"The Oxford History of the French Revolution" IV Vox Populi

I often feel that an inescapable part of the debate in today's day and age is: "Just how much democracy do we really want?."

"Do we really want those people to be in charge?"

"You know, those idiots vote.  And there are a lot of them."

Okay, so I grant you, that's more of the informal conversations people will have between each other, but even among the more politically attuned and high-minded, the essence of the debate isn't much different.  Have you paid a visit to Jesusland?  Or are you a member of the 47%?

Truthfully, that angle is boring.  All nations are heterogeneous mixtures of people with all sorts of whacko views sprinkled liberally around, and considering the healthy dosage of jerks, it's stupidly easy to find evidence of the other side's perfidy.

What does interest me is that any given country is a leavened loaf of fanatics, partisans, idiots, and blowhards; but also a lot of regular, middle-of-the-road folks of every class and race.  How do you calibrate the balance between giving a voice to the people and insulating our institutions from popular whim?  Can democracy always successfully balance competing factions? Continuity and stability clearly matter - just look at California.

In that vein, one passage in this book really jumped out at me.  Revolutionary France was in turmoil after the execution of the king, and the National Convention was basically at the mercy of the sans-culottes, the Parisian working class.  The sans-culottes (also sansculottes) and their allies in the Convention were demanding the guillotine for all opponents of the Republic, and they were quick to use their sheer numbers to literally threaten the Convention to doing their bidding.  This naturally had bad consequences, as the rest of the country started rising in revolt, demanding "Federalism" and objecting strenuously to the "radical" tyranny of Paris:

"...[W]hat the 'Federalists appear to have resented if anything even more than the grip of the sansculottes on elected deputies was the range of emergency measures any government would have felt to take to cope with the downturn in French fortunes that spring.  Conscription, enhanced police powers, market controls, and forced loans, actual or threatened, [My note: all popular sansculotte measures] were now coming on top of years of upheaval tolerated only because of the promise of calmer times to come...but the disappearance over the summer of 1792 of the distinction between active and other citizens* seemed to place the power to exercise authority enhanced by authority in the hands of those with least to lose." (p. 242)

And that's the thing.  The "'blood-drinkers'" of the Paris sections were so embittered against the old regime, that their lust for vengeance against old enemies, and the supplication of the government to the mob meant that the French leaders pursued a policy of exacting their pound of flesh from the propertied beyond any reason.  Let alone, addressing the nation's and the Revolution's real problems.

The rise of Robespierre and the subsequent Reign of Terror that took place between 1793-1794 can be traced in part to the increasing power of the sansculottes, and their government by mob rule.  The Parisian mob, hungry, impoverished, embittered, and newly-aware of their own power did not hesitate to use it to get the government to enact a program they believed beneficial to them.  The demonstrations on September 4, 1793 show exactly how this worked:

"Chaumette, at the head of thousands of sansculottes, denounced the shortages, the failure to implement existing laws to deal with them, and those who caused them: 'Legislators, the immense gathering of citizens come together yesterday and this morning...has formed   but one wish:...Our subsistence, and to get it, apply the law!"....The Convention voted to do it on the spot-although it did not authorize the guillotines on wheels which Chaumette thought every detachment....ought to have....It was all carried by acclamation, amid scenes, in Barère's words, of delirium.  Terror, he observed, was now the order of the day." (p. 251)

Reading this, I find myself trying to understand what can be understood from these episodes.  The Revolution started off as a bourgeois affair - even the men who stormed the Bastille were culled from the bourgeoisie.  The men who populated the Estates-General, the National Assembly, and the National Convention were almost all to a man highly educated.  Visionaries, even.  Check out this mind-bending quote from Jean-Paul Marat, elected to the National Convention and a famous scientist and rabble-rouser:

"Don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen because the poverty’s been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces."

For good measure, let me emphasize that he said that in the 1790's! 

And yet, four years in, the mob had seized control.   How did this happen?  How did it not happen in America?  The answer lies in the structure of the population of France itself.

Representative democracy tends to work best (i.e. be most stable) in small, culturally homogenous, and egalitarian societies.  Prior to the 20th century, there were exceptions like England, but this was generally the rule.  This description in a lot of ways could be applied to Revolutionary America.  Yet, none of those adjectives described Revolutionary France at all.  When major segments of the population becomes isolated and oppressed by the ruling classes, electoral politics, when it finally does arrive, becomes an exercise in using the leverage of numbers to exact justice, economic and social, against former oppressors.  We see this time and time again.


As an American, what these episodes say to me is that fearing growing inequality is one thing.  Fearing the growing perception that the game is rigged is more dangerous, because coupled with the increasing numbers of entrenched poor, may be more wise, as the combination has shown itself to be explosive.  Revolutionary, even.  In that sense, we should perhaps look at the Tea Party and the Occupy movement as shots across the bow.  To freely paraphrase from Milan Kundera:  while we are in the midst of the sunset of the dissolution from our American empire, we should be wary that everything becomes illuminated by the aura of nostalgia for better times; yes, even the guillotine.**


* "Active" citizens were simply those who were eligible to vote, usually based on property or wealth requirements.
** The original quote is:
"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine."
 Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being