Monday, August 6, 2018

Jacobin


There has been some debate over what these American socialists really believe. It is difficult because it is hard to imagine anyone holding on to these outdated, primitive, failed and homicidal beliefs. It's like trying to understand when your next door neighbor aligns himself with the Inquisition. Nonetheless....

In an article for Vox, Meagan Day, a writer for the socialist magazine, "Jacobin," and a democratic socialist, says the goal is to pursue a “reform agenda today in an effort to revive a politics focused on class hierarchy and inequality in the United States.” 
She writes,
"I’m a staff writer at the socialist magazine Jacobin and a member of [the Democratic Socialists of America], and here’s the truth: In the long run, democratic socialists want to end capitalism."  Continuing she says:
“The eventual goal is to transform the world to promote everyone’s needs rather than to produce massive profits for a small handful of citizens.” 
I believe her. 

Now the name of her magazine is interesting.
The Jacobins originated as the Club Breton at Versailles, where the deputies from Brittany to the Estates-General (later the National Assembly) of 1789 met with deputies from other parts of France to concert their action. The group was reconstituted, probably in December 1789, after the National Assembly moved to Paris, under the name of Society of the Friends of the Constitution, but it was commonly called the Jacobin Club because its sessions were held in a former convent of the Dominicans, who were known in Paris as Jacobins. Its purpose was to protect the gains of the Revolution against a possible aristocratic reaction.
In July 1791 the Jacobin Club split over a petition calling for the removal of Louis XVI after his unsuccessful attempt to flee France; many of the moderate deputies left to join the rival club of the Feuillants. Maximilien Robespierre was one of the few deputies who remained, and he assumed a position of prominence in the club.
After the overthrow of the monarchy, in August 1792 (in which the Jacobin Club, still reluctant to declare itself republican, did not have a direct role), the club entered a new phase as one of the major groups directing the Revolution. With the proclamation of the republic in September, the club changed its name to Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Liberty and Equality. It acquired a democratic character with the admission of the leftist Montagnard deputies in the National Convention (the new legislature) and also a more popular one as it responded to the demands of the Parisian working and artisan class. Through the early phase of the Convention, the club was a meeting place for the Montagnards, and it agitated for the execution of the king (January 1793) and for the overthrow of the moderate Girondins (June 1793).

With the establishment of the Revolutionary dictatorship, beginning in the summer of 1793, the local Jacobin clubs became instruments of the Reign of Terror. (In 1793 there were probably 5,000 to 8,000 clubs throughout France, with a nominal membership of 500,000.) The clubs, as part of the administrative machinery of government, had certain duties: they raised supplies for the army and policed local markets. Often local government officials were replaced with members of clubs. As centres of public virtue, the clubs watched over people whose opinions were suspect, led the dechristianizing movement, and organized Revolutionary festivals.
(stolen from the Encyclopedia Britannica)

It is very important to see that these people are not afraid or ashamed of the history of their creed. That this approach to economic and political life has been both murderous and destructively unsuccessful seem to matter to them not a whit.

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