MODERN FRANCE MIDTERM QUOTES

Marx and spectre of revolution.

"A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies." - The Communist Manifesto "On the Threshold of the February Revolution, the social republic appeared as a phrase, as a prophecy. In the June days of 1848, it was subsequent acts of the drama like a ghost." - 18th Brumaire

Restriction of the freedom of press - law of 29 november 1830 forbids

"All attacks. . . against royal dignity, against the order of succession to the throne, the rights which the King holds from the will of the French nation, as expressed in the declaration of 7 August 1830, and from the constitutional Charter accepted by him and sworn to in the session of 9 August of the same year, against his constitutional authority, the inviolability of his person, the rights and authority of the Chambers."

Leon Gambetta - 1872 - mobilizing middle class leon gambetta - chamber 1877

"All of these elements have attained a degree of prosperity and they comprise the nouvelles couches sociales of which I have spoken before. Remember, gentlemen, I said couches, not classes: that is a distasteful word I never use . .. . As soon as these men are invested with the right to vote and to give themselves a government, they would choose the Republic, because democracy and republicanism are linked like cause and effect." "The evil of clericalism- and that is one of the aspects of the question which we are concerned with today- the evil of clericalism has profoundly infiltrated what is called the ruling class of this country . . Clericalism? There is the enemy."

Marx on the civil war in France

"And, to broadly mark the new era of history it was conscious of initiating, under the eyes of the conquering Prussians on the one side, and the Bonapartist army, led by Bonapartist generals, on the other, the Commune pulled down that colossal symbol of martial glory, the Vendôme column." "It is generally the fate of completely new historical creations to be mistaken for the counterpart of older and even defunct forms of social life, to which they may bear a certain likeness..."

Karl Max with the revolution of 1848 as an old mole

"But the revolution is thorough-going. It is still in the process of passing through purgatory. It does its work methodically. December 2, 1851, it had completed one half of its preparatory work; it is now completing the other half. First it perfected the parliamentary power, in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has attained this, it perfects the executive power, reduces it to the purest expression, isolates it, sets it up against itself as the sole target, in order to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it. And when it has done this second half of its preliminary work, Europe will leap from her seat and exultantly exclaim: Well grubbed, old mole!" (514)

Saint-Victor on the paris commune

"Drunkness fed this depraved revolution. A vapor of alcohol wafted above the effervescence of this mob. The bottle was one of the Commune's "tools of government." It would inebriate with wine and eau de vie the imbecilic bands that it sent off to die. There was a delirium tremens in the fury of their resistance. They fell down dead-drunk under the bullets and bombs."

Rousseau -- everyone participates in the sovereign

"Finally, in giving himself to all, each person gives himself to no one. And since there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right that he would grant others over himself, he gains the equivalent of everything he loses, along with a greater amount of force to preserve what he has." "Although in this state he deprives himself of several of the advantages belonging to him in the state of nature, he regains such great ones." "Let us summarize this entire balance sheet so that the credits and debits are easily compared."

Burke

"France has bought poverty by crime! France has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her virtue. All other nations have begun the fabric of a new government or the reformation of an old, by establishing originally, or by enforcing with greater exactness some rites or other of religion. All other people have laid the foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and a system of a more austere and masculine morality. France, when she let loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the licence, of a ferocious disoluteness in manners and of an insolent irreligion in opinions and practices..."

Gerard, Proclamation of Deputies of July 31, 1830

"Frenchmen! The Duke of Orleans has himself already spoken, and his language is such as is proper for a free country. 'The chambers will meet,' he says to you, 'they will think of means to secure the country, the laws, and the upholding of the rights of the nation.' 'The Charter will in future be a truth.'

levee en massee august 23 1793

"From this moment until such time as its enemies shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic, all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the services of the armies. The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn old lint into linen; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic."

Leonard Gallois, account of the 1930 revolution

"I dreaded again to behold those brigands who strained the character of the first revolution. I expected to see every moment file off bands of those ill-omened and ferocious figures, as disgusting in appearance as in language whom I had seen exhibited in the plates representing the scenes of that epoch." (99) "The crowd which hurried to the centre of Paris did not consist entirely of the working class of people. I observed many well dressed men, and even young men of fashionable appearance..."

Marx, inaugural address of the creation of the international working men's association

"If the emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfill that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people's blood and treasure."

Jaures 1893 - socialism as an extension of the republic in a speech for the national assembly

"It is because socialism alone is capable of resolving the fundamental contradictions of today's society, it is because socialism proclaims that the political Republic must bring about the social Republic, it is because socialism wants the Republic to be affirmed in the workshop as it is here [in the National Assembly], it is because it wants the nation to be as sovereign in the economic order...as it is in the political order, it is for these reasons that socialism arises out of the republican movement." If Dreyfus has been convicted illegally, and if, in fact, as I will soon demonstrate, he is innocent, he is no longer an officer or a bourgeois. He is stripped, by the very violence of misfortune, of every quality of class. He is no longer anything but humanity itself, at the highest point of misery and despair one can imagine.

Rousseau

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. He who believes himself the master of others does not escape being more of a slave than they (41)." Critique of the idea that one can "sell oneself into slavery" as model for submitting to political authority

Bell

"Nothing illustrates the implacable logic of total war more than Napoleon's decision to attack Russia." 256

Paris Commune Proclamation 1871

"Paris, since 18 March, has no government other than that of the people, which is the best form of government. Never has a revolution been achieved in a situation comparable to ours. Paris has become a free city. The centralization of power no longer exists. The monarchy died through this admission of impotence. In this free city, everyone has the right to freedom of speech without claiming any influence whatsoever on the destinies of France."

Max Nordau Address to the second Zionist Congress 1899

"The Dreyfus Affair was the revelation of a state of mind hitherto unsuspected. It rises up as a warning and a lesson to that category of Jews who continue to believe in their definitive and unqualified admission into the most advanced states of the West...Attacked as a group, Judaism should have defended itself collectively...it should have risen up, as a single man, to defend its well-being."

Theodor Herzl Retrospective reflections 1899

"The Dreyfus case embodies more than a judicial error; it embodies the desire of the vast majority of the French to condemn a Jew, and to condemn all Jews in this one Jew. Death to the Jews! Howled the mob, as the decorations were being ripped from the captain's coat...Where? In France. In republican, modern, civilized France, a hundred years after Declaration of the Rights of Man. The French people, or at any rate, the greater part of the French people, does not want to extend the rights of man to Jews. The edict of the great revolution has been revoked."

Maurice Barres - anti semistism in the burns reading

"The Jewish question is linked to the national question. Ranked by the Revolution with authentic Frenchmen, Jews kept their distinctive traits, and after having once been the persecuted they become the tyrants. We support the most complete freedom of conscience; further, we would consider it a grave danger to allow Jews the privilege of appealing to- and that way appearing to defend- the principles of civil liberty promulgated by the Revolution. They violate those principles through . . .their habits of monopolizing, of speculation, of cosmopolitanism. (7-8)

Doing penance for the commune - archbishop of paris proposes plan for sacre coeur 1873

"The blood that ran from your side redeemed the world; may a drop of this divine blood, through its all-powerful capacity to expiate, redeem once again this France that you loved and who, turning from her many errors, wishes to return to her Christian vocation...May the temple that is going to be built by our hands...become for us an impenetrable citadel which will protect Paris and our patrie."

Rousseau, in response to hobbes and despotism

"The despot, it will be said, guarantees civil tranquility for his subjects... Life is also tranquil in dungeons; is that enough to feel well in them?" "To say that a man gives himself gratuitously is to say something absurd and inconceivable. Such an act is illegitimate and null, if only for the fact that he who commits it does not have his wits about him. To say the same thing of an entire populace is to suppose a populace composed of madmen. Madness does not bring about right." (45)

conservative reaction to the commune - edmond de goncourt

"The government is leaving the hands of those who have, to go into the hands of those who have not, going from those who have a material interest in conservation of society to those who are completely unconcerned about order, stability of conservation. Is it possible that in the great law underlying changes here on earth; the workers are for modern societies what the Barbarians were for ancient societies, convulsive agents of dissolution and destruction."

Saint-Simon continued.

"The men who brought about the Revolution, the men who directed it, and the men who, since 1789 and up to the present day, have guided the nation, have committed a great political mistake. They have all sought to improve the governmental machine, whereas they should have subordinated it and put administration in the first place."

Protest against the ordinances july 27, 1830 Guizot

"The mentioned measures, contained in the ordinances of 25th of July, are, in the opinion of the undersigned, directly contrary to the constitutional rights of the chamber of peers, to the political rights of Frenchmen, and to the opinions and decrees of the courts, and calculated to cause a disturbance in the state, which will put in peril both the peace of the present, and the safety of the future." (signed: Guizot, Constant

1825 law on sacrilege and royer-collard's vote against

"The moment that a single dogma of the Catholic religion enters into the law, that religion should beheld true in its fullest extent, and all the others false; it should form a part of the constitution of the State, and thence spread itself through all its civil and political institutions. In breaking a long silence, I have wished to mark my lively opposition to the theocratic principle which threatens at one society and religion, a principle so much the more serious that it is not, as in the days of barbarity and ignorance, the sincere fury of a too ardent zeal which relights this torch."

Henri de Saint Simon

"The most direct method of improving the moral and physical welfare of the majority of the population is to give priority in State expenditure to ensuring work for all fit men, to secure their physical existence; spreading throughout the proletarian class a knowledge of positive science; ensuring for this class forms of recreation and interests which will develop their intelligence."

Marx on the new constitution after 1848

"The new Constitution was at bottom only the republicanised edition of the constitutional Charter of 1830....The old organisation of government, of the municipal system, of the administration of law, of the army, etc. continued to exist inviolate, or, where the Constitution changed them, the change concerned the table of contents not the contents: the name, not the thing." (447)

Amar 1794

"The private functions to which women are destined by nature itself follow from the general order of society. This social order results from the difference between and women." (137)

Electoral fears in 1848 from left and right

"The rumor was put about that our delegate was going to preach female emancipation, St. Simonianism, and communism. He was pelted with stones and garbage." (Report from Vitré, cited in Price, 68-69) "The people is not sufficiently educated to be able to make good use of its rights. It obeys old prejudices and paltry interests. It does not appreciate that great act it will perform the day after tomorrow. It will let itself be led along by the bourgeoisie. In consequence it is the bourgeoisie that will decide the elections. The workers and the peasants still tremble before their former lords and masters." (70)

Marx, 18th november.

"This executive power with its enormous bureaucratic and military organization, with its ingenious state machinery, embracing wide strata, with a host of officials numbering half a million, besides an army of another half million, this appalling parasitic body, which enmeshes the body of French society like a net and chokes all its pores, sprang up in the days of the absolute monarchy, with the decay of the feudal system, which it helped to hasten . . . In its struggle against the revolution, the parliamentary republic found itself compelled to strengthen, along with the repressive measures, the resources and centralization of government power. All revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it."

Haussmann on remodeling old paris

"To tear open Old Paris . . . the district of riots and barricades, by a wide, central thoroughfare which would pierce this almost impenetrable labyrinth from one side to the other, and would itself be crossed by transversal streets whose continuation would carry on the work begun by the boulevard." "A capital has above all the responsibility to present itself as equal to the role it plays in the state; and when that state is France... centralization is the principle of its importance."

Armand Carrel, le National 20 march 1834

"Two camps have formed, which threaten one another. In the camp of public order, one already states that the suspension of liberty may be necessary in order to preserve order; but, as far as the camp of liberty is concerned, we say that we have already conducted in July a revolution, despite the party of public order; we say that this revolution cannot and must not be abandoned, and that it will not be; we have enough sense to think that, if there is suspension of liberty, the response must be, as in July, a suspension of public order."

Carinal Lavigeries - declaration of alger 1891 to naval officers

"Unity, in the presence of a still painful past and an always threatening future, is, in effect, what at this time we need most. Unity is also, let me assure you, the first wish of the Church and all ranks of its clergy."

Hubertine Auclerty - drawing parallel between workers and women

"We address ourselves to you, proletarians, our comrades in misfortune, to support our right to emancipation. You are voters, you have the power of numbers; all of you are women at heart, you are our brothers. Help us to liberate ourselves."

Count Clermont-Tonnerre on JewsDecember 23, 1789, 88

"We must refuse everything to Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals...They must be citizens individually. But, some will say to me, they do not want to be citizens. Well then! If they do not want to be citizens, they should say so, and then we should banish them. It is repugnant to have in the state an association of non-citizens, and a nation within a nation." Jews admitted to citizenship: September 27, 1791 on condition of the renunciation of their "privileges" (1789): "The Jews are to be refused everything as a Nation; they must be granted everything as individuals."

Louis Philippes - middel course, jan 29th, 1831

"We shall endeavor to observe a strict middle course (juste milieu), equally removed from the past abuses of the royal power and from the excesses of the power of the people."

Proclamation instituting workers' (Luxembourg) Commission and the national workshops

"Whereas the Revolution brought about by the people should be to the people's benefit; Whereas the time has come to put an end to the workers' long and iniquitous sufferings- Whereas there is no problem that is greater or more worthy of a republican government's concern- Whereas the question of work is of supreme importance... Whereas the means must be found without the least delay to guarantee to the people the proper fruits of their toil...A standing committee...shall be appointed with the express and specific task of concerning itself with the workers' problems."

Jeanne Deroin

"Women should be called on to take part in the great task of social regeneration that is under way. Why should our country be deprived of the services of its daughters?"

Octave Dupont - on assimilation of the law of difference

"assimilation would necessitate the exclusive application of our laws and adoption of our customs, which are diametrically opposed to the natives' social state, and this would undoubtedly breed revolution among the Muslims."

Motto of the right - Edouard Drumont (1891)

"the real plague of France are the foreigners who invade her, who abuse her hospitality, and who carve her up like a conquered province."

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (August 26, 1789) importnt articles

1. Men are born free and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only on public utility. 2. The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. 3. The sources of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation; no body, no individual can exercise authority that does not proceed from it in plain terms. 4. Liberty consists in the power to do anything that does not injure others; accordingly, the exercise of the rights of each man has no limits except those that secure the enjoyment of these same rights to the other members of society. These limits can be determined only by law. 5. The law has only the rights to forbid such actions as are injurious to society. Nothing can be forbidden that is not interdicted by the law, and no one can be constrained to do that which it does not order. 6. Law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to take part personally, or by their representatives, and its formation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, art equally eligible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacities, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents. 17. Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one may be deprived of it, except when public necessity, certified by law, obviously requires it, and on the condition of a just compensation in advance.

Haitian Declaration of Independence, 1804

The Commander in Chief to the People of Haiti Citizens: It is not enough to have expelled the barbarians who have bloodied our land for two centuries; it is not enough to have restrained those ever-evolving factions that one after another mocked the specter of liberty that France dangled before you. We must, with one last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government that for so long kept us in the most humiliating torpor. In the end we must live independent or die. Independence or death... let these sacred words unite us and be the signal of battle and of our reunion

Cahiers de doleances (drawn up by members of the three estates) March/April of 1789 examples

10. In order to assure to the third estate the influence to which it is entitled in view of the number of its members, the amount of its contributions to the public treasury, and the manifold interests which it has to defend or promote in the national assemblies, its votes in the assembly should be taken and counted by head. 11. No order, corporation, or individual citizen may lay claim to any pecuniary exemptions. . . . All taxes should be assessed on the same system throughout the nation. 12. The due exacted from commoners holding fiefs should be abolished, and also the general or particular regulations which exclude members of the third estate from certain positions, offices, and ranks which have hitherto been bestowed on nobles either for life or hereditarily. A law should be passed declaring members of the third estate qualified to fill all such offices for which they are judged to be personally fitted. 13. Since individual liberty is intimately associated with national liberty, his Majesty is hereby petitioned not to permit that it be hereafter interfered with by arbitrary orders for imprisonment. . . 14. Freedom should be granted also to the press, which should however be subjected, by means of strict regulations to the principles of religion, morality, and public decency. . .

Laws of Difference formalized in 1881 - first elaborated in 1874

33 infractions including: Speaking disrespectfully to a French official Defaming the Republic Traveling without a permit Failure to declare birth or death Refusing to fight forest fires Avoiding labor contributions (the corvée)

Constitution of 1793 - eliminated property requirements for universal male suffrage

4. Every man born and living in France, of twenty-one years of age, and every alien, who has attained the age of twenty-one, and has been domiciled in France one year, and lives from his labor; or has acquired property; or has married a French woman; or has adopted a child; or supports an aged man; and finally every alien whom the legislative body has declared as one well deserving of the human race, are admitted to exercise the rights of a French citizen.

Decree made by the estates general 1789(??)

All citizens without distinction of birth, are to be admitted to all ecclesiastical, civil, and military positions and honors, and no useful profession shall imply a loss of honor."

Sieyes

All inhabitants of a country should enjoy the rights of a passive citizen: all have the right to the protection of their person, their property, their liberty, etc; but all do not have the right to take an active part in the formation of the public authorities: all are not active citizens. Women, at least in the present state, children, foreigners, those who contribute nothing to maintaining the public establishment, should have no active influence on public affairs. (81)

Adolphe Thiers 1872 - conservative reaction to commune

Any government that fails to provide France with peace and calm, which are so absolutely absolutely essential for her, will not be under any illusions! Ending the cycle of violence: "This has often happened, as you know, and do not believe that it cannot happen again. This sad and humiliating progress from anarchy to despotism, and from despotism to anarchy will be repeated a hundred times with its humiliations and calamities . . ." (27)

OlympeDe Gouges Declaration.

Art. 1 De Gouges: Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility. Article 4. De Gouges: Liberty and justice consist in restoring all that belongs to another; hence the exercise of the natural rights of woman has no other limits than those that the perpetual tyranny of man opposes to them; these limits must be reformed according to the law of nature and reason.

Division of French Nationality: Senatus Consulte of 1865

Article 1: The Muslim indigenous is French; however, he will continue to be subjected to Muslim law. He may be admitted to serve in the terrestrial and marine Army. He may be called to functions and civil employment in Algeria. He may, on his demand, be admitted to enjoy the rights of a French citizen; in this case, he is subjected to the political and civil laws of France." Article 1: The Israelite Indigenous is French; however, he continues to be subject to his personal status. He may be called to functions and civil employment in Algeria. He may, on his demand, be admitted to enjoy the rights of a French citizen; in this case, he is subjected to the political and civil laws of France."

Le Chapelier Law, 14 june 1791

Article 4. It is contrary to the principles of liberty and the Constitution for citizens with the same professions, arts, or trades to deliberate or make agreements among themselves designed to set prices for their industry or their labor. If such deliberations and agreements are concluded, whether accompanied by oath or not, they will be declared unconstitutional, prejudicial to liberty and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and will be null and void.

Rousseau, the social contract, 1762 (on the topic of what it means to be a sovereign)

Born a citizen of a Free State, and a member of the sovereign, the right to vote in it is enough to impose on me the duty to learn about public affairs.

Leclerc - (November 18,1801)

Citizen General: The peace with England and all the European powers, which has established the Republic in the highest degree of power and grandeur, now allows the government to occupy itself with the colony of Saint-Domingue. We are sending there Citizen Leclerc, our brother-in-law, in his quality as General to serve as first magistrate of the colony. He is accompanied by a considerable force in order to ensure the respect of the sovereignty of the French people. It is in these circumstances that we hope that you will prove to us, and to all of France, the sincerity of the sentiments that you have regularly expressed in the letters that you wrote to us. We hold you in esteem, and we are happy to recognize and proclaim the great services that you have rendered the French people. If its banner flies over Saint-Domingue it is to you and the brave blacks that this is owed. Called by your talents and the force of circumstances to the leading position of command, you have done away with civil war, put a brake on the persecution by several ferocious men, and returned to its place of honor the cult of God, from which everything emanates. The constitution you made, while including many good things, contains some that are contrary to the dignity and sovereignty of the French people, of which Saint-Dominigue forms only a portion.

July Ordinances - july 26 1830 not a quote

Curtailing press freedom Dissolving Chamber of Deputies Reducing number of Deputies and summoning new Electoral Colleges Further restriction of Franchise

Text of the abolition of april 27 1848

FRENCH REPUBLIC Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood In the name of the French People The temporary Government, Considering that slavery is an attempt against the human dignity ; That by destroying the free will of the man, it abolishes the natural principle of the right and the duty; That it is a blatant violation of the republican dogma: Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood. Considering that if actual measures did not follow of very near the proclamation already made by the principle of the abolition, it could result in colonies the most pitiful disorders, Decree : Art. 1. Slavery will be completely abolished in all the colonies and the French possessions, two months after the promulgation of the present decree in each of them. From the promulgation of the present decree in colonies, any corporal punishment, any sale of not free persons, will be absolutely forbidden .

Rousseau

For the particular will tends, but its nature, to partiality, and the general will to equality

Camille See Law - promotion of marital harmony - secular secondary schooling for women

Her vocation is to live in a happy communion of feeling with her husband and to bring up her children, and thus she has the right to an education worthy of her, worthy of him with whom she shares her life, worthy of the children whose first steps in learning she will guide, worthy finally of the Republic which emerged from the Revolution of 1789 and which was the first emancipator of women.

Clemenceau on pardoning communards 1876

I ask you to take account at the same time of the so-called lower classes, who must also be reconciled and conciliated. I tell you that it is only through the reconciliation of all classes and all citizens that you will achieve the social peace which we all want. (31)

Prudhomme 1791

I do not conceive how a sexual difference makes for one in equality of rights..." (134)

Tocqueville - unfortunate necessity of colonial war. Tocqueville - no right to property for the colonized, tocqueville on the legality of expropriation Tocqueville - protecting the right to property of the colonizer - against utopian colonization schemes Establishing a Rule of Law in Algeria - tocqueville

I have often heard men in France whom I respect...find it wrong that we burn harvests, that we empty silos, and finally that we seize unarmed men, women, and children. These, in my view, are unfortunate necessities, but ones to which any people that wants to wage war on the Arabs is obliged to submit. And, if I must speak my mind, these acts do not revolt me more than, or even as much as, many others that the law of war clearly authorized and that have occurred in all the wars of Europe. 70 Good sense tells us that of all operations necessary for colonization, the foremost is to procure territory to colonize. At the moment, as we have said many times, this does not exist. Consolidation of property. In general, I am quite hostile to violent measures which usually seem to me as ineffective as they are unjust. But we must recognize that we shall never manage to possess the land around Algiers without the aid of such measures. As a result, we must resolve to make use of them....once the administration has taken control of this territory, it must not give it back, even in peacetime. The tribes that occupy it have been at war with us; their land can be confiscated according to Muslim law. It is a rigorous law whose rigor, in this case, we must use. (87) Nothing proves better than these theories the kind of irresistible attraction in our time and our country that little by little is leading the human spirit to destroy individual life in order to make society into a single being. In France, this tendency has produced Fourierism and Saint-simonianism. It has even attracted, unbeknown to themselves, abbe landmann, General Bugeaud, and many others who have written or spoken on colonization. All of them tend to cover Algeria with veritable phalansteries, theocratic, military, or economic; in other words, they all want to found little communities where property and individual life are hardly found, if at all, and in which each citizen works like a bee, following a single plan and a single goal, not for his own interests, but for those of the hive. 89 To bring inhabitants to such a country, they must, first, be given good chances of making their fortune there; second, they must encounter a state of society that agrees with their habits and their tastes. Because if the evils and irritations of a bad government join the inseparable evils born of the country, no one will either come or stay. 97 No part of the French society of Algeria rests on the law. The royal ordinance itself rules only on some matters; several of the most important are governed by ministerial decrees that can be modified every day in the darkness of an office, according to the whim of some clerk. The act in virtue of which the governor general possesses his powers...the act that gives him such extraordinary powers is a ministerial decree. Thus, the instability is not only in the administration, but in the legislation itself. The very foundations of society rest on nothing solid and are indeed constantly being overturned...such a state of things is absolutely intolerable in a newborn society whose naturally unstable elements have a particular need to be held firm and stable. (105

Oge speech to club of colonists in 1789

If we do not take the most prompt and efficacious measures; if firmness, courage, and constancy do not animate all of us; if we do not quickly bring together all our intelligence, all our means, and all our efforts; if we fall asleep for an instant on the edge of the abyss, we will tremble upon awakening! We will see blood flowing, our lands invaded, the objects of our industry ravaged, our homes burnt.

The King and the Declaration of december 7

In accordance with the foregoing, His Royal Highness, Louis Philippe, of Orleans, Duke of Orleans, Lieutenant General of the kingdom, will be invited to accept and swear to the foregoing clauses and obligations to the observing of the constitutional charter, and the specified modifications, and, after having done this in presence of the assembled chambers, to take the title of King of Frenchmen."

Blanqui on the relationship between slavery and wage labor

In fact, servitude does not consist solely in being a man's thing, or a lord's serf. He is not free who, deprived of the instruments of labor, remains at the mercy of the privileged who are their owners. This is the state that feeds revolt. Let us immediately say that equality doesn't consist in the partitioning of land. The splitting up of land will really change nothing concerning the right of property. With wealth growing from the ownership of the instruments of labor, rather than through labor itself, the spirit of exploitation left standing would soon know, through the reconstruction of large fortunes, how to restore social inequality.

Closing of the revolution in the charter of 1814

In thus attempting to renew the chain of the times, which disastrous events have broken, we have banished from our recollection, as we could wish it were possible to blot out from history, all the evils which have afflicted the fatherland during our absence. (Charter of 1814)

Durkheim- founding the league for human rights in 1898

Individualism, understood in this way, is the glorification, not of the ego, but of the individual in general.

Blanqui on Property as conquest

Individuals have taken over common land by ruse or violence, declaring themselves its owners; they have established by law that it will always be theirs, and that the right to property will become the foundation of the social constitution; which is to say that it will come before and, if need be, absorb all human rights, even that to life, if it has the ill fortune to find itself in conflict with the privilege of a small number.

Abbe Sieyes 1788

It does not suffice to have demonstrated that the privileged, far from being useful to the Nation, can only weaken and harm it; it must be proved further that the noble order is not even part of society itself: it may very well be a burden for the Nation but it cannot be a part of it. A body of associates living under a common law and represented by the same legislature. (67) danger of corporations on 69

Robespierre Principles

It has been said that terror was the mainspring of despotic government. Does your government, then, resemble a despotism? Yes, as the sword which glitters in the hands of liberty's heroes resembles the one which tyranny's lackeys are armed. Let the despot govern his brutalized subjects by terror; he is right to do this, as a despot. Subdue liberty's enemies by terror, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. Is not force made to protect crime? And is it not to strike the heads of the proud that lightening is destined.

Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804

The Commander in Chief to the People of Haiti Citizens: It is not enough to have expelled the barbarians who have bloodied our land for two centuries; it is not enough to have restrained those ever-evolving factions that one after another mocked the specter of liberty that France dangled before you. We must, with one last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government that for so long kept us in the most humiliating torpor. In the end we must live independent or die. Independence or death... let these sacred words unite us and be the signal of battle and of our reunion.

Ernest Renan - What is a nation 1882

It is no more soil than it is race which makes a nation. The soil furnishes the substratum, the field of struggle and of labor; man furnishes the soul. Man is everything in the formation of this sacred thing which is called a people. Nothing purely material suffices for it. A nation is a spiritual principle, the outcome of the profound complications of history; it is a spiritual family, not a group determined by the shape of the earth. (18-19) A nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future. It presupposes a past; it is summarized, however, in the present-day by a tangible fact, namely consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue a common life." (19) Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for [the principle of] nationality. Indeed, historical enquiry brings to light deeds of violence which took place at the origin of all political formations, even of those whose consequences have been altogether beneficial. Unity is always effected by means of brutality. (11)

Marx on louis napoleon's victory as a seduction

It is not enough to say, as the French do, that their nation was taken unawares. A nation and a woman are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer that came along could violate them. (441)-

Louis Blanc - organization of Labor - 1840

Let us summarize. A social revolution must be tried: 1.- Because the current social order is too filled with iniquities, suffering, turpitude to be able to subsist much longer 2.- There is no one who would not benefit, no matter his position, rank, or fortune from the introduction of a new social order 3.- Finally, because this revolution, which is so necessary, it is possible, even easy, to accomplish it peacefully

1875 - constitution

Maintains universal manhood suffrage President elected by parliament with "universal manhood suffrage" Art.5: "The President of the Republic can, in accordance with the recommendation of the Senate, dissolve the Chamber of Deputies"

the extending of equality to free blacks

May 15, 1791: initial political rights granted to free blacks Revoked in the wake of August insurrection slave revolts on September 24, 1791 April 4, 1792: "The National Assembly recognizes and proclaims that the free blacks and men of color, as well as the white colonists, should enjoy equality in political rights."

olympe de Gouges, The declaration of the rights of woman and citizen (september 1791)

Mothers, daughters, sisters, female representatives of the nation ask to be constituted as a national assemble. Considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt for the rights of woman are the sole causes of public misfortunes and governmental corruption, they have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of woman...

leon Daudet in the burns reading 53

On the wreckage of so many beliefs, a single faith remains genuine and sincere: that which safeguards our race, our language, the blood of our blood, and which brings us together in solidarity. The closed ranks are our ranks. The wretch was not French." (53)

History as the history of class conflict: the communist manifesto

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.

Lissagaray - proclamation of the paris commune around 1871

Paris broke the thousand fetters which bound France down to the ground, like Gulliver prey to ants; restored the circulation to her paralyzed limbs; said, 'The life of the whole nation exists in each of her smallest organisms; the unity of the hive, and not that of the barracks. The organic cell of the French Republic is the municipality, the commune."

Rousseau on the necessity of a social contract

Remains an issue of "self-preservation"; "the point where the obstacles that interfere with their preservation in the state of nature" Forming "an association that will defend and protect the person and goods of each associate with the full common force"

Constitution of Saint-Domingue by Toussaint l'ouverture 1901

Saint-Domingue in its entire expanse . . . form the territory of a single colony, which is part of the French Empire, but ruled under particular laws. TITLE IIOf the Inhabitants Art. 3. - There cannot exist slaves on this territory, servitude is therein forever abolished. All men are born, live and die free and French. Art. 4. - All men, regardless of color, are eligible to all employment. Art. 5. - There shall exist no distinction other than those based on virtue and talent, and other superiority afforded by law in the exercise of a public function.  The law is the same for all whether in punishment or in protection.

Minister of Defence Freycinet response

Sirs, in the army we know neither Israelites nor Protestants nor Catholics; we know only French officers, without regard of birth

William Wordsworth, sonnets dedicated to libery 1802 - to toussaint l'ouverture

TOUSSAINT, the most unhappy of men! Whether the whistling Rustic tend his ploughWithin thy hearing, or thy head be nowPillowed in some deep dungeon's earless den; O miserable Chieftain! where and whenWilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thouWear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behindPowers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;There's not a breathing of the common windThat will forget thee; thou hast great allies;Thy friends are exultations, agonies,And love, and man's unconquerable mind.

Marx on louis napoleons historical inevitability

That Republic has lost nothing but the semblance of respectability. Present-day France was contained in a finished state within the parliamentary republic. It only required a bayonet thrust for the bubble to burst and the monster to spring forth before our eyes (511) - november 18th

Sonthonax - august 29 1793

The French Republic wants all men to be free and equal with no color distinctions. Kings can only be content when they are surrounded by slaves; they are the ones who sold you to the whites on the African coast; they are the tyrants in Europe who want this vile trade to continue. The republic adopts you among its children; these kings wanted only to load you down with chains or eliminate you.

Creamieux Decree, gambetta, glais bisoin, fourichin - algerian jews become citizens in october 24 1870

The Government of National Defense Decrees: The Israelites native to the departments of Algeria are declared French citizens; consequently, their real status and their personal status shall be, dating from the promulgation of the present decree, regulated by French law, with all rights acquired until this day inviolable. All contrary legislative dispositions, senatus-consults, decrees, rulings, or ordinances are abolished.

Paul Topinar 1881 on the kabyle myth

The Kabyle has a fixed abode. His communal administration is highly liberal. He is active, hardworking, honest, and dignified. He has elevated sentiments of equality, honor, human dignity, and justice. He is courageous and attacks his enemy frontally. The exact opposite of the points enumerated in the summary correspond to the physiological type of the Arab.

Declaration of the Chamber of Deputies August 7th, the abolishing preamble

The chamber of deputies declares, secondly, that by the wish and interest of the French nation, the preamble of the constitutional charter is annulled, because it offends the national dignity, as it might seem by it, that rights that essentially belong to them, had only been granted to Frenchmen.

Bakunin and the difference between communism and anarchism

The communists believe it is necessary to organize the workers' forces in order to seize the political power of the State. The revolutionary socialists organize for the purpose of destroying- or, to put it more politely- liquidating the state. The communists advocate the principle and practices of authority; the revolutionary socialists put all their faith in liberty

Napoleon to Toussaint november 18 1801

The constitution you made, while including many good things, contains some that are contrary to the dignity and sovereignty of the French people, of which Saint-Dominigue forms only a portion. But today, when the circumstances have changed for the better, you should be the first to render homage to the sovereignty of the nation that counts you among its most illustrious citizens thanks to the services you have rendered it and by the talents and the force of character with which nature has graced you. A contrary conduct would be irreconcilable with the idea we have conceived of you. It would have you lose the many rights to recognition and the benefits of the republic, and would dig beneath your feet a precipice which, in swallowing you up, could contribute to the misfortune of those brave blacks whose courage we love, and whose rebellion we would, with difficulty, be obliged to be punished.

Gustave Le Bon 1895 on the study of crowd images - the idea that people behave differently in a group than as individuals

The creation of the legends which so easily obtain circulation in crowds is not solely the consequence of their extreme credulity. It is also the result of the prodigious perversions that events undergo in the imagination of a throng. The simplest event that comes under the observation of a crowd is soon totally transformed. A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first . . . A crowd scarcely distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as real the images evoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed fact.

Jules Ferry - 1882 on secularization of schooling

The greatest and most serious of social reforms and the most lasting of political reforms...when the whole of French youth has developed, grown up under this triple aegis of free, compulsory, secular education we shall have nothing more to fear from returns to the past, for we shall have the means of defending ourselves...the spirit of all these new generations, of these countless young reserves of republican democracy, trained in the school of science and reason, who will block retrograde attitudes with the insurmountable obstacle of free minds and liberated consciences.

Tocqueville on the causes of 1848 - structure and accident Tocqueville on the June Days - the barricades, and the ends of workshops 1848 revolution retrospect - tocqueville vs. marx

The industrial revolution which, during the past thirty years, had turned Paris into the principal manufacturing city of France and atrracted within its walls an entire new population of workmen... tended more and more to inflame this multitude. Add to this the democratic disease of envy which was silently permeating it; the economic and political theories which were beginning to make their way and which strove to prove that human misery was the work of laws and not of Providence, and and that poverty could be suppressed by changing the conditions of society; the contempt into which the governing class, and especially the men who led it had fallen . . .the centralization which reduced the whole revolutionary movement to the overmastering of Paris. . .; and lastly, the mobility of all things, institutions, ideas, men and customers, in a fluctuating state of society. . . ." (Recollections, 81-82) - What distinguished it also, among all the events of this kind which have succeeded one another in France for sixty years, is that it did not aim at changing the form of government, but at altering the order of society. It was not strictly speaking, a political struggle, in the sense which until then we had given to the word, but a combat of class against class, a sort of Servile War...These poor people had been told that the wealth of the rich was in some way the product of a theft practised upon themselves. They had been assured that the inequality of fortunes was as opposed to morality and the welfare of society as it was to nature. Prompted by their needs and their passions, many had believed this obscure and erroneous notion of right, which, mingled with brute force, imparted to the latter an energy, a tenacity and a power which it would never have possessed unaided. (Recollections, 187-8) - Tocqueville: "The whole time I had the feeling that we had staged a play about the French Revolution, rather than continuing it." Marx: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."

Kersaint - plan for the colonies

The moment has come to change the social system of the colonies, to reintegrate it into humankind, and in this greater view will be found the salvation of all interested parties, justice and utility, interest and glory. (113)

Preamble to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (August 26, 1789)

The representatives of the French people, constituted as a National Assembly, and considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of public misfortunes and governmental corruption, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man....."

Louis August Blanqui on property 2

The right to property has extended itself by logical deduction from the land to other instruments: the accumulated products of labor, designated by the generic name of capital. Since capital, sterile in and of itself can only fructify through labor, and , on the other hand, since it is the primary matter worked on by social forces, the majority, excluded from its possession, finds itself condemned to forced labor, to the profit of the possessing minority. Neither the instruments nor the fruits of labor belong to the workers, but to the idlers. The gluttonous branches absorb the tree's sap, to the detriment of the fertile boughs. The hornets devour the honey created by the bees.

Marx on Louis Napoleon 1948

The social revolution of the 19th century cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself, before it has stripped off all superstition in regard to the past. 439

Clausewitz 1812 (bell 241)

The war of the present time is a war of all against all. It is not the King who wars on a king, nor an army which wars on an army, but a people which wars on another, and the king and the army are contained in the people. War will only lose this character with much difficulty, and in truth, the return of that old, bloody, yet often boring chess game of soldiers fighting is not to be desired. (Bell, 241)

The Retreat from europe according to Jean Roch Coignet - war of 1812 and the attempt to invade russia

There was no longer any discipline or any human feeling for one another. Each man looked out for himself. Every sentiment of humanity was extinguished. No one would have reached out his hand to his father and that can be easily understood. For he who stooped down to help his fellow would not be able to rise again. (Jean-Roch Coignet from Bell, 260) There was no longer any discipline or any human feeling for one another. Each man looked out for himself. Every sentiment of humanity was extinguished. No one would have reached out his hand to his father and that can be easily understood. For he who stooped down to help his fellow would not be able to rise again. (Jean-Roch Coignet from Bell, 260)

Achilles heel of constitution - marx (?)

This constitution, made inviolable in so ingenious a manner, was nevertheless, like Achilles, vulnerable in one point, not in the heel, but in the head, or rather in the two heads in which it issued- the Legislative Assembly, on the one hand, the President on the other. (448)

Hegel Sights Napleon at Jena 1806

This morning I saw the Emperor [Napoleon]- this world-soul- ride through town. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.

Blanqui on the Canuts

Those poor girls of Lyons whose fairy fingers weave satin and poplin, have no chemises; the canuts who decorate with their magnificent tapestry our palaces and temples, are often without sabots. -History of political economy in Europe

Communist Manifesto - on nationalism/internationalism

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie

Dreyfus on his situation 1895 - burns 59

Until now, I worshiped reason; I believed in the logic of things and events; I believed, finally, in human justice!...Alas! how all my sound reason, all my beliefs have collapsed.

Remembering and Forgetting in the Restoration: The Charter of 1814

We are bound, by the example of the kings, our predecessors, to estimate the effects of the ever increasing progress of enlightenment, the new relations which these advances have introduced into society, the direction impressed upon opinions during the past half century, and the significant alterations which have resulted therefrom: we have recognized that the wish of our subjects for a constitutional charter was the expression of a real need..... In thus attempting to renew the chain of the times, which disastrous errors have broken, we have banished from our recollection, as we could wish it were possible to blot out from history, all the evils which have afflicted the fatherland during our absence. Happy to find ourselves once more in the bosom of our great family, we have felt that we could respond to the love of which we have received so many testimonials, only by pronouncing words of peace and consolation. The dearest wish of our heart is that all Frenchmen should live as brothers, and that no bitter recollection should ever disturb the security that must follow the solemn act which we grant them to-day.

Emile Zola - 1897

We have seen the gutter press in heat, making a profit out of sick minds, driving the public mad for the sake of selling its drivel, which ceases to find any customers the minute the nation becomes calm, healthy, and strong. The hawkers for the evening rags, especially the tabloids, lure passersby with their huge headlines promising debauchery. in 1898: But what a blot on your name...this abominable Dreyfus Affair is! A court martial, action on orders, has just dared to acquit such a man as Esterhazy. Truth itself and justice have been slapped in the face. And now it is too late, France's cheek has been sullied by that supreme insult, and History will record that it was during your Presidency that such a crime against society was committed." "I have but one goal: that light be shed, in the name of mankind which has suffered so much and has the right to happiness. My ardent protest is merely a cry from my very soul. Let them dare to summon me before a court of law! Let the inquiry be held in broad daylight. J'accuse: They talk to us about the honor of the army; they want us to love the army, respect the army. Oh yes, indeed, if you mean an army that would rise up at the very first hint of danger, that would defend French soil; that army is the French people themselves, and we have nothing but affection and respect for it. But the army that is involved here is not the dignified army that our justice calls out for. What we are faced with here is the sabre, the master that may be imposed on us tomorrow. Should we kiss the hilt of that sabre, that god, with pious devotion? No, we should not! (100)

Charter of 1814 constitutional monarchy

We have taken into consideration that, although all authority in France resides in the person of the king, our predecessors have not hesitated to alter the exercise thereof in accordance with the change of the times... We are bound, by the example of the kings, our predecessors, to estimate the effects of the ever increasing progress of enlightenment, the new relations which these advances have introduced into society, the direction impressed upon opinions during the past half century and the significant alterations which have resulted therefrom: we have recognized the wish of our subjects for a constitutional charter

Leclerc to Napoleon in 1802 - from ghachem, colonial vendee 170

We must destroy all the blacks of the mountains- men and women- and spare only children under twelve years of age. We must destroy half of those in the plains and must not leave a single colored person in the colony who has worn an epaulette.

Robespierre's declaration of the king as an enemy - December 3 1792

When a nation has been forced to resort to its right of insurrection, its relationship with the tyrant is then determined by the law of nature. By what right does the tyrant invoke the social contract? He abolished it! The nation, if it deems proper, may preserve the contract insofar as it concerns the relations between citizens. But the end result of tyranny and insurrection is to completely break all ties with the tyrant and to reestablish the state of war between the tyrant and the people. Tribunals and judiciary procedure are designed only for citizens.

Robespierre

Without, all the tyrants encircle you; within all the friends of tyranny conspire- they will conspire until crime has been robbed of hope. We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with them. In this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror. (Principles, 1794)

Olympe de Gouges post script

Women, wake up; the tocsin of reason sounds throughout the universe; recognize your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fantaticism, and lies. The torch of truth has dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation. Enslaved man has multiplied his force and needs yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust toward his companion. Oh women! Women, when will you cease to be blind? What advantages have you gathered in the revolution?