¿Fue buena o mala la Revolución francesa? - Mises Institute
La violencia popular, por supuesto, acompañó a la Revolución desde sus inicios. El asalto a la Bastilla el 14 de julio de 1789 se saldó con ...
breve pero intenso
Es posible que el interés actual de los estudiosos austriacos por la Revolución vaya en aumento, tanto en términos de conceptualización general como de investigación histórica detallada sobre los orígenes, los resultados y la propia convulsión. Por ejemplo, el <anchor>breve pero intenso</anchor> ensayo de Ryan McMaken sobre «Medievalismo, absolutismo y Revolución francesa» amplía algunos temas de Hoppe y otros, proporcionando contexto y señalando otros temas útiles que necesitan ser explorados.
Medievalism, Absolutism, and the French Revolution | Mises Institute
Search

Open Mobile Navigation

Open Search

Search

# Medievalism, Absolutism, and the French Revolution



Sunday is Bastille Day, and that means another round of ruminations on the French Revolution in the conservative media. We see George Rutler at the conservative Catholic magazine Crisis discussing “convenient myths” behind the French Revolution today, and we find Liam Warner at The Wall Street Journal pinning the Democratic Party’s current drive for slavery reparations on the Spirit of the French Revolution.

Fair enough. The murders and other other crimes committed by the Revolutionaries don’t get enough press.

Ever since the Revolution, however, one can also identify an error in the opposite direction: to act as if all opposition to the French monarchy was itself unwarranted and excessive.

For example, modern-day opponents of the Revolution often follow in the footsteps of Joseph de Maistre, who led the effort to rehabilitate the old French ruling class in the eyes of his nineteenth-century contemporaries. De Maistre did not shy away from sweeping statements in support of the old regime, and he denied it was ever possible to morally oppose a monarch. Perhaps a representative example of his thinking is this:

Demanding this sort of extreme deference to the French state, however, is just the sort of thing that got the monarchy into trouble in the first place.

But even for more mild opponents of the Revolution, such as Edmund Burke, there is a tendency to oppose the Revolution on the grounds that the French state represented that which was tried, true, and traditional. Some even suggest the French regime was representative of the limited, internationalist regimes of the Middle Ages.

The conclusion we are then supposed to draw is that the Revolutionaries were overturning what was in truth a timid and prudent regime which had governed in a moderately laissez-faire fashion for centuries. Thus, the Revolutionaries were necessarily excessive in demanding reform of any significance.

This interpretation, however, draws a much too optimistic picture of the French state.

#### The Medieval Monarchy was Long Gone by the time of the Revolution

In fact, the French state of the late eighteenth century was more characterized by mercantilism, absolutism, and centralization than by restraint. It was the French monarchy — not the Revolutionaries — who first destroyed the older decentralized medieval order and created the strong centralized state that would later fall into the hands of the radicals.

Thus, by the time of the Revolution, long gone were the modest medieval institutions of old. In their place had grown the absolutist monarchy, which embraced and sought untrammeled centralized power as much as possible, and encouraged economic policies designed to benefit the friends of the monarchs at the expense of everyone else.

The Revolution — especially in its earlier bourgeois form, and only later usurped by the radicals — was not, therefore, a revolt against traditional Europe, but against a rising power of modern absolutism.

#### Absolutism Arose After the Middle Ages

The transformation of the French state had begun centuries earlier.

In his history of economic thought, Murray Rothbard notes the “first and critically most important step in the rise in the power of the State at the expense of crippling the economy” had occurred in the fourteenth century, as “Philip IV, the Fair, king of France (1285–1314), moved to tax, plunder, and effectively destroy” important free trade zones and other market institutions beyond his control:

On other words, by the sixteenth century and the rise of absolutism in France, the medieval world was long gone. Historian Jack Goldstone notes:

Goldstone doesn’t mean unhampered economies, of course. He means an economy increasingly characterized by cash-based payments and exchanges of commodities over longer distances.

What arose side-by-side with this was the mercantilism of the absolutist state, which the French state embraced with gusto in the sixteenth century.

As absolutist ideology spread in France, the ruling classes increasingly used the monarchy to consolidate power. Rothbard continues:

The French monarchs were only too delighted to play along, and the power of the French state over economic matters grew throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

The lack of market freedom, however, took its toll. As the monarchs continued on with a multitude of elective wars and other forms of lavish spending, the French state found itself in financial trouble.

#### After the Failure of Liberal Reform Came the Revolution

The early French liberals, chief among them François Quesnay and A.R.J. Turgot, attempted to bring some sanity back to the French treasury. But thanks to the power of the monarchy and its allies, there was little they could do beyond attempt to convince the monarch to embrace more sane economic policies. Any attempts at decentralization or reform from outside the monarchy would likely be crushed with brutal efficiency by the monarchs who were happy to shed the blood of anyone who did not ascent to the state’s edicts.

Thus Rothbard concludes,

That is, after multiple reform attempts — thwarted by an ossified monarchy and ruling class —  “came the French revolution.”

It is not the case that the the French state, in the days leading up the revolution, was merely a flawed institution, doing the best it could, and restrained in its exercise of power. The states of Louis XIV and Louis XVI were, on the contrary, absolutist states that wielded vast political and economic power, crushing enemies and exploiting ordinary citizens for the sake of enriching the regime’s allies. Thus, the idea that no Frenchmen had a legitimate grievance against the French state has little foundation in the brutal realities of eighteenth century French political economy.

There is no denying, however, that the Revolution did indeed lead to countless blood-soaked excesses that cannot be defended. But even here, we see the fingerprints of the monarchs. It was the monarchs, after all, who had crushed local autonomy, crated a large, modernized bureaucratic regime, and manufactured the idea of a single French state answerable to the whims of whoever controlled the levers of power.

The absence of all this in the American colonies helps to explain why the American revolution never approached anything resembling its own Reign of Terror. A romanticized view of the American revolution — in which the conflict is imagined as a very civilized and restrained affair — has long been pushed by defenders. But the reality was far more violent. The American revolution was not at all immune from the troubles of mob violence, bloody internecine strife, and widespread theft from a displaced ruling class. All those elements existed in the colonies. What was lacking was a powerful centralized bureaucracy, a domestic standing army, and an idea that there could only be one people under a single state.

That sort of thing was created in France in the incubators built by the French monarchs, and through this, the monarchs contributed greatly to their own demise.

- 1Quoted in Conservative Thinkers, From John Adams to Winston Churchill by  Peter Viereck

Image Source: Wikimedia

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

### What Is The Mises Wire?

Mises Wire offers contemporary news and opinion through the lens of Austrian economics and libertarian political economy.

The views expressed on Mises Wire and mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

Latest Articles

Bologna, a city in northern Italy, is considered by many scholars to be the oldest university city in the Western world. Its university— the Alma Mater Studiorum—dates back to the year 1088. From the...

Marx by Jaime Edwards and Brian Leiter Routledge, 224; 316 pp. In Marx, Jaime Edwards and Brian Leiter aim to give readers who haven’t studied Karl Marx an account of the essentials of his thought and...

In a recent conversation with my college-educated friend, they expressed their sentiments that college, for many, was a waste, echoing a common critique among libertarians. Further, they continued...

In these politically turbulent times, the “illusion of democracy is fading worldwide” as one pundit wrote recently. There is a growing sense in the West that “democracy” is not working well, but there...

It’s now been nearly 35 years since E.L. Jones first published his watershed book The European Miracle. Jones’s history of Europe’s economic development examined the reasons why Europe—a comparatively...

Meet the Writer

rwm

Ryan McMaken ( @ryanmcmaken) is executive editor at the Mises Institute, a former economist for the State of Colorado...

It’s now been nearly 35 years since E.L. Jones first published his watershed book The European Miracle. Jones’s history of Europe’s economic development examined the reasons why Europe—a comparatively...

The US government says that there are no limits on its ability to militarily dominate every corner of the globe. Ryan, Zach, and Tho talk about why that's a lot more expensive than the regime admits.

Subscribe to our Mailing Lists

Email Address *

Email
Subscriptions

- Daily
- News &
  Events
- Bookstore
- Week in
  Review
- The Misesian

Marketing Permissions

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Mises
Institute:

Email

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of
our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit
our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing
platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your
information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about
Mailchimp's privacy practices.

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Mises Institute

Browse Library

About the Mises Institute

Contact Us

Mises Institute518 West Magnolia AvenueAuburn, Alabama 36832-4501

Fax: 334.321.2119

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

Website powered by Mises Institute donors

Mises Institute is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent the law allows. Tax ID# 52-1263436