chapter 1 Introduction: French Revolution and Historical Materialism

Marx’s interpretation of the French Revolution is central to his understanding of history. For Marx the revolution represented the classic example of the trans- ition from feudalism to capitalism by means of revolution. The revolution of 1789 like no other event demonstrated the truth of the materialist view of his- tory in which changes in a mode of production occur through the revolutionary overthrow of one class by another. Marx saw the revolution as a model for the proletarian revolution in which the working class would sooner or later over- throw the capitalist class and establish socialism. Marx’s ideas on the French Revolution were substantiated, elaborated and refined by French historians starting with Jean Jaurès at the turn of the twentieth century and continu- ing with Albert Mathiez, Georges Lefebvre, Albert Soboul and Michel Vovelle. In France the Marxist view dominated as late as the 1960s but since then has come under attack by revisionist scholars. In the first instance, revisionists con- centrated on raising as many objections as possible against the notion that the revolution was capitalist and bourgeois in nature. But inspired by François Furet’s insistence that the essence of the revolution was ideological, many revi- sionists rejected materialist explanations and took a cultural turn. Contrary to the Marxist view that sees culture, politics and ideas as inextricably bound up with social and economic forces, many revisionists split the one off from the other, arguing that the former rather than economic and social forces brought about the revolution. Whether the Marxist interpretation stands or falls is a scholarly matter but it is also a political question. In the Marxist view the capitalist epoch was born and developed through class struggle and its denouement is seen in terms of a likely revolutionary transformation of the mode of production from capitalism to socialism. The consequences of revisionism were not merely to put into question the Marxist view of the events of 1789, but to raise doubts about its overall interpretation of modern history and its prognostication of the future. This collection of papers is meant to challenge revisionism and to reassert the Marxist viewpoint. Against the revisionist assault on the conception of the revolution as capitalist and bourgeois, the collection brings to bear new historical research while employing the tools of theory to reassert the Marxist case. Most of the pieces included have previously appeared in the pages of the

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004345867_002 2 chapter 1 journal Historical Materialism. Most address a particular historical question, e.g., absolutism and the bourgeoisie, the financial history of the revolution, revolutionary class consciousness, the nature of the Terror. Brought together as a book these articles offer a substantial critique of revisionism and defence of the Marxist viewpoint. My interest in challenging revisionism is an outgrowth of a long career devoted to the history of the Ancien Régime. The Marxist view has been that in dialectical fashion a capitalist bourgeoisie slowly matured within the aristo- cratic Old Regime and assumed power with the revolution. Fundamental to the revisionist position is the raising of doubts about the development of a bourgeoisie prior to the revolution. This introduction among other things is designed to show that the existence of this bourgeoisie is confirmed as early as the sixteenth century. Under considerable pressure it continued to develop in the following century and then the development of this class powerfully accelerated in the eighteenth century, advancing to the crisis of 1789. It was the discrepancy between the denials of the revisionists and my own sense of the long pre-revolutionary development of the bourgeoisie which led me to confront revisionism. It was through the support of Historical Materialism that this challenge to revisionism was able to emerge. The birth of this journal was a godsend to me as it opened a sorely needed new venue for Marxist history. Scholarly period- icals that would accept Marxist-inspired historical scholarship are few and far between in the Anglophone world. Historical Materialism was born in the late 1990s as a result of an initiative by a group of graduate students in international relations at the London School of Economics who were inspired by the works of Trotsky and Marx. Deliberately non-sectarian, the editorial committee took as its objective the renewal of Marxist political economy from a pluralist and internationalist perspective. Intellectually serious articles on philosophy, eco- nomics, culture, contemporary politics and international relations as well as history appeared in its pages and attracted a growing readership. Born in the wake of the collapse of Soviet Communism, the ravages of Thatcherism, the hypocrisies of the Blairite Third Way and the ongoing crisis of British society, it was meant to lay the foundations for a theoretical renewal of Marxism and revolutionary politics in Britain but also globally. Indeed, Historical Material- ism’s high scholarly standards, its political openness and its annual conferences attracted a growing international audience drawn both by its politics and soph- isticated scholarship. Given my deepening commitment to Marxist history and theory and disillusionment with liberal and positivist approaches, Historical Materialism offered new vistas to my understanding of Marxism and a new out- let for my scholarship.