The start to the 2024 Paris Olympics appears to have gotten off to a dodgy start with the opening ceremony appearing to have ruffled quite a few feathers. Aspects of the display have enraged the religious fantasists who are screaming on social media, satanic! God will not be mocked! As SOYMB has already noted; the Olympics are sport as warfare.
.https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-olympics-sport-as-warfare.html
As far as can be judged, this Blog being completely indifferent to the nationalistic propagandising of the French, it is aspects of the French Revolution which are being extolled. There seems to be a lack of awareness of eighteenth century history on the part of many of the ‘disgusted’ on social media.
In 1793, in his essay, ‘Considerations on the Nature of the Revolution in France’, Jacques Mallet du Pan wrote, ‘Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.’
On
28 July, 1794, Jacobin leader, Maximilien Robespierre, was
guillotined.
‘Whatever may have been Robespierre’s reasons
for justifying the dictatorship of the Jacobin Committee of Public
Safety, the bulk of the members of the national assembly (and indeed
some members of the Committee itself) supported it as a necessity to
win the war, both external and internal, and were ready to relax it
once this had been achieved, as it had been by the summer of 1794.
This was fatal for Robespierre who was overthrown on 27 July (9
Thermidor, according to the revolutionary calendar) and guillotined
with his immediate followers the next day.
The Right to Unequal Property Ownership Re-asserted
The overthrow of Robespierre and the Jacobins marked the end of the radicalisation of the French Revolution and a return to its original aim of establishing a constitutional government by and for property owners. The only difference with 1791 was that this was now to be achieved within the framework of a Republic rather than of a constitutional monarchy. The Republican Constitution of 1795 reintroduced the property qualifications for being an "active" citizen, an "elector" and a deputy.’
[Taken from the Socialist Standard July 1989:1789: France’s bourgeois revolution.
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2013/07/1789-frances-bourgeois-revolution.html
Note: the excellent article referenced above gives an in-depth socialist analysis of the events of 1789, before and after. Readers are encouraged to study it at source as it is an absorbing but long read.
The below is from the Socialist Standard July 1989.
This document should be read alongside 1789: France’s bourgeois revolution https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2013/07/1789-frances-bourgeois-revolution.html
that also appeared in the July 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard.
This manifesto, drawn up by Sylvain Maréchal, for an attempt to organise an insurrection in Paris in 1796 known as the "Conspiracy of the Equals", was never formally adopted by the conspirators. It is nevertheless a fine appeal for the establishment of the same sort of classless communist society as Winstanley and the Diggers had advocated in the course of the English revolution some 150 years previously.
PEOPLE OF FRANCE
For
fifteen hundred years you have lived in slavery and in misery. And
for the last six years you have existed in the hourly expectation of
independence, happiness, and equality.
Equality is the
first principle of nature, the most elementary need of man, the prime
bond of any decent association among human beings. But in this you,
the French people, have fared no better than the rest of mankind.
Humanity, the world over, has always been in the grip of more or less
clever cannibals—creatures who have battened on men in order to
advance their own selfish ambitions and to nourish their own selfish
lust for power. Throughout man’s history he has been gulled with
fine words, he has received only the shadow of a promise, not its
substance. Hypocrites, from time immemorial, have told us that men
are equal; and yet monstrous and degrading inequality has, from time
immemorial, ground humanity into the dust. Since the dawn of human
history man has understood that equality is the finest ornament of
the human condition, yet not once has he been successful in his
struggles to bring his vision to life. Equality has remained a legal
fiction, beautiful but baseless. And today, when we demand it with a
new insistence, our rulers reply: “Silence! Real equality is an
idle dream. Be content with equality before the law. Ignorant and
lowborn herd, what else do you need?"
Men of high
degree—lawmakers, rulers, the rich—now it is your turn to listen
to us.
Men are equal. This is a self-evident truth. As
soon say that it is night when the sun shines, as deny
this.
Henceforth we shall live and die as we have been
born—equal. Equality or death: that is what we want. And that is
what we shall have, no matter what the price to be paid. Woe to you
who stand in our way or try to thwart the realization of our dearest
wish!
The French Revolution is only the forerunner of
another, even greater, that shall finally put an end to the era of
revolutions. The people have swept away the kings and priests who
have been leagued against them. Next they will sweep away the modern
upstarts, the tyrants and tricksters who have usurped the ancient
seats of power.
What else do we need other than equality
before the law?
We need not only this equality as it is
written down in the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen; we need it in life, in our very midst,
in our homes. For the true and living equality we will give up
everything. Let the arts perish, if need be! But let us have real
equality.
Men of high degree—lawmakers, rulers, the
rich—strangers as you are to the love of man, to good faith, to
compassion: it is no good to say that we are only "bringing up
again the old cry of loi agraire.” It is our
turn to speak. Listen to our just demands and to the law of nature
which sanctions them.
The loi agraire—the
division of the land—has been the instinctive demand of a handful
of soldiers of fortune, of peoples here and there governed by
passion, not by reason. We intend something far better and far more
just: the COMMON GOOD, or the COMMUNITY OF GOODS. There must be an
end to individual ownership of the land, for the land is nobody’s
personal property. Our demand is for the communal ownership of the
earth’s resources. These resources are the property of mankind.
We
say that an end must be put to the situation in which the
overwhelming majority of mankind, living under the thumb of a tiny
minority, sweats and toils for the sole benefit of a few. In France
fewer than a million persons own and dispose of wealth that
rightfully belongs to twenty millions of their fellow men, to their
fellow citizens.
There must be an end to this outrage!
Will people in times to come even be able to conceive that such a
situation ever existed? There must be an end to this unnatural
division of society into rich and poor, into strong and weak, into
masters and servants, into rulers and ruled.
Age and sex
are the sole natural distinctions existing between men. All men have
the same needs, all are endowed with the same faculties, all are
warmed by the same sun, and all breathe the same air. Why then should
not all receive an equal share of food and clothing—equal both in
that quantity and quality to which all shall be entitled?
But a howl arises from the sworn enemies of a truly natural order of things. ‘Anarchists! Demagogues!" they shriek. “You are nothing more than instigators of mob violence. That’s what you are."
PEOPLE OF FRANCE,
We shall not waste time dignifying such charges with an answer. But to you we say: the high enterprise which we are engaged upon has a single purpose— to put an end to civil strife and to the sufferings of the masses.
No vaster plan than ours has ever been conceived or put into execution. Once in a long while men of vision have discussed it, cautiously and in whispers; none of them has had the boldness to speak out and to tell the whole truth.
The hour for decisive action has now struck. The people’s suffering has reached its peak; it darkens the face of the earth. For centuries chaos has reigned under the name of "order." Now the time has come to mend matters. We, who love justice and who seek happiness—let us enter the struggle for the sake of equality. The time has come to establish THE REPUBLIC OF EQUALITY, to prepare an asylum for mankind. The time has come to set the earth to rights. You, who are oppressed, join us: come and partake of the feast which nature has provided for all her sons and daughters.
PEOPLE OF FRANCE,
A glorious and historic destiny has been reserved. for you.
Hidebound tradition and blind prejudice will set barriers, as they always have, in the way of the establishment of the Republic of Equality. True equality—that alone provides for all human needs without sacrificing some men to the selfish interests of others—will not be welcome to everyone. Selfish and ambitious people will curse us. Men who have grown rich by thieving from their fellows will be the first to cry "thief." Proud men, living in privilege or in idleness, who have grown callous to the sufferings of others, will do battle with us. Men who wield arbitrary power, or who are its creatures, will not unprotesting bow their stiff necks beneath the yoke. The shape of things to come, the common good, their blind eyes cannot see. But how can a handful of such people prevail against a whole nation that has at last found the rapturous happiness it sought so long?
The day after the revolution for true equality has taken place people will be amazed. They will say “The common good was so easy to attain! We only had to will it! Why on earth didn’t we realize that sooner—why did we have to be told so often? It’s absolutely true: when one man is richer and more powerful than the rest of us, everything is spoiled; crime and misery flourish”.
PEOPLE OF FRANCE,
What is the hallmark of excellence in a constitution? Only true equality can serve as a foundation on which to base your Republic and satisfy all your needs. The aristocratic charters of 1791 and 1795 did not break your chains: they riveted them upon you more firmly. The Constitution of 1793 was a giant step toward true equality, the greatest that we have yet taken. It was dedicated to the goal of the common good, but did not, even so, fully provide the basis for organizing it.
PEOPLE OF FRANCE,
Open your eyes and hearts to full happiness: recognize the REPUBLIC OF EQUALITY. Join with us in working for it.
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2018/07/manifesto-of-equals-1989.html
Workers of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!
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