France’s 1789 revolution came amid economic plenty, not impoverishment

Evidence

Moreover, all assertions concerning periods of crisis or of prosperity may give rise to unilateral judgements. In his historical outline of the French Revolution, Mathiez, in opposition to the vulgar traditional history which aprioristically “discovers” a crisis coinciding with every major rupture of social equilibrium, asserts that towards 1789 the economic situation was in an immediate sense rather good, so that it cannot be said that the downfall of the absolute State was due to a crisis of impoverishment. It should be observed that the State was in the throes of a mortal financial crisis and considering which of the privileged social orders would have to bear the sacrifices and burdens necessary for the State and Royal finances to be put back in order. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 766