January 25th last year has been a tremendous victory for hope in Europe: Alexis Tsipras and Syriza won elections in Greece. Their program was clearly socialist and democratic, against the rule of the troika experts and global finance institutions.

The close relationship between the struggle for democracy and the struggle against “debtocracy” has nothing new for those of us who remember how Athenian democracy was established after the Solon reforms. Here is another historical document that is worth the reading in today’s context. It is a petition written by women in Lyons, during the French Revolution (1789-1799), in September 1792, against what we by now call “debtocracy”, i.e. the hollowing-out of democratic institutions by financial coercion.

It reads:

The sovereign people of the city of Lyons, weary for a long time under the yoke of the tyranny of the monopolizing aristocrats, tired since four years from the losses affecting paper-money that he receives in exchange of this work; obliged to pay what he byes, almost twice as much than before, has settled that henceforth he would not pay commodities used for his daily needs but to the price founded upon the bases of Justice, Equity and Equality. In short, to be able to provide his subsistence without being in the case of employing among violent means that are rendered necessary by the public calamities (…)

This text is followed by a list of food items along with their just price. This historical document is kept at the Musée Gadagne in Lyons (France). The text above has been translated to English from L’intelligence politique de la Révolution française edited by Sophie Wahnich (Paris, Textuel, 2012, p. 139).

From the onset of the French Revolution in July 1789, the working people of this city has been hoping that the end of absolutism would also end the high level of taxation on foodstuffs that has been established by the city consulate in the preceding years to pay off its extravagant expenditures. The masses were thus expecting the cancellation of these illegitimate debts.

On July 1789, working people have provided the city’s markets with foodstuffs without paying these taxes. They have been violently repressed on this occasion. After the fall of the monarchy on August 10, 1792, when the Tuileries palace hosting Louis XVI was taken by a mass of Parisian sans-cullotes and fédérés soldiers, and with the proclamation of the Republic by the newly-elected Convention on September 21st, the hopes of the laboring people seemed to be at reach for many. It is in this interplay between a sweep of hope among the people and a context of profound hardship and crisis that the women of Lyons intervene politically through this petition against unjust taxes on food items. Their politics still echo resolutely our 21st century debt-ridden world.

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