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A series of classic texts by revolutionaries in both thought and deed.
Each book includes an introduction by a major contemporary writer
illustrating how these figures continue to speak to readers today.
VIRTUE
AND TERROR
MAXIMILIEN ROBESPIERRE
INTRODUCTION BY SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
TEXTS SELECTED AND ANNOTATED BY JEAN DUCANGE
TRANSLATION BY JOHN HOWE
This edition published by Verso 2017
Translation © John Howe 2007, 2017
Introduction © Slavoj Žižek 2007, 2017
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the authors and translator have been asserted
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Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-337-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-339-2 (US EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-338-5 (UK EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Robespierre, Maximilien, 1758–1794. | éZiézek, Slavoj, contributor.
Title: Virtue and terror / Maximilien Robespierre; introduction by Slavoj éZiézek; texts selected and annotated by Jean Ducange; translation by John Howe.
Description: 2017 edition. | London; Brooklyn, NY: Verso, [2017] | Series:
Revolutions | Series: Virtue and terror | Originally published: Verso 2007. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017025009 | ISBN 9781786633378 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781786633385
(uk e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Robespierre, Maximilien, 1758–1794—Political and social
views. | France-History-Revolution, 1789–1799. | Political
violence—France—History—18th century.
Classification: LCC DC146.R6 A25 2017 | DDC 944.04092–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025009
Typeset in Bembo by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, UK
CONTENTS
Introduction
Suggested Further Reading
Glossary
Chronology
Translator’s Note
Part One: Robespierre at the Constituent Assembly and the Jacobin Club
1On Voting Rights for Actors and Jews
2On the Silver Mark
3On the Condition of Free Men of Colour
4On the Rights of Societies and Clubs
5Extracts from On the War
Part Two: In the National Convention
6Extracts from Answer to Louvet’s Accusation
7Extracts from On Subsistence
8On the Trial of the King
9Draft Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
10Extracts from In Defence of the Committee of Public Safety and Against Briez
11Extracts from Report on the Political Situation of the Republic
12Response of the National Convention to the Manifestos of the Kings Allied Against the Republic
13On the Principles of Revolutionary Government
14On the Principles of Political Morality that Should Guide the National Convention in the Domestic Administration of the Republic
15Extracts from Speech of 8 Thermidor Year II
Notes
ROBESPIERRE, OR, THE ‘DIVINE VIOLENCE’ OF TERROR
Slavoj Žižek
When, in 1953, Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Prime Minister, was in Geneva for the peace negotiations to end the Korean War, a French journalist asked him what he thought about the French Revolution; Zhou replied: ‘It is still too early to tell.’ In a way, he was right: with the disintegration of the ‘people’s democracies’ in the late 1990s, the struggle for the historical significance of the French Revolution flared up again. The liberal revisionists tried to impose the notion that the demise of Communism in 1989 occurred at exactly the right moment: it marked the end of the era which began in 1789, the final failure of the statist-revolutionary model which first entered
