French and Bolchevik Revolutions : Sociological and comparative Study
Before investigating the sociological background of revolutions, we have to begin by this unavoidable and redoubtable question: What is a revolution? When we try to study the history of the three famous revolutions in modern time, the American, the French and the Russian, the mainstream and classical theories become fully interested by their only political posture, taking into account the struggle of the main political and social forces and protagonists for conquest and possession of power and the conditions and the means of its exercise. For these mainstream theories, a revolution is essentially the overthrow of the old ruling class and its replacement by a new one doomed to shape its own political system and its own political institutions. However, the weakness of the mainstream theories of revolution reside in the fact that they put aside and have been their neglect of the main factor in revolutionary phenomenon, the social background to the revolution or more precisely the structure of property and the mode of appropriation of the means of production. It is that regime of property and its role in the social distribution of wealth among the classes which determine fundamentally and without appeal the nature, the scope and the course of events of each revolution. That why we have to be careful by employing the terminology and the word revolution, because the mainstream theories of revolution use the term revolution to designate a mere political change without touching to the structure of property and the mode of appropriation of the means of production. It will be this pertinent criteria i.e; the property and the class at which benefit which constitutes the background of revolution. For this purpose, in every study on revolution, we have first to investigate the driving force within a revolution, its projects and its aim in the property field and its attitude vis à vis the question the mode of appropriation of the means of production.
One object of this study has to suggest that what we call the French revolution was not at all a genuine and real revolution. Marxist historians called it “bourgeois revolution” but here the use of term revolution is inappropriate because the bourgeoisie made her best for the conquest of the political power without bringing any fundamental change to the structure of property and the mode of appropriation of the means of production. At the beginning of the French revolution and during her course many new elements it is true, emerged but they formed part of the elites of the ancient régime; We must to recognize that what we call French revolution is nothing but a triumph for the conservative propertied, land-owning classes that The French Revolution was directed by middle and for middle class interest . Her leadership was propertied leadership from beginning to end. Ruffians they were middle-class ruffians Even the most advanced political and radical movement of the revolution, Babeuf’s Conspiracy of the Equals was middle class organization.
