Food for Revolutionary Thought

Government censorship of certain widely transmitted public opinions has an important role in the history of many countries. What the masses believe, what we trust in and into whose hands we wish to place our own survival; these components are the most important to the mechanics of revolutionary change. My definition of revolutionary will remain broad for these purposes, encompassing everything from civil disobedience and general criticism of authority, all the way up to the gates of the Bastille. The French Revolution especially is a prime example of the evolution of public opinion and the intellectual origins of one of the Western World’s most remarkable regime changes.
An interesting work titled The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, by Robert Darnton, contains a mountain of theses, most of which are supported by some of the most intriguing research of an illegal trade that I have ever read. One of Darnton’s most ambitious conclusions has to do with this r...