193
Reflections on the
revolution in France
JOHN VANE
France. The revival of the great tradition after nearly a century—
1789,
1830,
1848,
1871—
from the
storming of the Bastille to the fall of the
Commune. A reminder that most of our political ideas (and the words they are expressed in) come from France. (It makes it easier to understand why old
Kropotkin wanted to fight for
France in
1914.) But how the tradition has become divided! The
Tricolour, the
Republic, the
Marseillaise, the
Resistance—
all symbols of the establishment, of the extreme right. But that is nothing new. “
Liberty, equality, fraternity, when what the Republic really means is
infantry,
cavalry,
artillery”—
said
Marx 120 years ago. What is new is that people are surprised when the French students occupy the universities and the French workers occupy the factories. The tradition must be part of the French people’s political education. We still remember our
Hunger Marches, our
General Strike, our
Suffragettes, our Black Sunday, our
chartists; surely the French may be expected to remember the Resistance, the
sit-in strikes of 1936, the <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: mutinies
194
of 1917">
mutinies 194
of 1917, the
syndicalist movement before the
First World War, the Commune, the
July Days, the
Great Fear. We are hardly in close touch with French affairs, but recent issues of
anarchy mentioned “the sort of activism which is endemic at the bourgeois
Sorbonne” (
Peter Redan Black in
anarchy 84) and described the sit-
in strike in
Besancon (
Proudhon’s home town!) at the beginning of last year (
Chris Marker in
anarchy 76). After all, the
Nanterre students have been struggling with the authorities for a year; where have all the experts been?
★
Revolution.
