The planned economy instaured in the autumn of 1793 in response to pressure from the masses answered, from the point of view of those who governed, less to a theoretical conception of what social organisation should be than to the requirements of national defense: they needed to feed, equip, arm the men massively recruited, provide necessities to those in the cities, all the while external commerce tainted by the blocus and all of France like an besieged fortress. The requisition affected all the material resources of the country, limiting free Enterprise. A necessary complement to the requisition, generalized taxation as of the decree of September 29 1793 defined imposed profit margins (5% for the wholesaler, 10% for the retailer), put the brakes on speculative ardour, restrained the liberty to profit. Nationalization affected production in varying degrees, especially that of armaments and war goods, and external trade, but essentially as a function of military needs, the Committee for the Public Good refusing to nationalize civilian necessities.
Yet one could see the first signs of social democracy. Neither Montagnards nor Jacobins could envisage integrating the popular masses into the bourgeois nation other than through accession to property as defined in terms of Eighty-nine. It is no longer argued that one should put the right to property second to that of providing subsistence, nor to propose it as " a social institution defined by law", as had been suggested by Robespierre in his version of a Declaration of rights, April 24 1793. But the Mountain finally gave satisfaction to the peasants, July 17 1793, by the absolute abolition, without indemnity, of all lordly rights. The decree of October 22 1793 forbade property owners to require from farmers and lease-holders any replacement payment ( but how seriously was this applied?). While this transfer of revenue was taking place, the transfer of property accelerated: the lands of those nobles who had emigrated sequestered as of February 9 1792, put up for sale the following July 27, would be offered in small lots of 2 to 4 acres ( as of the decree of of June 3 1793), payable over 10 years ( delay augmented to 20 years through the decree of September 13). On June 10, a decree authorized the breaking-up of communal goods, on the condition that one-third of the inhabitants make the request. The culminating point of these measures tending to create a nation of small property-owners, was reached through the decrees of 8 and 13 ventôse year II (February 26 and march 3 1794), which deprived suspects of their goods ("He who proves himself to be the enemy of his country cannot there be a property-owner", according to Saint-Just), to be transferred to indigent patriots. It is not here a question of a "program for a new revolution", as Albert Mathiez has suggested, but a political and social measure well en scribed in the bourgeois revolution: confiscation was never other than a means of struggle against the aristocracy, accession to property being a factor of social consolidation. Partisans in their hearts of economic liberalism, the followers of Robespierre and the Montagnards both were reluctant to intervene in agricultural reform: deaf to the demands of the Without-proper-pants of the countryside, they never considered reforming land-leasing nor the breaking-up of large farms into small lots. The same boldness and the same timidity can be found in attempts at new social legislation. The right to social assistance was sanctioned in a decree dated 22 floréal year II (May 11 1794) which opened in each department a book of national welfare, but available only to the inhabitants of the countryside: retirement income for the old and the infirm, allocations for mothers and widows with children, free medical home-care - so many measure which pre-figure social security.
"Let Europe take note that you no longer want a destitute man nor an oppressor on French territory, had declared Saint-Just, on 13 ventôse...Happiness is a new idea in Europe."
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