>>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb at jmu.edu> 11/03 2:37 PM >>>
Lou,
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). __________
Charles: the classical Marxist view of the French revolution has not yet been refuted by Louis Pro or Comninel. For that view is not that the bourgeois revolution in France was started and completed during the flashpoint events at the end of the 1700's. The transition from feudalism to capitalism is an epochal process in the Marxist paradigm. The absolute monarchy is actually a transitional form, because in fulblown feudalism there is no national king but a decentralized ruling class of feudal lords and manors. The occurrence of monarchy signals the unification of the NATION AND THE NATION IS A BOURGEOIS FORM IN THE MARXIST PARADIGM. In other words, the classical Marxist model would predict that the monoarchy and bourgeoisie would start to merge in some ways, just as Comninel "discovers". ( In England the merger was much more peaceful and permanent). And after the circa 1789 events things lurched back toward monarchy. It took many more years of struggle to get rid of Bonapartism, which was a sort of hybrid between monarchy and a bourgeois democratic-republic. Marx was involved in this in the revolution of 1848. His and Engels' understanding of the French Revolution was much more complex than the strawman Comninel shoots down.
Charles Brown
Detroit
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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