Can we actually have a French Revolution discussion thread on the social/political side with someone knowledgeable like Sam seems to be.
I feel that this may be false flattery. I am very much a post 1870 modernist.
Sam, do you basically agree with the Marxist argument that the revolution was one of the Bourgeoise using enlightenment ideas to dissolve the old feudal rights to better themselves?
I basically agree, but I am a Marxist, so this isn't "unexpected" theoretical conclusions. There are strong debates about how big the bourgeoisie were, and who they were, and whether the rentiers were bourgeois or not.
But yeah, basically I see that the beneficiaries of the value system by profit—ie a Marxist bourgeoisie, whether this correlates for the French "bourgeoisie" or not doesn't interest me, used state force to smash the institutional and social powers that were fettering their access to profit.
I think the idea that there were "enlightenment" views driving this is naïve unless we broaden the concept of "enlightenment" to breaking point. I don't remember the enlightenment discussing using credit fiascos to forcibly displace peasants from their land, by illegally buying up the results of defeudalisation at auctions that peasants couldn't attend. In fact this sounds very much like the old Tory and old Whig practices of enclosure rather than the enlightenment. Political Economy has more blame coming to it for the complexion of the Directorie than the Enlightenment does.
Marat and Robespierre and Roux were aberrations, wondrous and terrible, but ideology didn't drive the revolution: seizure of the Means and Tools of production did, in this case, the countryside from the aristocracy and later the peasantry.
(My evidence shows that the agricultural bourgeoisie was massive in France, much like the agricultural and sugar bourgeoisies were much larger than the manufacturing bourgeoisie in England.)
yours,
Sam R.