Marx, the French Revolution, and the Spectre of the Bourgeoisie

Abstract

Seeking to deny the bourgeois and capitalist nature of the French Revolution, revisionist scholars have argued that the bourgeoisie did not exist as a class-in-itself or for-itself. The existence of the bourgeoisie as a class-in-itself is increasingly confirmed by recent research. The question whether or not a sense of the bourgeoisie as a class-for-itself developed during the Revolution requires a more complicated response. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Marx asserted that the consciousness of the revolutionaries was obscured by the rhetoric of classical republicanism. It was only after the Revolution that the French bourgeoisie developed a sense of themselves as a class-for-itself and recognized the Revolution as bourgeois. In fact the upheavals of the Revolution did create a bourgeois consciousness of itself as a class whose strength was based on its growing economic power. But this consciousness was marginalized by the revolutionary leadership because of its potential social divisiveness.