Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution

Lefebvre argues that it is misleading to see the leaders of the French Revolution as selfish goodty-owners who wanted to begin with to preserve their own political and economic power:

They had onwards their eyes a society in which modern capitalism was barely beginning, and in which the increase of productive capacity seemed the crucial corrective to poverty and want. Even to those who gave thought to the poor it seemed non impossible that every man might own a few acres or a shop . . . This prototype remained alive well into the nineteenth century. Experience has not confirm these hopes (p. 218).

Actually, the ideal of capitalism remains alive in the tardily 20th century, and is more(prenominal) alive than ever after the rumple of its rival communism in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, experience continues to con us that that ideal still does not justify such hope for economic equality. Like all apologists for the processes of democracy, Lefebvre brushes aside the porcine inequities brought by the handmaiden of democracy --- capitalism.

Certainly what the revolutionaries did in France was a remarkable achieve manpowert, and one which advanced the cause of freedom copulation to dictatorship. However, Lefebvre, writing in 1939, under the growing threat of Fascism in Europe, simply goes too far in his idealization of those men and their motivations:

We come here to the deeper meaning of the Declaration.

The nobility also enjoyed privileges, some "honorific," such as the secure to carry the sword, others "useful," such as exemption from the tax know as taille and from obligations for road service and quartering troops; merely it was less favored than the clergy, not forming an organized body and beingness subject to the poll-tax and the twentieth-taxes (p. 8).

It is a direction of intention; it therefore requires of the citizens an single of purpose, which is to say a critical spirit, patriotism in the proper sense of the word, respect for the rights of others, reasoned devotion to the national community, " fairness" in the language of Montesquieu, Rousseau and Robbespierre.

"The soul of the Republic," wrote Robbespierre in 1792, "is virtue, love of country, the disinterested devotion that fuses all interests into the general interest" (pp. 219220).

The book is luxuriant in historical, political, and cultural details:

As with many of the more unpleasant aspects of the revolution, the author seems to treat its power, and especially the Terror, with a by all odds light touch. For example, in "Mobilization of the Masses," Lefebvre writes that the violence of the revolution was an ineluctable result of the economic, political and emotional pressures which had been building in France for decades: snatch and terror produced a violent defensive and military reception . . . These angry moves could not fail, after victory, to arouse a allow to punish the enemies of the 'nation' and of the common well-being, which in turn led to sum-up executions and all the excesses of revenge" (p. 101).

It is not as if Lefebvre is arguing that violence is a desirable element of a revolution. He is utter that sometimes revolutions do get messy, and this is true for even the to the highest degree hallowed revolution of all. The implication, of course, is that whatever credit line is shed in a revolution which brings down tyranny and establishes democracy is blood well-spent.

Lefebvre runs into the
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