Hacker News Reader

Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

> don't conflate "nobility" and "bourgeois" in your statistics and analysis

Yet it was mid-level aristocrats that were overrepresented in the Directorate and the Council of 500.

> no. Bourgeois, prior to the revolution, were not part of the elite. It's difficult to imagine, but there was a time where there wasn't such a direct correlation as today between wealth and power

Yes. I know, but the initial conversation is based on correcting the a revisionist meme that the French Revolution was a quasi-communist revolution, when in reality it was just a form of inter-elite fratricide - especially between mid-level aristocrats and the church and a subset of royalists.

All the revolution did was cleave the bourgeois from the third estate, and merge them along with the second and first estates.

View on HN

> meme that the French Revolution was a quasi-communist revolution

It's not a meme. There's clearly a collectivist movement within the revolution, it's just that this force failed to take power. The "révolution de Février", in 1848 was precisely this: Paris going full collectivist, abolishing property and all, then small land owner from the provinces freaking out and all come to Paris to whoop them.

> There's clearly a collectivist movement within the revolution, it's just that this force failed to take power

And there was a much more powerful core of leaders who were the children of the various types of elites within the ancien regime.

Almost the entire history of France the century after the revolution was authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian rule with the collaboration of intellectual, economic, and religious elites.

And this is why Marxists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, and other flavors of Communists take a dim view of the French Revolution.

If a revolution between the cultural elite and the capital elite just led to the pre-eminence of the capital elite and their co-opting of the cultural elite, that means the revolution basically had no positive impact for the overwhelming majority of the French subaltern of the 19th century.

And don't get me or my extended family started about French colonialism.

It's weird, I feel like we're arguing over saying the same thing. Sure, I agree, but please don't say it's a meme.

Sure, it didn't take power, sure, the bourgeois were stronger, but they still managed to overthrow the forces of Louis-Phillipe. Internet wasn't invented yet, memes couldn't depose kings.

> It's weird, I feel like we're arguing over saying the same thing

Yea, I think from the looks of it there's a bit of mutual confusion over terminology being used, but we are largely aligned

> Internet wasn't invented yet, memes couldn't depose kings

I'm using the Rene Girard definition of a "meme" before it got co-opted into internet speak.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com