Dooming a System By Refusing To Save It
Finding lessons in the dying days of pre-revolutionary France
To be in the French ruling class in the late 1700s was to live a magnificent life of privilege and glory. Indeed in many ways they existed as a state within a state, well insulated from the depressing existence of the great mass of struggling, impoverished Frenchmen. It is therefore not surprising they resisted all attempts at reform despite the growing danger of revolution and collapse.
In truth, history is full of fascinating tales of creaking power structures that refused to reform, despite the imminent danger of revolution or collapse. The last ruling emperor of China, Guangxu, was sidelined in a coup in 1898 following his Hundred Days of radical reform of his empire. He had hoped to bring China into the modern age, but the ruling elite managed to keep the party going for a few more years — until the ancient imperial system collapsed forever in 1911.
France in the late 1700s was the strongest power in Europe, dominating its neighbors and playing a critical role in the success of the American Revolution. Under the surface, however, the kingdom had slipped from a sunny position of wealth and power to a low point of poverty and oppression. Its king, Louis XVI (reigned 1774–1792), inherited a system of absolute despotism crafted by his predecessor Louis IV (reigned 1643–1715), commonly known as the Sun King — the glowing center of the nation around which everything else revolved.
The system, in theory, focused all power onto the throne, in matters international and domestic. In truth, however, that power depended on the personality of the king. Louis IV had been a dynamic, intelligent and confident ruler who still attracts admirers more than three centuries after his reign. His descendant Louis XVI, however, while intelligent, was not psychologically equipped to wield despotic power, nor to steer a course that would ensure the system’s survival.
To be a member of France’s nobility was to lead a charmed life. Family connections ensured a prosperous career in politics, business and the military — they were, by law, guaranteed leadership positions. Every mechanism of the state was geared toward protecting the good life for the top one percent of the country and blocking the advancement of ordinary people. It had been that way for as long as anyone could remember, but at long last the citizenry were fed up.
A change of course was urgently needed. The national government was essentially bankrupt, and in the power vacuum created by the king’s indecisiveness the local nobles had reasserted their old feudal authority. Trade and industry were severely hampered by a galaxy of internal customs barriers (local elites demanding a cut of everything passing through their territory) and the mass of French citizens, who had essentially no civil rights, were at the breaking point.
The popularity of authors such as Voltaire and Rousseau, not to mention the advent of the American Revolution (which France had supported to the point of bankruptcy), had allowed radical new ideas to take flight; ideas such as democracy, personal freedom, and the restraint of governmental power.
The response of the state to dissent was reliably brutal: arrest, followed by torture, imprisonment, exile or death. France had institutionalized corruption and enforced it with an iron boot.
Louis tried to bring in reforms. He hired — and then, under severe pressure from the elite, fired — several ministers who pushed hard for major reforms. The last of these was Charles Alexandre de Calonne, appointed in 1783.
De Calonne was a successful businessman who knew the only way to address the country’s crisis was to whittle away the power of the local nobility. Impoverished farmers were heavily taxed by their local lords, who in turn paid few if any taxes to the king. De Calonne therefore drew up a list of reforms:
- Ban all internal customs barriers
- Replace corvée (forced) labor with taxation
- Balance the national budget
- Create public works projects to create jobs and boost the economy
- Create elected legislatures in the provinces
- Begin taxing the Church
The nobility were horrified by these reforms. Removing their rights to tax trade, and forcing them in turn to pay taxes to the national government, would take away the biggest sources of their income, while balancing the budget would make it harder to squeeze the king’s coffers. At the same time, introducing democracy at the local level would bypass feudal privileges that had gone unquestioned for generations.
Pay taxes? Think of the people? Sacrifice for the nation? Re-balance society? These were completely alien concepts to the nobles who owned France.
The king, despite the “let them eat cake” image that history has given him, knew full well just how dire the situation was. He promised to support de Calonne to the hilt. The finance minister, who in turn knew how strongly the nobles opposed his plans, sought to bypass the existing power structure and appeal directly to the masses. In 1787, he gathered an Assembly of Notables, which hadn’t been called for over a century, in hopes of getting something approaching a popular mandate.
Here is a small part of his address to the Assembly:
Abuses [in tax payment] . . . are defended by self-interest, influence, wealth and ancient prejudices which seem to be hallowed by time; but what are all these together compared with the common good and the necessity of the state?
These abuses oppress the wealth-producing, laboring class: the abuses of pecuniary privilege; exceptions to the general rule, and so many unjust; exemptions which only relieve one section of taxpayers by aggravating the condition of the others.
It’s interesting to note that he refers to the working class as “wealth-producing”, a far cry from today’s oft-repeated mantras describing the elite as the world’s “job creators”.
The rich and powerful who opposed his reforms, however, essentially bought the Assembly, excluding those who supported de Calonne’s reforms.
Instead of endorsing the reform package, therefore, the Assembly attacked de Calonne personally. All talk of the structural problems was replaced by bitter arguments over personalities. He was so demonized, in fact, that the king, who had vowed to support his minister no matter what, caved in, stripping de Calonne of his offices and exiling him from France.
The nobles were proud. In their delusion, apparently ignorant of the seething volcano of public discontent rumbling beneath their feet, the ruling class believed they had won a great victory. A glum de Calonne said, “The King, who assured me a hundred times that he would support me with unshakable firmness, abandoned me, and I succumbed”.
The system slouched on a little longer. King Louis XVI slid into a deep depression, withdrawing into a kind of paralysis of governance. Maybe he saw what was coming.
The crisis of the state, of course, did not go away. Two years later, in 1789, a new assembly was called in another effort to address the worsening problems of poverty and oppression. The nobles, however, had learned nothing from their previous “success” and scored another “victory” by once more excluding representatives of the common folk. Once again the reform effort failed.
That would be their last victory. Maybe it was too late to save the system by then anyway.
The people’s representatives gathered anyway, away from the nobles. They drew up a new constitution for France, and the revolution began. In the ensuing storm, most of France’s nobility were either exiled or murdered, while the king and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were executed. Their young sons died in prison after horrific suffering and abuse.
It seems axiomatic that ruling elites resist real change until change is forced on them. France might conceivably have ended up with a constitutional monarchy and a booming trade-based economy like its rival Great Britain. But no — instead the hatreds of pre-revolutionary France would explode into a new empire that would drench all of Europe in blood.
Growing wealth gaps create poverty and stir public anger. Institutionalized corruption creates instability in governance and trade. Sometimes the system is reformed and survive. Often change is rejected and the system collapses. Either way, things do not remain the same.
When change is needed, change always comes. The only question is whether that change is orderly and peaceful or sudden and violent.
When systems become too unjust, however, change becomes inevitable.
