Anarchists and the Music of the French Revolution

The French Revolution created an extraordinarily rich world of visual imagery, iconography, and music. These images and songs would outlive the revolutionary era of their birth and appear again in the later revolutionary culture of the anarchist movement in France between 1880 and 1914. The anarchists sought to put the culture of the sans-culotte revolution of the eighteenth century into the service of the proletarian revolution of the nineteenth and twentieth. In anarchist newspapers, books, pamphlets, and posters, the images associated with sans-culottes of 1793 would be prolifically used. The symbols of '93, like the Phrygian cap and the sans-culotte pick, would adorn the anarchists' propaganda. The revolutionary Marianne would appear as an anarchist avenger. At anarchist meetings and demonstrations, "la Carmagnole" and "Ça Ira" would echo in the halls and streets of Paris. The anarchists, however, did not merely ape the culture of the past century's ancestors; they updated and modified these revolutionary working-class standards to meet the needs of the current struggle. By writing new lyrics and placing the Revolution in the context of their own struggle, the anarchists could disseminate their ideology to a largely semiliterate audience in terms and contexts with which it would already be familiar. The use of French Revolutionary popular culture would be one the anarchists' most valuable propaganda tools.

The song culture from the Revolution, in particular, provided an important and effective tool for propaganda. It became valuable for diffusing ideas and building revolutionary solidarity among the largely illiterate working classes. While the theoretical works of Kropotkin may not be accessible to all, "la Carmagnole" could deliver a similar message as efficiently. Although the anarchists did create a good deal of their own unique popular culture, much of which has been documented by Gaetano Manfredonia and Richard Sonn, the popular culture of the Revolution played a vital role.¹

The songs of the French Revolution proved to be surprisingly resilient and popular both with the anarchists and with the French working classes at the turn of the century. Among the diverse range of cultural works that came out of the Revolution, the culture of the sans-culottes proved to be the most important for the anarchists, who embraced this eighteenth-century working-class culture with a strong affinity. In doing so, they were able to accomplish a number of purposes. Primarily, they realized that it still resonated with the contemporary working classes and thus served as an effective means of revolutionary propaganda. Their embrace of sans-culotte culture, like much of their utilization of the French Revolution in general, additionally allowed the anarchists to place themselves in the chain of continuity with French revolutionary history. By associating themselves with the past, they hoped to confer a form of legitimacy. Third, the sans-culotte culture was extremely violent. It was the culture of people-at-arms and fit well with the anarchists' agenda of popular, violent revolution. Finally, their embrace of the popular culture from the Revolution allowed the anarchists to criticize the Third Republic for failing to live up to the ideals of the Revolution. Through skillful use of images and, most importantly, songs from the Revolution, the anarchists could argue again that they—and not the Republicans now in power—represented the ideals of the Revolution. The popular musical culture of the Revolution would prove to be a valuable weapon in the anarchist arsenal.

Song Culture in French Revolutionary History

Revolutionary French politics has a long and rich history of song culture. Dating from 1789, songs have played an important part in France's numerous revolutionary movements, and the anarchists are no exception to this tradition. While the visual arts provided other important cultural tools for the anarchists' efforts, songs and singing played a special role in revolutionary politics. As a result, song culture allows the historian an important lens through which to examine the cultural activity of a revolutionary movement. As Laura Mason states in her excellent cultural history of songs during the French Revolution, the importance of song culture rests on two key bases. First, songs...