The Radicalization Trap: Political-Economic Extremism and the Derailment of France’s and Haiti’s Revolutions
Abstract
In revolutionary France, Maximilien Robespierre’s fusion of virtue and terror justified massive purges that undermined liberty and public debate. Likewise, in Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s radical nationalism and economic policies (embodied in the 1804 Declaration of Independence) invoked the revolutionary slogan “liberty or death” while repudiating commerce and white property ownership. Both leaders adopted an absolute approach, which constrained the development of political pluralism. Drawing on primary texts (Robespierre’s speeches and the Haitian Declaration), this paper uses comparative analysis to examine radicalization in the French and Haitian Revolutions and its effect on realization of the revolutions’ core goals. The study demonstrates that this ideological extremism (political in France, economic in Haiti) produces social fragmentation, international isolation, and the betrayal of the original goals. This paper argues that revolutionary radicalization created a “trap”, in which the stated aspirations of liberty and equality were compromised, leading both revolutions away from stable constitutional democracy toward authoritarian outcomes.
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