Syndicalism and the French Revolution

That to this day the vast majority of those on the French Left remain wedded to a conception of the French Revolution as an anticipation of later movements towards greater social and economic equality is beyond dispute. Likewise, it is clear (and well-known) that this reverence for the Great Revolution and its offspring, Jacobinism, is not of recent origin. It was in place certainly by the early years of the Third Republic and so much so that, as Patrick Hutton has remarked, it had become part of the 'mental universe' of broad sections of leftwing opinion.' Yet this predominantly democratic and republican model of social transformation was never able to obtain universal assent on the Left. First Saint-Simon and Fourier and then Proudhon voiced their reservations about the Revolution and to these were added the arguments of such groups as the proletarian positivists who, following Comte, saw 1789 predominantly as an 'aborted' and incomplete attempt to secure a superior level of civilization and organization.2 But the greatest challenge to the ascendancy of the French Revolution and the Jacobin tradition came in the form of the

Political science · French Historical and Cultural Studies · History

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