A Jacobin (; ) was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary political movement that was the most famous political club during the French Revolution (1789–1799).Tony Judt (2011). Marxism and the French Left: Studies on Labour and Politics in France, 1830–1981. New York & London:New York University Press. p. 108. The club got its name from meeting at the Dominican rue Saint-Honoré Monastery of the Jacobins. The Dominicans in France were called Jacobins (, corresponds to Jacques in French and Jack in English) because their first house in Paris was the Saint Jacques Monastery.
The terms Jacobin and Jacobinism have been used in a variety of senses. Prior to 1793, the terms were used by contemporaries to describe the politics of Jacobins in the congresses of 1789 through 1792. With the ascendancy of Maximilien Robespierre and the Montagnards into 1793, they have since become synonymous with the policies of the Reign of Terror, with Jacobinism now meaning "Robespierrism". As Jacobinism was memorialized through legend, heritage, tradition and other historical means over the centuries, the term acquired a "semantic elasticity" in French politics of the late 20th Century with a "vague range of meanings", but all with the "central figure of a sovereign and indivisible public authority with power over civil society." Today in France, Jacobin colloquially indicates an ardent or republican supporter of a centralized and revolutionary democracy or state as well as "a politician who is hostile to any idea of weakening and dismemberment of the State."
In the French Revolution The Jacobin Club was one of several organizations that grew out of the French Revolution and it was distinguished for its left-wing, revolutionary politics. Because of this, the Jacobins, unlike other sects such as the Girondins (who were originally part of the Jacobins, but branched off), were closely allied to the sans-culottes, who were a popular force of working-class Parisians that played a pivotal role in the development of the revolution.
The Jacobins had a significant presence in the National Convention; they were dubbed "the mountain" or Montagnards for their seats in the uppermost part of the chamber. Eventually, the Revolution coalesced around The Mountain's power, with the help of the insurrections of the sans-culottes, and, led by Robespierre, the Jacobins established a revolutionary dictatorship, or the joint domination of the Committee of Public Safety and Committee of General Security.
The Jacobins were known for creating a strong government that could deal with the needs of war, economic chaos, as well as internal rebellion (such as the war in the Vendée). This included establishing the world's first universal military draft as a solution to filling army ranks to put down civil unrest and prosecute war.Retrieved 25 April 2021 The Jacobin dictatorship was known for enacting the Reign of Terror, which targeted speculators, monarchists, Girondin, Hébertists, and alleged traitors, and led to many beheadings.
The Jacobins supported the rights of property, but represented a much more middle-class position than the government that succeeded them in Thermidor.
They favored free trade and a market economy much like the Girondists, but their relationship to the people made them more willing to adopt interventionist economic policies. Unlike the Girondins, their economic policy favored price controls (i.e., General maximum) on staples like grain and select household and grocery goods to address economic problems. Using the armée revolutionnaire, they targeted farmers, the rich and others who may have stocks of essential goods ("goods of the first necessity") in service of a national distribution system with severe punishment for uncooperative hoarders.
Another tenet of Jacobinism is a secularism that includes the elimination of existing religions in favor of one run by the state (i.e., the cults of Reason and the Supreme Being).
Jacobinism was as an ideology thus developed and implemented during the French Revolution of 1789. In the words of François Furet, in Penser la révolution française (quoted by Hoel in Introduction au Jacobinisme...), "Jacobinism is both an ideology and a power: a system of representations and a system of action." ("le jacobinisme est à la fois une idéologie et un pouvoir : un système de représentations et un système d'action"). Its political goals were largely achieved later during France's Third Republic.
France Jacobinism did not end with the Jacobins. The Robespierrist François-Noël Babeuf eventually rejected the rule of the Jacobins and welcomed the end of the Terror. However, he later eschewed the Thermidorean Reaction that overthrew the Jacobins and he returned to Robespierrism. In May 1796, he led a failed coup d'état with neo-Robespierrists to attempt to return the republic to the Montagnard Constitution of 1793 in the Conspiracy of Equals. His political ideology was a form of neo-Jacobinism and primordial communism that highlighted egalitarian division of all land and property enforced by a dictatorship run by the Equals. His ideas were widely publicized and further developed as "Babeuvism" by colleague Filippo Buonaroti in his 1828 book, Histoire de la Conspiration Pour l'Égalité Dite de Babeuf (History of Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality).
Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx called the Conspiracy of Equals "the first appearance of a truly active Communist party." Leon Trotsky echoed these sentiments, stating that the foundation of the Communist International marked a "carrying on in direct succession the heroic endeavours and martyrdom of a long line of revolutionary generations from Babeuf."
Himself a Robespierrist, Buonaroti went on to write Observations sur Maximilien Robespierre in 1836, which extolled the Jacobin leader as a legend and hero. His portrayal of Robespierre as a model for socialist revolutionaries greatly influenced young socialists and republicans, such as Albert Laponneraye.
The 19th century socialist firebrand, nationalist and founder of Blanquism, Louis Auguste Blanqui expressed admiration for Jacobin leaders of the Terror like Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, framing them in messianic terms. Retrieved 30 March 2022 Retrieved 30 March 2022 Retrieved 30 March 2022 Retrieved 30 March 2022 There is evidence that his principles were also instructed by Babeuvism through his familiarity with Buonarroti. Retrieved 30 March 2022 After the French Revolution of 1848, he criticized contemporaries who claimed to be heirs of Jacobinism, writing: "Our own self-styled Montagnards are a caricature, indeed a very poor copy, of the Girondins." Retrieved 30 March 2022 His view of Robespierre later changed over an understanding of the Terror's executions of Georges Danton and the Hébertists, as well as the formation of the Cult of the Supreme Being, the latter due to Blanqui's promotion of materialism and atheism. Retrieved 30 March 2022 According to Blanqui, the Hebertists were the true revolutionaries in defending atheism, science and equality. He said that socialism needed to be built on the foundations laid by the French Revolution, and would better defend the ideals of the Enlightenment than Jacobinism, adding the toast, "Citizens, the Mountain is dead! To socialism, its sole heir!"
Various French left-wing parties would claim to be the "true heirs" to the French Revolution and the 1871 Paris Commune. Retrieved 30 March 2022 Aspects of Blanqui were likewise claimed by French political groups like the Radical Socialists and the Stalinists. Other organizations included the French Central Revolutionary Committee and its successor, the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and the Blanquist section of the International Workingmen's Association or First International.
On 4 October 1919, Alexandre Varenne founded the socialist daily La Montagne, Quotidien de la Démocratie Socialiste du Center. Retrieved 10 May 2021 The title was selected to reflect its alignment with the ideas of the Montagnards.
In the 1930s, the Popular Front coalition included the French Communist Party or Parti communiste français (PCF), who along with portions of the alliance's socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party increasingly emphasized patriotism. The PCF were characterized as "New Jacobins", and their leader Maurice Thorez as a "Stalinist Jacobin".
Apart from Marxism, the movement of Neosocialism and its founder Marcel Déat who was a collaborator with Vichy and the Nazis, was known to be inspired by Jacobin politics and claimed its heritage .
Haiti The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, is the only successful revolt of enslaved people to create an independent nation and abolish the slave society. In the historiography on Haiti, these revolutionaries are often called "Black Jacobins," beginning with Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James' seminal book The Black Jacobins, in 1938.
India
In 1794, Frenchmen in the Kingdom of Mysore allegedly established the "Jacobin Club of Mysore" with the assistance of its ruler Tipu Sultan, who purportedly declared himself "Citizen Tipoo". During the subsequent Fourth Anglo-Mysore War of 1799, British forces captured French volunteers led by François Ripaud who were serving under Mysorean command. French historian Jean Boutier argued that senior officials of the East India Company fabricated the club's existence to justify their war against Mysore.
Italy
Blanquism had a notable influence on Benito Mussolini who founded fascism as an outgrowth of revolutionary socialism. Retrieved 7 April 2022 He claimed he "introduced into Italian socialism something of (Henri) Bergson mixed with much of Blanqui," including Blanqui's nationalism, the idea of rule by a dominant minority and use of violence. However, Mussolini dispensed with Blanquism's links to the Enlightenment and communism and instead stated, fascism is "opposed to all individualistic abstractions based on eighteenth century materialism; and it is opposed to all Jacobinistic utopias and innovations." Retrieved 7 April 2022 The masthead of his newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia carried quotes from Blanqui ("Whoever has steel has bread") and Napoleon Bonaparte ("The Revolution is an idea which has found bayonets!"). Retrieved 7 April 2022 Leon Trotsky called fascism in a sense "a caricature of Jacobinism". Retrieved 7 April 2022
Poland King Stanisław II August was enamored with the American Constitution, the ideals of the Gironde of 1790–1792, and the office of Roi Citoyen ("Citizen King"). He helped develop the 1791 Polish Constitution which embraced social reforms guaranteeing "the freedom, property and equality of every citizen." Its ratification led some Society of the Friends of the Constitution chapters to endorse the King and his Rzeczypospolita and helped shape the French constitution adopted later that year.
While the Constitutionalists had contacts with Jacobin Clubs, they were expressly not Jacobins. However prior to the 1792 war that crushed the republic, Russian Empress Catherine the Great claimed the constitution was the work of the Jacobins and that she would be "fighting Jacobinism in Poland" and "the Jacobins of Warsaw".
Russia and Soviet Union The 1870s saw the emergence of the "Worker's Marseillaise", a Russian revolutionary song set to a Robert Schumann melody inspired by the 1792 "Marseillaise". It was used as a national anthem by the Russian Provisional Government and in Soviet Russia for a short time alongside "The Internationale". Retrieved 26 February 2022