Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” relies primarily on the basest of human emotions and the abandonment of intellectual integrity in its case for tying Jews to Marxism and Marxism to the need for Germany to advance on Russia. While its sentiments certainly live on in the hearts of those who share Hitler’s anti-Semitism and perspective on life from the angle of race, ultimately one is required to personally identify with the Aryan race as well as to discard with reason, humanity and objectivity in order for such sentiments to resonate.
Hitler attempts first to dehumanize the Jews and strike fear and anger in the hearts of non-Jewish Germans, in alleging without proof the animalistic drive among Jewish males to seduce non-Jewish females, ultimately for the purpose of impurifying her prospective offspring’s’ supposedly superior Aryan bloodline and depriving non-Jewish German males of the opportunity to produce purely Aryan children with said females. Hitler than declares without proof the absurd statement that the Jews were responsible for bringing blacks into Germany for further purposes of diluting the Aryan racial purity. The statement is absurd in all capacities, in purporting Jews were solely responsible for bringing blacks to Germany, for alleging that there was something inherently wrong about blacks being in Germany and for suggesting this importation of blacks was tied to Hitler’s ill-conceived Jewish agenda of diluting Aryan blood. Following this dehumanization and appeal to Germans’ xenophobia of Jews and blacks, Hitler asserts a blanket statement that in weakening the power of Aryan purity could the Jews then pursue their grand goal: the enslavement of a bastardized amalgam of races, all “infected” with Jewish blood.
After deconstructing the supposed agenda of the Jewish race, Hitler then employs Marxism as the weapon of Jews with which they may “subjugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist.” Hitler relies on intellectual ambiguity and fallacy in describing all of the fears he and many Germans harbored towards the effects of Marxism and vaguely binds these effects to Jews intermingled with anti-Semitic rambling. After decrying how “he” (the Jew) “…undermines the states until the social enterprises which have become unprofitable are taken from the state and subjugated to his financial control,” Hitler further names the Jew (“he”) as being culpable for dismantling the political structure. He alleges that the Jew (“he”) “…refuses the state the means for its self-preservation, destroys the foundations of all national self-maintenance and defense, destroys faith in the leadership…” as well as having contempt for the state’s history, culture and moral center.
Hitler then instantiates these supposed illustrations of the employment of Marxism by Jews with the example of Russia. Here, Hitler’s agenda is transparent, as he waxes nostalgic for the centuries past when “…Russia drew nourishment from this Germanic nucleus of its upper leading strata.” Hitler then states that this “Germanic nucleus” has been “…exterminated and extinguished,” having been replaced by the Jew. In then lamenting the impossibility for the Russian to “…shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources” as well as stoking hope that “…it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever,” Hitler has essentially created a two-headed boogeyman to both frighten his fellow Germans as well as to inspire mock-sympathy in them towards the apparent “decomposition” of the Russians whom he intends to “re-nourish” with Germanic rule.
From an ideological standpoint, Mussolini would have undoubtedly agreed with Hitler’s anti-intellectual rhetoric, in so far as he boldly asserted proclamations from the heart with little reliance on reason or substance. Mussolini’s belief in the need of the state to expand that it could express its vitality by way of militarism agrees with Hitler’s justifications for the advance on Russia. Mussolini would clearly agree with Hitler’s attacks on the economic, political, cultural and moral effects of Marxism, and overall the notion that the strength of the state had to be preserved at all costs. Apart from Hitler’s attributing the implementation of Marxism to the Jews, Mussolini would undoubtedly agree that Marxism undermined the state’s financial control of social enterprises. He would agree that Marxism undermined the political integrity of a democratic state. He would agree that Marxism polluted the state’s culture in terms of its art, literature and theater, as much as he would have found Hitler’s romanticism of the state’s cultural virtues agreeable. He would agree that Marxism debased the moral centers of a state including religion, ethics and morality in general, having stated, “The state is a spiritual and moral fact in itself.”
As insane and despicable as Hitler’s sentiments and tactics may seem to anyone not subscribing to his ideologies, it is easy to understand why “Mein Kampf” resonated with many Germans in the 1930’s. In the wake of such miserable morale following the crushing and humiliating defeat of Germany in World War I, Hitler’s appeal to many Germans’ supposed racial superiorities must have been uplifting and empowering to a people who felt inferior and powerless. In the wake of poor economic conditions, Hitler’s demonization of the Jews (a people whose cultural emphasis on education had historically propelled them to positions of political and financial influence in European society) empowered the resentment of Jews by non-Jewish Germans, and fabricated a sense of racial entitlement. Hitler’s romanticism of German history and culture must have certainly appealed to the German people’s strong sense of pride and nationalism. The fact that the previously more liberal German government, relying on reason and accountability, had failed its people could only have increased the receptiveness people had for anti-intellectualism as well as compliance with the forthcoming totalitarianism. Hitler’s fear-mongering the effects of Marxism at the hands of Jews could only have intensified his alternative political appeal in the wake of such ineptitude by the failed liberal government.
From today’s perspective, as astounding as Hitler’s notions of safeguarding democracy are (e.g. “And in politics he begins to replace the idea of democracy by the dictatorship of the proletariat”) given his suppression of the ideals of democracy with his fascist regime, I find it equally astounding to note the similarity of tone and tactics “Mein Kampf” has in relation to rhetoric employed by the modern Republican Party in its scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims as tied to the threat of terrorism. One can only hope that in the instance of the United States, liberalism will prevail and ultimately thwart the rise of fascism.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
UMass Boston History 112: Midterm on the French Revolution
January 21, 1793
A vast silence had overtaken the city of Paris. It was a moist and foggy day that saw the streets of Paris empty, shops closed for business and battalions of National Guards lining a path stretching from the Temple all the way to the Place Lois XV. Making its way down the path was a closed horse-drawn carriage whose occupants were enroute to embrace a destiny soon to send shockwaves throughout the entire civilized world.
Louis Capet, formerly King Louis XVI, was accompanied by his faithful Abbé Edgeworth along with several guards instructed to knife Capet to death should he attempt to escape. Their journey was to end with Capet’s head in a guillotine for purportedly conspiring against the liberty of the nation and of attempts against the general safety of the state. Only twenty-four hours earlier had the former king been made aware of his sentence, and had been denied a three-day delay to make peace with his God.
In what must have been an excruciatingly slow two-hour journey to the scaffold, one wonders what thoughts had taken shape in Capet’s mind. He was completely convinced of his innocence, and while having endured a sudden and cruel separation from his family earlier he was notably strong, serene and composed. As he gazed out upon the faces of National Guards lining his fateful death-march, one wonders if perhaps his mind traced back to the turbulent events that had led him here; turbulent events that marked the beginning of the Revolution...
Estates-General
For the first time since the year 1614, the body of the Estates-General convened at Versailles on May 5, 1789. The King’s power had greatly diminished following enormous debt incurred after a taxing war against Britain over the American Revolution, which he attempted to relieve by way of a permanent and indiscriminant land tax. The First and Second Estates (consisting of the elite Clergy and Nobles respectively) ultimately curtailed the King’s power to levy such a tax as the Parlement of Paris asserted the approval of the Estates-General as a provisional requirement. In order to restore regal authority, absolute monarchy had been cut off at the legs in the face of what would need to be a severely tumultuous show of force by the King. Given the precarious position he was in with such widespread dissent and financial ruin afoot, King Louis XVI bowed to the demands of the Estates.
The opening of the Estates-General involved a long march through the streets of Versailles by the representatives of the Estates, each of whom had distinguished themselves in their manner of dress: the nobles with gold-embroidered cloaks and plumed caps, the clergy bearing Episcopal purple colored clothing and the Third Estate (representatives of the common people) more modestly garbed in black wool and plain round caps (reminiscent of feudal ages). As the members took their places at the meeting, the atmosphere was charged with partisanship as some attendees were cheered or booed to varying degrees, while the King was boisterously received by cries of “Vive le Roi!”
The King gave an impassioned speech praising the First and Second Estates’ offer to renounce their financial privileges, in so far as they had previously been exempted from the land tax. He expressed hope for cooperation by all three Estates for the general good of France, and regret that the tax would be needed in order to rebuild the economy and restore public confidence in the government. He pleaded for a return to the traditional deference to the King that had subsisted in the monarchal system in exchange for his faithful and best-intentioned service to the nation. The King’s speech was received by enthusiastic applause, and followed by yet more cries of “Vive le Roi!” as he left the meeting.
Notable was a speech by the Finance Minister Jacques Necker, who reported the state of France’s finances in a very lengthy, detailed and repetitious manner that was seen to be overly complementary to the King. The First and Second Estates received these sentiments with little dissatisfaction, however Necker’s speech was met with silent disapproval of the representatives of the Third Estate. Particularly objectionable in Necker’s financial report was his inability to account for the cause of the bread shortage resulting in higher costs to the peasants. Other issues of contention that ultimately served to drown out the food-related issues of concern to the populace at large were the movement to unite all three Estates into a single body (opposed by the staunchly Monarchist Nobles and Clergy while supported by the bourgeoisie and the Third Estate) as well as to set the standard of voting by number of people as opposed to by privilege of Estate (opposed by the staunchly Monarchist Nobles and Clergy while supported by the bourgeoisie and the Third Estate). The concern among the staunchly Monarchist Nobles and Clergy was that the sheer volume of representatives present among the bourgeoisie and the Third Estate would erode their traditional domination of the Assembly. Ultimately, the Nobles and Clergy were able to retain their dominance by containing a small majority in favor of voting by privilege of Estate.
Unwilling to continue to cede to the dominance of the overly-represented privileged Estates, the Third Estate reacted by staging a walk-out of the Estates-General and began meeting as the “Communes” (meaning “Commons”). While inviting the other two Estates to take part on June 10, they did not waste any time in formally declaring themselves the National Assembly on June 17, 1789 after representatives of the First and Second Estates did not join them. Dissolving the notion of representation by Estate, it was their intention to govern the affairs of the people of France with or without the other two groups of representatives. King Louis XVI, for his part, chose to impede the National Assembly from continuing to meet in the Salle des États by locking it up. This resulted in the National Assembly moving their convention to a tennis court, where they administered the “Tennis Court Oath” holding its members to a pledge for keeping the National Assembly together until France had a new constitution. Soon after, a majority of the Second Estate joined the National Assembly, as did 47 members of the First Estate.
Taking the Bastille
King Louis XVI next sought to intimidate the National Assembly in calling up over twenty thousand soldiers to Paris and Versailles, including numbers of hired foreign soldiers against the advice of Finance Minister Necker. In the midst of such chaos and under threat, the National Assembly continued to work undeterred, focused largely on responding to the high cost of bread. After advising the King to restrict the royal family’s expenditures to a budget in order to be more fiscally conservative, Necker was dismissed from his job as well as well as being told to relinquish his citizenship on July 11th, 1789 when he fled France for Brussels. The dismissal of Necker was seen as a huge loss by the bourgeois, and taken as a monarchal political coup. Necker’s dismissal was accompanied by the suspension of theater performances and closure of the Bourse by the order of the Estates-General. Afraid that the National Assembly was in danger of being silenced, an armed mob of ten thousand bourgeois took to the streets of Paris being further agitated by the incendiary political speech of revolutionary Camille Desmoulins.
On July 12th, the armed bourgeois mob attacked cavalry troops with stones and took hostages. On the 13th, the mob seized sixty barrels of gunpowder on the Seine, a store of grain in the Monastery of Saint-Lazare and arms from the King’s “garde-meuble.” The mob began to assemble into a formation of a national armed corps, selecting Fournier l’ Américain as their chief, who related that although they were mostly armed with less than formidable weapons (e.g. - clubs, ancient swords, pruning-hooks, pitchforks, and spades), their confidence was inspired by the sentiment of liberty. On the 14th, the bourgeois mob seized yet more arms from the Hôtel des Invalides without any interference from five thousand of the King’s soldiers stationed no more than four hundred yards away. In all, twenty-eight thousand muskets were seized along with a cannon. The bourgeois later learned that the governor of the Bastille, the Marquis de Launay, had denied there were any arms to give to the mob, when so queried. All at once, the battle cry of “Let’s go and attack the Bastille!” was to be heard throughout the streets of Paris.
The situation at the Bastille escalated from the bourgeois demanding munitions and arms to being threatened by the guards, to throngs and throngs of bourgeois arriving with and without arms poised to attack. The hateful sentiment towards the Bastille was universally felt among the French commoners, as it had long served as an institution that symbolized despotism. The mob attempted to force their way into the fortress, and the guards responded by opening fire killing over a hundred bourgeois. Wishing not to incur a massacre, the governor ordered a cease-fire and surrendered the fortress. Thinking he had secured the safety of himself and his men in the course of the surrender, the governor ordered the drawbridge to the Bastille lowered, which the mob violently rushed across. The guards were hanged, arrested and dragged through the streets in humiliation. The governor was beaten, stabbed and ultimately decapitated, his head impaled upon a pike and taken about the city in celebration of the bourgeois victory, ultimately ending at the Palais-Royal.
Upon being briefed of the fall of the Bastille, the King resolved to withdraw his soldiers from Versailles in order to quell the violence, and also recalled Necker to his former position. He traveled to Paris, and appeared to accept the circumstances of the revolution, even placing a tricolore cockade in his hat. While in Paris, he sanctioned a self-appointed citizens’ committee as the new Parisian government as well as to order the representatives of the First and Second Estates to join the National Assembly. Contrary to the wishes of the King, the Nobles fled France as émigrés and more so spoiled for the intervention of other European nations to restore order to France with monarchy at the helm.
August Decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
In late July of 1789, the peasants took up insurrection on their own behalves. As such, they burned both manor houses of their landlords along with the records containing owed payments and services. The insurrection of the peasants coinciding with the vast amount of unemployed peasants on the roadsides whipped up widespread paranoia in what came to be known as the “Great Fear.” On August 4, the National Assembly sought to appease the peasants as many bourgeois were also landowners and feared what had befallen the nobles would befall them as well. In what came to be known as the “August Decrees,” the National Assembly abolished the long-standing feudal system, which tied the peasants’ interests to that of the revolution.
The “August Decrees” held that the traditional rights, monetary dues and peasant labor previously entitled to the landowners would be immediately abolished without compensation. They held that the traditionally exclusive right to hunt game on farmland by the nobles would now be a right held by all on their own land. The sale of judicial and municipal offices was abolished as were the fees paid to priests. The exemption from paying taxes was abolished, and was replaced with a proportional tax levied to all citizens on their property. All privileges, financial or otherwise, as concocted by provinces, principalities, districts, cantons, cities and communities were abolished and would be replaced by laws from the forthcoming constitution. The exclusivity by way of birthright to particular positions was abolished. The money previously collected to be sent to the court of Rome, the vice-legation of Avignon and the nunciature of Lucerne by the clergy was to cease being collected, and would be an issue for church bishops to tend to. All special financial privileges afforded the clergy were to be abolished. The ability to have more than one benefice when the revenues yield more than three thousand livres was abolished. Excessive pensions, dispensations and emoluments would be reduced.
On August 26, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was published after the National Assembly was able to come to an agreement on the basic tenants while attempting to assemble the constitution. It was inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, and co-authored by America’s own Thomas Jefferson with the Marquis de La Fayette. As well as the common author of Jefferson, the French and American Declarations shared a common link of John Locke’s Natural Rights. The French Declaration was to serve functionally as a preface to the Constitution, and unlike the American Declaration attempted to outline the basis of actual legal guidelines. Among the key principles were establishing that men are born free with equal rights, establishing government’s purpose as the guardian of these rights, establishing sovereignty as belonging solely to the nation, establishing that liberty is permitted in so far as it does not cause harm to others, establishing that it is the right of the law to determine what is harmful to others, establishing that the law is the expression of the general will of the people, forbidding the detention of any man for reasons not determined by the law, establishing punishments for breaking the law along strict and conservative guidelines, establishing that man is innocent until proven guilty when accused of a crime, establishing the freedom of religion, establishing the freedom of expression, establishing the need for a police force, establishing the need for a proportionate tax in order to cover the cost of police and administration, establishing the citizen’s right to government transparency with regards to usage of taxes, establishing the citizen’s right to hold administrations to account, establishing the separation of powers for citizens, and establishing the right to property as a right which can only be lawfully seized for use of public necessity or at the discretion of the law with judicious indemnity being granted.
The “general will” tenant in the Declaration was inspired by the political ideas of French-Swiss philosphe Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his publication “Social Contract.” This tenant as applied to the Declaration referred to the collective will of French society, where all who participate via their individual contribution are to be bound by the overall will by reason of their stake in it. Rousseau’s concept legitimized the National Assembly as a sovereign authority, and helped to establish guidelines by which the National Assembly sought to stay true to with regards to respecting the general will of the people of France. Following the publication of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the National Assembly made clear their intention to abolish the Parlement whom “called themselves the representatives of the people, desiring to be so only in order to augment their power and bring added misfortunes.” Ultimately, there was discord among the National Assembly as to how the will of the people could best be organized structurally. Contentious issues were raised, such as the executive veto, in an effort to shape the government like that of the English structure with a bicameral legislature and a King exercising an executive veto. The opposing view was to structure the legislature as a unicameral body with no executive veto for the King, essentially reducing the weight of the King’s vote to not being above that of a president. The National Assembly ultimately adopted the unicameral legislature giving the King a suspensive veto, which allowed him to merely suspend proposed legislation to not being re-proposed until following the next election. He was able to suspend legislation with a veto merely twice, and if the legislation is proposed a third time the King’s veto will have been overrode.
Marching on Versailles
By the Fall of 1789, there was mutual distrust flowing freely the monarchists (consisting of those in the monarchy and the portion of the populace who supported them) and the anti-monarchists (consisting of the National Assembly and the large portion of the populace who supported them). The National Assembly and its supporters were not confident in the King’s loyalty to the revolution with his reticence to support the August Decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, along with the fact that royal émigrés were actively undermining the revolution in collusion with foreign nations. The King and his followers were constantly on guard against designs against the royal family, and mostly the imminent destruction of the monarchy itself. Plans devised by the National Assembly to relocate the King to Paris were turned down by Louis XVI when presented to him by Necker. The grain crisis grew worse resulting in resentment against bakers, and both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary orators attempting to guide the revolution in their relative favor (revolutionary attempting to guide it against the King and counter-revolutionary attempting to guide it against the National Assembly).
The straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, occurred during a royal banquet on September 23rd. The banquet consisted of loyal sentiment expressed to the royal family, and among the spectators paying witness were revolutionists. These witnesses published their personal accounts of the banquet, which included outrage at the loyalist expressions of love for the King, perceptions of conspiracy against the city of Paris and that soldiers on guard stomped on the tricolour cockade opting instead to wear the black cockade. This resulted in many Parisians attacking army officers and aristocrats in the evening of October 4th, and on the morning of October 5th many women took to the streets denouncing the lack of bread in baker shops. As the mob grew to between six and thousand women, bakers were abused, offers by officials to state their grievances civilly were ignored, and ultimately the women began to march to Versailles.
Informed of the forthcoming mob marching on Versailles, King Louis XVI rejected the advise of his counsel to violently thwart the march at the bridges of Sévres and Saint-Cloud. Unwilling to invoke bloodshed, the King soon found the mob of women entering Versailles with small weapons and a cannon in tow chanting “Long live the King!” to which inhabitants of Versailles chanted back “Long live our Parisiennes!” Upon reaching the National Assembly, some of the women met with the representatives to discuss the bread famine, while some Assembly members discussed the necessity to reign in order among the mob. The mob surrounded the palace, where the guards were ordered to avoid agitating the mob at all costs. Meanwhile, the National Assembly chose to use the advantage of the mob as an opportunity to press the King to grant them audience in order to accept the preliminary articles of the constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. They were successful in attaining a nine o’clock evening reception. Before the reception of the National Assembly deputies, the King received a delegation of eight women who implored him for need of bread, to which he replied that he would send all the bread of Versailles to Paris. The King then signified his acceptance of the constitution.
Making his way from Paris to Versailles, the Marquis de La Fayette soon reached the palace, where he assured the King of the National Guard’s protection. On the morning of October 6th, the mob massacred the palace guards in their barracks, broke through the gates and forced entry to the palace killing guards they encountered. The royal family safely took refuge in their apartments until La Fayette was able to convince the National Guard to join with the palace guards and defend the royal family. The mob scoured the palace for signs of the royal family, stabbing bed mattresses with pikes to make clear their intentions would they have found them. La Fayette convinced the King of the necessity for the royal family to relocate to Paris, where he felt they would be more secure. As this was what the National Assembly and the mob desired (for the sentiment was that there would be no lack of bread in Paris should the King reside there), the King and Queen appeared on the balcony to announce their intention to move to the palace of Tuileries in Paris. King Louis XVI and his family was then escorted to Paris by the National Guards, which helped to legitimize the National Assembly for their role in safe-guarding the monarchy as much as their revolution had displaced it.
The National Assembly in Charge
Following the King’s unhappy relocation to Paris, the National Assembly relocated to Paris as well on October 19th. They set to work on the constitution, which consisted of dismantling the old structure of government while maintaining a precarious balancing act ultimately resulting in the National Assembly having leverage over the King and other parts of government. The Assembly formally acclaimed Louis XVI “King of the French,” proceeded to rename and reorganize boundaries of provinces and divided the government into ninety-three departments which were further divided into districts that were further divided into cantons composed of six or seven parishes (all levels nearly identical in size and structure). The people took on a citizenship classification of either being active or inactive, the former permitting the citizen voting eligibility in elections and slightly lower taxes. It was decreed that judges were to be elected, and that a prominent councilor of parlement dissolve every last parlement in France.
There were many adverse reactions to the reforms of the National Assembly. The Clergy reacted to their loss of privileges in attempting to call for insurrections against the National Assembly. The parlements of Rouen, Bordeaux, Metz and Toulouse reacted by attempting to garner the sympathy of the King for what they felt was the National Assembly violating the rights of the King and his subjects. The ministry, for their part, manufactured publications magnifying purported irregularities of the new constitution in a manner that would make it seem dysfunctional.
The Assembly began to divide into factions over varying perspectives of the state of the revolution. The National Party in the center was led by Mirabeau, La Fayette and Bailly, the radicals on the left were led by Robespierre, the conservatives on the right were led by de Cazalès and Maury and the Royalist Democrats (who wanted to organize France similar to the British system) were led by those such as Mournier and the Comte de Lally-Tollendal in alliance with Finance Minister Necker. The factions were to break down further into associative political clubs. Most influential was the Jacobins, formed from the deputies of Brittany, who were known for being patriotic to the extreme. The Jacobin society was to grow to the extent that it was practically a separate political body within the government by 1793 in containing approximately five hundred thousand members. Such notable Jacobins were Robespierre, Antoine and Dumets. With the revolution falling more and more into the hands of radical factions, more and more aristocrats as well as army officers became émigrés and fled France reacting to such measures as the abolishment of symbolic items of the ancient regime. The Club of ’89 consisted of leaders such as La Fayette, Bailly and Roederer and such accomplished members as Condorcet, Marmontel and Champfort who broke off from the Jacobins after finding them to be overly irrational, ignorant and uncouth that they could focus more on completing the constitution and defending it from the King, the nobles and the clergy. Mirabeau, who would not join either the Jacobins or the Club of ’89, variably switched favor with each club when mutually politically convenient.
Reforming the Church and Nobility
In 1790, measures were taken to cover government administration costs, which ultimately resulted in the confiscation of Church properties. The measures included spreading propaganda about the wealth of the clergy, the government’s desperate financial state, the lack of exemplary behavior of the priests, bishops, monks and abbots and the rights of the nation over the rights of the clergy. When the issue of confiscation was put to a vote in the National Assembly, it passed by a large majority. The confiscation entailed disassembling the monastic orders and government seizure of church properties, while paying fixed salaries to the bishops and priests. Later, when attempting to determine the relationship between the clergy and the new constitution, the National Assembly voted to create a Civil Constitution. This held that the bishops and priests were to now be elected, and ultimately set up a power structure that served to nationalize the church.
In June 23rd, the National Assembly moved to formally abolish the nobility in keeping with the constitutional principles to abolish institutions that harmed liberty and the equality of rights. This abolition also included the discarding of sale or inheritance of public office, the discarding of any privilege or exception to common French law, the discarding of corporations of professions, arts and trades and the non-recognition of any religious vow or engagement that conflicts with natural rights or the constitution. This abolition occurred without the permitting of any discussion whatsoever by the National Assembly.
The popularity of the National Assembly was negatively affected by these reforms. The Assembly became unpopular with the peasants due to increase in poverty and discontent due to the short-term financial fallout of the reforms, as well as the more religious Catholics in western and southeast France who were receptive to the counter-revolutionary propaganda of the angry clergy. The Assembly became unpopular with the landowners for the huge drop in revenue due to the abolition of feudalism. Overall, the Assembly was seen as culpable for the widespread unemployment, lack of tax accountability, bankrupt treasury and all-around unstable economy.
The Royals Attempt to Escape Paris
Pressed several times to escape Paris by the Queen, the King had remained indecisive bound by the constraints of duty in the face of causing a civil war. However, the adverse circumstance in which he found himself grew to become unbearable: his ministers were replaced with revolutionaries; the reforms made by the Assembly were (in his estimation) extreme; the association that he had with the Assembly in their efforts to nationalize the church he felt atrocious; the royal family was under tight security in which their every move was heavily surveyed by the National Assembly; their attempt to go on holiday to Saint-Cloud was inhibited by Jacobin propaganda that the King was attempting to emigrate. Unhappy in such circumstances, preparations to escape began being drawn as early as March 1790.
On June 20, 1791, the royal family sprung into action. Dressed as servants accompanying their servants who dressed as nobles, the royal family left Tuileries by carriage for the camp of General Bouillé at Montmédy. The journey passed with little incident until Varennes. It was at Varennes on June 21st in early evening, when Rapport du sieur Drouet recognized the face of the Queen and then the face of the King (from what he had seen of the King’s likeness from the fifty livres assignat) as they passed in their carriage. Drouet later informed an innkeeper, who informed others of the King’s intended flight, and they proceeded to barricade a bridge required by the King’s route. They then retrieved local authorities, who questioned the King when their carriage had reached the barricade. After initially refusing his identity, the King admitted who he was. He received a decree from the Assembly alarming France to prevent his flight from the kingdom, and ultimately decided to return to Paris pretending it was not their intention to flee.
A King Transformed and the Constitution Completed
Upon his return to Tileries, the National Assembly placed King Lois XVI under even heavier security and suspended his royal functions. He was required to swear allegiance to the constitution, and consent that violating that oath was equivalent to him abdicating the throne by proxy. Barnave, a leftist, led the Assembly to preserve the King and even restore some of his eroded authority to the horror of the Jacobins. Brissot and Doumont, of the Jacobins, attempted to argue vie petition that the King had already abdicated because of his flight to Varennes. When this petition was presented at the Champ de Mars, La Fayette had been charged by the National Assembly to keep order and following a confrontation fifty people were killed.
Meanwhile, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, King Frederick William II of Prussia and Charles-Phillipe, comte d’Artois (the King’s brother who was an émigré) drew up the Declaration of Pillnitz on August 27, 1791, which effectively threatened to invade France to restore the freedom and monarchy of King Louis XVI should the National Assembly not dissolve. Around the same time, the National Assembly completed the constitution. The completed constitution Soon after, the King accepted the constitution, and reaffirmed his allegiance to the country and the people, as well as his opposition of foreign interference in France’s affairs. His affirmation was met with skepticism by radicals, such as the Jacobins, whose hold on power seemed driven by keeping alive the perception that the King was a perpetual enemy of France. Having fulfilled its primary purpose of creating the constitution, the National Assembly then declared the need for an election of a new Legislative Assembly.
The New Legislative Assembly and the Clamoring for War
Because the former National Assembly had excluded its members from running for re-election to the Legislative Assembly, the majority of the Legislative Assembly was composed of Girondins (liberal republicans) and Jacobin on the left (330 in all), 250 unaffiliated deputies and a minority of 165 Fueillants (constitutional monarchs) on the right. The Legislative Assembly had their first session on October 1st, 1791. They proceeded to declare a decree against the émigrés and clergy, moving that their flight to foreign nations made them suspects of a conspiracy against France. This was to be punishable by death, and applied to civil and military functionaries, who aided and abided by the departure of the émigrés. The King vetoed the decree, and proceeded to ask his brothers to return to France.
The Legislative Assembly was divided in its attitude towards going to war with Austria and its allies. The King and the Fueillants supported the war because they saw it as an opportunity to expand the King’s power and popularity, regardless of whether France won or lost. The Girondins supported the war because they saw it as an opportunity to spread the ideals of the revolution to other nations in Europe, and thus strengthen and validate the revolution in France. The Jacobins led by Robespierre were against the war: they saw consolidation and expansion of the revolution domestically as a higher priority and feared the rise of militarism. Consequently, Romchambeau, Lückner and La Fayette were appointed to command the three armies that were to fight in the war.
War on Austria and Turmoil in Paris
Meanwhile the émigrés were preparing to invade France, the French ambassador to Austria attempted to open negotiations. In response, he received conditions from the Austrian ministry in order to avoid a declaration of war on France, the old power structure of the monarchy, nobility and clergy be reinstated, property of the clergy be returned and feudal property of the nobility be returned. The majority of the Legislative Assembly moved for war, and on April 20, 1792, King Louis XVI declared war on Austria. The Prussians entered the war on Austria’s side weeks later.
Meanwhile, an insurrection on June 20th was staged in which Jacobins rallied a mob to enter Tuileries on the pretext of offering a patriotic address to the King. Upon gaining entrance to the Tuileries, the mob tore through the palace, knocking down doors until they encountered the King. Guards immediately surrounded the King in a protective circle, and ultimately Paris Mayor Pétion managed to disperse the mob. Meanwhile, La Fayette, upon arriving in Paris and witnessing the chaos denounced the Jacobins at the Assembly and demanded their punishment to no avail. The Jacobins, in turn, accused La Fayette of orchestrating the massacre at Champ de Mars and conspiring with the Queen to deliver France to Austria. La Fayette failed to convince the royal family to allow him to deliver them to safety in Rouen, and left the next day to return to his army. The deposition of King Louis XVI was becoming inevitable with the designs of Philippe d’Orléans whose supporters hoped he would ascend to the throne upon Louis’ abdication and potential deposition petitions to be drafted by the Jacobins.
Tuileries in Crisis
On July 25, 1792, the Duke of Brunswick issued the Brunswick Manifesto, which promised violence upon the French population should they interfere with the designs of Austria and Prussia to restore the monarchy. This resulted in widespread agitation among the populace and caused the King to reaffirm his intention to fight off any invasion of France. Pressure mounted for the deposition of the King from the populace, with many threatening insurrection should the Legislative Assembly not dethrone Louis. When Paris Mayor Pétion called for the dethronement of the King, the populace, impatient with the perceived ineptitude of the Legislative Assembly, took over the city government with Mayor Pétion remaining at the head and armed themselves with pikes and bayonets.
On August 10th, as tension mounted and an attack on Tuilries seemed imminent, the royal family was convinced by Roederer to take refuge at the Assembly. They arrived under protection of Swiss and National guards and had been there an hour before the arrival of the signal to attack the palace: four heads impaled on pikes placed on the Terrace of the Feuillants. The insurrectionists proceeded to attack the palace with musket and cannon fire, as the Swiss guards retreated from the palace courts to the interior. For a time, it seemed as though the Swiss were holding their own until they ran out of ammunition. At this point, they fled for the Assembly where they were instructed by the King to lay down their arms and retire to the barracks. These Swiss, as well as others remaining at the palace were eventually to be massacred at the Place Louis XV. Meanwhile, the Assembly (comprised by Jacobin members present) decreed the suspension of the King as he ate in the stenographer’s box.
September Massacres
The insurrection continued as all priests unaffiliated with the Jacobins under sixty years of age were arrested. Churches were stripped of silver and lavish furnishings for use of military supplies. A rally at Champ de Mars was held where orators agitated the populace over alleged conspiracies being devised by aristocrats. The prisons were filled with people suspected of sympathies to the aristocracy. Quarries were dug in preparation for forthcoming victims of a massacre, called for by insurrection leaders in a proclamation by the Council-General.
In what came to be known as the September Massacres, the populace took to a murderous rampage in killing four hundred priests and over a thousand prisoners who had been arrested over suspected sympathies to the aristocracy. In order to dress the massacre in a semblance of justice, mock trials were conducted in the jail cell of each prisoner prior to their imminent murder. The Princesse de Lamballe was decapitated, and her head was paraded around the streets. The Assembly, feigning ignorance to the designs of the Massacre, sent deputies to investigate what was transpiring on the streets and was both helpless and unwilling to do anything.
Death to Monarchy and Birth to Republic
The National Convention opened on September 20th, 1792 to decide the fate of the King, bring order to what had become chaos in France and govern the war. This Convention became the de facto government and set to task writing a new constitution. Although there ensued an enormous power struggle between the Girondins and the Jacobins, on September 21st the monarchy was dismantled and France was declared a Republic.
The King and his family were essentially prisoners being held in the Temple, when his trial was decreed. The Brunswick Manifesto was cited as proof of the King’s conspiracy with France’s enemies, and ultimately he was found guilty of treason by a unanimous decision. His sentence of death by guillotine was decided by a small majority (361 yeas, 288 nays and 72 yeas with a variety of delaying conditions) and carried out on January 21st, 1793. France’s regicide resulted in more wars with other European nations, and the Queen was to follow her husband to the guillotine on October 16, 1793.
A vast silence had overtaken the city of Paris. It was a moist and foggy day that saw the streets of Paris empty, shops closed for business and battalions of National Guards lining a path stretching from the Temple all the way to the Place Lois XV. Making its way down the path was a closed horse-drawn carriage whose occupants were enroute to embrace a destiny soon to send shockwaves throughout the entire civilized world.
Louis Capet, formerly King Louis XVI, was accompanied by his faithful Abbé Edgeworth along with several guards instructed to knife Capet to death should he attempt to escape. Their journey was to end with Capet’s head in a guillotine for purportedly conspiring against the liberty of the nation and of attempts against the general safety of the state. Only twenty-four hours earlier had the former king been made aware of his sentence, and had been denied a three-day delay to make peace with his God.
In what must have been an excruciatingly slow two-hour journey to the scaffold, one wonders what thoughts had taken shape in Capet’s mind. He was completely convinced of his innocence, and while having endured a sudden and cruel separation from his family earlier he was notably strong, serene and composed. As he gazed out upon the faces of National Guards lining his fateful death-march, one wonders if perhaps his mind traced back to the turbulent events that had led him here; turbulent events that marked the beginning of the Revolution...
Estates-General
For the first time since the year 1614, the body of the Estates-General convened at Versailles on May 5, 1789. The King’s power had greatly diminished following enormous debt incurred after a taxing war against Britain over the American Revolution, which he attempted to relieve by way of a permanent and indiscriminant land tax. The First and Second Estates (consisting of the elite Clergy and Nobles respectively) ultimately curtailed the King’s power to levy such a tax as the Parlement of Paris asserted the approval of the Estates-General as a provisional requirement. In order to restore regal authority, absolute monarchy had been cut off at the legs in the face of what would need to be a severely tumultuous show of force by the King. Given the precarious position he was in with such widespread dissent and financial ruin afoot, King Louis XVI bowed to the demands of the Estates.
The opening of the Estates-General involved a long march through the streets of Versailles by the representatives of the Estates, each of whom had distinguished themselves in their manner of dress: the nobles with gold-embroidered cloaks and plumed caps, the clergy bearing Episcopal purple colored clothing and the Third Estate (representatives of the common people) more modestly garbed in black wool and plain round caps (reminiscent of feudal ages). As the members took their places at the meeting, the atmosphere was charged with partisanship as some attendees were cheered or booed to varying degrees, while the King was boisterously received by cries of “Vive le Roi!”
The King gave an impassioned speech praising the First and Second Estates’ offer to renounce their financial privileges, in so far as they had previously been exempted from the land tax. He expressed hope for cooperation by all three Estates for the general good of France, and regret that the tax would be needed in order to rebuild the economy and restore public confidence in the government. He pleaded for a return to the traditional deference to the King that had subsisted in the monarchal system in exchange for his faithful and best-intentioned service to the nation. The King’s speech was received by enthusiastic applause, and followed by yet more cries of “Vive le Roi!” as he left the meeting.
Notable was a speech by the Finance Minister Jacques Necker, who reported the state of France’s finances in a very lengthy, detailed and repetitious manner that was seen to be overly complementary to the King. The First and Second Estates received these sentiments with little dissatisfaction, however Necker’s speech was met with silent disapproval of the representatives of the Third Estate. Particularly objectionable in Necker’s financial report was his inability to account for the cause of the bread shortage resulting in higher costs to the peasants. Other issues of contention that ultimately served to drown out the food-related issues of concern to the populace at large were the movement to unite all three Estates into a single body (opposed by the staunchly Monarchist Nobles and Clergy while supported by the bourgeoisie and the Third Estate) as well as to set the standard of voting by number of people as opposed to by privilege of Estate (opposed by the staunchly Monarchist Nobles and Clergy while supported by the bourgeoisie and the Third Estate). The concern among the staunchly Monarchist Nobles and Clergy was that the sheer volume of representatives present among the bourgeoisie and the Third Estate would erode their traditional domination of the Assembly. Ultimately, the Nobles and Clergy were able to retain their dominance by containing a small majority in favor of voting by privilege of Estate.
Unwilling to continue to cede to the dominance of the overly-represented privileged Estates, the Third Estate reacted by staging a walk-out of the Estates-General and began meeting as the “Communes” (meaning “Commons”). While inviting the other two Estates to take part on June 10, they did not waste any time in formally declaring themselves the National Assembly on June 17, 1789 after representatives of the First and Second Estates did not join them. Dissolving the notion of representation by Estate, it was their intention to govern the affairs of the people of France with or without the other two groups of representatives. King Louis XVI, for his part, chose to impede the National Assembly from continuing to meet in the Salle des États by locking it up. This resulted in the National Assembly moving their convention to a tennis court, where they administered the “Tennis Court Oath” holding its members to a pledge for keeping the National Assembly together until France had a new constitution. Soon after, a majority of the Second Estate joined the National Assembly, as did 47 members of the First Estate.
Taking the Bastille
King Louis XVI next sought to intimidate the National Assembly in calling up over twenty thousand soldiers to Paris and Versailles, including numbers of hired foreign soldiers against the advice of Finance Minister Necker. In the midst of such chaos and under threat, the National Assembly continued to work undeterred, focused largely on responding to the high cost of bread. After advising the King to restrict the royal family’s expenditures to a budget in order to be more fiscally conservative, Necker was dismissed from his job as well as well as being told to relinquish his citizenship on July 11th, 1789 when he fled France for Brussels. The dismissal of Necker was seen as a huge loss by the bourgeois, and taken as a monarchal political coup. Necker’s dismissal was accompanied by the suspension of theater performances and closure of the Bourse by the order of the Estates-General. Afraid that the National Assembly was in danger of being silenced, an armed mob of ten thousand bourgeois took to the streets of Paris being further agitated by the incendiary political speech of revolutionary Camille Desmoulins.
On July 12th, the armed bourgeois mob attacked cavalry troops with stones and took hostages. On the 13th, the mob seized sixty barrels of gunpowder on the Seine, a store of grain in the Monastery of Saint-Lazare and arms from the King’s “garde-meuble.” The mob began to assemble into a formation of a national armed corps, selecting Fournier l’ Américain as their chief, who related that although they were mostly armed with less than formidable weapons (e.g. - clubs, ancient swords, pruning-hooks, pitchforks, and spades), their confidence was inspired by the sentiment of liberty. On the 14th, the bourgeois mob seized yet more arms from the Hôtel des Invalides without any interference from five thousand of the King’s soldiers stationed no more than four hundred yards away. In all, twenty-eight thousand muskets were seized along with a cannon. The bourgeois later learned that the governor of the Bastille, the Marquis de Launay, had denied there were any arms to give to the mob, when so queried. All at once, the battle cry of “Let’s go and attack the Bastille!” was to be heard throughout the streets of Paris.
The situation at the Bastille escalated from the bourgeois demanding munitions and arms to being threatened by the guards, to throngs and throngs of bourgeois arriving with and without arms poised to attack. The hateful sentiment towards the Bastille was universally felt among the French commoners, as it had long served as an institution that symbolized despotism. The mob attempted to force their way into the fortress, and the guards responded by opening fire killing over a hundred bourgeois. Wishing not to incur a massacre, the governor ordered a cease-fire and surrendered the fortress. Thinking he had secured the safety of himself and his men in the course of the surrender, the governor ordered the drawbridge to the Bastille lowered, which the mob violently rushed across. The guards were hanged, arrested and dragged through the streets in humiliation. The governor was beaten, stabbed and ultimately decapitated, his head impaled upon a pike and taken about the city in celebration of the bourgeois victory, ultimately ending at the Palais-Royal.
Upon being briefed of the fall of the Bastille, the King resolved to withdraw his soldiers from Versailles in order to quell the violence, and also recalled Necker to his former position. He traveled to Paris, and appeared to accept the circumstances of the revolution, even placing a tricolore cockade in his hat. While in Paris, he sanctioned a self-appointed citizens’ committee as the new Parisian government as well as to order the representatives of the First and Second Estates to join the National Assembly. Contrary to the wishes of the King, the Nobles fled France as émigrés and more so spoiled for the intervention of other European nations to restore order to France with monarchy at the helm.
August Decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
In late July of 1789, the peasants took up insurrection on their own behalves. As such, they burned both manor houses of their landlords along with the records containing owed payments and services. The insurrection of the peasants coinciding with the vast amount of unemployed peasants on the roadsides whipped up widespread paranoia in what came to be known as the “Great Fear.” On August 4, the National Assembly sought to appease the peasants as many bourgeois were also landowners and feared what had befallen the nobles would befall them as well. In what came to be known as the “August Decrees,” the National Assembly abolished the long-standing feudal system, which tied the peasants’ interests to that of the revolution.
The “August Decrees” held that the traditional rights, monetary dues and peasant labor previously entitled to the landowners would be immediately abolished without compensation. They held that the traditionally exclusive right to hunt game on farmland by the nobles would now be a right held by all on their own land. The sale of judicial and municipal offices was abolished as were the fees paid to priests. The exemption from paying taxes was abolished, and was replaced with a proportional tax levied to all citizens on their property. All privileges, financial or otherwise, as concocted by provinces, principalities, districts, cantons, cities and communities were abolished and would be replaced by laws from the forthcoming constitution. The exclusivity by way of birthright to particular positions was abolished. The money previously collected to be sent to the court of Rome, the vice-legation of Avignon and the nunciature of Lucerne by the clergy was to cease being collected, and would be an issue for church bishops to tend to. All special financial privileges afforded the clergy were to be abolished. The ability to have more than one benefice when the revenues yield more than three thousand livres was abolished. Excessive pensions, dispensations and emoluments would be reduced.
On August 26, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was published after the National Assembly was able to come to an agreement on the basic tenants while attempting to assemble the constitution. It was inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, and co-authored by America’s own Thomas Jefferson with the Marquis de La Fayette. As well as the common author of Jefferson, the French and American Declarations shared a common link of John Locke’s Natural Rights. The French Declaration was to serve functionally as a preface to the Constitution, and unlike the American Declaration attempted to outline the basis of actual legal guidelines. Among the key principles were establishing that men are born free with equal rights, establishing government’s purpose as the guardian of these rights, establishing sovereignty as belonging solely to the nation, establishing that liberty is permitted in so far as it does not cause harm to others, establishing that it is the right of the law to determine what is harmful to others, establishing that the law is the expression of the general will of the people, forbidding the detention of any man for reasons not determined by the law, establishing punishments for breaking the law along strict and conservative guidelines, establishing that man is innocent until proven guilty when accused of a crime, establishing the freedom of religion, establishing the freedom of expression, establishing the need for a police force, establishing the need for a proportionate tax in order to cover the cost of police and administration, establishing the citizen’s right to government transparency with regards to usage of taxes, establishing the citizen’s right to hold administrations to account, establishing the separation of powers for citizens, and establishing the right to property as a right which can only be lawfully seized for use of public necessity or at the discretion of the law with judicious indemnity being granted.
The “general will” tenant in the Declaration was inspired by the political ideas of French-Swiss philosphe Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his publication “Social Contract.” This tenant as applied to the Declaration referred to the collective will of French society, where all who participate via their individual contribution are to be bound by the overall will by reason of their stake in it. Rousseau’s concept legitimized the National Assembly as a sovereign authority, and helped to establish guidelines by which the National Assembly sought to stay true to with regards to respecting the general will of the people of France. Following the publication of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the National Assembly made clear their intention to abolish the Parlement whom “called themselves the representatives of the people, desiring to be so only in order to augment their power and bring added misfortunes.” Ultimately, there was discord among the National Assembly as to how the will of the people could best be organized structurally. Contentious issues were raised, such as the executive veto, in an effort to shape the government like that of the English structure with a bicameral legislature and a King exercising an executive veto. The opposing view was to structure the legislature as a unicameral body with no executive veto for the King, essentially reducing the weight of the King’s vote to not being above that of a president. The National Assembly ultimately adopted the unicameral legislature giving the King a suspensive veto, which allowed him to merely suspend proposed legislation to not being re-proposed until following the next election. He was able to suspend legislation with a veto merely twice, and if the legislation is proposed a third time the King’s veto will have been overrode.
Marching on Versailles
By the Fall of 1789, there was mutual distrust flowing freely the monarchists (consisting of those in the monarchy and the portion of the populace who supported them) and the anti-monarchists (consisting of the National Assembly and the large portion of the populace who supported them). The National Assembly and its supporters were not confident in the King’s loyalty to the revolution with his reticence to support the August Decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, along with the fact that royal émigrés were actively undermining the revolution in collusion with foreign nations. The King and his followers were constantly on guard against designs against the royal family, and mostly the imminent destruction of the monarchy itself. Plans devised by the National Assembly to relocate the King to Paris were turned down by Louis XVI when presented to him by Necker. The grain crisis grew worse resulting in resentment against bakers, and both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary orators attempting to guide the revolution in their relative favor (revolutionary attempting to guide it against the King and counter-revolutionary attempting to guide it against the National Assembly).
The straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, occurred during a royal banquet on September 23rd. The banquet consisted of loyal sentiment expressed to the royal family, and among the spectators paying witness were revolutionists. These witnesses published their personal accounts of the banquet, which included outrage at the loyalist expressions of love for the King, perceptions of conspiracy against the city of Paris and that soldiers on guard stomped on the tricolour cockade opting instead to wear the black cockade. This resulted in many Parisians attacking army officers and aristocrats in the evening of October 4th, and on the morning of October 5th many women took to the streets denouncing the lack of bread in baker shops. As the mob grew to between six and thousand women, bakers were abused, offers by officials to state their grievances civilly were ignored, and ultimately the women began to march to Versailles.
Informed of the forthcoming mob marching on Versailles, King Louis XVI rejected the advise of his counsel to violently thwart the march at the bridges of Sévres and Saint-Cloud. Unwilling to invoke bloodshed, the King soon found the mob of women entering Versailles with small weapons and a cannon in tow chanting “Long live the King!” to which inhabitants of Versailles chanted back “Long live our Parisiennes!” Upon reaching the National Assembly, some of the women met with the representatives to discuss the bread famine, while some Assembly members discussed the necessity to reign in order among the mob. The mob surrounded the palace, where the guards were ordered to avoid agitating the mob at all costs. Meanwhile, the National Assembly chose to use the advantage of the mob as an opportunity to press the King to grant them audience in order to accept the preliminary articles of the constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. They were successful in attaining a nine o’clock evening reception. Before the reception of the National Assembly deputies, the King received a delegation of eight women who implored him for need of bread, to which he replied that he would send all the bread of Versailles to Paris. The King then signified his acceptance of the constitution.
Making his way from Paris to Versailles, the Marquis de La Fayette soon reached the palace, where he assured the King of the National Guard’s protection. On the morning of October 6th, the mob massacred the palace guards in their barracks, broke through the gates and forced entry to the palace killing guards they encountered. The royal family safely took refuge in their apartments until La Fayette was able to convince the National Guard to join with the palace guards and defend the royal family. The mob scoured the palace for signs of the royal family, stabbing bed mattresses with pikes to make clear their intentions would they have found them. La Fayette convinced the King of the necessity for the royal family to relocate to Paris, where he felt they would be more secure. As this was what the National Assembly and the mob desired (for the sentiment was that there would be no lack of bread in Paris should the King reside there), the King and Queen appeared on the balcony to announce their intention to move to the palace of Tuileries in Paris. King Louis XVI and his family was then escorted to Paris by the National Guards, which helped to legitimize the National Assembly for their role in safe-guarding the monarchy as much as their revolution had displaced it.
The National Assembly in Charge
Following the King’s unhappy relocation to Paris, the National Assembly relocated to Paris as well on October 19th. They set to work on the constitution, which consisted of dismantling the old structure of government while maintaining a precarious balancing act ultimately resulting in the National Assembly having leverage over the King and other parts of government. The Assembly formally acclaimed Louis XVI “King of the French,” proceeded to rename and reorganize boundaries of provinces and divided the government into ninety-three departments which were further divided into districts that were further divided into cantons composed of six or seven parishes (all levels nearly identical in size and structure). The people took on a citizenship classification of either being active or inactive, the former permitting the citizen voting eligibility in elections and slightly lower taxes. It was decreed that judges were to be elected, and that a prominent councilor of parlement dissolve every last parlement in France.
There were many adverse reactions to the reforms of the National Assembly. The Clergy reacted to their loss of privileges in attempting to call for insurrections against the National Assembly. The parlements of Rouen, Bordeaux, Metz and Toulouse reacted by attempting to garner the sympathy of the King for what they felt was the National Assembly violating the rights of the King and his subjects. The ministry, for their part, manufactured publications magnifying purported irregularities of the new constitution in a manner that would make it seem dysfunctional.
The Assembly began to divide into factions over varying perspectives of the state of the revolution. The National Party in the center was led by Mirabeau, La Fayette and Bailly, the radicals on the left were led by Robespierre, the conservatives on the right were led by de Cazalès and Maury and the Royalist Democrats (who wanted to organize France similar to the British system) were led by those such as Mournier and the Comte de Lally-Tollendal in alliance with Finance Minister Necker. The factions were to break down further into associative political clubs. Most influential was the Jacobins, formed from the deputies of Brittany, who were known for being patriotic to the extreme. The Jacobin society was to grow to the extent that it was practically a separate political body within the government by 1793 in containing approximately five hundred thousand members. Such notable Jacobins were Robespierre, Antoine and Dumets. With the revolution falling more and more into the hands of radical factions, more and more aristocrats as well as army officers became émigrés and fled France reacting to such measures as the abolishment of symbolic items of the ancient regime. The Club of ’89 consisted of leaders such as La Fayette, Bailly and Roederer and such accomplished members as Condorcet, Marmontel and Champfort who broke off from the Jacobins after finding them to be overly irrational, ignorant and uncouth that they could focus more on completing the constitution and defending it from the King, the nobles and the clergy. Mirabeau, who would not join either the Jacobins or the Club of ’89, variably switched favor with each club when mutually politically convenient.
Reforming the Church and Nobility
In 1790, measures were taken to cover government administration costs, which ultimately resulted in the confiscation of Church properties. The measures included spreading propaganda about the wealth of the clergy, the government’s desperate financial state, the lack of exemplary behavior of the priests, bishops, monks and abbots and the rights of the nation over the rights of the clergy. When the issue of confiscation was put to a vote in the National Assembly, it passed by a large majority. The confiscation entailed disassembling the monastic orders and government seizure of church properties, while paying fixed salaries to the bishops and priests. Later, when attempting to determine the relationship between the clergy and the new constitution, the National Assembly voted to create a Civil Constitution. This held that the bishops and priests were to now be elected, and ultimately set up a power structure that served to nationalize the church.
In June 23rd, the National Assembly moved to formally abolish the nobility in keeping with the constitutional principles to abolish institutions that harmed liberty and the equality of rights. This abolition also included the discarding of sale or inheritance of public office, the discarding of any privilege or exception to common French law, the discarding of corporations of professions, arts and trades and the non-recognition of any religious vow or engagement that conflicts with natural rights or the constitution. This abolition occurred without the permitting of any discussion whatsoever by the National Assembly.
The popularity of the National Assembly was negatively affected by these reforms. The Assembly became unpopular with the peasants due to increase in poverty and discontent due to the short-term financial fallout of the reforms, as well as the more religious Catholics in western and southeast France who were receptive to the counter-revolutionary propaganda of the angry clergy. The Assembly became unpopular with the landowners for the huge drop in revenue due to the abolition of feudalism. Overall, the Assembly was seen as culpable for the widespread unemployment, lack of tax accountability, bankrupt treasury and all-around unstable economy.
The Royals Attempt to Escape Paris
Pressed several times to escape Paris by the Queen, the King had remained indecisive bound by the constraints of duty in the face of causing a civil war. However, the adverse circumstance in which he found himself grew to become unbearable: his ministers were replaced with revolutionaries; the reforms made by the Assembly were (in his estimation) extreme; the association that he had with the Assembly in their efforts to nationalize the church he felt atrocious; the royal family was under tight security in which their every move was heavily surveyed by the National Assembly; their attempt to go on holiday to Saint-Cloud was inhibited by Jacobin propaganda that the King was attempting to emigrate. Unhappy in such circumstances, preparations to escape began being drawn as early as March 1790.
On June 20, 1791, the royal family sprung into action. Dressed as servants accompanying their servants who dressed as nobles, the royal family left Tuileries by carriage for the camp of General Bouillé at Montmédy. The journey passed with little incident until Varennes. It was at Varennes on June 21st in early evening, when Rapport du sieur Drouet recognized the face of the Queen and then the face of the King (from what he had seen of the King’s likeness from the fifty livres assignat) as they passed in their carriage. Drouet later informed an innkeeper, who informed others of the King’s intended flight, and they proceeded to barricade a bridge required by the King’s route. They then retrieved local authorities, who questioned the King when their carriage had reached the barricade. After initially refusing his identity, the King admitted who he was. He received a decree from the Assembly alarming France to prevent his flight from the kingdom, and ultimately decided to return to Paris pretending it was not their intention to flee.
A King Transformed and the Constitution Completed
Upon his return to Tileries, the National Assembly placed King Lois XVI under even heavier security and suspended his royal functions. He was required to swear allegiance to the constitution, and consent that violating that oath was equivalent to him abdicating the throne by proxy. Barnave, a leftist, led the Assembly to preserve the King and even restore some of his eroded authority to the horror of the Jacobins. Brissot and Doumont, of the Jacobins, attempted to argue vie petition that the King had already abdicated because of his flight to Varennes. When this petition was presented at the Champ de Mars, La Fayette had been charged by the National Assembly to keep order and following a confrontation fifty people were killed.
Meanwhile, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, King Frederick William II of Prussia and Charles-Phillipe, comte d’Artois (the King’s brother who was an émigré) drew up the Declaration of Pillnitz on August 27, 1791, which effectively threatened to invade France to restore the freedom and monarchy of King Louis XVI should the National Assembly not dissolve. Around the same time, the National Assembly completed the constitution. The completed constitution Soon after, the King accepted the constitution, and reaffirmed his allegiance to the country and the people, as well as his opposition of foreign interference in France’s affairs. His affirmation was met with skepticism by radicals, such as the Jacobins, whose hold on power seemed driven by keeping alive the perception that the King was a perpetual enemy of France. Having fulfilled its primary purpose of creating the constitution, the National Assembly then declared the need for an election of a new Legislative Assembly.
The New Legislative Assembly and the Clamoring for War
Because the former National Assembly had excluded its members from running for re-election to the Legislative Assembly, the majority of the Legislative Assembly was composed of Girondins (liberal republicans) and Jacobin on the left (330 in all), 250 unaffiliated deputies and a minority of 165 Fueillants (constitutional monarchs) on the right. The Legislative Assembly had their first session on October 1st, 1791. They proceeded to declare a decree against the émigrés and clergy, moving that their flight to foreign nations made them suspects of a conspiracy against France. This was to be punishable by death, and applied to civil and military functionaries, who aided and abided by the departure of the émigrés. The King vetoed the decree, and proceeded to ask his brothers to return to France.
The Legislative Assembly was divided in its attitude towards going to war with Austria and its allies. The King and the Fueillants supported the war because they saw it as an opportunity to expand the King’s power and popularity, regardless of whether France won or lost. The Girondins supported the war because they saw it as an opportunity to spread the ideals of the revolution to other nations in Europe, and thus strengthen and validate the revolution in France. The Jacobins led by Robespierre were against the war: they saw consolidation and expansion of the revolution domestically as a higher priority and feared the rise of militarism. Consequently, Romchambeau, Lückner and La Fayette were appointed to command the three armies that were to fight in the war.
War on Austria and Turmoil in Paris
Meanwhile the émigrés were preparing to invade France, the French ambassador to Austria attempted to open negotiations. In response, he received conditions from the Austrian ministry in order to avoid a declaration of war on France, the old power structure of the monarchy, nobility and clergy be reinstated, property of the clergy be returned and feudal property of the nobility be returned. The majority of the Legislative Assembly moved for war, and on April 20, 1792, King Louis XVI declared war on Austria. The Prussians entered the war on Austria’s side weeks later.
Meanwhile, an insurrection on June 20th was staged in which Jacobins rallied a mob to enter Tuileries on the pretext of offering a patriotic address to the King. Upon gaining entrance to the Tuileries, the mob tore through the palace, knocking down doors until they encountered the King. Guards immediately surrounded the King in a protective circle, and ultimately Paris Mayor Pétion managed to disperse the mob. Meanwhile, La Fayette, upon arriving in Paris and witnessing the chaos denounced the Jacobins at the Assembly and demanded their punishment to no avail. The Jacobins, in turn, accused La Fayette of orchestrating the massacre at Champ de Mars and conspiring with the Queen to deliver France to Austria. La Fayette failed to convince the royal family to allow him to deliver them to safety in Rouen, and left the next day to return to his army. The deposition of King Louis XVI was becoming inevitable with the designs of Philippe d’Orléans whose supporters hoped he would ascend to the throne upon Louis’ abdication and potential deposition petitions to be drafted by the Jacobins.
Tuileries in Crisis
On July 25, 1792, the Duke of Brunswick issued the Brunswick Manifesto, which promised violence upon the French population should they interfere with the designs of Austria and Prussia to restore the monarchy. This resulted in widespread agitation among the populace and caused the King to reaffirm his intention to fight off any invasion of France. Pressure mounted for the deposition of the King from the populace, with many threatening insurrection should the Legislative Assembly not dethrone Louis. When Paris Mayor Pétion called for the dethronement of the King, the populace, impatient with the perceived ineptitude of the Legislative Assembly, took over the city government with Mayor Pétion remaining at the head and armed themselves with pikes and bayonets.
On August 10th, as tension mounted and an attack on Tuilries seemed imminent, the royal family was convinced by Roederer to take refuge at the Assembly. They arrived under protection of Swiss and National guards and had been there an hour before the arrival of the signal to attack the palace: four heads impaled on pikes placed on the Terrace of the Feuillants. The insurrectionists proceeded to attack the palace with musket and cannon fire, as the Swiss guards retreated from the palace courts to the interior. For a time, it seemed as though the Swiss were holding their own until they ran out of ammunition. At this point, they fled for the Assembly where they were instructed by the King to lay down their arms and retire to the barracks. These Swiss, as well as others remaining at the palace were eventually to be massacred at the Place Louis XV. Meanwhile, the Assembly (comprised by Jacobin members present) decreed the suspension of the King as he ate in the stenographer’s box.
September Massacres
The insurrection continued as all priests unaffiliated with the Jacobins under sixty years of age were arrested. Churches were stripped of silver and lavish furnishings for use of military supplies. A rally at Champ de Mars was held where orators agitated the populace over alleged conspiracies being devised by aristocrats. The prisons were filled with people suspected of sympathies to the aristocracy. Quarries were dug in preparation for forthcoming victims of a massacre, called for by insurrection leaders in a proclamation by the Council-General.
In what came to be known as the September Massacres, the populace took to a murderous rampage in killing four hundred priests and over a thousand prisoners who had been arrested over suspected sympathies to the aristocracy. In order to dress the massacre in a semblance of justice, mock trials were conducted in the jail cell of each prisoner prior to their imminent murder. The Princesse de Lamballe was decapitated, and her head was paraded around the streets. The Assembly, feigning ignorance to the designs of the Massacre, sent deputies to investigate what was transpiring on the streets and was both helpless and unwilling to do anything.
Death to Monarchy and Birth to Republic
The National Convention opened on September 20th, 1792 to decide the fate of the King, bring order to what had become chaos in France and govern the war. This Convention became the de facto government and set to task writing a new constitution. Although there ensued an enormous power struggle between the Girondins and the Jacobins, on September 21st the monarchy was dismantled and France was declared a Republic.
The King and his family were essentially prisoners being held in the Temple, when his trial was decreed. The Brunswick Manifesto was cited as proof of the King’s conspiracy with France’s enemies, and ultimately he was found guilty of treason by a unanimous decision. His sentence of death by guillotine was decided by a small majority (361 yeas, 288 nays and 72 yeas with a variety of delaying conditions) and carried out on January 21st, 1793. France’s regicide resulted in more wars with other European nations, and the Queen was to follow her husband to the guillotine on October 16, 1793.
Friday, June 20, 2008
UMass Boston History 112: Essay#4
Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” employs various propaganda tactics in its appeal to Americans for support of imperialism, specifically applied to the celebration of the annexation of the Philippines by the United States. As a liberal, I find his means no more appealing than the ends of American imperialism. His ultra-nationalistic zeal is strikingly similar in tone and substance to that of modern-day ultra-nationalistic propaganda available on talk-radio or in cable news networks. No doubt the “White Man’s Burden” was far more appealing to the nationalists of that time.
To start, I would define the concept of “White Man’s Burden” as what Kipling sees as white Christian Americans’ honor-bound duty to themselves, their country and even the indigenous people of potentially-colonized countries to deliver imperialistic servitude. In every stanza, Kipling puts forth this concept as though it were a flag or a standard in declaring, “Take up the White Man’s burden.” It challenges the reader much like a call-to-arms, with a noble and sentimental tone. The varying methods Kipling undertook in his effort to justify imperialism were artfully crafted as though stemming from a propaganda handbook.
Kipling first dehumanizes indigenous people in describing them as “new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child.” He sets this dehumanization against the declaration, “Send forth the best ye breed….Go, bind your sons to exile….To serve your captives’ need.” Here, he is speaking to white Christian American fathers as though they are bulls of breeding for the benefit of the country, ultimately for the benefit (according to Kipling) of the indigenous people.
In the second stanza, Kipling stirs up nationalistic sentiments that implore the reader “To veil the threat of terror” in what appears to be an attempt to ambiguously link the benefits of imperialism with that of terrorism (a method not lost on modern right-wing nationalists in their justifications for invading Iraq by linking the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda with that of the Iraqi government). Kipling also stokes the nationalistic sense of superiority over other competing nations in his declaration that the reader will “….check the show of pride” (suggesting the humbling effect that the American efforts should bring to other competitors). Kipling concludes the stanza by boldly asserting the responsibility to bring profit to the motherland as “….seek another’s profit and work another’s gain.”
The third stanza espouses more benefits to the motherland Americans might bring such as helping to end famine and cure disease (presumably by the host nation’s unique resources). The fourth stanza seems to suggest the opportunity to freely civilize the untouched terrain of the host country, unburdened by constraints of monarchy. This brings to mind television propaganda for military enlistment, which will usually tout the benefit of seeing the world.
The fifth stanza seems to resort to martyrdom, in declaring the “old reward” of the White Man’s burden to be “The blame of those ye better” (competitor nations) and “The hate of those ye guard” (the indigenous people). I took the passage regarding the “…hosts ye humour” to be about liberal Americans against the idea of imperialism. If this be the case, then Kipling is essentially equating formerly-enslaved Jews to Americans, ancient Egypt to pre-imperialist America and the lack of imperialism in America to bondage itself.
The sixth stanza seems to continue an attack on anti-imperialistic sentiment in stating the reader “…dare not stoop to less” and not hide behind the banner of freedom to disguise their lack of fortitude. The stanza then goes on the encourage the promotion of religion (assuredly Christianity) upon the “…silent sullen peoples” whom “….shall weigh your God and you.” The final and seventh stanza amounts to machismo peer pressure. It is a call to grow up, be a man and join the cause of imperialism or risk being judged harshly by your peers.
Thus, Kipling’s justification for imperialism amounted to dehumanizing the victims, stoking a strong sense of nationalism in declaring superiority as a nation compared to competitor nations and as a people compared to indigenous people, stoking a strong sense of patriotism in terms of service and sacrifice, stoking a strong sense of pride in terms of spreading Western civilization, martyrdom for the unpopularity suffered, demonization of political opponents of imperialism, tying Christian superiority to imperialism and equating manliness and fortitude to imperialism.
The question remains of what in the character of the United States made Kipling’s sentiments welcome in the hearts of Americans who supported imperialism. To start, there were the motives of imperialism itself. The economic motive sought raw materials, markets and investments due mostly to the burgeoning industrial capitalism. The push for national power and prestige in the face of the world was a major motive for imperialism. The drive to civilize what were considered to be heathen countries was a major motive for Christian missionaries who accompanied the soldiers and merchants in their “civilizing missions.” The demand in jobs for service abroad motivated many men of varying economic positions to take up the White Man’s burden. All of these motives for imperialism match up perfectly with the sentiments expressed in Rudyard Kipling’s poem.
In modern terms, it is not unlike Bush’s evolving rationalizations for the Iraq War in which there also exists the umbrella of excuses to maintain what amounts to a modern day equivalent of imperialism. Bush has found a way to justify his occupation of Iraq in declaring its benefit for all Americans, for the United States as a whole and for Iraqi citizens. Bush’s rationalizations have been distributed to the public and vigorously defended by right-wing talk radio hosts and cable news networks all of whom serve as the modern day equivalent to Rudyard Kipling.
While Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” is morally reprehensible by today’s standards and by the standards of his contemporary liberals whom opposed imperialism, it had an appeal well-suited to the ideologically-aligned mindsets of his time. Fervent supporters of Bush’s occupation of Iraq would do well to view side-by-side comparisons of their modern day propaganda and that of Rudyard Kipling in order to understand what it is they are really defending.
To start, I would define the concept of “White Man’s Burden” as what Kipling sees as white Christian Americans’ honor-bound duty to themselves, their country and even the indigenous people of potentially-colonized countries to deliver imperialistic servitude. In every stanza, Kipling puts forth this concept as though it were a flag or a standard in declaring, “Take up the White Man’s burden.” It challenges the reader much like a call-to-arms, with a noble and sentimental tone. The varying methods Kipling undertook in his effort to justify imperialism were artfully crafted as though stemming from a propaganda handbook.
Kipling first dehumanizes indigenous people in describing them as “new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child.” He sets this dehumanization against the declaration, “Send forth the best ye breed….Go, bind your sons to exile….To serve your captives’ need.” Here, he is speaking to white Christian American fathers as though they are bulls of breeding for the benefit of the country, ultimately for the benefit (according to Kipling) of the indigenous people.
In the second stanza, Kipling stirs up nationalistic sentiments that implore the reader “To veil the threat of terror” in what appears to be an attempt to ambiguously link the benefits of imperialism with that of terrorism (a method not lost on modern right-wing nationalists in their justifications for invading Iraq by linking the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda with that of the Iraqi government). Kipling also stokes the nationalistic sense of superiority over other competing nations in his declaration that the reader will “….check the show of pride” (suggesting the humbling effect that the American efforts should bring to other competitors). Kipling concludes the stanza by boldly asserting the responsibility to bring profit to the motherland as “….seek another’s profit and work another’s gain.”
The third stanza espouses more benefits to the motherland Americans might bring such as helping to end famine and cure disease (presumably by the host nation’s unique resources). The fourth stanza seems to suggest the opportunity to freely civilize the untouched terrain of the host country, unburdened by constraints of monarchy. This brings to mind television propaganda for military enlistment, which will usually tout the benefit of seeing the world.
The fifth stanza seems to resort to martyrdom, in declaring the “old reward” of the White Man’s burden to be “The blame of those ye better” (competitor nations) and “The hate of those ye guard” (the indigenous people). I took the passage regarding the “…hosts ye humour” to be about liberal Americans against the idea of imperialism. If this be the case, then Kipling is essentially equating formerly-enslaved Jews to Americans, ancient Egypt to pre-imperialist America and the lack of imperialism in America to bondage itself.
The sixth stanza seems to continue an attack on anti-imperialistic sentiment in stating the reader “…dare not stoop to less” and not hide behind the banner of freedom to disguise their lack of fortitude. The stanza then goes on the encourage the promotion of religion (assuredly Christianity) upon the “…silent sullen peoples” whom “….shall weigh your God and you.” The final and seventh stanza amounts to machismo peer pressure. It is a call to grow up, be a man and join the cause of imperialism or risk being judged harshly by your peers.
Thus, Kipling’s justification for imperialism amounted to dehumanizing the victims, stoking a strong sense of nationalism in declaring superiority as a nation compared to competitor nations and as a people compared to indigenous people, stoking a strong sense of patriotism in terms of service and sacrifice, stoking a strong sense of pride in terms of spreading Western civilization, martyrdom for the unpopularity suffered, demonization of political opponents of imperialism, tying Christian superiority to imperialism and equating manliness and fortitude to imperialism.
The question remains of what in the character of the United States made Kipling’s sentiments welcome in the hearts of Americans who supported imperialism. To start, there were the motives of imperialism itself. The economic motive sought raw materials, markets and investments due mostly to the burgeoning industrial capitalism. The push for national power and prestige in the face of the world was a major motive for imperialism. The drive to civilize what were considered to be heathen countries was a major motive for Christian missionaries who accompanied the soldiers and merchants in their “civilizing missions.” The demand in jobs for service abroad motivated many men of varying economic positions to take up the White Man’s burden. All of these motives for imperialism match up perfectly with the sentiments expressed in Rudyard Kipling’s poem.
In modern terms, it is not unlike Bush’s evolving rationalizations for the Iraq War in which there also exists the umbrella of excuses to maintain what amounts to a modern day equivalent of imperialism. Bush has found a way to justify his occupation of Iraq in declaring its benefit for all Americans, for the United States as a whole and for Iraqi citizens. Bush’s rationalizations have been distributed to the public and vigorously defended by right-wing talk radio hosts and cable news networks all of whom serve as the modern day equivalent to Rudyard Kipling.
While Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” is morally reprehensible by today’s standards and by the standards of his contemporary liberals whom opposed imperialism, it had an appeal well-suited to the ideologically-aligned mindsets of his time. Fervent supporters of Bush’s occupation of Iraq would do well to view side-by-side comparisons of their modern day propaganda and that of Rudyard Kipling in order to understand what it is they are really defending.
Monday, June 16, 2008
UMass Boston History 112: Essay #3
It is easy to see why the Communist Manifesto has had a broad appeal to the proletariat of various nations in various eras, as much as its platform has been reviled by other nations in various eras. While history proves Marx and Engels to be prophetic in some aspects and untenable in others, I find myself disagreeing with most of their ideas, while supporting a few of their policies as they pertained to reform in the era of the Industrial Revolution.
To start, I found the introduction regarding the political fear-mongering over the influence of Communism among other political parties to be extremely prophetic in terms of what was to come in the twentieth century, in as much as they were describing their own era’s disposition towards Communism. Reactions in the United States to Communism stemming from the Cold War were histrionic and excessive as the Conservative ideologies ostracized and bludgeoned members of society and government officials of the Liberal ideologies suspected of Communist sympathies. As Marx and Engels aptly state in reference to their own era, the demagoguery in the United States was one of fear by the established powers of the “specter of Communism” as posed by the Soviet Union, which was anticipated to corrupt the democratic sensibilities of the American people.
The root of my overall disagreement with the policies advocated by Marx and Engels is Marx’s departure from Hagel’s Dialectic Principle with the “mode of production” being the primary force in a given society, whose opposing forces develop with technological innovations that break with the economic structural convention. The premise that human beings can function best as a society when organized strictly by imperatives of material production presents a dim and negative outlook of the capabilities of mankind. At its core, this premise seeks to discourage man’s profound ability to reinvent himself with new ideas, and attain a higher understanding of himself and the world around him. It would seem that according to Marx and Engels, man’s optimal consciousness was that of a bee in a hive.
While Marx and Engel focus on property relations using the French Revolution as an example (where feudal property becomes bourgeois property), I believe they do their audience a disservice in ignoring the ideas and intentions that drove the French Revolution. Instead, they merely reduce it to being about a transfer of property from one group to another group. While I suppose this method supports Marx’s intention to override the notion that opposing ideas are a major force in history, it appears cynical and intellectually dishonest for him to deny any virtues of the French Revolution with respect to the empowerment of its own proletariat. His focus on that of property seems to encourage an inherently secular and material-based value system, which can also be supported in his inclusion of the Pope among the “holy alliance” that would “exorcise” the specter of Communism. Indeed, the very language he uses sarcastically derides the influence of the Church. Being a Jew myself, I wonder if Marx had a bone to pick with Christianity as a societal influence.
While one may disagree with Marx and Engels at the crux of their ideology, at least one policy of the Communist Manifesto addresses a grim reality resulting from the Industrial Revolution: policy number ten calls for “Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form.” This policy goes further than the initial English child labor reforms, which merely abolished child labor up until the age of nine, capped the labor of children under eighteen to nine hours per day and excluded children from mine labor. While I am also agreeable with the same policy’s call for “Free education for all children in public schools,” I find the conclusion to that policy calling for the “Combination of education with industrial production….” to be merely an ideological prop as opposed to actual reform. This suggests to me that Marx and Engel sought to indoctrinate children with the hive mentality as a part of their free public education.
I find the balance of the policies advocated by Marx and Engels to be ideologically oriented as opposed to actual reforms by-and-large. They are geared towards equalizing wealth, abolishing private property, monopolizing finance, production and agriculture in the hands of the state and blending agriculture with manufacturing industries for purposes of no distinction between urban and rural peoples. The remaining policy, which could appear to be either ideological or reform-minded, is that of number six: “Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.” One could argue it to be ideological on the grounds that the State would seek a monopoly of communication and transport means to empower the State itself. The argument for reform would be that the State might be in the position to ensure the optimal and non-arbitrary delivery of communication and transport services as opposed to being left to the whims of capitalism.
The appeal of the Communist Manifesto to the proletariat of whom Marx and Engels speak was immense. The fact that many impoverished factory workers resided in dismal accommodations while being exposed to the luxuries of city-living out of their economic reach was fertile ground for Marx and Engels to plant their ideological seed. The fact that many former farmers were forced to abandon agriculture to become replaceable cogs in replaceable machines, often being exposed to hazardous and grueling conditions affecting the dynamics of their formerly tight-knit family units was fertile ground for Marx and Engels to plant their ideological seed. The political climate entrenched with free-market captains of industry who fought government intervention on the workers’ behalves, could only have made the conquest of the so-called bourgeois that much more appealing to the so-called proletariat.
Marx and Engels’ notion that upon taking its place as the newly-ruling class, the proletariats would dissolve the class system after removing class antagonisms and ultimately abolish its own supremacy as a class has been proved to be untenable by modern incarnations of Communism in practice. China, continuously attempting to purge itself of so-called class antagonisms has found its ruling class of Communists constantly in conflict with its populace (e.g. – the Tienanmen Square Massacre) in a manner that suggests the ruling class is unlikely to ever abolish its own supremacy. The same could be said of the former Soviet Union, whose ruling class’s supremacy has outlasted their Communist system of government.
Prophetic, idealistic, occasionally reform-oriented and ultimately untenable, the Communist Manifesto is a revolutionary document whose ideology wields considerable power in the world today.
To start, I found the introduction regarding the political fear-mongering over the influence of Communism among other political parties to be extremely prophetic in terms of what was to come in the twentieth century, in as much as they were describing their own era’s disposition towards Communism. Reactions in the United States to Communism stemming from the Cold War were histrionic and excessive as the Conservative ideologies ostracized and bludgeoned members of society and government officials of the Liberal ideologies suspected of Communist sympathies. As Marx and Engels aptly state in reference to their own era, the demagoguery in the United States was one of fear by the established powers of the “specter of Communism” as posed by the Soviet Union, which was anticipated to corrupt the democratic sensibilities of the American people.
The root of my overall disagreement with the policies advocated by Marx and Engels is Marx’s departure from Hagel’s Dialectic Principle with the “mode of production” being the primary force in a given society, whose opposing forces develop with technological innovations that break with the economic structural convention. The premise that human beings can function best as a society when organized strictly by imperatives of material production presents a dim and negative outlook of the capabilities of mankind. At its core, this premise seeks to discourage man’s profound ability to reinvent himself with new ideas, and attain a higher understanding of himself and the world around him. It would seem that according to Marx and Engels, man’s optimal consciousness was that of a bee in a hive.
While Marx and Engel focus on property relations using the French Revolution as an example (where feudal property becomes bourgeois property), I believe they do their audience a disservice in ignoring the ideas and intentions that drove the French Revolution. Instead, they merely reduce it to being about a transfer of property from one group to another group. While I suppose this method supports Marx’s intention to override the notion that opposing ideas are a major force in history, it appears cynical and intellectually dishonest for him to deny any virtues of the French Revolution with respect to the empowerment of its own proletariat. His focus on that of property seems to encourage an inherently secular and material-based value system, which can also be supported in his inclusion of the Pope among the “holy alliance” that would “exorcise” the specter of Communism. Indeed, the very language he uses sarcastically derides the influence of the Church. Being a Jew myself, I wonder if Marx had a bone to pick with Christianity as a societal influence.
While one may disagree with Marx and Engels at the crux of their ideology, at least one policy of the Communist Manifesto addresses a grim reality resulting from the Industrial Revolution: policy number ten calls for “Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form.” This policy goes further than the initial English child labor reforms, which merely abolished child labor up until the age of nine, capped the labor of children under eighteen to nine hours per day and excluded children from mine labor. While I am also agreeable with the same policy’s call for “Free education for all children in public schools,” I find the conclusion to that policy calling for the “Combination of education with industrial production….” to be merely an ideological prop as opposed to actual reform. This suggests to me that Marx and Engel sought to indoctrinate children with the hive mentality as a part of their free public education.
I find the balance of the policies advocated by Marx and Engels to be ideologically oriented as opposed to actual reforms by-and-large. They are geared towards equalizing wealth, abolishing private property, monopolizing finance, production and agriculture in the hands of the state and blending agriculture with manufacturing industries for purposes of no distinction between urban and rural peoples. The remaining policy, which could appear to be either ideological or reform-minded, is that of number six: “Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.” One could argue it to be ideological on the grounds that the State would seek a monopoly of communication and transport means to empower the State itself. The argument for reform would be that the State might be in the position to ensure the optimal and non-arbitrary delivery of communication and transport services as opposed to being left to the whims of capitalism.
The appeal of the Communist Manifesto to the proletariat of whom Marx and Engels speak was immense. The fact that many impoverished factory workers resided in dismal accommodations while being exposed to the luxuries of city-living out of their economic reach was fertile ground for Marx and Engels to plant their ideological seed. The fact that many former farmers were forced to abandon agriculture to become replaceable cogs in replaceable machines, often being exposed to hazardous and grueling conditions affecting the dynamics of their formerly tight-knit family units was fertile ground for Marx and Engels to plant their ideological seed. The political climate entrenched with free-market captains of industry who fought government intervention on the workers’ behalves, could only have made the conquest of the so-called bourgeois that much more appealing to the so-called proletariat.
Marx and Engels’ notion that upon taking its place as the newly-ruling class, the proletariats would dissolve the class system after removing class antagonisms and ultimately abolish its own supremacy as a class has been proved to be untenable by modern incarnations of Communism in practice. China, continuously attempting to purge itself of so-called class antagonisms has found its ruling class of Communists constantly in conflict with its populace (e.g. – the Tienanmen Square Massacre) in a manner that suggests the ruling class is unlikely to ever abolish its own supremacy. The same could be said of the former Soviet Union, whose ruling class’s supremacy has outlasted their Communist system of government.
Prophetic, idealistic, occasionally reform-oriented and ultimately untenable, the Communist Manifesto is a revolutionary document whose ideology wields considerable power in the world today.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
UMass Boston History 112: Essay #2
When evaluating the legitimacy of a revolution, I consider the standard of a revolution’s declaration to be of the utmost usefulness and importance. In both instances of the American and French Revolutions, each relative declaration served as the most visible and vocal platform upon which the purpose of each revolution clearly defined and the unity of each revolution’s people powerfully compelled. While the American Declaration of Independence may have preceded the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen chronologically and thus conceptually, the French declaration ultimately served a broader role in its revolution than that of the American declaration in its own revolution.
Before breaking down the similarities and differences between these great documents, I feel it is important to state a link that I have come across in my independent studies, which I have not yet encountered in the readings of the lectures. The Sherman passage explicitly states, “…it is uncertain whether the French were directly influenced by the American document, both are products of common ideas of the late eighteenth century and show evidence of a strong relationship between these ideas and revolutionary activities in Western civilization.” When watching the HBO mini-series “John Adams”, I was astonished to behold Jefferson declaring to Adams that he had personally advised the Marquis de Lafayette who was in the midst of drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. I verified this fact on the Internet, one website stating, “Lafayette proceeded to persuade the Assembly to adopt the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, a document he drafted in cooperation with Jefferson.” This link, I feel, is far more binding than each revolution’s mutual inspiration of the Age of Enlightenment ideals. It is inherent proof that the American Revolution directly impacted the French Revolution by way of common declaration authors, as opposed to merely serving as a remote influence due to shared ideology and order of occurrence.
Aside from the declarations’ similarities in their virtues as they apply to their overall relevance to each relative revolution as stipulated in my introduction, what is apparent in examining the similarities between the two documents is the shared inspiration of John Locke. Locke’s notion that all people possess certain natural rights directly relates to the American declaration’s statement that “…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” as much as it relates to the French declaration’s statement that the “…representatives of the French people…have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man…” and also Article 1 of the French declaration stating “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” Given the fact presented in the above paragraph, one can’t help but wonder if Jefferson’s choice of language (the mutual usage of the word “inalienable” for example) pervaded the French declaration as much as his overall conceptual influence!
Locke’s definition of these natural rights as being life, liberty and property are variably espoused by the American declaration as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” and also variably espoused by the French declaration in Article 2 as “liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.” Locke’s notion that the sole responsibility of government is to preserve these rights as delegated by the people directly relates to the American declaration’s statement that “…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” as much as it relates to the French Declaration’s statement in Article 2 that “The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man” and also Article 3 that “The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.”
Lastly, Locke’s notion that a political agent being subject to resistance should he exceed society’s expectation of his power’s limits is powerfully reflected in the American declaration’s statement that “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness” and more simply stated in the French declaration’s Article 15 that “Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.”
The difference between the two documents pertaining to purpose finds its origins in the differing set of circumstances per revolution as well as the chain of events leading up to each document’s creation. In the case of the American Revolution, the rebellion’s representatives were an illegitimate body in the eyes of the King, whose prior attempts at peacefully seeking redress via the Olive Branch Petition, had been completely ignored. Thus, the Declaration of Independence was a calculated and aggressive tactical maneuver in decrying the King (and not Parliament) for purposes of rallying the populace of all colonies to enlist in armed resistance despite geographical and cultural differences. In the case of the French Revolution, the rebellion’s representatives were a legitimate body in the eyes of the King, who chose to break away from the remaining bodies of the Estates-General. Their armed resistance had already ensued since their siege of the Bastille, and thus the need to rally for armed resistance was not to be a goal in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Instead, it largely sought to outline principles of government and serve as a preface to the French Constitution.
The difference between the two documents pertaining to substance finds its origins in the difference between the documents pertaining to purpose. Because the Declaration of Independence was a call to arms and an aggressive decrying of the King in purpose, its substance parts ways with that of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen following the establishment of their mutual natural rights sentiments in the Introduction and the Preamble. The remaining two sections of the American declaration are known as the “Indictment” (which lists all of the King’s “repeated injuries and usurpations” of the Americans’ natural rights) and the “Denunciation” (which completes the justification for revolution in stating disappointment that prior attempts to reconcile their differences had gone ignored). In the case of the French declaration, it transcended listing injuries by the King and proceeded to listing principles of governance. The American declaration was largely focused on the causes of the revolution, while the French declaration was focused on the ends of the revolution.
While the substantive and causal differences between the American and French declarations are significant, their similarities both in big-picture revolutionary function as well as historical importance cannot be denied when considering the standard of declarations in evaluating the legitimacy of revolutions. When one takes into account the dual role that Jefferson played in both revolutions, it should also refresh our understanding of the significance the American Revolution with respect to the French Revolution.
Before breaking down the similarities and differences between these great documents, I feel it is important to state a link that I have come across in my independent studies, which I have not yet encountered in the readings of the lectures. The Sherman passage explicitly states, “…it is uncertain whether the French were directly influenced by the American document, both are products of common ideas of the late eighteenth century and show evidence of a strong relationship between these ideas and revolutionary activities in Western civilization.” When watching the HBO mini-series “John Adams”, I was astonished to behold Jefferson declaring to Adams that he had personally advised the Marquis de Lafayette who was in the midst of drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. I verified this fact on the Internet, one website stating, “Lafayette proceeded to persuade the Assembly to adopt the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, a document he drafted in cooperation with Jefferson.” This link, I feel, is far more binding than each revolution’s mutual inspiration of the Age of Enlightenment ideals. It is inherent proof that the American Revolution directly impacted the French Revolution by way of common declaration authors, as opposed to merely serving as a remote influence due to shared ideology and order of occurrence.
Aside from the declarations’ similarities in their virtues as they apply to their overall relevance to each relative revolution as stipulated in my introduction, what is apparent in examining the similarities between the two documents is the shared inspiration of John Locke. Locke’s notion that all people possess certain natural rights directly relates to the American declaration’s statement that “…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” as much as it relates to the French declaration’s statement that the “…representatives of the French people…have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man…” and also Article 1 of the French declaration stating “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” Given the fact presented in the above paragraph, one can’t help but wonder if Jefferson’s choice of language (the mutual usage of the word “inalienable” for example) pervaded the French declaration as much as his overall conceptual influence!
Locke’s definition of these natural rights as being life, liberty and property are variably espoused by the American declaration as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” and also variably espoused by the French declaration in Article 2 as “liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.” Locke’s notion that the sole responsibility of government is to preserve these rights as delegated by the people directly relates to the American declaration’s statement that “…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” as much as it relates to the French Declaration’s statement in Article 2 that “The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man” and also Article 3 that “The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.”
Lastly, Locke’s notion that a political agent being subject to resistance should he exceed society’s expectation of his power’s limits is powerfully reflected in the American declaration’s statement that “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness” and more simply stated in the French declaration’s Article 15 that “Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.”
The difference between the two documents pertaining to purpose finds its origins in the differing set of circumstances per revolution as well as the chain of events leading up to each document’s creation. In the case of the American Revolution, the rebellion’s representatives were an illegitimate body in the eyes of the King, whose prior attempts at peacefully seeking redress via the Olive Branch Petition, had been completely ignored. Thus, the Declaration of Independence was a calculated and aggressive tactical maneuver in decrying the King (and not Parliament) for purposes of rallying the populace of all colonies to enlist in armed resistance despite geographical and cultural differences. In the case of the French Revolution, the rebellion’s representatives were a legitimate body in the eyes of the King, who chose to break away from the remaining bodies of the Estates-General. Their armed resistance had already ensued since their siege of the Bastille, and thus the need to rally for armed resistance was not to be a goal in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Instead, it largely sought to outline principles of government and serve as a preface to the French Constitution.
The difference between the two documents pertaining to substance finds its origins in the difference between the documents pertaining to purpose. Because the Declaration of Independence was a call to arms and an aggressive decrying of the King in purpose, its substance parts ways with that of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen following the establishment of their mutual natural rights sentiments in the Introduction and the Preamble. The remaining two sections of the American declaration are known as the “Indictment” (which lists all of the King’s “repeated injuries and usurpations” of the Americans’ natural rights) and the “Denunciation” (which completes the justification for revolution in stating disappointment that prior attempts to reconcile their differences had gone ignored). In the case of the French declaration, it transcended listing injuries by the King and proceeded to listing principles of governance. The American declaration was largely focused on the causes of the revolution, while the French declaration was focused on the ends of the revolution.
While the substantive and causal differences between the American and French declarations are significant, their similarities both in big-picture revolutionary function as well as historical importance cannot be denied when considering the standard of declarations in evaluating the legitimacy of revolutions. When one takes into account the dual role that Jefferson played in both revolutions, it should also refresh our understanding of the significance the American Revolution with respect to the French Revolution.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
UMass Boston History 112: Essay #1
I found the excerpt from the “Tenth Epoch” of Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind by the Marquis de Condorcet to be extremely applicable to my understanding of history, and very prophetic for a man of his time. On a broader level, I found the excerpt relatable to my undergraduate studies in music history (particularly those focusing on the 6th century Roman Christian philosopher Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius). On a more detailed level, I mostly related the excerpt’s content to my understanding of modern American history.
Condorcet’s division of the hopes for the future condition of the human species and his description of the interplay between each hope instantly brought to mind the attempt of Boethius to divide music into three immutable levels, among which existed an equal degree of interplay. It seemed apparent that Condorcet had constructed a hierarchy in establishing equality among nations at the very top, equality within each nation in the middle and an improvement of men at the very bottom. Boethius established a hierarchy with musica mundana (globe/world music) at the top, musica humana (human music) in the middle and musica instrumentalis (vocal/instrumental music) at the bottom. The mutual hierarchal relationships I discerned between the two concepts, and more importantly the common theme that emerged made this comparison imperative to relate in this essay.
The common theme, which I felt bound the two concepts, was that of striving for equilibrium per hierarchy component, and ultimately striving for collective equilibrium. The equilibrium to be attained in the case of Condorcet’s hierarchy began with the health and robustness of an individual, which relates to Boethius’ musica instrumentalis (music attained by an individual instrument or voice). In ensuring members of a nation are made to know their rights to resist tyranny and inequality, equilibrium is attained at the next highest level of Condorcet’s hierarchy, which relates to Boethius’ musica humana (external symmetry of the human body and the balance of its members and their placement). A nation’s transcending prejudice, monopoly, treachery and disrespect towards all other nations achieves equilibrium at the highest level of Condorcet’s hierarchy, which relates to Boethius’ musica mundana (harmony standing as a foundation of the world around us). As much as Boethius seeks to avoid dissonance in any level of his hierarchy, so too does it behoove humanity to do the same.
While I largely share in the view of Condorcet that through heavy human investment in the sciences and arts could we rapidly unearth truths for the betterment of mankind, I pondered the context of his questioning why should a philosopher be proscribed from conjecturing upon the development of the intellectual and moral faculties of man. Being that this question was posed following an explanation pertaining to the foundation of faith in the natural sciences, I initially supposed that Condorcet, while perhaps indignant about the treatment of philosophers by organized religion, sought to win over a more devoutly religious audience in connecting two disparate and warring moral authorities. These thoughts were later reinforced by his bold and unsparing decrying of the “….proselyting fury or the intrigues of our priests,” whose passage arrived suspiciously four pages later (perhaps to pad the effect upon a more religious audience?).
Much of the excerpt’s content brought to mind my personal observations of modern American history in the form of supportive evidence. Much of my evidence pertains to policy established under the administration of George W. Bush, as I feel his presidency to have brought and to eventually bring about the direst of consequences for the United States, which leaves little doubt in my mind as to the certainty of Condorcet’s philosophies. Other evidence draws from more positive moments in American history.
To begin, I felt Condorcet’s question of whether inequality was a natural byproduct of civilization or else an imperfection of social order to be a conundrum. On the one hand, Darwin teaches us that in nature only the strongest, fastest and smartest species survive. This would tend to support the notion that inequality is naturally produced by civilization. On the other hand, political leadership will often tip the scales to favor particular demographics over others (e.g. – the Bush Administration’s steadfast dedication to preserving and augmenting the wealth of the richest one percent of Americans with lopsided economic policies). It is also very often true that a society’s choice in leadership can reflect qualities of the society itself (e.g. – many Americans eagerly accepted Bush’s now-known manufactured case for invading Iraq without critically examining or demanding the facts, which is not unlike Bush’s push for war without critically examining or demanding the real facts from the Pentagon). I suppose the best way to resolve this conundrum is to answer that civilization is naturally unequal in as much as its inequality is due to the imperfection social order.
Condorcet’s notion that the reciprocal influence of the sciences and instruction being among the most prolific and powerful causes of the improvement of the human race can be no better illustrated than with the hostilities demonstrated toward both science and education by the Bush Administration. Thanks to framing his policy towards stem cell research in a strictly ideological manner, Bush has drastically slowed scientific research for potential cures to numerous diseases. As for education, his “No Child Left Behind Act” has vastly reduced the actual education of children in public schools in favor of heavy testing for the purposes of defunding public schools with low test score averages. Bush’s attitude in these instances as well as in many other instances when confronted by concepts outside of his narrow ideologies proves Condorcet’s notion to be irrefutably true as we are tragically left to wonder about the betterment of mankind that might have been.
I found Condorcet’s vision of science building upon itself exponentially to be amazingly prophetic for a man of his time. While I am admittedly ignorant of the state of science in his time, my thoughts became absorbed with visions of rapid American innovation occurring between the latter part of the nineteenth century well into the twentieth century. Communication, transportation, exploration and entertainment were enhanced in ways that rendered the human condition undeniably more robust thanks to American inventors who benefited from the scientific contributions of predecessors and subsequent instruction provided to them.
Condorcet’s notion that a society’s consciousness of freedom measures the influence of political instruction is well illustrated by the large degree of misinformation charading as news on cable television networks in the United States. Particularly, Fox News (a network recently confirmed by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellen to be a personal propaganda mouthpiece for the Bush Administration) has been constantly engaged in the act of injecting right-wing ideology in the context of news programming since the late 1990’s. This misinformation has helped to shore up support for self-destructive policy-making, while demonizing liberal politicians to the degree they are seen by many citizens as mere caricatures of derision.
Condorcet’s notion that the perfectibility of man in indefinite has become self-evident. Over time with medical science expanding our lifespans, mankind has already proved Condorcet correct and continues to do so. I support both meanings of the word “indefinite” as applied to the notion that the interval between birth and death may be extended indefinitely. Ultimately, it takes merely accepting that man will maintain the lifespans we have achieved thus far, as well as to occasionally surpass expectations resulting in an increased overall expectation of our collective lifespans. We can only assume the more our doctors know, the longer we will live and the higher the expectation in our lifespans will grow.
The Marquis de Condorcet serves as an excellent example of somebody who drew from his past, and through logic and precision was able to cast a very accurate reading of mankind’s future progress. I am sure it would please him to know that he has served in the role of the very philosopher he writes about, whose conjectures may well be regarded as fact by any sound mind today.
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