V.1.2. "LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY" LETS CAPITALISM TAKE WING

IF YOU LOOK UP "CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION" ON THE WEB, ALL THAT'S SAID WILL BE TRUE. 

But nothing will be said of the underlying reason, to let capitalism fly.  

• Liberty means free enterprise / raw capitalism (different language for the same thing).

• Equality ends the nobles' privileges that limit economic growth. 

• Fraternity calls up the masses to blow those privileges away.

Painting gone from the web.

Middle-class leader, popular striking force: But only the man with the blue head scarf at the bottom right appears to work with his hands.

Economic growth made conflict between hereditary landowners — the nobles, who controlled the State — and nascent capitalists inevitable. 

Here's the background.

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When the explorations and discoveries of the end of the 15th century bring major new revenues, an unprecedented expansion of chains of production lets new entrepreneurs challenge the overclass of hereditary landowners, the nobles.

In France early results of that transformation are:

• Stronger monarchy, which contains the new interests.

• Arts that buttress the nobles by associating them with the gods of mythology.

• "Wars of Religion," that pit popular masses against entrepreneurs who challenge traditional protections.  

Nobles' legal privileges and control of the State hampers economic growth and for two centuries the struggle between nobles and gradually enriched capitalists is latent. Yet by the 1780's establishments employing hundreds of workers have sprung up around Paris:

   Pillage de a Folie-Titon [Réveillon] au Fbg. Saint-Antoine, April 28 1789, anonymous, end 18th century / zoom

A riot at the Réveillon wall-paper manufactory, with 200 employees, takes place two months before the taking of the Bastille. By opposing a rumored reduction of salaries rather than the cost of bread, it announces the struggle between capital and labor. 

A company with 300 employees in what is now the 13th, plants north of the Saint-Denis gate, one of which has 800 worker and manufactories in Orleans and Rouen are other such establishments.

-- In the 13th:

Éléments pour une history de la Commune dans le 13e arrondissement by Gérard Conte, 1981

-- In the north:

The Crowd in the French Revolution by George Rudé, 1959

-- In Orleans and Rouen:

Les derniers feux [fires]de la monarchie by Charles-Eloi Vial, ch. 1, 2016

Entrepreneurs resent the nobles' privileges that block their expansion and want political power that fits their economic clout. Nobles resist because they usually have neither the resources nor the upbringing to equip them for business: for more, please click and scroll down.

The street provides the force that will lead to them to hide, flee or be guillotined: "What had been pretension became tragedy."

-- Adolphe Thiers, Histoire de la Révolution française,1834

 

      Illustration in La Grande Révolution française by Georges Soria (ed. Bordas), 1988

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Marx's summary of the French Revolution: "The dykes to capitalism had to be broken. They were broken."

But not quite.

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Next,

 5.1.3.

The 1830 Revolution:

Capitalists' neglected triumph