• 4lan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The wealth inequality in America today is worse than France pre-revolution.

      We are long overdue, bring out the guillotines

        • Deuces@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It should about right, but the French revolution was generally speaking not about income inequality. The women’s march on Versailles is the most economic influenced part of the revolution that I can think of. That was primarily about not having enough food.

          The parts of the revolution that we like to think of as being “the” revolution were mostly about getting basic human rights. The two most important treaties were “the rights of man” which is about… well, the rights of man, and “what is the third estate” which is about the importance of the peasant classes to the nation and their lack of political power in relation to it.

          As for the major events: The storming of the Bastille was about political prisoners (ironically there were none in the Bastille at the time). The tennis court oath was about voting by head rather than by acre. The sans culottes, the girondins, and the mountain were all about giving the people more of a voice. The murder of Louie was a direct response to the flight to varennes, and the terror was just the mountain losing it’s grasp on political control and doing whatever it took to keep it. Even the guillotine itself was designed to give peasant criminals a clean death. Before it was invented nobles would be put to the sword but peasants would be hanged.

          Everything I’ve just said is personal opinion, but my source for all of it is season 3 of Revolutions by Mike Duncan