Misunderstanding of Reed's support for Bolshevism

The leaders of the French Revolution, devotees of Voltaire and Rousseau were hardly "Classical Liberals" in the way we understand the word today. Much of what Rousseau, the driving ideological force of the French Revolution was a rejection of John Locke, and Republican forms of government (which in reality are the dominant form of government today, where democratically elected representatives speak for a constituency).

The Liberals of the French Revolution were arguably closer to the Bolsheviks, including their desire to see 'Liberalism' spread across the world at the point of a bayonet. Rousseau was of course a serious inspiration for Karl Marx, and the concept of a free man by necessity must be involved in the political process lead to Marx's conception of a 'Worker's State' where he ties the monetary concepts of Marxism to Rousseau's concepts of democratic freedom.

Although he was not a Liberal, Edmund Burke supported the Liberal-inspired American Revolution (and he was a Brit to boot), but rejected the French Revolution on their grounds of their distinctly differing ideologies. When we talk about "Classical Liberalism" today, we probably aren't invoking Talleyrand and Napoleon (although Rousseau I'm sure would be drawn to a great many minds), so yes I think that if a movie like this were made about the French Revolution we would be questioning the ideas of Classical Liberals if that is the term that you want to apply to the French of that time. However I don't feel that their philosophy extends to the Enlightenment Era American Revolutionaries, nor the British intellectuals like Locke, nor their Venetian precursors whom more correctly should bear that title.

There is also the common theme that both the French Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks were peasant rebels fighting against the nobility, which makes the actual motives for those revolutions coming out looking more like reactionary backlash against oppression than a fight for ideals. Many of the leaders of the American Revolution for example actually had quite a lot to lose and even the rank and file of the militias and continental army were not literally being mistreated (in such a way that it impacted their daily lives to any great extent that is) by their British brothers. The Bolsheviks and French Peasants could realistically only go up from their current position on the bottom of the social ladder (at least those that walked away from failed insurrection with their heads on their shoulders) and were in much more dire straights in regards to their day to day lives in their respective countries.

While Lenin, Trotsky et al obviously were very idealistic I question their personal ability and that of their creed to inspire anyone but the downtrodden rabble that they did. The success of the Revolution was really the failing of the Tsarist leadership and not the triumph of idealistic revolutionaries, hell bent on success at all costs. If you are talking about a triumph of ideals, neither the Russian nor French Revolutions are prime examples as their prime motivation hardly seemed to be ideology as exampled in the lack of loyalty that those ideologues actually commanded after the initial bloodletting, leading to the catapulting to power non-ideologue rulers through democratic means, as well as vast corruption as another example of widespread lack of adherence to the creeds that allegedly inspired those revolutions.