this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 71 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I looked at a list of the people who took over immediately after the French revolution, and it looks very much like a bunch of aristocrats used a mob to take over.

It certainly wasn't handed over to the likes of you and me.

You can see this being emulated right now by people like Trump. "The people won't stand for it", "there'll be civil war", etc. If Jan 6th was more than a rabble of trailer trash dumbfucks, they might even have been talking about it the same way by now...

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

it looks very much like a bunch of aristocrats used a mob to take over.

Not unusual for educated professionals to form the intellectual and financial backbone of a revolution, because... they are the ones with money and education.

But there was an enormous gulf between the mid level bureaucrats of the French Revolution and the senior aristocrats they deposed. That is, in large part, because the French aristocracy was married into all the other European royal families, while the insurrectionists were not.

If some junior office workers at Exxon executed the board and the C-level staff with the help of the blue collar roughnecks, that would be an enormous change in the governance of the company. Imagine how Wall Street would respond. Not unlike how France's neighbors responded to their revolution, I'm sure.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Oh they'd respond exactly the same.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

it looks very much like a bunch of aristocrats used a mob to take over.

Mostly bourgeois actually, aristocrats were very much profiting of the system. Bourgeois are the ones who had enough money to get education and rethink the political system to end the aristocrats' birth privileges. How would an illiterate peasant be able to rethink the political system beyond tax reduction?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Bourgeois inspired by the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

And Diderot and Montesquieu.