Second of all: it’s hard to imagine the intellectual development that led to socialism and anarchism, without the French revolution. Of course, it’s a counterfactual scenario to imagine history without the French revolution – but still, things happened the way they did.
Edit: French revolutionaries liberated women and banned slavery – until the counter revolution.
Anarchism has always existed. It’s kind of the default for hunter gatherers. We would probably have different popular flavors.
That’s a very very simplified view of how they resolved slavery and gender issues in the french revolution. They wobbled, slipped forward, slipped back. And with the long communication times to colonies it got weird.
Im aware of the problems with the guillotine and the entire hot mess the first french revolution, where people with barely any concept of what freedom even is suddenly had the reins of power and fucked up basically everything, because how could they not, even if they did trust each other (they didn’t) but the thing they were pushing out was such a shit show the fuckups barely counted and they racked up an impressive string of wins.
You’ve picked perhaps the worst outcome of the French revolution – save Napoleon. Burn the guillotine, like the Commune did.
Oh damn, i guess libs didnt give us anything worth having, then.
First of all, I’d like to recommend you this article: https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too
Second of all: it’s hard to imagine the intellectual development that led to socialism and anarchism, without the French revolution. Of course, it’s a counterfactual scenario to imagine history without the French revolution – but still, things happened the way they did.
Edit: French revolutionaries liberated women and banned slavery – until the counter revolution.
Anarchism has always existed. It’s kind of the default for hunter gatherers. We would probably have different popular flavors.
That’s a very very simplified view of how they resolved slavery and gender issues in the french revolution. They wobbled, slipped forward, slipped back. And with the long communication times to colonies it got weird.
Im aware of the problems with the guillotine and the entire hot mess the first french revolution, where people with barely any concept of what freedom even is suddenly had the reins of power and fucked up basically everything, because how could they not, even if they did trust each other (they didn’t) but the thing they were pushing out was such a shit show the fuckups barely counted and they racked up an impressive string of wins.
Things did in fact happen the way they did.