I agree with the sentiment but don’t agree that literacy is that important to revolutions throughout history. Most of the foot soldiers in a revolution were illiterate, don’t need a book to understand the people at the top are taking all your money with rent and taxes and giving you nothing in return.
The women marching on Versailles and the sans cullotes marching in the street weren’t marching because they read a book, they were marching because they needed bread and knew the ruling monarchy and aristocracy weren’t fulfilling that need.
One of the most important elements in successful revolutions is recruiting class traitors. They have the means to make it successful and work the establishment from the inside as well.
This idea that the only condition necessary for (successful) revolution is for conditions to get bad enough, ignores the fact that conditions have been extremely shitty for large numbers of people for long stretches of time. There have been plenty of people suffering under colonialism or slavery, and even without that, people in the past were much poorer in general.
Mismanagement and abuse by the king and aristocracy was by no means a new thing. All across Europe, throughout the middle ages, kings got into long, bloody, expensive conflicts that left them unable to pay their debts. The solution, generally speaking, was to blame the resulting problems on Jews and use them as a scapegoat to cancel the government’s debts and expel them from the country, seizing whatever assets they had in the process. Or just don’t pay your soldiers what they were promised, which happened often (in spite of the risks). In the meantime, of course, you remind everyone that they will get to enjoy eternal paradise, but only if they accept their lot peacefully.
The French Revolution started because the king got involved in a very expensive conflict, the American Revolution, which created a debt crisis. That part was nothing new. What was new was that the bourgeoisie class had developed substantially and possessed much greater wealth and power than they ever had before. Furthermore, literacy allowed people to question the narratives that had previously kept them loyal and passive. They weren’t going to accept, “We can’t pay you what we promised, sorry, the Jews did it” and they had sufficient power to back it up.
Crucially, it also allowed for communication and unity between the politicians of the National Assembly and rural peasants. Without that, rural peasants might see them as persuing their own aims in a way unconnected from their own problems (and contrary to their traditional beliefs and values). This would in turn discredit the National Assembly and make it harder to see them as representing anyone or negotiating with any power behind them.
“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” If you lack imagination to think of a way things could be different (and how to get there), then you will only double down on the frameworks and solutions the system provides you with. Prayer, racial scapegoating, etc, no matter how illogical they may seem from the outside, without literacy, the only solutions you’re likely to find are the ones based on things you already believe.
I think the barrier is that inability to read critically and meaningfully creates a fertile environment for propaganda, which can prevent the unity needed for an uprising (and has been doing a depressingly good job at that for a while now.)
I found a paper that seems to be arguing that you’re right about motive, but that the literate French revolutionaries were smarter about it:
It has been widely argued that the growth of mass literacy is critical for the development of modern forms of contentious politics. Recent Scholarship, however, has challenged this view. This study explores the relationship between levels of literacy in rural France toward the end of 18th century and the extent and nature of peasant mobilization at the beginning of the French Revolution. It is found that literacy did not promote rural disturbances as such but that the forms and targets of peasant actions in the more literate areas difered from those in the less literate. The less literate districts were notable for mobilization against rumored but nonexistent invasions, whereas the most literate districts nurtured attacks on the central social institutions of the Old Regime.
The less literate districts were notable for mobilization against rumored but nonexistent invasions, whereas the most literate districts nurtured attacks on the central social institutions of the Old Regime.
“Mobilizing against rumored invasions” doesn’t exactly sound revolutionary. Isn’t “attacking the central social institutions of the Old Regime” kind of… what a revolution is?
Sounds like “propaganda works better to mobilize the illiterate, for better or worse”
And that tracks. With modern methods and lawmaking to incrementally increase societal illiteracy coupled with an obscene level of increased propaganda, the tools that worked for revolution are turning instead to bolster power for those literate few in power.
A dumber electorate. That’s what’s happening and that’s the goal. The revolution got hijacked. And it’s working amazingly well unfortunately.
I agree with the sentiment but don’t agree that literacy is that important to revolutions throughout history. Most of the foot soldiers in a revolution were illiterate, don’t need a book to understand the people at the top are taking all your money with rent and taxes and giving you nothing in return.
The women marching on Versailles and the sans cullotes marching in the street weren’t marching because they read a book, they were marching because they needed bread and knew the ruling monarchy and aristocracy weren’t fulfilling that need.
Class consciousness is not dependent on literacy.
One of the most important elements in successful revolutions is recruiting class traitors. They have the means to make it successful and work the establishment from the inside as well.
This idea that the only condition necessary for (successful) revolution is for conditions to get bad enough, ignores the fact that conditions have been extremely shitty for large numbers of people for long stretches of time. There have been plenty of people suffering under colonialism or slavery, and even without that, people in the past were much poorer in general.
Mismanagement and abuse by the king and aristocracy was by no means a new thing. All across Europe, throughout the middle ages, kings got into long, bloody, expensive conflicts that left them unable to pay their debts. The solution, generally speaking, was to blame the resulting problems on Jews and use them as a scapegoat to cancel the government’s debts and expel them from the country, seizing whatever assets they had in the process. Or just don’t pay your soldiers what they were promised, which happened often (in spite of the risks). In the meantime, of course, you remind everyone that they will get to enjoy eternal paradise, but only if they accept their lot peacefully.
The French Revolution started because the king got involved in a very expensive conflict, the American Revolution, which created a debt crisis. That part was nothing new. What was new was that the bourgeoisie class had developed substantially and possessed much greater wealth and power than they ever had before. Furthermore, literacy allowed people to question the narratives that had previously kept them loyal and passive. They weren’t going to accept, “We can’t pay you what we promised, sorry, the Jews did it” and they had sufficient power to back it up.
Crucially, it also allowed for communication and unity between the politicians of the National Assembly and rural peasants. Without that, rural peasants might see them as persuing their own aims in a way unconnected from their own problems (and contrary to their traditional beliefs and values). This would in turn discredit the National Assembly and make it harder to see them as representing anyone or negotiating with any power behind them.
“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” If you lack imagination to think of a way things could be different (and how to get there), then you will only double down on the frameworks and solutions the system provides you with. Prayer, racial scapegoating, etc, no matter how illogical they may seem from the outside, without literacy, the only solutions you’re likely to find are the ones based on things you already believe.
I think the barrier is that inability to read critically and meaningfully creates a fertile environment for propaganda, which can prevent the unity needed for an uprising (and has been doing a depressingly good job at that for a while now.)
I found a paper that seems to be arguing that you’re right about motive, but that the literate French revolutionaries were smarter about it:
“Mobilizing against rumored invasions” doesn’t exactly sound revolutionary. Isn’t “attacking the central social institutions of the Old Regime” kind of… what a revolution is?
Sounds like “propaganda works better to mobilize the illiterate, for better or worse”
And that tracks. With modern methods and lawmaking to incrementally increase societal illiteracy coupled with an obscene level of increased propaganda, the tools that worked for revolution are turning instead to bolster power for those literate few in power.
A dumber electorate. That’s what’s happening and that’s the goal. The revolution got hijacked. And it’s working amazingly well unfortunately.
Not really what it’s saying, both literate and illiterate areas mobilized.