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lately I've been seeing a lot of posts that express the general sentiment of "it's unhealthy/immoral to want a Glorious Leftist Revolution, the better and more sustainable way to better the world is to work towards small-scale change on a nonviolent local level". oftentimes these are couched in rhetoric that either exploits mental health concerns ("you all are just depressed/suicidal") or morality concerns ("you all just want to kill people you dislike"). unfortunately this sentiment ignores a hell of a lot of relevant concepts, including historical precedent, imperialism, and hidden systemic injustices that our current system cannot sustain itself without.
the historical precedent issue is pretty easy to grasp. basically every single successful social movement involved a violent element, whether primary or secondary. the labor movements that got us the fucking weekend off involved a violent element. stonewall was not a petition. the nazis were not defeated because the red army and the partisans decided to launch a public awareness campaign about the regime's atrocities. even the carnation revolution that is always lauded as unusually peaceful began with a military coup. there is no indication that nonviolent or incremental movements are more successful in achieving widespread change. in fact, historical evidence points to the contrary, and many of the "nonviolent" movements often cited/praised in these arguments were not in fact strictly nonviolent.
the other issue these arguments ignore is the reality of imperialism, which probably explains why a lot of these posts seem to come from liberal zionists. imperialism necessitates regions that are exploited and regions that commit and benefit from the exploitation. because the wealth and status of the imperial-core regions are derived and maintained through exploitation of the rest of the world, attempts to solely 'improve conditions' in the imperial core without addressing the way in which said conditions are tied to exploitation will always fall flat. the foundation that the imperial core is built upon is inherently unjust. the issues that spring from said foundation will not go away so long as that foundation continues to be what is being built upon.
and if for some reason you can't bring yourself to acknowledge the injustice of imperialism, you can also look at the shape subjugation takes within your own borders, such as the prison system. even in the most "progressive" nations, police and carceral violence exist. and in the united states, for example, prisons and jails are fucking death traps. you cannot spend any amount of time in a usamerican jail and not come out with an understanding that something is deeply, deeply wrong. I suspect that many of the people who make these kinds of institutionalist posts simply have not seen or experienced the worst of what empire can offer to even its own citizens.
this is why so many people (myself included) believe revolution is genuinely necessary. it's not because we're hopeless or because we get off on violence or because we think that it will be easy. incrementalism is in fact the easy option, where you can do good and help others without having to get your hands dirty or do the difficult work of deconstructing which systems you refuse to interrogate and why.
and this is not to say that we should not also be helping our local communities, or that the small things we do don't matter. but this system is designed to perpetuate itself and subsume its own critiques. we might be able to petition our way out of a school board's bad curriculum change, but we cannot petition our way out of imperialism, systemic racism or the carceral system. for those issues, other tools are necessary.
wwii era guy with a horrible grasp of politics: "you all are fools. there will never be a glorious antifascist resistance that will destroy the nazis. instead we should just be planting gardens and baking cookies for our neighbors and also trying really really hard not to look directly at the concentration camps."
Joyeux anniversaire, Robespierre. Wherever you are, thank you again and here's to another year.
*The biography is called Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life. For the Introduction's title, Peter Mcphee was in fact referencing another quote by another biographer (Janet Malcolm) for a different biography.
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Je peux lire tous les reportages anciens de l'assemblée nationale mais je ne peut pas entend les conversations normales 🫠 You guys string the words together c'est très difficile
You want my evidence that Saint-Just was queer? Alright, I'll give you my loudest evidence.
This is Fragment 41 - Verso of the Institutions républicaines, theorized by Anne Quenneday and myself (after reading and analyzing them thoroughly - yes, I did actually do that for my PhD thesis) to be a first draft:
Highlighted is a passage saying: "those who love each other are spouses" (ceux qui s'aiment sont époux).
Here is the final draft "On Affections", Fragment 18 - Recto:
You want to see what comphet and self-censorship looks like? You're looking at it right here.
Here you have 13 statements on affections:
11 of them go in depth about male friendship.
One is about tutors for children.
One is about heterosexual marriage.
Except the very same "mistake" was there again: he had written "ceux" (those) then struck it out and wrote (in darker ink, which shows it was revised at another time) "l'homme et la femme" (the man and woman). Almost as if he had realized he had gone too far, he self-corrected to a more traditional definition of marriage between men and women - a type of partnership he clearly has little interest in. Here's comparatively an abundance of text dedicated to the revolutionary, sacred bonds between men, and then there's that one cramped, self-conscious "correction" that forces a heteronormative structure onto a resolutely much broader philosophy of affection.
He spent eleven statements fleshing out state-codified partnerships between men, proposing a radical, expansive, gender-neutral and definitely queer definition of partnership (ceux) only to forcibly narrow and correct it to fit the heteronormative expectation (l'homme et la femme).
This is not me "writing fanfic". This isn't about "ships and yaoi". That is queer theory. That is a queer reading of history.
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Strangely enough, the physical monster painted by the Thermidorians, the monster they never tire of lacerating, is presented to us elegantly attired, and the only sincere evidence they give of him is that he was always well dressed.
Maybe one video-essay I should make is about what I call "Terrorsploitation" aka the Anglo-America obsession with "Madame Guillotine" (pronounced the Anglo way) and all the stupid myths they made up.
It's probably THE most important video to make because all the rest flows from the fact THIS is where their mind goes when most people in the Anglosphere think "revolution", you won't understand any theory or historical fact as long as this propaganda smoke screen warps your understanding, but...
It's July 6, it's 30 Celsius in my apartment with the AC on because the sun very sloooooowly sets in my windows, and it's going to give me ulcers and trigger my IBS so bad.
Unless I write the script while being unbelievably drunk and high as a kite. But the first draft would still just be the audio equivalent of this:
My point is: trying to explain that revolutions do accomplish things, examples of what the French Revolution did accomplish, etc. is going to mean nothing at all when THIS is what they think of when they think of a revolution in general and the French Revolution in particular. They'd still be like "ok that's all well and good but in order to achieve that they had to guillotine aristocrat babies and women who liked to dress fancy" and any other fucking bullshit these pieces of shit media throw up.
And while it obviously thankfully escapes categorization as "terrorsploitation", even Les Miz is a censored version of the actual Les Misérables source material because it had to be altered for Anglo sensitivities.
The Finale and Turning are two very clear examples of that. I can't rant enough about how these make no sense for either Les Misérables itself or French mentality - so much that the lyrics of the Finale are completely changed for the French adaptation. Because French people don't want to hear that they'll be rewarded in Heaven if they're good little serfs, what the hell?
Saint-Just, his legal studies, and his interest in literature
Below: English translation of the first two pages of Vinot's chapter 5 of his biography on Saint-Just.
(I used DeepL and other online translation tools like linguee to verify everything. I added some notes at the end.)
(Also a sort of sequel to this post.)
CHAPTER V
A Libertine Poet?
M. D.: You undermine kings. The author: I love kings, I hate tyrants. M. D.: You trample on the most sacred institutions. The author: These institutions have fallen. They are no longer sacred but vile.
SAINT-JUST:
Dialogue between M. D... and the author of the poem Organt
SAINT-JUST "LICENCIÉ ÈS LOIS"?
After discreetly returning to Blérancourt with d'Évry (1), Saint-Just probably went to the office of a prosecutor in Soissons, Me Dubois-Descharmes, where Rigaux (2) had obtained him a position as second clerk. It is widely believed that he attended the Faculty of Law in Reims. The Reims historian G. Laurent (3) claims to have found, in a register that no longer exists, the name of a certain Sejust, enrolled between October 1787 and July 1788. He also refers to memories left by Menu, brother-in-law of the Convention member Prieur de la Marne, who is said to have had in his possession a letter from Saint-Just, dated "from mid-1787", in which he spoke of his move to Reims and the small matters he had to attend to on behalf of his boss. The young man is said to have lived in a house on Rue des Anglais (now Rue Saint-Just) that the baker Fouet rented to law students. He is said to have met in this house, which became a hub of intellectual life, a whole elite of young people who would be set ablazed by the Revolution.
The law faculty in Reims was not known for its rigor. Classes, it was said, were irregular and student absenteeism was very high. In 1761, numerous complaints even prompted an investigation by Chancellor Lamoignon. A generation later, Brissot, who needed to "earn degrees" to become a lawyer, decided to "buy them in Reims". "The trip I took to that city," he wrote in his memoirs, "convinced me of the degradation of its university (..) Everything was for sale, degrees, theses, and arguments." It is easy to verify today, by consulting the register of Admissiones ad actum et ad gradum, that students became bachelors and graduates in a few months. The very large attendance at the faculty by students from all the cities of the kingdom suggests that the studies were either remarkable or... the diplomas were very easy to obtain.
Did Saint-Just feel disgusted by this academic corruption and see it as the result of social decay? Did he lack the financial means necessary to purchase degrees? Did he experience early on the contempt he expresses in Organt for the legal profession? Did his position as a second clerk leave him enough time to pursue normal studies? We don't know. But one thing is certain: Saint-Just does not appear in the register of graduates from the faculty of Reims between 1786 and 1792, and he cannot be confused with a certain Lejuste who graduated in 1787 and 1788.
Despite the lack of formal evidence, it is difficult to doubt this stay in Reims, which is firmly attested to by tradition. But it is likely that, absorbed by his duties at the law office of Me Dubois-Descharmes and above all by his literary work, Saint-Just did not make the effort to take his exams. This did not prevent him from being awarded, on several occasions, the title of "licencié ès lois" or "licensed in law" and even "lawyer". Besides, he demonstrated in his judicial activities remarkable competence, most likely acquired at Me Dubois-Descharmes' office rather than at the faculty.
"ARLEQUIN-DIOGÈNE."
Much to his mother's despair, Louis-Antoine, at that time, was not seriously preparing to enter the bar. With a vocation that had undoubtedly blossomed in school, he was drawn to writing. He was fascinated by the great names of literature, dreamed of becoming one of them, and, as we have seen, was also interested in theater. Among his papers in Blérancourt, a short one-act comedy in verse entitled Arlequin-Diogène was found.
The composition and versification betray the awkwardness of a beginner. The handwriting reveals that the play was written in several stages and that an initial version was revised and expanded. It is written in the style of a Marivaux comedy in which the satire targets both love and the social and political environment in which the characters evolve. The plot, full of twists and turns, features Arlequin-Diogène, who displays an apparent detachment from people and events. This is in fact a ploy to win over Pérette, a prude who has, until then, refused him. His feigned indifference is effective: Arlequin can delight in rebuffing the woman who now offers herself insistently. His position also allows him to taunt and mystify the “important” people in society: he refuses the throne offered to him by an ambassador and bribes a police commissioner to have a financier unjustly imprisoned. After these exploits, Arlequin finally confesses his true feelings to Pérette. She then completely changes her attitude and refuses him again. The play ends with an ambiguous dénouement.
During this entertainment, the author indulges in a scathing reflection on the social order. He condemns the arrogance of the financier, evokes the turpitudes of the courts and kings, denounces the venality of the commissioner and the dishonesty of the petits-maîtres (4). He also expresses his romantic disappointment: there is a mutual attraction between Arlequin and Pérette, but it is thwarted by the impossibility of simultaneous consent. Could we venture to say that it is a little as if, at the moment when everything was possible, Thérèse-Pérette did not really believe in a love that Louis-Antoine-Arlequin had concealed too well from her?
"ORGANT": A PORNOGRAPHIC POEM?
Despite its satirical intentions, this charming comedy seems rather harmless, almost saccharine compared to another violent and corrosive early work published under the title Organt, poème en vingt chants (Organt, a poem in twenty cantos). (5)
**************
My notes:
(1) This is set after he was released from Sainte-Colombe's detention house on 30 March 1787. (He was put there on 30 September 1786.)
(2) Rigaux was a school friend. On 26 February 1787, he had written to d'Évry that he had sent a letter to Rigaux, presumably to get a job as was required for him to show he was "sufficiently reformed" and could be released.
(3) See:
LAURENT (Gustave) : "Figures champenoises. Les relations de Saint-Just à Reims", A.R., 1923 AND "La Faculté de Reims et les hommes de la Révolution", A.H.R.F., 1929.
(4) Literally, it means "small masters" but it doesn't have a direct translation besides "fop" and "dandy". It's not just about looks, it's about attitude: being pretentious, insincere, fake.
(5) I'm stopping the translation here as it's a good place to stop, but he goes on about Organt for a few more pages. If you would like a translation of his analysis, just ask!
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I wasn't prepared for how sad it would be to get to the end of The Road from Versailles again & remember how long the conservatism of 1794— lasted. Each iteration had only a relatively brief time in the spotlight, eventually being overturned, from the Thermidorians to the Directory to Napoleon and Napoleon again and the restored kings. Each of whom, in some ways, might argue with the designation "conservative" because everyone tried to claim that they were reforming the older version; even the kings didn't claim to be returning to pre-1789 ways. But the political trajectory was an arrow in one direction. And it just kept going and going until everyone who'd worked for something better was long dead, and so many people who'd devoted themselves to breaking even the tiniest measure of progress just got to live happily ever after.
It's a difficult time to look up and see that huge shadow.
I'm trying to remember that we're sitting here 200+ years later talking about Saint-Just's ideas and digging Robespierre's reputation out from under centuries of lies and wrestling with Camille and Brissot and so many others' complicated legacies and discovering and rediscovering the values that they fought and died for.
And I'll persist in thinking that this is important right now; we're not divorced from them, despite the intervening centuries. Their words pop into my head all the time, sometimes unprompted; other times, I'll be thinking about something that doesn't objectively have anything to do with the French Revolution, but some distant association makes me think Well, Camille said [this] or Saint-Just was thinking working on [idea] or Robespierre said [that] etc. And it'll push me into wondering or thinking about things in a new light or developing ideas that are more directly relevant. They're still helping us frame our 21st-century world and helping us understand confusing and scary and momentous things.
dededos
prguitarman
romaincrisis
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discoholicmusic
stormborns
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