Bastille Day: Why commemorate? The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, July 20th, 1999. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.peg.apc.org/~guardian Subscription rates on request. ****************************** By Rob Gowland The fall of the Bastille occurred on July 14, 1789, and heralded the French Revolution. Some may ask: "Why celebrate a bourgeois democratic revolution? After all, it brought capitalism to power in France." But the French Revolution had a profound effect on the history of the modern world. It was part of a process of change that saw the struggle for a better life spread around the world, develop the will and the strength to challenge capitalism and -- despite plenty of setbacks -- to deny it the global dominance it once had and wants to have again. That process of change began long ago, but for convenience sake I shall take as my starting point another revolution, that also began in July, albeit a little over a decade earlier than the fall of the Bastille. That was the American Revolution of 1776. It was a revolution fought over questions of taxation, parliamentary representation and opposition to an autocratic King. Its ideas are embodied in a document, the Declaration of Independence, which the present-day rulers of the USA are fond of waving around as some sort of proof that their acts of international savagery are in fact based on high ideals of humanity, justice and freedom. The passages they quote from the Declaration are indeed glowing statements of high ideals. That they have been honoured more in the breach than the observance does not diminish their worth. The class that came to power in the new United States soon found its class interest at odds with the ideals that had inspired its own revolutionary phase. Those ideals were largely the work of Tom Payne, "Citizen Tom Payne" as Howard Fast called him in his book of that title. After the USA's successful War of Independence against Britain, Citizen Tom Payne left the US and went to France, to take part in the ferment of ideas that presaged the Revolution there. There too the initial issues were taxation, representation, autocracy and the ownership of the land. Louis XVI, facing bankruptcy of the royal treasury, was obliged in May, 1789, to summon the Estates General, a body that could approve new taxes but which had not met for over a hundred years. The three estates represented respectively the aristocracy, the clergy and the commoners -- well-to-do commoners, people of property or position mainly, but commoners all the same, and as such, people without significant political rights. But the time was ripe for change and events moved swiftly. Only a month after it was summoned, the Third Estate went solo, renaming itself the National Assembly. A month after that the people stormed the royal prison, the Bastille. The King took fright. As the Revolution progressed, lopping off the heads of aristocrats, empowering the ordinary toiling people, breaking up estates among the peasants and threatening the established order in neighbouring monarchies, the wealthier and more powerful among the middle classes also began to take fright. They had gained what they wanted from the revolution -- political power -- and they were as frightened of the people in the streets as the aristocracy was. They conspired against the revolution, and after less than six years of revolution, counter revolution triumphed in 1795 with the execution of Robespierre. By 1799, only one decade after the fall of the Bastille, it was all over, and Napoleon was in power. But you cannot kill ideas and a whole generation had experienced the power of ideas that grip the mind of the masses. France was becoming a capitalist country and the new capitalist class was busy developing its own gravediggers in the form of a working class for its growing number of factories and mills. After Napoleon's defeat by Britain and its allies, Louis XVI's brother was installed on the throne, but he was sickly and soon died. Louis' other brother, Charles became king and set about re- establishing the old regime. The people, including the new capitalists, had had enough of the old regime, however. They also knew how to get rid of kings. In 1830 they kicked Charles out and "elected" a new king, Louis Phillipe, the former Duke of Orleans. At the time of the French Revolution, under the name Citizen Egalite (Equality), he had joined the citizens' militia, the National Guard, under Lafayette (who had fought in the American Revolution). The regime of the "citizen king" however became increasingly reactionary and corrupt, until it was ousted in the torrent revolutionary activity that burst forth in 1848. In February, the French threw out Louis Phillipe. This was still a bourgeois-democratic revolution, but carried to a higher stage and influenced by the Communist League of Marx and Engels. Revolutionary sentiments and aims spread across Europe. In March, revolutionary uprisings erupted in Germany. In June, the workers of Paris rose up. Engels called this "the first great battle for power between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie". 100,000 soldiers confronted 30,000-40,000 workers behind street barricades. For three glorious days the armed people held the army at bay. When the workers' districts fell, the heroic insurgents were massacred, the survivors hanged or transported. Marx and Engels, through their paper in Germany, the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung", vigorously supported the Parisian workers. "If 40,000 Parisian workers", wrote Engels, "could achieve such tremendous things against forces four times their number, what will the whole mass of Paris workers accomplish by concerted and co-ordinated action!" The example of the Parisian workers inspired other mass revolutionary uprisings that year in Poland, Italy and Bohemia, all countries suffering under the rule of foreign monarchs. Late in the year there was a second revolutionary uprising in Germany. These were not localised events. Revolutionary armies were formed and campaigns waged. Engels joined the revolutionary army in Germany, and exposed the fatal timidity and poor tactics of the revolutionary leaders. In Hungary, revolutionary war raged and continued on into much of 1849 before being finally defeated by the sheer power of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In Germany, during 1849, there were more uprisings, this time against the counter-revolution. Again, the soldiers in many areas sided with the people, and pitched battles were fought between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary armies. Meanwhile, the nephew of Napoleon, a wily demagogue, had returned to France from exile shortly after the February revolution of 1848 and got himself elected to the new Constituent Assembly. Posing as the protector of popular liberties and national prosperity, he was elected President and in 1851 he dissolved the Constitution and a year later proclaimed himself Emperor as Napoleon III. Early in 1854, revolution reached Mexico, the people rising up against the dictatorship of Santa Anna. After more than a year of intensive fighting, Santa Anna fled the country. Under the leadership of Benito Pablo Juarez, a federal form of government, universal male suffrage, freedom of speech, and other civil liberties were embodied in a new revolutionary constitution. In 1857, the first world-wide financial crisis broke out. Capitalism was beginning as it would continue. In Mexico, the reactionaries started a civil war against the revolutionaries that lasted until 1860, when the Juaristas were victorious. The worldwide crisis prompted the capitalist north of the USA to pressure the south, whose neo-slave society was holding back the development of US capitalism. By 1861, the country was embroiled in its own civil war -- fought on the issue of slavery -- that would last until 1865 and have a profound effect on Europe. In 1864, the International Working Men's Association was formed in London, replacing the previous socialist sects with what Marx, who was elected to its executive, called "a really militant organisation of the working class". Meanwhile, Juarez, as President of Mexico, had issued a decree in 1861 suspending interest payments on foreign loans incurred by preceding (anti-people) governments. France, Britain and Spain decided to intervene jointly to protect their investments in Mexico. The prime mover in the agreement was Napoleon III of France. Britain and Spain soon dropped out, but the Juaristas were not to rid their country of the French or France's puppet "Emperor of Mexico", Maximilian, until 1867. In 1867 also, the Irish, who had risen many times against British rule -- most notably in 1798 with help that came too late from the French -- rose again, to be shot down in the standard response of British imperialism. Napoleon III's foreign policy proved a failure in Europe, too. In 1870 he embroiled France in a disastrous war with Prussia, busy unifying the German principalities under Prussian dominance on behalf of German capitalism. France's armies were defeated and Napoleon III taken prisoner. A Government of National Defence was immediately formed in Paris, the Third Republic proclaimed, and the might of Prussia defied. For four months Paris held out against German siege, but January 1871, when Paris neared the end of its food supply and provincial military operations appeared hopeless, the French Government capitulated. Bismarck imposed harsh peace terms. Two months later, the French Government moved to disarm the workers. In Paris, the workers, supported by the men of the National Guard (the same body that "Citizen Egalite" had joined in 1789), rose up under the banner of the Red Flag, and proclaimed a Commune. Similar Communes were established at Lyon, Toulouse, Marseilles, Saint-Etienne, Le Creusot and Narbonne, but were short lived. Paris was isolated. After a heroic struggle the city fell to the counter- revolutionary government forces in May 1871, and a week-long massacre of Communards ensued. But as Marx commented: "The principles of the Commune were eternal and could not be crushed; they would assert themselves again until the working classes were emancipated." And they did. The movement of the working class, of the toiling peasants and the nationally oppressed grew in the ensuing decades, leading to revolution in Russia in 1905-07, in Mexico in 1911 against the dictator Diaz who had betrayed the legacy of Juarez, in China in 1912, in Mexico again in 1914, in Ireland at Easter 1916, then in Russia again in 1917, culminating in the first successful socialist revolution. This in turn set off a chain reaction of revolutions and national liberation struggles that still continues. The revolutionary process, of which the French Revolution was a significant part, has ebbed and flowed, suffering setbacks as well as securing victories. In the period since the fall of the Bastille, it has carried humanity out of feudalism and even the remnants of slavery into bourgeois democracy in most of the world. In some areas it has seen people throw off the yoke of capitalism and begin the building of socialism. The struggle has a way to go yet, and the obstacles are many, but the revolutionary struggle will continue as long as there are workers wanting to be free of exploitation and injustice. It is a glorious struggle of which we are a proud part, however small. The Guardian 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. 2010 Australia. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Website: http://www.peg.apc.org/~guardian -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
