Letter – Robespierre, Justice, 27th May 1899, p.3.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Dear Comrade,
Your review of Robespierre was surely a little too indulgent to that unscrupulous petit bourgeois Chadband. His treacherous intrigues against his old friends the Dantonists; his ruthless destruction of the Hébertistes who stood in the way of his schemes for moderating the revolution in the interests of the propertied classes and the law of Prairial by which he secured that his victim should be condemned unheard in their own defence – these things surely apart from anything else, constitute a tolerably heavy indictment. The fact is the slimy “incorruptible” has had the extreme good fortune of having become the personification of the revolution in the popular mind and hence of having sustained the main brunt of reactionary abuse anent the Revolution. But this should not blind us to facts or prevent us from giving an impartial judgement of Robespierre’s character based on these facts. Napoleon, it may he remarked, recognised in Robespierre his unsuccessful predecessor in the attempt to secure “order,” i.e., presumably his “order” of plutocratic supremacy.
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Yours fraternally, |
Last updated on 25.5.2004