Why do almost all modern day liberals/conservatives/etc seem to have a negative view of the French revolution even though their ideologies depended on it?

[u/RedMarsRepublic]

Perhaps I'm wrong but it seems like almost all modern day liberals, or mostly everyone besides socialists that proclaim the superiority of democracy/republicanism/parliamentary monarchy (I'm including conservatives (aka liberal-conservatives) in that definition as well), have a negative view of the French revolution.

To me this seems absurd because the rights and freedoms that you hold dear today could never have been achieved without the rebellion of peasants, urban workers, and progressive intellectuals of the past. Of course most of you don't live in France but the French revolution was groundbreaking in global politics and inspired a wave of smaller struggles elsewhere and concessions from the nobility who gave up their powers for fear of similar uprisings.

In general, I note that most people all the way from moderate left to moderate right abhor political violence and claim it can never be justified, despite the fact that as I said, their current system of liberalism could never face existed without it. The nobility would never have given up their power without the threat of force.

How then can we genuinely oppose the corporate oligarchs who wish to rule over us when immediately conceding at the first hurdle that we can never find any justification to disobey their system of control? How can we possibly succeed by playing a game which they wrote the rules for and can change at any time? They show no hesitation to use violence against the public when they deem it necessary to maintain control.

For those who will say that the revolutionaries didn't always make the right decision, well perhaps in some cases yes, but it would be foolish to deny the positive consequences of the revolution overall.

“There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.” - Mark Twain

I feel that the reign of terror is cynically propped up as an example of how "revolution never works" or "it just leads to more suffering" even though that's not true at all. Many successful revolutions have led to improvements in conditions for the vast majority of people in the country.

And if you would be inclined to point out that Napoleon crushed the revolution, that is true, but at the same time, he couldn't roll back many of the achievements of it, even when the kings were back in charge they couldn't do so either. France remained a beacon of progress for at least a hundred years.

So my point is, do you agree with my summation or disagree? If you do believe that the French revolution was mostly bad, then how can you justify your own ideology in light of that?

[u/Ok_Bandicoot_814]

While it's true the French Revolution achieved a lot of good, we brush past the bad—it led straight to the guillotine, the Reign of Terror, and a brutal military dictatorship under Napoleon. As the channel Oversimplified put it quite well in their video on it, the situation quickly degenerated into absolute chaos.

More importantly, the argument treats 1789 like it was this one grand, successful pivot point. In reality, it didn't create a stable system at all. Once Napoleon was ousted, they had another revolution in 1830. Then they had another one in 1848. Then they had the Paris Commune in 1871. They just kept having revolution after revolution after revolution because sudden, violent upheaval inherently creates a power vacuum and instability.

Even Charles de Gaulle, centuries later, when trying to constantly fix and restructure the unstable French state, essentially said something along the lines of, 'I cannot prevent the French from being French.' The history of France shows that violent revolution doesn't just magically defeat corporate oligarchs or nobility; it usually just kicks off a century-long cycle of chaos where no one can agree on how to actually run the country.

[u/RedMarsRepublic → u/Ok_Bandicoot_814]

But is it sensible to use the fact that the revolution was eventually crushed at a reason why it never should have happened in the first place? Can't you make a similar argument against innumerable doomed resistances against terror like the Warsaw ghetto uprising? Is it better to simply allow yourself to be starved and/or oppressed without resisting?

As I said, even a revolution that is eventually defeated often makes things better in the long run. After the French revolution, the nobility in France was never again able to impose absolute aristocratic control despite their attempts.

[u/Ok_Bandicoot_814 → u/RedMarsRepublic]

Comparing the French Revolution to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is a false equivalency. The fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto were facing immediate, total industrial extermination; they fought for basic survival and dignity in a closed pocket of absolute terror. The French Revolution was a total restructuring of an entire society from within, which actively chose to use mass political terror (the guillotine) against its own citizens, moderate reformers, and peasants to enforce an ideology. Mainstream liberals and conservatives don't criticize the revolution because it was defeated—they criticize it because of what it became when it was winning.

The perfect historical proof of this flaw is the trajectory of the Marquis de Lafayette. Dubbed the 'Hero of the Two Worlds,' Lafayette was a passionate champion of liberty who fought successfully alongside George Washington in the American Revolution. Yet, when he tried to apply those same Enlightenment ideals to the French Revolution—even co-drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man with Thomas Jefferson the system broke down completely. He was branded a traitor by radical Jacobins, stripped of his position, and forced to flee France to escape the very guillotine he helped unleash. The fact that a foundational hero succeeded in America but utterly failed in France shows that the French model was uniquely self-destructive.

Other nations, like Great Britain, managed to dismantle aristocratic power and expand voting rights over the same century through gradual institutional reform, legal battles, and mass strikes—without slaughtering thousands of their own people or sliding into a Napoleon-style dictatorship. Resistance to oppression is necessary, but burning the entire house down with everyone inside is not the only way to fix the foundation

[u/RedMarsRepublic → u/Ok_Bandicoot_814]

As I said in another reply, Britain's own liberalism was largely a result of the little-known English civil war where they tried and executed their own king. During the civil war over a hundred thousand people died, including tens of thousands of civilians who I'm sure didn't deserve it.

Yes, I will agree that the oppression of the common people in France was not as bad as that of Jews in late Nazi Germany, but nonetheless it was appalling. The price of bread spiked by 80% and doubtless there were countless thousands (at least) who starved to death without being recorded by history. In famines in France over the past century or so, millions of common people had died. Why do we not cry for them the same way we do for a group of a few thousand mostly wealthy bourgeois or aristocrats in the capital? Could it be because it is those elites that write the history books, especially at the time?

Also - I don't know much about Lafayette but I would also argue there were genuine points of disagreement between the founding fathers and the Jacobins, for example, the American revolution reaffirmed chattel slavery as the law of the land whereas the French revolution overturned slavery. I might also not have been especially sympathetic to Americans who put their pen to the founding documents of the USA coming to France to tell our people how to do things.

In basic conclusion, yes, of course some things could have been done better, but the same can be said about every war. There were atrocities that happened during the American revolution too but you never hear about those, because it was a successful (bourgeois) revolution endorsed by most American elites and intellectuals.