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Rethinking the French Revolution: Marxism and the Revisionist Challenge
Historians generally—and Marxists in particular—have presented the revolution of 1789 as a bourgeois one which marked the ascendance of the bourgeois as a class, the defeat of a feudal aristocracy, and the triumph of capitalism. Recent revisionist accounts, however, have raised convincing arguments against the idea of the bourgeois class revolution, and the model on which it is based.
In this provocative study, George Comninel surveys existing interpretations of the French Revolution and the methodological issues these raise for historians. He argues that the weaknesses of Marxist scholarship originate in Marx’s own method, which has led historians to fall back on abstract conceptions of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Comninel reasserts the principles of historical materialism that found their mature expression in Das Kapital ; and outlines an interpretation which concludes that, while the revolution unified the nation and centralized the French state, it did not create a capitalist society.
In this provocative study, George Comninel surveys existing interpretations of the French Revolution and the methodological issues these raise for historians. He argues that the weaknesses of Marxist scholarship originate in Marx’s own method, which has led historians to fall back on abstract conceptions of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Comninel reasserts the principles of historical materialism that found their mature expression in Das Kapital ; and outlines an interpretation which concludes that, while the revolution unified the nation and centralized the French state, it did not create a capitalist society.
240 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1987
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July 1, 2017
This book by George Comninel is one of the foundational texts of ‘Political Marxism’, and is an iconoclastic and influential analysis of the theoretical and empirical validity of the Marxist concept of ‘Bourgeois Revolution’, as it refers to the French Revolution specifically and as a general category of socio-historical analysis.
Comninel argues that the ‘social interpretation’ of the French Revolution, in which the revolution was led by a nascent capitalist class emergent within the interstices of the ancien regime, and aimed at overthrowing the remaining fetters of feudalism to set the stage for the full unfolding of capitalism, is fundamentally flawed.
This is alleged to be due to empirically corroborated revisionist historical research that undermines the classical claims of the ‘teleological’ social (or 'Marxist') interpretation.
This revisionist consensus is summarised as a recognition:
Firstly, that feudal dues were no longer a key element of the economy of the ancien regime at the time of the revolution, and to the extent that they still existed (in land and office), the bourgeoisie participated in their extraction from the non-capitalist agrarian producers as partners with the nobility.
Secondly, that the aristocratic and absolutist structures of the ancien regime played a crucial role in promoting the growth of large-scale commerce, administration, and industry in eighteenth-century France.
Thirdly, that the revolutionary bourgeoisie was not a capitalist class.
Fourth, that the post-revolution society did not witness the launch of significant capitalist growth, but rather conserved the essentially pre-capitalist relations of production of the ancien regime.
Comninel summarises the ensuing response of ‘orthodox’ and Althusserian Marxists to this revisionist challenge as ultimately inadequate, both empirically and theoretically, as neither could locate a capitalist class in the ancien regime nor escape the ultimate teleology of the classical social interpretation.
This was true despite the superficial complexity of the Althusserian approach that analysed the ancien regime as a social formation “penetrated” simultaneously by relations of the feudal and capitalist modes of production. Comninel argues that unless the category of surplus value - and the relations of exploitation that produce it - can be historically identified then it is mere sophistry to insist that relations of the capitalist mode of production must be present in the ancien regime, or teleologically emerging.
This section of the book is really excellent, both in its deconstruction of the supposed theoretical rigour of Althusserian Marxism, but also its empirically detailed examination of the non-existence of capitalist relations of production in the agriculture of ancien regime France.
Most damningly, the structuralist account of the transition and bourgeois revolution simply ignores the fact that the socio-economic structures of both the Empire and the Restoration were fundamentally the same as the ancien regime.
Comninel moreover suggests that all these neo-Marxist accounts of the transition and a presumed bourgeois revolution fail in that they follow a slavish textual fidelity to Marx rather than an original historical inquiry in his spirit. Theory is prioritised over historical evidence, leading to the inevitable distortion of both categories.
Comninel instead suggests that Marx’s concept of ‘bourgeois revolution’ itself is fatally flawed, and that “trying to rescue Marx from himself” is a doomed intellectual project. Instead Comninel argues that the theory of Bourgeois Revolution is originally a liberal concept that reflects rather than criticises bourgeois ideology, and should be rejected by Marxists, despite its political attraction as justifying or presaging a future Proletarian Revolution.
To substantiate this argument Comninel spends a large part of the book undertaking a rigorous genealogy of ‘Bourgeois Revolution’ as a concept, tracing its intellectual origins to liberal historians of the early modern era, whose simplistic narrative of a heroic middle class represents the mirror image to the equally ahistorical rationalisations of the contemporary British school of Political Economy that Marx criticised in his mature theoretical works.
Comninel argues that while Marx never fully rejected this simplistic narrative – as outlined in the Communist Manifesto or German Ideology – as he never returned to a systemic study of pre-capitalist societies, it is contradicted by his mature method in his systematic study of capitalist society as outlined in Capital and the Grundrisse.
This does not entail the reproduction however of the problematic Althusserian contradiction between a ‘young’ and ‘old’ Marx and Comninel instead explains how Marx’s mature analysis of capitalist class society belongs to a coherent and continuous line of theoretical development that dates from his earliest work, including the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, as part of his prolonged project of the critique of political economy.
Thus the category of “alienation” in the young Marx is not merely a ‘humanist’ slippage but an integral expression of his historicisation of the categories of political economy. In this view the key to historical materialism is not some teleological and empirically inaccurate ‘four stages' (slavery, asiatic, feudal, capitalist) model of successively unfolding modes of production but rather an analysis of the contradictions ofalienated labour (exploitation) as the motive force of human historical development.
Comninel, drawing on the mature Marx and the 'political marxist' analysis of Ellen Meiksins Wood, instead sketches his own methodology for how this historical materialist critique can be applied precapitalist societies:
Firstly, he argues that the central focus for historical materialists must be the relationship of exploitation between rulers and ruled, incorporating the dynamic of intra-ruling class competition over the disposal of the appropriated of surplus.
Secondly, the role of the state in the relationship of surplus extraction and the reproduction of the ruling and exploited classes must be examined critically, and whether it operates as a directly ‘political’ or merely ‘economic’ force (such as under capitalism) in the process of surplus extraction.
Thirdly, class struggle should be viewed as a dynamically evolving historical process, with modes of production conceived as 'modes of exploitation'.
Comninel then applies this method to the French Revolution itself, outlining a novel materialist analysis of the revolution in which the central revisionist contention – that the bourgeoisie and nobility were a single elite stratum composed of contesting sub-strata and fractions – is accepted as accurate but also inadequate as a positive explanation for the longterm social crisis unleashed by the revolution.
Comninel agrees with revisionists that the ‘aristocratic offensive’ of 1787-8 and the subsequent agitation of the Third Estate 1788-9 was a single movement of reform, “reflecting the emerging institutional requirements of this single elite stratum and their emerging ideological consensus”, however he rejects the conservative liberal conclusion wherein this rational movement was displaced by the ‘dérapage’ or derailing of the popular movement (including the Terror, etc) and Jacobin populism.
Instead Comninel argues that while the aristocratic constitutionalists of the nobility and constitutional liberals dominant among the bourgeoisie were initially united in their revolt against the absolutist monarchy, the two ideologies expressed fundamentally conflictual relationships to the state as a material entity, and that this conflict was played out in a coherent ‘bloc’ of historical events from the founding of the constituent assembly to the endpoint of the Jacobin dictatorship (backed by the popular movement).
In other words class-interest did exist in the French Revolution – the opposition between bourgeoisie and aristocracy was real – but was not based on a conflicting relationship to the mode of surplus extraction (both exploited the peasantry), but rather centred on the aristocratic monopolisation of the “best positions” in the ancien regime.
The revolution’s real social basis lay in the intra-ruling class conflict between the (non-capitalist) bourgeoisie and the aristocracy (including the monarchy) as two wrings of the ruling class within the ancien regime, over control of the state (incorporating patronage, high office, and control of the army and administration), issuing in the triumph of the former as it united the mass of the people behind its ideology of liberal republicanism.
While the result of the revolution was to unify the ‘nation’ and centralise the state (as well as eliminate internal tariffs), it did not transform the essentially pre-capitalist relations of production, something which Marx himself recognised in much of his writing on post-revolutionary France.
This book is an essential read for anyone interested in 'Political Marxism', the French Revolution, or the general project of renovating historical materialist research for the twenty-first century.
Comninel argues that the ‘social interpretation’ of the French Revolution, in which the revolution was led by a nascent capitalist class emergent within the interstices of the ancien regime, and aimed at overthrowing the remaining fetters of feudalism to set the stage for the full unfolding of capitalism, is fundamentally flawed.
This is alleged to be due to empirically corroborated revisionist historical research that undermines the classical claims of the ‘teleological’ social (or 'Marxist') interpretation.
This revisionist consensus is summarised as a recognition:
Firstly, that feudal dues were no longer a key element of the economy of the ancien regime at the time of the revolution, and to the extent that they still existed (in land and office), the bourgeoisie participated in their extraction from the non-capitalist agrarian producers as partners with the nobility.
Secondly, that the aristocratic and absolutist structures of the ancien regime played a crucial role in promoting the growth of large-scale commerce, administration, and industry in eighteenth-century France.
Thirdly, that the revolutionary bourgeoisie was not a capitalist class.
Fourth, that the post-revolution society did not witness the launch of significant capitalist growth, but rather conserved the essentially pre-capitalist relations of production of the ancien regime.
Comninel summarises the ensuing response of ‘orthodox’ and Althusserian Marxists to this revisionist challenge as ultimately inadequate, both empirically and theoretically, as neither could locate a capitalist class in the ancien regime nor escape the ultimate teleology of the classical social interpretation.
This was true despite the superficial complexity of the Althusserian approach that analysed the ancien regime as a social formation “penetrated” simultaneously by relations of the feudal and capitalist modes of production. Comninel argues that unless the category of surplus value - and the relations of exploitation that produce it - can be historically identified then it is mere sophistry to insist that relations of the capitalist mode of production must be present in the ancien regime, or teleologically emerging.
This section of the book is really excellent, both in its deconstruction of the supposed theoretical rigour of Althusserian Marxism, but also its empirically detailed examination of the non-existence of capitalist relations of production in the agriculture of ancien regime France.
Most damningly, the structuralist account of the transition and bourgeois revolution simply ignores the fact that the socio-economic structures of both the Empire and the Restoration were fundamentally the same as the ancien regime.
Comninel moreover suggests that all these neo-Marxist accounts of the transition and a presumed bourgeois revolution fail in that they follow a slavish textual fidelity to Marx rather than an original historical inquiry in his spirit. Theory is prioritised over historical evidence, leading to the inevitable distortion of both categories.
Comninel instead suggests that Marx’s concept of ‘bourgeois revolution’ itself is fatally flawed, and that “trying to rescue Marx from himself” is a doomed intellectual project. Instead Comninel argues that the theory of Bourgeois Revolution is originally a liberal concept that reflects rather than criticises bourgeois ideology, and should be rejected by Marxists, despite its political attraction as justifying or presaging a future Proletarian Revolution.
To substantiate this argument Comninel spends a large part of the book undertaking a rigorous genealogy of ‘Bourgeois Revolution’ as a concept, tracing its intellectual origins to liberal historians of the early modern era, whose simplistic narrative of a heroic middle class represents the mirror image to the equally ahistorical rationalisations of the contemporary British school of Political Economy that Marx criticised in his mature theoretical works.
Comninel argues that while Marx never fully rejected this simplistic narrative – as outlined in the Communist Manifesto or German Ideology – as he never returned to a systemic study of pre-capitalist societies, it is contradicted by his mature method in his systematic study of capitalist society as outlined in Capital and the Grundrisse.
This does not entail the reproduction however of the problematic Althusserian contradiction between a ‘young’ and ‘old’ Marx and Comninel instead explains how Marx’s mature analysis of capitalist class society belongs to a coherent and continuous line of theoretical development that dates from his earliest work, including the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, as part of his prolonged project of the critique of political economy.
Thus the category of “alienation” in the young Marx is not merely a ‘humanist’ slippage but an integral expression of his historicisation of the categories of political economy. In this view the key to historical materialism is not some teleological and empirically inaccurate ‘four stages' (slavery, asiatic, feudal, capitalist) model of successively unfolding modes of production but rather an analysis of the contradictions ofalienated labour (exploitation) as the motive force of human historical development.
Comninel, drawing on the mature Marx and the 'political marxist' analysis of Ellen Meiksins Wood, instead sketches his own methodology for how this historical materialist critique can be applied precapitalist societies:
Firstly, he argues that the central focus for historical materialists must be the relationship of exploitation between rulers and ruled, incorporating the dynamic of intra-ruling class competition over the disposal of the appropriated of surplus.
Secondly, the role of the state in the relationship of surplus extraction and the reproduction of the ruling and exploited classes must be examined critically, and whether it operates as a directly ‘political’ or merely ‘economic’ force (such as under capitalism) in the process of surplus extraction.
Thirdly, class struggle should be viewed as a dynamically evolving historical process, with modes of production conceived as 'modes of exploitation'.
Comninel then applies this method to the French Revolution itself, outlining a novel materialist analysis of the revolution in which the central revisionist contention – that the bourgeoisie and nobility were a single elite stratum composed of contesting sub-strata and fractions – is accepted as accurate but also inadequate as a positive explanation for the longterm social crisis unleashed by the revolution.
Comninel agrees with revisionists that the ‘aristocratic offensive’ of 1787-8 and the subsequent agitation of the Third Estate 1788-9 was a single movement of reform, “reflecting the emerging institutional requirements of this single elite stratum and their emerging ideological consensus”, however he rejects the conservative liberal conclusion wherein this rational movement was displaced by the ‘dérapage’ or derailing of the popular movement (including the Terror, etc) and Jacobin populism.
Instead Comninel argues that while the aristocratic constitutionalists of the nobility and constitutional liberals dominant among the bourgeoisie were initially united in their revolt against the absolutist monarchy, the two ideologies expressed fundamentally conflictual relationships to the state as a material entity, and that this conflict was played out in a coherent ‘bloc’ of historical events from the founding of the constituent assembly to the endpoint of the Jacobin dictatorship (backed by the popular movement).
In other words class-interest did exist in the French Revolution – the opposition between bourgeoisie and aristocracy was real – but was not based on a conflicting relationship to the mode of surplus extraction (both exploited the peasantry), but rather centred on the aristocratic monopolisation of the “best positions” in the ancien regime.
The revolution’s real social basis lay in the intra-ruling class conflict between the (non-capitalist) bourgeoisie and the aristocracy (including the monarchy) as two wrings of the ruling class within the ancien regime, over control of the state (incorporating patronage, high office, and control of the army and administration), issuing in the triumph of the former as it united the mass of the people behind its ideology of liberal republicanism.
While the result of the revolution was to unify the ‘nation’ and centralise the state (as well as eliminate internal tariffs), it did not transform the essentially pre-capitalist relations of production, something which Marx himself recognised in much of his writing on post-revolutionary France.
This book is an essential read for anyone interested in 'Political Marxism', the French Revolution, or the general project of renovating historical materialist research for the twenty-first century.
November 10, 2023
Comminel’s synthesis of the revisionist critique of the social interpretation of the Revolution and political Marxism is compelling. Almost as compelling is his critique of Marx for not fully extricating himself from liberal materialism. At the same time, I am not fully convinced of his centering of alienation and property relations as the heart of historical materialism rather than social reproduction and reproduction. Be warned, however, Comminel’s “rethinking” of the French Revolution only comes at the end, with the rest of the text being primarily an overview and history of the existing literature on the Revolution.
March 31, 2024
Review of the debate about the origins of the French Revolution which comes down on the side of the revisionist challenge to conventional Marxism, that it was driven by the rise of the bourgeoisie. Argues for a more nuanced approach backed by the historical evidence.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews