The Fall of the Bastille
The 200th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille is the occasion of national celebrations in France, a flood of books, articles and TV programmes, presenting opinions for all tastes.
Yet beneath all the ballyhoo, the ghosts of 1789-93 are beginning to stir uneasily. The modern descendants of that very bourgeoisie which was the principal benefactor of the revolution are experiencing a crisis of identity in their attitude to their own past. As one journalist expressed it, "although all serious politicians in France are republicans, only the left are entirely happy with the founding event."
The suggestion by the Communist mayor of Thionville that a bust of Robespierre be erected in the town square lead to a vitriolic argument in which one right wing councillor described the Jacobin leader as "the Ayotallah Khomeini of his day."
While formally "celebrating" the Revolution with lavish parties and speeches, the ruling class and its spokesmen make sure that the real significance of this great event is carefully buried. The most ignorant pundits proclaim that the French Revolution "proves" that revolution always ends in tears. The most refined falsifiers of history re-take the Bastille in the comfort of their studies, demonstrating irrefutably that the Revolution never really occurred and that, even if it did, everything was just the same after it as before.
The French Revolution was, however, one of the greatest events in human history. It is an inexhaustible source of lessons for the labour movement even today. Yet here the first note of caution must be sounded. The French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, and it would be entirely mistaken to attempt to draw exact parallels between the processes involved and the movement of the modern proletariat. To attempt to do so would end up in all kinds of anachronistic and unscientific conclusions.
In the period with which we are dealing, the proletariat, in the modern sense of the word, hardly existed in France.
Yet beneath all the ballyhoo, the ghosts of 1789-93 are beginning to stir uneasily. The modern descendants of that very bourgeoisie which was the principal benefactor of the revolution are experiencing a crisis of identity in their attitude to their own past. As one journalist expressed it, "although all serious politicians in France are republicans, only the left are entirely happy with the founding event."
The suggestion by the Communist mayor of Thionville that a bust of Robespierre be erected in the town square lead to a vitriolic argument in which one right wing councillor described the Jacobin leader as "the Ayotallah Khomeini of his day."
While formally "celebrating" the Revolution with lavish parties and speeches, the ruling class and its spokesmen make sure that the real significance of this great event is carefully buried. The most ignorant pundits proclaim that the French Revolution "proves" that revolution always ends in tears. The most refined falsifiers of history re-take the Bastille in the comfort of their studies, demonstrating irrefutably that the Revolution never really occurred and that, even if it did, everything was just the same after it as before.
The French Revolution was, however, one of the greatest events in human history. It is an inexhaustible source of lessons for the labour movement even today. Yet here the first note of caution must be sounded. The French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, and it would be entirely mistaken to attempt to draw exact parallels between the processes involved and the movement of the modern proletariat. To attempt to do so would end up in all kinds of anachronistic and unscientific conclusions.
In the period with which we are dealing, the proletariat, in the modern sense of the word, hardly existed in France.