The “social question,” in 18th-century parlance, referred to the existence of poverty. It was abject poverty that brought masses of commoners into the streets in France, leading the revolutionary leader, Maximilien Robespierre (See: Key Figures), to prioritize satisfying the material needs of the poor above establishing new political institutions. The goal of the revolution was no longer “freedom” but “the happiness of the people” (51) and this shift is what ultimately “unleashed the terror and sent the Revolution to its doom” (51).

Not only was this shift the turning point of the French Revolution, it also inspired every subsequent revolution, largely because Marx focused his own revolutionary conceptions on historical necessity and the social question. Concluding that the French Revolution had failed because it failed to solve the problem of mass poverty, he was the first to argue that “poverty can be a political force of the first order” (52). His own theory held that poverty is the product of exploitation by a “ruling class” and is therefore “a political, not a natural phenomenon, the result of violence and violation rather than scarcity” (53). Instead of pursuing freedom for its own sake, subsequent revolutionists made eliminating exploitation and scarcity their chief aim.