Furet

I met a guy. He’s French and smart. He’s got all these great ideas. Well— I didn’t meet him exactly, but I know what he thinks because I met him through his book, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century. His name is Francois Furet. His work on The French Revolution (1965) brought him fame, but in a video interview on YouTube, he says he was just doing his job. He hadn’t yet found his question, the one that would stay with him, the one that demands his concern.

In the early 1970s, Furet was involved in a large-scale, interdisciplinary initiative that combined history with statistical methods to better understand the social and political dynamics of the French Revolution. The project was highly innovative for its time, as it sought to use quantitative analysis to uncover patterns and trends in historical events, particularly in relation to the Revolution.

Furet and his collaborators were working within the framework of Annales School historiography, which emphasized the integration of social science methods, including quantitative approaches like statistics, into historical analysis. The Annales School, a major force in 20th-century historiography, had already pioneered efforts to expand the scope of historical inquiry beyond political events and figures, focusing on social and economic history, and using more “scientific” approaches to study history. (ChatGPT)

Cool, hugh? That he wanted to set out a statistical approach to the social sciences.

The project didn’t work out quite the way they anticipated. In the video he is clearly disapointed. He says math is tough. It only considers one variable. Despite all the demographic data, the results posed more questions than answers.

Yet in The Passing of an Illusion (here’s a book review to give you an overview of it), there’s a sense that the author has thought through the historical events in terms of definitions and relationships. His narrative talks of actors and associations instead of the grand sweeps of inevitable movements. He tells of individuals and the choices they make. He groups people by their shared ambitions. There is an agency to the peasants or the bourgeoisie, to the aristocrats and the intellectual class.

There’s a sense of time in his sorting as well. As soldiers took up arms under their national flags in July of 1914, he describes a sense of obligation to the past, to the generations who came before and fought to maintain national borders. The sentiments of statehood weren’t found in the moment but had built up a reserve of obligation over time.

Whereas the passion ignited on behalf of the downtrodden proletariat reached a universal appeal. The shared interest in favor of the worker found at odds with the capitalist would not be contained by political boundaries. Communism, indeed, found its footing across the globe.

Furet, rather shyly, also talks of another facet of social activity: volunteerism. It’s hard to know if he looks down and away in the video because the concept wasn’t well received. But the idea that people devote their volunteer labor to the cause is part of his theory. From Chat:

Summary of Key Ideas in Furet’s Concept of Volunteerism:

• Rejection of Structuralism: Furet rejected deterministic structural explanations (such as class conflict theory) for revolutionary action, arguing instead that individuals and groups made deliberate decisions that led to the Revolution.
• Ideology as Driving Force: He saw ideological commitment as the key motivator behind revolutionary action, with people acting voluntarily to advance certain political ideas and principles.
• Revolutionary Agency: The French Revolution was a voluntary act of will, driven by the agency of individuals and groups who made choices based on their ideological commitments, not merely by economic conditions or social determinism.
• Collective Action from Voluntary Unity: Furet explored how diverse groups, driven by shared ideological commitments, united in collective action to achieve common revolutionary goals.

Here’s how ChatGPT summed up Furet’s focus.

This approach presents the Revolution as a complex interaction of ideology, agency, and action, where individual choices play a central role in determining the outcome of collective struggles.

I couldn’t agree more. But I think we can generalize this structure across all public efforts, including all those which are much more mundane than revolution. Thankfully.