AND REVOLUTION

Class struggle and revolution: thë example of 1848.

In the revolutions of 1848, Marx and Engels took the opportunity of testing their new theories against historical experience. They had claimed to be 'scientific socialists, basing their political programme on the revolutionary struggle of a class inevitably produced by capitalism's own development. (The Communist Manifesto').

This they had contrasted with the 'Utopian socialism' of all varieties.

1848 was to bring the industrial proletariat directly on to the political scene, its force actually bringing about great changes in the state.

But the result could only be, at this stage, the bourgeois republic.

King Louis Philippe, overthrown in February 1848, had presided over the rule of only one section of the bourgeoisie, the 'finance oligarchy'.

It still remained for the industrial bourgeoisie to 'normalize' the relations between the whole bourgeois class and the state machine. Louis Philippe was overthrown in February 5348 by an alliance of industrial bourgeoisie, proletariat, urban middle class, and peasantry.

Compromise

The Provisional government then set up could only be a compromise between all the classes which had contributed to the overthrow of Louis Philippe:

"The great majority of its members consisted of representatives of the bourgeoisie.

The republican petty bourgeoisie were represented by Ledru-Rollin and Flocon, the republican bourgeoisie by the people from the 'National' (the newspaper of the republican opposition, founded by Thiers in 1830), the dynastic opposition by Crémieux, Dupont de l'Eure, etc.

"The working class had only two representatives, Louis Blanc and . Albert. Finally;

Lamartine as a member of the Provisional government; the latter had actually no real interest, no definite class, it was the February Revolution itself, the common uprising with its illusions, its poetry, its imagined content and its phrases. For the rest, the spokesman on the February Revolution, by his position and his views, belonged to the bourgeoisie."

Marx's analysis of the 18481850 events in France is the history of the dramatic dissolution of this political unity under the impact of the irreconcilable class antagonisms between its several components.

However, Marx was compelled to explain, by his own theory and method, not only the long-term necessity which eventually prevailed, but also the movement of events, men and ideas which at first sight, (Marx, "The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850', in "Selected Works', Vol. II, p.

199.) by their complexity and accidental character, contradict the materialist conception.

How did the compromise arise in the first place? Why did the historical necessity establish itself only through a definite series of stages and struggles? Why were these struggles veiled in particular types of political illusions and not others?

And finally, why did the democratic republic brought forth by February 1848, once the working class was defeated and brought into line, quickly submit to the dictatorship of Louis Bonaparte, borne aloft on the shoulders of the humble peasant?

Criticism

The main criticism levelled against historical materialism is that precisely such questions are left unanswered by the stress on the 'ultimate' determining character of the economic base.

The writings of Lenin and Trotsky on the Russian Revolution and the class struggle in this century are certainly the most complete answer. However, Marx and Engels' own writings on 1848 were already sufficient to put paid to this criticism of historical materialism. What follows here is only a series of examples, meant as an introduction to the study of the texts themselves.* Modern 'political sociology' can, of course, afford to neglect the kind of questions dealt with by Marx in 18481851. It takes the groups and classes in society simply as accumulations of certain external characteristics (level of education, literacy, income, occupation, area of residence, occupation of parents, etc. etc.) and then checks against these a more or less impressive series of data about what is called 'political behaviour' normally consisting of votes cast in elections.

If 'vulgar political economy' was an apologia for capitalist exploitation, political sociology would perhaps have been characterized by Marx as a sort of market research operation for established political parties.

Whereas bourgeois "political sociology' devotes itself entirely to the surface 'poli*Marx, 'The Class Struggles in France 1848-1850', "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Address of the Central Council to the Communist League (1851). Engels (sometimes published under Marx's name) 'Germany: Revolution and Counter-revolutical behaviour' of the individuals in society during periods of relative stability, Marx's theory was, characteristically, tested against revolutionary upheavals. His sociology of class cannot be separated from his "sociology of revolution'.

How does . Marx explain the combination of opposed class forces in the Provisional government in 1848? He begins with a characterization of Louis Philippe's regime and the opposition to it:

It was not the French bourgeoisie that ruled under Louis Philippe, but a fraction of it, bankers, stock-exchange kings, railway kings, owners of coal and iron works and forests, a part of the landed proprietors that rallied round them—the so-called finance aristocracy. It sat on the throne, it dictated laws in the Chambers, it conferred political posts from cabinet portfolios to the tobacco bureau."

The rule of this finance aristocracy produced characteristic political and social contradictions, particularly through its plunder of government finances and control of government agencies.

These accumulated in such a way as to render the finance aristocracy the common object and symbol against which all opposition to existing conditions was concentrated. The industrial bourgeoisie formed the core of the parliamentary opposition, and gradually gained in confidence to oppose the regime through the 1840s, comforted by the feeling that the proletariat had been thoroughly disciplined by the suppression of the uprisings of 1832, 1834 (Lyons) and 1839.

The other classes which were to appear in the revolutionary struggles of 1848, the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry, had, like the proletariat, no place whatsoever in the political life of the July monarchy.

Swindling

Marx summarizes the swindling and extortion of the finance aristocracy through the national debt and the financing of state enterprises, and concludes:

"The July monarchy was nothing other than a joint stock company for the exploitation of French • national wealth, the dividends of which were divided among ministers, Chambers, 240,000 voters and their adherents. Louis Philippe was the director of this company-Robert Macaire on the throne. Trade, industry, agriculture, shipping, the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie, were bound to be continually prejudiced and endangered In particular there broke out, at the top of bourgeois society, clashing every moment with the bourgeois laws themselves, an unbridled display of unhealthy and dissolute appetites, wherein the wealth having its source in gambling naturally seeks its satisfaction, where pleasure becomes crapuleux (debauched), where gold, filth and blood flow together. The finance aristocracy, in its mode of acquisition as well as in its pleasures, is nothing but the resurrection of the lumpenproletariat at the top • of bourgeois society.

'And the non-ruling sections the French bourgeoisie Marx and Engels ha already insisted that revolution is not an unfortunate necessity, a by-product of the transition to a classless society, but is the actual experience by which me change themselves throi changing their own environmentithus producing "communist consciousne " on "a mass scale" 7795508 3E1! cried: corruption! The people cried: a bas les grands voleurs! a bas les assassins!* when in 1847, on the most prominent stages of bourgeois society, the same scenes were publicly enacted which regularly lead the lumpenproletariat to brothels, to workhouses and lunatic asylums, before the Bench, to Bagnos (a prison) and to the scaffold.

"The industrial bourgeoisie

saw its interests endangered, the petty bourgeoisie was filled with moral indignation, the imagination of the people was tive foreign policy dictated by the finance houses gradually solidified national feeling against the existing regime, culminating in the effects of the political events in Europe of the years 1846-1848.

Guizot, Louis Philippe's minister, had come out in favour of the Holy Alliance against the Swiss, and when the latter were victorious in 'this mimic war', this 'raised the self-respect of the bourgeois opposition in France'.

And then, given the explosive internal condition of the French nation, 'the bloody uprising of the people in Palermo (January 12, 1848) worked like an electric shock on the paralysed masses of the people and awoke their great revolutionary memories and passions'.

Thus, given a certain level of the development of internal contradictions in French society, international events which at another time might have had little effect or even have been used to discourage political activity, could provide a major impetus to revolution.

Striking force

Indeed, it was from the international level, but this time economically, that the revolutionary opposition's formation was finally completed and fused into a striking-force.

"The eruption of the general the sentiment for revolt ripened by two economic world events?

First came the potato blight and bad harvests of 18451846 and the consequent heightening of the glaring contrasts between the poverty of the masses and the unrerained luxury istocracy:

'At Buzançais the hunger rioters executed; in Paris the over-satiated escrocs (swindlers)

snatched from the courts by the royal family Hunger For Marx, this condition of sharp reduction in living standards and even prolonged hunger enter as one of the conjunctural factors in building up the revolutionary situation, something which 'ripened the sentiment for revolt' and 'accelerated the general discontent.

Discussions about impoverishment and hunger as the 'causes' of revolution derive from an extreme vulgarization of Marx's views, and must be dismissed on that count if they are raised as criticisms of Marxian theory.

For Marx, the whole pre ceding social and political development, determined in its main lines by the economic structure, prepares the disposition of class forces which enters into a revolutionary situation.

From then on, the movement of events is subject to the laws and mechanisms of the political class struggle, and now the developments in the 'economic base' will have effects which are determined in this political framework.

In 1846-1848, therefore, the growing impoverishment enters only secondarily, as a determinant of tempo and a contributory factor. to the heightening of consciousness of already fashioned conflicting interests.

The second 'economic world event' of this order was a general commercial and industrial crisis in England'; and now Marx can describe the actual gathering of the revolutionary storm. All the factors he has considered are brought into action in the concrete course of events: .

'The devastation of trade and industry caused by the economic epedemic made the autocracy of the finance aristocracy still more unbearable.

Throughout the whole of France the bourgeois opposition evoked the banquet agitation for an electoral reform which should win for them the majority in the Chambers and overthrow the Ministry of the Bourse.

'In Paris the industrial crisis had, in particular, the result of throwing a number of manufacturers and big traders, who under the existing circumstances could no longer do any business in the foreign market, on to the home market.

"They set up large épiciers and boutiquiers (grocers and small shopkeepers) en masse.

Hence the innumerable bankruptcies among this section of the Paris bourgeoisie, and hence their revolutionary action in February.

It is known how Guizot and the Chambers answered the reform proposals with a plain challenge, how Louis Far Marx and Engels Left: Auguste Blanqui Below: 1848—King Philippe's throne burns al the foot of the July Colum Philippe too late resolved on a Ministry led by Barrot, how hand-to-hand fighting took place between the people and the army, how the army was disarmed by the passive conduct of the National Guard, how the July monarchy had to give way to a Provisional government."

Errors

Marx and Engels considered afterwards that they made two errors in their evaluation of the 1848 revolutions.

In the first place, they mistook the economic crisis of 1847-1848 for a manifestation of the impending collapse of the capitalist system, whereas that system proved beyond doubt to have within it great scope for the expansion of the productive forces, particularly with the growth of United States capitalism.

The industrialization of Europe itself had only just begun, and at a later date Marx asked Engels in correspondence the question: even if we are successful in a socialist revolution in old (PIbid.;