10 June 1793: The Jacobins take power скачать в хорошем качестве

10 June 1793: The Jacobins take power

On this day in 1793 the Jacobins came to power in the French Revolution, installing a revolutionary dictatorship under the Committee for Public Safety. The French Revolution began in 1789 as the emerging bourgeoisie, as well as the peasantry and urban petit bourgeoisie, could no longer tolerate the economic and social limitations imposed on them by the feudal system, under the absolutist monarchy. The first few years were characterised by what Marxists call dual power in which the institutions of a new way of organsing society exist alongside the institutions of the old; an untenable situation that must be resolved one way or the other. By 1793 this dynamic had reached boiling point, the feudal counterrevolution was attacking and the large bourgeoisie were becoming hesitant at the radicalism the crisis was producing, the masses of Paris were becoming increasingly angry and demanded radical reforms to alleviate their suffering and concretise the democratic gains of the revolution. In this context the masses, organised under a system of democratic public assemblies that represented the poor artisans and workers of Paris, stormed the National Convention with the demands to purge counter-revolutionaries, fix the prices of necessities and for power to be in the hands of the popular democracy of the sans-culottes (Parisian masses). This paved the way for the Jacobin dictatorship, which was the political faction seen as most sympathetic to these demands, and thus began the most radical stage of the revolution that solidified many of the gains of the revolution and ultimately destroyed feudalism. But the Jacobins, themselves representatives of the bourgeoisie, were only willing to go so far and eventually, after offering concessions under pressure, would try to suppress the sans-culottes, which would spell their own demise. By July 1794, having used extraordinary measures to complete the revolution in the interests of the bourgeoisie, ending the barbarity of feudalism, and now, sufficiently diverting and demoralising the aspirations of the rising poor, they too would be dispensed with. The French Revolution, the gains of which are still felt today, and the rise to power of the Jacobins are rich in lessons for revolutionaries. The productive forces of society had not yet developed to a sufficient enough degree for the implementation of the demands of the sans-culottes. They would have to wait decades until the working class developed in earnest, and the raise in productivity brought about by capitalism made a truly classless society a possibility. But their actions stand as a testament to the bravery of the masses, the role of class struggle as the ‘motor force of history’ and offered the downtrodden the earliest glimpses of a new world, free from inequality and oppression, that would soon become possible, a world we are still fighting for today.