The French Revolution and Capitalism: an Explanatory Schema
The French Revolution and Capitalism: an Explanatory Schema

Summary/Abstract: The centrality of the French Revolution is a consequence of the centrality of the Franco-British struggle for hegemony of the world-economy. The French Revolution occurred in the wake of, and as a consequence of, France’s sense of impending defeat in this struggle. And the French Revolution had the kind of impact on the world-system that it did have precisely because it occurred in the country that had lost the struggle for hegemony. The French Revolution, which many had hoped would reverse the tide of British victory, may be said to have been on the contrary decisive in ensuring an enduring British victory. But precisely because of this geopolitical, geoeconomic defeat, the French revolutionaries in fact achieved their long-term ideological objectives. Let us then look at the history of the French Revolution primarily in terms of its consequences rather than of its imputed causes. First of all, what were the actual economic policies of the early revolutionary governments in two key domains, the structure of agricultural productions and the role of the state in relationship to industrial production?

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