What Is the Third Estate? What Is the Third Estate? What Is the Third Estate? () is a political pamphlet written in January 1789, shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution, by the French thinker and clergyman Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836). The pamphlet was Sieyès' response to finance minister Jacques Necker's invitation for writers to state how they thought the Estates-General should be organized. In the pamphlet, Sieyès argues that the third estate – the common people of France – constituted a complete nation within itself and had no need of the "dead weight" of the two other orders, the first and second
What Is the Third Estate? and operated by independent associations, and therefore society would be self-governed. A comprehensive collection of writings on the topic was released under "Pluralist Theory of the State". Modern equivalent theories building upon the ideas within pluralistic state theory are libertarian socialism and free-market anarchism. An example of the former is guild socialism, one of the founders of which is G. D. H. Cole mentioned above. What Is the Third Estate? What Is the Third Estate? () is a political pamphlet written in January 1789, shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution, by the French thinker and clergyman Abbé Emmanuel