/lit/ - Literature

>>5186538
>>5186571

>They were far better than Robespierre (or Lenin, or Kaganovich, or whatever other leftist of whatever era

No they were not, they were incompetent,inbred,weak and cowardly, a very bad combination. Even Machiavelli complained against the state of degeneration and decadence the nobility had reached in Italy.
Look at how incopetent and paranoid the czar was in comparison to Peter the Great.

Autocracy necessarily devolves and degenerates through the years and generations.

This was the point Marx was making in the 18th of Brumaire. The legacy of "Napoleon the hero" is relaced by the bloody legacy of "Napoleon III the incompetent".
By analogy Robespierre was one of the great Hegelian protagonists of history, that commanded tremendous power through the will of the people to command changes acording to the collective will ( a la Roussau).

In reality Robespierre was neither a vilain nor a hero, but a great actor of his era.

Who is your role model, /lit/ ?