 1790 and 1791 let's move into the year 1792. You know, the question remains, what were the major events and who were the major players in this transition year? And what made this a transition year or a turning point for

the revolution? Yeah. So in the spring of 1792, we see France finally officially declare war against Austria. And as a result, they begin, you know, really ramping up for war by launching these kind of mass conscription efforts for the army. And Louis responds to these war preparations by very transparently vetoing them pretty much from the start. And that's bad enough. But then the war also kicks off really badly, but these major defections of like royalist officers and huge losses for France just kind of right off the bat. So to kind of fight back against Louis sabotage of the revolution and the inaction of the assembly to really do anything to stop him from sabotaging the revolution. The Paris commune, which we both kind of mentioned already, and for those who don't know,

is basically just the city government of Paris. They, a couple kind of, revolutionaries in the in the commune who get together and form a secret insurrectionary committee which is really led by george d'antone and this plays a major role in a kind of mini invasion of the treleurries palace where the sanguolo enter by force and then they then force louis to don the popular red cap of the revolution and in response to this the assembly bans armed the gatherings and lafayette actually returns from the war just to come into the assembly in paris and to chastise the people of paris for being too radical. But when it becomes pretty clear to him that the people of Paris aren't

really interested in calming down or hearing from him, Lafayette also defects from the French army. And this is hugely demoralizing to France. And then things get even worse when we see the commander of the Austrian army send out this public declaration, which is known as the Brunswick Manifesto, which essentially says if anything happens to the royal family, we're going to invade and essentially burn Paris to the ground. So this really outrages and offense, everyone in France, but especially the Saint-Coulot in the different sections of Paris, who come together to sign a new petition demanding the removal of Louis in response to this. And again, the Assembly really refuses to take this petition seriously.

So from August 9th until August 10th, Danton and other radical Jacobins, including Ropes-Pierre and Marat, take control of the Paris Commune, and a coalition of the commune's forces and the Saint-Coulogne from the different sections, storm the Twellery's palace in open insurrection against, both the monarchy and the assembly. And as a result of this insurrection, which is commonly referred to as August 10th, Louis XVI's power is finally totally suspended. And we have a new Republican government called the National Convention, which is ordered as a direct result of this symbiosis

between the radical revolutionaries and the popular movement on the ground. So this is a really big moment for the revolution's radical progression, because even a year before, many of the most radical revolutionaries who are involved in this. And many of the people in the popular movement aren't even fully Republicans. They were still kind of hesitant to really embrace that path. But now they're really, you know, overseeing the formation of the first Republican Europe. So this initially binds the different wings of the Jacob and party together. And in September, when the convention opens, they officially declare France a republic and they announce that they're going to begin working on a new, more radical constitution. And the revolutionaries make it a point to

not only have the elections to the new national convention be vastly more open than for the previous assemblies, but also to incorporate the will of the popular movement into this new government very consciously. And we see this in the way that the convention really encourages participation from crowds in the public gallery, but also in the way that they reserve hours at the beginning of each convention session to, like, hear grievances and petitions directly from the people, which again is something that we don't even do in, you know, 2022 in the United States. So yeah, that's a big major difference. But going into the fall of 1792, unfortunately, tensions do begin to reemerge among the Jacobins. And as a result, we see two new factions begin to

form. So this time there's tension between the more moderate, provincially concerned wing of the Jacobin party who really despise popular violence and Paris's continued domination of the revolution and the more radical Parisian and Sankoulo-lined wing of the party who want to keep that emphasis on Paris and the popular movement. And there's also a major divide between the way that these two sides view the issue of private property, with the moderates believing that property ownership is like a sacred, untouchable right, and the radicals believing that private property should never be more valuable than human life or happiness. And the moderates are also increasingly affiliated with this growing capitalist class in France. And as a result, they're advocating for

a continuation of the non-regulated economy to the chagrin of the popular movement. that really, really is pushing for price controls at this point and needs them because the economic situation in France is still so bad. So the radical faction become known as the Montagnards or the mountain because they sit high up into the left in the convention stalls. So this was people like Reps-Pierre, Mara, d'Anton, and this newcomer named Antoine Sonshust, and Sonshust quickly becomes one of the most prominent Montagnard revolutionaries. He's not really mentioned in kind of like mostly American histories of the French Revolution, which is bizarre because he was very important to it. So like the other revolutionaries, Sanjus is also an Enlightenment kind of

educated lawyer. But what's interesting about him is that when he was younger, he was actually forcibly imprisoned using something called Electra de Cache. And this was a feature of the old regime that was one of the peasant's biggest complaints to the third estate, because what it did was it essentially enabled the nobility to lock people up against their will for doing, you know, just arbitrary things. So the revolution really offers Sonschus to a fresh start and a way for him to kind of help actively dismantle this oppressive feudal system, which had traumatized him, you know, so much as a young person.

So Ropes Fier really takes Sonshust under his wing, and Sanzhust ends up becoming his closest friend and political ally. And in my opinion, a little bit more than that, but that's, you know, another story for another time. So these are the biggest players in the Montagnards. And then on the other hand, you have the moderate faction, which becomes known as the Gironde. And this is a term that Ropes Pierre coins for them that essentially describes the region of France that the majority of them are from and signifies their allegiance to the provinces instead of to Paris. So this was people like our old friend, Jacques Pierre Brousseau, this guy, Jerome Petion, who had been the mayor of Paris at one point and a good friend of Robs-Pieres, the Rolans, and the philosopher Condorcet is also in the Gironde. But the vast majority of the deputies in the convention are still somewhere between these two extremes.

So they sit in the plane or the middle of the convention. And this is actually where political directions originate from as well. So in many ways, we are actually leftist today because of where the Montagnards chose to sit in the convention like 200 years ago, which is so crazy. And this show is called Revolutionary Left Radio because of where they decided to sit. Absolutely, which is so cool. but yeah so throughout the the rest of 1792 the gerrand and the montagnards are just kind of really at each other's throats and this only intensifies once these secret documents are discovered which confirm but pretty much everybody already knew which is that the royal family had been plotting to kind of betray the revolution all along so this opens up a new question for the revolutionaries about you know how we can punish a king what we can do with our king so you have the geronde arguing that louis shouldn't be tried or executed, just, you know, imprisoned or banished for life. And then on the other hand, you have the Montagnards who are arguing that Louis should be both tried and executed. And their

position is presented most, you know, effectively by Roeb's Pier and Sanjoust, who argue that Louis can't be left alive because he is a traitor. And counter-revolution will always form around him, no matter, you know, where he goes, but also because the existence of a republic should render the existence of the king, you know, impossible. And as Robs-Pierre very famously puts it, Louis must die so that the Republic can live. So in the end, the convention votes to execute Louis XVIth in a, I believe, 360 to 360 vote, which is crazy, or 361 to 360. And he's guillotined in January of 1793, which leads us right into the first and final radical years of the revolution.

All right. So a couple things. Obviously, you mentioned the left and right dichotomy arising out of the French Revolution, which I think is interesting and worthwhile. You know, on the left are the radical egalitarians. On the right are the royalists and the restorationists who basically want to move back into monarchy and feudalism. And in the center is this, you know, liberal capitalist property respecting, you know, centrist position trying to operate between these two fringes. But even on the left, you see factions arising, which happens in all. revolutions. And as revolutionary momentum increases, those differences become more and more important. We've seen that in pretty much every subsequent major revolution. And then, you know, also the deposing of King Louis, not simply the jailing or the exiling, but the ending of that bloodline was seen as a necessary thing by the far left. And, you know, what only 120, 30, you know, years later, Tsar Nicholas would meet a very similar fate. And for similar reasons, and for similar So, yeah, all these things are very interesting.

There's a shift to the left happening, the mountain or the Montagnards, or however you want to say it, the Montagnards. I don't know how to speak. Yeah, my French is awful. Mine too. So I think we both apologize for that. Yes, absolutely. They are representative of the, really the most revolutionary, fervent, left-wing faction of this entire spectrum, correct? Yeah, yes.

Absolutely, yeah. Okay. So all of that in mind, it's now time to move. It's now time to move into 1973. So who were the major players and what were the major events in 1793? And importantly, how did they set the stage for what became known as the reign of terror? So first and most significantly, going into 1793, we have the execution of Louis XVIth, which, you know, as you can probably imagine, really send shockwaves throughout the Western world.

And as a result of Louis being executed, the war widens to involving both England and Spain, which is not good because France is already having its ass handed to it by Austria. And we also have the intensification of two internal situations, which are really impacting the economic situation across France and making it even worse. So the first of these is the spread of these counter-revolutionary revolts or rebellions across the Vande region in Western France. And these break out primarily because people in the Vande are traditionally more conservative

and religious, and they're very upset. about the revolution's de-Christianization efforts, as well as the fact that they're kind of being forced to fight a war that they don't support because they don't believe in a revolution. And this situation is particularly dangerous at this point because by now it's pretty much crystallized into a full-blown civil war in Western France.

And the second situation that we see more rightfully intensifying is the Haitian Revolution, which at this point is unfortunately really being viewed with suspicion by many of them, Montagnard revolutionaries, because some of its leaders, including to Saint-Lauverture, are self-professed royalists who at this point are currently fighting with Spain against France for their freedom. And this suspicion only grows when we see a Gironde deputy in Haiti, who ends up being the one who promises the Haitian revolutionaries abolition in exchange

for helping France fight both Spain and the reactionary white colonists on the island, who are also very opposed to the revolution. So there's a lot of different forces going on. there. But this action is seen as kind of extremely hypocritical by the Montagnards, who the Gironde is currently criticizing for being too supportive of popular violence in France and Paris. So they're essentially being like, you know, why are you guys okay with popular violence in Haiti, but not here in France. So the one group who really takes advantage of this infighting situation is the colonial lobby. And they end up working with this moderate black deputy to the convention named Jean-Vier-Let and actually getting him to.

temporarily convince many prominent Montagnard revolutionaries, including Ropes Pierre, unfortunately, that the revolution in Haiti is kind of a reactionary one that's being encouraged by like foreign monarchies and internal kind of revolutionaries in an attempt to weaken revolutionary France. So as a result of all of that and the government's, you know, very hands-off approach to the market, we see food prices going up, scarcity, inflation, and as a result, we get these kind of pockets of food riots that break out in Paris. And this also gives rise to two new figures in the Parisian popular movement. So the first of these figures is the radical journalist Jacques Abert. And he was kind of like the new opportunist version of Marat. And Abert had been around pretty much for years at this

point publishing his paper of Rupert Duchenne or Father Duchenne. And this was a really popular paper for the Sankoulo because it was constantly calling for increased violence against like speculators and hoarders in street French. So he was like constantly cursing and stuff. And that was really attractive to the Sankulo at the time. But he and his allies really begin to become influential in the commune at this point because they're calling for this increased violence against enemies of the revolution. And the second figure who emerges in this little period is this revolutionary priest named Jacques Rue. And he's agitating for a more radical economic policy called the General Maximum. And this is also something that's really

popular with the Sankoulo because it would involve the government in it like intervening in the market to set prices and raise wages. So we have this group of people who are very small and limited, but they are kind of more far left economic radicals. And they become loosely known as the enrages or the angry ones, even though they aren't really a significant or organized faction and they actually share a lot of ideas with the Montagnards and the Abertis, but they are almost a distinct group at this point. But unfortunately for all of these groups, the revolutionary government at this point is still pretty firmly in the hands of deputies from the Chirond. And none of them are very supportive of price controls.

And they're instead focusing all of their energy on trying to curb the influence of the Parisian popular movement on the revolution. And to do that, they're really going after the most radical Montagnar deputies who support and encourage that movement. And this takes the form of these very kind of personalized attacks on well-known Montagnarts, like, Brooks Fierre and Mara. And actually, Mara ends up getting sent by the Girond in front of the Revolutionary Tribunal for inciting violence. But thankfully, the tribunal is kind of stocked with radical Jacobins, and they vote to acquit Mara.

But his arrest only pisses off the popular movement even more. And they respond by joining this coalition of Abertis and Rajas and Montagnards and finally purging the Geron's leadership from the government in this combined coup and insurrection. in the spring of 93. So this insurrection really should have cleared the way for the Montagnards to establish a more radical government at this point.

But because the Girond are so popular with the more moderate provinces, the cities of Marseille and Leone actually end up joining the Von Dei in open rebellion against the government as a result of the purge of the Girond deputies. And this really makes the Montagnarts hesitant to do anything to kind of inflame that situation even more. But this all changes when we see a young Girondon named Sharpe. Charlotte Corday traveled to Paris in July, and she actually tricks Mara into meeting with her because he had kind of an open-door policy in his house where he would just let the Saint-Culot

or regular people just come in and talk to him and present him with like new information about counter-revolutionaries or whatever. So Charlotte-Corda essentially tricks Mara into letting her into his house, and she then stabs him to death in his bathtub. So, which is obviously, you know, a horrible thing. And the death of Mara, I think, has become one of the most vilified aspects of the revolution by reactionaries and liberals who kind of try and treat it like Mara became the new Jesus of the revolutionary movement, which there was kind of a cult of personality that developed around Mara as a martyr. But it was a sincere sense of anguish and fury for the popular movement because this was someone who had been fighting for them since,

you know, the start of the revolution. So they're very, very upset about this. And they respond by demanding that the Montagnar government not only enact the price controls that they've been asking for, but also exercise the full force of the state power at that point to crush these kinds of moderate enemies of the revolution. And this becomes known more broadly as a demand to make terror the order of the day. So unlike their traditional narrative that we are taught, especially in the states, the terror wasn't something that was like forced on the people of France by this extremist bloodthirsty government that had no connection to the people, but it was actually something that was demanded from the bottom up by the popular movement in Paris. So as a result of that

demand, the Montagnard government finally concedes to what the people are asking for, and they enact a series of policies that are designed to do four key things. So the first thing is to win this external war with Europe that is going very badly at this point. The second thing is to crush the internal counter-revolution in France. The third thing is to resolve the economic crisis, and the fourth is to inspire a truly radical regeneration of French society in which wealth and poverty will be eliminated in a new more egalitarian republic. And they go about trying to achieve these things in several key ways. So first they pass another kind of component of the terror that's been very vilified by reactionaries and liberals, which is the law of suspects. And this allows the revolutionary

government to expedite the prosecution of accused counter-revolutionaries while also expanding the categories of who could be considered a counter-revolutionary. begin with. So speculators and hoarders kind of end up being in that category. And the second thing that the revolutionary government does is they declare a scorched earth policy for all these regions that are rebelling against the government, while also creating a revolutionary or Sanguolo People's Army, which has then integrated into the existing French army. And with this, you also get this total reorganization of the army, which is mostly overseen by these convention deputies on mission, including Sangerie's, too, became a very well-known military commissar at that point.

The government also finally enacts the general maximum, which sets a price ceiling on essential goods and raises the wages of workers to their highest possible levels. And this also includes a very interesting attempt by the state to take on a more active role in monitoring and controlling production and supply of grain. You can't really call it a planned economy because we're, you know, decades, if not centuries away from that, but it is interesting to see the way that they kind of tried to put a curb on the market by intervening with it. And then you have the temporary suspension of the Constitution of 1793 and this increased executive authority being granted to the Committee of Public Safety.

And this is a 12-person committee elected by the convention, which becomes responsible for a whole host of things from guiding and setting policy for the revolutionary government to ensuring that the French army, you know, has everything that it needs. And the Committee of Public Safety essentially becomes the executive body for the Revolutional Peace can be achieved. And as concessions to the popular movement, Robs-Pierras elected to the committee alongside to Abertis. And you also have the election of Robs-Pierras like Sanjouz and George Coupein to the committee,

as well as moderates like Lazare Carneau. And then the last thing that happens is the institutionalization of revolutionary violence or terror by the state to kind of threaten and punish these counter-revolutionaries. And this is obviously, you know, the most well-known part of the French Revolution. About 3,000 people will be executed by Guillaeem in Paris during this period. And that's obviously not including, you know, the thousands of people who are executed by either provincial tribunals or killed in the wars in the Vande and Leone. And this has led the entire period to be referred to as the terror, even though at the time,

it really wasn't thought of as this, like, separate, horrifying aberration. And like I mentioned before, it was really something that the popular movement had to force the government to adopt and not the other way around. And it was also something that the more radical revolutionaries like Roeb's parents, Sanjoust, felt that the government had a duty to take on so that the popular movement didn't have to keep shouldering the responsibility or the blame for the revolutionary violence that they were committing. Saanjus put it very aptly when he said, you know, let us be terror. so that the people don't have to be. So revolutionary violence was absolutely, you know, a conscious government policy at this point. And in 1794, we even see Roeb's peer saying that, you know, the revolutionary government owes the people its full protection, but it owes the enemies of the people, nothing but death.

And this is a philosophy that's really going to underline the rest of the so-called terror period heading from 1793 into 1794. Yeah, very, very well done, covering a lot of ground there, expertly. I give you huge props for taking these huge questions on board. A couple of things I just wanted to reiterate that you mentioned. One, the general maximum, right? You're talking, it's not quite a planned economy. I totally agree, but it is, and I think we agree this sort of proto-socialist intervention

in the market, specifically on behalf of working in poor people. So that's very interesting. This is also the time when Mara gets stabbed to death by Corday, this, you know, a representative of the more moderate faction, the more centrist. could say liberal faction of the revolution stabbed to death in his bathtub hence giving rise to that famous painting the death of mara which i mentioned earlier for people to go check out it really is a stunning a stunning piece of art yeah um you know and there's i like to draw these connections you know as i've been doing throughout but there's a little bit of you know how rosa died the social

democrats earlier part of the revolution turned on the more radical faction sent the fry core after her, to kill her and throw her body in the canal. Not as systematically organized as that, but you still have a more moderate person coming and killing a more radical person. So I thought that's interesting. And then the last thing, or two more things, one, the suspension of the Constitution. I was listening to a lecture series on the French Revolution, and it's very interesting because they literally put it in a box, I think, the Constitution and suspended it from the ceiling. Yes. So it's literally

suspending the Constitution and enacting the reign. They literally suspended it. They also suspended Mara's heart from the ceiling of the Jacobin Club, which is kind of brutal, but... Also badass. Also badass. So, yeah, they suspend the Constitution, and they basically partake in the reign of terror

to protect the revolution. And then the final thing I just wanted to mention is the invention of the guillotine is seen and was seen as an egalitarian movement. move. So, you know, but before that, is anybody who studied even cursory, you know, the European history and their forms of corporeal punishment and, you know, death sentences, it was brutal and it was unequal. So you're much more likely to have a brutal, torturous, you know,

death sentence if you're poor and, you know, more, more wealthier or higher up people, had easier deaths or whatever it may be. And the guillotine was seen as this egalitarian mechanism by which, no matter if you were poor or rich, Whether you're King Louis or a vagabond, you're getting the same exact method of execution. So the guillotine is this sort of specter of like, you know, revolutionary violence. But it is interesting to note that the underlying egalitarian intentions behind the creation of the guillotine. So I think that's always kind of interesting to note. It was, you know, created by a doctor who was an opponent of the death penalty and supported by many, including Robsphere,

many deputies who were firm, you know, opponents of the death penalty when it was being applied against, like, common criminals in these very medieval, torturous ways. So, yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up because people just don't think about how the keyotine was literally designed to be an egalitarian, ideally painless form of execution for kind of political prisoners versus just common ones. And it's objectively more humane than the methods that modern America uses to put down people. Yeah. Whether electrocution, which is barbaric as fuck, or this injection you know the poisoning of the i mean those go wrong all the time with the guillotine it was almost guaranteed they even talked about the sensation is a a cool breeze down the back of your neck

yeah on the back of your neck i can't imagine but if i had to choose a way to get executed i'd probably pick the guillotine i'd say that all the time yes if i had to go that's the way i'd go absolutely absolutely all right so now we're we're getting into the reign of terror for sure so how did the reign of terror develop going into 1794 and what were some of its successes and failures? Yeah. So by the end of 1793 and early 1794, we really see the new policies of the terror and the revolutionary government beginning to yield positive results that are very rarely talked about. And I'll kind of get into why later. But inflation goes down. We see currency stabilized and inflation, you know, stabilizes well. Essentials like bread become more accessible and

affordable. The external war situation vastly improves as a result of the more egalitarian reorganization of the army, and internal wars in the Vonday and Leon are suppressed. One of the biggest things that happens during this time period, which, again, you know, reactionaries and mostly liberal historians will never talk about the positives of the terror. And this is a major thing that happens during the terror that just kind of skated over. But slavery is finally abolished in the colonies. And this is, you know, overwhelmingly due to the tireless fighting of the Haitian revolutionaries in Haiti, but also thanks to the campaigning of this delegation of like black, mixed in white Haitian convention deputies who are finally able to

convince the revolutionary government that Haiti is not the Vande and that enslaved Haitians will defend the Republic if it defends them. So this is a significant moment for the revolution where we see the convention in the committee during the reign of terror, finally correct one of the worst errors made by the original assembly during the quote-unquote good revolution. And they not only enthusiastically side with the Haitian revolutionaries and free men of color, but they also refuse to compensate white slave owners or the colonial lobby in this process, which is hugely significant because in the United States, that's absolutely not what happened. So this is a really big moment for the revolution. And lastly, we see the revolutionary government work to roll out

these unprecedented to this day social welfare programs, which include land redistribution system for the poor, which is really kind of thought up by and pushed by San Jose and Robshire, Social Security programs for the disabled and the elderly are rolled out, and Robsfair is very involved in proposing a free and universal education system for both men and women. So along with this, we also see a kind of cultural revolution where we start to take hold, where there's a collective effort from both the government and from the popular movement to really cultivate revolutionary identity and radically remake French society. So for example, we see a move away from addressing people as Monsieur Madame and towards the like comrade equivalent, which is citizen, which is awesome.

Yeah, it's kind of like the precursor. And like you said, there's so many parallels to, especially the Russian Revolution that you can find. It also involved the elimination of the French Voo, which is like kind of an informal way to address someone, changing that. to two, regardless of someone's stature in society. The arts and revolutionary celebrations are subsidized by the government. Museums are open to the public across France. And you also have an increase in de-Christianization efforts, which take a lot of different forms, some kind of violent not-so-great, other ones very revolutionary. And one of the most famous of these is the rollout of the French revolutionary calendar, which not only radically reconceives the names of days and months,

but it also sets out to declare 1792 as like year one for France. So it's this kind of moment of total regeneration that we see with the calendar. So personally, you know, looking at all of these achievements, I really consider the terror to be a, you know, incredible and kind of inspiring moment of truly radical revolution for the Western world. That has unfortunately been very vilified by liberal and reactionary historians for very political reasons. But, you know, we are Marxists.

we do want to study the failures and the limitations of any revolutionary period. And there were a lot of errors committed during the terror that, you know, we should address too. So first, we do see increased political repression and a crackdown on any voice that kind of questions the authority of the revolutionary government, which at this point is really working to centralize its control in order to make sure that it can win these, you know, massive fights against counter-revolution. So this unfortunately includes the repression of Jacques Rue and some other loosely affiliated in Rajas, as well as the closing of many popular societies by order of the revolutionary government. And this puts some strain on the relationship between the popular

movement and the government, even if, you know, again, we can understand why it was done from a practical standpoint. There are also legitimate accesses and abuses of the terror that are committed by these convention deputies on mission, particularly in places like Leon and in the von day, to the point where to this day in France, there are many people and parts of the region in the Bondi who view the revolution as like a genocidal event, which is not a discussion that I want to even approach, but it is, you know, something that really gives you a sense of how significant this period is for France to this day. And last thing that we see is an increase in the authority of the Committee of Public Safety, which isn't really moving to put a

stop to this repression, even as the material situation in France does appear to be improving and moving towards peace. So because of that, a lot of detractors of this period from both like the libertarian left and the right, we'll try to argue that this either shows the Montagnards were either moderate opportunists who kind of just exploited the popular movement to seize power or that they were a bunch of ideological fanatics who didn't know when to stop killing or didn't want to stop killing. But for me personally, I think it more just shows that they weren't really sure where to go next because, you know, in many ways, the revolutionary government is really running up against the limits of the historical moment. You know, they have no Western precedent.

They have no theory to work off of, I mean, they have Rousseau, but that's obviously not enough for this point. They don't have Marx, you know, they don't have Lenin. They don't have angles that of anybody. And virtually none of them have any kind of education and economics either. And they don't really want to move to totally abolish private property just because that is seen as like way too far radically left at this point. So they kind of end up in a situation where they're caught in the middle. And at the same time, like the ropes, Ferris and other radicals and the government are very wary to end the terror because they rightfully feel like there is still a very real counter-revolutionary threat in France that needs to be stomped out, particularly when it comes

to the rise of like the nascent bourgeoisie, who they really despised. They were not fans of capitalism. Because at this point, like, we have to remember that their ideal society is kind of a Russoist, almost utopian socialist wonder where what they really want to create is a state that'll ensure that everyone has the basics of what they need, which will include like having a small home and a small plot of land, which you can either use to be, you know, self-sufficient or become a small-time artisan or a producer. And this is something that's, you know, increasingly anachronistic and impossible with the rise of capitalism and industrialization. So they're kind of just caught in this almost anachronistic idea of an egalitarian society. So publicly, the committee aligns

behind Brooks Fier's theory of revolutionary government, which is to continue to pursue the policy of the terror while being mindful to steer between the two reefs of moderation and excess, but things are really beginning to kind of fracture at this point. And in early 1794, we're going to see the formation of two new factions to left and the right of the revolutionary government. So to the left, you have this group called, kind of just called the Ultras, even though it's a very loose collection of just people who don't really fit in anywhere else. So this includes some leftover Abertis, the commune, which at this point is mostly controlled

by Abertis and the portion of like the spurned popular movement who want the terror to intensify further while also kind of re-enlivening its connection to the streets. And many of the political leaders who are involved with this faction are either defending the war crimes that are being committed in the Vande or actively involved in committing them. So not really the greatest group of people. And then to the right you have this group that becomes known as the indulgence. So this is people like Roeb's Fierre's old friends, Camille de Moulin and Georges-D'Anton. along with other moderates who are left over from the geron under the plane, and they're really sick of the repression and the bloodshed of the terror,

and they really just want to put an end to the whole thing, implement the Constitution, and just call it a day. And supporting this group, you also have France's Mason bourgeoisie and what's left of the colonial lobby, who really want to put an end to the more radical social elements of the terror. So popular democracy, slavery, abolition, and the government's control of the market. And then in the middle, you have the revolutionary government, You have the Robs-Fierrez, the Jacobin Club members throughout France, and another large section of the popular movement who see the value in continuing the terror, but they also recognize that it has a lot of failings that need to be corrected and that a new connection to the streets needs to be made in order for the revolution to survive.

So despite kind of being internally fractured along similar lines, the committee responds to these threats by purging and executing the leaders of both the indulgence and the ultras. then a contingent, which is primarily led by the Rose Fierrez, starts trying to revive the connection between the popular movement and the government, while also trying to curb the kind of worst excesses of the terror. And they do this primarily by passing the law of 22 Prairie L, which is another very infamous revolutionary law that's passed. Again, I think it's just very poorly understood and politicized incorrectly. But what it originally was intended to do was widen the scope of counter-revolutionary

crimes even further, an attempt to appease the Sanguolo. And it also moved all political trials from the entire country to Paris, where ideally they could be more directly overseen by the principled revolutionary tribunal in Paris versus the tribunals in the provinces, which were kind of very incoherently applying the laws of the terror. And it also streamlined sentencing, which is probably the most controversial aspect of it. It got rid of juries for the accused. and the tribunal could only choose between acquittal and death. But the last thing that it does that's really fatal for Robs-Pierre is that it allows for members of the convention

to appear before the tribunal, which would have allowed the Robs-Pierras to put the deputies on mission who had committed these war crimes in the Bondi and Leon on trial. So again, Prairie has come to be seen by many liberal and reactionary historians as this, like, horrifying kind of draconian policy that led to this period called the Great Terror, where the rate of executions did substantially increase in Paris. But in reality, like many of the things that Prairieal decreed were already happening de facto,

the revolutionary tribunal was already basically just deciding between acquittal and death. There weren't really any other options at that point. And the rate of executions only really appears to increase in Paris because what Prairieal did was move political trials for the whole country to Paris. So obviously the amount of executions in Paris is going to go up as a result of that. But again, what Prairieal did that, actually really alarmed Roeb Spears' enemies in the government was that it had the, you know, the potential and the ability to hold them accountable for the kind of crimes

they had committed in the provinces. So there's this fear now that Robs' Spear is going to use the law of 22 Prairie L to go after these remaining remnants of moderates and ultras. So as a result of this, there's this huge fractions between the different factions on the committee. There's all this infighting. They end up having to like close the doors on the windows. in the summertime because people can hear them arguing with each other on the streets. It's just like, it's kind of a nightmare. So after all of like months and weeks of this fighting, Ropes Speer kind of just says, you know what, fuck it.

And he just stops coming to work. He stops showing up to the committee. And while he's gone, the remaining committee members really take advantage of his absence to begin abusing Prairie L for their own political purposes, really increasing the rate of executions in a way that should not have been done. And they also pass a series of very unpopular measures. including a rollback on the maximum, which not only, you know, severes the tie between the government and the popular movement,

but also becomes, it also gets to a point where the popular movement starts blaming Roeb's fear for these things that are happening, even though he's not in the government, he's still the most well-known and well-respected member of the government to the general public. So when all of these very unpopular measures start happening, more people are being executed for things that make less and less sense, the popular movement starts to blame and really turn on Roe-Sphere, which is going to be very fatal for him going into July of 1794,

to the point where by the time Saint-Jus returns to Paris in June, after helping the French win this huge victory at Flourouse, he's faced with what he calls a frozen revolution and this very fractured government that's, like, poised to turn on the Robs-Pierras. And that, unfortunately, brings us right into Thermador, or Termador, as it would be more commonly known in French, which is the term for the fall of the Robs-Pierras in July of 1794. All right. So, yeah, a few things I want to point out before we move on to how Robespier was killed. One thing you said is that's really important to remember is there's no theory or precedent here. Nothing like this in the way that the French Revolution is being carried out. Nothing has a precedent here. And not even the American Revolution could offer any. I mean, that happened technically chronologically before it, but was so different in nature that it offers nothing of anything like that. You could take a universalizable theoretical.

element and apply it in France, right? So they're really doing this, you know, with no precedent, which I think is just fascinating. And there is this cultural revolution. So of course we know that a cultural revolution would occur in virtually, you know, every major proletarian revolution to some extent after this. And Mao famously formalized cultural revolution into a vast, you know, socialist experiment in practice, but also into a universalizable theoretical aspect of revolution going forward and yeah from from the invention of the guillotine to citizen being the

prelude to comrade calling everybody that to literally like we're going to rearrange time like we're going to have 10 day weeks and we're not going to have Sundays anymore because that's the church day it is profound what they were doing yeah absolutely and it's also worth noting that

you know we're not going to sit here and say everybody killed in the reign of terror deserved it I mean revolutions are messy fucking things right Mao said later you know this is not a dinner party there's never ever ever ever going to be a perfect revolution without excesses without errors without brutalities and tragedies but it must always be compared to the brutalities and excesses and errors of the status quo they're trying to overturn so for example anybody that is you know robustly against the cuban revolution and hate fidel and chay

they almost never mentioned batista they never mentioned what the cuban people were were were subjected to under the Batista regime. And so it's just like in a vacuum these people are monsters. No, they are overturning a monstrous system and revolutions are messy affairs and that's just the nature of the beast. So I wanted to stress that

as well. And then one more thing quickly you were talking about private property and some of the differences involved there and it's not quite as radical as it would eventually become. But what came out of the French Revolution were theorists that explicitly went after property. So

Prudon, right, the anarchist thinker, did that text about private property. And of course, Prudon is a French name. He comes out of France. And the utopian socialist, right? Henry Day Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, those are French names. They're the utopian socialist that Marx would later point to as an interesting prelude to scientific socialism. So, you know, that element did come in eventually and became theorized later. But yeah, not at the time. And the very last thing I wanted to mentioned, just because this is a personal interest of mine, is Thomas Paine, right? Many Americans will remember Thomas Paine, the writer of common sense, the writer of rights of man. And my favorite work by Payne is agrarian justice, where in the 1700s, he is laying out basically a robust social

democratic welfare state that was utterly unheard of at the time. In, you know, and so he of course supported the American Revolution. Then he supported the French Revolution, traveled to France to participate in it. The reign of terror got a little too hot. He got he got imprisoned and sentenced to death. So he was supposed to die by guillotine. But the executioner, they were marking the cells of everybody, you know, the doors on the cell, prison cell of everybody that was meant to be slated for execution. And Thomas Payne's door, I guess, was open. And so they painted the X on the back of the door. So when it shut, you couldn't see the marking anymore. So he, escaped that execution, you know, by the thinnest of hairs.

It was so wild. Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely wild and eventually made it back to America. And then was seen by his fellow American revolutionaries as too far to the left. And I think only like six people, three of which were black, because Thomas Payne was an abolitionist, were even present at his funeral. So, you know, Thomas Payne was sort of reached a pinnacle of, you know, love in America with his common sense and rights of man and then was brought low. by, you know, his perceived extremism and was sort of, you know, only had a few people at his funeral. I always thought that was an interesting historical fact. Yeah, for sure. And it really

points to, too, just how different the French and the American Revolution are, even though they are, you know, so often lumped together, which we talked about at the beginning. But to me, there's just no comparison. You know what I mean? Like anything that was done during the reign of terror, to this day in America, you could not get away with. So, yeah, they're vastly different periods. Absolutely. So this is, now we're going to move into the death of Robespierre. And I think, this is fascinating. When I went to Paris, I was walking through the streets, listening to a lecture,

and I remember walking along the Sen by myself and just hearing this, like, you know, world-class lecturer talk about how Robespierre came to his end. And it is a brutal and tragic, an insane story. And just walking along the

Sen in Paris, as I'm hearing about it, knowing that these revolutionaries that are being discussed, walked these same exact streets that I'm walking. It was a really moving moment. But let's get into it. What led to the downfall of Robespierre and what was the Thermidor reaction? Yeah. So at the end of July of 1794, so this is about a month after Ropes Fier just totally disappeared from the government. He actually comes back to the convention with no warning to anyone, including Sonshu's, and he gives this really incredible, almost four-hour-long

speech. He mostly rails against abuses of the terror and this kind of ongoing plot to frame him as like this, you know, ultimately bloodthirsty dictator, but he also goes after moderate inaction and the encroachment of the capitalist class, particularly financiers on the revolution. And to resolve these issues, he calls for a purge of the membership of the current committees and their subordination to the convention, which are two things that are met with, you know, wild support from deputies to the convention and also from his base in the Jacobin Club. The other thing that Robespier does that gets brought up a lot in these conversations around Thermador is he is essentially accusing people without using their names. And when he's called on, when he's called on this,

when he's asked to provide the names of the deputies who is actually referring to, he kind of refuses to do it. And this is a huge tactical error that he commits because this really freaks out all of his enemies and the committees on both the left and the right, of which he has many. And they're not sure now if Robespierre is going to go after them or not. So they decide to form a tentative alliance to purge him and his allies as soon as they possibly can. And at this point, Sonschus is almost considered a toss-up. The Thermidorians, which is the name that's given to this group of people, because this is all happening again in the revolutionary month of Thermador.

They're not really sure what to do with Sonshuis because at this point, he's seen as such a popular military hero in France, but they don't really want to alienate people by just kind of lumping him in with Ropes-Pier and executing him. So they essentially approach him with an ultimatum. And they say, basically, you can either, you know, join us and you can live, or you can stick by Roep's Fear and die. And incredibly, even though Saint-Juze is only like 26 at this point, and he has all these really incredible kind of proto-socialist plans for the New Republic that he hasn't even really gotten to kind of explore yet, he chooses to go down with Roeb Spear, and he actually spends the night

writing a speech in his defense, which really walks back a lot of Robsphere's kind of more severe. threats against the committees. But before Sanjus can give that speech the next day, the Thermadorians staged their coup against the Robs-Pierras, and they arrest Reps-Pierre, they arrest Sanjus, and they arrest some of their other key allies. So in response to this, the commune, which is now controlled by Robs-Pierrez, tries to rally the popular movement to their defense. But thanks in part to Robs-Pier's kind of reluctance to pursue an insurrection against the government, like what he really wanted was to be brought before the revolutionary tribunal like Maraw was and then acquitted. So he's very reluctant to engage in a kind of like

violent insurrection against the government, either because he had a death wish or he was just tired or he didn't want to think it would work. We don't really know. But the movement as a result is incredibly unorganized. And then you also have this rupture that's occurred between Roeb's fear and the popular movement. So as a result of that, fewer sections of Sankoulo even come out to defend him than his allies are expecting. And the few forces that do come out, they're waiting around for like four, five, six hours without any direction. So they're kind of just like, well, I guess we'll go home. Nothing's happening. So it's this entire almost catastrophic failure to organize a resistance against the Thermadorians. So as a result, the Robespierras are executed,

and this new fragile alliance between the ultras and the moderates become the new ruling party of France. All right. Yeah. Now, this is absolutely fascinating. So as, as, you know, Robespierre is arrested and he knows that this is not going to end well, him and his comrades attempt to basically commit suicide to prevent themselves from going and being executed. Some of them succeed. Robespier in particular, fucks up, blows off his jaw instead. So his lower jaw, he's not dead, his lower jaw is ripped wide off, are basically hanging from a hinge from the side of his face, blood gushing out of his mouth. And this is obviously grotesque imagery and the suffering he must have went through in those final hours is profound.

But eventually when he is brought to the guillotine to be executed, his jaw at this point is bandaged up. And the executioner, you know, as he's placing him in the guillotine, rips the bandage off of his shattered jaw. And Robespierre lets out this insane, painful scream that is only ended by the heavy blade of the guillotine severing his head. from the rest of his body. So that, for me, the imagery of all of that is just insane and feverish and wild. And knowing that Robespierre went out with extreme pain and this almost animalistic yell and howl. And was ended by the guillotine that he, you know, helped and him and his comrades helped bring to the fore. It is like, if you put this stuff in a movie, people wouldn't believe it.

Oh, yeah. I know. The entire period is crazy, but yeah, that entire sequence of events is just totally wild. And there's even debate to over whether or not he was possibly shot in the face by, like, guards that had been set in by the convention. But, yeah, the last 10 hours of his life were just absolute agony. And it's, it's almost just totally symbolic, you know, because this, the fall of Robespierre's execution really is the end of the revolution as far as most people are concerned. And so it's almost this, you know, final cry out of just everything that they could have accomplished, but unfortunately weren't able to do.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I just wanted also mention that these people are young, relatively young. Yes. Oh, yeah. These are all people in their 20s and 30s for the most part. Robespier himself, I think, in his mid or late 30s by the time he's, maybe he reached 40 by the time he died. Do you know that off the top of your head?

Yeah, he was 36. 36 years old when he died. So, yeah, this whole everybody involved here, for the most part, are in their 20s and 30s, which I just think is another fascinating thing to mention. On June 27th, now the 9th of Thermidor, he appears before the convention and delivers a speech of threats. It is the last speech he will ever give. Gross here makes a tactical error.

He comes in and announces that he has a new list of enemies of the republic, but he won't give the list. Therefore, everyone is afraid they might be on the list. And when he comes back the next day to give the list, he is arrested before he can speak. An unexpected chorus of voices shouts Robespierre down. He is stunned into silence. The deputies declare him an outlaw and immediately remove him from the convention.

Robespierre and several of his associates are taken to City Hall, where they remain under watch for the night. Shots ring out in the early morning. The guards race to the second floor. They fling the doors open to a grisly scene. One of Robespierre's allies has thrown himself from the window. Another has taken a pistol to his head.

And Robespierre is found semi-conscious with a bullet wound to the face. His jaw shattered from an apparent suicide attempt. Robespierre spends his last hours on the table the Committee of Public Safety and the very room where he had piloted the terror to its hideously bloody peak. As he is ridiculed and insulted by his former colleagues, Robespierre is unable to respond. The grand master of oratory has been silenced. In the conciergerie, where the last queen of France had preceded him, Robespierre is prepared for the

national razor. His cellmate, the revolutionary Saint-Just, points to a painting of the rights of man and declares, at least we did that. Robespierre had spearheaded a revolution and changed the face of France. He had reordered society

and engineered a bloody and tyrannical system to ensure its success. But he was destined to be one of its final victims. It turns out that there is a great deal of enthusiasm for ending the terror. Nobody can figure out how to do it. And what turns out to be the case

is that the only thing that will end the terror and apparently the only thing they can all agree upon is the fall of Robespierre. On July 27, 17, 1994, the guillotine comes down on the incorruptible. and the last blood of the terror is shed. The terror dies with Robespierre, but the revolution does not.

The rights of man, democracy, the new republic. The accomplishments of the revolution would far outlive any of the revolutionaries themselves. France would enter a period of uncertainty, frozen between fear of another terror, or worse yet, a return to the oppressive monarchy that preceded it. Five stagnant years would pass before power once again consolidated in the hands of a single man, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Historians disagree over the end of the revolution. Some believe it died with the rise of Napoleon. Others maintain that the revolution lived on into the 19th century. and beyond. The revolution was the first and enduring model of a people taking its destiny in its own hands. The idea that the subjects of the oldest, the most established, the most glorious monarchy in Europe

could decide to completely rewrite their history was something that had extraordinary resonance. The revolution, tore apart the old feudal fabric of Europe and forever changed the course of Western civilization. The question raised by the French Revolution is how much violence is justified in achieving a better society. Do people have the right to overthrow what they see as an unjust system

to replace it with what they are convinced in their hearts is a more just system? How much violence is justified in doing that? We still face this question today. As Robespierre and his colleagues were driving their country into the future, many of them must have wondered what the final outcome would be. More than 200 years after the birth of the French Republic, the ghost of Robespierre hangs over revolutions from Russia to Vietnam,

China to Latin America. The French experiments with democracy have inspired models all over the world wherever tyranny takes root the cry for justice is eternal for liberty equality fraternity for revolution all right so the next question is how did things change after thermidor and what were conditions like for the french people in the midst of this reaction yeah so unsurprisingly you know this alliance between the moderate and the ultra thermidorians isn't really built on anything except a hatred of Robsfair. So once Robs Fair is executed, there really isn't anything binding them together anymore. And as a result, the moderate Thernodorians, who also have

the full force of the rising capitalist class in France behind them, turn on the ultras, and they either imprison them, they guillotine them, or they banish some of them to French Guiana. So they just kind of get rid of all of them. And those who survive by very, very carefully renouncing the terror and blaming all of its failings that it's exes. on the Robs-Pierras specifically. So this becomes conscious government policy for the Thermadorians, and it's the reason why pretty much to this day, Robs-Pier is still seen as solely personally responsible for the terror

and as this, like, bloodthirsty, insane dictator, even though this idea and the idea of the terror, even being this, like, top-down sectioned-off period of history, were both consciously invented as propaganda by the Thermadorian government to turn the people against Robs-Pier and the radical revolution that they just overthrew. And really quick, just to mention that, and of course, this exact thing has happened to every single major revolutionary leader ever since, from Castro to Stalin to Mao and everybody

else, this exact thing happens. Everything bad is laid at their specific feet. They were in charge, top down, there's no mass movement, there's no factions, there's no other collective entities that they're responding to. It's just this out-of-history dictator of monstrousal, you know, elements and dimensions. And it's just, it's a conservative. fantasy and lie and it needs to be rejected. Absolutely. And I'm going to go into this later too.

Oh no, no, not at all. I mean, I completely agree. And I'm going to touch on this later. But even, I mean, direct comparisons are made all the time between Rokespeer and Stalin and Mao. And then you even get the conflation of like, you know, communism with with fascism and you have comparisons to Hitler and Mussolini. And it just gets absolutely crazy. But yeah, there's complete similarities there. And there's also similarities in the ferocity that we see in the level of reaction against Robespierre's allies in the radical revolution. So all of his allies are either arrested or executed Jacques Louis David, who painted the death of Mara. He was a very well-known Robespierrez, and he ends up kind of ratting Robespierre out so that he's able to survive

and become like a court, a court painter for Napoleon. But so that, those kinds of things start to happen. The Jacobin clubs throughout France are shut down, and a reactionary white terror begins, which sees the execution of thousands of Jacobins. Some people are just even lynched in the streets in retribution for the Red Terror. But what's most significant for the people of France is that the Thermidorians also move to just totally destroy the revolutionary government

and undo all of the good things that it either managed to achieve or was like trying to achieve. So for example, the general maximum is repealed, social safety nets get destroyed, wages are lowered for workers, all political power. that the popular movement had is totally destroyed.

The directory actually reintroduces the passive and active citizenship tiers. So those come back. Women are banned from being able to sit in the Assembly's galleries. And the government moves to just fully embrace the rise of capitalism, which the Rob Spirist had at least, you know,

continued the terror in part to prevent. And as a result of this, we see destitution and hunger, skyrocket, inflation takes hold again. And unfortunately, conditions return almost to revolution levels for a lot of people. And I just wanted to pull out this one quote from a worker who would later join Bebuf's movement. And he remembered of this period that bread on the free market was priced at 80, 150, even 200 francs at a time when a day's work was paid at only 100 francs. And he writes, in a worker's household, three quarters of bread, all eaten at breakfast, left nothing

but potato goes until the end of the day. The results of this was that everything of value in a house was either sold or pawned down to the sheets from the beds. So it is a really, really reactionary and terrible period of economic turmoil for regular people as well. So Thermidor really represents the end of the radical revolutionary experiment and the victory of the reactionary counter-revolution for really centuries to come because a lot of kind of radical historians will argue that we're still living in the Thermadorian reaction. It was, you know, that significant. And we'll see spikes of the popular movement return with the uprising of Germinal, which is in part fought to return France to the times of Ropesfair.

We'll see it with Babbooth's so-called conspiracy of equals, the July rebellion in the early 1800s, and of course, you know, in the Paris Commune, which you also have a really great episode on that I recommend people check out. But overwhelmingly, Thermador really ushers in the rise of the bourgeoisie, which will include the rise of Napoleon, the eventual return of the monarchy, and probably what, you know, in my view, is the most horrific thing, which is the attempted reinstatement of slavery in France and the explosion of French imperialism, which, you know, to this day, continues to wreak just absolute havoc on the third world. So I really see the French Revolution and specifically, you know, the radical revolution from 93 to 94. as a complete aberration in French history. And I think that the way that French historian Florence Gautier puts it is even better, and she calls it the, quote, critical conscience of European barbarism. So I think that that really kind of sums up the period in total. Yes, yes.

So just as left and right came out of the French Revolution, so did the connections with various colors to various movements. So red was after that associated with left wing movement socialists and communist you know they're called the red threat the red menace the red terror and white was given to the forces of reaction and we had white terror after the chinese and the russian revolution so in the chinese revolution when the communist kicked out the nationalist won the revolution and put them they fled to taiwan there was like a 30 or 40 year fascist military dictatorship uh that would unleash what's known as a white terror against anybody

they suspected of being anything like a leftist of any sort. And then, of course, in Russia, the white terror is well known that, you know, all these various countries teaming up to try to crush the Bolshevik revolution. Now, red would live on to become, as we all know, the color of communists and socialists, and white actually got flipped and became black, the color of fascist in the modern era. So white is really associated with this earlier phase of reaction pre-fascist that was fundamentally royalist in nature often

a restoration of monarchy a royalist commitment to kings and queens etc and in the modern era the reactionaries I guess there are a few that want to bring back

kings and shit but for the most part reaction became synonymous with some form of fascism in the modern era and thus black was associated with that so just worth noting and then just also I just want to point out

what happens in counter revolution, just as I was saying earlier, whatever terrible depravities happened during revolution. We have to look at what happened before. What were the conditions of people before the revolution? And in those instances, when revolutionary movements are overthrown, you see what is the alternative. This brutal, you know, everything that you hated about the reign of terror, it is just, it's made worse, right? The people suffer more. The economy goes out of control. Inequality rises. All the depravities come right back. And, Trotsky, for example, has this famous quote where he says, you know, if the Russian revolution, if we lost to the white terror, you know, if our, if our revolution was successfully squashed, fascism would be a Russian word, right? Ultimately, it became, I think it was an Italian word. But fascism, the modern instantiation of fascism would have came out of Russia if the Bolsheviks had been crushed. And you can see, you can look back at the French Revolution and see exactly what that would have probably looked like. So those are important things to remember. Yeah. absolutely yeah i was going to say really quick that's the thing that i think obviously a lot of liberals

you know either purposely or just because they're you know poorly politically educated don't understand about why these periods have to be so authoritarian and severe because of the amount of reaction that they're dealing with is so violent and abhorrent i mean you see what happened when revolutions fail exactly like what you said it's just the same thing but inverse so they have to be almost you know they have to crack down in order to keep these periods from rising like we see seat with Thermador. Absolutely. And there was also, correct me if I'm wrong here, but basically in this thermidor reaction after the, you know, Robespier's killed and everything, there's these what we would call basically fascist gangs that would go around and fuck up people from the

revolution, sympathizers, they would, you know, do property damage or jump people in the streets. They very much were like the proto-black shirts or brown shirts. But they were also often coming out of these upper class movements. So these are not working class people that are ganged together. These are fancy lads. These are up the chain of wealth. And they're the ones and their entire lineages and privileges were the ones that threat in the revolution.

And they were the ones that formed these basically proto-fascist street gangs that would do the things to anybody they saw is even slightly sympathetic to revolution. So it's worth noting. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, let's get into this question, which I know you, deeply care about. Who was, how do you say his name, Babouf?

Babouf. Babouf. And what was the conspiracy of equals? Yeah. So for people who've never heard of him before, Gratius or Francois Noel Babboff, which was his real name, he's primarily known in socialist and Marxist circles for being one of the ideological grandfathers of communism, who had a lot of influence on Marx and angles specifically.

So Babuff was a journalist. He was a communal. which basically meant that he believed in the abolition of private property, just for the sake of simplicity. I'm just going to be calling him a communist because it's the same thing. But he was also a revolutionary who helped most significantly plan an insurrection, which if it had succeeded, would have ousted the extremely unpopular directory government, which is the kind of ruling party that comes into power after the Thermadorian alliance kind of breaks apart.

So to give a quick overview of Budbuff's life, one of the things that I think is, is the most interesting about him is that he didn't come from the same kind of like middle class background as a lot of the other revolutionaries did. He came from a poor working family. And he had to work from the time that he was, I think, like 10 years old building a bridge or a dam or some horrible thing. But this background, you know, is what really helps him understand that the French revolution not only needed to address political inequity, but also economic and material and equity as well. So during the revolution itself, Bedbuf becomes very actively involved in the popular movement. And as a result, he kind of ends up being in and out of prison quite a bit.

But because he's so well known and respected in the popular movement, Maraugh himself actually intervenes on Fedbub's behalf and helps him get released from prison around 1790, which is just kind of a cool connection. And then later from 1791 to 1792, Babboff works as a commissioner in the provinces. he then returns to Paris in 1793, and he becomes a secretary in the Paris commune. And this is a position that he's initially pretty excited about because at this point, he's still a big supporter of the Montagnards, and he's actually convinced that Robsphere is like a secret communist or could be converted into one, because Robsphere gives this really, really great speech condemning private property in 1793.

It did not go as far as it should have, but it is a very interesting speech. and that elimination of private property was something that was, you know, a huge issue for Bebuf throughout his life. But eventually Bebuf becomes kind of disenchanted with the revolutionary government because he thinks that it's both, you know, too repressive and also not going far enough economically. So because of this, he actually supports the Bermadorian reaction at first, which is not great. But this really starts to change once he meets a couple friends of Ropespares, including the Italian socialist police points. Guinearotti, who brings them into this ongoing underground movement in France to overthrow the directory, which is known as the equals. So the more that Babouf kind of gets to know Buena Rotti and the more miserable that the

directory is continuing to make life for everybody in France, the more that by Buf comes to really admire Ropes Pierre and the revolutionary government, because he kind of sees what we were just talking about, which is that the level of bourgeois reaction that they were up against was so intense, and he understands kind of why they felt they had to be so harsh in order to suppress it. So in this really significant letter that he writes to his friend Bogson, who was another radical who hated the revolutionary government because he was a big fan of a bear, but Boff writes this pretty blunt note that I think is really interesting. So he says, I freely confess today that I'm vexed with myself for having formerly taken an unfavorable view

of the revolutionary government, Roeb's Fier and Sonschus. I believe that these mental loan were worth more than all the revolutionaries put together, and that their dictatorial government was a devilish good idea. All that has happened since these men and their government ceased to exist is perhaps a sufficient justification of this assertion. I do not at all agree with you that they committed great crimes and caused the death of many Republicans. Not so very many, I think. Robespierism exists everywhere in the republic, among all the thoughtful and clear-sighted classes, and naturally among the people. The reason for this is simple. It's that Robespierism is democracy and that these two words are absolutely identical. So in raising up Robs-Pierrism,

you're sure to be raising democracy. So unbelievable, amazing letter. I love that letter so much, but it really just goes to show Bebuf's kind of changing ideological viewpoint at this point. And we'll sometimes see Bebuf get classed as an anarchist, and I think it's kind of fair to overall class him as like an anarcho-communist, but he actually did see the necessity of both a vanguard party and a kind of dictatorship of the proletariat as these two very temporary steps between the success of a revolutionary movement and the decentralized communist society that he ultimately wanted. So he's a little bit more complicated in that sense. But going into 1796, Babboof, Plenoradi and the other equals, which includes some surviving Jacobins from

the revolution, finally plan to launch an insurrectionary movement in Paris to restore the radical revolution. And they publicly and purposely call themselves the insurrectionary committee of public safety, which I think is so great. And they become popular in Paris by promising bread in the constitution of 1793. So an explicit, yeah, so an explicit combination of both the economic and the political, which is, you know, a vast improvement from the kind of previous period. And around this time, Beth Buf is also really cranking out these very pro-roup sphere, and even openly communist issues of his newspaper, the tribute. of the people, which has kind of become like the new Amidu Pupla, I mean, it's always sending him

on the run from like directory authorities. He's in and out of prison. Babuff, I think, goes to prison more than any other French revolutionary. He is like constantly in and out of jail. But unfortunately, the equals never really get a chance to launch their revolution because one branch of their movement is ultimately infiltrated by a director of his spy, who is sent by Lazar Carnot, who if you remember from earlier, was one of the key Thermadorian moderates and a very, very huge and personal enemy

of Rupp's pair and Sonsjuice. So leaving this guy alive was really a horrible mistake that they made because he is involved in pretty much every period of reaction up until Napoleon. He's also buried in the Pantheon, of course. Ropes pair, Sonsjuist aren't, but, you know, Karno is. Mara was originally put

there, but then in reaction his shit was ripped out, and he's somewhere else now. Exactly. Yeah. And that happens during the Thermadorian reaction. They remove Mara off on the Pantheon, which is great. But yeah, so Bad Boehnerati and the other equals end up being arrested by the directory government. They're put on trial. Bud Boophe tries to defend himself, but there really isn't, you know, there's nothing he can kind of do at that point. And he's executed in 1797 for inciting quote unquote anarchy, which was kind of like the standard charge that was thrown at anyone who advocated policies like communalism, which were seen as very far left.

So for me, the execution of Babouf is really the final nail in the coffin for the radical revolution. But if we do want to look at the positives, we do see that Bubbuf's legacy has this really huge and direct influence on both Marx and angles who view Babbuf as the man who gave rise to the communist idea. I think it's what they say about him. So we do get to see this kind of clear inconsistent through line from Reps, Pierre, and Saint-Just, and the more radical popular elements of the revolution to Bebuf, who builds on their economic shortcomings, and then from Bebuf to Marx and Angles, and then eventually to, you know, Lenin and Stalin and now. So in many ways, even though Bebuf was very upset and discouraged when he was executed because he saw just the

level of reaction that France was faced with, he really did succeed, at least in influencing world communism, which is definitely a significant accomplishment. Yeah, absolutely. absolutely fascinating you could we could and you're more than welcome to come back on and do this have an entire episode on just him and his life absolutely but to all my Maoist friends out there the conspiracy of equals does sound a little bit like the gang of four doesn't it a little bit of prelude there that's interesting okay okay all right so we have a couple more questions here and i think we're coming up on two hours which is fine because you know an episode like this could last much longer than that and you are genuinely doing an expert job of breaking this stuff

down and summarizing this very complicated and nuanced history but the question i want to ask next is what was the role of women in the french revolution i mean all the names that we're discussing are are mostly you know men and of course this is the 1700 so this is pre-feminism um but what was the role of women in the french revolution because every successful you know left-wing revolution is lives and dies on the role of women. So I'm very curious about their role here. Yeah, absolutely. So women pretty much like you identified were also very essential to the front of revolution.

But as is the case with most revolutionary periods, they aren't a monolith of experience. So it's kind of tricky to answer this question. And this is another one that you could probably spend like, you know, four hours just talking about. But I'll try to condense it much more than that. So first, I think it's important to understand what kinds of like gender dynamic. were underlining the revolution as a result of the Enlightenment. So we've talked about him a bunch at this point, but the Enlightenment philosopher who probably had the biggest impact on the revolutionaries idea of gender roles was Rousseau. And in this case, we're looking

specifically at his kind of endorsement of gender complementarianism, which is essentially this idea that men and women have like separate but equally important roles to play in building and maintaining a society. So for example, politics are seen as like a male domain, whereas as the home is seen as a female one. And obviously, this is all, you know, very gender essentialist, rooted in gender binary. So, you know, I apologize for that, but that's just kind of the way it was at the time.

Totally. But, yeah, for Rousseau, women aren't only responsible for just kind of, you know, giving birth, but also for raising and educating their children correctly so that they're able to participate in society in, like, the right way. So they did have a big role to play, even if it was one that was very limited and kind of, you know, predicated on misogyny.

But what's really really, kind of crazy and seems nonsensical to us as modern feminists is that this framework was actually really popular with women during the revolution, particularly many radical women who were involved with the popular movement. And this kind of gets into the larger paradox of, you know, women during the French Revolution. So on one hand, you have more moderate revolutionary women like Olymp de Bouge is a big name, Théon de Merri Kor. And these were feminists who were associated with the Girond faction, and we're primarily interested in campaigning for, like, women's suffrage. And they were supported to some degree by the men of the Gironde, most specifically

Condorcet, who is one of the few, I don't know, quote-unquote feminist revolutionary men. But the Girond were still, you know, very disliked by the popular movement in France, and especially in Paris, particularly among radical women who actually preferred Montegnard revolutionaries like Roeb's Paramarra, even though both of them kind of endorsed this very goofy, a revolutionary version of Rousseau's gender complementarianism. And just as a quick aside, Roeb's fear especially was beloved by radical women to the point where both the Girond and the Thermidorians,

actually one of the biggest pieces of propaganda they tried to use against him, was his effect that he had on women, which is kind of funny because to me he's, if not gay, just kind of asexual. but he was accused of kind of like rainwashing the women of Paris and leading this religious cult of women around him, which is really kind of funny. And reactionaries, reactionaries always hate revolutionary chads.

They can't help them. Yeah, literally, yes. They can't comprehend it. So, oh, my God. So you have this kind of mass of radical revolutionary women who are supportive of the Montagnards, even though they are kind of sexist. And their primary concern is economic.

So they don't feel insulted being referred to by the Montagnard as like, Montagnards is like mothers or wives because they are mothers and wives. And they are responsible for managing their homes and feeding their families. And these are duties that they take very seriously and that they also see as revolutionary. So they sort of, you know, naturally align with the revolutionaries who are advocating for an improvement in those things. So these are the women in the streets who organize like the March on Versailles, who participated in bread and grocery riots and who really dominated the galleries at the assemblies and the political clubs. So they did have political agency, even if it wasn't suffrage,

you know, in the traditional sense. And many of them actually see the Girond's conversations around suffrage as this kind of like upper class salon fodder that doesn't really have any bearing on their day-to-day lives. But that being said, there are some efforts made by truly radically, you know, revolutionary women to advocate for both. economic and political rights. And these are primarily led by two female Saint-Coulogne named Claire Lacombe and Pauline Leon. And they succeed in lobbying the revolutionary government to create a women's popular society. So basically like a Jackman Club, but for women. And what's really, again, bizarre and ironic is that this idea is seen by most women in the popular movement as this

kind of very fringe idea, especially because most of the women in the popular movement support the Montagnards over the enrages, who the society is sometimes affiliated with. And this all comes to this very dramatic head in 1794 when these two groups of women are involved in this like huge strait brawl over the role of like the society and the popular movement. And this ultimately leads the revolutionary government to just say, you know what, we're just going to shut this down. So all of that's going on. And this is something, this particular action by the revolutionary government that's kind of led like generations of liberal historians to cast the Jacobins as these like horrendous misogynist to the point where a movie that just came out in France has

this crazy scene where Rov's Fier literally tells a limp de Guge to go back to the kitchen, which is just so fucking nuts. But yeah, so they were definitely very misogynist, Jacobins, and I think, you know, one of the biggest critiques we can make of the radical revolutionaries, like you said, is that, you know, they weren't feminist by any modern understanding of that term, but the decision to shut down the women's society had a lot less to do. with the jacobos beings, flaming misogynists, and more to do with them wanting to shut down groups that were, like, causing trouble. And actually, during the terror itself, we see the

revolutionary government oversees some pretty big changes to French law in support of women, including the equalizing of inheritance laws for men and women, and the mandated equal splitting of well-than-a-marriage. And then we also have Rupp Sphere pushing for a universal education program, and it is true that this was a very gender complementarian proposal, like women would be taught, like, how to keep a house and do, you know, things that are very misogamous to us now. But it would have still set the precedent for women to have the right to be educated for free by the state, which would have been huge. And it was also very popular with women, you know, that makes no sense to us. So, of course, you know, none of these things

end up being very long-lasting because after Thermador, we do see the French government take a truly reactionary stance on the role of women in politics. So not only do women lose many of these legal gains and education promises, they also lose any political agency that they did have when the directory just outright bans them from being able to participate in the public galleries exactly because they were so supportive of Rope's fear. So like many things after Thermador rights for women do get set back quite a ways with essentially the rise of capitalism in France. Right, right, which is completely unsurprising and feeds exactly what we're talking about earlier regarding the nature of counter-revolution. Just really, really,

quickly just to zoom out a little bit and think about the impact on feminism of the French Revolution. So, you know, I'm not going to be able to do this complete justice, but let me just give a minute or two breaking this down. The, you know, the French Revolution is happening. The rest of Europe is watching it. They're not liking it, right? The leaders and the powerful and the rich hate this shit. And Edmund Burke in Britain, right? He rises as this, this conservative thinker. So Edmund Burke, to this day, is seen as, you know, one of the forerunners of modern conservatism. He wasn't, I don't think he was a fascist, you know, or anything like that. He was a sort of a liberal conservative, but still on the right. And, and what really defines it and helps

make clear how much more radical the French Revolution is in the American one is that Burke, as an Englishman, supported the American Revolution, but did not support the French Revolution. And he put out this argument, you know, this classic conservative, you know, diatribe against the French revolution and why it's bad and that created a response from people from lefties right around the continent so you had you had thomas pain really coming to prominence through his engagement with burke's conservatism of the french revolution and pain is just knocking down every single one of burke's arguments in really really impressive fashion and that's why i love thomas pain and i love reading about him um so if burke was a conservative and a forerunner of modern conservatism

pain definitely a you know a democratic liberal and a forerunner of you could even say social democrats um to some extent and then there was another major figure mary walstonecraft who also responded to burke and took a position to the left of thomas pain um arguing against burke's you know dislike of the french revolution and and you know just obliterating his arguments as well but if Burke was a conservative and Payne was a liberal, Mary represented the prelude to progressivism, taking a stance even to the left of Thomas Payne, and she introduced a feminist critique into these arguments as well. So Payne writes famously the rights of man, and this goes on to influence the American and the French revolutions. Mary, in her response to Burke and Payne and all of that, ends up creating a text called A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

and really pushes this feminist current. So even though there's this complexity involved with the role of women in the French Revolution, the overall impact and the rippling effect that the French Revolution had, did stir thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft to advance a more feminist politic that would eventually become what we know is modern feminism. And of course, Mary Wollstonecraft is the mother of Mary Shelley who went on to write Frankenstein, which is an interesting historical note. Yeah, so just the fallout and the intellectual fallout of the French Revolution and people all over Europe and America wrestling with it, you get the generation of these ideas and the progressive feminism of Mary Wallstonecraft is notable for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. So two more questions here. And as always with these revolutionary episodes, we do like to take stock of the failings. And I think you've done a great job so far of laying them out as we work through it. You know, this is imperfect. There's excesses. there are errors, et cetera, as one would expect, but maybe we can consolidate it a little bit more here. So what were some of the failings of the French Revolution, in your opinion? Yeah. So, you know, kind of putting aside its obvious weaknesses with regards to, you know, feminism and the equality for women that we were just talking about,

probably my critiques of the radical revolution specifically are very similar to that books. I think, you know, the revolutionary government did go a bit too far in some places in, you know, terms of the way that it repressed certain aspects of the popular movement and some of its ultra-left critics who were approaching critique from an earnest place. There were obviously many people who weren't, but some of them were, you know, even if we can understand from like a zoomed-out perspective, why the revolutionary government felt that they had to be so severe to protect the revolution. We can still kind of critique that, I feel. And I also think that they didn't go far enough in terms of their very limited, you know, application of radical economic.

policy and their failure to utilize the terror more harshly against groups like the nascent bourgeoisie, who would end up, you know, ultimately destroying the revolution after Thermador. Now, I would at least argue that Roeb-Spaer was on the brink of understanding and agreeing with those critiques based on, you know, his behavior and his final speech on Athermador. But I also think it would have been extremely difficult for him or anyone else to, you know, stop the rise of capitalism in France. That probably would not have been possible. So that's one thing. And then I also think that paranoia and suspicion are two things that get, you know, very, very overhyped about the terror or any revolutionary period, but that were still to some

extent legitimate issues, particularly when it came to this paranoia about like external and internal forces trying to destroy the revolution. And again, it's very easy to understand why the revolutionaries would be paranoid about that, given the amount of legitimate, you know, external and internal threats they did face and all of the double crossings and people defecting. And, you know, it's, it's easy to understand why they, they had those feelings. But this paranoia did lead to, you know, either the arrest or the execution of people who probably shouldn't have been arrested or executed, particularly during this period, this event known as the September mass occurs in 1792, in which we see a crowd of radical Parisians just kind of storm prisons

and begin indiscriminately killing prisoners because they were afraid that they were planning of royalist counter-revolution, but overwhelmingly most people who died in that event were just common criminals who got caught up in like the hysteria of the moment. And that's not even getting into, you know, the many excesses and legitimate war crimes that were committed by provincial tribunals and by convention deputies on mission in the Vande and the own. And paranoia was also what made even the most radical revolutionaries initially wary of the Haitian revolution because they were worried that it was being financed by like the Austrians or the Spanish or whatever

to destroy France. And this then turned into the fear that it was another von deray, which was an extremely kind of shitty way to view a very legitimate revolution in a place that the French had no right to, you know, own or enslave people on in the first place. And, you know, what the brutality of the slavery, I mean, of any slavery,

but especially what was going on in Haiti, was so unbelievably horrific that, you know, they should have obviously been on the side of the slaves to begin with. And that also then touches on the revolution's complete failure to consider anything close to what we'd consider as like anti-colonial theory with regards to Haiti. But yeah, I think that's kind of a kind of a summary all that I would say the revolution both went too far in some ways, not far enough in others, and that it was ultimately forced to kind of be constrained by the limits of the historical time period that it was

happening in and this kind of inevitable rise of capitalism that nobody could have really stopped. Absolutely. Yeah. Well said. And, you know, out of this reign of terror and its excesses, which were certainly present, as you've said, you get this idea of the revolution eating its own children. We've all heard that phrase a million times and it really comes out of the reign of terror but is applied, you know, to other revolutions ever since and specifically to the Stalinist era in particular. And I do think the purges under Stalin, which, you know, did a similar thing as the reign of terror, which, you know, eventually started killing Bolsheviks, killing comrades who made the revolution possible, who risked their entire life to do revolution because of this paranoia and

suspicion. Now, you are in a hot house of political intensity. And there is, there are attacks from every fucking angle. So you almost can't blame them for being paranoid or suspicious. But it can be taken too far. And I think what we can learn about as leftist today, as communist, as socialist today, is that there is this sort of shadow side of our tradition, of our movements, where at times, and to some extent are understandable, given, as I said, the hot house conditions, it goes too far. You turn in on yourself. You begin seeing plots and, you know, conspirators and counter-revolutionaries, even among comrades who you once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with. You know, Robespier oversawed the execution of his childhood friend, Dantan. And, you know, Stalin did similar things with his Bolshevik comrades.

And it wasn't just Stalin, as we've said. This is hyper simplification. The Stalinist era, the purges that took place, many of them completely outside of Stalin's control, as we know. But just pointing this out to say, this is something we shouldn't disregard. This is something that is in our tradition. And it is something that needs to be guarded against for many future attempts at revolution. whether that happens here or anywhere else. And I think just coming to terms with that and being honest about it is, you know, really

important for us on the communist left to do. It's important for us to wrestle with it in an honest and good faith way and to understand that we don't need to do apologia for every single thing that's ever happened under our banner. I mean, and in the face of so much propaganda and counter-revolutionary myth-making, it's understandable why we would want to. But we should be restrained and we should be honest about these things. And we should work to prevent them in the future. that's all you can really say yeah exactly i completely agree all right final question and you know

now that we've kind of talked about some of the failings what did it accomplish and why is the french revolution significant and why should we care about it today as communist as socialist as revolutionary leftist of any sort so obviously you know there are probably 400 million ways to answer this question but i do want to approach it more from the perspective of you know why we as leftists or Marxists in particular should either care about or defend the French Revolution. And like I mentioned before, I'm, you know, very aware that a lot of, a lot of leftists kind of dismissed the French Revolution as just this, you know, overhyped European bourgeois revolution. And I completely understand that in polls, especially after everything that France has done

to the third world as, you know, a truly horrific colonial and imperial power. But even if we put aside, like, Babboff's, you know, undeniable impact on Marx and the commune, and the way that that's inseparable from the radical history of the French Revolution, I think, as I've said a couple times now, that dismissing the entire thing is equal to the very reactionary American Revolution, which, as you pointed out, was primarily fought by, you know, rich settlers and slave owners just so that they could pay lower taxes is a very, you know, a historical and kind of unfair way to view this time period. Because at the end of the day, there was a radical democratic revolution in France.

it was an apparition and it only lasted like two years, but it still happened. And it happened because of a symbiotic relationship between a kind of nascent proletariat and a revolutionary class that helped them gain class consciousness, while also being, you know, extremely critical of wealth and private property and the rising capitalist class in France. So if anything, you know, the revolution only truly becomes bourgeois, in my opinion, after Thermador. And I mean, you know, again, even in Ropes Fier's final speech on the 8th, we see him really coming down against France's kind of financiers and bankers for edging things in this direction. And even Lenin himself, primarily because he was, you know, not only writing theory, but living it, you know, acknowledged the radical revolution's significance for Marxists when he wrote that, quote,

the bourgeois historians seeing Jacobinism a downfall. The proletariat historians regard Jacobinism as the greatest expression of an oppressed class in its struggle for liberation. The Jacobins gave France the best model of a democratic revolution. They repelled an exemplary fashion, the coalition of monarchs formed against the republic. It's natural for the bourgeoisie to hate Jacobism. It's natural for the petty bourgeoisie to ferret. The class conscious workers and toilers have faith in the total transfer of power to the revolutionary oppressed class, for that is the essence of Jacobism. So kind of exactly like Lenin said, I think it's really important for us as Marxists, Marxist Leninists and leftists overall to understand and uphold the radical

phase of the French Revolution, you know, obviously not uncritically because there were legitimate limitations and errors, but exactly because of the way that it's been vilified by both reactionaries and the liberal bifluz, because both have played, you know, this huge role in continuing Thermadorian propaganda and casting the radical revolution as the terror or this like, you know, repressive kind of cannibalistic period, where the roots of. of so-called modern authoritarianism were formed. And as you can probably guess, as a result of that, we kind of perceive this huge amount of anti-communism

coming out of a lot of histories of the French Revolution, especially in the 1980s and 90s, where we see a distinct historical trend emerge, where you have reactionary and liberal historians comparing very vilified caricatures of the revolutionary government and Rokesphere to very vilified caricatures of the Soviet Union and Stalin. So as a result of all of this kind of anti-communist propagandizing about the terror,

you get the creation of this very liberal paradigm where the French Revolution is taught to us, you know, in the West overall, but especially in the United States, as good up until the terror or as, you know, 1789 without 1793, France celebrates Bastille Day they don't celebrate August 10th, really, you know what I mean? But as we'll remember, you know, it wasn't until 1793 that the revolution even became really radical or revolutionary at all. And in Sanger's words, sought to make the unfortunate the masters of the earth by offering real economic and political power to regular people as a direct result of those people's organized strength and their influence on their own government. Because the crowd

in the French Revolution wasn't just this mindless mass of rioters. And typically rioters are not a mindless mass anyway. But this group, they were all revolutionaries and they were all equally involved in kind of casting their own fate in the revolution. So, you know, really what is vilifying the terror doing except vilifying a period of radical revolutionary change and popular democracy at a time when we live in the just, you know, unbelievably repressive and depressing death rows of capitalism, and we desperately need a similar revolution from below. You know, we talked about the guillotine before, and it's not a coincidence that the guillotine and Ropes we are in particular are seen as these kind of like dangerous communist symbols that are met with

you know so much controversy to this day in the liberal west um you know the ruling class absolutely sees these things as threats and in my opinion not just as a historian that studies this but as a Marxist you know we should not only understand why that is but also defend this radical revolutionary project that they want us to be afraid of you know so badly absolutely Yeah. These figures are hated by our enemies. They're hated by the fascist and the rulers of our capitalist world order. And for that reason alone, we should take a second look at them and outright embrace them. If Stalin and Mao and Robespierre and Castro and Lenin and Marx and all the rest, if they terrify these people so much, if they can't stand them, if they have to go out of their way to propagandize against them and slander them, it's because there's real power in not only their actual lived experience and the material impact they made on the world, but in the their continued relevance for working poor, oppressed people of all sorts. And so this is our tradition. We should embrace it. And if it's good enough for Lenin, it's certainly good enough for me. My thoughts exactly. And it really was a wildfire whose sparks continued after the main fire

itself was extinguished. Democracy in Europe today can be traced back to the French Revolution, no matter how imperfect that democracy is, no matter how bourgeois it ultimately is. You know, it changed Europe from a feudal royalist, you know, reactionary bastion into a better situation, right? And so that needs to be taken into account. And then, you know, I was actually listening to a BBC presentation on the French Revolution. These are these stuffy English scholars and philosophers. Yeah, don't start me on that. And one of these commenters, one of these conservative scholars said, you know, the world would be a much better place if the French Revolution never happened.

And to that, we say, fuck you. Fuck you. Absolutely. Oh, my God. One more thing about the legacy here. Obviously, we talked about the explicit connection to communism. And we've went over that many times throughout this entire conversation. But there's also this element of nationalism that was introduced.

You know, before the French Revolution, there are, and even today, there's different parts of France with different, you know, ethnic groups. And for a while, different dialects and linguistic groups. and the French Revolution really forged a common French identity and gave rise to nationalism, which has its positive and negative elements, right? The nationalism of the oppressed is progressive, the nationalism of, you know, the oppressors is always reactionary. But this nationalism that we all take for granted today is really fomented in the French Revolution. And interestingly, and this is perhaps an unforeseen but negative consequence of the French Revolution, is giving rise specifically to Napoleon,

but the French Revolution itself, you know, creating waves throughout Europe, gave rise to German nationalism. So, you know, and German militarism. So at the time of the French Revolution, Germany, as we know it today, is split up into thousands of little municipalities. You probably have the biggest chunk is Prussia,

which would team up with Austria and England and try to put down Napoleon. You know, this threat that Napoleon unleashed on the German people, created German unification, ultimately, in 1871, and this German militarism that went on to become a big problem for the world in the 20th century. So, you know, it's this wide-ranging, insanely, you know, broad impact, not only on Europe, but on the entire world. And so at the very least, it's fascinating for those reasons.

And, you know, the last thing I will say is the U.S. could use a little reign of terror, you know, as a treat as a treat and we should all we should all feed the little robespierre within us absolutely oh I cannot say it better yes all right Stella this has been a fascinating conversation I deeply deeply appreciate and am impressed

by how well you tackled this subject made it accessible and condensed and summarized as I said earlier deeply complex events so I'm so thankful for you coming on. If there's anything you would like to plug or promote, let us know or if there's any recommendations you would offer for anybody who wants to learn more, you can do that. Any last words? Anything. It's, the floor is yours. Yeah, no, I just wanted to say thanks for having me on. You know, I could probably even send you just a list of, you know, additional

resources and things I'd recommend for people to read. There's a really great book that just came out recently. It is called Terror, the French Revolution and its demons, and it's a newer work by Marissa Linton and Michelle B. Yard. And it really explores the idea that the terror is pretty much just like a created period during the Thermadorian reaction and afterwards. So really kind of just dismissing this idea that the terror was this kind of separate top-down period of history that I find really interesting. Because it's difficult to find good resources on the French Revolution, especially in English, you know, in kind of mainstream history. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. If you send me some links you know i'll i'll post them in the show notes and i would honestly i want to do an episode on

rousseau i would love to do an episode on napoleon but if you wanted to come come back on and do an episode on babouf or robespierre or anything else i open invite because i find this stuff absolutely fascinating and i find these figures to be particularly fascinating as well so open invite for sure oh thanks so much dude i this has been fantastic and i hope that i was uh enlightening or helpful to people in some way a lot of information but Thank you for listening. RevLeft Radio is 100% listener funded. If you like what we do here, you can support us at patreon.com,

forward slash RevLeft Radio, or make a one-time donation at BuyMea Coffee.com forward slash RevLeft Radio. Links will be in the show notes. You know, I'm going to be. I'm going to be.