Third Study. The Principle of Association. The Revolution of ’89 had the industrial order to build, after having made a clean sweep of the feudal order. By returning to political theories, it plunged us into economic chaos. In place of a natural order conceived in accordance with science and labor, we have a factitious order, in the shadow of which we have developed parasitic interests, abnormal morals, monstrous ambitions, prejudices at variance with common sense, which today all claim to be legitimate, invoking a tradition of sixty years, and, being unwilling either to abdicate or to modify their demands, place themselves in an antagonistic attitude toward one another, and in a reactionary attitude toward progress. As this state of affairs, of which the principle, the means and the end is War, is unable to answer the needs of an entirely industrial civilization, revolution is the necessary result. But, as everything in the...
The 14th of July -- Middle classes distrust people Royalists prepare coup d'état -- Middle classes urge people to arm- People seize Bastille -- Middle classes restore order-King and feudal rights -- Effect of Royal Session-Atmosphere of conspiracy at Court -- Foundation of Breton Club -- Mirabeau and people -- Necker tries to avert famine -- Incompetence of National Assembly -- Royalist plotting continues -- Petition of Assembly The accepted account of July 14 runs as follows: The National Assembly was sitting. At the end of June, after two months of parleying and hesitations, the Three Orders were at last united. The power was slipping from the grasp of the Court, which began, therefore, to prepare a coup d'état. Troops were summoned and massed round Versailles; they were to disperse the Assembly and bring Paris to its senses. On July II, the accepted version goes on to say, the Court decid...