Jacobinism Revisited

Since the appearance of François Furet’s Penser la Revolution Française in 1978, conventional wisdom concerning the French Revolution has fallen upon hard times. For quite some time such “conventional wisdom” has been left wing. In the nineteenth century the Revolution served to buttress the legitimacy of republican claims. In the twentieth century, when the achievements of the Republic could be treated as an accomplished fact, it was the socialists (e.g., James) wh...