Causes Of Social Inequality In The French Revolution

In order to better understand the social inequality in the French revolution, it is required to understand the social construct of The French Empire before the revolution. A monarchy, the old empire are mainly classified into three estates, this being the clergy, the nobles, and the commoners. The clergy and the nobility both benefitted from various privileges, such as tax exemptions and exclusivity of political authority. The clergy are known to exploit the commoners such as asking for payment and they are infamous for living a scandalous life. Few historians would disagree that social problems are a cause of the French Revolution, it is widely known how the privileged were overthrown due to unhappiness among the citizens , however the fact that the social conditions had been similar for hundreds of

Evidence that social inequality is responsible for starting the French Revolution is the social condition before the revolution and its impact on the citizens. Privileges were one of the symbols of inequality during the time, the higher classes such as the nobility and the clergy were granted excessive privileges while the commoners on the other hand were given none. One of the famous example of these privileges were taxes, although the monarchy was able to tax the privileged elite before the revolution, the commoners was still burdened by heavy taxes while the clergy are still exempt from paying taxes. Although the clergy and the nobility made up only three percent of the total population, they are the wealthiest classes in the empire thus by the exemption of taxes, it had a big impact on the economy. This combined with the inefficiency of French’s tax system