The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850
The scope of this exposition does not permit of developing the subject further.
We have seen that just as in the party of Order the finance aristocracy necessarily took the lead, so in the party of “ anarchy “ the proletariat . While the different classes, united in a revolutionary league, grouped themselves around the proletariat, while the departments became ever more unsafe and the Legislative Assembly itself ever more morose toward the pretensions of the French Soulouque, the long deferred and delayed by–election of substitutes for the Montagnards, proscribed after June 13, drew near.
The government, scorned by its foes, maltreated and daily humiliated by its alleged friends, saw only one mean of emerging from this repugnant and untenable position – revolt . A revolt in Paris would have permitted the proclamation of a state of siege in Paris and the departments and thus the control of the elections. On the other hand, the friends of order, in face of a government that had gained victory over anarchy, were constrained to make concessions, if they did not want to appear as anarchists themselves.
The government set to work. At the beginning of February, 1850, provocation of the people by chopping down the trees of liberty. In vain. If the trees of liberty lost their place, the government itself lost its head and fell back, frightened by its own provocation. The National Assembly, however, received this clumsy attempt at emancipation on the part of Bonaparte with ice-cold mistrust. The removal of the wreaths of immortelles from the July column [118] was no more successful. It gave part of the army an opportunity for revolutionary demonstrations and the National Assembly the occasion for a more or less veiled vote of no confidence in the ministry. In vain the government press threatened the abolition of universal suffrage and the invasion of the Cossacks. In vain was Hautpoul's direct challenge, issued to the Left in the Legislative Assembly itself, to betake itself to the streets, and his declaration that the government was ready to receive it. Hautpoul received nothing but a call to order from the President, and the party of Order, with silent, malicious joy, allowed a deputy of the Left to mock Bonaparte's usurpatory longings. In vain, finally, was the prophecy of a revolution on February 24. The government caused February 24 to be ignored by the people.
The proletariat did not allow itself to be provoked to revolt , because it was on the point of making a revolution .
Unhindered by the provocations of the government, which only heightened the general exasperation at the existing situation, the election committee, wholly under the influence of the workers, put forward three candidates for Paris: Deflotte, Vidal, and Carnot . Deflotte was a June deportee, amnestied through one of Bonaparte's popularity-seeking ideas; he was a friend of Blanqui and had taken part in the attempt of May 15. Vidal , known as a communist writer through his book Concerning the Distribution of Wealth, was formerly secretary to Louis Blanc in the Luxembourg Commission. Carnot , son of the man of the Convention who had organized the victory, the least compromised member of the National party, Minister of Education in the Provisional Government and the Executive Commission, was through his democratic public education bill a living protest against the education law of the Jesuits. These three candidates represented the three allied classes: at the head, the June insurgent, the representative of the revolutionary proletariat; next to him the doctrinaire socialist, the representative of the socialist petty bourgeoisie; finally, the third, the representative of the republican bourgeois party whose democratic formulas had gained a socialist significance vis-a-vis the party of Order and had long lost their own significance. This was a general coalition against the bourgeoisie and the government, as in February . But this time the proletariat was at the head of the revolutionary league .
In spite of all efforts the socialist candidates won. The army itself voted for the June insurgent against its own War Minister La Hitte. The party of Order was thunderstruck. The elections in the departments did not solace them; the departments gave a majority to the Montagnards.
The election of March 10, 1850! It was the revocation of June, 1848: the butchers and deportees of the June insurgents returned to the National Assembly but returned, bowed down, in the train of the deported, and with their principles on their lips. It was the revocation of June 13, 1849: the Montagne, proscribed by the National Assembly, returned to the National Assembly, but as advance trumpeters of the revolution, no longer as its commanders. It was the revocation of December 10: Napoleon had lost out with his Minister La Hitte. The parliamentary history of France knows only one analogy: the rejection of d'Haussez, minister of Charles X, in 1830. Finally, the election of March 10, 1850, was the cancellation of the election of May 13, which had given the party of Order a majority. The election of March 10 protested against the majority of May 13. March 10 was a revolution. Behind the ballots lie the paving stones.
“The vote of March 10 means war,“ shouted Ségur d'Aguesseau, one of the most advanced members of the party of Order.
With March 10, 1850, the constitutional republic entered a new phase, the phase of its dissolution . The different factions of the majority are again united among themselves and with Bonaparte; they are again the saviors of order – he is again their neutral man. If they remember that they are royalists, it happens only from despair of the possibility of a bourgeois republic; if he remembers that he is a pretender, it happens only because he despairs of remaining President.
At the command of the party of Order, Bonaparte answers the election of Deflotte , the June insurgent, by appointing Baroche Minister of Internal Affairs, Baroche, the accuser of Blanqui and Barbès, of Ledru-Rollin and Guinard. The Legislative Assembly answers the election of Carnot by adopting the education law, the election of Vidal by suppressing the socialist press. The party of Order seeks to blare away its own fears by the trumpet blasts of its press. “The sword is holy,“ cries one of its organs; “the defenders of order must take the offensive against the Red party,“ cries another; “between socialism and society there is a duel to the death, a war without surcease or mercy; in this duel of desperation one or the other must go under; if society does not annihilate socialism, socialism will annihilate society,“ crows a third cock of Order. Throw up the barricades of order, the barricades of religion, the barricades of the family! An end must be made of the 127,000 voters of Paris! A Bartholomew's Night for the socialists! And the party of Order believes for a moment in its own certainty of victory.
Their organs hold forth most fanatically of all against the “ boutiquiers [tradesmen] of Paris .“ The June insurgent of Paris elected by the shopkeepers of Paris as their representative! This means that a second June, 1848, is impossible; this means that a second June 13, 1849, is impossible; this means that the moral influence of capital is broken; this means that the bourgeois assembly now represents only the bourgeoisie; this means that big property is lost, because its vassal, small property, seeks its salvation in the camp of the propertyless.
The party of Order naturally returns to its inevitable commonplace . “ More repression ,“ it cries, “ tenfold repression! “ But its power of repression has diminished tenfold, while resistance has increased a hundredfold. Must not the chief instrument of repression, the army, itself be repressed? And the party of Order speaks its last word: “The iron ring of suffocating legality must be broken. The constitutional republic is impossible . We must fight with our true weapons; since February, 1848, we have fought the revolution with its weapons and on its terrain – , we have accepted its institutions; the constitution is a fortress which safeguards only the besiegers, not the besieged! By smuggling ourselves into holy Ilion in the belly of the Trojan horse, we have, unlike our forefathers, the Grecs [12] , not conquered the hostile town, but made prisoners of ourselves.
The foundation of the constitution, however, is universal suffrage . Annihilation of universal suffrage – such is the last word of the party of Order, of the bourgeois dictatorship.
On May 4, 1848, on December 20, 1848, on May 13, 1849, and on July 8, 1849, universal suffrage admitted that they were right. [119] On March 10, 1850, universal suffrage admitted that it had itself been wrong. Bourgeois rule as the outcome and result of universal suffrage, as the express act of the sovereign will of the people – that is the meaning of the bourgeois constitution. But has the constitution any further meaning from the moment that the content of this suffrage, of this sovereign will, is no longer bourgeois rule? Is it not the duty of the bourgeoisie so to regulate the suffrage that it wills the reasonable, its rule? By ever and anon putting an end to the existing state power and creating it anew out of itself, does not universal suffrage put an end to all stability, does it not every moment question all the powers that be, does it not annihilate authority, does it not threaten to elevate anarchy itself to the position of authority? After March 10, 1850, who would still doubt it?
By repudiating universal suffrage, with which it hitherto draped itself and from which it sucked its omnipotence, the bourgeoisie openly confesses, “ Our dictatorship has hitherto existed by the will of the people; it must now be consolidated against the will of the people .“ And, consistently, it seeks its props no longer within France , but without, in foreign countries, in invasion .
With the invasion, this second Coblenz [13] , its seat established in France itself, rouses all the national passions against itself. With the attack on universal suffrage it provides a general pretext for the new revolution, and the revolution requires such a pretext. Every special pretext would divide the factions of the revolutionary league, and give prominence to their differences. The general pretext stuns the semi-revolutionary classes; it permits them to deceive themselves concerning the definite character of the coming revolution, concerning the consequences of their own act. Every revolution requires a question for discussion at banquets. Universal suffrage is the banquet question of the new revolution.
The bourgeois factions in coalition , however, are already condemned, since they take flight from the only possible form of their united power, from the most potent and complete form of their class rule , the constitutional republic , back to the subordinate, incomplete, weaker form of monarchy . They resemble the old man who in order to regain his youthful strength fetched out his boyhood garments and suffered torment trying to get his withered limbs into them. Their republic had the sole merit of being the hothouse of the revolution .
March 10, 1850, bears the inscription:
Après moi le déluge! After me the deluge! [14]
7. How great the change since then (Virgil, Aeneid).
8. Either Caesar or Clichy. Clichy was a debtors' prison in Paris.
9. From Georg Herwegh, “Aus den Bergen“ (“From the Mountains“).
10. Note by Engels to the 1895 edition: On July 8, 1847, before the Chamber of Peers in Paris, began the trial of Parmentier and General Cubières for bribery of officials with a view to obtaining a salt works concession, and of the then Minister of Public Works, Teste, for accepting such money bribes. The latter, during the trial, attempted to commit suicide. All were sentenced to pay heavy fines, Teste, in addition, to three years' imprisonment.
11. Note by Engels to the 1895 edition: This is the name given by history to the fanatically ultraroyalist and reactionary Chamber of Deputies elected immediately after the second overthrow of Napoleon, in 1815.
12. Note by Engels to the 1895 edition: A play on words: Greeks, but also professional cheats.
13. Coblenz was the center of the counterrevolutionary emigres during the French Revolution.
14. Words attributed to Louis XV.
Contents | Part
The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850