Favorite French Revolutionaries?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

isn't the French Revolution (along w/ the British industrial revolution) of such a massive gravity that it is impossible to assess whether its consequences were ultimately "favorable to society"?  it's kind of like asking, has Plato had a positive effect on philosophy?

Nah. Compared to those two examples the French Revolution is overrated and not in the same league.

I fail to see how the average French person benefited at all from the sudden persecution of the local priest who was the only authority figure in the community that actually listened to their complaints. This followed by sudden orders that they were "free" from an abstract set of constraints that were replaced by a far more real sense of servitude when their sons were marched off in an unprecedented draft in a pointless and baffling war with Austria. In the meantime, Royal decrees are replaced by Republican ones written only in the French of Paris, which is absolutely unintelligible to you, and whole subsets of your friends and neighbors have suddenly become "counterrevolutionaries" for continuing to hear Father Jacques' sermons after he refused to take the Oath. Oh, and the tax burden you complained about to begin with? Still there, we need to supply the troops, including your dispatched son to the front lines in Belgium, because we need to "defend the Revolution," whatever that is.

I fail to see any benefit in this story for the vast, vast majority of people in the Kingdom of France. Just replacing the temporary suffering caused by depression and famine with the more long term suffering of 25 years of war and desolation. A war started by said revolutionaries, no less!

You can't properly weigh the pros and cons of the Revolution by only looking at its immediate consequences. The long-term is absolutely critical here. Were the revolutionary years in general a pretty tough time for a majority of French people? Sure. But without the Revolution, France (and, to some extent, Europe in general) would have been unable to move forward in the countless ways it did throughout the 19th century. France would never have enjoyed its longest period of peace, prosperity, and material and cultural progress until the end of WW2 from 1871 to 1914. The French wouldn't have been one of the first people in the world to experiment democracy (well yeah, white male democracy, but that's better than nothing) and develop a vibrant political life. And an overbearing, rotten Catholic Church would still be dictating morality to the entire population and control the political process (again, just look at Italy). So yes, going through a little rough time is sometimes necessary to move history forward. I'm sorry it had to be so violent, and it certainly would have been possible to make it much less violent, but ultimately that's not what matters most.

The problem with this line of argument is that it can be used to justify any action based on some teleological notion of progress. Basically your argument can be changed as such: Without the brutal actions of Lenin and Stalin, regardless of their actual intentions, the Soviet Union could not have achieved its economic boom of the 70s and 80s, its peace and prosperity in the 90s and the stable democracy and centre of world Communism that we know today. And if you think I'm being facetious by this example, I will remind you that the Soviets themselves based their idea of revolution and history on the example of the French and were not unwilling to apply the 'lessons' of that history to the Russia of their age.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

isn't the French Revolution (along w/ the British industrial revolution) of such a massive gravity that it is impossible to assess whether its consequences were ultimately "favorable to society"?  it's kind of like asking, has Plato had a positive effect on philosophy?

Nah. Compared to those two examples the French Revolution is overrated and not in the same league.

I fail to see how the average French person benefited at all from the sudden persecution of the local priest who was the only authority figure in the community that actually listened to their complaints. This followed by sudden orders that they were "free" from an abstract set of constraints that were replaced by a far more real sense of servitude when their sons were marched off in an unprecedented draft in a pointless and baffling war with Austria. In the meantime, Royal decrees are replaced by Republican ones written only in the French of Paris, which is absolutely unintelligible to you, and whole subsets of your friends and neighbors have suddenly become "counterrevolutionaries" for continuing to hear Father Jacques' sermons after he refused to take the Oath. Oh, and the tax burden you complained about to begin with? Still there, we need to supply the troops, including your dispatched son to the front lines in Belgium, because we need to "defend the Revolution," whatever that is.

I fail to see any benefit in this story for the vast, vast majority of people in the Kingdom of France. Just replacing the temporary suffering caused by depression and famine with the more long term suffering of 25 years of war and desolation. A war started by said revolutionaries, no less!

You can't properly weigh the pros and cons of the Revolution by only looking at its immediate consequences. The long-term is absolutely critical here. Were the revolutionary years in general a pretty tough time for a majority of French people? Sure. But without the Revolution, France (and, to some extent, Europe in general) would have been unable to move forward in the countless ways it did throughout the 19th century. France would never have enjoyed its longest period of peace, prosperity, and material and cultural progress until the end of WW2 from 1871 to 1914. The French wouldn't have been one of the first people in the world to experiment democracy (well yeah, white male democracy, but that's better than nothing) and develop a vibrant political life. And an overbearing, rotten Catholic Church would still be dictating morality to the entire population and control the political process (again, just look at Italy). So yes, going through a little rough time is sometimes necessary to move history forward. I'm sorry it had to be so violent, and it certainly would have been possible to make it much less violent, but ultimately that's not what matters most.

The problem with this line of argument is that it can be used to justify any action based on some teleological notion of progress. Basically your argument can be changed as such: Without the brutal actions of Lenin and Stalin, regardless of their actual intentions, the Soviet Union could not have achieved its economic boom of the 70s and 80s, its peace and prosperity in the 90s and the stable democracy and centre of world Communism that we know today. And if you think I'm being facetious by this example, I will remind you that the Soviets themselves based their idea of revolution and history on the example of the French and were not unwilling to apply the 'lessons' of that history to the Russia of their age.

But that's not what I'm saying! Read my post again, I've never tried to justify the bad things that the revolutionaries did, nor to claim that they were necessary in any way. I oppose these things now and I would have opposed them then (though silently, in all likelihood). I'm simply claiming that all these bad things should be weighed against the Revolution's long-term legacy. If Lenin and Stalin's actions had achieved outcomes of similar magnitude, I would feel the same about them.

Ah but the problem with that we don't know what would have happened otherwise. To commemorate the revolution means to pose a causal link between the revolution and the development of the French Republic as it is today. But is that really the case? Is it possible that France might have morphed into a constitutional monarchy without the revolution? That's a question only for real experts (who probably wouldn't agree). Were France's moves towards representative government really much more advanced than those in the UK or in the Netherlands, for example, despite the lack of revolutions in either of those countries? With universal manhood suffrage came earlier to France than the UK (don't know about NL) giving women the vote took a few decades longer. Where was 'the spirit of the revolution' then?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I think that's an unfair characterization of Mikado's point– it's not a stretch to argue that more of the good things of the 19th and 20th Centuries were borne out of other events, say for example the Industrial Revolution, whereas more bad aspects of modernity have their roots in the French Revolution.  I think your argument here is a bit of a false dichotomy.

That would be going far too far. Here' s one good thing that happened due to the French Revolution: The Increasing freedom and eventual emancipation of large parts of the European Jewry. This may have happened in a world without the Revolution but surely not in the same way. Could industrialism be held to be responsible? Unlikely given where many of the Jews were and the pattern of emancipation.

You don't believe that broad social changes end up having a very concrete impact on real people's lives?

Of course. But is that worth a revolution though? Especially considering that those enacting the revolution did not have the greatest idea of what they wanted (Except perhaps 'Defeat the Austrians')

[Tetro Kornbluth]

To Al...I've always been puzzled by the idea that nationalism just turned on in the 18th century. Clearly you can find a lot of, for example, opinion in 1580s England that is distinctly hostile to the idea of union with Spain, and that's not entirely due to the Protestant/Catholic divide. Ditto Netherlands vs Spain in that same early modern epoch, another divide fueled by the Reformation but not really explained by it.

Like every 16th and 17th Century source I've read is aware of European entities known as 'England', 'France', 'Germany', 'Spain' and 'Italy' at least. And obviously they weren't just referring to states although I wouldn't say this was national identity of a modern type.