The Last Musketeer of The French Revolution - Pierre Bourdieu

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May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
Chapter 1
The Ancien Regime and the Revolution
The French Revolution transtbrmed French society and politics and threatened
the entire established order of Europe. French revolutionaries granted equal
rights to religious minorities, suppressed serfdom and the remaining feudal ob-
ligations, abolished the nobility, reorganized the Catholic Church, installed a
republican form of government, executed the king, and started a war that would
eventually engulf much of Europe, the Caribbean, and the Near East. ... By
the end of 1799 France had tried out four different constitutions at home and
imposed new constitutions on conquered territories in the Netherlands, Italy,
and Switzerland. The French aimed to revolutionize all of Europe (Censer and
Hunt 2001, p. 2).
This book argues that Pierre Bourdieu was inspired by the Revolution and its
republican virtues. However, in contrast to the bold statements above, Bourdieu
believed that the Revolution of 1789 failed; that the old structures of exploita-
tion and deceit are still in place; that the promise of the Revolution remained a
promise that is yet to be attained. Rather than being content with the achieve-
ments of the revolution, Bourdieu was constantly troubled by the new faces of
Copyright @ 2009. Lexington Books.
the ancien regime, and by the reproduction of injustice, inequality, and exploita-
tion.
This chapter briefly presents the historical context required to fully appre-
ciate this argument. It presents the social organization of the ancien regime, its
forces of stasis, and the causes of the Revolution and its aftermath. It should be
noted, though, that during recent decades historians have advanced new theories
for understanding the causes and the consequences of the Revolution (e.g., stu-
dies by Censer and Hunt 2005; Censer and Hunt 2001; Doyle 1999; Stone
2002). The interested reader should therefore consult those learned sources.
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16 Chapter 1
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
Notwithstanding those important historiographic debates, most historians do

agree on the basic features of the ancien regime and the events of the Revolu-
tion. Hence, the present review presents what is accepted by most scholars of
the French Revolution. This is also what Bourdieu assumed in criticizing the
French republic.
The Ancien Regime: Injustice, Arbitrariness, and Inequality
The ancien regime--the feudal and aristocratic order prior to 1789--was based
on a hierarchical and coercive political system (Censer and Hunt 2001; Doyle
1980; Doyle 1999; Lefebvre 1947; Lefebvre 1962; Soboul 1988; Stone 2002;
Tocqueville 1955). On the eve of the Revolution, French society consisted of
twenty-six million people, who were separated into three different estates or
social classes: The first estate prayed, the second estate fought, whilst the third
estate fmancially supported the monarchy and the other two estates. This order
of the estates was ruled by an absolutist monarchy, and it was based on extreme
forms of exploitation and inequality that everybody accepted as natural and as
"in the order of things." The French monarchy-the House of the Bourbons-
had deep roots in medieval Europe, and the social order of feudalism was wide-
ly spread across the continent. Nevertheless, the absolutism of the French mo-
narchy and the order of the nobility had peculiar French characteristics.
The first estate was comprised of the 130,000 members of the clergy-the
priests, the monks, and the nuns who together ministered the mostly Catholic
population, most of them in the agrarian provinces. Many of them illiterate
themselves, these officers of church were admired by the boorish peasants,
whose hard labor supported the financial infrastructure of the church despite
their dire straits. While there were inequalities within the first estate-some of
the clergy being poor and uneducated themselves-the church was a political
and economic empire: It controlled 10 percent of the land, and it levied its own
tax, the tithe, which amounted to 10 percent of all produce or income. In return
for these economic privileges, the church legitimized the social order. Tradi-
tionally, it supplied the monarchy with the religious justification for its political
and military control--often presenting the king as the secular agent of God on
earth-and it always enjoyed a balance of power vis-a-vis the monarchy. The
people accepted their lot even when they were destitute, because the social order
was explained by the clergy as "in the nature of things." On the eve of the Revo-
lution, however, the church lost its legitimacy, and the entire order of the estates
was reflected upon and criticized. As in previous historical eras (e.g., the Protes-
tant revolt in the sixteenth century), the economic abuses of the church were the
reason the people rose up against it. By failing to justify the social order, the
church slowly lost its grip on people's hearts and minds.
While the frrst estate provided the monarchy with religious justification, the
second estate--the nobility-provided it with military protection. Formed during

The Ancien Regime and the Revolution 17
the middle ages, the nobility was assigned to protect the king and to serve as his
state officials. First, the noblesse depee-the noblemen of the sword, the most
admired traditional nobility-were in charge of most military functions. All
commanders and platoon leaders were of aristocratic origin, and those ranks
were only accessible for people in noble-blood lineages. Second, the noblesse de
robe-the noblemen of the robe, the lawyers and judges who made up the more
recent form of nobility that was also more socially open (and thus despised by
their predecessors}-held most civil offices. Both parts of the nobility-together
constituting only 1 percent of the population-enjoyed legal privileges and were
accustomed to a life of luxurious leisure in the court society for decades.
Membership in the nobility was based on hereditary family lines. The title
of the nobility was inherited from father to son through strict primogeniture in-
heritance rules. The nobles were forbidden from working and were exempt from
taxation, and generally enjoyed institutionalized privileges, which at that time
legally meant "distinctions, whether useful or honorific, which are enjoyed by
certain numbers of society and denied to others" (quoted in Behrens 1967, p.
46). Important offices-those of judges, lawyers, and political advisers-were
bought by the rising nobility of the robe for significant amounts of money, ir-
respective of talent or prior attainments. In some cases, rich aspiring members
of the third estate could also buy offices and the title of the nobility, thus giving
the crown a higher income and more control. However, these self-elected offic-
ers had unbound authority over the laity-and they used it arbitrarily and for
their private and particularistic interests. Membership in the nobility was exclu-
sive: Only those of noble lineage could serve in top military ranks, and the aris-
tocrats were also the only ones who were able to house and consume art and
enjoy the fruits of science. It was a privileged society, exempt from securing its
own income yet enjoying the most lavish products of the ancien regime.
The third estate-those who worked to support the first and second estates
as well as the monarchy-consisted of the twenty-five million people who
lacked political rights or representation. It consisted of a diverse crowd: 80 per-
cent were peasants in the provinces, 5 percent were small craft industrialists and
the newly rising educated bourgeoisie, and the remainder consisted of lower-
class city dwellers. Most members of the third estate were poor and boorish, but
others were rich and well-educated. Notwithstanding their social and economic
differences, all members of the third estate lacked political representation, and
their claims could not be heard by the king. Through non-egalitarian taxation
procedures, the members of the third estate financially supported the lavish
courts of the monarchy and the nobility, and also paid the undeserved income of
the clergy. Its efforts were thus exploited without fraternal shouldering by the
other estates. Indeed, the third estate was the only productive element in society,
and it was the only un-represented tax-paying constituent. Furthermore, the fam-
ilies of the third estate supplied the soldiers for battles over France's fame and
for colonial expansion, but they could never voice an opinion on whether to
wage war and for what purpose. While supplying the infrastructure that sup-

18 Chapter I
ported the monarchy and the entire order of the estates, the members of the third
estate acquiesced with their lot even under extreme levels of exploitation and
humiliation.
This order of the estates was backed by a corresponding feudal economic
division of labor. The small minority of aristocratic land owners subjugated the
landless peasants, who had to pay them with capriciously determined taxes to
use the land. The peasants were often forced to pay their landlords for the use of
mills in order to get flour to feed their families. Although the subordinated far-
mers depended on the fields for their livelihood-and for paying their nobles,
the church, and the monarchy their due taxes-the landowners often stormed the
fields in their leisurely pursuit of game, thereby ruining produce or killing farm
animals. In times of conflict, the peasants were forcefully drafted to their mas-
ters' battalions, but in days of drought they could be left starving.
By any measure, then, the ancien regime was an exploitative social order.
The impoverished many supported a lazy and mostly uneducated nobility, and
the poor carried the unjust burdens of the indifferent privileged. It was, indeed,
an arbitrary and unjust division of labor, one that stretched the absence of fra-
ternity and solidarity to an unbearable limit.
The Roar: Taxation, Poverty, and Enlightenment

The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His vinues are
the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imper-
ceptibly into the habit ofloving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever
that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid (Diderot 2009).
By the end of the eighteenth century, the ancien regime began to disintegrate.
The unwavering support of Louis XVI in the American revolt against the British
crown necessitated ever more financial resources. The protracted and distanced
war effort culminated in a growing national debt, which resulted in the imposi-
tion of new ad hoc taxation. These unequal taxes became unbearable for many.
Consequently, the peasants and the poor felt ever more exploited by both church
and the nobility, and signs of discontent against the monarchy were becoming
popular. As Beaumarchais wrote in The Marriage of Figaro (1784), "Nobility,
wealth, rank, position ... they all make you feel so proud! What have you done to
deserve so much? You went to the trouble of being born-nothing more"

(quoted in Censer and Hunt 2001, p. 5).
Indeed, uneven and non-justified measures of taxation bred frustration and
even hatred, because they were unevenly and violently collected. For example,
"The principal direct tax, the Taille, [...] fell only on the peasants, [and it] was
imposed as a lump sum on the provinces (apart from certain provinces with spe-
cial privileges), and was then divided up among the parishes where the respon-
sibility for paying it was collective" (p. 32 in Beherens 1967). Added to this was

the corvee des routes, the obligation of the peasants to work on road mainten-
ance without pay, and other arbitrary impositions regarding communal forests,
communal pasturelands, and help in leisure hunting (see Censer and Hunt 2001,
pp. 24-25). The Salt Tax, also imposed on the peasants only, greatly infuriated
the impoverished people. As one peasant wrote to his governor, after detailing a
long list of arbitrary taxes, "Indeed, the most savage and barbarian peoples have
never invented so many ways of blackmail and extortion as our tyrants heaped
on our forefathers' heads" (Quoted in Walter Grub 1979, p. 23). Furthermore,
the administration of tax collection motivated the rich peasants to move to the
city, paring down the potential of agrarian provinces to develop capital and con-
tribute to collective securities. The weight of taxes and the unjust procedures of
tax collection reached a boiling point. In assessing this precarious situation, one
enlightened finance minister, Calonne, argued in 1787 that tax collection in
France is indeed counterproductive and unjust:
These are the abuses, the existence of which weighs heaviest upon the useful
and laborious classes: the abuses of pecuniary privileges; the exceptions to the
common law, and so many unjust exemptions, which relieve one part of those
who should contribute, and aggravate the burdens of the other; the general in-
equality in apportioning the subsidies and the enormous disproportion which
exists in the contributions of the different provinces (quoted in Beherns 1967,
pp. 167-68).
Soon after his speech-having proposed a reform of taxation policies which

suited his views on the undesirability of non-egalitarianism-Calonne was dis-
missed by Louis XVI, who still abided by the demands of the aristocracy and
the clergy. Given these early criticisms, however, it is indeed surprising to see
the extent to which a different order was still inconceivable. The principle of
"no taxation without participation" was yet un-thought of. In 1787-1788 people
grumbled, but they did not take action; they were sure that something was
wrong with the current order, but they still struggled to envision a different re-
gime in place of the old. Notwithstanding the peasant revolt and the grudges of
the bourgeoisie, change was slow to come. It was slow because the unjust and
arbitrary order of the ancien regime was perceived by all parties as legitimate. It
was, indeed, a doxic social order: Few doubted the monarchy, few doubted the
church. Exclusionary inheritance practices were accepted as natural, and the
nobility of the sword was unreservedly esteemed. People still believed in "blue
blood" and in the natural superiority of traditional noble families. The ideologi-
cal and religious justifications of the ancien regime joined the inculcated sub-
missive habitus of the peasants-producing stasis whilst allowing the regime to
reproduce itself with little change.
The immediate cause of the rise of popular unrest was htmger and a short-
age of flour. Most people in the third estate were poor and uneducated. Lacking
social securities that could hold back the negative consequences of catastrophic
weather, illness, or war, many people were destitute, living from hand to mouth.

20 Chapter I
As migration from country to city increased, homelessness and vagrancy turned

into real social ills. The bourgeoisie did not identify with the lot of the pea-
sants-though its members were equal in terms of political rights-and during
the early stages of the Revolution the interests of the poor were not represented
or cared for. However, catastrophic weather had shrunk agricultural produce in
the previous year, leading to hunger, illness, and death amongst the poorest-
both in the cities and in the countryside (Stone 2002). Crops were not enough to
support the people, while unemployment hit them everywhere. As their condi-
tions worsened in 1789, the peasants decided that violent resistance was un-
avoidable. The undeserved income of the nobility and their arbitrary rule slowly
accumulated to create revolutionary energies. Restlessness spread. Hunger riots
took place in different parts of the country, and local attacks on churches and
palaces began to take place-producing "the great fear." The aim of the peasant
rebellion was to take down the regime of noble privileges; to bring the nobility
and the church into the collective circle of tax collection. However, during
1789-even in the heyday of violence and rebellion-the monarchy was still left
intact. Actually, the rebels did not aim to abolish it; rather, they wanted to ab-
olish aristocratic privileges and set common grounds for social and political
participation; they still wanted a good king to protect the people from the arbi-
trary and unjust aristocratic estate.
Accumulating frustrations set the stage for change then. Material predica-
ments had to find new narratives for self-reflection; and suffering had to be ex-
plained in order to motivate people to take action. The narratives and ideas that
were to direct the Revolution and the new republic were slowly developed by
the philosophers of the Enlightenment-during the Siecle des Lumieres-who
put words to the suffering of the people while expounding alternative political
visions. In 1750, for example, Denis Diderot set up a framework to collect and
spread knowledge in what is known as the Encyclopedie. Diderot wanted to give
everybody the possibility to acquire knowledge-"the power to change men's
common way of thinking"-assuming, indeed, that knowledge provides people
with the power to obtain the good, or to better themselves and society. Although
the monarchy objected this enlightened project, Diderot and d' Alembert ma-
naged to arrange a group of authors to review and explain human knowledge to
as wide an audience as possible. This intellectual effort-one in a series of ref-
lexive critiques of the ancien regime-slowly gained momentum and popula-
rized science as a force in the democratization of the social order. Knowledge
and power were equated, and knowledge was used in order to transform the
bases of power in the ancien regime.
At the same time that Diderot and d' Alembert engaged with the encyclope-
die, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau supplied the philosophical platform
for reforming the ancien regime. Substituting Reason for God as the primal ba-
sis for justification, they argued that the principles which should govern deci-
sions about the good society should be rational. Therefore, they sought to under-
stand extant social inequalities through a reasoned discourse; they wanted to

examine the ancien regime through the new secular yardsticks of scientific ra-
tionalism. The philosophical results of those deliberations set new ideas in mo-
tion: that humans are equal by natural right; that the undeserved privileges of the
nobility betray those universal rights; that social class inequalities are unmerito-
cratic and undeserved; and that the people are the source of all sovereignty
(Tocqueville 1955). Because of the subversive nature of their books, the authors
were often banned and a few were even exiled. Their ideas, however, gained
popularity as the eighteenth century came to its close.
The philosophical and political writings of these authors constituted the
fundamental principles of the Enlightenment. The first principle was that social
orders are man-made and obey earthly laws. The philosophers argued that God
did not ordain France to be a monarchy, intimating that the people are responsi-
ble for choosing the right political order. The second principle depicted the cur-
rent political and economic order as arbitrary and dictatorial; it argued that it is
unfit for the French people because it negates universal human rights. The third
principle claimed that human rights are universal and natural, and that they con-
stitute basic, equal entitlements for all. Through their philosophical treatises,
these scholars raised concerns over the lack of political rights in France, and
they propagated comparative cases-from democratic Greece to the new Repub-
lic of America-and stirred the rising bourgeoisie to take action towards their
emancipation. Slowly their ideas became the new parlance, the language of poli-
ticians and rebels. As Jean-Paul Rabaut said in 1787, "The time has come when
it is no longer acceptable for a law to overtly overrule the rights of humanity
that are very well known all over the world" (quoted in Censor & Hunt 2001, p.
14).
The Rise and Fall of the Revolution
The French Revolution has often been pinned to July 14, 1789, the day that the
people took down the Bastille. However, George Lefebvre suggested many
years ago that in fact, the French Revolution began a year prior to the Parisian
Revolution and continued well after it subsided (Lefebvre 1947; Lefebvre
1962). Actually, he suggested that the cataclysmic events that led to the destruc-
tion of ancien regime did not start as a well-planned program to overhaul the
French political and social order. Things happened sequentially, he argued, each
stage re-charting the face of the Revolution and its destiny. Lefebvre suggested
that there were four revolutions in what we call the French Revolution, each led
by a different actor, each with different interests.
The first act of the Revolution, in 1788, consisted in a triumph of the aristocra-
cy.... But, after having paralyzed the royal power which upheld its own social
prominence, the aristocracy opened the way to the bourgeois revolution, then
to the popular revolution in the cities, and tinally to the revolution of the pea-

22 Chapter I
sants-and found itself buried under the ruins of the Old Regime (Lefebvre,
1947, p. 3).
In a classical historical paradox-which sociologists are fond of calling the

unintended consequences of action-the aristocracy set off a trajectory that re-
sulted in its liquidation. Calonne, the finance minister who criticized uneven
taxation, suggested in 1788 that the ancien regime be transformed without
changing the order of the estates. Given the economic debts of the monarchy, he
thought that there was no alternative but to expand the tax base and to include
the first and the second estates-until then exempt from most taxes-into the
circle of tax-paying agents. He suggested a new policy that required that the
nobility and the clergy let go of some of their privileges and take a more equal
role in supporting the economic needs of the country. While his proposal re-
flected an egalitarian approach, it was still modest and pragmatic: He sought to
raise more money to support the monarchy without altering the basic structure
of the ancien regime. In response to this challenge against their privileges, how-
ever, the aristocracy pressured Louis XVI to reject the new reform. In response,
the weak king-still seeking to maintain the social order-dismissed Calonne.
Calonne was replaced by Brienne, who soon found himself in a similar
economic deadlock. He too suggested raising some taxes from the aristocracy-
though he also promised to retain the three orders. However, within a year the
treasury was empty. Brienne resigned office, and the king called on Necker to
plan the economic recovery of the monarchy. Amid this national crisis, the king
also agreed to call for a National Assembly with all three estates present (the
prior meeting was in 1614). In what Lefebvre called the Aristocratic Revolution,
the nobility and the clergy forced the king to be master of the assembly, keeping
their superiority over the third estate but also taking control over decisions from
the absolutist monarchy. Paradoxically, this aristocratic revolution against the
monarchy produced the grounds for the bourgeois revolution against the aristo-
cracy.
The National Assembly was to meet on May I, 1789. Necker-having ap-
preciated, like Calonne and Brienne, that the tax base must be expanded--
attempted to reshuffle the power structure underlying the National Assembly.
He expected the meeting to abolish fiscal privileges, and made political efforts
to advance this agenda. Specifically, he wanted to double the voting power of
the third estate, and convinced Louis XVI to do so. To support this move, he
invited writers to propose ways to organize the National Assembly. Though the
nobility protested--motivating a series of clashes across class boundaries in
different parts of France-the bourgeois insisted on getting their voice heard,
leading to a series of delegitimizing moves which slowly reshuffled the bases of
power in the Assembly. The best known attack on the first and second estates
was voiced by Abbe Sieyes, who took on Necker's challenge and wrote a most
critical essay against the privileged orders. It constituted one of the most origi-
nal republican texts and ended up in the marriage of nation and state.

What is a nation? A body of associates, living under a common law, and

represented by the same legislature, etc.
Is it not evident that the noble order has privileges and expenditures which it
dares to call its rights, but which are apart from the rights of the great body of
citizens? It departs there from the common law. So its civil rights make of it an
isolated people in the midst of the great nation. This is truly imperium in impe·
ria. In regard to its political rights, these also it exercises apart. It has its special
representatives, which are not charged with securing the interests of the people.
The body of its deputies sit apart; and when it is assembled in the same hall
with the deputies of simple citizens, it is none the less true that its representa·
tion is essentially distinct and separate: it is a stranger to the nation, in the first
place, by its origin, since its commission is not derived from the people; then
by its object, which consists of defending not the general, but the particular in·
terest. The Third Estate embraces then all that which belongs to the nation; and
all that which is not the Third Estate, cannot be regarded as being of the nation.
What is the Third Estate? It is the whole (Sieyes 2008).
The National Assembly was thus set as the major political event that would
decide the fate of the ancien regime. Consequently, the technical procedures of
voting in the Assembly were of paramount importance. The first and second
estates insisted on vote by estate-guaranteeing an outcome of two against one.
However, Necker and the bourgeoisie insisted on the egalitarian principle of
vote by head. Given the doubling of the representatives of the third estate, vot·
ing by heads could mean that the Assembly would become democratic, and that
such a structure would naturally lead to the abolition of fiscal privileges and the
universalization of access to public office. In response, the aristocrats and the
clergy fought to cancel the king's decision, and even succeeded in forcing him
to dismiss Necker and expel him from France. At this point, however, the mem-
bers of the third estate resisted. They declared that all three estates should be
combined into one, and that only the members of this unified and universal poli-
ty of commons would enjoy voting power. When the king ordained this request
null, the representatives of the third estate retorted by rejecting the legitimacy of
this political move, declaring themselves the true representative of the people
and the nation. Through these legal and political moves, the third estate won out
against the privileged orders. The bourgeois revolution was almost complete.
Louis XVI was not content with that outcome, however. On July 11, when
Lafayette submitted his proposal for a declaration of human rights, Necker was
exiled. Meanwhile, the king sent armed forces to Paris in order to null the Na-
tional Assembly, but this move aroused fear amongst the proletarians of Paris.
As rumors about the dismissal of Necker spread, the people sensed that an aris-
tocratic conspiracy was being waged against them. Soon demonstrations spread,
and in a few places soldiers were aiming at citizens and shooting into the
crowds. In response, barricades were set and civil militias began to organize.
Fearing invasion from the outside, on July 14 the Parisians broke into the Inva-
lides, taking 32,000 rifles and a few canons. They marched to the Bastille-the

24 Chapter l
prime symbol of violence against the people-and circled it. Shots were fired at
the crowd by the guards. Soon, however, the doors to the Bastille were shot
down by the canons and the people invaded the jail. The commander was ex-
ecuted and his head was marched through the streets of Paris. Though the Bas-
tille was not an important post, its seizure broke Louis XVI. On July 15 he
yielded to the National Assembly, which was now under the control of the un-
iversalized third estate.
From July 20 until August 6, a "great fear" swept over the French provinc-
es. Agrarian revolts-often motivated by hunger and dispossession-spread as
fear of an aristocratic plot became ever more heartfelt. In many places, vaga-
bonds and the unemployed robbed the privileged, and several chateaux were set
on fire. The aristocrats-engaging in counter-revolutionary tactics-blamed the
bourgeois for spreading the "great fear," but to no avail. After two weeks of
mayhem in the provinces, the ancien regime was finally defeated. The provinces
supported the Parisian revolt, and the republican revolutionaries were finally
making progress in writing down the new French Constitution. On August 4, the
National Assembly "Enthusiastically adopted equality of taxation and redemp-
tion of all manorial rights .... Other proposals followed with the same success:
equality of legal punishment, admission of all to public office, abolition of ve-
nality in office, conversion of the tithe into payments subject to redemption,
freedom of worship, prohibition of plural holding of benefits, suppression of
annates" (Lefebvre 1968, p. 36). Debates continued for two more weeks, but
then, on August 26, it was all over: "Proclaiming liberty, equality, and national
sovereignty, the text was in effect the 'act of decease' of the Old Regime, which
had been put to death by the popular revolution" (Ibid., p. 36). The text was the
famous Declaration ofthe Rights ofMan and the Citizen.
In the years which followed, the convention acted on its egalitarian ideals,
forming the basis of what would later be known as the welfare state. This orien-
tation toward a "social state" was evident through several policies. One such
policy was the decision to abolish slavery in the colonies; another was the insti-
tution of progressive taxation. In 1793-1794 the Convention also enacted public
assistance entitlements and guaranteed state pensions for the aged and for indi-
gent farm workers, artisans, and rural widows. Through these decisions the
Convention formed a social net that was to support the poor and protect those in
need or in dire straits.
Terror and the Counter-Revolution
Notwithstanding the early successes of the revolutionaries, the continuing war

effort challenged their ability to control the state. A universal order of conscrip-
tion (for able men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five) faced resis-
tance and gave rise to insurgency and civil war. In response, the leaders of the
revolution-prominently led by Robespierre-formed The Committee of Public

Safety. This committee issued emergency decrees and devised a new strategy:
virtue for those supporting the Revolution, terror against those who resist it. The
government of terror redefined treason and engaged in mass executions by the
guillotine. It fought against the church--de-Christianization effecting exile or
the execution of many of the clergy-and even proposed a new civil religion,
namely the Cult of the Supreme Being. Emergency measures allowed the gov-
ernment to liquidate political dissidents, from both the right and the left wing.
Major figures of the Revolutionary era were guillotined, prominently Louis XVI
and his wife, Marie Antoinette, but the march of victims also swept with it revo-
lutionary spirits like Marat, Olympe de Gouges, and eventually Robespierre
himself.
The extreme measures of the terror initiated acts of rebellion and produced
counter-revolutionary efforts. The peasants were mainly outraged by the policy
to de-Christianize France and by the universal draft to the army. Motivated by
traditional and religious inclinations, they protected the clergy wherever they
could-celebrating religious events during the nighttime, for example-and
formed local groups that fought the Jacobin effort to centralize governance all
through France. These counter-revolutionary acts were supported by the nobili-
ty-now in exile outside the borders of France-and by the British government.
Notwithstanding the counter-revolutionary moves and the civil war, by 1795 the
government succeeded to win the war outside the borders and stabilize its con-
trol within them. As Censer and Hunt conclude,
Although the Terror had ended, the Revolution had not. Between 1789 and
1799 France underwent monumental changes. Monarchy as a tbrm of govern-
ment gave way to a republic whose leaders were elected. Aristocracy based on
rank and birth gave way to civil equality and the promotion of merit. Although
successive governments learned how to control popular activism, elections
continued to provide regular occasions for political education and mobilization
in clubs and proto-parties (Censer and Hunt 2001, p. 105).
Napoleon, Institution Building, and the Return of the Nobles
Under the ancien regime, the entire state administration was controlled by the
nobility. For example, all state or administrative institutions were manned by the
aristocratic nobles of the robe, and so were the parliaments and the courts.
Therefore, the Revolution tore down the prior state administration, but in so
doing it depleted the French capacity to administer a state. Indeed, during the
years after 1789 the revolutionaries exiled one hundred and fifty thousand of the
richest and most educated of the French nobility to foreign lands. Consequently,
the new state was left with few trained or skilled bureaucrats who could reform
and construct a new social and legal order. The incapacitated state was extreme-

26 Chapter l
ly unstable, allowing Napoleon-a young, successful, and charismatic military

commander-to take control of the state and further extend its power.
However, when Napoleon came to power in 1799, he understood that a
roaring aristocracy outside the French borders might pose dangers for his new
regime. Consequently, he engaged in politically shrewd moves that aimed to
transform the exiles from his enemies into his friends. Forcing his decision
against the wishes of the revolutionaries-who benefited from the disappearance
of the nobility-he decided to restore the nobility, namely to allow it to return
unharmed to France. Moreover, he allowed many of the noble exiles to return to
state service, and for most aristocratic families to regain their lands. Though a
meritocratic public system was now put in place, noble families were enabled to
restore their prestige and economic abundance, and many have indeed re-
entered into central governance centers.
Actually, Napoleon deviated from the republican path in two major re-
spects. The first was the re-instatement of hereditary principles into the running
of the new empire. Following his conquests in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, he
nominated his family members as kings and attempted to advance a unified Eu-
rope run by the Bonaparte family. The second deviation was the re-instatement
of aristocratic principles-forming a new elite (through the Legion of Honor)
which-though based on merit-supplied people with significant entitlements.
This move was accompanied by the revival of noble titles. In 1808, "He intro-
duced a complete hierarchy of noble titles, ranging from princes down to barons
and chevaliers. Titles could be inherited but had to be supported by wealth-a
man could not be a duke without a fortune of 200,000 francs, or a chevalier
without 3,000 francs" (Censer and Hunt 2001, p. 146).
This move toward "restoration" allowed fragments of the ancien regime to
resurface in France: in its governing bodies, in its banks, in its universities. It
brought back, as Callone said, "the ancient prejudices which antiquity seems to
have given a sanction to," namely "/'empire de l'habitude''-the dominance of
custom (quoted in Behrens 1967, p. 172). The restoration of hereditary prin-
ciples and the nobility may have also restored refmed cultural tastes and distinc-
tions, which allowed it to reconstitute its inherent aristocratic tendencies even
amidst national museums and public cultural centers. In this sense, counter-
revolutionary moves and Napoleon's strategic plans brought the ancien regime
to life; they infused it with new energies that-with concealment and subtlety-
allowed it to reproduce itself, namely to reinstate its order of the estates while
still presenting itself as a revolutionary, egalitarian, and republican order. The

revolution was thus betrayed, its institutions embodying the marrow of the an-
cien regime. After Napoleon's defeat in Waterloo, the allied countries re-
instated the French monarchy. The vision of liberte, egalite, and fraternite had
to wait for many years. Viewed from Bourdieu's perspective, it is still being
awaited.

Conclusion: The Frustration of the Revolution
No nation had ever before embarked on so resolute an attempt as that of the

French in 1789 to break with the past, to make, as it were, a scission in their
life line and to create an unbridgeable gulf between all they had hitherto been
and all they now aspired to be. With this in mind they took a host of precau-
tions so as to make sure of importing nothing from the past into the new re-
gime, and saddled themselves with all sorts of restrictions in order to differen-
tiate themselves in every possible way from the previous generation; in a word,
they spared no pains in their endeavor to obliterate their tbrmer selves (Toc-
queville 1955, p. vii).
Did they succeed, though? Was there an "unbridgeable gulf' separating the an-
cien regime from modem France? Had the French obliterated "their former
selves" and produced true republican spirits? Tocqueville was not sure that they
had, and as this book shows in great detail-Bourdieu was sure that they had
not. In study after study, he has exposed the persistence of the ancien regime;
and in domain after domain he found the old selves, the old habitus of the nobil-
ity and the peasants, still in place. Unlike Tocqueville, though, Bourdieu was a
firm believer in the Revolution, and he was constantly frustrated by the betrayal
of the French republican government. He embraced the republican virtues and
values of 1789, exposed their negation, and structured a program of study which
helped him to re-chart strategic moves-revolutionary or reformatory-that
would finally allow the unbridgeable gulf between the ancien regime and a true
rational and just order to be cut open.
Like the Lumieres of the eighteenth century, Bourdieu believed that know-
ledge is power, and that knowledge should be democratized in order to evade
the grip of power against the people. In that sense, his studies furthered the tra-
dition of the enlightenment, but they provided it with an important corrective.
Knowledge, he argued, is not only cognitive; it is embodied, it is entrenched in
the depth of the psyche, and it is mostly non-conscious. Consequently, the sim-
ple spread of knowledge across social class boundaries is not enough to trans-
form the social order. The bastions of the ancien regime are still resistant be-
cause people still carry past knowledge and prior aspirations in their bodies;
they actively resist the revolution because they act on pre-reflexive, pre-
cognitive assumptions that defeat their own interests. It is thus time to revolu-
tionize the habitus, said Bourdieu; it is necessary to deconstruct and reform the
bodily hexis ofthe French people-that ofthe rich, that of the poor, that of the
noble, that of the commoner.
As will become clear in the ensuing chapters, Bourdieu was relentless in
exposing this betrayal. An ardent advocate of revolutionary republican ideals, he
insisted that the ancien regime is still disguising and reproducing itself. When
equality was preached, he exposed the promotion of aristocratic distinctions;
when the government advocated a meritocratic policy, he rendered clear its ex-
clusionary practices; when liberty was heralded, he claimed that censorship is

28 Chapter I
all around. In that sense, indeed, Bourdieu exposed the structural affmity be-
tween the ancien regime and modem France. But like many enlightened Fren-
chman before him, he attempted to support ''true France," the ideal society that
the Lumieres charted during the end of the eighteenth century.
Though the Revolution failed in 1789--and again in 1830, 1848, 1870, and
1968-Bourdieu believed that the republican revolution is just around history's
comer. He kept the tradition of the Enlightenment alive, and he re-armed its
intellectual tools. He was collecting and analyzing data, writing books, and
prodding people to act-all in order to fight for the Revolution and to defend its
values. Child of the Revolution and its last musketeer, he was its ardent defend-
er. The following chapters show how.

Side Note 2
Joan of Arc and True France
Joan of Arc (1412-1431) constitutes one of the major symbols of French natio-
nalism. She is commonly thought of as having expressed ''the true France," and
her actions are portrayed as reflecting the spirit of emancipation and equality.
Her perseverance in the face of threat and treachery predates the French belief in
the capacity of men and women to change the social order. In that sense, indeed,
Joan of Arc provides the primal core of the political habitus of French activists;
she is the inspiration for critique, and she is a model for leading reform or revo-
lution. Emile Zola suggested long ago that French republican orientations can be
retraced back to Joan of Arc. It is no surprise, then, that one can retrace the
Bourdiesian habitus to its origins in the primal core of Joan of Arc's outstanding
feats of national resistance.
The fifteenth century found France at a low tide: England occupied the
country, and the English monarchy dictated all aspects of French life-social,
economic, and political. Though not fully or immediately successful, Joan of
Arc-a poor girl of humble origins in the village of Domremy-re-charted the
destiny of history. She was a visionary, hearing voices and believing that she
was God's messenger for the French king and the French people. At the early
age of twelve she heard voices telling her to save France from the English grip
and to help the young king, Charles VII, to rise to the throne. By the young age
of nineteen-the year of her death-after serial defeats of French cities, she led
the French resistance forces into battle against the British occupying power, and
in a combination of wit and luck she succeeded to drive it back and to coronate
the French king at Reims. Her leadership of the army-traditionally led by
nobles with little identification of the peasants-succeeded largely because she
managed to unify all the people behind her. Instead of standing for the mo-
narch-she stood for France. Instead of serving the nobility-she served the
people. She thus expressed French nationalism and minted it as a core value of
French brotherhood (heralding the revolutionary calls for national fraternity, or
the Musketeers' famous call "one for all and all for one," or yet the emphasis on
solidarity in French social theory). As historian Stephen Richey said, "she
turned what had been a dry dynastic squabble that left the common people un-
moved except for their own suffering into a passionately popular war of national
liberation" (Richey 2000).

30 Chapter I
The English retracted immediately, captured "the Maid of Orleans," and

engaged in a false trial that ended in her burning on the stake. At that time fami-
lies could pay ransom and release prisoners of war, but her family was too poor
and the king too indifferent-allowing the cardinal of Winchester to falsely ac-
cuse her of heresy and to swiftly execute her. Twenty-four years later the Pope
allowed a retrial and Joan of Arc was posthumously acquitted and religiously
rehabilitated. In the twentieth century she was beatified and canonized, becom-
ing known as Saint Joan of Arc.
Notwithstanding her tragic death-or maybe largely because she was will-
ing to risk death to liberate France from the British occupation-the French cel-
ebrate her heroic and patriotic actions until today. She traditionally became the
representative of "true France." In keeping with that tradition, Pierre Bourdieu
wanted to liberate France and to unify all the citizens around common fraternal
values. Like Joan of Arc, he was thinking across social class boundaries, and
like her he deemed liberty from occupation as a core political value. For Joan of
Arc, liberty meant repelling the British occupation; for Bourdieu it meant the
final destruction of internal occupation, namely that of the nobility over the
common people. In that sense, the scientific and political projects that Bourdieu
engaged in throughout his life reproduced the Arcian political habitus; it gave
new expression to an ancient constituting narrative that is uniquely French.


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The Ancien Regime and the Revolution

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Notwithstanding those important historiographic debates, most historians do

The Ancien Regime: Injustice, Arbitrariness, and Inequality

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The Roar: Taxation, Poverty, and Enlightenment

deserve so much? You went to the trouble of being born-nothing more"

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Soon after his speech-having proposed a reform of taxation policies which

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As migration from country to city increased, homelessness and vagrancy turned

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The Rise and Fall of the Revolution

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In a classical historical paradox-which sociologists are fond of calling the

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What is a nation? A body of associates, living under a common law, and

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Terror and the Counter-Revolution

Notwithstanding the early successes of the revolutionaries, the continuing war

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Napoleon, Institution Building, and the Return of the Nobles

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ly unstable, allowing Napoleon-a young, successful, and charismatic military

still presenting itself as a revolutionary, egalitarian, and republican order. The

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Conclusion: The Frustration of the Revolution

No nation had ever before embarked on so resolute an attempt as that of the

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EBSCO : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/5/2018 2:59 PM via DUOCUC

Joan of Arc and True France

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The English retracted immediately, captured "the Maid of Orleans," and

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