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‘Terror’ in the French revolution
The Terror: civil war in the French revolution
By David Andress
Little, Brown 2005, £20
Reviewed by
Peter Taaffe
THE TITLE of this book, The Terror, means
that it would not be advisable to read it openly, perhaps, on the London
Underground, in the prevailing atmosphere following the London bombings
and the shoot-to-kill policy of the Metropolitan Police. However, the
author, David Andress, deals not with modern terror or terrorists, be
they ‘Moslem extremists’ or others, but with the events of the French
Revolution, more than 200 years ago.
In fact, the term ‘terror’ then did not have the
same meaning as today, where it describes small groups using
indiscriminate violence against mostly innocent people. In the French
Revolution, ‘terror’ meant the use of mass force by the contending
forces of revolution and counter-revolution. The ‘terror’ of the
revolutionaries was, in the main, reactive to that of the feudal and
royalist counter-revolutionary terror.
Although it took place more than 200 years ago, this
revolution and the great figures who participated in it are still the
subject of great controversy between left and right, concepts that grew
out of the French Revolution itself. Following the collapse of the
Berlin Wall and the orgy of right-wing pro-capitalist propaganda –
extending inevitably into all spheres of knowledge including history
itself – there was a sustained assault on the French Revolution. A major
target was the alleged heartless violence and bloodthirsty terror
unleashed by the revolution and particularly pursued by the Jacobins and
the sans culottes, the motive force in the heroic period of the
revolution.
In the post-1989 atmosphere books such as
Citizens, by the British historian Simon Schama, held sway. Schama
claimed to stand on the European ‘left’ but nevertheless wrote: "I am
very bleak about 1789". He ‘deplored’ the violence of the revolution:
"In some depressingly unavoidable sense, violence was the revolution
itself". It is gratifying, therefore, to read David Andress’s rejection
of Schama’s statements in his introduction: "But this is simply not good
enough". We were of the same opinion in 1989 and that is why we produced
the book The Masses Arise – The Great French Revolution 1789-1815
(which will be reprinted in the next period).
Some of the new material contained in Andress’s book
is a vindication of the socialist and Marxist analysis of the great
events of the revolution. In fact, Andress claims to redress the balance
in his treatment of the revolution compared to Schama’s and particularly
on the numbers of those killed, especially through the measures of the
revolutionaries.
To some extent, he succeeds in this task. He points
out, for instance: "France’s decade of revolutionary strife was easily
matched by the years of warfare in North America between the mid-1770s
and mid-1780s. Of the colonies’ 2.5 million inhabitants, one in every
twenty-five fled abroad, far exceeding the proportion that left France
during her Revolution". He further states: "The crude numbers of dead in
the wars and repression of the French Revolution – a half-million or
more – are more horrific in their scale, but, in proportion to a
population more than ten times greater, little worse than the American
example". Moreover, in contrast to the revolt of the colonials in
America, the French revolutionaries set their sights to "overturn… an
entire social order, and to do so with virtually all of Europe in arms
against them. What is astonishing is not so much that they tried but
that, in a very real sense, they succeeded. When the French Revolution
was over, the world was a very different place". He correctly states
that "the French Revolution’s impact was so deep-seated that simply
turning the clock back had become impossible".
In a refreshing aside, he comments: "Socialism, too,
was a child of the French Revolution. Intellectually, Karl Marx derived
his entire picture of historical progress from liberal writers who saw
in the revolution the inevitable rise of the bourgeoisie". Less
acceptable, however, is Andress’s failure to deal with Gracchus Babeuf,
the father of ‘communism’. Babeuf’s ‘Conspiracy of Equals’ developed in
the downswing of the revolution, in the last act, so to speak, when the
proletariat of Paris had been exhausted by the preceding struggles. (See
Gracchus Babeuf: Communist Pioneer, in Socialism Today No.18). It was
doomed to inevitable defeat but, nevertheless, this vital episode in the
revolution is a bridge from the plebeian sans-culottes to the modern
socialist and Marxist movement. Andress does not even touch on Babeuf
and the struggles of his comrades such as Darthé and Buonarotti, who
stood for a communist organisation of society.
This book is nevertheless useful, drawing on the
latest historical research and providing some new facts and insights
into the processes of the revolution and the main actors in this drama,
such as Robespierre and Danton, as well as the leaders of the
sans-culottes such as Hébert and many others. Unlike some other
historians, who previously questioned France’s need for a revolution in
1789, Andress conclusively demonstrates that it was vital in order to
clear the ground of the remnants of feudalism, which were a huge
obstacle to the further development of French society. He also provides
a graphic description of Paris on the eve of the revolution and the
social composition of the different faubourgs (suburbs).
The information on the Jacobins – in effect, the
political party of the most determined capitalists or bourgeois – on the
background of the leading Jacobin figures such as Robespierre – who were
lawyers in the main – and Danton is very clear. Also, the description of
the role of the sans culottes, the ‘popular societies’ and their
decisive intervention at each stage in the upswing of the revolution,
while not new, is welcome. This is particularly so when set against the
background of the denunciation of the plebeian masses of Paris and
France by royalist calumniators of the time and bourgeois writers since,
despite the fact that the actions of the sans-culottes were decisive in
clearing the ground of the feudal rubbish, which in turn allowed the
development of French capitalism.
On the issue of the terror – the central theme of
the book – as opposed to authors like Schama, Andress states: "The
descent into terror was not brought about by ruthless leaders striking
out at helpless victims, but by men who feared their own immolation
driven… by the real threat of aristocratic vengeance". He further
states: "In resorting to Terror, the revolutionaries preserved their
country from the consequences of that disintegration, and went on to
forge a military power that was to dominate Europe for twenty years". As
opposed to Schama, who laments the ‘bloodthirsty’ character of the
storming of the Bastille, Andress points out that while the governor of
the Bastille was executed, a hundred Parisians had been shot down by the
troops of this very governor. Further episodes of violence by the
revolutionary forces arose from the ganging up of old Europe, led by
William Pitt’s Britain, against the Revolution. Friedrich Engels later
commented: "The whole French Revolution was dominated by the War of the
Coalition, all its pulsations depended upon it".
The rise and fall of different trends – called
factions by Robespierre – was also conditioned by the attempt to mollify
the counter-revolution, both internally and externally. First of all the
Feuillants – who stood for a constitutional monarchy – then the
Girondins representing the big bourgeois and Danton, the representative
of the so-called ‘Indulgents’, those who wished to come to a compromise
with the king and the counter-revolution, all fell because of the
determination of the revolutionary forces to extirpate, internally and
externally, the threat from these sources. Although this process has
been described many times by historians like Georges Lefebvre, Andress
spells out the essence of each stage of the revolution. He does not
always draw the necessary general conclusions, however, largely being a
representative of the English historical school of empiricism.
But he is very clear on the so-called ‘September
massacres’ of 1792. As he points out, "The story of the massacres is
inseparable from the consequences of the earlier 10 August insurrection.
This rising had cost the lives of some six hundred troops loyal to the
king… But in return, some three hundred Parisians, from forty-four of
the forty-eight Sections of the city, had been killed or wounded, along
with nearly ninety of their fédéré comrades from other regions".
Those who executed the imprisoned royalist prisoners did so because
"disposing of the baleful influence of the court… still left Paris
balanced on a knife-edge… Paris faced the need to send its own men out
to meet [the counter-revolutionary invasion], while leaving behind a
counter-revolutionary prison population that rumour elevated to many
thousands". These ‘massacres’, as with other examples of the ‘Terror’ of
the revolution, were more than matched by royalist and
counter-revolutionary terror. Andress points out: "Since 1789, the
ordinary people had shown that they had learned the lessons of the
public display of death well from their erstwhile masters".
While this book gives examples of the influence of
the sans culottes, their role as the driving force of the revolution is
not emphasised sufficiently, particularly their demands for ‘direct
democracy’, economic demands including the imposition of the so-called
‘maximum’, a limiting of prices but also of wages, and attacks on the
‘selfish rich’. On the other hand, the relationship between Robespierre
and the sans-culottes is explained, including his turning on his
plebeian base with the execution of Hébert and others, which
disillusioned the masses and laid the basis for Robespierre’s overthrow.
In fact, the very day before Robespierre’s fall from power, workers had
gathered to protest at the ‘maximum on wages’.
The key factor, however, in Robespierre’s downfall
was the military victory in June 1794 at Fleurus. Engels later pointed
out, "Once the frontiers had been safeguarded, thanks to military
victories, and after the destruction of the ‘frenzied Commune’ (the
execution of the Hébertists, etc)… Terror outlived itself as a weapon of
the revolution". Robespierre was at the height of his powers but, says
Engels, "henceforth terror became a means of self-preservation for him
and thus it was reduced to an absurdity". In this situation, the
‘Plain’, the majority of uncommitted delegates in the National
Convention, united with the right to topple Robespierre.
While Andress tries to give a fairly objective
defence of the revolution’s repression of counter-revolution, he is
inconsistent. He writes: "The problem of the Terror was that its
unrelenting quest to preserve and protect the fragile flower of personal
liberty was also the engine of destruction of that very thing. What use
is liberty, after all, unless one can dissent?" The problem is that
during a revolution – a civil war – the forces of counter-revolution
never ‘dissent’ in a ‘peaceful’ fashion as is shown by the experiences
of all revolutions, both bourgeois – the English and French revolutions
– as well as the October socialist revolution in Russia. Having lost
power through a popular uprising, it is the counter-revolution that
invariably resorts to ‘terror’ in order to restore the status quo.
Forceful measures by the revolutionary state are sometimes required
during a civil war. However, the revolutionaries, as in the Russian
Revolution, always considered them as temporary. Once the
counter-revolution is defeated then liberty and democracy should be
restored. That this did not happen immediately in France once the
revolution was secured arose from the continuing ganging up of Europe
against it and the inevitable economic dislocation, as well as the
unstable relationship of class forces.
The author is incapable of really describing all the
different stages of the revolution because he remains within a bourgeois
frame of reference. He argues: "This focus on the ‘Frenchness’ of the
terrorists can, ironically for us, obscure their wider significance,
just as the later insistence by twentieth-century Marxist scholars that
the Revolution was all about class struggle can make it seem irrelevant
in a post-Soviet world". On the contrary, only through the analytical
tools of Marxism, above all through making a class analysis, is it
possible to make sense of the seemingly chaotic processes of revolution,
particularly of the French Revolution itself. Marx and Engels, as well
as Lenin and Trotsky, prepared for the socialist revolution with an
assiduous study of the events of the Great French Revolution. The modern
generation should do likewise. Taken together with other Marxist works,
this book can provide a useful basis for stimulating an interest in
understanding the French Revolution, in order to prepare for the
struggle for the socialist transformation of Britain and the world in
the twenty-first century.
When the descendants of the working class in France
moved in their millions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they
returned to the inspiration of the giants of the French revolution. Only
through the mighty labours of the Parisian sans-culottes was the ground
cleared for the development of industry and capitalist society, the
working class and the mighty modern labour movement. The sans-culottes
were not working class in the modern senses of the term. But in every
sense, the working-class movement today stands on their sturdy
shoulders. They yearned and struggled mightily for a society in which
privation would be abolished. The material means were not at hand 200
years ago. But the development of the productive forces since then makes
it possible to abolish poverty, environmental destruction and misery
from the whole planet. In forging the political weapons to create such a
world, the working class today, and not just in France but throughout
the world, could enormously benefit from studying the French Revolution
and the role of the masses in this mighty event.
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