Indeed, the French nobility was relatively open and rich commoners bought and married their way to social mobility. Nobles were also involved in trade and finance, whilst many wealthy bourgeoisie purchased patents of nobility. Moreover, the distinction between noble and commoner was not as clear as once supposed. Critics pointed out that there were many nobles amongst those clamouring for reform in 1789. The Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution was increasingly challenged after 1945. In 1789 the bourgeoisie made common cause with the peasantry and the urban labouring classes to begin the Revolution. In this reading the Revolution resulted from a struggle for power between the old feudal nobility, whose status was based on the ownership of land, and the bourgeoisie, who acquired wealth through trade, finance and the professions. From the late nineteenth century, explanations based on the theories of Karl Marx became dominant. Early, royalist and clerical interpretations of the Revolution cast it as a conspiracy orchestrated by Enlightenment philosophes. Historians have identified multiple causes of the French Revolution, both long and short term.
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