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The French Revolution
🕑 Added 2022-08-26 15:54:56 +0000 UTCStella joins Breht to discuss (and put a unique communist spin) on the great French Revolution!
Together, they discuss the conditions that led to the revolution, the major events and figures of the Revolution, the so-called Reign of Terror, Maximilien Robespierre, Jean-Paul Marat, the Guillotine, the role of women, Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals, the Thermidorian Reaction and the end of the Revolution, the response to the Rev by the rest of monarchical Europe, and why communists today should value this bourgeois revolution and even see it as a part of our egalitarian and revolutionary tradition!
Clips included in this episode are from TDC - The World History Documentaries 'The French Revolution':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9RJz8LLhZQ
Outro music "The Guillotine" by The Coup
Comments
Revolutionary Left Radio
Yes his work is good and useful, despite being limited a bit by a sort of mainstream historical liberalism - particularly wrt to communist/left wing revolutions. I still find his work really helpful and a good foundation for anyone wanting to learn the details of these historical events.
William Pemberton
Anyone interested in a very intimate history should check out Mike Duncan’s “Revolutions” podcast - he’s not exactly a Marxist but his analysis is extremely nuanced and well researched. It’s something like 80+ hours long though, so be ready for that!
Revolutionary Left Radio
Wow... deep and penetrating analysis. Moving stuff. Who said it?
Matt Pierce
"The ever memorable and blessed revolution, which swept a thousand years of villainy away in one swift tidal wave of blood — one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. If we really think about it, there were two Reigns of Terror; in one people were murdered in hot and passionate violence; in the other they died because people were heartless and did not care. One Reign of Terror lasted a few months; the other had lasted for a thousand years; one killed a thousand people, the other killed a hundred million people. However, we only feel horror at the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. But how bad is a quick execution, if you compare it to the slow misery of living and dying with hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery is big enough to contain all the bodies from that short Reign of Terror, but the whole country of France isn't big enough to hold the bodies from the other terror. We are taught to think of that short Terror as a truly dreadful thing that should never have happened: but none of us are taught to recognize the other terror as the real terror and to feel pity for those people."
