Works of Karl Marx 1850

The Class Struggles in France,

1848 to 1850

Written: by Marx, January - October1850 for the Neue Rheinische ZeitungRevue;

Published: as a booklet by Engels in1895;

Source: Selected Works, Volume 1,Progress Publishers, Moscow 1969;

Proofed: and corrected by Matthew

Carmody, 2009, Mark Harris 2010;

Transcribed: by Louis Proyect.

Great importance must be attached toone of the historical documents of theGerman labour movement: the Prefacewritten by Fredrick Engels for the 1895re-issue of Marx’s Class Struggles inFrance … looking back upon the year1848, he showed that the belief that thesocialist revolution was imminent hadbecome obsolete … Engelsdemonstrated, as an expert in militaryscience, that it was a pure illusion tobelieve that the workers could, in theexisting state of military technique and

of industry, and in view of thecharacteristics of the great towns oftoday, successfully bring about arevolution by street fighting. RosaLuxemburg, 1918.

Introduction to the 1895 Edition, Engels

With the exception of only a fewchapters, every important part of therevolutionary annals from 1848 to 1849bear the heading: Defeat of therevolution!

What succumbed in these defeats wasnot the revolution. It was the pre-revolutionary traditional appendages,results of social relationships which had

not yet come to the point of sharp classantagonisms persons, illusions,conceptions, projects from which therevolutionary party before the FebruaryRevolution was not free, from which itcould be freed not by the victory ofFebruary, but only by a series of defeats.

In a word: The revolution madeprogress, forged ahead, not by itsimmediate tragicomic achievements but,on the contrary, by the creation of apowerful, united counterrevolution, bythe creation of an opponent in combatwith whom the party of overthrowripened into a really revolutionary party.

To prove this is the task of the followingpages.

Contents

Part I: The Defeat of June, 1848

Part II: From June 1848 to June 13, 1849

Part III: Consequences of June 13, 1849

Part IV: The Abolition of UniversalSuffrage in 1850

Marxs The Class Struggles in France,1848 to 1850 consists of a series ofarticles written between January andOctober 1850 specially for the NeueRheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue and published in itunder the general title 1848-1849. This

is a most important work summing up theresults of the 1848-49 revolution. Inpreparation for this work, Marx usedFrench newspaper reports, reportspublished in the Neue RheinischeZeitung, and accounts given by witnesses French and German revolutionaryrefugees, among them Ferdinand Wolff,the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Pariscorrespondent, and another CommunistLeague member, Sebastian Seiler, whowas a stenographer to the FrenchNational Assembly in 1848 and 1849and wrote a pamphlet on the events ofJune 13, 1849, which he presented toMarx. Marx was also probably familiarwith Ledru-Rollins pamphlet on thesame subject.

According to the original plan the workwas to consist of four articles: TheDefeat of June 1848, June 13, 1849,Repercussions of June 13 on theContinent and Current Situation;England. However, in Nos. 1, 2 and 3 ofthe journal only three articles werepublished: The Defeat of June 1848,June 13, 1849 and Consequences of June13, 1849. The influence of the June 1849events on the Continent and the situationin England were treated in other items ofthe journal. particularly in theinternational reviews written jointly byMarx and Engels.

The work was not reprinted in fullduring Marxs lifetime. In 1895 it came

out in book form in Berlin, with anIntroduction by Engels. The title TheClass Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850was given by Engels and the work hassince appeared under this title in variouslanguages. In the 1895 edition, Engelsadded the fourth chapter, which includedthe sections of the third internationalreview dealing with events in France.Engels entitled this chapter TheAbolition of Universal Suffrage in 1850.Engels wrote to Richard Fischer onFebruary 13, 1895, that the fourthchapter will serve as a factualconclusion to the work as a whole,without which it would have remained afragment. At the same time, the headingsof the first three chapters were changed:

I. From February to June 1848, II. FromJune 1848 to June 13, 1849, III. FromJune 13, 1849, to March 10, 1850. In thepresent edition, the headings of the firstthree chapters are given according to thejournal, while the heading of the fourthchapter is given as in the 1895 edition.

The publication of the series of Marxsarticles drew the attention of the press.A short announcement of No. 1 of theNeue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue and quotations fromMarxs work were published in theFreischütz. Hamburg, No. 40, April 2,1850; a review in the Wochenblatt derHornisse, Cassel, No. 3, April 15,1850~ The preface and the first article

were reprinted in the Deutsche LondonerZeitung Nos. 262, 263 and 264, April 5,12 arid 19, 1850. On January 1, 1852,the Turn-Zeitung, published by Germansocialist emigrants in the USA, carriedan article by Joseph Weydemeyer On theDictatorship of the Proletariat, writtenunder the direct influence of Marxswork, the first work by Marx and Engelsin which the term the dictatorship of theproletariat was used. On the other hand,the idea of the dictatorship of theproletariat brought criticism of theauthor from the petty-bourgeoisdemocrats. The Neue Deutsche Zeitung,whose editor was a former truesocialist, Otto Luning, published areview (Nos. 148-51, June 22-23, 25

and 26. 1850) of the four numbers of theNeue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue with unfavourablecomments on this proposition and anincorrect interpretation of it. Marx wasobliged to write Lüning a special letterrebuffing attempts to distort and disputethe idea of the dictatorship of theproletariat.

Marx and Engels attached greatimportance to the popularisation of theideas contained in The Class Strugglesin France among the English workers.Engels used this work in his Letters fromFrance published in The DemocraticReview and, on the basis of the firstarticle in the series, wrote Two Years of

a Revolution, which was published inthe same journal. Excerpts from Marxswork were cited by his contemporaries(Hermann Becker, Proudhon).

Excerpts from The Class Struggles inFrance were first published in English inthe journal The Marxian, New York,1921, Vol. 1, No. 2, and it appeared infull as a separate edition by LabourNews Company, New York, 1924.

In this volume, the work is publishedafter the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.Politisch-ökonomische Revue text,checked with that of the 1895 editionprepared by Engels. The Revuepublished it from the manuscript andsince Marxs handwriting was difficult to

decipher, mistakes cropped up. In thepresent edition, all changes in style,spelling, punctuation and othercorrections made by Engels have beentaken into account, as well as errataprinted in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.Politisch-ökonomische Revue (to thefirst number in the second, and to thesecond and third in the fourth).

Account has also been taken of theanalysis, carried out by the editorialcommission working on theMarx/EngeIs, Gesamtausgabe (MEGA),erste Abteilung, 10. Bd. and kindly madeavailable to us, of the marks andcorrections made by Marx and Engels intheir copies of the journal. Engels

corrections apparently date f torn 1895when he republished The ClassStruggles (in the 1895 edition, however,they were only partly taken intoaccount). It is also probable that Engelsintended to republish the Revue in full.Some corrections by Marx and Engelscoinciding with the errata printed in theRevue have been silently inserted in thetext of the present edition. Changes inmeaning are indicated in footnotes.

Besides this, obviously inaccurate datesand factual data, including those in the1850 and 1895 editions, have also beensilently corrected. Comments are notusually made on Marxs free translationof quotations, except when the words

Marx puts in quotation marks are not truequotations but convey the generalmeaning of the cited passages.

Footnotes | The June Revolution (Marx’sin Neue Rheinische Zeitung at the time)

18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (samematerial written 2 years later)

Selected Works | Marx/Engels Archive

The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to1850

Part I

The Defeat of June, 1848

After the July Revolution [of 1830],when the liberal banker Laffitte led hiscompčre, the Duke of Orléans, intriumph to the Hôtel de Ville, he let fallthe words: From now on the bankerswill rule. Laffitte had betrayed the secretof the revolution.

It was not the French bourgeoisie thatruled under Louis Philippe, but onefaction of it: bankers, stock-exchangekings, railway kings, owners of coal andiron mines and forests, a part of thelanded proprietors associated with them

the so-called financial aristocracy. It saton the throne, it dictated laws in theChambers, it distributed public offices,from cabinet portfolios to tobaccobureau posts.

The industrial bourgeoisie properformed part of the official opposition,that is, it was represented only as aminority in the Chambers. Its oppositionwas expressed all the more resolutelythe more unalloyed the autocracy of thefinance aristocracy became, and themore it imagined that its dominationover the working class was insured afterthe revolts of 1832, 1834, and 1839,which had been drowned in blood.[64]Grandin, a Rouen manufacturer and the

most fanatical instrument of bourgeoisreaction in the Constituent as well as inthe Legislative National Assembly, wasthe most violent opponent of Guizot inthe Chamber of Deputies. Léon Faucher,later known for his impotent efforts toclimb into prominence as the Guizot ofthe French counterrevolution, in the lastdays of Louis Philippe waged a war ofthe pen for industry against speculationand its train bearer, the government.Bastiat agitated in the name of Bordeauxand the whole of wine-producing Franceagainst the ruling system.

The petty bourgeoisie of all gradations,and the peasantry also, were completelyexcluded from political power. Finally,

in the official opposition or entirelyoutside the pays légal [electorate], therewere the ideological representatives andspokesmen of the above classes, theirsavants, lawyers, doctors, etc., in aword, their so-called men of talent.

Owing to its financial straits, the JulyMonarchy was dependent from thebeginning on the big bourgeoisie, and itsdependence on the big bourgeoisie wasthe inexhaustible source of increasingfinancial straits. It was impossible tosubordinate the administration of thestate to the interests of nationalproduction without balancing the budget,without establishing a balance betweenstate expenditures and revenues. And

how was this balance to be establishedwithout limiting state expenditures thatis, without encroaching on interestswhich were so many props of the rulingsystem and without redistributing taxes that is, without shifting a considerableshare of the burden of taxation onto theshoulders of the big bourgeoisie itself?

On the contrary, the faction of thebourgeoisie that ruled and legislatedthrough the Chambers had a directinterest in the indebtedness of the state.The state deficit was really the mainobject of its speculation and the chiefsource of its enrichment. At the end ofeach year a new deficit. After the lapseof four or five years a new loan. And

every new loan offered newopportunities to the finance aristocracyfor defrauding the state, which was keptartificially on the verge of bankruptcy ithad to negotiate with the bankers underthe most unfavorable conditions. Eachnew loan gave a further opportunity, thatof plundering the public which investedits capital in state bonds by means ofstock-exchange manipulations, thesecrets of which the government and themajority in the Chambers were privy to.In general, the instability of state creditand the possession of state secrets gavethe bankers and their associates in theChambers and on the throne thepossibility of evoking sudden,extraordinary fluctuations in the

quotations of government securities, theresult of which was always bound to bethe ruin of a mass of smaller capitalistsand the fabulously rapid enrichment ofthe big gamblers. As the state deficitwas in the direct interest of the rulingfaction of the bourgeoisie, it is clearwhy the extraordinary state expenditurein the last years of Louis Philippe’sreign was far more than double theextraordinary state expenditure underNapoleon, indeed reached a yearly sumof nearly 400,000,000 francs, whereasthe whole average annual export ofFrance seldom attained a volumeamounting to 750,000,000 francs. Theenormous sums which in this wayflowed through the hands of the state

facilitated, moreover, swindlingcontracts for deliveries, bribery,defalcations, and all kinds of roguery.

The defrauding of the state, practicedwholesale in connection with loans, wasrepeated retail in public works. Whatoccurred in the relations betweenChamber and government becamemultiplied in the relations betweenindividual departments and individualentrepreneurs.

The ruling class exploited the buildingof railways in the same way it exploitedstate expenditures in general and stateloans. The Chambers piled the mainburdens on the state, and secured thegolden fruits to the speculating finance

aristocracy. One recalls the scandals inthe Chamber of Deputies when bychance it leaked out that all the membersof the majority, including a number ofministers, had been interested asshareholders in the very railwayconstructions which as legislators theyhad carried out afterward at the cost ofthe state.

On the other hand, the smallest financialreform was wrecked through theinfluence of the bankers. For example,the postal reform. Rothschild protested.Was it permissible for the state to curtailsources of revenue out of which interestwas to be paid on its ever increasingdebt?

The July Monarchy was nothing otherthan a joint stock company for theexploitation of France’s national wealth,whose dividends were divided amongministers, Chambers, 240,000 voters,and their adherents. Louis Philippe wasthe director of this company RobertMacaire[65] on the throne. Trade,industry, agriculture, shipping, theinterests of the industrial bourgeoisie,were bound to be continuallyendangered and prejudiced under thissystem. Cheap government, governementŕ bon marché, was what it had inscribedon its banner in the July days.

Since the finance aristocracy made thelaws, was at the head of the

administration of the state, had commandof all the organized public authorities,dominated public opinion through theactual state of affairs and through thepress, the same prostitution, the sameshameless cheating, the same mania toget rich was repeated in every sphere,from the court to the Café Borgne[2] toget rich not by production, but bypocketing the already available wealthof others, Clashing every moment withthe bourgeois laws themselves, anunbridled assertion of unhealthy anddissolute appetites manifested itself,particularly at the top of bourgeoissociety lusts wherein wealth derivedfrom gambling naturally seeks itssatisfaction, where pleasure becomes

crapuleux [debauched], where money,filth, and blood commingle. The financearistocracy, in its mode of acquisition aswell as in its pleasures, is nothing butthe rebirth of the lumpenproletariat onthe heights of bourgeois society.

And the nonruling factions of the Frenchbourgeoisie cried: Corruption! Thepeople cried: Ŕ bas les grands voleurs!Ŕ bas les assassins! [Down with the bigthieves! Down with the assassins!] whenin 1847, on the most prominent stages ofbourgeois society, the same scenes werepublicly enacted that regularly lead thelumpenproletariat to brothels, toworkhouses and lunatic asylums, to thebar of justice, to the dungeon, and to the

scaffold. The industrial bourgeoisie sawits interests endangered, the pettybourgeoisie was filled with moralindignation, the imagination of thepeople was offended, Paris was floodedwith pamphlets The Rothschild Dynasty,Usurers Kings of the Epoch, etc. inwhich the rule of the finance aristocracywas denounced and stigmatized withgreater or less wit.

Rien pour la gloire! [Nothing for glory!]Glory brings no profit! La paix partout ettoujours! [Peace everywhere andalways!] War depresses the quotationsof the 3 and 4 percents which the Franceof the Bourse jobbers had inscribed onher banner. Her foreign policy was

therefore lost in a series ofmortifications to French nationalsentiment, which reacted all the morevigorously when the rape of Poland wasbrought to its conclusion with theincorporation of Cracow by Austria, andwhen Guizot came out actively on theside of the Holy Alliance in the Swissseparatist war.[66] The victory of theSwiss liberals in this mimic war raisedthe self-respect of the bourgeoisopposition in France; the bloodyuprising of the people in Palermoworked like an electric shock on theparalyzed masses of the people andawoke their great revolutionarymemories and passions. [Annexation ofCracow by Austria in agreement with

Russia and Prussia on November 11,1846. Swiss Sonderbund war:November 4 to 28, 1847. Rising inPalermo: January 12, 1848; at the end ofJanuary, nine days bombardment of thetown by the Neapolitans. Note by Engelsto the edition of 1895.]

The eruption of the general discontentwas finally accelerated and the mood forrevolt ripened by two economic worldevents.

The potato blight and the crop failures of1845 and 1846 increased the generalferment among the people. The famine of1847 called forth bloody conflicts inFrance as well as on the rest of theContinent. As against the shameless

orgies of the finance aristocracy, thestruggle of the people for the primenecessities of life! At Buzançais, hungerrioters executed[67]; in Paris,oversatiated escrocs [swindlers]snatched from the courts by the royalfamily!

The second great economic event thathastened the outbreak of the revolutionwas a general commercial and industrialcrisis in England. Already heralded inthe autumn of 1845 by the wholesalereverses of the speculators in railwayshares, staved off during 1846 by anumber of incidents such as theimpending abolition of the Corn Laws,the crisis finally burst in the autumn of

1847 with the bankruptcy of the Londonwholesale grocers, on the heels of whichfollowed the insolvencies of the landbanks and the closing of the factories inthe English industrial districts. Theaftereffect of this crisis on the Continenthad not yet spent itself when theFebruary Revolution broke out.

The devastation of trade and industrycaused by the economic epidemic madethe autocracy of the finance aristocracystill more unbearable. Throughout thewhole of France the bourgeoisopposition agitated at banquets for anelectoral reform which should win for itthe majority in the Chambers andoverthrow the Ministry of the Bourse. In

Paris the industrial crisis had, moreover,the particular result of throwing amultitude of manufacturers and bigtraders, who under the existingcircumstances could no longer do anybusiness in the foreign market, onto thehome market. They set up largeestablishments, the competition of whichruined the small épiciers [grocers] andboutiquiers [shopkeepers] en masse.Hence the innumerable bankruptciesamong this section of the Parisbourgeoisie, and hence theirrevolutionary action in February. It iswell known how Guizot and theChambers answered the reformproposals with an unambiguouschallenge, how Louis Philippe too late

resolved on a ministry led by Barrot,how things went as far as hand-to-handfighting between the people and thearmy, how the army was disarmed by thepassive conduct of the National Guard,how the July Monarchy had to give wayto a provisional government.

The Provisional Government whichemerged from the February barricadesnecessarily mirrored in its compositionthe different parties which shared in thevictory. It could not be anything but acompromise between the differentclasses which together had overturnedthe July throne, but whose interests weremutually antagonistic. The great majorityof its members consisted of

representatives of the bourgeoisie. Therepublican petty bourgeoisie wasrepresented by Ledru-Rollin and Flocon,the republican bourgeoisie by the peoplefrom the National[3], the dynasticopposition by Crémieux, Dupont del’Eure, etc.[68] The working class hadonly two representatives, Louis Blancand Albert. Finally, Lamartine in theProvisional Government; this was atfirst no real interest, no definite class;this was the February Revolution itself,the common uprising with its illusions,its poetry, its visionary content, and itsphrases. For the rest, the spokesman ofthe February Revolution, by his positionand his views, belonged to thebourgeoisie.

If Paris, as a result of politicalcentralization, rules France, the workers,in moments of revolutionaryearthquakes, rule Paris. The first act inthe life of the Provisional Governmentwas an attempt to escape from thisoverpowering influence by an appealfrom intoxicated Paris to sober France.Lamartine disputed the right of thebarricade fighters to proclaim a republicon the ground that only the majority ofFrenchmen had that right; they mustawait their votes, the Paris proletariatmust not besmirch its victory by ausurpation. [From Lamartine’s speech of24 February] The bourgeoisie allows theproletariat only one usurpation that offighting.

Up to noon of February 25 the republichad not yet been proclaimed; on theother hand, all the ministries had alreadybeen divided among the bourgeoiselements of the Provisional Governmentand among the generals, bankers, andlawyers of the National. But the workerswere determined this time not to put upwith any bamboozlement like that ofJuly, 1830. They were ready to take upthe fight anew and to get a republic byforce of arms. With this message,Raspail betook himself to the Hôtel deVille. In the name of the Paris proletariathe commanded the ProvisionalGovernment to proclaim a republic; ifthis order of the people were notfulfilled within two hours, he would

return at the head of 200,000 men. Thebodies of the fallen were scarcely cold,the barricades were not yet disarmed,and the only force that could be opposedto them was the National Guard. Underthese circumstances the doubts born ofconsiderations of state policy and thejuristic scruples of conscienceentertained by the ProvisionalGovernment suddenly vanished. Thetime limit of two hours had not yetexpired when all the walls of Paris wereresplendent with the gigantic historicalwords:

République français! Liberté, Egalité,Fraternité!

Even the memory of the limited alms and

motives which drove the bourgeoisieinto the February Revolution wasextinguished by the proclamation of therepublic on the basis of universalsuffrage. Instead of only a few factionsof the bourgeoisie, all classes of Frenchsociety were suddenly hurled into theorbit of political power, forced to leavethe boxes, the stalls, and the gallery andto act in person upon the revolutionarystage! With the constitutional monarchyvanished also the semblance of a statepower independently confrontingbourgeois society, as well as the wholeseries of subordinate struggles whichthis semblance of power called forth!

By dictating the republic to the

Provisional Government, and through theProvisional Government to the whole ofFrance, the proletariat immediatelystepped into the foreground as anindependent party, but at the same timechallenged the whole of bourgeoisFrance to enter the lists against it. Whatit won was the terrain for the fight for itsrevolutionary emancipation, but by nomeans this emancipation itself.

The first thing the February Republichad to do was, rather, to complete therule of the bourgeoisie by allowing,besides the finance aristocracy, all thepropertied classes to enter the orbit ofpolitical power. The majority of thegreat landowners, the Legitimists, were

emancipated from the political nullity towhich they had been condemned by theJuly Monarchy. Not for nothing had theGazette de France agitated in commonwith the opposition papers; not fornothing had La Roche-Jaquelein takenthe side of the revolution in the sessionof the Chamber of Deputies on February24. The nominal proprietors, thepeasants, who form the great majority ofthe French people, were put by universalsuffrage in the position of arbiters of thefate of France. The February Republicfinally brought the rule of thebourgeoisie clearly into view, since itstruck off the crown behind whichcapital had kept itself concealed.

Just as the workers in the July days hadfought for and won the bourgeoismonarchy, so in the February days theyfought for and won the bourgeoisrepublic. Just as the July Monarchy hadto proclaim itself a monarchysurrounded by republican institutions, sothe February Republic was forced toproclaim itself a republic surrounded bysocial institutions. The Paris proletariatcompelled this concession, too.

Marche, a worker, dictated the decree[decree on the right to work, 25February 1848] by which the newlyformed Provisional Government pledgeditself to guarantee the workers alivelihood by means of labor, to provide

work for all citizens, etc. And when afew days later it forgot its promises andseemed to have lost sight of theproletariat, a mass of 20,000 workersmarched on the Hôtel de Ville with thecry: Organize labor! Form a specialMinistry of labor! Reluctantly and afterlong debate, the Provisional Governmentnominated a permanent specialcommission charged with lending meansof improving the lot of the workingclasses! This commission consisted ofdelegates from the corporations [guilds]of Paris artisans and was presided overby Louis Blanc and Albert. TheLuxembourg Palace was assigned to it asits meeting place. In this way therepresentatives of the working class

were banished from the seat of theProvisional Government, the bourgeoispart of which retained the real statepower and the reins of administrationexclusively in its hands; and side by sidewith the ministries of finance, trade, andpublic works, side by side with the Bankand the Bourse, there arose a socialistsynagogue whose high priests, LouisBlanc and Albert, had the task ofdiscovering the promised land, ofpreaching the new gospel, and ofproviding work for the Paris proletariat.Unlike any profane state power, they hadno budget, no executive authority at theirdisposal. They were supposed to breakthe pillars of bourgeois society bydashing their heads against them. While

the Luxembourg sought the philosopher’sstone, in the Hôtel de Ville they mintedthe current coinage.

And yet the claims of the Parisproletariat, so far as they went beyondthe bourgeois republic, could win noother existence than the nebulous one ofthe Luxembourg.

In common with the bourgeoisie theworkers had made the FebruaryRevolution, and alongside thebourgeoisie they sought to secure theadvancement of their interests, just asthey had installed a worker in theProvisional Government itself alongsidethe bourgeois majority. Organize labor!But wage labor, that is the existing, the

bourgeois organization of labor. Withoutit there is no capital, no bourgeoisie, nobourgeois society. A special Ministry ofLabor! But the ministries of finance, oftrade, of public works are not these thebourgeois ministries of labor? Andalongside these a proletariat Ministry ofLabor had to be a ministry of impotence,a ministry of pious wishes, aLuxembourg Commission. Just as theworkers thought they would be able toemancipate themselves side by side withthe bourgeoisie, so they thought theywould be able to consummate aproletarian revolution within thenational walls of France, side by sidewith the remaining bourgeois nations.But French relations of production are

conditioned by the foreign trade ofFrance, by her position on the worldmarket and the laws thereof; how wasFrance to break them without a Europeanrevolutionary war, which would strikeback at the despot of the world market,England?

As soon as it has risen up, a class inwhich the revolutionary interests ofsociety are concentrated finds thecontent and the material for itsrevolutionary activity directly in its ownsituation: foes to be laid low, measuresdictated by the needs of the struggle tobe taken; the consequences of its owndeeds drive it on. It makes no theoreticalinquiries into its own task. The French

working class had not attained this level;it was still incapable of accomplishingits own revolution.

The development of the industrialproletariat is, in general, conditioned bythe development of the industrialbourgeoisie. Only under its rule does theproletariat gain that extensive nationalexistence which can raise its revolutionto a national one, and only thus does theproletariat itself create the modernmeans of production, which become justso many means of its revolutionaryemancipation. Only bourgeois rule tearsup the material roots of feudal societyand levels the ground on which alone aproletarian revolution is possible.

French industry is more developed andthe French bourgeoisie morerevolutionary than that of the rest of theContinent. But was not the FebruaryRevolution aimed directly against thefinance aristocracy? This fact provedthat the industrial bourgeoisie did notrule France. The industrial bourgeoisiecan rule only where modern industryshapes all property relations to suititself, and industry can win this poweronly where it has conquered the worldmarket, for national bounds areinadequate for its development. ButFrench industry, to a great extent,maintains its command even of thenational market only through a more orless modified system of prohibitive

duties. While, therefore, the Frenchproletariat, at the moment of arevolution, possesses in Paris actualpower and influence which spur it on toa drive beyond its means, in the rest ofFrance it is crowded into separate,scattered industrial centers, almost lostin the superior number of peasants andpetty bourgeois. The struggle againstcapital in its developed, modern form inits decisive aspect, the struggle of theindustrial wage worker against theindustrial bourgeois is in France apartial phenomenon, which after theFebruary days could so much the lesssupply the national content of therevolution, since the struggle againstcapital’s secondary modes of

exploitation, that of the peasant againstusury and mortgages or of the pettybourgeois against the wholesale dealer,banker, and manufacturer in a word,against bankruptcy was still hidden inthe general uprising against the financearistocracy. Nothing is moreunderstandable, then, than that the Parisproletariat sought to secure theadvancement of its own interests side byside with those of the bourgeoisie,instead of enforcing them as therevolutionary interests of society itself,that it let the red flag be lowered to thetricolor[70]. The French workers couldnot take a step forward, could not toucha hair of the bourgeois order, until thecourse of the revolution had aroused the

mass of the nation, peasants and petitebourgeois, standing between theproletariat and the bourgeoisie, againstthis order, against the rule of capital, andhad forced it to attach itself to theproletarians as its protagonists. Theworkers could buy this victory onlythrough the tremendous defeat in June.

The Luxembourg Commission, thiscreation of the Paris workers, must begiven the credit of having disclosed,from a Europe-wide tribune, the secretof the revolution of the nineteenthcentury: the emancipation of theproletariat. The Moniteur blushed whenit had to propagate officially the wildravings[71] which up to that time had

lain buried in the apocryphal writings ofthe socialists and reached the ear of thebourgeoisie only from time to time asremote, half-terrifying, half-ludicrouslegends. Europe awoke astonished fromits bourgeois doze. Therefore, in theminds of the proletarians, who confusedthe finance aristocracy with thebourgeoisie in general; in theimagination of the good old republicanswho denied the very existence of classesor, at most, admitted them as a result ofthe constitutional monarchy; in thehypocritical phrases of the factions ofthe bourgeoisie which up to now hadbeen excluded from power, the rule ofthe bourgeoisie was abolished with theintroduction of the republic. At that time

all the royalists were transformed intorepublicans and all the millionaires ofParis into workers. The phrase whichcorresponded to this imaginary abolitionof class relations was fraternité,universal fraternization and brotherhood.This pleasant abstraction from classantagonisms, this sentimentalreconciliation of contradictory classinterests, this visionary elevation abovethe class struggle, this fraternite, was thereal catchword of the FebruaryRevolution. The classes were dividedby a mere misunderstanding, and onFebruary 24 Lamartine christened theProvisional Government unegouvernement qui suspends cemalentendu terrible qui existe entre les

différentes classes [a government thatremoves this terrible misunderstandingwhich exists between the differentclasses, from Lamartine’s speech, 24February 1848]. The Paris proletariatreveled in this magnanimous intoxicationof fraternity.

The Provisional Government, for itspart, once it was compelled to proclaimthe republic, did everything to make itacceptable to the bourgeoisie and to theprovinces. The bloody terror of the firstFrench republic was disavowed by theabolition of the death penalty forpolitical offenses; the press was openedto all opinions the army, the courts, theadministration remained with a few

exceptions in the hands of their olddignitaries; none of the July Monarchy’sgreat offenders was brought to book. Thebourgeois republicans of the Nationalamused themselves by exchangingmonarchist names and costumes for oldrepublican ones. To them the republicwas only a new ball dress for the oldbourgeois society. The young republicsought its chief merit not in frightening,but rather in constantly taking frightitself, and in winning existence anddisarming resistance by soft complianceand nonresistance. At home to theprivileged classes, abroad to thedespotic powers, it was loudlyannounced that the republic was of apeaceful nature. Live and let live was its

professed motto. In addition to that,shortly after the February Revolution theGermans, Poles, Austrians, Hungarians,and Italians revolted, each people inaccordance with its immediate situation.Russia and England the latter itselfagitated, the former cowed were notprepared. The republic, therefore, hadno national enemy to face. Consequentlythere were no great foreigncomplications which could fire theenergies, hasten the revolutionaryprocess, drive the ProvisionalGovernment forward or throw itoverboard. The Paris proletariat, whichlooked upon the republic as its owncreation, naturally acclaimed each act ofthe Provisional Government which

facilitated the firm emplacement of thelatter in bourgeois society. It willinglyallowed itself to be employed on policeservice by Caussidičre in order toprotect property in Paris, just as itallowed Louis Blanc to arbitrate wagedisputes between workers and masters.It made it a point d’honneur [point ofhonor] to preserve the bourgeois honorof the republic unblemished in the eyesof Europe.

The republic encountered no resistanceeither abroad or at home. This disarmedit. Its task was no longer therevolutionary transformation of theworld, but consisted only in adaptingitself to the relations of bourgeois

society. As to the fanaticism with whichthe Provisional Government undertookthis task there is no more eloquenttestimony than its financial measures.

Public credit and private credit werenaturally shaken. Public credit rests onconfidence that the state will allow itselfto be exploited by the wolves of finance.But the old state had vanished and therevolution was directed above allagainst the finance aristocracy. Thevibrations of the last Europeancommercial crisis had not yet ceased.Bankruptcy still followed bankruptcy.

Private credit was therefore paralyzed,circulation restricted, production at astandstill before the February

Revolution broke out. The revolutionarycrisis increased the commercial crisis.And if private credit rests on confidencethat bourgeois production in the entirescope of its relations the bourgeoisorder will not be touched, will remaininviolate, what effect must a revolutionhave had which questioned the basis ofbourgeois production, the economicslavery of the proletariat, which set upagainst the Bourse the sphinx of theLuxembourg? The uprising of theproletariat is the abolition of bourgeoiscredit, for it is the abolition of bourgeoisproduction and its order. Public creditand private credit are the economicthermometer by which the intensity of arevolution can be measured. The more

they fall, the more the fervor andgenerative power of the revolution rises.

The Provisional Government wanted tostrip the republic of its antibourgeoisappearance. And so it had, above all, totry to peg the exchange value of this newform of state, its quotation on theBourse. Private credit necessarily roseagain, together with the current Boursequotation of the republic.

In order to allay the very suspicion thatit would not or could not honor theobligations assumed by the monarchy, inorder to build up confidence in therepublic’s bourgeois morality andcapacity to pay, the ProvisionalGovernment took refuge in braggadocio

as undignified as it was childish. Inadvance of the legal date of payment itpaid out the interest on the 5-percent, 4˝-percent and 4-percent bonds to thestate creditors. The bourgeois aplomb,the self-assurance of the capitalists,suddenly awoke when they saw theanxious haste with which thisgovernment sought to buy theirconfidence.

The financial embarrassment of theProvisional Government was naturallynot lessened by a theatrical stroke whichrobbed it of its stock of ready cash. Thefinancial pinch could no longer beconcealed and petty bourgeois, domesticservants, and workers had to pay for the

pleasant surprise which had beenprepared for the state creditors.

It was announced that no more moneycould be drawn on savings bank booksfor an amount of over a hundred francs.The sums deposited in the savings bankswere confiscated and by decreetransformed into an irredeemable statedebt. This embittered the already hard-pressed petty bourgeois against therepublic. Since he received state debtcertificates in place of his savings bankbooks, he was forced to go to the Boursein order to sell them and thus deliverhimself directly into the hands of theBourse jobbers against whom he hadmade the February Revolution.

The finance aristocracy, which ruledunder the July Monarchy, had its highchurch in the Bank. Just as the Boursegoverns state credit, the Bank governscommercial credit.

Directly threatened not only in its rulebut in its very existence by the FebruaryRevolution, the Bank tried from theoutset to discredit the republic bymaking the lack of credit general. Itsuddenly stopped the credits of thebankers, the manufacturers, and themerchants. As it did not immediatelycall forth a counterrevolution, thismaneuver necessarily reacted on theBank itself. The capitalists drew out themoney they had deposited in the vaults

of the Bank. The possessors of banknotes rushed to the pay office in order toexchange them for gold and silver.

The Provisional Government could haveforced the Bank into bankruptcy withoutforcible interference, in a legal manner;it would have had only to remainpassive and leave the Bank to its fate.The bankruptcy of the Bank would havebeen the deluge which in an instantwould have swept from French soil thefinance aristocracy, the most powerfuland dangerous enemy of the republic, thegolden pedestal of the July Monarchy.And once the Bank was bankrupt, thebourgeoisie itself would have had toregard it as a last desperate attempt at

rescue, if the government had formed anational bank and subjected nationalcredit to the control of the nation.

The Provisional Government, on thecontrary, fixed a compulsory quotationfor the notes of the Bank. It did more. Ittransformed all provincial banks intobranches of the Banque de France andallowed it to cast its net over the wholeof France. Later it pledged the stateforests to the Bank as a guarantee for aloan contracted from it. In this way theFebruary Revolution directlystrengthened and enlarged thebankocracy which it should haveoverthrown.

Meanwhile the Provisional Government

was writhing under the incubus of agrowing deficit. In vain it begged forpatriotic sacrifices. Only the workersthrew it their alms. Recourse had to behad to a heroic measure, to theimposition of a new tax. But who was tobe taxed? The Bourse wolves, the bankkings, the state creditors, the rentiers, theindustrialists? That was not the way toingratiate the republic with thebourgeoisie. That would have meant, onthe one hand, to endanger state creditand commercial credit, while on theother, attempts were made to purchasethem with such great sacrifices andhumiliations. But someone had to forkover the cash. Who was sacrificed tobourgeois credit? Jacques le bonhomme,

the peasant.

The Provisional Government imposed anadditional tax of 45 centimes to the francon the four direct taxes. The governmentpress cajoled the Paris proletariat intobelieving that this tax would fall chieflyon the big landed proprietors, on thepossessors of the milliard granted by theRestoration.[72] But in truth it hit thepeasant class above all, that is, the largemajority of the French people. They hadto pay the costs of the FebruaryRevolution; in them thecounterrevolution gained its mainmaterial. The 45-centime tax was aquestion of life and death for the Frenchpeasant. He made it a life and death

question for the republic. From thatmoment the republic meant to the Frenchpeasant the 45 centime tax, and he sawin the Paris proletariat the spendthriftwho did himself well at his expense.

Whereas the Revolution of 1789 beganby shaking the feudal burdens off thepeasants, the Revolution of 1848announced itself to the rural populationby the imposition of a new tax, in ordernot to endanger capital and to keep itsstate machine going.

There was only one means by which theProvisional Government could set asideall these inconveniences and jerk thestate out of its old rut a declaration ofstate bankruptcy. Everyone recalls how

Ledru-Rollin in the National Assemblysubsequently described the virtuousindignation with which he repudiatedthis presumptuous proposal of theBourse Jew, Fould [from Ledru-Rollin’sspeech 21 April 1849], now FrenchFinance Minister. Fould had handed himthe apple from the tree of knowledge.

By honoring the bills drawn on the stateby the old bourgeois society, theProvisional Government succumbed tothe latter. It had become the hard-pressed debtor of bourgeois societyinstead of confronting it as the pressingcreditor that had to collect therevolutionary debts of many years. It hadto consolidate the shaky bourgeois

relationships in order to fulfillobligations which are only to be fulfilledwithin these relationships. Creditbecame a condition of life for it, and theconcessions to the proletariat, thepromises made to it, became so manyfetters which had to be struck off. Theemancipation of the workers even as aphrase became an unbearable danger tothe new republic, for it was a standingprotest against the restoration of credit,which rests on undisturbed anduntroubled recognition of the existingeconomic class relations. Therefore, itwas necessary to have done with theworkers.

The February Revolution had cast the

army out of Paris. The National Guard,that is, the bourgeoisie in its differentgradations, constituted the sole power.Alone, however, it did not feel itself amatch for the proletariat. Moreover, itwas forced gradually and piecemeal toopen its ranks and admit armedproletarians, albeit after the mosttenacious resistance and after setting upa hundred different obstacles. Thereconsequently remained but one way out:to play off part of the proletariat againstthe other.

For this purpose the ProvisionalGovernment formed twentyfourbattalions of Mobile Guards, each athousand strong, composed of young men

from fifteen to twenty years old.[73]They belonged for the most part to thelumpen proletariat, which in all bigtowns forms a mass sharplydifferentiated from the industrialproletariat, a recruiting ground forthieves and criminals of all kinds livingon the crumbs of society, people withouta definite trade, vagabonds, gens sansfeu et sans aveu [men without hearth orhome], varying according to the degreeof civilization of the nation to which theybelong, but never renouncing theirlazzaroni[74] character at the youthfulage at which the ProvisionalGovernment recruited them, thoroughlymalleable, as capable of the most heroicdeeds and the most exalted sacrifices as

of the basest banditry and the foulestcorruption. The Provisional Governmentpaid them 1 franc 50 centimes a day; thatis, it bought them. It gave them their ownuniform; that is, it made them outwardlydistinct from the blouse-wearingworkers. In part it assigned officers fromthe standing army as their leaders; inpart they themselves elected young sonsof the bourgeoisie whose rodomontadesabout death for the fatherland anddevotion to the republic captivated them.

And so the Paris proletariat wasconfronted with an army, drawn from itsown midst, of 24,000 young, strong,foolhardy men. it gave cheers for theMobile Guard on its marches through

Paris. It acknowledged it to be itsforemost fighters on the barricades. Itregarded it as the proletarian guard incontradistinction to the bourgeoisNational Guard. Its error waspardonable.

Besides the Mobile Guard, thegovernment decided to rally arounditself an army of industrial workers. Ahundred thousand workers, thrown onthe streets by the crisis and therevolution, were enrolled by theMinister Marie in so-called nationalateliers [workshops]. Under thisgrandiose name was hidden nothing elsethan the employment of the workers ontedious, monotonous, unproductive

earthworks at a wage of 23 sous. Englishworkhouses[75] in the open that is whatthese national ateliers were. TheProvisional Government believed that ithad formed, in them, a secondproletarian army against the workersthemselves. This time the bourgeoisiewas mistaken in the national ateliers,just as the workers were mistaken in theMobile Guard. It had created an armyfor mutiny.

But one purpose was achieved.

National ateliers was the name of thepeople’s workshops which Louis Blancpreached in the Luxembourg Palace.Marie’s ateliers [workshops], devisedin direct antagonism to the Luxembourg,

offered occasion, thanks to the commonlabel, for a comedy of errors worthy ofthe Spanish servant farce. TheProvisional Government itselfsurreptitiously spread the report thatthese national ateliers were thediscovery of Louis Blanc, and thisseemed the more plausible becauseLouis Blanc, the prophet of the nationalateliers, was a member of theProvisional Government. And in thehalf-naive, half-intentional confusion ofthe Paris bourgeoisie, in the artificiallymolded opinion of France, of Europe,these workhouses were the firstrealization of socialism, which was putin the pillory, with them.

In their appellation, though not in theircontent, the national ateliers were theembodied protest of the proletariatagainst bourgeois industry, bourgeoiscredit, and the bourgeois republic. Thewhole hate of the bourgeoisie wastherefore turned upon them. It had foundin them, simultaneously, the point againstwhich it could direct the attack, as soonas it was strong enough to break openlywith the February illusions. All thediscontent, all the ill humor of the pettybourgeois too was directed against thesenational ateliers, the common target.With real fury they totted up the moneythe proletarian loafers swallowed upwhile their own situation was becomingdaily more unbearable. A state pension

for sham labor, so that’s socialism! theygrumbled to themselves. They sought thereason for their misery in the nationalateliers, the declamations of theLuxembourg, the processions of theworkers through Paris. And no one wasmore fanatic about the allegedmachinations of the communists than thepetty bourgeoisie, who hoveredhopelessly on the brink of bankruptcy.

Thus in the approaching melee betweenbourgeoisie and proletariat, all theadvantages, all the decisive posts, all themiddle strata of society were in thehands of the bourgeoisie, at the sametime as the waves of the FebruaryRevolution rose high over the whole

Continent, and each new post brought anew bulletin of revolution, now fromItaly, now from Germany, now from theremotest parts of southeastern Europe,and maintained the general ecstasy of thepeople, giving it constant testimony of avictory that it had already forfeited.

March 17 and April 16 were the firstskirmishes in the big class strugglewhich the bourgeois republic hid underits wing.

March 17 revealed the proletariat’sambiguous situation, which permitted nodecisive act. Its demonstration originallypursued the purpose of pushing theProvisional Government back onto thepath of revolution, of effecting the

exclusion of its bourgeois members,according to circumstances, and ofcompelling the postponement of theelections for the National Assembly andthe National Guard.[76] But on March16 the bourgeoisie represented in theNational Guard staged a hostiledemonstration against the ProvisionalGovernment. With the cry Ŕ bas Ledru-Rollin [Down with Ledru-Rollin]! itsurged to the Hôtel de Ville. And thepeople were forced, on March 17, toshout: Long live Ledru-Rollin! Long livethe Provisional Government! They wereforced to take sides against thebourgeoisie in support of the bourgeoisrepublic, which seemed to them to be indanger. They strengthened the

Provisional Government, instead ofsubordinating it to themselves. March 17went off in a melodramatic scene, andwhereas the Paris proletariat on this dayonce more displayed its giant body, thebourgeoisie both inside and outside theProvisional Government was all themore determined to smash it.

April 16 was a misunderstandingengineered by the ProvisionalGovernment in alliance with thebourgeoisie. The workers had gatheredin great numbers in the Champ de Marsand in the Hippodrome to choose theirnominees to the general staff of theNational Guard. Suddenly throughoutParis, from one end to the other, a rumor

spread as quick as lightning, to the effectthat the workers had met armed in theChamp de Mars, under the leadership ofLouis Blanc, Blanqui, Cabet, andRaspail, in order to march thence on theHôtel de Ville, overthrow theProvisional Government, and proclaim acommunist government. The generalalarm is sounded Ledru-Rollin,Marrast, and Lamartine later contendedfor the honor of having initiated this andin an hour 100,000 men are under arms;the Hôtel de Ville is occupied at allpoints by the National Guard; the cryDown with the Communists! Down withLouis Blanc, with Blanqui, with Raspail,with Cabet! thunders throughout Paris.Innumerable deputations pay homage to

the Provisional Government, all ready tosave the fatherland and society. Whenthe workers finally appear before theHôtel de Ville, in order to hand over tothe Provisional Government a patrioticcollection they had made in the Champde Mars, they learn to their amazementthat bourgeois Paris has defeated theirshadow in a very carefully calculatedsham battle. The terrible attempt ofApril 16 furnished the excuse forrecalling the army to Paris the realpurpose of the clumsily staged comedyand for the reactionary federalistdemonstrations in the provinces.

On May 4 the National Assembly[4] metthe result of the direct general elections,

convened. Universal suffrage did notpossess the magic power whichrepublicans of the old school hadascribed to it. They saw in the whole ofFrance, at least in the majority ofFrenchmen, citoyens [citizens] with thesame interests, the same understanding,etc. This was their cult of the people.Instead of their imaginary people, theelections brought the real people to thelight of day; that is, representatives ofthe different classes into which it falls.We have seen why peasants and pettybourgeois had to vote under theleadership of a bourgeoisie spoiling fora fight and of big landowners frantic forrestoration. But if universal suffrage wasnot the miracle working magic wand the

republican worthies had taken it for, itpossessed the incomparable higher meritof unchaining the class struggle, ofletting the various middle strata ofbourgeois society rapidly get over theirillusions and disappointments, of tossingall the sections of the exploiting class atone throw to the apex of the state, andthus tearing from them their deceptivemask, whereas the monarchy with itsproperty qualifications had let onlycertain factions of the bourgeoisiecompromise themselves, allowing theothers to lie hidden behind the scenesand surrounding them with the halo of acommon opposition.

In the Constituent National Assembly,

which met on May 4, the bourgeoisrepublicans, the republicans of theNational, had the upper hand. EvenLegitimists and Orléanists at first daredto show themselves only under the maskof bourgeois republicanism. The fightagainst the proletariat could beundertaken only in the name of therepublic.

The republic dates from May 4, not fromFebruary 25 that is, the republicrecognized by the French people; it isnot the republic which the Parisproletariat thrust upon the ProvisionalGovernment, not the republic with socialinstitutions, not the vision that hoveredbefore the fighters on the barricades.

The republic proclaimed by the NationalAssembly, the sole legitimate republic,is a republic which is no revolutionaryweapon against the bourgeois order, butrather its political reconstitution, thepolitical reconsolidation of bourgeoissociety; in a word, a bourgeois republic.This contention resounded from thetribune of the National Assembly, and inthe entire republican and anti-republicanbourgeois press it found its echo.

And we have seen how the FebruaryRepublic in reality was not and couldnot be other than a bourgeois republic;how the Provisional Government,nevertheless, was forced by theimmediate pressure of the proletariat to

announce it as a republic with socialinstitutions; how the Paris proletariatwas still incapable of going beyond thebourgeois republic otherwise than in itsfancy, in imagination; how even wherethe republic acted in the service of thebourgeoisie when it really came toaction; how the promises made to itbecame an unbearable danger for thenew republic; how the whole lifeprocess of the Provisional Governmentwas comprised in a continuous fightagainst the demands of the proletariat.

In the National Assembly all France satin judgment upon the Paris proletariat.The Assembly broke immediately withthe social illusions of the February

Revolution; it roundly proclaimed thebourgeois republic, nothing but thebourgeois republic. It at once excludedthe representatives of the proletariat,Louis Blanc and Albert, from theExecutive Commission[78] it hadappointed; it threw out the proposal of aspecial Labor Ministry and receivedwith acclamation the statement ofMinister Trélat: The question now ismerely one of bringing labor back to itsold conditions. [from Trélat’s speech of20 June 1848]

But all this was not enough. TheFebruary Republic was won by theworkers with the passive support of thebourgeoisie. The proletarians rightly

regarded themselves as the victors ofFebruary, and they made the arrogantclaims of victors. They had to bevanquished in the streets, they had to beshown that they were worsted as soon asthey did not fight with the bourgeoisie,but against the bourgeoisie. Just as theFebruary Republic, with its socialistconcessions, required a battle of theproletariat, united with the bourgeoisie,against the monarchy, so a second battlewas necessary to sever the republic fromsocialist concessions, to officially workout the bourgeois republic as dominant.The bourgeoisie had to refute, arms inhand, the demands of the proletariat.And the real birthplace of the bourgeoisrepublic is not the February victory; it is

the June defeat.

The proletariat hastened the decisionwhen, on the fifteenth of May, it pushedits way into the National Assemblysought in vain to recapture itsrevolutionary influence, and onlydelivered its energetic leaders to thejailers of the bourgeoisie. Il faut en finir!This situation must end! With this cry theNational Assembly gave vent to itsdetermination to force the proletariatinto a decisive struggle. The ExecutiveCommission issued a series ofprovocative decrees, such as thatprohibiting congregations of people,[80]etc. The workers were directlyprovoked, insulted, and derided from the

tribune of the Constituent NationalAssembly. But the real point of theattack was, as we have seen, the nationalateliers. The Constituent Assemblyimperiously pointed these out to theExecutive Commission, which waitedonly to hear its own plan proclaimed thecommand of the National Assembly.

The Executive Commission began bymaking admission to the national ateliersmore difficult, by turning the day wageinto a piece wage, by banishing workersnot born in Paris to the Sologne,ostensibly for the construction ofearthworks. These earthworks were onlya rhetorical formula with which toembellish their exile, as the workers,

returning disillusioned, announced totheir comrades. Finally, on June 21, adecree appeared in the Moniteur whichordered the forcible expulsion of allunmarried workers from the nationalateliers or their enrollment in the army.[81]

The workers were left no choice; theyhad to starve or let fly. They answeredon June 22 with the tremendousinsurrection in which the first greatbattle was fought between the twoclasses that split modern society. It wasa fight for the preservation orannihilation of the bourgeois order. Theveil that shrouded the republic was tornasunder.

It is well known how the workers, withunexampled bravery and ingenuity,without leaders, without a common plan,without means and, for the most part,lacking weapons, held in check for fivedays the army, the Mobile Guard, theParis National Guard, and the NationalGuard that streamed in from theprovinces. It is well known how thebourgeoisie compensated itself for themortal anguish it suffered by unheardofbrutality, massacring over 3000prisoners. The official representatives ofFrench democracy were steeped inrepublican ideology to such an extentthat it was only some weeks later thatthey began to have an inkling of thesignificance of the June fight. They were

stupefied by the gunpowder smoke inwhich their fantastic republic dissolved.

The immediate impression which thenews of the June defeat made on us, thereader will allow us to describe in thewords of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.[5]

The Executive Committee,[116] that lastofficial vestige of the Februaryrevolution, vanished like a ghost in theface of these grave events. Lamartine’sfireworks have turned into theincendiary shells of Cavaignac.

Fraternité, the brotherhood ofantagonistic classes, one of whichexploits the other, this fraternity which

in February was proclaimed andinscribed in large letters on the facadesof Paris, on every prison and everybarracks this fraternity found its true,unadulterated and prosaic expression incivil war, civil war in its most terribleaspect, the war of labor against capital.This brotherhood blazed in front of thewindows of Paris on the evening of June25, when the Paris of the bourgeoisieheld illuminations while the Paris of theproletariat was burning, bleeding,groaning in the throes of death.

This fraternité lasted only as long asthere was a consanguinity of interestsbetween the bourgeoisie and theproletariat. Pedants sticking to the old

revolutionary tradition of 1793; socialistdoctrinaires who begged alms for thepeople from the bourgeoisie and whowere allowed to deliver lengthy sermonsand compromise themselves so long asthe proletarian lion had to be lulled tosleep; republicans who wanted to keepthe old bourgeois order in toto, butwithout the crowned head; members ofthe Dynastic Opposition [117] on whomchance imposed the task of bringingabout the downfall of a dynasty insteadof a change of government; legitimists,[118] who did not want to cast off theirlivery but merely to change its style these were the allies with whom thepeople had fought their Februaryrevolution. What the people instinctively

hated in Louis Philip was not LouisPhilip himself, but the crowned rule of aclass, the capital on the throne. Butmagnanimous as always, the peoplethought they had destroyed their enemywhen they had overthrown the enemy oftheir enemies, their common enemy.

The February revolution was the nicerevolution, the revolution of universalsympathies, because the contradictionswhich erupted in it against the monarchywere still undeveloped and peacefullydormant, because the social strugglewhich formed their background had onlyachieved an ephemeral existence, anexistence in phrases, in words. The Junerevolution is the ugly revolution, the

nasty revolution, because the phraseshave given place to the real thing,because the republic has bared the headof the monster by knocking off the crownwhich shielded and concealed it.

Order! was Guizot’s war-cry. Order!shouted Sebastiani, the Guizotist, whenWarsaw became Russian. Order! shoutsCavaignac, the brutal echo of the FrenchNational Assembly and of the republicanbourgeoisie. Order! thundered his grape-shot as it tore into the body of theproletariat.

None of the numerous revolutions of theFrench bourgeoisie since 1789 assailedthe existing order, for they retained theclass rule, the slavery of the workers,

the bourgeois system, even though thepolitical form of this rule and thisslavery changed frequently. The Juneuprising did assail this system. Woe tothe June uprising!

Woe to that June! Re-echoes Europe.

The Paris proletariat was forced into theJune insurrection by the bourgeoisie.This sufficed to mark its doom. Itsimmediate, avowed needs did not driveit to engage in a fight for the forcibleoverthrow of the bourgeoisie, nor was itequal to this task. The Moniteur had toinform it officially that the time was pastwhen the republic saw any occasion tobow and scrape to its illusions, and only

its defeat convinced it of the truth thatthe slightest improvement in its positionremains a utopia within the bourgeoisrepublic, a utopia that becomes a crimeas soon as it wants to become a reality.In place of the demands, exuberant inform but still limited and even bourgeoisin content, whose concession theproletariat wanted to wring from theFebruary Republic, there appeared thebold slogan of revolutionary struggle:Overthrow of the bourgeoisie!Dictatorship of the Working class!

By making its burial place the birthplaceof the bourgeois republic, the proletariatcompelled the latter to come outforthwith in its pure form as the state

whose admitted object it is to perpetuatethe rule of capital, the slavery of labor.Having constantly before its eyes thescarred, irreconcilable, invincibleenemy invincible because its existenceis the condition of its own life bourgeois rule, freed from all fetters,was bound to turn immediately intobourgeois terrorism. With the proletariatremoved for the time being from thestage and bourgeois dictatorshiprecognized officially, the middle strataof bourgeois society, the pettybourgeoisie and the peasant class, had toadhere more and more closely to theproletariat as their position becamemore unbearable and their antagonism tothe bourgeoisie more acute. Just as

earlier they had to find the cause of theirdistress in its upsurge, so now in itsdefeat.

If the June insurrection raised the self-assurance of the bourgeoisie all over theContinent, and caused it to league itselfopenly with the feudal monarchy againstthe people, who was the first victim ofthis alliances The continentalbourgeoisie itself. The June defeatprevented it from consolidating its ruleand from bringing the people, halfsatisfied and half out of humor, to astandstill at the lowest stage of thebourgeois revolution.

Finally, the defeat of June divulged tothe despotic powers of Europe the secret

that France must maintain peace abroadat any price in order to be able to wagecivil war at home. Thus the people’swho had begun the fight for their nationalindependence were abandoned to thesuperior power of Russia, Austria, andPrussian, but at the same time the fate ofthese national revolutions was madesubject to the fate of the proletarianrevolution, and they were robbed oftheir apparent autonomy, theirindependence of the great socialrevolution. The Hungarian shall not befree, nor the Pole, nor the Italian, as longas the worker remains a slave!

Finally, with the victories of the HolyAlliance, Europe has taken on a form

that makes every fresh proletarianupheaval in France directly coincidewith a world war. The new Frenchrevolution is forced to leave its nationalsoil forthwith and conquer the Europeanterrain, on which alone the socialrevolution of the nineteenth century canbe accomplished.

Thus only the June defeat has created allthe conditions under which France canseize the initiative of the Europeanrevolution. Only after being dipped inthe blood of the June insurgents did thetricolor become the flag of the Europeanrevolution the red flag!

And we exclaim: The revolution isdead! Long live the revolution!

Notes

1. Robert Macaire, a swindler, is acharacter in Robert and Bertrand, acomedy by B. Antier and F. Lemaitre(1834).

2. A term applied to cafes of dubiousreputation.

3. Le National, a liberal Paris dailyproduced by A. Marrast and L. A.Garnier-Pagčs.

4. The Constituent National Assembly,in power from May 4 1848 to May 1849.

5. Marx’s article, in the NeueRheinische Zeitung of June 29, 1848,

from which he quotes here, appears onpages 147-150.

Contents | Part II: From June 1848 toJune 13, 1849 | Marx/Engels Archive

The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to1850

Part II

From June 1848 to June 13, 1849

February 25, 1848, granted the republicto France, June 25 thrust the revolutionupon her. And revolution, after June,meant: overthrow of bourgeois society,whereas before February it meant:overthrow of the form of government.

The June fight was led by the republicanfaction of the bourgeoisie; with victorypolitical power necessarily fell to itsshare. The state of siege laid, gaggedParis, unresisting, at its feet, and in theprovinces there prevailed a moral stateof siege, the threatening, brutal

arrogance of victorious bourgeoisie andthe unleashed property fanaticism of thepeasants. No danger, therefore, frombelow!

The crash of the revolutionary might ofthe workers was simultaneously a crashof the political influence of thedemocratic republicans; that is, of therepublicans in the sense of the pettybourgeoisie, represented in theExecutive Commission by Ledru-Rollin,in the Constituent National Assembly bythe part of the Montagne and in the pressby the Réforme. Together with thebourgeois republicans, they hadconspired on April 16 against theproletariat, together with them they had

warred against it in the June days. Thusthey themselves blasted the backgroundagainst which their party stood out as apower, for the petty bourgeoisie canpreserve a revolutionary attitude towardthe bourgeoisie only as long as theproletariat stands behind it. Theproletarians were dismissed. The shamalliance which the bourgeoisrepublicans, reluctantly and withreservations, concluded with themduring the epoch of the ProvisionalGovernment and the ExecutiveCommission was openly broken by thebourgeois republicans. Spurned andrepulsed as allies, they sank down tosubordinate henchmen of the tricolormen, from whom they could not wring

any concessions but whose dominationthey had to support whenever it, andwith it the republic, seemed to be put injeopardy by the anti-republicanbourgeois factions. Lastly, thesefactions, the Orléanists and theLegitimists, were from the verybeginning in a minority in the ConstituentNational Assembly. Before the Junedays they dared to react only under themask of bourgeois republicanism theJune victory allowed for a moment thewhole of bourgeois France to greet itssavior in Cavaignac; and when, shortlyafter the June days, the anti-republicanparty regained independence, themilitary dictatorship and the state ofsiege in Paris permitted it to put out its

antennae only very timidly andcautiously.

Since 1830 the bourgeois republicanfaction, in the person of its writers, itsspokesmen, its men of talent andambition, its deputies, generals, bankers,and lawyers, had grouped itself around aParisian journal, the National. In theprovinces this journal had its branchnewspapers. The coterie of the Nationalwas the dynasty of the tricolor republic.It immediately took possession of allstate offices of the ministries, theprefecture of police, the post-officedirectorship, the prefectures, the higherarmy officer posts which had nowbecome vacant. At the head of the

executive power stood its general,Cavaignac; its editor in chief, Marrast,became permanent president of theConstituent National Assembly. Asmaster of ceremonies he at the same timedid the honors, in his salons, of therespectable republic.

Even revolutionary French writers,awed, as it were, by the republicantradition, have strengthened the mistakenbelief that the royalists dominated theConstituent National Assembly. On thecontrary, after the June days, theConstituent Assembly remained theexclusive representative of bourgeoisrepublicanism, and it emphasized thisaspect all the more resolutely, the more

the influence of the tricolor republicanscollapsed outside the Assembly. If thequestion was one of maintaining the formof the bourgeois republic, then theAssembly had the votes of thedemocratic republicans at its disposal; ifone of maintaining the content, then evenits mode of speech no longer separated itfrom the royalist bourgeois factions, forit is the interests of the bourgeoisie, thematerial conditions of its class rule andclass exploitation, that form the contentof the bourgeois republic.

Thus it was not royalism but bourgeoisrepublicanism that was realized in thelife and work of this ConstituentAssembly, which in the end did not die,

nor was killed, but decayed.

For the entire duration of its rule, for aslong as it gave its grand performance ofstate on the proscenium,[83] an unbrokensacrificial feast was being staged in thebackground the continual sentencing bycourtsmartial of the captured Juneinsurgents or their deportation withouttrial. The Constituent Assembly had thetact to admit that in the June insurgents itwas not judging criminals but wiping outenemies.

The first act of the Constituent NationalAssembly was to set up a commission ofinquiry into the events of June and ofMay 15, and into the part played by thesocialist and democratic party leaders

during these days. The inquiry wasdirectly aimed at Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, and Caussidičre. The bourgeoisrepublicans burned with impatience torid themselves of these rivals. Theycould have entrusted the venting of theirspleen to no more suitable object thanM. Odilon Barrot, the former chief of thedynastic opposition, the incarnation ofliberalism, the nullité grave [self-important non-entity], the thoroughlyshallow person who not only had adynasty to revenge, but even had to settleaccounts with the revolutionists forthwarting his premiership. A sureguarantee of his relentlessness. ThisBarrot was therefore appointedchairman of the commission of inquiry,

and he constructed a complete legalprocess against the February Revolutionwhich may be summarized thus: March17, demonstration; April 16, conspiracy;May 15, attempt; June 23, civil war!Why did he not stretch his eruditecriminologists researches as far back asFebruary 24? The Journal des Débatsinquired that is, to the foundation ofRome. The origin of states gets lost in amyth that one may believe but may notdiscuss. Louis Blanc and Caussidičrewere handed over to the courts. TheNational Assembly completed the workof purging itself which it had begun onMay 15.

The plan formed by the Provisional

Government, and again taken up byGoudchaux, of taxing capital in the formof a mortgage tax was rejected by theConstituent Assembly; the law thatlimited the working day to ten hours wasrepealed; imprisonment for debt wasonce more introduced; the large sectionof the French population that can neitherread nor write was excluded from juryservice. Why not from the franchisealso? Journals again had to depositcaution money. The right of associationwas restricted.

No one had fought more fanatically inthe June days for the salvation ofproperty and the restoration of creditthan the Parisian petty bourgeois

keepers of cafes and restaurants,marchands de vins [wine merchants],small traders, shopkeepers,handicraftsman, etc. The shopkeeper hadpulled himself together and marchedagainst the barricades in order to restorethe traffic which leads from the streetsinto the shop. But behind the barricadestood the customers and the debtors;before it the creditors of the shop. Andwhen the barricades were thrown downand the workers were crushed and theshopkeepers, drunk with victory, rushedback to their shops, they found theentrance barred by a savior of property,an official agent of credit, whopresented them with threatening notices:Overdue promissory note! Overdue

house rent! Overdue bond! Doomedshop! Doomed shopkeeper!

Salvation of property! But the house theylived in was not their property; the shopthey kept was not their property; thecommodities they dealt in were not theirproperty. Neither their business, nor theplate they ate from, nor the bed theyslept on belonged to them any longer. Itwas precisely from them that thisproperty had to be saved for the house-owner who let the house, for the bankerwho discounted the promissory note, forthe capitalist who made the advances incash, for the manufacturer who entrustedthe sale of his commodities to theseretailers, for the wholesale dealer who

had credited the raw materials to thesehandicraftsman. Restoration of credit!But credit, having regained strength,proved itself a vigorous and jealous god;it turned the debtor who could not payout of his four walls, together with wifeand child, surrendered his sham propertyto capital, and threw the man himselfinto the debtors prison, which had oncemore reared its head threateningly overthe corpses of the June insurgents.

The petty bourgeois saw with horror thatby striking down the workers they haddelivered themselves without resistanceinto the hands of their creditors. Theirbankruptcy, which since February hadbeen dragging on in chronic fashion and

had apparently been ignored, was openlydeclared after June.

Their nominal property had been leftunassailed as long as it was ofconsequence to drive them to thebattlefield in the name of property. Nowthat the great issue with the proletariathad been settled, the small matter of theépicier could in turn be settled. In Paristhe mass of overdue paper amounted toover 21,000,000 francs; in the provincesto over 1,000,000. The proprietors ofmore than 7,000 Paris firms had not paidtheir rent since February.

While the National Assembly hadinstituted an inquiry into political guilt,going as far back as the end of February,

the petty bourgeois on their part nowdemanded an inquiry into civil debts upto February 24. They assembled enmasse in the Bourse hall andthreateningly demanded, on behalf ofevery businessman who could prove thathis insolvency was due solely to thestagnation caused by the revolution andthat his business had been in goodcondition on February 24, an extensionof the term of payment by order of acommerce court and the compulsoryliquidation of creditors claims inconsideration of a moderate percentagepayment. As a legislative proposal, thisquestion was dealt with in the NationalAssembly in the form of concordats ŕlamiable [amicable agreements]. The

Assembly vacillated; then it suddenlylearned that at the same time, at the PorteSt. Denis, thousands of wives andchildren of the insurgents had preparedan amnesty petition.

In the presence of the resurrected specterof June, the petty bourgeoisie trembledand the National Assembly retrieved itsimplacability. The concordats ŕlamiable, the amicable settlementsbetween debtor and creditor, wererejected in their most essential points.

Thus long after the democraticrepresentatives of the petty bourgeoishad been repulsed within the NationalAssembly by the republicanrepresentatives of the bourgeoisie, this

parliamentary breach received its civil,its real economic meaning by the pettybourgeois as debtors being handed overto the bourgeois as creditors. A largepart of the former were completelyruined and the remainder were allowedto continue their businesses only underconditions which made them absoluteserfs of capital. On August 22, 1848, theNational Assembly rejected theconcordats ŕ lamiable; on September 19,1848, in the midst of the state of siege,Prince Louis Bonaparte and the prisonerof Vincennes, the Communist Raspail,were elected representatives of Paris.[84] The bourgeoisie, however, electedthe usurious moneychanger and OrléanistFould. From all sides at once, therefore,

open declaration of war against theConstituent National Assembly, againstbourgeois republicanism, againstCavaignac.

It needs no argument to show how themass bankruptcy of the Paris pettybourgeois was bound to produceaftereffects far transcending the circle ofits immediate victims, and to convulsebourgeois commerce once more, whilethe state deficit was swollen anew bythe costs of the June insurrection, andstate revenues sank continuously throughthe hold-up of production, the restrictedconsumption, and the decreasingimports. Cavaignac and the NationalAssembly could have recourse to no

other expedient than a new loan, whichforced them still further under the yokeof the finance aristocracy.

While the petty bourgeois had harvestedbankruptcy and liquidation by order ofcourt as the fruit of the June victory,Cavaignacs Janisseries, the MobileGuards, found their reward in the softarms of the courtesans, and as theyouthful saviors of society they receivedall kinds of homage in the salons ofMarrast, the knight of the tricolor, whoserved simultaneously as the Amphitryonand the troubadour of the respectablerepublic. Meantime, this socialfavoritism and the disproportionatelyhigher pay of the Mobile Guard

embittered the army, while all thosenational illusions with which bourgeoisrepublicanism, through its journal, theNational, had been able to attach to itselfa part of the army and peasant classunder Louis Philippe vanished at thesame time. The role of mediator whichCavaignac and the National Assemblyplayed in North Italy in order, togetherwith England, to betray it to Austria thisone day of rule destroyed eighteen yearsof opposition on the part of the National.No government was less national thanthat of the National, none moredependent on England, and, under LouisPhilippe, the National lived byparaphrasing daily Catos dictum:Carthaginem esse delendam [Carthage

must be destroyed], none was moreservile toward the Holy Alliance, andfrom a Guizot the National haddemanded the tearing up of the Treatiesof Vienna.[85] The irony of history madeBastide, the ex-editor for foreign affairsof the National, Minister of ForeignAffairs of France, so that he might refuteevery one of his articles in every one ofhis dispatches.

For a moment, the army and the peasantclass had believed that, simultaneouslywith the military dictatorship, warabroad and gloire had been placed onthe order of the day in France. ButCavaignac was not the dictatorship ofthe saber over bourgeois society; he was

the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by thesaber. And of the soldier they nowrequired only the gendarme. Under thestern features of antique-republicanresignation Cavaignac concealedhumdrum submission to the humiliatingconditions of his bourgeois office.Largent na pas de maître! Money has nomaster! He, as well as the ConstituentAssembly in general, idealized this oldelection cry of the Third Estate bytranslating it into political speech: Thebourgeoisie has no king; the true form ofits rule is the republic.

And the great organic work of theConstituent National Assembly consistedin working out this form, in producing a

republican constitution. Therechristening of the Christian calendar asa republican one, of the saintlyBartholomew as the saintly Robespierre,made no more change in the wind andweather than this constitution made orwas supposed to make in bourgeoissociety. Where it went beyond a changeof costume, it put on record the existingfacts. Thus it solemnly registered the factof the republic, the fact of universalsuffrage, the fact of a single sovereignNational Assembly in place of twolimited constitutional chambers. Thus itregistered and regulated the fact of thedictatorship of Cavaignac by replacingthe stationary, irresponsible hereditarymonarchy with an ambulatory,

responsible, elective monarchy, with aquadrennial presidency. Thus it elevatedno less to an organic law the fact of theextraordinary powers with which theNational Assembly, after the horrors ofMay 15 and June 25, had prudentlyinvested its president in the interest ofits own security. The remainder of theconstitution was a work of terminology.The royalist labels were torn off themechanism of the old monarchy andrepublican labels stuck on. Marrast,former editor in chief of the National,now editor in chief of the constitution,acquitted himself of this academic tasknot without talent.

The Constituent Assembly resembled the

Chilean official who wanted to regulateproperty relations in land more firmly bya cadastral survey just at the momentwhen subterranean rumblings announcedthe volcanic eruption that was to hurlaway the land from under his very feet.While in theory it accurately marked offthe forms in which the rule of thebourgeoisie found republicanexpression, in reality it held its own onlyby the abolition of all formulas, by forcesans phrase [without any exceptions], bythe state of siege. Two days before itbegan its work on the constitution, itproclaimed an extension of the state ofsiege. Formerly constitutions had beenmade and adopted as soon as the socialprocess of revolution had reached a

point of rest, the newly formed classrelationships had establishedthemselves, and the contending factionsof the ruling class had had recourse to acompromise which allowed them tocontinue the struggle among themselvesand at the same time to keep theexhausted masses of the people out of it.This constitution, on the contrary, did notsanction any social revolution itsanctioned the momentary victory of theold society over the revolution.

The first draft of the constitution,[86]made before the June days, stillcontained the droit au travail, the right towork, the first clumsy formula whereinthe revolutionary demands of the

proletariat are summarized. It wastransformed into the droit ŕ lassistance,the right to public relief, and whatmodern state does not feed its paupers insome form or other? The right to workis, in the bourgeois sense, an absurdity, amiserable, pious wish. But behind theright to work stands the power overcapital; behind the power over capital,the appropriation of the means ofproduction, their subjection to theassociated working class, and thereforethe abolition of wage labor, of capital,and of their mutual relations. Behind theright to work stood the June insurrection.The Constituent Assembly, which in factput the revolutionary proletariat hors laloi, outside the law, had on principle to

throw the proletariats formula out of theconstitution, the law of laws; had topronounce its anathema upon the right towork. But it did not stop there. As Platobanned the poets from his republic, so itbanished forever from its republic theprogressive tax. And the progressive taxis not only a bourgeois measure, whichcan be carried out within the existingrelations of production to a greater orless degree, it was the only means ofbinding the middle strata of bourgeoissociety to the respectable republic, ofreducing the state debt, of holding theanti-republican majority of thebourgeoisie in check.

In the matter of the concordats ŕ

lamiable, the tricolor republicans hadactually sacrificed the petty bourgeoisieto the big bourgeoisie. They elevatedthis isolated fact to a principle by thelegal prohibition of a progressive tax.They put bourgeois reform on the samelevel as proletarian revolution. But whatclass then remained as the mainstay oftheir republic? The big bourgeoisie. Andits mass was anti-republican. While itexploited the republicans of the Nationalin order to consolidate again the oldrelations of economic life, it thought, onthe other hand, of exploiting the oncemore consolidated social relations inorder to restore the political forms thatcorresponded to them. As early as thebeginning of October, Cavaignac felt

compelled to make Dufaure and Vivien,previously ministers of Louis Philippe,ministers of the republic, however muchthe brainless puritans of his own partygrowled and blustered.

While the tricolor constitution rejectedevery compromise with the pettybourgeoisie and was unable to win theattachment of any new social element tothe new form of government, it hastened,on the other hand, to restore itstraditional inviolability to a body thatconstituted the most hardbitten andfanatical defender of the old state. Itraised the irremovability of judges,which had been questioned by theProvisional Government, to an organic

law. The one king whom it had removedrose again, by the score, in theseirremovable inquisitors of legality.

The French press has analyzed fromnumerous aspects the contradictions ofM. Marrasts constitution, for example,the coexistence of two sovereigns, theNational Assembly and the President,etc., etc.

The comprehensive contradiction of thisconstitution, however, consists in thefollowing: The classes whose socialslavery the constitution is to perpetuate proletariat, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie it puts in possession of political powerthrough universal suffrage. And from theclass whose old social power it

sanctions, the bourgeoisie, it withdrawsthe political guarantees of this power. Itforces the political rule of thebourgeoisie into democratic conditions,which at every moment help the hostileclasses to victory and jeopardize thevery foundations of bourgeois society.From the first group it demands that theyshould not go forward from political tosocial emancipation; from the others thatthey should not go back from social topolitical restoration.

These contradictions perturbed thebourgeois republicans little. To theextent that they ceased to beindispensable and they wereindispensable only as the protagonists of

the old society against the revolutionaryproletariat they fell, a few weeks aftertheir victory, from the position of a partyto that of a coterie. And they treated theconstitution as a big intrigue. What wasto be constituted in it was, above all, therule of the coterie. The President was tobe a protracted Cavaignac; theLegislative Assembly a protractedConstituent Assembly. They hoped toreduce the political power of the massesof the people to a semblance of power,and to be able to make sufficient playwith this sham power itself to keepcontinually hanging over the majority ofthe bourgeoisie the dilemma of the Junedays: realm of the National or realm ofanarchy.

The work on the constitution, which wasbegun on September 4, was finished onOctober 23. On September 2 theConstituent Assembly had decided not todissolve until the organic lawssupplementing the constitution wereenacted. Nonetheless, it now decided tobring to life the creation that was mostpeculiarly its own, the President, onDecember 4, long before the circle of itsown activity was closed. So sure was itof hailing, in the homunculus of theconstitution, the son of his mother. As aprecaution it was provided that if noneof the candidates received two millionvotes, the election should pass over fromthe nation to the Constituent Assembly.

Futile provisions! The first day of therealization of the constitution was thelast day of the rule of the ConstituentAssembly. In the abyss of the ballot boxlay its sentence of death. It sought theson of his mother and found the nephewof his uncle. Saul Cavaignac slew onemillion votes, but David Napoleon slewsix million. Saul Cavaignac was beatensix times over.

December 10, 1848, was the day of thepeasant insurrection. Only from this daydoes the February of the French peasantsdate. The symbol that expressed theirentry into the revolutionary movement,clumsily cunning, knavishly naive,doltishly sublime, a calculated

superstition, a pathetic burlesque, acleverly stupid anachronism, a world-historic piece of buffoonery and anindecipherable hieroglyphic for theunderstanding of the civilized thissymbol bore the unmistakablephysiognomy of the class that representsbarbarism within civilization. Therepublic had announced itself to thisclass with the tax collector; it announceditself to the republic with the emperor.Napoleon was the only man who hadexhaustively represented the interestsand the imagination of the peasant class,newly created in 1789. By writing hisname on the frontispiece of the republic,it declared war abroad and the enforcingof its class interests at home. Napoleon

was to the peasants not a person but aprogram. With banners, with beat ofdrums and blare of trumpets, theymarched to the polling booths shouting:Plus dimpôts, ŕ bas les riches, ŕ bas larépublique, vive lEmpereur! No moretaxes, down with the rich, down with therepublic, long live the emperor! Behindthe emperor was hidden the peasant war.The republic that they voted down wasthe republic of the rich.

December 10 was the coup détat of thepeasants, which overthrew the existinggovernment. And from that day on, whenthey had taken a government from Franceand given a government to her, their eyeswere fixed steadily on Paris. For a

moment active heroes of therevolutionary drama, they could nolonger be forced back into the inactiveand spineless role of the chorus.

The other classes helped to complete theelection victory of the peasants. To theproletariat, the election of Napoleonmeant the deposition of Cavaignac, theoverthrow of the Constituent Assembly,the dismissal of bourgeoisrepublicanism, the cessation of the Junevictory. To the petty bourgeoisie,Napoleon meant the rule of the debtorover the creditor. For the majority of thebig bourgeoisie, the election ofNapoleon meant an open breach with thefaction of which it had had to make use,

for a moment, against the revolution, butwhich became intolerable to it as soonas this faction sought to consolidate theposition of the moment into aconstitutional position. Napoleon inplace of Cavaignac meant to thismajority the monarch, in place of therepublic, the beginning of the royalistrestoration, a sly hint at Orléans, thefleur-de-lis hidden beneath the violets.[87] Lastly, the army voted for Napoleonagainst the Mobile Guard, against thepeace idyll, for war.

Thus it happened, as the NeueRheinische Zeitung stated, that the mostsimple-minded man in France acquiredthe most multifarious significance. Just

because he was nothing, he could signifyeverything save himself. Meanwhile,different as the meaning of the nameNapoleon might be in the mouths of thedifferent classes, with this name eachwrote on his ballot: Down with the partyof the National, down with Caivaignac,down with the Constituent Assembly,down with the bourgeois republic.Minister Dufaure publicly declared inthe Constituent Assembly: December 10is a second February 24.

Petty bourgeoisie and proletariat hadvoted en bloc for Napoleon, in order tovote against Cavaignac and, by poolingtheir votes, to wrest the final decisionfrom the Constituent Assembly. The

more advanced sections of the twoclasses, however, put forward their owncandidates. Napoleon was the collectivename of all parties in coalition againstthe bourgeois republic; Ledru-Rollin andRaspail were the proper names, theformer of the democratic pettybourgeoisie, the latter of therevolutionary proletariat. The votes forRaspail the proletarians and theirsocialist spokesmen declared it loudly were to be merely a demonstration, somany protests against any presidency,that is, against the constitution itself, somany votes against Ledru-Rollin, thefirst act by which the proletariat, as anindependent political party, declared itsseparation from the democratic party.

This party, on the other hand thedemocratic petty bourgeoisie and itsparliamentary representative, theMontagne[6] treated the candidature ofLedru-Rollin with all the seriousnesswith which it is in the habit of solemnlyduping itself. For the rest, this was itslast attempt to set itself up as anindependent party, as against theproletariat. Not only the republicanbourgeois party, but also the democraticpetty bourgeoisie and its Montagne werebeaten on December 10.

France now possessed a Napoleon sideby side with a Montagne, proof that bothwere only the lifeless caricatures of thegreat realities whose names they bore.

Louis Napoleon, with the emperors hatand the eagle, parodied the oldNapoleon no more miserably than theMontagne, with its phrases borrowedfrom 1793 and its demagogic poses,parodied the old Montagne. Thus thetraditional 1793 superstition wasstripped off at the same time as thetraditional Napoleon superstition. Therevolution had come into its own onlywhen it had won its own, its originalname, and it could do that only when themodern revolutionary class, theindustrial proletariat, came dominatinglyinto its foreground. One can say thatDecember 10 dumbfounded theMontagne and caused it to growconfused in its own mind, if for no other

reason than because that day laughinglycut short with a contemptuous peasantjest the classical analogy to the oldrevolution.

On December 20 Cavaignac laid downhis office and the Constituent Assemblyproclaimed Louis Napoleon President ofthe Republic, On December 19, the lastday of its sole rule, it rejected theproposal for amnesty for the Juneinsurgents. Would revoking the decree ofJune 27, under which it had condemned15,000 insurgents to deportation withoutjudicial sentence, not have meantrevoking the June battle itself.

Odilon Barrot, the last minister of LouisPhilippe, became the first minister of

Louis Napoleon. Just as Louis Napoleondated his rule, not from December 10,but from a decree of the Senate of 1804,so he found a prime minister who did notdate his ministry from December 20, butfrom a royal decree of February 24.[88]As the legitimate heir of Louis Philippe,Louis Napoleon mollified the change ofgovernment by retaining the old ministry,which, moreover, had not had time to beworn out, since it had not found time toembark upon life.

The leaders of the royalist bourgeoisfactions advised him in this choice. Thehead of the old dynastic opposition, whohad unconsciously constituted thetransition to the republicans of the

National, was still more fitted toconstitute with full consciousness thetransition from the bourgeois republic tothe monarchy.

Odilon Barrot was the leader of the oneold opposition party which, alwaysfruitlessly struggling for ministerialportfolios, had not yet been used up. Inrapid succession the revolution hurledall the old opposition parties to the topof the state, so that they would have todeny, to repudiate their old phrases notonly in deeds but even in words, andmight finally be flung all together,combined in a repulsive commixture, onthe dung heap of history by the people.And no apostasy was spared this Barrot,

this incarnation of bourgeois liberalism,who for eighteen years had hidden therascally vacuity of his mind behind theserious demeanor of his body. If atcertain moments the far too strikingcontrast between the thistles of thepresent and the laurels of the paststartled the man himself, one glance inthe mirror gave him back his ministerialcomposure and human self-admiration.What beamed at him from the mirror wasGuizot, whom he had always envied,who had always mastered him, Guizothimself, but Guizot with the Olympianforehead of Odilon. What he overlookedwere the ears of Midas.

The Barrot of February 24 first became

manifest in the Barrot of December 20.Associated with him, the Orléanist andVoltairean, was the Legitimist and JesuitFalloux, as Minister of Public Worship.

A few days later, the Ministry of HomeAffairs was given to Léon Faucher, theMalthusian. Law, religion, and politicaleconomy! The ministry of Barrotcontained all this and, in addition, acombination of Legitimists andOrléanists. Only the Bonapartist waslacking. Bonaparte still hid his longingto signify Napoleon, for Soulouque didnot yet play Toussaint Louverture.

The party of the National wasimmediately relieved of all the higherposts, where it had entrenched itself.

The prefecture of police, the post-officedirectorship, the procuratorship general,the mairie [mayors office] of Paris wereall filled with old creatures of themonarchy. Changarnier, the Legitimist,received the unified supreme commandof the National Guard of the Departmentof the Seine, of the Mobile Guard andthe troops of the line of the first militarydivision; Bugeaud, the Orléanist, wasappointed commander in chief of theAlpine Army. This change of officialscontinued uninterrupted under the Barrotgovernment. The first act of his ministrywas the restoration of the old royalistadministration. The official scene was atonce transformed scenery, costumes,speech, actors, supers, mutes, prompters,

the position of the parties, the theme ofthe drama, the content of the conflict, thewhole situation. Only the premundaneConstituent Assembly remained in itsplace. But from the hour when theNational Assembly had installedBonaparte, Bonaparte Barrot, and BarrotChangarnier, France stepped out of theperiod of republican constitution into theperiod of the constituted republic. Andwhat place was there for a ConstituentAssembly in a constituted republic?After the earth had been created, therewas nothing else for its creator to do butflee to heaven. The ConstituentAssembly was determined not to followhis example; the National Assembly wasthe last asylum of the party of the

bourgeois republicans. If all levers ofexecutive power had been wrested fromit, was there not left to it constituentomnipotence? Its first thought was tohold under all circumstances the positionof sovereignty it occupied, and thence toreconquer the lost ground. Once theBarrot Ministry was displaced by aministry of the National, the royalistpersonnel would have to vacate thepalaces of the administration forthwithand the tricolor personnel wouldtriumphantly move in again. TheNational Assembly resolved on theoverthrow of the ministry and theministry itself offered an opportunity forthe attack, a better one than theConstituent Assembly itself could have

invented.

It will be remembered that for thepeasants Louis Bonaparte signified: Nomore taxes! Six days he sat in thePresidents chair, and on the seventh, onDecember 27, his ministry proposed theretention of the salt tax, whose abolitionthe Provisional Government haddecreed. The salt tax shares with thewine tax the privilege of being thescapegoat of the old French financialsystem, particularly in the eyes of thecountry folk. The Barrot Ministry couldnot have put into the mouth of thepeasants choice a more mordant epigramon his electors than the words:Restoration of the salt tax! With the salt

tax, Bonaparte lost his revolutionary salt the Napoleon of the peasant insurrectiondissolved like an apparition, and nothingremained but the great unknown ofroyalist bourgeois intrigue. And notwithout intention did the Barrot Ministrymake this act of tactlessly rudedisillusionment the first governmentalact of the President.

The Constituent Assembly, for its part,eagerly seized the double opportunity ofoverthrowing the ministry and, as againstthe elected choice of the peasantry,setting itself up as the representative ofpeasant interests. It rejected the proposalof the finance minister, reduced the salttax to a third of its former amount, thus

increasing by sixty millions a statedeficit of five hundred and sixtymillions, and, after this vote of noconfidence, calmly awaited theresignation of the ministry. So little didit comprehend the new world thatsurrounded it and its own changedposition. Behind the ministry stood thePresident and behind the President stoodsix millions who had placed in the ballotbox as many votes of no confidence inthe Constituent Assembly. TheConstituent Assembly gave the nationback its no-confidence vote. Absurdexchange! It forgot that its votes were nolonger legal tender. The rejection of thesalt tax only matured the decision ofBonaparte and his ministry to finish the

Constituent Assembly. There began thatlong duel which lasted the entire latterhalf of the life of the ConstituentAssembly. January 29, March 31, andMay 8 are the journées, the great days ofthis crisis, just so many forerunners ofJune 13.

Frenchmen, for example Louis Blanc,have construed January 29 as the date ofthe emergence of a constitutionalcontradiction, the contradiction betweena sovereign, indissoluble NationalAssembly born of universal suffrage anda President who, to go by the wording,was responsible to the Assembly, butwho, to go by reality, was not onlysimilarly sanctioned by universal

suffrage and in addition united in hisown person all the votes that were splitup a hundred times and distributedamong the individual members of theNational Assembly, but who was also infull possession of the whole executivepower, above which the NationalAssembly hovered as a merely moralforce. This interpretation of January 29confuses the language of the struggle onthe platform, through the press, and inthe clubs with its real content. LouisBonaparte as against the ConstituentNational Assembly that was not oneunilateral constitutional power asagainst another; that was not theexecutive power as against thelegislative. That was the constituted

bourgeois republic itself as against theintrigues and ideological demands of therevolutionary faction of the bourgeoisiethat had founded it and was now amazedto find that its constituted republiclooked like a restored monarchy, andnow desired forcibly to prolong theconstituent period with its conditions, itsillusions, its language, and itspersonages and to prevent the maturebourgeois republic from emerging in itscomplete and peculiar form. As theConstituent National Assemblyrepresented Cavaignac, who had fallenback into its midst, so Bonaparterepresented the Legislative NationalAssembly that had not yet been divorcedfrom him, that is, the National Assembly

of the constituted bourgeois republic.

The election of Bonaparte could becomeexplicable only, by putting in the placeof the one name its manifold meanings,by repeating itself in the election of thenew National Assembly. The mandate ofthe old was annulled by December 10.Thus on January 29 it was not thePresident and the National Assembly ofthe same republic that were face to face;it was the National Assembly of therepublic that was coming into being andthe President of the republic that hadcome into being, two powers thatembodied quite different periods in thelife process of the republic; the one, thesmall republican faction of the

bourgeoisie that alone could proclaimthe republic, wrest it from therevolutionary proletariat by streetfighting and a reign of terror, and draftits ideal basic features in theconstitution; and the other, the wholeroyalist mass of the bourgeoisie thatalone could rule in this constitutedbourgeois republic, strip the constitutionof its ideological trimmings, and realizeby its legislation and administration theindispensable conditions for thesubjugation of the proletariat.

The storm which broke on January 29gathered its elements during the wholemonth of January. The ConstituentAssembly wanted to drive the Barrot

Ministry to resign by its no-confidencevote. The Barrot Ministry, on the otherhand, proposed to the ConstituentAssembly that it should give itself adefinitive no-confidence vote, decide onsuicide, and decree its own dissolution.On January 6, Rateau, one of the mostobscure deputies, at the order of theministry brought this motion before theConstituent Assembly that in August haddetermined not to dissolve until it hadenacted a whole series of organic lawssupplementing the constitution. Fould,the ministerialist, bluntly declared to itthat its dissolution was necessary for therestoration of the deranged credit. Anddid it not derange credit when itprolonged the provisional stage and,

with Barrot, again called Bonaparte inquestion, and, with Bonaparte, theconstituted republic Barrot the Olympianbecame a raving Roland at the prospectof seeing the premiership he had finallypocketed, which the republicans hadalready withheld from him for tenmonths, again torn from him afterscarcely two weeks enjoyment of it.Barrot, confronting this wretchedAssembly, outtyrannized the tyrant. Hismildest words were, No future ispossible with it. And actually it didrepresent only the past. It is incapable,he added ironically, of providing therepublic with the institutions which arenecessary for its consolidation.Incapable indeed! Its bourgeois energy

was broken simultaneously with itsexceptional antagonism to theproletariat, and with its antagonism tothe royalists its republican exuberancelived anew. Thus it was doublyincapable of consolidating the bourgeoisrepublic, which it no longercomprehended, by means of thecorresponding institutions.

Simultaneously with Rateaus motion theministry evoked a storm of petitionsthroughout the land, and from all cornersof France came flying daily at the headof the Constituent Assembly bundles ofbillets-doux [love-letters] in which itwas more or less categoricallyrequested to dissolve and make its will.

The Constituent Assembly, on its side,called forth counter-petitions in which itcaused itself to be requested to remainalive. The election struggle betweenBonaparte and Cavaignac was renewedas a petition struggle for and against thedissolution of the National Assembly;the petitions were to be belatedcommentaries on December 10. Thisagitation continued during the whole ofJanuary.

In the conflict between the ConstituentAssembly and the President, the formercould not refer back to the generalelection as its origin, for the appeal wasfrom the Assembly to universal suffrage.It could base itself on no regularly

constituted power, for the issue was thestruggle against the legal power. It couldnot overthrow the ministry by no-confidence votes, as it again essayed todo on January 6 and 26, for the ministrydid not ask for its confidence. Only onepossibility was left to it, that ofinsurrection. The fighting forces of theinsurrection were the republican part ofthe National Guard, the Mobile Guard,and the centers of the revolutionaryproletariat, the clubs. The MobileGuard, those heroes of the June days, inDecember formed the organized fightingforce of the republican faction of thebourgeoisie, just as before June thenational ateliers had formed theorganized fighting force of the

revolutionary proletariat. As theExecutive Commission of the ConstituentAssembly directed its brutal attack onthe national ateliers, when it had to putan end to the now unbearablepretensions of the proletariat, so theministry of Bonaparte directed its attackon the Mobile Guard, when it had to putan end to the now unbearablepretensions of the republican faction ofthe bourgeoisie. It ordered thedisbanding of the Mobile Guard. Onehalf of it was dismissed and thrown onthe street, the other was organized onmonarchist instead of democratic lines,and its pay was reduced to the usual payof troops of the line. The Mobile Guardfound itself in the position of the June

insurgents and every day the presscarried public confessions in which itadmitted its blame for June and imploredthe proletariat to forgive it.

And the clubs? From the moment whenthe Constituent Assembly in the personof Barrot called in question thePresident, and in the person of thePresident the constituted bourgeoisrepublic, and in the person of theconstituted bourgeois republic thebourgeois republic in general, all theconstituent elements of the FebruaryRepublic necessarily ranged themselvesaround it all the parties that wished tooverthrow the existing republic and by aviolent retrograde process to transform

it into a republic of their class interestsand principles. The scrambled eggswere unscrambled, the crystallisationsof the revolutionary movement had againbecome fluid, the republic that wasbeing fought for was again the indefiniterepublic of the February days, thedefining of which each party reserved toitself. For a moment the parties againtook up their old February positions,without sharing the illusions ofFebruary. The tricolor republicans onthe National again leaned on thedemocratic republicans of the Réformeand pushed them as protagonists into theforeground of the parliamentary struggle.The democratic republicans againleaned on the socialist republicans on

January 27 a public manifesto announcedtheir reconciliation and union andprepared their insurrectional backgroundin the clubs. The ministerial press rightlytreated the tricolor republicans of theNational as the resurrected insurgents ofJune. In order to maintain themselves atthe head of the bourgeois republic, theycalled in question the bourgeois republicitself. On January 26 Minister Faucherproposed a law on the right ofassociation,[89] the first paragraph ofwhich read: Clubs are forbidden. Hemoved that this bill immediately bediscussed as urgent. The ConstituentAssembly rejected the motion ofurgency, and on January 27 Ledru-Rollinput forward a proposition, with 230

signatures appended to it, to impeach theministry for violation of the constitution.The impeachment of the ministry at timeswhen such an act was a tactlessdisclosure of the impotence of the judge,to wit, the majority of the Chamber, oran impotent protest of the accuseragainst this majority itself that was thegreat revolutionary trump that the latter-day Montagne played from now on ateach high spot of the crisis. PoorMontagne! crushed by the weight of itsown name!

On May 15 Blanqui, Barbčs, Raspall,etc., had attempted to break up theConstituent Assembly by forcing anentrance into its hall at the head of the

Paris proletariat. Barrot prepared amoral May 15 for the same Assemblywhen he wanted to dictate its self-dissolution and close the hall. The sameAssembly had commissioned Barrot tomake the inquiry against the Mayaccused, and now, at the moment whenhe appeared before it like a royalistBlanqui, when it sought for allies againsthim in the clubs, among therevolutionary proletarians, in the partyof Blanqui at this moment the relentlessBarrot tormented it with the proposal towithdraw the May prisoners from theCourt of Assizes with its jury and handthem over to the High Court, the hautecour devised by the party of theNational. Remarkable how wild fear for

a ministerial portfolio could pound outof the head of a Barrot points worthy ofa Beaumarchais! After much vacillationthe National Assembly accepted hisproposal. As against the makers of theMay attempt, it reverted to its normalcharacter.

If the Constituent Assembly, as againstthe President and the ministers, wasdriven to insurrection, the President andthe ministers, as against the ConstituentAssembly, were driven to a coup detat,for they had no legal means of dissolvingit. But the Constituent Assembly was themother of the constitution and theconstitution was the mother of thePresident. With the coup detat the

President tore up the constitution andextinguished his republican legal title.He was then forced to pull out hisimperial legal title, but the imperiallegal title woke up the Orléanist legaltitle and both paled before the Legitimistlegal title. The downfall of the legalrepublic could shoot to the top only itsextreme antipode, the Legitimistmonarchy, at a moment when theOrléanist party was still only thevanquished of February and Bonapartewas still only the victor of December10, when both could oppose torepublican usurpation only theirlikewise usurped monarchist titles. TheLegitimists were aware of thepropitiousness of the moment; they

conspired openly. They could hope tofind their Monk[90] in GeneralChangarnier. The imminence of thewhite monarchy was as openlyannounced in their clubs as was that ofthe red republic in the proletarian clubs.

The ministry would have escaped alldifficulties by a happily suppressedrising. Legality is the death of us, criedOdilon Barrot. A rising would haveallowed it, under the pretext of salutpublic [public safety], to dissolve theConstituent Assembly, to violate theconstitution in the interests of theconstitution itself. The brutal behavior ofOdilon Barrot in the National Assembly,the motion for the dissolution of the

clubs, the tumultuous removal of fiftytricolor prefects and their replacementby royalists, the dissolution of theMobile Guard, the ill treatment of theirchiefs by Changarnier, the reinstatementof Lerminier, the professor who wasimpossible even under Guizot, thetoleration of the Legitimist braggadocio all these were just so many provocationsto mutiny. But the mutiny remained mute.It expected its signal from theConstituent Assembly and not from theministry.

Finally came January 29, the day thedecision was to be taken on the motionof Mathieu (de la Drôme) forunconditional rejection of Rateaus

motion. Legitimists, Orléanists,Bonapartists, Mobile Guard, Montagne,clubs all conspired on this day, eachjust as much against the ostensibleenemy as against the ostensible ally.Bonaparte, on horseback, mustered apart of the troops on the Place de laConcorde; Changarnier play-acted witha display of strategic maneuvers; theConstituent Assembly found its buildingoccupied by the military. ThisAssembly, the center of all theconflicting hopes, fears, expectations,ferments, tensions, and conspiracies, thislionhearted Assembly did not falter for amoment when it came nearer to theWeltgeist [world spirit] than ever. Itwas like the fighter who not only feared

to make use of his own weapons but alsofelt himself obliged to maintain theweapons of his opponent unimpaired.Scorning death, it signed its own deathwarrant and rejected the unconditionalrejection of the Rateau motion. Itself in astate of siege, it set limits to aconstituent activity whose necessaryframe had been the state of siege ofParis. It revenged itself worthily whenon the following day it instituted aninquiry into the fright that the ministryhad given it on January 29. In this greatcomedy of intrigues the Montagneshowed its lack of revolutionary energyand political understanding by allowingitself to be used by the party of theNational as the crier in the contest. The

party of the National had made its lastattempt to continue to maintain, in theconstituted republic, the monopoly ofrule it had possessed during the inchoateperiod of the bourgeois republic. It wasshipwrecked.

While in the January crisis it was aquestion of the existence of theConstituent Assembly, in the crisis ofMarch 21 it was a question of theexistence of the constitution there of thepersonnel of the National party, here ofits ideal. There is no need to point outthat the respectable republicanssurrendered the exaltation of theirideology more cheaply than the worldlyenjoyment of governmental power.

On March 21 Fauchers bill against theright of association: the suppression ofthe clubs was on the order of the day inthe National Assembly. Article 8 of theconstitution guarantees to all Frenchmenthe right to associate. The prohibition ofthe clubs was therefore an unequivocalviolation of the constitution, and theConstituent Assembly itself was tocanonize the profanation of its holy ofholies. But the clubs these were thegathering points, the conspiratorial seatsof the revolutionary proletariat. TheNational Assembly had itself forbiddenthe coalition of the workers against itsbourgeois. And the clubs what werethey but a coalition of the whole workingclass against the whole bourgeois class,

the formation of a workers state againstthe bourgeois state? Were they not justso many constituent assemblies of theproletariat and just so many militarydetachments of revolt in fighting trim what the constitution was to constituteabove all else was the rule of thebourgeoisie. By the right of associationthe constitution, therefore, couldmanifestly mean only associations thatharmonized with the rule of thebourgeoisie, that is, with bourgeoisorder. If for reasons of theoreticalpropriety it expressed itself in generalterms, were not the government and theNational Assembly there to interpret andapply it in a special case? And if in theprimeval epoch of the republic the clubs

actually were forbidden by the state ofsiege, had they not to be forbidden in theordered, constituted republic by thelaw? The tricolor republicans hadnothing to oppose to this prosaicinterpretation of the constitution but thehigh-flown phraseology of theconstitution. A section of them,Pagnerre, Duclerc, etc., voted for theministry and thereby gave it a majority.The others, with the archangelCavaignac and the father of the churchMarrast at their head, retired, after thearticle on the prohibition of the clubshad gone through, to a special committeeroom, jointly with Ledru-Rollin and theMontagne and held a council. TheNational Assembly was paralyzed; it no

longer had a quorum. At the right time,M. Crémieux remembered in thecommittee room that the way from hereled directly to the street and that it wasno longer February, 1848, but March,1849. The party of the National,suddenly enlightened, returned to theNational Assemblys hall of session,behind it the Montagne, duped oncemore. The latter, constantly tormented byrevolutionary longings, just as constantlyclutched at constitutional possibilities,and still felt itself more in place behindthe bourgeois republicans than in front ofthe revolutionary proletariat. Thus thecomedy was played. And the ConstituentAssembly itself had decreed that theviolation of the letter of the constitution

was the only appropriate realization ofits spirit.

There was only one point left to settle,the relation of the constituted republic tothe European revolution, its foreignpolicy. On May 8, 1849, unwontedexcitement prevailed in the ConstituentAssembly, whose term of life was due toend in a few days. The attack of theFrench army on Rome, its repulse by theRomans,[91] its political infamy andmilitary disgrace, the foul assassinationof the Roman republic by the Frenchrepublic the first Italian campaign of thesecond Bonaparte was on the order ofthe day. The Montagne had once moreplayed its great trump; Ledru-Rollin had

laid on the Presidents table theinevitable bill of impeachment againstthe ministry, and this time also againstBonaparte, for violation of theconstitution.

The motive of May 8 was repeated lateras the motive of June 13. Let us get clearabout the expedition to Rome.

As early as the middle of November,1848, Cavaignac had sent a battle fleetto Civita Vecchia in order to protect thePope, to take him on board and ship himover to France. The Pope was toconsecrate the respectable republic, andto insure the election of Cavaignac asPresident. With the Pope, Cavaignacwanted to angle for the priests, with the

priests for the peasants, and with thepeasants for the presidency. Theexpedition of Cavaignac, an electionadvertisement in its immediate purpose,was at the same time a protest and athreat against the Roman revolution. Itcontained in embryo Francesintervention in favor of the Pope.

This intervention on behalf of the Pope,in association with Austria and Naplesagainst the Roman republic, wasdecided at the first meeting ofBonapartes ministerial council, onDecember 23. Falloux in the ministry that meant the Pope in Rome and in theRome of the Pope. Bonaparte no longerneeded the Pope in order to become the

President of the peasants; but he neededthe conservation of the Pope in order toconserve the peasants of the President.Their credulity had made him President.With faith they would lose credulity, andwith the Pope, faith. And the Orléanistsand Legitimists in coalition, who ruledin Bonapartes name! Before the king wasrestored, the power that consecrateskings had to be restored. Apart fromtheir royalism: without the old Rome,subject to his temporal rule, no Pope;without the Pope, no Catholicism;without Catholicism, no French religion,and without religion, what wouldbecome of the old French society? Themortgage the peasant has on heavenlypossessions guarantees the mortgage the

bourgeois has on peasant possessions.The Roman revolution was therefore anattack on property, on the bourgeoisorder, dreadful as the June Revolution.Reestablished bourgeois rule in Francerequired the restoration of papal rule inRome. Finally, to smite the Romanrevolutionists was to smite the allies ofthe French revolutionists; the alliance ofthe counterrevolutionary classes in theconstituted French republic wasnecessarily supplemented by the allianceof the French republic with the HolyAlliance, with Naples and Austria.

The decision of the ministerial councilon December 23 was no secret to theConstituent Assembly. On January 8

Ledru-Rollin had interpellated theministry about it; the ministry had deniedit and the National Assembly hadproceeded to the order of the day. Did ittrust the word of the ministry? We knowit spent the whole month of Januarygiving the ministry no-confidence votes.But if it was part of the ministrys role tolie, it was part of the NationalAssemblys role to feign belief in its lieand thereby save republican dehors[face].

Meanwhile Piedmont was beaten,Charles-Albert had abdicated, and theAustrian army knocked at the gates ofFrance.[92] Ledru-Rollin vehementlyinterpellated. The ministry proved that it

had only continued in North Italy thepolicy of Cavaignac and Cavaignac onlythe policy of the ProvisionalGovernment, that is, of Ledru-Rollin.This time it even reaped a vote ofconfidence from the National Assemblyand was authorized to occupytemporarily a suitable point in UpperItaly to give support to peacefulnegotiations with Austria concerning theintegrity of Sardinian territory and thequestion of Rome. It is known that thefate of Italy is decided on the battlefieldsof North Italy. Hence Rome would fallwith Lombardy and Piedmont, or Francewould have to declare war on Austriaand thereby on the Europeancounterrevolution. Did the National

Assembly suddenly take the BarrotMinistry for the old Committee of PublicSafety?[93] Or itself for the Convention?Why, then, the military occupation of apoint in Upper Italy? This transparentveil covered the expedition againstRome.

On April 14, 14,000 men sailed underOudinot for Civita Vecchia; on April 16the National Assembly voted theministry a credit Of 1,200,000 francs forthe maintenance of a fleet of interventionin the Mediterranean Sea for threemonths. Thus it gave the ministry everymeans of intervening against Rome,while it adopted the pose of letting itintervene against Austria. It did not see

what the ministry did; it only heard whatit said. Such faith was not found inIsrael; the Constituent Assembly hadfallen into the position of not daring toknow what the constituted republic hadto do.

Finally, on May 8, the last scene of thecomedy was played; the ConstituentAssembly urged the ministry to takeswift measures to bring the Italianexpedition back to the aim set for it.Bonaparte that same evening inserted aletter in the Moniteur in which helavished the greatest appreciation onOudinot. On May 11 the NationalAssembly rejected the bill ofimpeachment against this same

Bonaparte and his ministry. And theMontagne, which instead of tearing thisweb of deceit to pieces took theparliamentary comedy tragically in orderto play in it the role of Fouquier-Tinville, did not betray its natural pettybourgeois calfs hide under the borrowedlions skin of the Convention!

The latter half of the life of theConstituent Assembly is summarizedthus: on January 29 it admits that theroyalist bourgeois factions are thenatural superiors of the republicconstituted by it; on March 21, that theviolation of the constitution is itsrealization; and on May 11, that thebombastically proclaimed passive

alliance of the French republic with thestruggling peoples means its activealliance with the Europeancounterrevolution.

This miserable Assembly left the stageafter it had given itself the satisfaction,two days before its first birthday, May 4,of rejecting the motion of amnesty for theJune insurgents. Its power shattered,held in deadly hatred by the people,repulsed, maltreated, contemptuouslythrown aside by the bourgeoisie, whosetool it was, forced in the second half ofits life to disavow the first, robbed of itsrepublican illusions, without havingcreated anything great in the past,without hope in the future, and with its

living body dying bit by bit, it was ableto galvanize its own corpse into life onlyby continually recalling and livingthrough the June victory over and overagain, affirming itself by constantlyrepeated damnation of the damned. Avampire living on the blood of the Juneinsurgents!

It left behind a state deficit increased bythe costs of the June insurrection, by theloss of the salt tax, by the compensationit paid the plantation owners forabolishing Negro slavery, by the costs ofthe Roman expedition, by the loss of thewine tax, whose abolition it resolvedupon when already at its last gasp amalicious old man, happy to impose on

his laughing heir a compromising debt ofhonor.

With the beginning of March theagitation for the election of theLegislative National Assembly hadcommenced. Two main groups opposedeach other, the party of Order and thedemocratic socialist, or Red, party;between the two stood the Friends of theConstitution, under which name thetricolor republicans of the Nationalsought to put forward a party. The partyof Order was formed directly after theJune days; only after December 10 hadallowed it to cast off the coterie of theNational, of the bourgeois republicans,was the secret of its existence, the

coalition of Orléanists and Legitimistsinto one party, disclosed. The bourgeoisclass fell apart into two big factionswhich alternately the big landedproprietors under the restored monarchyand the finance aristocracy and theindustrial bourgeoisie under the JulyMonarchy had maintained a monopolyof power. Bourbon was the royal namefor the predominant influence of theinterests of the one faction, Orléans theroyal name for the predominant influenceof the interests of the other faction thenameless realm of the republic was theonly one in which both factions couldmaintain with equal power the commonclass interest without giving up theirmutual rivalry. If the bourgeois republic

could not be anything but the perfectedand clearly expressed rule of the wholebourgeois class, could it be anything butthe rule of the Orléanists supplementedby the Legitimists, and of the Legitimistssupplemented by the Orléanists, thesynthesis of the Restoration and the JulyMonarchy. The bourgeois republicans ofthe National did not represent any largefaction of their class resting oneconomic foundations. They possessedonly the importance and the historicalclaim of having asserted, under themonarchy, as against the two bourgeoisfactions that understood only theirparticular regime, the general regime ofthe bourgeois class, the nameless realmof the republic, which they idealized and

embellished with antique arabesques,but in which above all they hailed therule of their coterie. If the party of theNational grew confused in its own mindwhen it descried the royalists incoalition at the top of the republicfounded by it, these royalists deceivedthemselves no less concerning the fact oftheir united rule. They did notcomprehend that if each of their factions,regarded separately, by itself, wasroyalist, the product of their chemicalcombination had necessarily to berepublican, that the white and the bluemonarchy had to neutralize each other inthe tricolor republic. Forced byantagonism to the revolutionaryproletariat and the transition classes

thronging more and more around it astheir center to summon their unitedstrength and to conserve the organizationof this united strength, each faction of theparty of Order had to assert, as againstthe desire for restoration and theoverweening presumption of the other,their joint rule, that is, the republicanform of bourgeois rule. Thus we findthese royalists in the beginning believingin an immediate restoration, laterpreserving the republican form withfoaming rage and deadly invectiveagainst it on their lips, and finallyconfessing that they can endure eachother only in the republic and postponingthe restoration indefinitely. Theenjoyment of the united rule itself

strengthened each of the two factions,and made each of them still more unableand unwilling to subordinate itself to theother, that is, to restore the monarchy.

The party of Order directly proclaimedin its election program the rule of thebourgeois class, that is, the preservationof the life conditions of its rule:property, family, religion, order!Naturally it represented its class ruleand the conditions of its class rule as therule of civilization and as the necessaryconditions of material production aswell as of the relations of socialintercourse arising from it. The party ofOrder had enormous money andresources at its command; it organized

its branches throughout France it had allthe ideologists of the old society in itspay it had the influence of the existinggovernmental power at its disposal; itpossessed an army of unpaid vassals inthe whole mass of petty bourgeois andpeasants, who, still removed from therevolutionary movement, found in thehigh dignitaries of property the naturalrepresentatives of their petty prejudices.This party, represented throughout thecountry by countless petty kings, couldpunish the rejection of their candidatesas insurrection, dismiss the rebelliousworkers, the recalcitrant farm hands,domestic servants, clerks, railwayofficials, copyists, all the functionariescivilly subordinate to it. Finally, here

and there it could maintain the delusionthat the republican Constituent Assemblyhad prevented the Bonaparte ofDecember 10 from manifesting hiswonderworking powers. We have notmentioned the Bonapartists in connectionwith the party of Order. They were not aserious faction of the bourgeois class,but a collection of old, superstitiousinvalids and young, unbelieving soldiersof fortune. The party of Order wasvictorious in the elections; it sent a largemajority to the Legislative Assembly.

As against the coalescedcounterrevolutionary bourgeois class,the sections of the petty bourgeoisie andpeasant class already revolutionized

naturally had to ally themselves with thehigh dignitary of revolutionary interests,the revolutionary proletariat. We haveseen how the democratic spokesmen ofthe petty bourgeoisie in parliament, thatis, the Montagne, were driven byparliamentary defeats to the socialistspokesmen of the proletariat, and howthe actual petty bourgeoisie, outside ofparliament, was driven by theconcordats ŕ lamiable [friendlyagreements], by the brutal enforcementof bourgeois interests, and by bankruptcyto the actual proletarians. On January 27Montagne and the socialists hadcelebrated their reconciliation; at thegreat banquet of February, 1849, theyrepeated their act of union. The social

and the democratic party, the party of theworkers and that of the petty bourgeois,united to form the Social-Democraticparty, that is, the Red party.

Paralyzed for a moment by the agony thatfollowed the June days, the Frenchrepublic had lived through a continuousseries of feverish excitements since theraising of the state of siege, sinceOctober 14. First the struggle for thepresidency, then the struggle between thePresident and the Constituent Assembly;the struggle for the clubs; the trial ofBourges which, in contrast with the pettyfigures of the President, the coalescedroyalists, the respectable republicans,the democratic Montagne, and the

socialist doctrines of the proletariat,caused the proletariats realrevolutionists to appear as primordialmonsters such as only a deluge leavesbehind on the surface of society, or suchas could only precede a social deluge;the election agitation; the execution ofthe Bréa murderers;[95] the continualproceedings against the press; theviolent interference of the governmentwith the banquets by police action; theinsolent royalist provocations; theexhibition of the portraits of Louis Blancand Caussidičre on the pillory; theunbroken struggle between theconstituted republic and the ConstituentAssembly, which each moment drove therevolution back to its starting point,

which each moment made the victors thevanquished and the vanquished thevictors and in an instant changed aroundthe positions of the parties and theclasses, their separations andconnections; the rapid march of theEuropean counterrevolution; the gloriousHungarian fight; the armed uprisings inGermany;[96] the Roman expedition; theignominious defeat of the French armybefore Rome in this vortex of themovement, in this torment of historicalunrest, in this dramatic ebb and flow ofrevolutionary passions, hopes, anddisappointments, the different classes ofFrench society had to count their epochsof development in weeks when they hadpreviously counted them in half-

centuries. A considerable part of thepeasants and of the provinces wasrevolutionized. Not only were theydisappointed in Napoleon, but the Redparty offered them, instead of the name,the content, instead of illusory freedomfrom taxation, repayment of the milliardpaid to the Legitimists, the adjustment ofmortgages, and the abolition of usury.

The army itself was infected with therevolutionary fever. In voting forBonaparte it had voted for victory, andhe gave it defeat. In him it had voted forthe Little Corporal [Napoleon] behindwhom the great revolutionary general isconcealed, and he once more gave it thegreat generals behind whom the pipe-

clay corporal shelters himself. Therewas no doubt that the Red party, that is,the coalesced democratic party, wasbound to celebrate, if not victory, still,great triumphs; that Paris, the army, anda great part of the provinces would votefor it. Ledru-Rollin, the leader of theMontagne, was elected by fivedepartments; no leader of the party ofOrder carried off such a victory, nocandidate belonging to the proletarianparty proper. This election reveals to usthe secret of the democratic-socialistparty. If, on the one hand, the Montagne,the parliamentary champion of thedemocratic petty bourgeoisie, wasforced to unite with the socialistdoctrinaires of the proletariat the

proletariat, forced by the terriblematerial defeat of June to raise itself upagain through intellectual victories andnot yet enabled through the developmentof the remaining classes to seize therevolutionary dictatorship, had to throwitself into the arms of the doctrinaires ofits emancipation, the founders ofsocialist sects the revolutionarypeasants, the army, and the provinces, onthe other hand, ranged themselves behindthe Montagne, which thus became lordand master in the revolutionary armycamp and through the understanding withthe socialists eliminated everyantagonism in the revolutionary party. Inthe latter half of the life of theConstituent Assembly it represented the

Assemblys republican fervor and causedto be buried in oblivion its sins duringthe Provisional Government, during theExecutive Commission, during the Junedays. In the same measure as the party ofthe National, in accordance with its half-and-half nature, had allowed itself to beput down by the royalist ministry, theparty of the Mountain, which had beenbrushed aside during the omnipotence ofthe National, rose and asserted itself asthe parliamentary representative of therevolution. In fact, the party of theNational had nothing to oppose to theother, royalist factions but ambitiouspersonalities and idealistic humbug. Theparty of the Mountain, on the contrary,represented a mass hovering between the

bourgeoisie and the proletariat, a masswhose material interests demandeddemocratic institutions. In comparisonwith the Cavaignacs and the Marrasts,Ledru-Rollin and the Montagne,therefore, represented the truerevolution, and from the consciousnessof this important situation they drew thegreater courage the more the expressionof revolutionary energy limited itself toparliamentary attacks, bringing in billsof impeachment, threats, raised voices,thundering speeches, and extremeswhich were pushed only as far asphrases. The peasants were in about thesame position as the petty bourgeoisie;they had more or less the same socialdemands to put forward. All the middle

strata of society, so far as they weredriven into the revolutionary movement,were therefore bound to find their heroin Ledru-Rollin. Ledru-Rollin was thepersonage of the democratic pettybourgeoisie. As against the party ofOrder, the half-conservative, half-revolutionary, and wholly utopianreformers of this order had first to bepushed to the forefront.

The party of the National, the Friends ofthe Constitution quand męme [as is], therépublicains purs et simples[republicans pure and simple], werecompletely defeated in the elections. Atiny minority of them was sent into theLegislative Chamber; their most noted

leaders vanished from the stage, evenMarrast, the editor in chief and theOrpheus of the respectable republic.

On May 28 the Legislative Assemblyconvened; on June 11 the collision ofMay 8 was renewed and, in the name ofthe Montagne, Ledru-Rollin brought in abill of impeachment against thePresident and the ministry for violationof the constitution, for the bombardmentof Rome. On June 12 the LegislativeAssembly rejected the bill ofimpeachment, just as the ConstituentAssembly had rejected it on May 11, butthe proletariat this time drove theMontagne onto the streets not to a streetbattle, however, but only to a street

procession. It is enough to say that theMontagne was at the head of thismovement to know that the movementwas defeated, and that June, 1849, was acaricature, as ridiculous as it was vile,of June, 1848. The great retreat of June13 was eclipsed only by the still greaterbattle report of Changarnier, the greatman that the party of Order improvised.Every social epoch needs its great men,and when it does not find them, it inventsthem, as Helvétius says.

On December 20 only one half of theconstituted bourgeois republic was inexistence: the President; on May 28 itwas completed by the other half, theLegislative Assembly. In June, 1848, the

constituent bourgeois republic, by anunspeakable battle against theproletariat, and in June, 1849, theconstituted bourgeois republic, by anunutterable comedy with the pettybourgeoisie, engraved their names in thebirth register of history. June, 1849, wasthe nemesis of June, 1848. In June, 1849,it was not the workers that werevanquished; it was the petty bourgeois,who stood between them and therevolution, that were felled. June, I849,was not a bloody tragedy between wagelabor and capital, but a prison-fillingand lamentable play of debtors andcreditors. The party of Order had won, itwas all-powerful; it had now to showwhat it was.

Notes

6. The Jacobins, who sat in theMontagne, or raised seats at the back, inthe French National Convention, whichmet in Paris in September, 1792.

Contents | Part III: Consequences of June13, 1849 | Marx/Engels Archive

The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to1850

Part III

Consequences of June 13, 1849

On December 20 the Janus head of theconstitutional republic had still shownonly one face, the executive face withthe indistinct, plain features of L.Bonaparte; on May 28, 1849, it showedits second face, the legislative, pittedwith the scars that the orgies of theRestoration and the July Monarchy hadleft behind. With the LegislativeNational Assembly the phenomenon ofthe constitutional republic wascompleted, that is, the republican formof government in which the rule of thebourgeois class is constituted, the

common rule, therefore, of the two greatroyalist factions that form the Frenchbourgeoisie, the coalesced Legitimistsand Orléanists, theparty of Order. Whilethe French republic thus became theproperty of the coalition of the royalistparties, the European coalition of thecounterrevolutionary powers embarkedsimultaneously upon a general crusadeagainst the last places of refuge of theMarch revolutions. Russia invadedHungary, Prussia marched against thearmy defending the Reich constitutionand Oudinot bombarded Rome. TheEuropean crisis was evidentlyapproaching a decisive turning point; theeyes of all Europe were turned on Paris,and the eyes of all Paris on the

Legislative Assembly.

On June 11 Ledru-Rollin mounted itstribune. He made no speech; heformulated an indictment of theministers, naked, unadorned, factual,concentrated, forceful.

The attack on Rome is an attack on theconstitution; the attack on the Romanrepublic is an attack on the Frenchrepublic. Article 5 of theconstitution[98] reads: The Frenchrepublic never employs its forcesagainst the liberty of any peoplewhatsoever and the President employsthe French army against Roman liberty.Article 54 Of the constitution forbids theexecutive power to declare any war

whatsoever without the consent of theNational Assembly. The ConstituentAssembly’s resolution of May 8expressly commands the ministers tomake the Rome expedition conform withthe utmost speed to its original mission;it therefore just as expressly prohibitswar on Rome and Oudinot bombardsRome. Thus Ledru-Rollin called theconstitution itself as a witness for theprosecution against Bonaparte and hisministers. At the royalist majority of theNational Assembly, he, the tribune of theconstitution, hurled the threateningdeclaration: The republicans will knowhow to command respect for theconstitution by every means, be it evenby force of arms! By force of arms!

came the hundredfold echo of theMontagne. The majority answered with aterrible tumult; the President of theNational Assembly called Ledru-Rollinto order Ledru-Rollin repeated thechallenge, and finally laid on thePresident’s table a motion for theimpeachment of Bonaparte and hisministers. By 361 votes to 203, theNational Assembly resolved to pass onfrom the bombardment of Rome to thenext item on the agenda.

Did Ledru-Rollin believe he could beatthe National Assembly by means of theconstitution, and the President by meansof the National Assembly?

To be sure, the constitution forbade any

attack on the liberty of foreign peoples,but what the French army attacked inRome was, according to the ministry, notliberty but the despotism of anarchy.Had the Montagne still notcomprehended, all experiences in theConstituent Assembly notwithstanding,that the interpretation of the constitutiondid not belong to those who had made it,but only to those who had accepted it?That its wording must be construed in itsviable meaning and that the bourgeoismeaning was its only viable meaningThat Bonaparte and the royalist majorityof the National Assembly were theauthentic interpreters of the constitution,as the priest is the authentic interpreterof the Bible, and the judge the authentic

interpreter of the laws Should theNational Assembly, freshly emergedfrom the general elections, feel itselfbound by the testamentary provisions ofthe dead Constituent Assembly, whosewill an Odilon Barrot had broken whileit was alive? When Ledru-Rollin citedthe Constituent Assembly’s resolution ofMay 8, had he forgotten that the sameConstituent Assembly on May 11 hadrejected his first motion for theimpeachment of Bonaparte and theministers; that it had acquitted thePresident and the ministers; that it hadthus sanctioned the attack on Rome asconstitutional; that he only lodged anappeal against a judgment alreadydelivered that he, lastly, appealed from

the republican Constituent Assembly tothe royalist Legislative Assembly? Theconstitution itself calls insurrection to itsaid by summoning, in a special article,every citizen to protect it. Ledru-Rollinbased himself on this article. But at thesame time, are not the public authoritiesorganized for the defense of theconstitution, and does not the violationof the constitution begin only from themoment when one of the constitutionalpublic authorities rebels against theother? And the President of the republic,the ministers of the republic, and theNational Assembly of the republic werein the most harmonious agreement.

What the Montagne attempted on June 11

was an insurrection within the limits ofpure reason, that is, a purelyparliamentary insurrection. The majorityof the Assembly, intimidated by theprospect of an armed rising of thepopular masses, was, in Bonaparte andthe ministers, to destroy its own powerand the significance of its own election.Had not the Constituent Assemblysimilarly attempted to annul the electionof Bonaparte, when it insisted soobstinately on the dismissal of theBarrot-Falloux Ministry?

Neither were there lacking from the timeof the Convention models forparliamentary insurrections which hadsuddenly transformed completely the

relation between the majority and theminority and should the young Montagnenot succeed where the old hadsucceeded? nor did relations at themoment seem unfavorable for such anundertaking. Popular unrest in Paris hadreached an alarmingly high point thearmy, according to its vote at theelection, did not seem favorably inclinedtoward the government; the legislativemajority itself was still too young tohave become consolidated, and inaddition it consisted of old gentlemen. Ifthe Montagne were successful in aparliamentary insurrection, the helm ofstate would fall directly into its hands.The democratic petty bourgeoisie, for itspart, wished, as always, for nothing

more fervently than to see the battlefought out in the clouds over its headbetween the departed spirits ofparliament. Finally, both of them, thedemocratic petty bourgeoisie and itsrepresentatives, the Montagne, would,through a parliamentary insurrection,achieve their great purpose, that ofbreaking the power of the bourgeoisiewithout unleashing the proletariat orletting it appear otherwise than inperspective; the proletariat would havebeen used without becoming dangerous.

After the vote of the National Assemblyon June 11, a conference took placebetween some members of the Montagneand delegates of the secret workers’

societies. The latter urged that the attackbe started the same evening. TheMontagne decisively rejected this plan.On no account did it want to let theleadership slip out of its hands; its allieswere as suspect to it as its antagonists,and rightly so. The memory of June,1848, surged through the ranks of theParis proletariat more vigorously thanever. Nevertheless it was chained to thealliance with the Montagne. The latterrepresented the largest part of thedepartments it had increased itsinfluence in the army; it had at itsdisposal the democratic section of theNational Guard; it had the moral powerof the shopkeepers behind it. To beginthe revolution at this moment against the

will of the Montagne would have meantfor the proletariat, decimated moreoverby cholera and driven out of Paris inconsiderable numbers by unemployment,to repeat uselessly the June days of1848, without the situation which hadforced this desperate struggle. Theproletarian delegates did the onlyrational thing. They obligated theMontagne to compromise itself, that is,to come out beyond the confines of theparliamentary struggle, in the event thatits bill of impeachment was rejected.During the whole of June 13 theproletariat maintained this sameskeptically watchful attitude, andawaited a seriously engaged irrevocablemelee between the democratic National

Guard and the army, in order then toplunge into the fight and push therevolution forward beyond the pettybourgeois aim set for it. In the event ofvictory a proletarian commune wasalready formed which would take itsplace beside the official government.The Parisian workers had learned in thebloody school of June, 1848.

On June 12 Minister Lacrosse himselfbrought forward in the LegislativeAssembly the motion to proceed at onceto the discussion of the bill ofimpeachment. During the night thegovernment had made every provisionfor defense and attack; the majority ofthe National Assembly was determined

to drive the rebellious minority out intothe streets; the minority itself could nolonger retreat; the die was cast; the billof impeachment was rejected by 377votes to 8. The Mountain, which hadabstained from voting, rushed resentfullyinto the propaganda halls of the pacificdemocracy, the newspaper offices of theDémocratie Pacifique.[99]

Its withdrawal from the parliamentbuilding broke its strength as withdrawalfrom the earth broke the strength ofAntaeus, her giant son. Samsons in theprecincts of the Legislative Assembly,the Montagnards were only Philistines inthe precincts of the pacific democracy.A long, noisy, rambling debate ensued.

The Montagne was determined tocompel respect for the constitution byevery means, only not by force of arms.In this decision it was supported by amanifesto[100] and by a deputation ofFriends of the Constitution. Friends ofthe Constitution was what the wreckageof the coterie of the National, thebourgeois-republican party, called itself.While six of its remaining parliamentaryrepresentatives had voted against, theothers in a body voting for, the rejectionof the bill of impeachment, whileCavaignac placed his saber at thedisposal of the party of Order, thelarger, extra-parliamentary part of thecoterie greedily seized the opportunity toemerge from its position of a political

pariah and to press into the ranks of thedemocratic party. Did they not appear asthe natural shield bearers of this party,which hid itself behind their shield,behind their principles, behind theconstitution?

Till break of day the Mountain was inlabor. It gave birth to a proclamation tothe people, which on the morning of Juneoccupied a more or less shamefacedplace in two socialist journals.[101] Itdeclared the President, the ministers,and the majority of the LegislativeAssembly outside the constitution andsummoned the National Guard, the army,and finally also the people to arise. Longlive the Constitution! was the slogan it

put forward, a slogan that signifiednothing other than Down with therevolution!

In conformity with the constitutionalproclamation of the Mountain, there wasa so-called peaceful demonstration ofthe petty bourgeois on June 13, that is, astreet procession from the Chateaud’Eau through the Boulevards, 30,000strong, mainly National Guardsmen,unarmed, with an admixture of membersof the secret workers’ sections, movingalong with the cry: Long live theConstitution! which was utteredmechanically, icily, and with a badconscience by the members of theprocession itself, and thrown back

ironically by the echo of the people thatsurged along the sidewalks, instead ofswelling up like thunder. From the many-voiced song the chest notes weremissing. And when the processionswung by the meeting hall of the Friendsof the Constitution and a hired herald ofthe constitution appeared on thehousetop, violently cleaving the air withhis claquer hat and from tremendouslungs letting the catch cry Long live theConstitution! fall like hail on the headsof the pilgrims, they themselves seemedovercome for a moment by the comedyof the situation. It is known how theprocession, having arrived at thetermination of the Rue de la Paix, wasreceived in the Boulevards by the

dragoons and chasseurs of Changarnierin an altogether unparliamentary way,how in a trice it scattered in alldirections, and how it threw behind it afew shouts of To arms only in order thatthe parliamentary call to arms of June 11might be fulfilled.

The majority of the Montagne assembledin the Rue du Hasard scattered when thisviolent dispersion of the peacefulprocession, the muffled rumors ofmurder of unarmed citizens on theBoulevards, and the growing tumult inthe streets seemed to herald theapproach of a rising.Ledru-Rollin at thehead of a small band of deputies savedthe honor of the Mountain. Under the

protection of the Paris Artillery, whichhad assembled in the Palais National,they betook themselves to theConservatoire des Arts et Métiers[Museum of arts and trades, aneducational institution in Paris], wherethe fifth and sixth legions of the NationalGuard were to arrive. But theMontagnards waited in vain for the fifthand sixth legions; these discreet NationalGuards left their representatives in thelurch; the Paris Artillery itself preventedthe people from throwing up barricades;chaotic disorder made any decisionimpossible; the troops of the lineadvanced with fixed bayonets; some ofthe representatives were taken prisoner,while others escaped. Thus ended June

13.

If June 23, 1848, was the insurrection ofthe revolutionary proletariat, June 13,I849, was the insurrection of thedemocratic petty bourgeois, each ofthese two insurrections being theclassically pure expression of the classwhich had been its vehicle.

Only in Lyons did it come to anobstinate, bloody conflict.[102] Here,where the industrial bourgeoisie and theindustrial proletariat stand directlyopposed to one another, where theworkers’ movement is not, as in Paris,included in and determined by thegeneral movement, June 13, in itsrepercussion, lost its original character.

Wherever else it broke out in theprovinces it did not kindle fire acoldlightning flash.

June 13 closes the first period in the lifeof the constitutional republic, which hadattained its normal existence on May 28,1849, with the meeting of the LegislativeAssembly. The whole period of thisprologue is filled with vociferousstruggle between the party of Order andthe Montagne, between the bigbourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie,which strove in vain against theconsolidation of the bourgeois republic,for which it had itself continuouslyconspired in the ProvisionalGovernment and in the Executive

Commission, and for which, during theJune days, it had fought fanaticallyagainst the proletariat. The thirteenth ofJune breaks its resistance and makesthelegislative dictatorship of the unitedroyalists a fait accompli. From thismoment the National Assembly is only aCommittee of Public Safety of the partyof Order.

Paris had put the President, theministers, and the majority of theNational Assembly in a state ofimpeachment; they put Paris in a state ofsiege. The Mountain had declared themajority of the Legislative Assemblyoutside the constitution; for violation ofthe constitution the majority handed over

the Mountain to the haute cour andproscribed everything in it that still hadvital force.[103] It was decimated to arump without head or heart. The minorityhad gone so far as to attemptaparliamentary insurrection the majorityelevated its parliamentary despotism tolaw. It decreed new standing orders,which annihilate the freedom of thetribune and authorize the president of theNational Assembly to punishrepresentatives for violation of thestanding orders with censure, with fines,with stoppage of their salaries, withsuspension of membership, withincarceration. Over the rump of theMontagne it hung the rod instead of thesword. The remainder of the deputies of

the Montagne owed it to their honor tomake a mass exit. By such an act thedissolution of the party of Order wouldhave been hastened. It would have had tobreak up into its original componentparts the moment not even the semblanceof an opposition would hold it togetherany longer.

Simultaneously with their parliamentarypower, the democratic petty bourgeoiswere robbed of their armed powerthrough the dissolution of the ParisArtillery and the eighth, ninth, andtwelfth legions of the National Guard.On the other hand, the legion of highfinance, which on June 13 had raided theprint shops of Boule and Roux,

demolished the presses, played havocwith the offices of the republicanjournals, and arbitrarily arrested editors,compositors, printers, shipping clerks,and errand boys, received encouragingapproval from the tribune of the NationalAssembly. All over France thedisbanding of National Guardssuspected of republicanism wasrepeated.

A new press law, a new law ofassociation, a new law on the state ofsiege, the prisons of Paris overflowing,the political refugees driven out, all thejournals that go beyond the limits of theNational suspended, Lyons and the fivedepartments surrounding it abandoned to

the brutal persecution of militarydespotism, the courts ubiquitous, and thearmy of officials, so often purged,purged once more these were theinevitable, the constantly recurringcommonplaces of victorious reaction,worth mentioning after the massacresand the deportations of June onlybecause this time they were directed notonly against Paris but also against thedepartments, not only against theproletariat but, above all, against themiddle classes.

The repressive laws by which thedeclaration of a state of siege was left tothe discretion of the government, thepress still more firmly muzzled, and the

right of association annihilated,absorbed the whole of the legislativeactivity of the National Assembly duringthe months of June, July, and August.

However, this epoch is characterized notby the exploitation of victory in fact, butin principle; not by the resolutions of theNational Assembly, but by the groundsadvanced for these resolutions; not bythe thing but by the phrase; not by thephrase but by the accent and the gesturewhich enliven the phrase. The brazen,unreserved expression of royalistsentiments, the contemptuouslyaristocratic insults to the republic, thecoquettishly frivolous babbling ofrestoration aims in a word, the boastful

violation of republican decorum give itspeculiar tone and color to this period.Long live the Constitution! was the battlecry of the vanquished of June 13. Thevictors were therefore absolved from thehypocrisy of constitutional, that is,republican, speech. Thecounterrevolution subjugated Hungary,Italy, and Germany, and they believedthat the restoration was already at thegates of France. Among the masters ofceremonies of the factions of Order thereensued a real competition to documenttheir royalism in the Moniteur, and toconfess, repent, and crave pardon beforeGod and man for liberal sins perchancecommitted by them under the monarchy.No day passed without the February

Revolution being declared a nationalcalamity from the tribune of the NationalAssembly, without some Legitimistprovincial cabbage-junker solemnlystating that he had never recognized therepublic, without one of the cowardlydeserters of and traitors to the JulyMonarchy relating the belated deeds ofheroism in the performance of whichonly the philanthropy of Louis Philippeor other misunderstandings had hinderedhim. What was admirable in theFebruary days was not the magnanimityof the victorious people, but the self-sacrifice and moderation of the royalists,who had allowed it to be victorious.One Representative of the Peopleproposed to divert part of the money

destined for the relief of those woundedin February to the Municipal Guards,[104] who alone in those days haddeserved well of the fatherland. Anotherwanted to have an equestrian statuedecreed to the Duke of Orléans in thePlace du Carrousel. Thiers called theconstitution a dirty piece of paper. Thereappeared in succession on the tribuneOrléanists, to repent of their conspiracyagainst the legitimate monarchy byLegitimists, who reproached themselveswith having hastened the overthrow ofmonarchy in general by resisting theillegitimate monarchy; Thiers, whorepented of having intrigued againstMolé; Molé, who repented of havingintrigued against Guizot; Barrot, who

repented of having intrigued against allthree. The cry Long live the Social-Democratic Republic! was declaredunconstitutional; the cry Long live theRepublic! was prosecuted as social-democratic. On the anniversary of theBattle of Waterloo,[105] arepresentative declared: I fear aninvasion of the Prussians less than theentry of the revolutionary refugees intoFrance. To the complaints about theterrorism organized in Lyons and theneighboring departments, Baraguayd’Hilliers answered: I prefer the whiteterror to the red terror. And theAssembly applauded frantically everytime an epigram against the republic,against the revolution, against the

constitution, for the monarchy, or for theHoly Alliance fell from the lips of itsorators. Every infringement of theminutest republican formality forexample, that of addressing therepresentatives as citoyens filled theknights of order with enthusiasm.

The by-elections in Paris on July 8, heldunder the influence of the state of siegeand of the abstention of a great part ofthe proletariat from the ballot box, thetaking of Rome by the French army, theentry into Rome of the redeminences[106] and, in their train, ofinquisition and monkish terrorism, addedfresh victories to the victory of June andincreased the intoxication of the party of

Order.

Finally, in the middle of August, halfwith the intention of attending theDepartment Councils just assembled,half through exhaustion from thetendentious orgy of many months, theroyalists decreed a two month recess ofthe National Assembly. With transparentirony they left behind a commission oftwenty-five representatives, the cream ofthe Legitimists and the Orléanists, aMolé and a Changarnier, as proxies forthe National Assembly and as guardiansof the republic. The irony was moreprofound than they suspected. They,condemned by history to help tooverthrow the monarchy they loved,

were destined by it to conserve therepublic they hated.

The second period in the life of theconstitutional republic, its royalistperiod of sowing wild oats, closes withthe recess of the Legislative Assembly.

The state of siege in Paris had againbeen raised, the activities of the presshad again begun. During the suspensionof the Social-Democratic papers, duringthe period of repressive legislation androyalist bluster, the Sičcle, the oldliterary representative of the monarchist-constitutional petty bourgeois,republicanized itself; the Presse, the oldliterary exponent of the bourgeoisreformers, democratized itself; while the

National, the old classic organ of therepublican bourgeois, socialized itself.

The secret societies grew in extent andintensity in the same degree that thepublic clubs became impossible. Theworkers’ industrial cooperatives,tolerated as purely commercialsocieties, while of no accounteconomically, became politically somany means of cementing the proletariat.June 13 had struck off the official headsof the various semirevolutionary parties;the masses that remained won a head oftheir own. The knights of order hadpracticed intimidation by prophecies ofthe terror of the red republic; the baseexcesses, the hyperborean atrocities of

the victorious counterrevolution inHungary, in Baden, and in Rome washedthe red republic white. And themalcontent intermediate classes ofFrench society began to prefer thepromises of the red republic with itsproblematic terrors to the terrors of thered monarchy with its actualhopelessness. No socialist in Francespread more revolutionary propagandathan Haynau. A chaque capacité selonses oeuvres! [To each man of talentaccording to his work!]

In the meantime Louis Bonaparteexploited the recess of the NationalAssembly to make princely tours of theprovinces, the most hot-blooded

Legitimists made pilgrimages to Ems, tothe grandchild of the saintly Louis, andthe mass of the popular representativeson the side of order intrigued in theDepartment Councils, which had justmet. It was necessary to make thempronounce what the majority of theNational Assembly did not yet darepronounce, an urgent motion forimmediate revision of the constitution.According to the constitution, it couldnot be revised before 1852, and thenonly by a National Assembly calledtogether expressly for this purpose. If,however, the majority of the DepartmentCouncils expressed themselves to thiseffect, was not the National Assemblybound to sacrifice the virginity of the

constitution to the voice of France? TheNational Assembly entertained the samehopes in regard to these provincialassemblies as the nuns in Voltaire’sHenriade entertained in regard to thepandours. But, some exceptions apart,the Potiphars of the National Assemblyhad to deal with just so many Josephs ofthe provinces. The vast majority did notwant to understand the importunateinsinuation. The revision of theconstitution was frustrated by the veryinstruments which were to have called itinto being, by the votes of theDepartment Councils. The voice ofFrance, and indeed of bourgeois France,had spoken and had spoken againstrevision.

At the beginning of October theLegislative National Assembly met oncemore tantum mutatus ab illo.[7] Itsphysiognomy was completely changed.The unexpected rejection of revision onthe part of the Department Councils hadput it back within the limits of theconstitution and indicated the limits ofits term of life. The Orléanists hadbecome mistrustful because of thepilgrimages of the Legitimists to Ems;the Legitimists had grown suspiciousbecause of the Orléanists’ negotiationswith London; the journals of the twofactions had fanned the fire and weighedthe reciprocal claims of their pretenders.Orléanists and Legitimists grumbled inunison at the machinations of the

Bonapartists, which showed themselvesin the princely tours, in the more or lesstransparent emancipatory attempts of thePresident, in the presumptuous languageof the Bonapartist newspapers; LouisBonaparte grumbled at a NationalAssembly which found only theLegitimist-Orléanist conspiracylegitimate, at a ministry which betrayedhim continually to this NationalAssembly. Finally the ministry was itselfdivided on the Roman policy and on theincome tax proposed by Minister Passy,decried as socialistic by theconservatives.

One of the first bills of the BarrotMinistry in the reassembled Legislative

Assembly was a demand for a credit of300,000 francs for the payment of awidow’s pension to the Duchess ofOrléans! The National Assembly grantedit and added to the list of debts of theFrench nation a sum of seven millionfrancs. Thus while Louis Philippecontinued to play successfully the role ofthe pauvre honteux, the shamefacedbeggar, the ministry dared not move anincrease of salary for Bonaparte nor didthe Assembly appear inclined to grant it.And Louis Bonaparte, as ever,vacillated in the dilemma: Aut Caesaraut Clichy! [8]

The minister’s second demand for acredit, one of nine million francs for the

costs of the Rome expedition, increasedthe tension between Bonaparte on theone hand and the ministers and theNational Assembly on the other. LouisBonaparte had inserted a letter to hismilitary aide, Edgar Ney, in theMoniteur, in which he bound the papalgovernment to constitutional guarantees.The Pope, on his part, had published anaddress, motu proprio[110], in which herejected any limitation of his restoredrule. Bonaparte’s letter, with studiedindiscretion, raised the curtain on hiscabinet in order to expose himself to theeyes of the gallery as a benevolentgenius who was, however,misunderstood and shackled in his ownhouse. It was not the first time that he

had coquetted with the furtive flights of afree soul.[9] Thiers, the reporter of thecommission, completely ignoredBonaparte’s flight and contented himselfwith translating the papal allocution intoFrench. It was not the ministry but VictorHugo who sought to save the Presidentthrough an order of the day in which theNational Assembly was to express itsagreement with Napoleon’s letter.Allonsdonc! Allons donc! [Let’s go then!] Withthis disrespectful, frivolous interjectionthe majority buried Hugo’s motion. Thepolicy of the President? The letter of thePresident? The President himself?Allons donc! Allons donc! Who thedevil takes Monsieur Bonaparteseriously? Do you believe, Monsieur

Victor Hugo, that we believe you thatyou believe in the president?Allonsdonc! Allons donc!

Finally, the breach between Bonaparteand the National Assembly was hastenedby the discussion on the recall of theOrléans and the Bourbons. In default ofthe ministry, the President’s cousin[Joseph Bonaparte], son of the ex-kingof Westphalia, had put forward thismotion, which had no other purpose thanto push the Legitimist and the Orléanistpretenders down to the same level, orrather a lower level than the Bonapartistpretender, who at least stood in fact atthe pinnacle of the state.

Napoleon Bonaparte was disrespectful

enough to make the recall of the expelledroyal families and the amnesty of theJune insurgents parts of one and the samemotion. The indignation of the majoritycompelled him to apologize immediatelyfor this sacrilegious concatenation of theholy and the impious, of the royal racesand the proletarian brood, of the fixedstars of society and of its swamp lights,and to assign each of the two motions toits proper place. The majorityenergetically rejected the recall of theroyal family, and Berryer, theDemosthenes of the Legitimists, left nodoubt about the meaning of the vote. Thecivic degradation of the pretenders, thatis what is intended! It is desired to robthem of their halo, of the last majesty that

is left to them, the majesty of exile!What, cried Berryer, would thepretenders think of the President, who,forgetting his august origin, came here tolive as a simple private individual? Itcould not have been more clearlyintimated to Louis Bonaparte that he hadnot gained the day by his presence, thatwhereas the royalists in coalition neededhim here in France as a neutral man inthe presidential chair, the seriouspretenders to the throne had to be keptout of profane sight by the fog of exile.

On November 1, Louis Bonaparteanswered the Legislative Assembly witha message which in quite brusque wordsannounced the dismissal of the Barrot

Ministry and the formation of a newministry. The Barrot-Falloux Ministrywas the ministry of the royalist coalition,the Hautpoul Ministry was the ministryof Bonaparte, the organ of the Presidentas against the Legislative Assembly, theministry of the clerks.

Bonaparte was no longer the merelyneutral man of December 10, 1848. Hispossession of the executive power hadgrouped a number of interests aroundhim, the struggle with anarchy forced theparty of Order itself to increase hisinfluence, and if he was no longerpopular, the party of Order wasunpopular. Could he not hope to compelthe Orléanists and the Legitimists,

through their rivalry as well as throughthe necessity of some sort of monarchistrestoration, to recognize the neutralpretender?

From November 1, 1849, dates the thirdperiod in the life of the constitutionalrepublic, a period which closes withMarch 10, I850. The regular game, somuch admired by Guizot, of theconstitutional institutions, the wranglingbetween executive and legislativepower, now begins. More, as against thehankering for restoration on the part ofthe united Orléanists and Legitimists,Bonaparte defends his title to his actualpower, the republic; as against thehankering for restoration on the part of

Bonaparte, the party of Order defends itstitle to its common rule, the republic; asagainst the Orléanists, the Legitimists,and as against the Legitimists, theOrléanists, defend the status quo, therepublic. All these factions of the partyof Order, each of which has its own kingand its own restoration in petto[secretly], mutually enforce, as againsttheir rivals’ hankering for usurpation andrevolt, the common rule of thebourgeoisie, the form in which thespecial claims remain neutralized andreserved the republic.

Just as Kant makes the republic, so theseroyalists make the monarchy the onlyrational form of state, a postulate of

practical reason whose realization isnever attained, but whose attainmentmust always be striven for and mentallyadhered to as the goal.

Thus the constitutional republic had goneforth from the hands of the bourgeoisrepublicans as a hollow ideologicalformula to become a form full of contentand life in the hands of the royalists incoalition. And Thiers spoke more trulythan he suspects when he said: We, theroyalists, are the true pillars of theconstitutional republic.

The overthrow of the ministry of thecoalition and the appearance of theministry of the clerks has a secondsignificance. Its Finance Minister was

Fould. Fould as Finance Ministersignifies the official surrender ofFrance’s national wealth to the Bourse,the management of the state’s propertyby the Bourse and in the interests of theBourse. With the nomination of Fould,the finance aristocracy announced itsrestoration in the Moniteur. Thisrestoration necessarily supplemented theother restorations, which form just somany links in the chain of theconstitutional republic.

Louis Philippe had never dared to makea genuine loup-cervier [stock-exchangewolf] finance minister. Just as hismonarchy was the ideal name for therule of the big bourgeoisie, so in his

ministries the privileged interests had tobear ideologically disinterested names.The bourgeois republic every wherepushed into the forefront what thedifferent monarchies, Legitimist as wellas Orléanist, had kept concealed in thebackground. It made earthly what theyhad made heavenly. In place of thenames of the saints it put the bourgeoisproper names of the dominant classinterests.

Our whole exposition has shown howthe republic, from the first day of itsexistence, did not overthrow butconsolidated the finance aristocracy. Butthe concessions made to it were a fate towhich submission was made without the

desire to bring it about. With Fould, theinitiative in the government returned tothe finance aristocracy.

The question will be asked how thecoalesced bourgeoisie could bear andsuffer the rule of finance, which underLouis Philippe depended on theexclusion or subordination of theremaining bourgeois factions.

The answer is simple.

First of all, the finance aristocracy itselfforms a weighty, authoritative part of theroyalist coalition, whose commongovernmental power is denominatedrepublic. Are not the spokesmen andleading lights among the Orléanists the

old confederates and accomplices of thefinance aristocracy? Is it not itself thegolden phalanx of Orleanism? As far asthe Legitimists are concerned, underLouis Philippe they had alreadyparticipated in practice in all the orgiesof the Bourse, mine, and railwayspeculations. In general, the combinationof large landed property with highfinance is a normal fact. Proof: England;proof: even Austria.

In a country like France, where thevolume of national production stands ata disproportionately lower level than theamount of the national debt, wheregovernment bonds form the mostimportant subject of speculation and the

Bourse the chief market for theinvestment of capital that wants to turnitself to account in an unproductive way in such a country a countless number ofpeople from all bourgeois or semi-bourgeois classes must have an interestin the state debt, in the Boursegamblings, in finance. Do not all theseinterested subalterns find their naturalmainstays and commanders in the factionwhich represents this interest in itsvastest outlines, which represents it as awhole?

What conditions the accrual of stateproperty to high finance? The constantlygrowing indebtedness of the state. Andthe indebtedness of the state? The

constant excess of its expenditure overits income, a disproportion which issimultaneously the cause and effect ofthe system of state loans.

In order to escape from thisindebtedness, the state must eitherrestrict its expenditure, that is, simplifyand curtail the government organism,govern as little as possible, employ asfew personnel as possible, enter as littleas possible into relations with bourgeoissociety. This path was impossible forthe party of Order, whose means ofrepression, official interference in thename of the state, and ubiquity throughorgans of state were bound to increase inthe same measure as the number of

quarters increased from which its ruleand the conditions for the existence of itsclass were threatened. The gendarmeriecannot be reduced in the same measureas attacks on persons and propertyincrease.

Or the state must seek to evade the debtsand produce an immediate but transitorybalance in its budget by puttingextraordinary taxes on the shoulders ofthe wealthiest classes. But was the partyof Order to sacrifice its own wealth onthe altar of the fatherland to stop thenational wealth from being exploited bythe Bourse? Pas si bęte! [Not so stupid!]

Therefore, without a completerevolution in the French state, no

revolution in the French state budget.Along with this state budget necessarilygoes the lordship of the trade in statedebts, of the state creditors, the bankers,the money dealers, and the wolves of theBourse. Only one faction of the party ofOrder was directly concerned in theoverthrow of the finance aristocracy themanufacturers. We are not speaking ofthe middle, of the smaller peopleengaged in industry; we are speaking ofthe reigning princes of the manufacturinginterests, who had formed the broadbasis of the dynastic opposition underLouis Philippe. Their interest isindubitably reduction of the costs ofproduction and hence reduction of thetaxes, which enter into production, and

hence reduction of the state debts, theinterest on which enters into the taxes,hence the overthrow of the financearistocracy.

In England and the largest Frenchmanufacturers are petty bourgeoiscompared with their English rivalsactually find the manufacturers, aCobden, a Bright, at the head of thecrusade against the bank and the stock-exchange aristocracy. Why not inFrance? In England industrypredominates in France, agriculture. InEngland industry requires free trade; inFrance, protective tariffs, nationalmonopoly alongside the othermonopolies. French industry does not

dominate French production; the Frenchindustrialists, therefore, do not dominatethe French bourgeoisie. In order tosecure the advancement of their interestsas against the remaining factions of thebourgeoisie, they cannot, like theEnglish, take the lead of the movementand simultaneously push their classinterests to the fore; they must follow inthe train of the revolution, and serveinterests which are opposed to thecollective interests of their class. InFebruary they had misunderstood theirposition; February sharpened their wits.And who is more directly threatened bythe workers than the employer, theindustrial capitalists? The manufacturer,therefore, of necessity became in France

the most fanatical member of the party ofOrder. The reduction of his profit byfinance, what is that compared with theabolition of profit by the proletariat?

In France, the petty bourgeois does whatnormally the industrial bourgeois wouldhave to do; the worker does whatnormally would be the task of the pettybourgeois; and the task of the worker,who accomplishes that? No one. InFrance it is not accomplished; in Franceit is proclaimed. It is not accomplishedanywhere within the nationalboundaries.[111] The class war withinFrench society turns into a world war, inwhich the nations confront one another.Accomplishment begins only at the

moment when, through the world war,the proletariat is pushed to the fore ofthe people that dominates the worldmarket, to the forefront in England. Therevolution, which finds here not its end,but its organizational beginning, is noshort-lived revolution. The presentgeneration is like the Jews whom Mosesled through the wilderness. It not onlyhas a new world to conquer, it must gounder in order to make room for the menwho are able to cope with a new world.

Let us return to Fould.

On November 14, 1849, Fould mountedthe tribune of the National Assembly andexpounded his system of finance: anapology for the old system of taxes!

Retention of the wine tax! Abandonmentof Passy’s income tax!

Passy, too, was no revolutionist; he wasan old minister of Louis Philippe’s. Hebelonged to the Puritans of the Dufaurebrand and to the most intimate confidantsof Teste[10], the scapegoat of the JulyMonarchy. Passy, too, had praised theold tax system and recommended theretention of the wine tax, but he had atthe same time torn the veil from the statedeficit. He had declared the necessityfor a new tax, the income tax, if thebankruptcy of the state was to beavoided. Fould, who had recommendedstate bankruptcy to Ledru-Rollin,recommended the state deficit to the

Legislative Assembly. He promisedeconomies, the secret of which laterrevealed itself in that, for example,expenditures diminished by sixtymillions while the floating debtincreased by two hundred millions conjurers’ tricks in the grouping offigures, in the drawing up of accounts,which all finally amounted to new loans.

Alongside the other jealous bourgeoisfactions, the finance aristocracynaturally did not act in so shamelesslycorrupt a manner under Fould as underLouis Philippe. But once it existed, thesystem remained the same: constantincrease in the debts, masking of thedeficit. And in time the old Bourse

swindling came out more openly. Proof:the law concerning the AvignonRailway; the mysterious fluctuations ingovernment securities, for a brief timethe topic of the day throughout Paris;finally, the ill-starred speculations ofFould and Bonaparte on the elections ofMarch 10.

With the official restoration of thefinance aristocracy, the French peoplesoon had to stand again before aFebruary 24.

The Constituent Assembly, in an attackof misanthropy against its heir, hadabolished the wine tax for the year ofour Lord 1850. New debts could not bepaid with the abolition of old taxes.

Creton, a cretin of the party of Order,had moved the retention of the wine taxeven before the Legislative Assemblyrecessed. Fould took up this motion inthe name of the Bonapartist ministry andon December 20, 1849, the anniversaryof the day Bonaparte was proclaimedPresident, the National Assemblydecreed the restoration of the wine tax.

The sponsor of this restoration was not afinancier; it was the Jesuit chiefMontalembert. His argument wasstrikingly simple: Taxation is thematernal breast on which the governmentis suckled. The government is theinstruments of repression; it is the organsof authority; it is the army; it is the

police; it is the officials, the judges, theministers; it is the priests. An attack ontaxation is an attack by the anarchists onthe sentinels of order, who safeguard thematerial and spiritual production ofbourgeois society from the inroads of theproletarian vandals. Taxation is the fifthgod, side by side with property, thefamily, order, and religion. And the winetax is incontestably taxation and,moreover, not ordinary, but traditional,monarchically disposed, respectabletaxation. Vive l’impôt des boissons![Long live the tax on drinks!] Threecheers and one cheer more!

When the French peasant paints the devilhe paints him in the guise of a tax

collector. From the moment whenMontalembert elevated taxation to a god,the peasant became godless, atheist, andthrew himself into the arms of the devil,of socialism. The religion of order hadforfeited him; the Jesuits had forfeitedhim; Bonaparte had forfeited him.December 20, 1849, had irrevocablycompromised December 20, 1848. Thenephew of his uncle was not the first ofhis family whom the wine tax defeated,this tax which, in Montalembert’sphrase, heralds the revolutionary storm.The real, the great Napoleon declared onSt. Helena that the reintroduction of thewine tax had contributed more to hisdownfall than all else, since it hadalienated from him the peasants of

Southern France. As far back as underLouis XIV the favorite object of thehatred of the people (see the writings ofBoisguillebert and Vauban), abolishedby the first revolution, it wasreintroduced by Napoleon in a modifiedform in 1808. When the Restorationentered France, there trotted before it notonly the Cossacks,, but also the promisesto abolish the wine tax. Thegentilhommerie [gentry] naturally did notneed to keep its word to the genstaillables ŕ merci et miséricorde [peopletaxed pitilessly]. The year I830promised the abolition of the wine tax. Itwas not its way to do what it said or saywhat it did. The year 1848 promised theabolition of the wine tax, just as it

promised everything. Finally, theConstituent Assembly, which promisednothing, made, as already mentioned, atestamentary provision whereby thewine tax was to disappear on January 1,1850. And just ten days before January1, 1850, the Legislative Assemblyintroduced it once more, so that theFrench people perpetually pursued it,and when they had thrown it out the doorsaw it come in again through thewindow.

The popular hatred of the wine tax isexplained by the fact that it unites initself all the odiousness of the Frenchsystem of taxation. The mode of itscollection is odious, the mode of its

distribution aristocratic, for the rates oftaxation are the same for the commonestas for the costliest wines; it increases,therefore, in geometrical progression asthe wealth of the consumers decreases,an inverted progressive tax. Itaccordingly directly provokes thepoisoning of the laboring classes byputting a premium on adulterated andimitation wines. It lessens consumption,since it sets up octrois [toll houses]before the gates of all towns of over fourthousand inhabitants and transforms eachsuch town into a foreign country with aprotective tariff against French wine.The big wine merchants, but still morethe small ones, the marchands de vins,whose livelihood directly depends on

the consumption of wine, are so manyavowed enemies of the wine tax. Andfinally, by lessening consumption thewine tax curtails the producers’ market.While it renders the urban workersincapable of paying for wine, it rendersthe wine growers incapable of selling it.And France has a wine-growingpopulation of about twelve million. Onecan therefore understand the hatred ofthe people in general; one can inparticular understand the fanaticism ofthe peasants against the wine tax. And inaddition they saw in its restoration noisolated, more or less accidental event.The peasants have a kind of historicaltradition of their own, which is handeddown from father to son, and in this

historical school it is muttered thatwhenever any government wants to dupethe peasants, it promises the abolition ofthe wine tax, and as soon as it has dupedthe peasants, it retains or reintroducesthe wine tax. In the wine tax the peasanttests the bouquet of the government, itstendency. The restoration of the wine taxon December 20 meant: Louis Bonaparteis like the rest. But he was not like therest; he was a peasant discovery, and inthe petitions carrying millions ofsignatures against the wine tax they tookback the votes that they had given a yearbefore to the nephew of his uncle.

The country folk over two-thirds of thetotal French population consist for the

most part of so-called free landowners.The first generation, gratuitously freedby the Revolution of 1789 from itsfeudal burdens, had paid no price for thesoil. But the following generations paid,under the form of the price of land, whattheir semi-serf forefathers had paid inthe form of rent, tithes, corvee, etc. Themore, on the one hand, the populationgrew and the more, on the other hand, thepartition of the soil increased, the higherbecame the price of the parcels, for thedemand for them increased with theirsmallness. But in proportion as the pricethe peasant paid for his parcel rose,whether he bought it directly or whetherhe had it accounted as capital by his co-heirs, necessarily the indebtedness of the

peasant, that is, the mortgage, also rose.The claim to a debt encumbering theland is termed a mortgage, a pawn ticketin respect of the land. Just as privilegesaccumulated on the medieval estate,mortgages accumulate on the modernsmall allotment. On the other hand, underthe system of parcelisation the soil ispurely an instrument of production for itsproprietor. Now the fruitfulness of landdiminishes in the same measure as landis divided. The application of machineryto the land, the division of labor, majorsoil improvement measures, such ascutting drainage and irrigation canalsand the like, become more and moreimpossible, while the unproductive costsof cultivation increase in the same

proportion as the division of theinstrument of production itself. All this,regardless of whether the possessor ofthe small allotment possesses capital ornot. But the more the division increases,the more does the parcel of land with itsutterly wretched inventory form theentire capital of the small allotmentpeasant, the more does investment ofcapital in the land diminish, the moredoes the peasant lack land, money, andeducation for making use of the progressin agronomy, and the more does thecultivation of the soil retrogress. Finally,the net proceeds diminish in the sameproportion as the gross consumptionincreases, as the whole family of thepeasant is kept back from other

occupations through its holding and yetis not enabled to live by it.

In the measure, therefore, that thepopulation and, with it, the division ofthe land increases, does the instrument ofproduction, the soil, become moreexpensive and its fertility decrease, doesagriculture decline and the peasantbecome loaded with debt. And what wasthe effect becomes, in its turn, the cause.Each generation leaves behind anothermore deeply in debt each newgeneration begins under moreunfavorable and more aggravatingconditions; mortgaging begetsmortgaging, and when it becomesimpossible for the peasant to offer his

small holding as security for new debts,that is, to encumber it with newmortgages, he falls a direct victim tousury, and usurious interest rates becomeso much the more exorbitant.

Thus it came about that the Frenchpeasant cedes to the capitalist, in theform of interest on the mortgagesencumbering the soil and in the form ofinterest on the advances made by theusurer without mortgages, not onlyground rent, not only the industrial profit in a word, not only the whole net profit but even a part of the wages, and thattherefore he has sunk to the level of theIrish tenant farmer all under the pretenseof being a private proprietor.

This process was accelerated in Franceby the ever growing burden of taxes, bycourt costs called forth in part directlyby the formalities with which Frenchlegislation encumbers the ownership ofland, in part by the innumerable conflictsover parcels everywhere bounding andcrossing each other, and in part by thelitigiousness of the peasants, whoseenjoyment of property is limited to thefanatical assertion of their title to theirfancied property, their property rights.

According to a statistical statement of1840, the gross production of Frenchagriculture amounted to 5,237,178,000francs. Of this the costs of cultivationcame to 3,552,000,000 francs, including

consumption by the persons working.There remained a net product of1,685,178,000 francs, from which550,000,000 had to be deducted forinterest on mortgages, 100,000,000 forlaw officials, 350,000,000 for taxes, and107,000,000 for registration money,stamp duty, mortgage fees, etc. Therewas left one-third of the net product or538,000,000; when distributed over thepopulation, not 25 francs per head netproduct.[112] Naturally, neither usuryoutside of mortgage nor lawyers’ fees,etc., are included in this calculation.

The condition of the French peasants,when the republic had added newburdens to their old ones, is

comprehensible. It can be seen that theirexploitation differs only in form from theexploitation of the industrial proletariat.The exploiter is the same: capital. Theindividual capitalists exploit theindividual peasants through mortgagesand usury, the capitalist class exploitsthe peasant class through the state taxes.The peasant’s title to property is thetalisman by which capital held himhitherto under its spell, the pretext underwhich it set him against the industrialproletariat. Only the fall of capital canraise the peasant; only an anti-capitalist,a proletarian government can break hiseconomic misery, his social degradation.The constitutional republic is thedictatorship of his united exploiters; the

social-democratic, the red republic, isthe dictatorship of his allies. And thescale rises or falls according to thevotes the peasant casts into the ballotbox. He himself has to decide his fate.So spoke the socialists in pamphlets,almanacs, calendars, and leaflets of allkinds. This language became moreunderstandable to him through thecounter-writings of the party of Order,which for its part turned to him, andwhich by gross exaggeration, by itsbrutal conception and representation ofthe intentions and ideas of the socialists,struck the true peasant note andoverstimulated his lust after forbiddenfruit. But most understandable was thelanguage of the actual experience that the

peasant class had gained from the use ofthe suffrage, were the disillusionmentsoverwhelming him, blow upon blow,with revolutionary speed. Revolutionsare the locomotives of history.

The gradual revolutionizing of thepeasants was manifested by varioussymptoms. It early revealed itself in theelections to the Legislative Assembly itwas revealed in the state of siege in thefive departments bordering Lyons; it wasrevealed a few months after June 13 inthe election of a Montagnard in place ofthe former president of the Chambreintrouvable[11] by the Department of theGironde; it was revealed on December20, 1849, in the election of a red in

place of a deceased Legitimistdeputy[113] in the Department du Gard,that promised land of the Legitimists, thescene of the most frightful infamiescommitted against the republicans in1794 and 1795 and the center of thewhite terror in 1815, when liberals andProtestants were publicly murdered.This revolutionizing of the moststationary class is most clearly evidentsince the reintroduction of the wine tax.The governmental measures and the lawsof January and February, 1850, aredirected almost exclusively against thedepartments and the peasants. The moststriking proof of their progress.

The Hautpoul circular, by which the

gendarme was appointed inquisitor ofthe prefect, of the subprefect, and, aboveall, of the mayor, and by whichespionage was organized even in thehidden corners of the remotest villagecommunity; the law against theschoolteachers, by which they (the menof talent, the spokesmen, the educatorsand interpreters of the peasant class)were subjected to the arbitrary power ofthe prefect they, the proletarians of thelearned class, were chased like huntedbeasts from one community to another;the bill against the mayors, by which theDamocles sword of dismissal was hungover their heads, and they, the presidentsof the peasant communities, were everymoment set in opposition to the

President of the Republic and the partyof Order; the ordinance whichtransformed the seventeen militarydistricts of France into four pashaliksand forced the barracks and the bivouacon the French as their national salon; theeducation law, by which the party ofOrder proclaimed unconsciousness andthe forcible stupefaction of France as thecondition of its life under the regime ofuniversal suffrage what were all theselaws and measures? Desperate attemptsto reconquer the departments and thepeasants of the departments for the partyof Order.

Regarded as repression, they werewretched methods that wrung the neck of

their own purpose. The big measures,like the retention of the wine tax, of the45-centime tax, the scornful rejection ofpeasant petitions for the repayment of themilliard, etc., all these legislativethunderbolts struck the peasant class allat once, wholesale, from the center; thelaws and measures cited made attackand resistance general, the topic of theday in every hut; they inoculated everyvillage with revolution; they localizedand peasantized the revolution.

On the other hand, do not theseproposals of Bonaparte and theiracceptance by the National Assemblyprove the unity of the two powers of theconstitutional republic, so far as it is a

question of repression of anarchy thatis, of all the classes that rise against thebourgeois dictatorship? Did notSoulouque [Louis Bonaparte], directlyafter his brusque message, assure theLegislative Assembly of his dévouement[devotion] to order, through theimmediately following message ofCarlier,[116] that dirty, mean caricatureof Fouché, as Louis Bonaparte himselfwas the shallow caricature ofNapoleon?

The education law shows us the allianceof the young Catholics with the oldVoltaireans. Could the rule of the unitedbourgeois be anything else but thecoalesced despotism of the pro-Jesuit

Restoration and the makebelievefreethinking July Monarchy? Had not theweapons that the one bourgeois factionhad distributed among the people againstthe other faction, in their mutual strugglefor supremacy, again been torn from it,the people, since the latter wasconfronting their united dictatorship?Nothing has aroused the Parisshopkeeper more than this coquettishétalage [display] of Jesuitism, not eventhe rejection of the concordats ŕl’amiable [friendly agreements].

Meanwhile the collisions between thedifferent factions of the party of Order,as well as between the NationalAssembly and Bonaparte, continued. The

National Assembly was far from pleasedthat Bonaparte, immediately after hiscoup d’état, after appointing his own,Bonapartist ministry, summoned beforehim the invalids of the monarchy, newlyappointed prefects, and made theirunconstitutional agitation for hisreelection as President the condition oftheir appointment; that Carliercelebrated his inauguration with theclosing of a Legitimist club, or thatBonaparte founded a journal of his own,Le Napoleon, which betrayed the secretlongings of the President to the public,while his ministers had to deny themfrom the tribune of the LegislativeAssembly. The latter was far frompleased by the defiant retention of the

ministry, notwithstanding its variousvotes of no confidence; far from pleasedby the attempt to win the favor of thenoncommissioned officers by an extrapay of four sous a day and the favor ofthe proletariat by a plagiarisation ofEugčne Sue’s Mysteries by an honorloan bank; far from pleased, finally, bythe effrontery with which the ministerswere made to move the deportation ofthe remaining June insurgents to Algiers,in order to heap unpopularity on theLegislative Assembly en gros, while thePresident reserved popularity forhimself en detail, by individual grants ofpardon.Thiers let fall threatening wordsabout coups d’état and coups de tęte[rash acts], and the Legislative

Assembly revenged itself on Bonaparteby rejecting every proposed law that heput forward for his own benefit, and byinquiring with noisy mistrust, in everyinstance when he made a proposal in thecommon interest, whether he did notaspire, through increase of the executivepower, to augment the personal power ofBonaparte. In a word, it revenged itselfby a conspiracy of contempt.

The Legitimist party, on its part, sawwith vexation the more capableOrléanists once more occupying almostall posts and centralization increasing,while it sought its salvation principallyin decentralization. And so it was. Thecounterrevolution centralized forcibly,

that is, it prepared the mechanism of therevolution. It even centralized the goldand silver of France in the Paris Bankthrough the compulsory quotation ofbank notes, and so created the ready warchest of the revolution.

Lastly, the Orléanists saw with vexationthe emergent principle of legitimacycontrasted with their bastard principle,and themselves every moment snubbedand maltreated as the bourgeoismisalliance of a noble spouse.

Little by little we have seen peasants,petty bourgeois, the middle classes ingeneral, stepping alongside theproletariat, driven into open antagonismto the official republic and treated by it

as antagonists. Revolt against bourgeoisdictatorship, need of a change of society,adherence to democratic-republicaninstitutions as organs of their movement,grouping around the proletariat as thedecisive revolutionary power these arethe common characteristics of the so-called party of social democracy, theparty of the red republic. This party ofanarchy, as its opponents christened it, isno less a coalition of different intereststhan the party of Order. From thesmallest reform of the old socialdisorder to the overthrow of the oldsocial order, from bourgeois liberalismto revolutionary terrorism as far apartas this lie the extremes that form thestarting point and the finishing point of

the party of anarchy.

Abolition of the protective tariff socialism! For it strikes at the monopolyof the industrial faction of the party ofOrder. Regulation of the state budget socialism! For it strikes at the monopolyof the financial faction of the party ofOrder. Free admission of foreign meatand corn socialism! For it strikes at themonopoly of the third faction of the partyof Order, large landed property. Thedemands of the freetrade party, that is, ofthe most advanced English bourgeoisparty, appear in France as so manysocialist demands. Voltaireanismsocialism! For it strikes at a fourthfaction of the party of Order, the

Catholic. Freedom of the press, right ofassociation, universal public education socialism, socialism! They strike at thegeneral monopoly of the party of Order.

So swiftly had the march of therevolution ripened conditions that thefriends of reform of all shades, the mostmoderate claims of the middle classes,were compelled to group themselvesaround the banner of the most extremeparty of revolution, around the red flag.

Yet manifold as the socialism of thedifferent large sections of the party ofanarchy was, according to the economicconditions and the total revolutionaryrequirements of the class or fraction of aclass arising out of these, in one point it

is in harmony: in proclaiming itself themeans of emancipating the proletariatand the emancipation of the latter as itsobject. Deliberate deception on the partof some; self-deception on the part of theothers, who promote the worldtransformed according to their ownneeds as the best world for all, as therealization of all revolutionary claimsand the elimination of all revolutionarycollisions.

Behind the general socialist phrases ofthe party of anarchy, which sound ratheralike, there is concealed the socialism ofthe National, of the Presse, and of theSiécle, which more or less consistentlywants to overthrow the rule of the

finance aristocracy and to free industryand trade from their hitherto existingfetters. This is the socialism of industry,of trade, and of agriculture, whosebosses in the party of Order deny theseinterests, insofar as they no longercoincide with their private monopolies.Petty bourgeois socialism, socialism parexcellence, is distinct from thisbourgeois socialism, to which, as toevery variety of socialism, sections ofthe workers and petty bourgeoisnaturally rally. Capital hounds this classchiefly as its creditor, so it demandscredit institutions; capital crushes it bycompetition, so it demands associationssupported by the state; capitaloverwhelms it by concentration, so it

demands progressive taxes, limitationson inheritance, taking over of largeconstruction projects by the state, andother measures that forcibly stem thegrowth of capital. Since it dreams of thepeaceful achievement of its socialism allowing, perhaps, for a secondFebruary Revolution lasting a brief dayor so the coming historical processnaturally appears to it as an applicationof systems which the thinkers of society,whether in companies or as individualinventors, devise or have devised. Thusthey become the eclectics or adepts ofthe existing socialist systems, ofdoctrinaire socialism, which was thetheoretical expression of the proletariatonly as long as it had not yet developed

further into a free historical movement ofits own.

While this utopian doctrinaire socialism,which subordinates the total movementto one of its stages, which puts in placeof common social production thebrainwork of individual pedants and,above all, in fantasy does away with therevolutionary struggle of the classes andits requirements by small conjurers’tricks or great sentimentality, while thisdoctrinaire socialism, which at bottomonly idealizes present society, takes apicture of it without shadows, and wantsto achieve its ideal athwart the realitiesof present society; while the proletariatsurrenders this socialism to the petty

bourgeoisie; while the struggle of thedifferent socialist leaders amongthemselves sets forth each of the so-called systems as a pretentiousadherence to one of the transit points ofthe social revolution as against another the proletariat rallies more and morearound revolutionary socialism, aroundcommunism, for which the bourgeoisiehas itself invented the name of Blanqui.This socialism is the declaration of thepermanence of the revolution, the classdictatorship of the proletariat as thenecessary transit point to the abolition ofclass distinctions generally, to theabolition of all the relations ofproduction on which they rest, to theabolition of all the social relations that

correspond to these relations ofproduction, to the revolutionizing of allthe ideas that result from these socialrelations.

The scope of this exposition does notpermit of developing the subject further.

We have seen that just as in the party ofOrder the finance aristocracynecessarily took the lead, so in the partyof anarchy the proletariat. While thedifferent classes, united in arevolutionary league, groupedthemselves around the proletariat, whilethe departments became ever moreunsafe and the Legislative Assemblyitself ever more morose toward thepretensions of the French Soulouque, the

long deferred and delayed byelection ofsubstitutes for the Montagnards,proscribed after June 13, drew near.

The government, scorned by its foes,maltreated and daily humiliated by itsalleged friends, saw only one mean ofemerging from this repugnant anduntenable position revolt. A revolt inParis would have permitted theproclamation of a state of siege in Parisand the departments and thus the controlof the elections. On the other hand, thefriends of order, in face of a governmentthat had gained victory over anarchy,were constrained to make concessions,if they did not want to appear asanarchists themselves.

The government set to work. At thebeginning of February, 1850,provocation of the people by choppingdown the trees of liberty. In vain. If thetrees of liberty lost their place, thegovernment itself lost its head and fellback, frightened by its own provocation.The National Assembly, however,received this clumsy attempt atemancipation on the part of Bonapartewith ice-cold mistrust. The removal ofthe wreaths of immortelles from the Julycolumn[118] was no more successful. Itgave part of the army an opportunity forrevolutionary demonstrations and theNational Assembly the occasion for amore or less veiled vote of noconfidence in the ministry. In vain the

government press threatened theabolition of universal suffrage and theinvasion of the Cossacks. In vain wasHautpoul’s direct challenge, issued tothe Left in the Legislative Assemblyitself, to betake itself to the streets, andhis declaration that the government wasready to receive it. Hautpoul receivednothing but a call to order from thePresident, and the party of Order, withsilent, malicious joy, allowed a deputyof the Left to mock Bonaparte’susurpatory longings. In vain, finally, wasthe prophecy of a revolution on February24. The government caused February 24to be ignored by the people.

The proletariat did not allow itself to be

provoked to revolt, because it was onthe point of making a revolution.

Unhindered by the provocations of thegovernment, which only heightened thegeneral exasperation at the existingsituation, the election committee, whollyunder the influence of the workers, putforward three candidates for Paris:Deflotte, Vidal, and Carnot. Deflottewas a June deportee, amnestied throughone of Bonaparte’s popularity-seekingideas; he was a friend of Blanqui andhad taken part in the attempt of May 15.Vidal, known as a communist writerthrough his book Concerning theDistribution of Wealth, was formerlysecretary to Louis Blanc in the

Luxembourg Commission. Carnot, son ofthe man of the Convention who hadorganized the victory, the leastcompromised member of the Nationalparty, Minister of Education in theProvisional Government and theExecutive Commission, was through hisdemocratic public education bill a livingprotest against the education law of theJesuits. These three candidatesrepresented the three allied classes: atthe head, the June insurgent, therepresentative of the revolutionaryproletariat; next to him the doctrinairesocialist, the representative of thesocialist petty bourgeoisie; finally, thethird, the representative of therepublican bourgeois party whose

democratic formulas had gained asocialist significance vis-a-vis the partyof Order and had long lost their ownsignificance. This was a generalcoalition against the bourgeoisie and thegovernment, as in February. But this timethe proletariat was at the head of therevolutionary league.

In spite of all efforts the socialistcandidates won. The army itself votedfor the June insurgent against its ownWar Minister La Hitte. The party ofOrder was thunderstruck. The electionsin the departments did not solace them;the departments gave a majority to theMontagnards.

The election of March 10, 1850! It was

the revocation of June, 1848: thebutchers and deportees of the Juneinsurgents returned to the NationalAssembly but returned, bowed down, inthe train of the deported, and with theirprinciples on their lips. It was therevocation of June 13, 1849: theMontagne, proscribed by the NationalAssembly, returned to the NationalAssembly, but as advance trumpeters ofthe revolution, no longer as itscommanders. It was the revocation ofDecember 10: Napoleon had lost outwith his Minister La Hitte. Theparliamentary history of France knowsonly one analogy: the rejection ofd’Haussez, minister of Charles X, in1830. Finally, the election of March 10,

1850, was the cancellation of theelection of May 13, which had given theparty of Order a majority. The electionof March 10 protested against themajority of May 13. March 10 was arevolution. Behind the ballots lie thepaving stones.

The vote of March 10 means war,shouted Ségur d’Aguesseau, one of themost advanced members of the party ofOrder.

With March 10, 1850, the constitutionalrepublic entered a new phase, the phaseof its dissolution. The different factionsof the majority are again united amongthemselves and with Bonaparte; they areagain the saviors of order he is again

their neutral man. If they remember thatthey are royalists, it happens only fromdespair of the possibility of a bourgeoisrepublic; if he remembers that he is apretender, it happens only because hedespairs of remaining President.

At the command of the party of Order,Bonaparte answers the election ofDeflotte, the June insurgent, byappointing Baroche Minister of InternalAffairs, Baroche, the accuser of Blanquiand Barbčs, of Ledru-Rollin andGuinard. The Legislative Assemblyanswers the election of Carnot byadopting the education law, the electionof Vidal by suppressing the socialistpress. The party of Order seeks to blare

away its own fears by the trumpet blastsof its press. The sword is holy, cries oneof its organs; the defenders of order musttake the offensive against the Red party,cries another; between socialism andsociety there is a duel to the death, a warwithout surcease or mercy; in this duelof desperation one or the other must gounder; if society does not annihilatesocialism, socialism will annihilatesociety, crows a third cock of Order.Throw up the barricades of order, thebarricades of religion, the barricades ofthe family! An end must be made of the127,000 voters of Paris! ABartholomew’s Night for the socialists!And the party of Order believes for amoment in its own certainty of victory.

Their organs hold forth most fanaticallyof all against the boutiquiers [tradesmen]of Paris. The June insurgent of Pariselected by the shopkeepers of Paris astheir representative! This means that asecond June, 1848, is impossible; thismeans that a second June 13, 1849, isimpossible; this means that the moralinfluence of capital is broken; this meansthat the bourgeois assembly nowrepresents only the bourgeoisie; thismeans that big property is lost, becauseits vassal, small property, seeks itssalvation in the camp of thepropertyless.

The party of Order naturally returns toits inevitable commonplace. More

repression, it cries, tenfold repression!But its power of repression hasdiminished tenfold, while resistance hasincreased a hundredfold. Must not thechief instrument of repression, the army,itself be repressed? And the party ofOrder speaks its last word: The iron ringof suffocating legality must be broken.The constitutional republic isimpossible. We must fight with our trueweapons; since February, 1848, we havefought the revolution with its weaponsand on its terrain , we have accepted itsinstitutions; the constitution is a fortresswhich safeguards only the besiegers, notthe besieged! By smuggling ourselvesinto holy Ilion in the belly of the Trojanhorse, we have, unlike our forefathers,

the Grecs[12], not conquered the hostiletown, but made prisoners of ourselves.

The foundation of the constitution,however, is universal suffrage.Annihilation of universal suffrage suchis the last word of the party of Order, ofthe bourgeois dictatorship.

On May 4, 1848, on December 20, 1848,on May 13, 1849, and on July 8, 1849,universal suffrage admitted that theywere right.[119] On March 10, 1850,universal suffrage admitted that it haditself been wrong. Bourgeois rule as theoutcome and result of universal suffrage,as the express act of the sovereign willof the people that is the meaning of thebourgeois constitution. But has the

constitution any further meaning from themoment that the content of this suffrage,of this sovereign will, is no longerbourgeois rule? Is it not the duty of thebourgeoisie so to regulate the suffragethat it wills the reasonable, its rule? Byever and anon putting an end to theexisting state power and creating it anewout of itself, does not universal suffrageput an end to all stability, does it notevery moment question all the powersthat be, does it not annihilate authority,does it not threaten to elevate anarchyitself to the position of authority? AfterMarch 10, 1850, who would still doubtit?

By repudiating universal suffrage, with

which it hitherto draped itself and fromwhich it sucked its omnipotence, thebourgeoisie openly confesses, Ourdictatorship has hitherto existed by thewill of the people; it must now beconsolidated against the will of thepeople. And, consistently, it seeks itsprops no longer within France, butwithout, in foreign countries, ininvasion.

With the invasion, this secondCoblenz[13], its seat established inFrance itself, rouses all the nationalpassions against itself. With the attackon universal suffrage it provides ageneral pretext for the new revolution,and the revolution requires such a

pretext. Every special pretext woulddivide the factions of the revolutionaryleague, and give prominence to theirdifferences. The general pretext stuns thesemirevolutionary classes; it permitsthem to deceive themselves concerningthe definite character of the comingrevolution, concerning the consequencesof their own act. Every revolutionrequires a question for discussion atbanquets. Universal suffrage is thebanquet question of the new revolution.

The bourgeois factions in coalition,however, are already condemned, sincethey take flight from the only possibleform of their united power, from themost potent and complete form of their

class rule, the constitutional republic,back to the subordinate, incomplete,weaker form of monarchy. Theyresemble the old man who in order toregain his youthful strength fetched outhis boyhood garments and sufferedtorment trying to get his withered limbsinto them. Their republic had the solemerit of being the hothouse of therevolution.

March 10, 1850, bears the inscription:

Aprčs moi le déluge! After me thedeluge![14]

Notes

7. How great the change since then(Virgil, Aeneid).

8. Either Caesar or Clichy. Clichy was adebtors’ prison in Paris.

9. From Georg Herwegh, Aus denBergen (From the Mountains).

10. Note by Engels to the 1895 edition:On July 8, 1847, before the Chamber ofPeers in Paris, began the trial ofParmentier and General Cubičres forbribery of officials with a view toobtaining a salt works concession, andof the then Minister of Public Works,Teste, for accepting such money bribes.

The latter, during the trial, attempted tocommit suicide. All were sentenced topay heavy fines, Teste, in addition, tothree years’ imprisonment.

11. Note by Engels to the 1895 edition:This is the name given by history to thefanatically ultraroyalist and reactionaryChamber of Deputies electedimmediately after the second overthrowof Napoleon, in 1815.

12. Note by Engels to the 1895 edition:A play on words: Greeks, but alsoprofessional cheats.

13. Coblenz was the center of thecounterrevolutionary emigres during theFrench Revolution.

14. Words attributed to Louis XV.

Contents | Part IV: The Abolition ofUniversal Suffrage in 1850 |Marx/Engels Archive

The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to1850

Part IV

The Abolition of Universal Suffrage in1850[14]

The same symptoms have shownthemselves in France since 1849, andparticularly since the beginning of 1850.The Parisian industries are abundantlyemployed and the cotton factories ofRouen and Mulhouse are also doingpretty well, although here, as in England,the high prices of the raw material haveexercised a retarding influence. Thedevelopment of prosperity in Francewas, in addition, especially promoted bythe comprehensive tariff reform in Spainand by the reduction of the duties on

various luxury articles in Mexico; theexport of French commodities to bothmarkets has considerably increased. Thegrowth of capital in France led to aseries of speculations, for which theexploitation of the California gold mineson a large scale served as a pretext.[121] A swarm of companies havesprung up; the low denomination of theirshares and their socialist-coloredprospectuses appeal directly to thepurses of the petty bourgeois and theworkers, but all and sundry result in thatsheer swindling which is characteristicof the French and Chinese alone. One ofthese companies is even patronizeddirectly by the government. The importduties in France during the first nine

months of 1848 amounted to 63,000,000francs, of 1849 to 95,000,000 francs,and of 1850 to 93,000,000 francs.Moreover, in the month of September,1850, they again rose by more than amillion compared with the same monthof 1849. Exports also rose in 1849, andstill more in 1850.

The most striking proof of restoredprosperity is the Bank’s reintroductionof specie payment by the law of August6, 1850. On March 15, 1848, the Bankhad been authorized to suspend speciepayment. Its note circulation, includingthat of the provincial banks, amounted atthat time to 373,000,000 francs(14,920,000 pounds). On November 2,

1849, this circulation amounted to482,000,000 francs, or 19,280,000, anincrease of 4,360,000 pounds, and onSeptember 2, 1850, to 496,000,000francs, or 19,840,000 pounds, anincrease of about 5,000,000 pounds.This was not accompanied by anydepreciation of the notes; on the contrary, the increased circulation of the noteswas accompanied by the steadilyincreasing accumulation of gold andsilver in the vaults of the Bank, so that inthe summer of 1850 its metallic reserveamounted to about 141,000,000 pounds,an unprecedented sum in France. Thatthe Bank was thus placed in a position toincrease its circulation and therewith itsactive capital by 123,000,000 francs, or

5,000,000 pounds, is striking proof ofthe correctness of our assertion in anearlier issue that the finance aristocracyhas not only not been overthrown by therevolution, but has even beenstrengthened. This result becomes stillmore evident from the following surveyof French bank legislation during the lastfew years. On June 10, 1847, the Bankwas authorized to issue notes of 200francs; hitherto the smallestdenomination had been 500 francs. Adecree of March 15, 1848, declared thenotes of the Bank of France legal tenderand relieved it of the obligation ofredeeming them in specie. Its note issuewas limited to 350,000,000 francs. Itwas simultaneously authorized to issue

notes of 100 francs. A decree of April27 prescribed the merging of thedepartmental banks in the Bank ofFrance; another decree, of May 2, 1848,increased the latter’s note issue to442,000,000 francs. A decree ofDecember 22, 1849, raised the maximumof the note issue to 525,000,000 francs.Finally, the law of August 6, 1850,reestablished the exchangeability ofnotes for specie. These facts, thecontinual increase in the circulation, theconcentration of the whole of Frenchcredit in the hands of the Bank, and theaccumulation of all French gold andsilver in the Bank’s vaults led M.Proudhon to the conclusion that the Bankmust now shed its old snakeskin and

metamorphose itself into a Proudhonistpeople’s bank.[122] He did not evenneed to know the history of the Englishbank restriction from 1797 to 1819;[123] he only needed to direct his glanceacross the Channel to see that this fact,for him unprecedented in the history ofbourgeois society, was nothing morethan a very normal bourgeois event,which only now occurred in France forthe first time. One sees that the allegedlyrevolutionary theoreticians who, afterthe Provisional Government, talked bigin Paris were just as ignorant of thenature and the results of the measurestaken as the gentlemen of the ProvisionalGovernment themselves.

In spite of the industrial and commercialprosperity that France momentarilyenjoys, the mass of the people, thetwenty-five million peasants, suffer froma great depression. The good harvests ofthe past few years have forced the pricesof corn much lower even than inEngland, and the position of the peasantsunder such circumstances, in debt,sucked dry by usury and crushed bytaxes, must be anything but splendid. Thehistory of the past three years has,however, provided sufficient proof thatthis class of the population is absolutelyincapable of any revolutionary initiative.

Just as the period of crisis began later onthe Continent than in England, so also

did prosperity. The process originated inEngland, which is the demiurge of thebourgeois cosmos. On the Continent thevarious phases of the cycle repeatedlyexperienced by bourgeois societyassume a secondary and tertiary form.First, the Continent exports to Englanddisproportionately more than to anyother country. This export to England,however, depends on the latter’sposition, especially in regard to theoverseas market. England exportsdisproportionately more to overseascountries than to the whole Continent, sothat the quantity of continental exports tothose countries is always dependent onEngland’s foreign trade. Hence whencrises on the Continent produce

revolutions there first, the bases for themare always laid in England. Violentoutbreaks naturally erupt sooner at theextremities of the bourgeois body than inits heart, because in the latter thepossibilities of accommodation aregreater than in the former. On the otherhand, the degree to which continentalrevolutions affect England is at the sametime the thermometer that indicates towhat extent these revolutions really putinto question bourgeois life conditions,and to what extent they touch only theirpolitical formations.

Given this general prosperity, whereinthe productive forces of bourgeoissociety are developing as luxuriantly as

it is possible for them to do withinbourgeois relationships, a realrevolution is out of the question. Such arevolution is possible only in periodswhen both of these factors the modernforces of production and the bourgeoisforms of production come intoopposition with each other. The variousbickerings in which representatives ofthe individual factions of the continentalparty of Order presently engage andcompromise each other, far fromproviding an occasion for revolution,are, on the contrary, possible onlybecause the bases of relationships aremomentarily so secure and what thereactionaries do not know so bourgeois.On this all the reactionary attempts to

hold back bourgeois development willrebound just as much as will all theethical indignation and all the enrapturedproclamations of the democrats. A newrevolution is only a consequence of anew crisis. The one, however, is as sureto come as the other.

Let us now turn to France.

The victory that the people, inconjunction with the petty bourgeois, hadwon in the elections of March 10 wasannulled by the people itself when itprovoked the new election of April 28.Vidal was elected not only in Paris, butalso in the Lower Rhine. The ParisCommittee, in which the Montagne andthe petty bourgeoisie were strongly

represented, induced him to accept forthe Lower Rhine. The victory of March10 ceased to be a decisive one; the dateof the decision was once morepostponed; the tension of the people wasrelaxed; it became accustomed to legaltriumphs instead of revolutionary ones.The revolutionary meaning of March 10,the rehabilitation of the Juneinsurrection, was finally completelyannihilated by the candidature of EugeneSue, the sentimental petty-bourgeoissocial-fantast, which the proletariatcould at best accept as a joke to pleasethe grisettes. As against this well-meaning candidature, the party of Order,emboldened by the vacillating policy ofits opponents, put up a candidate who

was to represent the June victory. Thiscomic candidate was the Spartanpaterfamilias Leclerc, from whoseperson, however, the heroic armor wastorn piece by piece by the press, andwho experienced a brilliant defeat in theelection. The new election victory onApril 28 put the Montagne and the pettybourgeoisie in high feather. They alreadyexulted in the thought of being able toarrive at the goal of their wishes in apurely legal way and without againpushing the proletariat into theforeground through a new revolution;they reckoned positively on bringingLedru-Rollin into the presidential chairand a majority of Montagnards into theAssembly through universal suffrage in

the new elections of 1852. The party ofOrder, rendered perfectly certain by theprospective elections, by Sue’scandidature, and by the mood of theMontagne and the petty bourgeoisie, thatthe latter were resolved to remain quietno matter what happened, answered thetwo election victories with an electionlaw which abolished universal suffrage.

The government took good care not tomake this legislative proposal on itsown responsibility. It made an apparentconcession to the majority by entrustingthe working out of the bill to the highdignitaries of this majority, theseventeen burgraves.[125] Thus it wasnot the government that proposed the

repeal of universal suffrage to theAssembly; the majority of the Assemblyproposed it to itself.

On May 8 the project was brought intothe Chamber. The entire Social-Democratic press rose as one man inorder to preach to the people dignifiedbearing, calme majestueux, passivity,and trust in its representatives. Everyarticle of these journals was aconfession that a revolution would,above all, annihilate the so-calledrevolutionary press, and that therefore itwas now a question of its self-preservation. The allegedlyrevolutionary press betrayed its wholesecret. It signed its own death warrant.

On May 21 the Montagne put thepreliminary question to debate andmoved the rejection of the whole projecton the ground that it violated theconstitution. The party of Orderanswered that the constitution would beviolated if it were necessary; there was,however, no need for this at present,because the constitution was capable ofevery interpretation, and because themajority alone was competent to decideon the correct interpretation. To theunbridled, savage attacks of Thiers andMontalembert the Montagne opposed adecorous and refined humanism. It tookits stand on the ground of law; the partyof Order referred it to the ground onwhich the law grows, to bourgeois

property. The Montagne whimpered:Did they really want, then, to conjure uprevolutions by main force? The party ofOrder replied: One would await them.

On May 22 the preliminary question wassettled by 462 votes to 227. The samemen who had proved with such solemnprofundity that the National Assemblyand every individual deputy would berenouncing his mandate if he renouncedthe people, his mandatory, now stuck totheir seats and suddenly sought to let thecountry act, through petitions at that,instead of acting themselves, and still satthere unmoved when, on May 31, thelaw went through in splendid fashion.They sought to revenge themselves by a

protest in which they recorded theirinnocence of the rape of the constitution,a protest which they did not even submitopenly, but smuggled into the President’spocket from the rear.

An army of 150,000 men in Paris, thelong deferment of the decision, theappeasing attitude of the press, thepusillanimity of the Montagne and of thenewly elected representatives, themajestic calm of the petty bourgeois, butabove all, the commercial and industrialprosperity, prevented any attempt atrevolution on the part of the proletariat.

Universal suffrage had fulfilled itsmission. The majority of the people hadpassed through the school of

development, which is all that universalsuffrage can serve for in a revolutionaryperiod. It had to be set aside by arevolution or by the reaction.

The Montagne developed a still greaterdisplay of energy on an occasion thatarose soon afterward. From the tribuneWar Minister Hautpoul had termed theFebruary Revolution a banefulcatastrophe. The orators of theMontagne, who, as always, distinguishedthemselves by their morally indignantbluster, were not allowed by thePresident, Dupin, to speak. Girardinproposed to the Montagne that it shouldwalk out at once en masse. Result: TheMontagne remained seated, but Girardin

was cast out from its midst as unworthy.

The election law still needed one thingto complete it, a new press law. Thiswas not long in coming. A proposal ofthe government, made many times moredrastic by amendments of the party ofOrder, increased the caution money, putan extra stamp on feuilleton fiction(answer to the election of Eugčne Sue),taxed all publications appearing weeklyor monthly up to a certain number ofsheets, and finally provided that everyarticle of a journal must bear thesignature of the author. The provisionsconcerning the caution money killed theso-called revolutionary press; thepeople regarded its extinction as

satisfaction for the abolition of universalsuffrage. However, neither the tendencynor the effect of the new law extendedonly to this section of the press. As longas the newspaper press was anonymous,it appeared as the organ of a numberlessand nameless public opinion; it was thethird power in the state. Through thesignature of every article, a newspaperbecame a mere collection of literarycontributions from more or less knownindividuals. Every article sank to thelevel of an advertisement. Hitherto thenewspapers had circulated as the papermoney of public opinion; now they wereresolved into more or less bad solobills, whose worth and circulationdepended on the credit not only of the

drawer but also of the endorser. Thepress of the party of Order had incitednot only for the repeal of universalsuffrage but also for the most extrememeasures against the bad press.However, in its sinister anonymity eventhe good press was irksome to the partyof Order and still more to its individualprovincial representatives. As for itself,it demanded only the paid writer, withname, address, and description. In vainthe good press bemoaned the ingratitudewith which its services were rewarded.The law went through; the provisionabout the giving of names hit it hardestof all. The names of republicanjournalists were rather well known; butthe respectable firms of the “Journal des

Débats”, the Assemblée Nationale”, the“Constitutionnel”, etc., etc., cut a sorryfigure in their high protestations of statewisdom when the mysterious companyall at once disintegrated intopurchasable penny-a-liners of longpractice, who had defended all possiblecauses for cash, like Granier deCassagnac, or into old milksops whocalled themselves statesmen, likeCapefigue, or into coquettish fops, likeM. Lemoinne of the Débats.

In the debate on the press law theMontagne had already sunk to such alevel of moral degeneracy that it had toconfine itself to applauding the brillianttirades of an old notable of Louis

Philippe’s time, M. Victor Hugo.

With the election law and the press lawthe revolutionary and democratic partyexits from the official stage. Before theirdeparture home, shortly after the end ofthe session, the two factions of theMontagne, the socialist democrats andthe democratic socialists, issued twomanifestoes, two testimonia paupertatis[certificates of pauperism] in which theyproved that while power and successwere never on their side, theynonetheless had ever been on the side ofeternal justice and all the other eternaltruths.

Let us now consider the party of Order.The Neue Rheinische Zeitung had said:

As against the hankering for restorationon the part of the united Orléanists andLegitimists, Bonaparte defends his titleto his actual power, the republic; asagainst the hankering for restoration onthe part of Bonaparte, the party of Orderdefends its title to its common rule, therepublic; as against the Orléanists, theLegitimists, and as against theLegitimists, the Orléanists, defend thestatus quo, the republic. All thesefactions of the party of Order, each ofwhich has its own king and its ownrestoration in petto, mutually enforce, asagainst their rivals hankering forusurpation and revolt, the common ruleof the bourgeoisie, the form in which thespecial claims remain neutralized and

reserved the republic…. And Thiersspoke more truly than he suspects whenhe said: We, the royalists, are the truepillars of the constitutional republic.

This comedy of the républicains malgréeux [republicans in spite of themselves],the antipathy to the status quo and theconstant consolidation of it; the incessantfriction between Bonaparte and theNational Assembly; the ever renewedthreat of the party of Order to split intoits separate component parts, and theever repeated conjugation of its factions;the attempt of each faction to transformeach victory over the common foe into adefeat for its temporary allies; themutual petty jealousy, chicanery,

harassment, the tireless drawing ofswords that ever and again ends with abaiser Lamourette[15] this wholeunedifying comedy of errors neverdeveloped more classically than duringthe past six months.

The party of Order regarded the electionlaw at the same time as a victory overBonaparte. Had not the governmentabdicated when it handed over theediting of and responsibility for its ownproposal to the Commission ofSeventeen? And did not the chiefstrength of Bonaparte as against theAssembly lie in the fact that he was thechosen of six millions? Bonaparte, onhis part, treated the election law as a

concession to the Assembly, with whichhe claimed to have purchased harmonybetween the legislative and executivepowers. As reward, the vulgaradventurer demanded an increase ofthree millions in his civil list. Dared theNational Assembly enter into a conflictwith the executive at a moment when ithad excommunicated the great majorityof Frenchmen? It was roused to anger; itappeared to want to go to extremes; itscommission rejected the motion; theBonapartist press threatened, andreferred to the disinherited people,deprived of its franchise; numerousnoisy attempts at an arrangement tookplace, and the Assembly finally gaveway in fact, but at the same time

revenged itself in principle. Instead ofincreasing the civil list in principle bythree millions per annum, it grantedBonaparte an accommodation of2,160,000 francs. Not satisfied with this,it made even this concession only after ithad been supported by Changarnier, thegeneral of the party of Order and theprotector thrust upon Bonaparte.Therefore it really granted the twomillions not to Bonaparte, but toChangarnier.

This sop, thrown to him de mauvaisegrâce [with bad grace], was accepted byBonaparte quite in the spirit of thedonor. The Bonapartist press blusteredanew against the National Assembly.

When in the debate on the press law theamendment was made on the signing ofnames which, in turn, was directedespecially against the less importantpapers the representatives of the privateinterests of Bonaparte, the principalBonapartist paper, the Pouvoir,published an open and vehement attackon the National Assembly. The ministershad to disavow the paper before theAssembly; the girant [manager] of thePouvoir was summoned before the barof the National Assembly and sentencedto pay the highest fine, 5,000 francs.Next day the Pouvoir published a stillmore insolent article against theAssembly, and as the revenge of thegovernment, the public prosecutor

promptly prosecuted a number ofLegitimist journals for violating theconstitution.

Finally there came the question ofproroguing the Assembly. Bonapartedesired this in order to be able tooperate unhindered by the Assembly.The party of Order desired it partly forthe purpose of carrying on its factionalintrigues, partly for the pursuit of theprivate interests of the individualdeputies. Both needed it in order toconsolidate and push further thevictories of reaction in the provinces.The Assembly therefore adjourned fromAugust 11 until November 11. Since,however, Bonaparte in no way

concealed that his only concern was toget rid of the irksome surveillance of theNational Assembly, the Assemblyimprinted on the vote of confidenceitself the stamp of lack of confidence inthe President. All Bonapartists werekept off the permanent commission oftwenty-eight members who stayed onduring the recess as guardians of thevirtue of the republic.[129] In theirstead, even some republicans of theSičcle and the National were elected toit, in order to prove to the President theattachment of the majority to theconstitutional republic.

Shortly before, and especiallyimmediately after the recess, the two big

factions of the party of Order, theOrléanists and the Legitimists, appearedto want to be reconciled, and this by afusion of the two royal houses underwhose flags they were fighting. Thepapers were full of reconciliationproposals that were said to have beendiscussed at the sickbed of LouisPhilippe at St. Leonards, when the deathof Louis Philippe suddenly simplifiedthe situation. Louis Philippe was theusurper, Henry V the dispossessed; theCount of Paris, on the other hand, owingto the childlessness of Henry V, was hislawful heir to the throne. Every pretextfor objecting to a fusion of the twodynastic interests was now removed. Butprecisely now the two factions of the

bourgeoisie first discovered that it wasnot zeal for a definite royal house thatdivided them, but that it was rather theirdivided class interests that kept the twodynasties apart. The Legitimists, whohad made a pilgrimage to the residenceof Henry V at Wiesbaden just as theircompetitors had to St. Leonards,received there the news of LouisPhilippe’s death. Forthwith they formeda ministry in partibus infidelium[16],which consisted mostly of members ofthat commission of guardians of thevirtue of the republic and which on theoccasion of a squabble in the bosom ofthe party came out with the mostoutspoken proclamation of right by thegrace of God. The Orléanists rejoiced

over the compromising scandal that thismanifesto[130] called forth in the press,and did not conceal for a moment theiropen enmity to the Legitimists.

During the adjournment of the NationalAssembly, the Councils of thedepartments met. The majority of themdeclared for a more or less qualifiedrevision of the constitution; that is, theydeclared for a not definitely specifiedmonarchist restoration, for a “solution”,and confessed at the same time that theywere too incompetent and too cowardlyto find this solution. The Bonapartistfaction at once construed this desire forrevision in the sense of a prolongation ofBonaparte’s presidency.

The constitutional solution, theretirement of Bonaparte in May, 1852,[131] the simultaneous election of a newPresident by all the electors of the land,the revision of the constitution by aChamber of Revision during the firstmonths of the new presidency, is utterlyinadmissible for the ruling class. Theday of the new presidential electionwould be the day of rendezvous for allthe hostile parties, the Legitimists, theOrléanists, the bourgeois republicans,the revolutionists. It would have to cometo a violent decision between thedifferent factions. Even if the party ofOrder should succeed in uniting aroundthe candidature of a neutral personoutside the dynastic families, he would

still be opposed by Bonaparte. In itsstruggle with the people, the party ofOrder is compelled constantly toincrease the power of the executive.Every increase of the executive’s powerincreases the power of its bearer,Bonaparte. In the same measure,therefore, as the party of Orderstrengthens its joint might, it strengthensthe fighting resources of Bonaparte’sdynastic pretensions, it strengthens hischance of frustrating a constitutionalsolution by force on the day of thedecision. He will then have, as againstthe party of Order, no more scruplesabout the one pillar of the constitutionthan that party had, as against the people,about the other pillar in the matter of the

election law. He would, seemingly evenagainst the Assembly, appeal touniversal suffrage. In a word, theconstitutional solution questions theentire political status quo and behind thejeopardizing of the status quo thebourgeois sees chaos, anarchy, civilwar. He sees his purchases and sales,his promissory notes, his marriages, hisagreements duly acknowledged before anotary, his mortgages, his ground rents,house rents, profits, all his contracts andsources of income called in question onthe first Sunday in May, 1852, and hecannot expose himself to this risk.Behind the jeopardizing of the politicalstatus quo lurks the danger of thecollapse of the entire bourgeois society.

The only possible solution in theframework of the bourgeoisie is thepostponement of the solution. It can savethe constitutional republic only by aviolation of the constitution, by theprolongation of the power of thePresident. This is also the last word ofthe press of Order, after the protractedand profound debates on the solutions inwhich it indulged after the session of thegeneral councils. The high and mightyparty of Order thus finds itself, to itsshame, compelled to take seriously theridiculous, commonplace, and, to it,odious person of the pseudo Bonaparte.

This dirty figure likewise deceivedhimself about the causes that clothed him

more and more with the character of theindispensable man. While his party hadsufficient insight to ascribe the growingimportance of Bonaparte tocircumstances, he believed that he owedit solely to the magic power of his nameand his continual caricaturing ofNapoleon. He became more enterprisingevery day. To offset the pilgrimages toSt. Leonards and Wiesbaden, he madehis round trips through France. TheBonapartists had so little faith in themagic effect of his personality that theysent with him everywhere as claquerspeople from the Society of December10,[132] that organization of the Parislumpen proletariat, packed en masse intorailway trains and post chaises. They put

speeches into the mouth of theirmarionette which, according to thereception in the different towns,proclaimed republican resignation orperennial tenacity as the keynote of thePresident’s policy. In spite of allmaneuvers these journeys were anythingbut triumphal processions.

When Bonaparte believed he had thusmade the people enthusiastic, he set outto win the army. He caused greatreviews to be held on the plain ofSatory, near Versailles, at which hesought to buy the soldiers with garlicsausages, champagne, and cigars.Whereas the genuine Napoleon, amid thehardships of his campaigns of conquest,

knew how to cheer up his wearysoldiers with outbursts of patriarchalfamiliarity, the pseudo Napoleonbelieved it was in gratitude that thetroops shouted: Vive Napoleon, vive lesaucisson! [Long live Napoleon, longlive the sausage!] that is, Hurrah for theWurst [sausage], hurrah for theHanswurst [buffoon]!

These reviews led to the outbreak of thelong suppressed dissension betweenBonaparte and his War MinisterHautpoul, on the one hand, andChangarnier, on the other. InChangarnier the party of Order hadfound its real neutral man, in whose casethere could be no question of his own

dynastic claims. It had designated himBonaparte’s successor. In addition,Changarnier had become the greatgeneral of the party of Order through hisconduct on January 29 and June 13,1849, the modern Alexander whosebrutal intervention had, in the eyes of thetimid bourgeois, cut the Gordian knot ofthe revolution. At bottom just asridiculous as Bonaparte, he had thusbecome a power in the very cheapestmanner and was set up by the NationalAssembly to watch the President. Hehimself coquetted, for example, in thematter of the salary grant, with theprotection that he gave Bonaparte, androse up ever more overpoweringlyagainst him and the ministers. When, on

the occasion of the election law, aninsurrection was expected, he forbadehis officers to take any orders whateverfrom the War Minister or the President.The press was also instrumental inmagnifying the figure of Changarnier.With the complete absence of greatpersonalities, the party of Ordernaturally found itself compelled toendow a single individual with thestrength lacking in its class as a wholeand so puff up this individual to aprodigy. Thus arose the myth ofChangarnier, the bulwark of society. Thearrogant charlatanry, the secretive air ofimportance with which Changarniercondescended to carry the world on hisshoulders, forms the most ridiculous

contrast to the events during and after the[last] Satory review, which irrefutablyproved that it needed only a stroke of thepen by Bonaparte, the infinitely little, tobring this fantastic offspring ofbourgeois fear, the colossusChangarnier, back to the dimensions ofmediocrity and transform him, society’sheroic savior, into a pensioned general.

Bonaparte had for some time beenrevenging himself on Changarnier byprovoking the War Minister to disputesin matters of discipline with the irksomeprotector. The last review at Satoryfinally brought the old animosity to aclimax. The constitutional indignation ofChangarnier knew no bounds when he

saw the cavalry regiments file past withthe unconstitutional cry: Vivel’Empereur! [Long live the Emperor!] Inorder to forestall any unpleasant debateon this cry in the coming session of theChamber, Bonaparte removed WarMinister Hautpoul by appointing himgovernor of Algiers. In his place he put areliable old general of the time of theEmpire, one who was fully a match forChangarnier in brutality. But so that thedismissal of Hautpoul might not appearas a concession to Changarnier, hesimultaneously transferred GeneralNeumayer, the right hand of the greatsavior of society, from Paris to Nantes.It was Neumayer who at the last reviewhad induced the whole of the infantry to

file past the successor of Napoleon inicy silence. Changarnier, himselfattacked in the person of Neumayer,protested and threatened. To no purpose.After two days’ negotiations, the decreetransferring Neumayer appeared in theMoniteur, and there was nothing left forthe hero of Order but to submit todiscipline or resign.

Bonaparte’s struggle with Changarnier isthe continuation of his struggle with theparty of Order. The reopening of theNational Assembly on November 11will therefore take place underthreatening auspices. It will be a stormin a teacup. In essence the old game mustgo on. Meanwhile the majority of the

party of Order will, despite the clamorof the sticklers for principle in itsdifferent factions, be compelled toprolong the power of the President.Similarly, Bonaparte, already humbledby lack of money, will, despite allpreliminary protestations, accept thisprolongation of power from the hands ofthe National Assembly as simplydelegated to him. Thus the solution ispostponed; the status quo continued; onefaction of the party of Ordercompromised, weakened, madeunworkable by the other; the repressionof the common enemy, the mass of thenation, extended and exhausted until theeconomic relations themselves haveagain reached the point of development

where a new explosion blows into theair all these squabbling parties withtheir constitutional republic.

For the peace of mind of the bourgeois itmust be said, however, that the scandalbetween Bonaparte and the party ofOrder has the result of ruining amultitude of small capitalists on theBourse and putting their assets into thepockets of the big wolves of the Bourse.

Notes

14. The continuation of the threeforegoing chapters is found in the Revuein the fifth and sixth double issue of theNeue Rheinische Zeitung, the last toappear. Here, after the great commercialcrisis that broke out in England in 1847had first been described and the comingto a head of the political complicationson the European continent in therevolutions of February and March,1848, had been explained by itsreactions there, it is then shown how theprosperity of trade and industry thatagain set in during the course of 1848and increased still further in 1849paralyzed the revolutionary upsurge and

made possible the simultaneousvictories of the reaction. With specialreference to France, it is then said: Written by Engels for the 1895 edition,as an introductory paragraph to SectionIV.

15. Lamourette’s kiss. On July 7, 1792,Bishop Adrien Lamourette, a deputy inthe Legislative Assembly, proposed thatparty dissensions be ended with afraternal kiss. The deputiesenthusiastically embraced each otherthen, but the fraternal embrace was soonforgotten. French wits came to use theexpression to denote a trivial love affair.

16. In the realms of the unbelievers;referring to the non-Christian dioceses to

which Catholic bishops were assignedby the Early Church.

Contents | Marx/Engels Archive

Table of ContentsIntroduction1. The Defeat of June, 18482. From June 1848 to June 13, 18493. Consequences of June 13, 18494. The Abolition of Universal Suffrage

in 1850