adopt a particular course of action (Kennedy, 1989, 367).
Kennedy makes the Jacobins sound much like incipient political parties, and parties with power they could exercise.
Kennedy portrays the Jacobins as a group that betrayed its stated principles. The organization claimed to be democratic, and Kennedy sees it as attempting to establish a virtuocracy susceptible to the worst crimes--sacrilege, false testimony, fratricide, and pillage:
Education can only be understood to mean what Jacobinism pretended it to mean, not what it usually conveys. Democracy was spoiled, not saved, by the Terror. . . a Jacobin is by definition a vigilante (Kennedy, 1989, 369-370).
The popular societies had a role in mobilizing the people, but they also were given to ideological purges in the name of patriotism. The image of the Jacobins conveyed by Kennedy is cultural and political--they were a response to the revolutionary fervor of the time and participated as a force to effect change in the direction of increased revolution. They were both a product and shaper of the times.
Palmer (1941) approaches the Revolution through the personalities of those who were leaders of the various factions involved, and he sees the Jacobin club especially as the site of the battle between followers of Robespierre and opponents of Robespierre. His analysis presents the Jacobin clubs as a setting as much as an organization, though he does not ignore the dynamics of the clubs as political forces in their own right. Palmer emphasizes certain actions of the Jacobins as important in the context of the Revolution, especially its efforts toward Dechristianization. In facing this crisis, the Jacobins built up a form of planned economy and advanced further along the road leading from anarchy to order. Palmer sees the role of the Jacobins as more moderated and progressive than does Kennedy. He sees them as embodying Revolutionary principles, and indeed he se...