Should we celebrate Bastille Day and the French Revolution...

what sort of leftist doesn't admire the fucking french revolution

you spelled counter-revolutionary pro-aristocrat scum incorrectly

Yeah we should celebrate both. Leftism as we know it wouldn't exist without it. Revolution and Republicanism might've become short-lived memes if not.

But we should also celebrate something, or someone, else.

Napoleon is one of, if not the greatest, monarchs in existence. If he had won Europe would have become a Superpower dwarfing the US while upholding the ideals of the revolution just as well as those before him. TL:DR the revolution's Julius Ceaser.

Say what you will of kings and emperors, but they are men just like you and me. They can exact as much evil as they can do good. Napoleon did much more good.

Napoleon in almost 20 years failed to make one single significant, long-lasting alliance, brought slavery back to the French colonies, reverted most significant gains of the Revolution and from a military point of view didn't do anything that the Jacobins weren't already doing, except that they were also pushing society forward.

And let's not forget what he did to Haiti and Louverture, which was not only morally abhorrent but also lead them to lose the american colonies.

It's kinda hard to make a long-lasting alliance when you were only in power for 20 years, but in that time he was making allies in the German, Italian, Polish, etc, satellites. How are they not significant?

The man didn't care for the new world. He was willing to sacrifice it so that he could take the new. He was also willing to use slavery as a cash cow to fund it. Morally abhorrent yes, but it was a tactful sacrifice.

wew lad
Oh yeah the Jacobins totally would've taken the H.R.E., dismantled it (probably averting a cluster of reactionary politics should it have remained; I can just imagine monarchists in that alternate world utilizing the sugnificance of the position to do terrible shit), and march their armies all the way from Russia to Portugal.

You call the spread of the Napoleonic Code not pushing society foreward?

If you think a fifth of a century is not enough to make at least one other significant power in Europe not hate you then you haven't studied your history. Frederick was almost as controversial and not only cemented strong alliances but earned the admiration of so many aristocrats that he was saved by a new Tsar withdrawing from what was essentially a won war, solely out of admiration for him.

That's a pretty fucking silly thing to say m8

You may not care for the new world but you certainly care for money, resources, markets and how they help finance two decades of war. Losing the colonies was a huge setback. And if he didn't care for it, then why try to retake Haiti at all, let alone through such low, desperate measures?

Not only that, but your next point

doesn't even make sense if you take into account that in the French empire slavery virtually only existed in the colonies, and by losing them you can't profit from them, with or without slavery.

Also, I think you'd be surprised to know that using slavery as a cash cow is what every slave owner in history had in mind. That's pretty much the only use for it. If you're going to rationalise it on that basis then you have virtually no ground to criticize slavery from.

What I meant by Jacobins were already doing is that they were successfully defending the country from foreign invaders, which is what everyone tends to give Napoleon kudos for.

But I agree that his design for Europe and its boundaries was decent and could only be achieved through aggression, and that's the one thing in his legacy that I like.

I haven't read the Code myself but if I recall correctly something like that had been in the talks since the beginning of the Revolution, so I don't know how much credit we should give him for it.

Why is this even a question? Literally who gives a fuck. We have nothing worth celebrating while capitalism continues to exist.

One might even say that this is pretty lifestylist :^))

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Thanks folks! I almost forgot my 2nd favorite day of the year. (1st is 4th of July)

VIVE LA REPUBLIQUE! Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!

Cheers to my French comrades.

By the way, there is something Robespierre did wrong.

He wasn't an Enrages.

(Though, the whole centralization thing was also a dumb decision and the guilds, in a more egalitarian form, should've been brought back after the bourgeois government before the Jacobins banned it.)