French Revolution: It’s Deja Vu All Over Again

Re “You Say You Want a Revolution?” Commentary, Jan. 17: Lee Siegel omitted one crucial point of comparison between the circumstances surrounding the French Revolution of 1789 and the situation today -- in the U.S., not Iraq, that is. The revolution, historians generally agree, was in part the outcome of a grossly unfair system of taxation, with a fabulously wealthy elite collecting tithes and duties and paying nothing into the royal coffers, so that the tax burden was borne entirely by the middle classes, small landowners and renters of land, and industrial workers.

There is, admittedly, a lot more social mobility nowadays; money lavished on the right -- or right -- political causes can do wonders for one’s business prospects; and even the lowliest citizen gets to vote. (Well, maybe not the last one.) But isn’t there something eerily familiar about the rest of the setup?

Catherine Atherton

Professor, philosophy and

classics, UCLA

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Siegel writes that the French Revolution was “the mother, the model, of all revolutions,” while the American Revolution was “nice, but not awesome.” Looking at their subsequent impacts on history and longevity of the governments that came after the revolutions, one has to wonder if Siegel has any knowledge of history whatsoever. The French Revolution was succeeded by at least seven different constitutions, multiple governments that collapsed and a bloody massacre of thousands at the guillotine. This is the “model”?

The American Revolution was followed by one government, one Constitution and no executions. The Bill of Rights and Constitution, drafted by the revolutionary founders, are considered to be the greatest documents espousing democracy ever written. The founders of the American Revolution were political visionaries; the founders of the French Revolution were mass murderers.

Eric Kollman

Chicago