Napoleon Restored the Revolution of 1789

The notion that Napoleon’s 18 Brumaire Coup represented the complete undoing of everything the French Revolution fought for is the greatest misnomer in all Historical Discourse.

The radical even by modern standards political visions of the Girondins, Colliders, Jacobins and Enrages had already been dead for years but were themselves the product of the Revolution moving beyond its original goal.  After half a decade of rule by the Centrists devoid of any real political vision Napoleon was supported by multiple key leaders of the original Revolution.  

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes was the original ideological leader of the Revolution, his “What is the Third Estate” was the Declaration of Independence of the Bourgeoisie.  He had faded into the background when the Revolution was radicalized and then became a vital backer of Napoleon’s Coup.

Of course he and a lot of the well known spokesmen of Bourgeoisie ideology were not strictly speaking of the Bourgeoisie themselves.  Someone who was would be Claude Perier who played an overlooked material role in starting the Revolution in 1789, was not fond of the Radicalism of 1792-94 and then was another vital backer of Napoleon and was among the founders of the Bank of France.

Even when Napoleon later became Emperor he was embodying the Pre-Revolution concept of the Enlightened Monarch.

This is the problem I have with Peter Coffin’s “Leftism is the Left Wing of Capitalism” nonsense.  The French Revolution started and ended as a Bourgeoisie Revolution because of its Right Wing.

The Enrages were Proto Marxist-Leninists the Conspiracy of the Equals were proto Libertarian Socialists.  The Girdondins may not have been Socialist enough to fit an official definition but they would have been enough for the CIA to overthrow them in a Coup during the Cold War.

Am I a Marxist?

Marxism is strictly speaking not a Socio-Economic or Political Ideology but a way of looking at History.  That can have implications on how one looks towards achieving their political goals, but you can in theory agree with a Marxist analysis of history while having politics that are the opposite of Marx’s.

At its broadest most basic sense Marxism is viewing history as primarily driven by Class Conflict and Material Conditions.  And in that I am essentially Marxist.  And my political goals are also the same, I am a Communist who desires a Moneyless, Classless Stateless Society.

However I view a lot of the specifics of how Marx and Engels framed their History of Class Conflict as gravely mistaken, which many contemporary Marxists and especially MLs still cling to dogmatically.  The division of eras simplistically into Primitive-Communism then “Slavery” then “Feudalism” then Capitalism being where we are now is very problematic in how biased towards a Western Perspective it is.  But even within that Western Perspective is still an oversimplification and tied to now outdated terminology.  The Socio-Economic Mode of Production of the Middle Ages is better defined as Manorialism not “Feudalism” for one example.

I have prior posts on this Blog already talking about aspects of all that.  But for further understanding of how wrong both the Marxist and common Liberal understanding of “Feudalism” and the Middle Ages is I recommend reading the book Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking The Myths by Regine Pernoud and/or watching the YouTube videos on this Playlist I made.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4CWxmx4wepgNS9Ql6ZQfxjbA5XkJ4OSP

Marxism is an Apostate child of Hegelianism.  Hegelianism was all about viewing History as driven by Conflicts, New Atheists are very Hegleian in their devotion to the discredited Science vs Religion Conflict thesis.  But I say Apostate because while keeping a form Conflict in his view of History Marx also rejected the Idealism that Hegel inherited from Kant and Plato preferring to see things Materialistically like an Empiricist or Epicurean or Aristotelian or Stoic.  But Marx and Engels were not the first Materialist Worker focused Socialists, before them came Flora Tristan and Moses Hess.

TIK ignores the ways in which Marx Apostatized from Hegelianism in building his little Ideological Genealogy.  He recognized Aristotelianism as ultimately independent of Platonism in-spite of how Aristotle started as a student of Plato, well Marx is to Hegel as Aristotle was to Plato.

However the Marxists have brought this on themselves by not rejecting all the Hegelian terminology they should have.  “Dialectical Materialism” is an Oxymoron, Dialectics is definitionally an idealist concept having its roots in Pythagorean Dualism.  It no longer means what it originally meant in how Marx and Engels use the word, but modern Marxists fall right back into Hegelian Idealism for example in how Slavoj Zizek refuses to see a third option existing for anything including Gender.