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ABSTRACT:
Seeking to deny the bourgeois and capitalist nature of the French Revolution, revisionist scholars have argued that the bourgeoisie did not exist as a class-in-itself or for-itself. The existence of the bourgeoisie as a class-in-itself is increasingly confirmed by recent research. The question whether or not a sense of the bourgeoisie as a class-for-itself developed during the Revolution requires a more complicated response. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Marx asserted that the consciousness of the revolutionaries was obscured by the rhetoric of classical republicanism. It was only after the Revolution that the French bourgeoisie developed a sense of themselves as a class-for-itself and recognized the Revolution as bourgeois. In fact the upheavals of the Revolution did create a bourgeois consciousness of itself as a class whose strength was based on its growing economic power. But this consciousness was marginalized by the revolutionary leadership because of its potential social divisiveness.
REVISIONISM HAS BEEN THE DOMINANT TREND in the study of the French Revolution since the 1970s. This is especially the case in the English-speaking countries, but its influence is felt as well in France as a result of the authority of François Furet. As is well known, the object of revisionism has been to challenge the long-established Marxist view of the Revolution. The Marxist school of historians, which included Albert Mathiez, Georges Lefebvre and Albert Soboul, flourished in the first part of the 20th century. It looked upon the Revolution as a bourgeois revolution whose power was based on the development of capitalism in the 18th century. In a multitude of ways revisionists have attempted to deny the significance of the bourgeoisie and capitalism in the Revolution. They have questioned the link between the two terms. They have cast doubt on the strength of both capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Some have even sought to deny the meaning of the terms. Finally they have questioned the significance of the Revolution to French history, which, it is claimed, is a history of continuity rather than change.
Among prominent historians who continue to defend the Marxist view has been Michel Vovelle. In his recent work Les mots de la Révolution, Vovelle puts forward the following assessment of the still evolving character of the bourgeoisie at...