Certainly the traditional Marxist view of the French Revolution was this bourgeoisie versus feudal aristocracy bit, which is somewhat questionable given, among other things, the relatively underdeveloped state of the bourgeoisie (industrial capitalism did not really take off in France until well into the nineteenth century).
But a more fundamental Marxist view does hold. After all, this was an overwhelmingly feudal society. The dominant contradiction was between the aristocracy and the peasantry. The revolution did result in a massive transfer of control of the means of production from the former ruling and exploiting class to the former exploited class. The peasants got the land and by and large kept it, much to the chagrin of current EU agricultural policymakers. Barkley Rosser On Tue, 03 Nov 1998 10:22:51 -0500 Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com> wrote:
> >Quite right. The specifics of this case aside, we
> >could just as easily dismiss Marx for being a sexist
> >or overly fond of hamburgers, or any other figure from
> >the past for some deviation for contemporary left mores.
> >
> >MBS
>
> Actually this gets to the heart of a very interesting theoretical question
> that Jim Heartfield and I debated out on the Marxism list. This is whether
> there is such a thing as a bourgeois revolution, which I think needs
> rethinking. George Comninel's book on the French Revolution considers the
> recent historiography which questions whether there were really any deep
> class antagonisms between the French nobility and bourgeoisie in 1789.
>
> I would like to carve out the time one of these days to subject the
> American revolution to the same kind of analysis. For example, Staughton
> Lynd did a study of the upstate NY ruling class at the time of the
> revolution and discovered conciliatory attitudes toward the crown not
> unlike those examined by the "revisionist" French historians in Comninel's
> work.
>
> Comninel questions the traditional Marxist schema of the French revolution
> as being some kind of precursor to the proletarian revolutions of the 20th
> century. He says that everything that was revolutionary about 1789 took
> place despite the bourgeoisie. Daniel Guerin, the French anarchist, wrote a
> study of the French revolution independent of the "revisionist" scholarship
> which comes to an identical conclusion.
>
> Perhaps we need to analyze the contending class forces of the American
> revolution with more acuity than we have in the past. Communist Party
> historians such as Herbert Aptheker tend to glorify the role of Jefferson.
> Aptheker presided over the CP's Jefferson School, created during the
> popular front. Browder described communism as 20th century Americanism.
>
> I suspect that Jefferson was committed to the interests of the
> plantation-owning class, whose interests collided not only with the working
> people in the colonies, but the slaves and the American Indian, who
> Jefferson called openly for the extermination of. Karl Marx, on the other
> hand, was committed to the freedom of the working class at the expense of
> plantation-owners and industrialists. Most of the concessions he made to
> racism were as a result of his tendency to see the "bourgeois revolution"
> in a too optimistic way. This included his support of the US against Mexico
> in the border wars. Mexico was seen as an impediment to the consolidation
> of the bourgeois revolution on this continent and the Mexicans were
> described in derogatory if not racist terms.
>
> I guess you have to be an Indian to look at all those bastards in a
> clinical fashion, rather than in the way that Max Sawicky got taught to
> look at them in seventh grade social studies. The first thing I'd like to
> see happen in a successful American revolution is Mount Rushmore
> sandblasted. Jim Craven, my Blackfoot friend and comrade, included this in
> his signature file:
>
> "The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards Indians; their land
> and
> property shall never be taken from them without their consent."
> (Northwest Ordinance, 1787, Ratified by Congress 1789)
>
> "...but this letter being unofficial and private, I may with safety give
> you a more
> extensive view of our policy respecting the Indians, that you may better
> comprehend
> the parts dealt to to you in detail through the official channel, and
> observing the
> system of which they make a part, conduct yourself in unison with it in
> cases where
> you are obliged to act without instruction...When they withdraw themselves
> to the
> culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them
> are their
> extensive forests, and will be willing to pare them off from time to time
> in exchange
> for necessaries for their farms and families. To promote this disposition
> to exchange
> lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries which we have
> to spare
> and they want,we shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good
> and
> influencial individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that
> when these
> debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop
> them off
> by cession of lands...In this way our settlements will gradually
> circumscribe and
> approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us as
> citizens
> of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi.The former is
> certainly the
> termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole
> course
> of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we
> presume that
> our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we
> have only to
> shut our hand to crush them..."
>
> (Classified Letter of President Thomas Jefferson ("libertarian"--for
> propertied white
> people) to William Henry Harrison, Feb. 27, 1803)
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu