Bourgeois revolution: the genesis of a concept

By Bertel Nygaard, University of Aarhus (bertel.nygaard@hum.au.dk)

Historical Materialism Conference, London, December 8-10, 2006

Abstract

The concept ‘bourgeois revolution’ developed through a

particular synthesis of three world views, each with its own
period of dominance in Western thought. In the enlightenment
views of civilization history developing in Scotland and France
from the 1740’s till about 1800, materialist notions of historical
progress were developed focussing on social structure and the
main conditions of social development. Important notions of
agency, including social classes as historical agents, and of
revolutions as specific leaps in the developmental process, were
developed with the onset of romantic re-appropriations of
enlightenment theses in the aftermath of the French Revolution.
Finally, the development of modern socialist critiques of
capitalism contributed an orientation towards a future socialist
revolution necessary to construct ‘bourgeois revolution’ as a
specific category of historical analysis. This paper proposes to
expand upon these phases in more conceptual and historical
detail.

***

1
The concept ‘bourgeois revolution’ has been a main theme of several important
debates among historians and social theorists.1 Its conventional meaning can be
summed up loosely as implying a capitalist bourgeoisie conquering the old feudal
state for its own new social purposes. This comprises assumptions about macro-
historical development, social structure and social agency: The specific
revolutionary moment is seen as a crucial point, a necessary form of change,
within a long-term process of transition from one long-dominant social type,
feudalism, to another, capitalism. The main driving powers in this transition are
socio-economic needs and interests, crystallized on a concrete level in the notion
of classes in reciprocal conflict. And the main object of the revolutionary is the
state, conceived as a political apparatus or form of power functionally related in
one way or the other to the basic socio-economic interests, or to the general
interests of the ruling class.

During most of the 20th century this concept was central to interpretations of the
developmental processes of the modern bourgeois, or capitalist, society.2 Since
the 1960’s many specialist historians have tended towards a negative verdict on
its validity, especially in the wake of ‘revisionist’ critiques of the traditional
social interpretations of the French and English revolutions.3 Yet, the meanings,
implications and validity of this concept are still being discussed among
historical sociologists, particularly Marxists.4 Though it would surely be
overhasty to judge the theoretical success and prospects of Marxism as a general
theory of history by the success or failure of the concept ‘bourgeois revolution’,
discussions about the one has invariably held implications for the other, thus
tying the two to each other with the power of effective history, even if not with
the power of theory or logic.

As a contribution to this long-standing debate, this paper proposes to focus on the

genesis of the concept ‘bourgeois revolution’ as a network of concepts
concerning social structure and development.5 Through this particular
perspective, we may reconsider also the historical roots of Marxist thought, and

2
thus indirectly confront questions of its specificity and its relation to other
currents of thought. Also, one may view mode of enquiry as a way of considering
one aspect of this question often somewhat denigrated by recent revisionists and
historical sociologists, namely, to what extent were the classic bourgeois
revolutions likely to be conceived as ‘bourgeois’ in the terms of their own
epoch.6

The main proposal in the following is that the concept ‘bourgeois revolution’
developed gradually during the nineteenth century by way of a synthesis of three
distinct world views, each with its own specific historical period of appearance
and dominance. The first world view is enlightenment notions of the history of
civilization dominant in European thought during the latter half of the eighteenth
century, developing theories of long-term historical evolution through distinct
stages of social development. The second one is the moment of romanticism
gaining dominance after the French revolution. This highlighted notions of
human agency and rupture and thus concepts of class as a historical agent and
revolution as a specific mode of change, within the long-term evolution of
civilization. And finally the socialist critiques of capitalism gaining strength from
the 1820’s onwards and culminating in Marxist theories of historical
development, synthesizing the prior elements within an enlarged temporal
framework, oriented towards a radically different future beyond the capitalist
stage of development. Only within the perspective of a future socialist revolution
did the earlier large-scale revolutionary events achieve their significance as
bourgeois revolutions, at the same time typologically similar precedents of future
socialist revolutions and typologically different, though necessary, aspects of the
prehistory of future socialist revolutions.

So the first main contribution occurred within the world view of enlightenment,
particularly the historical theories of civil society in Scottish and French

3
Enlightenment figures writing mostly from the 1740’s till the 1790’s: Adam
Smith, John Millar, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot and others. Here notions were
developed of historical progress through distinct stages of social development
towards modern civil society, the stages defined by specific ‘modes of
subsistence’, that is, socio-economic modes of production and reproduction. This
innovative notion of ‘civil’ society is defined and demarcated both structurally
and historically.7

In a structural sense it is conceived as a specifically social sphere, opposite to the

political state. This is different from what can be found in earlier theories such as
those of Hobbes or Locke, to whom ‘civil society’ and ‘political society’
designated the same thing.8 Also, in this view, the state is essentially an
instrument for the preservation of the existing social order, to the benefit of the
ruling social strata and the protection of the propertied against the poor.

Historically, civil society is viewed here as a distinct historical stage comprising

both commercial development and cultural refinement, hence the close semantic
relations between civil society, civilized society and commercial society in the
writings of Smith.

In David Hume’s and particularly John Millar’s analyses of the English Civil
War, both from the latter half of the eighteenth century, such notions of macro-
social development are tentatively developed further, in associating the
revolutionaries with new commercial and industrial capital, or the ‘middle ranks’
or ‘middle classes’, against the non-industrious rentiers, monopolists and feudal
high nobility.9 Hence, civil society is also middle class society, the historical
result of conflicts arising from contradictions between old and new social
interests.

If we turn from these Scottish forefathers to their French disciples who during the
French Revolution applied Smithian historical categories in order to understand
the process they were going through, say Antoine de Barnave or Pierre-Louis
Roederer, we find some significant further developments of these concepts.10

4
Apart from connecting the French Revolution with the long-term civilization
process, viewing it as the culmination of the latter, these writers identify the
socio-economic middle class with the social, juridical and historical category of
the bourgeoisie, with its roots in the medieval towns. Thus, in the hands of the
French, civilized commercial society becomes bourgeois society.

Yet, the concept of revolution and class developed here do not emphasize the
moment of rupture and social agency associated with modern notions of
bourgeois revolution, or the modern understanding of social revolution in
general.11 In the writings of Smith and Millar the word ‘revolution’ covers all
different sort of change, from changes in furniture design to the fall of the Roman
Empire.12 And though terms such as ‘rank’ or ‘class’ are associated with large
socio-economic interest groups of great importance to the social structure as a
whole, their historical writings show no real connection between particular
historical action and the general developmental processes. King Charles and
Oliver Cromwell both play important roles in their writings, but there is no
notion of macro-social or macro-historical agency.

Turning to the great French romantic liberal historians from the restoration and
July monarchy period, François Guizot, Augustin Thierry and others, we find
precisely such intertwined notions of revolution as rupture and macro-historical
class agency.13 These historians, publicists and politicians were romanticists in
so far as they intended to resituate certain achievements of enlightenment history
in a new theoretical context of the historical particular, of human agency,
sensibility, and a longing for harmony and love as principles for social
cohesion.14 And especially in the hands of French historians inspired by Hegel’s
philosophy of history this resulted in a grand synthesis of affirmation and
negation, of conflict and harmony in history.15

5
On important condition of this is the fact that the concept of revolution itself has
been reconstructed in the wake of the French Revolution. It is in the writings of
Guizot, Mignet and Thiers that we find the first great presentations of the
histories of revolutions proper – as ruptures within a limited number of years, yet
macro-historically significant because of their roots in the long-term history of
civilisation.16 And integral to this perspective are the concepts of class and class
struggle as motor forces in both the general development of world history and
the particular internal dynamics of revolution.17

Thus, in his History of the French Revolution from 1824 Mignet views the
Revolution as the result of the long-term evolution of the third estate, meaning
essentially the bourgeoisie with its roots in new forms of commercial wealth and
manufacture. But where he really unfolds the new conception of class struggle is
in the internal development of the revolution. From moderates of the National
Assembly, power passed to the Jacobin government with its basis in the “lower
classes”. And after the fall of Robespierre, power was returned to the hands of
the bourgeoisie and parts of the nobility in what Mignet terms a “geometrical”
movement from the lower to the upper classes.18 In Guizot’s multi-volume
History of the English Revolution published from 1826 till 1850’s the English
Civil War is basically reconstructed as a social revolution along lines of the
French, with a similar cycle of political and social radicalisation and de-
radicalisation.19

Together with this new view of revolution and class agency as intertwined socio-
historical features we see in the reasoning of Guizot and several of his
contemporaries a new emphasis on the state as the instance securing the civilized
and moral character of modern civil society. According to Guizot, the history of
civilization culminates in the post-revolutionary settlement of that balance of
forces between people, parliament and monarchy achieved through constitutional
monarchy.20 Thus, Guizot would agree with Smith that civil society, or bourgeois
society, is commercial society, reflecting the strong position of the bourgeoisie.

6
Also, he would agree that the history of civilization leads to a conflict of interests
between the new bourgeois class and the old-regime state, in some cases causing
a violent revolution necessary for the progress of civilisation. Yet, in Guizot’s
view, this new bourgeois society needs to be heavily mediated by the political
state, in order to be truly civilized and moral, that is, in order to produce the
grand harmony of differing social interests desired by Guizot.21

So with the moment of romanticism some of the main ingredients of the

conception of bourgeois revolution: macro-historical progression through grand
stages of development, bourgeois society, class struggle and class agency. But
we have yet to disclose the actual expression ‘bourgeois revolution’. This is no
coincidence, for still we have not encountered the orientation towards the future
necessary to provide the necessary historical perspective for this conception.

Thus, all of these commentators share a certain epochal apologetic. Mignet

provides a good example of this. Eager to show the present as the harmonized
telos of history, he begins his work by proclaiming the French Revolution as the
consummation and ending of class struggle.22 And since history is inextricably
bound to conflict and revolutionary change, according to Mignet, historical time
cannot significantly transcend the present epoch. Any revolution expressing the
moderate liberal principles of 1789 as Guizot and Mignet see them must be the
final one.

This epochal apologetic was gradually transcended in social thought with the
development of modern forms of socialism, conceived clearly as a post-capitalist
social order, based on the world-historical process of technical innovation
initiated by the development of capitalism, not as the return to pre-capitalist or
pre-modern forms of social cohesion. We see this modern form of socialism
evolving mainly on the basis of the enlightenment liberalism mentioned above

7
and romantic impulses, particularly through Saint-Simonism and some of the
Young Hegelians in Germany, particularly Moses Hess. And with Marx’s
transformation of perspective from the speculative sphere to the historical
practice in the here-and-now, this whole edifice is re-synthesized.

It is here that we find the precise expression ‘bourgeois revolution’.23 In this

precise form the expression can be found in only a few instances within the
writings of Marx and Engels, mainly in the writings dating from the years around
1848.24 And the context of these uses of the term is almost always an attempt at
political intervention by means of historical example, rather than a thorough and
detached historical analysis. Marx’s most famous and oft-quoted judgments
concerning the French Revolution and the English Revolution derive from such
political interventions, a fact often forgotten in attempts to deduce a theory of
history or a sociology of revolution from these short passages.25 This context of
political intervention itself suggests the way in which this concept is linked with
a socialist project for the future.

But the more general background to these passages should probably be sought in
Marx’s earlier writings of the years 1843 and 1844. It is here that we disclose, in
terms not yet influenced by conceptions of social class, Marx’s most intensive
work in the history of the French Revolution. And it is here that he conceives his
basic critique of that Revolution and of Jacobinism. The French Revolution,
according to Marx, was a political revolution, resulting in the separation of the
political sphere from the social. The state as such was brought into existence
together with modern bourgeois society.

But though this surely indicated a progressive step, the liberation of the political,
this liberation is still limited by its purely formal character. The social sphere,
bourgeois-capitalist society, continues to hold sway over the political state.
Therefore the political revolution is a precondition for a future revolution, the
human revolution, achieving a genuine emancipation of human beings from the
alienated relationships of capitalist society. And it is clear that the categories

8
political and human here are reciprocal: The political revolution is only political
because it is contrasted with the human one.26

Of course, these thoughts are still rather speculative and general, but as Marx
gradually unites them with the notion of class and with a more concrete analysis
of capitalist society, the modern concept of bourgeois revolution appears.
Simultaneously, bourgeois society is conceived as structurally and historically
rooted in the capitalist mode of production. This implies its structural opposition
to the modern state as well as its historical demarcation not only from pre-
capitalist societies of the past, but also from post-capitalist societies of the future.
Thus, what to Smith and Guizot appeared as the achievement of civilized
commercial society, and what for the young Marx was the mere political
revolution is now reconstructed as a grand social transformation through which
the capitalist mode of production wins out on a world-historical scale.

Such macro-historical considerations not only provide the general theoretical

framework for Marxist analyses of bourgeois revolutions but also explain the
importance of such past social transformations for Marxism.

And yet, this is still only the most general contours of these transformations. This
is ‘bourgeois revolution’ as a general process. It does not confront the specificity
of individual revolutionary transformations, the revolutions as events. For Marx,
bourgeois revolution is primarily a world-historical process, the separation of the
political and the economic, but central features of this process is crystallized
within certain social, political and cultural revolutions, the bourgeois revolutions,
in the plural.

In a wider sense, this sense of a post-capitalist social alternative as a collective

mental structure contributed greatly to the credibility of such macro-historical
categories of analysis as bourgeois revolution, and the relative demise of the term
in mainstream historiography should probably be related to the general lack of
faith in social alternatives today.

9
Thus, ‘bourgeois revolution’ derives from a rather complex interaction of words,
meaning and social reality. Many of the later disagreements about the
applicability of this concept as an analytical category can be at least partially
explained by this background, and many historians of revolutions have proceeded
from certain category mistakes, either confounding Marx’s analysis of a world-
historical process with specific revolutionary events, or paying insufficient
attention to the precise relationship between the civil and the capitalist aspects of
this, or the juridical, the political and the economic. ‘Bourgeois revolution’ can
hardly be satisfactorily defined in the formal and static terms of, say analytical
philosophy, for it is a historical term, reflecting a dialectical interconnection
between the particular and the universal, between the structural and the historical,
between the ideological, the political and the socio-economic. Whether this
multiplicity of meanings is a sign of strength or weakness I shall not judge in this
context.27 Suffice it to say that a greater knowledge of this concept as historical-
dynamic entity should be a starting point of any discussion of this concept,
whether we wish to retain it as an analytical category or not.

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1
This paper is a work in progress, briefly summarizing some of the main results of my PhD dissertation:
Bourgeois Revolution. The genesis of a concept studied through historiography and political theory (in
Danish). All constructive criticism is will be kindly received.
2
To name but a few examples, the majority of the great social historians of the French Revolution, Albert
Mathiez, Georges Lefebvre, Albert Soboul, George Rudé and Michel Vovelle all held this revolution to
be bourgeois and capitalist. The English Revolution of the 1640’s has been termed a ‘bourgeois
revolution’ by such prominent scholars of the field as Christopher Hill and Brian Manning; and,
conversely, several historians and historical sociologists from Barrington Moore to Ralf Dahrendorf and
Hans-Ulrich Wehler have held the lack of a victorious bourgeois revolution in Germany to be the main
explanation for the subsequent Nazi victory. Similar analyses have been applied to a range of other
national delepments.
3
The most important revisionist writings comprise Cobban 1964; Furet 1989; Russell 1973.
4
To cite some of the most important contributions since the 1980s, in chronological order: Davis 1979;
Blackbourn 1984; Comninel 1987; Brenner 1989; Callinicos 1989; Katz 1989; Hobsbawm 1990;
Gerstenberger 1990; Moss 1990; Wood 1991; Mooer 1991; Brenner 1993; Holstun 2000; Teschke 2003;
Teschke 2005; Davidson 2005a; Davidson 2005b; Heller 2006. Though the debate may seem to have
been somewhat quiet in the 1990’s, i.e., during the years of the most vehement anti-Marxist sentiment in
academic and political circles as well as the immediate aftermath of the bicentennial of the French
Revolution, it has certainly been re-enlivened in the last few years, perhaps due to the resurgence of

13
radical projects in general within academic circles and society and also a certain fatigue in post-
modernism and revisionist interpretations of revolutions.
5
Methodologically, this seeks to combine the approaches of German conceptual history
(Begriffsgeschichte) with more conventional approaches to the history of political ideas, a notion of world
views inspired by Lucien Goldmann and an understanding of social history as a concrete totality in
development.
6
Of course, this latter question is not immediately relevant to definitions of ‘bourgeois revolution’
proceeding from the unintended long-term consequences of political or institutional changes. [Davis
1979; Blackbourn 1984; Callinicos 1989; Mooers 1991] Yet, unless one subscribes to a strong version of
evolutionist determinism very rarely defended among historical sociologists today, the precise forms of
action and intentions must indeed be seen as a crucial link in historical explanation, as part of explaining
why even ever so unintended outcomes happened to come out exactly as they did.
7
On the concepts of civil society in the Smithian and other traditions: Kaviraj 2001; Riedel 1979. On civil
society and bourgeois society in the Marxian tradition: Markner 2001. On the four-stage theory of history:
Meek 1976. On the historical theories of the Scottish enlightenment theorists in general: Medick 1973;
Hont 1983; Pittock 2003; Haakonssen 1981; Haakonssen 1996.
8
However, one could of course argue that the social contract theory propounded by Hobbes and Locke
does contain some of the logic of the state-society dualism, by presupposing individuals capable of
rational social choice.
9
Hume 1847, pp. 550, 584f; Millar 1818, Vol. III
10
Barnave 1960; Roederer 1831
11
On the development modern concept of revolution: Koselleck 1969; Koselleck 1984; Griewank 1973;
Hatto 1949
12
Cf., e.g. Smith 1976, pp. 342, 313, 195
13
Behind this significant change in concepts and ideas lies not only the French Revolution as a political,
economic or military event, but closely linked to this event a much larger cultural or ideological rupture
with some of the dominant features of Enlightenment thought: its rationalism and optimism – a socially
generated epistemological break, so to speak, allowing for a new balancing of the elements of thought.
For it is revealing that one may already find elements of historical pessimism and doubt in the works of
Adam Smith and John Millar. On the one hand, their writings show an overall optimism in the theoretical
framework supporting the long-term civilization process towards the telos of civilized commercial society
of generalized commodity production. On the other hand, their empirical observations of the effects of
such commercial activity in their own day, the misery and malfunction of the manual labourers, lead them
to moment of doubt as to whether commercial society is really so civilized after all, or whether it may

14
really work on its own. (This moment of doubt, of course, is markedly stronger if we turn to Rousseau or
Adam Ferguson, but the internal rift between theoretical optimism and practical-empirical doubt is
strongest in the writings of Smith and Millar.) This points towards a notion of a much more active state
apparatus as the instigator of poor relief, education, not to mention social goods not necessarily well-
handed by private capital, such as bridges, canals, roads and so on. This conception of the state is
significantly different from the mere instrumentalist notion mentioned earlier, a much more active sense
of the state. So, in some respects the elements of agency as a necessary moment in developing civilized
society is already there in some instances of Enlightenment theory, but it took a great social and cultural
upheaval to put these notions to the centre stage of ideas and conceptual apparatuses.
14
This notion of romanticism as world-view is loosely inspired by considerations in Löwy 2001. On the
great French Historians of this period and their contexts: Walch 1986; Crossley 1993; Réizov 1956;
Stadler 1958.
15
The role of Hegelianism in French philosophy of history during the 1820’s, as in the general European
political theory of the entire period from circa 1820 to circa 1848, is severely underexposed. I show some
strong Hegelian influences on Guizot in my PhD thesis cited above. On Hegel and the enlightenment
views on civilization and its history: Waszek 1988; Avineri 1972; Riedel 1970
16
Guizot 1828; Mignet 1844; Thiers 1839
17
This is still a rather vague category of class, sometimes being synonymous with “orders” (that is, the
juridical-political estates), sometimes with socio-economic interests.
18
Cf. Mignet 1844, p. 385. The most extensive analysis of Mignet’s historical writings is Knibiehler
1973.
19
Guizot 1845-46; Guizot 1850; Guizot 1854; Guizot 1856. On Guizot as an historian and a political
theorist: Johnson 1963; Rosanvallon 1985; O’Connor 1955; Keiser 1925.
20
Guizot 1828
21
This, of course, rather closely resembles Hegel’s views on this matter.
22
Mignet 1844, p. 2
23
Though the German form of this expression, bürgerliche Revolution, is semantically related to term
bourgeois it does not significantly distinguish between this and the civil aspects. Correspondingly,
bürgerliche Gesellschaft in German is simultaneously civil and bourgeois society, just as Bürger may be
translated as either citizen (citoyen) and bourgeois. This is clear from the use of the latter terms in, e.g.,
the writings of Kant and Hegel.
24
Cf. generally Marx Engels Werke, Vols. IV-VII.
25
I present Marx’s use of the concept bourgeois revolution in a bit more detail in Nygaard 2007.

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Marx: ‘Zur Judenfrage’, Marx Engels Werke, Vol. I
27
I defend a use of the concept as a category for social and historical analysis, conditioned by certain
precisions, in Nygaard 2007.

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