Rethinking the French Revolution, George Comninel

(xi-xii): in sum--three guiding principles of Comninel's position on French Rev

1. (a) in contrast with Britain, capitalist class relations did not yet exist in France in town or countryside; (b) the bourgeoisie was not a class opposed to the aristocracy but rather shared with it the essential social relations of property ownership (in land) and state office; (c) consequently, the two were 'partners in exploitation'
2. this partnership was an unequal one -- it was over the 'political' control of the state and spoils of office (army, administration) that a conflict arose that led to the revolution
3. major result of the Revolution was to unify the nation and centralize the state; but it did not transform France into a capitalist country.

(2): Cobban opened the revisionist historiography, refusing to see the French rev as a 'social revolution' (not an objection to analyzing it in terms of social/economic interests)

(6): Lefebvre, on the other hand, saw it as a 'necessary bourgeois social revolution'

(9): an uneasy alliance between Marxists and liberals

(16): three central points of the Marxist perspective

1. the bourgeoisie had been agent of growth in commerce and industry
2. the aristocratic and absolutist structure had been a feudal hindrance to this growth
3. and that the bourgeoisie had led the Revolution in order to overthrow this system, clearing the ground for capitalism

(19): Cobban's three counter-points

1. bourgeois revolutionaries were 'not capitalists'
2. shared in full range of landed income--including portion derived from fedual dues
3. Revolution did not give rise to capitalist production but preserved the essential social characteristics of the Ancien Regime

(20): we have, thus, a 'single elite'

(20-25): int. section on 'conservative liberalism' of the revisionist challenge (for revisionists, what the revolution was about is not the interesting question; they, rather, saw it as their task to prove what it was not about)

(30): by 1850, Marx and Engels had come to the conclusion that the bourgeoisie would not lead a bourgeois revolution, simply because an aristocratic regime held power

(33): Marxism retreated into theoretical 're-mixing' of the history, rather than confronting this wealth of historical evidence head-on (which demonstrated that there was no 'social frontier' separating the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, etc.)

(50): even Hill, writing about the English Civil War, conceded that the gentry played a large role. for him, the bourgeois revolution is not one which is led by the bourgeoisie (paradoxically, this one was led by the nobility), but one which creates the conditions for capitalism. Brenner takes this further, obviously, noting instead that you get radical and conservative positions within the ruling class leading to Civil War.

(56): Marx's debt to bourgeois materialism ('I did not discover the existence of classes.' [Guizot, Mignet, etc.]) [Comninel's main argument here, of course, is that Marx is giving credit where credit is not due--the 'critique of political economy' actually is a critique of the liberal categories Marx adopted in his early work]

(61): a fundamentally Smithian account of history: 'middle-class industry' as the prgoressive force of civilization, hampered by tradition, etc. Modern, bourgeois progress.

(65): the 'stages' theory is also a legacy of liberal materialism

(68): for liberal materialism, it was the 'mechanistic force of population growth which provided the essential impetus of social development' [you have density-->division of labor, in essence--Durkheim]

(74): key--the 'bourgeois revolution' that Marx imported into his account of history was borrowed from this type of an understanding of the mechanics of history (a liberal class, straining to break free)

(78): against orthodox Marxism -- in which the bourgeois revolution has pride of place (Hobsbawm being its exemplar)

(82): against Structuralist Marxism -- a scientific theory that will be filtered through Marxist categories (but, in essence, Comninel is arguing, these categories that Structuralist Marxism took for granted are flawed). moreover, it is descriptive--can't answer dynamic questions about the MoP, social structure

(106): the question is not whether you had a clash of ideologies in the Rev (you did--'constitutional liberalism' vs 'aristocratic constitutionalism'); the question is whether this reflected a fundamental social clash.

(111-112): 'classlessness' as a common ideology, for all participants in the French Rev (even if in different ways, all clung to some understanding of the 'nation')

(112-113): imp--it proved impossible to defende the Revolution while also attempting to containe the threat of popular sovereignty (explaining its move left) [remember--the argument is not that the 'masses' represented clashing social interest to the bourgeoisie/aristocracy, which is relevant] [one question, here, might be why such a trenchant conflict was fought over political spoils? his point will be the intra-ruling class struggles can be quite profound. do we accept it?]

(117): classes, in liberal history, were not defined in terms of fundamental relations of exploitation--but defined ideologically (active/passive, etc.)

(125): insisting that we remember that HM developed through the critique of capitalism--the critique of political economy

(138): imp--already by 1847, Marx coneived property relatoins as historically specific expressions of the antagonistic relations of production fundamental to each particular epoch.

(139): HM's critique of liberal ideology was to reveal its class content, and the specificity of its concepts

(141-143, 147-148, 150): key-- GI carries liberal ideology within it--division of labor as a motive force, along with increase of production (technical aspects of division of labor predominate, a la Smith; focus is on the social division of labor). two aspects: (1) conflation of liberal conception of class with Marx's own; (2) subordination of history of class society to technical development of division of labor

(151): how can you make sense of the bourgeois revolution, though, without taking into account the fundamental exploitative relationship of the epoch (namely, bourgeoisie/aristocracy with the peasantry)?

(152): Sweezy-Dobb debate--capitalism as developing external to feudalism, versus as an 'internal dynamic' in class history (here Comninel mentions there is a great deal to be said for an intervening period between feudalism and capitalism)

(156-158): critical--distinction between social division of labor, and technical division of labor, in capitalism (excellent line from Poverty of Philosophy)