Great post. My only quibble is that Robespierre, Reign of Terror and everything, was in fact NOT worse than the thousand years of feudal oppression personified by Louis XVI. As Mark Twain once observed, we always hear about the brief revolutionary terror, but never about the grinding White Terror that preceded it or the far more bloody one that ensued in 1815.
Every historical revolution has provided somebody with the opportunity to rise to absolute power, and usually there's somebody around who is willing to take it, therefore the question is: How do revolutionaries prevent that from happening?
I don't know the answer, but I'm going to keep asking that question whenever I can.
You can make the argument that the Reign of Terror wasn’t worse, but it also wasn’t better. When all the drama stops and the bodies have been cleaned up, there’s still a Them who calls the shots, and you still need to get to work to make them rich.
Which means that Revolution isn’t a solution to anything, least of all heirarchical injustice. It’s just a thing that happens, a tornado emerging out of certain conditions.
Great post, right up my alley with the history. Bravo.
Enjoyed this
Great post. My only quibble is that Robespierre, Reign of Terror and everything, was in fact NOT worse than the thousand years of feudal oppression personified by Louis XVI. As Mark Twain once observed, we always hear about the brief revolutionary terror, but never about the grinding White Terror that preceded it or the far more bloody one that ensued in 1815.
Every historical revolution has provided somebody with the opportunity to rise to absolute power, and usually there's somebody around who is willing to take it, therefore the question is: How do revolutionaries prevent that from happening?
I don't know the answer, but I'm going to keep asking that question whenever I can.
You can make the argument that the Reign of Terror wasn’t worse, but it also wasn’t better. When all the drama stops and the bodies have been cleaned up, there’s still a Them who calls the shots, and you still need to get to work to make them rich.
Which means that Revolution isn’t a solution to anything, least of all heirarchical injustice. It’s just a thing that happens, a tornado emerging out of certain conditions.