A to Marxist

ON PHI (v) 1848: the bourgeoisie and the democratic state MARX'S earliest political writings had been concerned with explaining that the state, the sphere oi politics, was the product of social relations and not their creator, and that, far from being the guarantor •and embodiment of social unity and peace, it was the expression of the irreconcilability of social antagonisms.

We have seen that 1848 enabled Marx to go much further: he reached the historic conclusion that the proletariat cannot simply transfer into its own hands the bureaucraticmilitary machine of the state, but must 'smash' it and develop its own organs of state power.

But the same historical turning-point which enabled Marx to make this theoretical conclusion for the proletarian revolution also posed a special problem for the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the democratic state, and the interrelation between these two problems was to prove the motive force in the political developments of the ensuing So threatening was the strength of the working class that the bourgeoisie everywhere turned, after 1848, to a compromise with reaction. Of course, the economic impact of capitalism's continuing expansion was still fundamentally revolutionary: in opening up new markets and breaking up old social systems; in dissolving old social forms within the capitalist countries; developing the productive forces; in concentrating and increasing the force of the proletariat.

Relationship

But politically 1848 was a major turning of the ways. We take up here two aspects of this historical watershed which are of great value in illustrating the method of Marx in understanding social and political relations as fundamentally relations of class struggle: the connection between the ruling class in Marx's sense (the propertied class, in this case the bourgeoisie) and government; and the precise analysis of the role of the small peasantry in the accession to power of Louis Bonaparte.

At the very point, in 1848, where the French bourgeoisie found it necessary to remove the sectional interests which restricted its full development through control of the July monarchy — a removal which took a Republican-democratic form, capable of momentarily uniting all classes beneath itit was forced to engage in a political struggle with the proletariat which rendered this Republican democracy stillborn, with similar consequences throughout Europe.

The right-wing Party of Order, after the June 1848 insurrection, took the opportunity of branding as 'socialist' every democratic measure proposed in the assembly. Marx comments:

"This was not merely a figure of speech, fashion or party tactics. The bourgeoisie had true insight into the fact that all the weapons which it had forged against feudalism turned their points against itself, that all the means of education which it had produced rebelled against its own civilization, that all the gods which it had created had fallen away from it. It understood that all the so-called bourgeois liberties and organs of progress attacked and menaced its class rule at its social foundation and its political summit simultaneously, and had therefore become "socialistic" . . .

'What the bourgeoisie did not grasp, however, was the logical conclusion that its own parliamentary regime, that its political rule in general, was now bound to meet with the general verdict of being likewise socialistic. As long as the rule of the bourgeois class had not been organized completely, as long as it had not acquired its pure political expression, the antagonism of the other classes likewise could not appear in its pure form, and where it did appear, could not take the dangerous turn that transforms every • struggle against the power of the state into a struggle against capital. 6 And because of this, 'the bourgeoisie had to be 'delivered from the danger of governing in its own name'. The deliverance was carried out by Louis Bonaparte, resting on the small peasantry.

It is interesting once again to note that Marx attempts always to explain the necessity of every major historical experience, and does not write history as a series of mistakes and inspirations. Not a theory worked out as predictions in advance, but the experience of the 1848 struggle and the abortive republic, was necessary to bring into the life of the bourgeoisie the realization of the great historical turning-point marked by the political baptism of its evil opposite and inescapable familiar, the proletariat.

Only these experiences, reverberating through the life of the whole class and its surrounding petty - bourgeois strata, could establish the meaning of the new stage in It is this changed class content of the 1848 revolution which explains its different course from that of 1789, and which confounds the search for a regular series of stages by the few historians and sociologists who have attempted explanations of 'the revolutionary phenomenon' In the first French Revolution the rule of the Constitutionalists is followed by the rule of the Girondins and the rule of the Girondins by the rule of the Jacobins. Each of these parties supported itself on the more progressive party.

As soon as it has brought the revolution far enough to be (16'18th Brumaire', 'Selected Works' 11 pp. 361-362.) unable to follow it further, still less to go ahead of it, it is thrust aside by the bolder ally that stands behind it and sent to the guillotine. The revolution thus moves along an ascending line.

It is the reverse with the Revolution of 1848. The proletarian party appears as an appendage of the petty-bourgeois democratic party. It is betrayed and dropped by the latter on April 16, May 15, and in the June days. The democratic party, in its turn, leans on the shoulders of the bourgeois - Republican party. The bourgeois-republicans no sooner believe themselves well established than they shake off the troublesome comrade and support themselves on the shoulders of the Party of Order.

"The Party of Order hunches its shoulders, lets the bourgeois-Republicans tumble and throws itself on the shoulders of the armed force. It fancies it is still sitting on its shoulders when, one fine morning, it perceives that the shoulders have transformed themselves into bayonets. Each party strikes from behind at that pressing further and leans from in front on that pressing back. No wonder that in this ridiculous posture it loses its balance and, having made the inevitable. grimaces, collapses with curious capers. The revolution thus moves in a descending line."

In an important sense, the history of France since 1848 is the history of the French bourgeoisie's inability to find any permanent form of political rule for the proteotion of its class domination. national economic and political developments over the century, the crisis of consciousness and leadership in the proletariat resulting from its experience of betrayal, rather than the historical role of the bourgeoisie.

Prophetic

German history presents the other W European countries is me phenomenon in even already politically in decline... ore brutal form; and the best It is a peculiarity of the Top left: Louis Bonaparte, who ruled France as Manifest Napoleon III.

Above: The Borsig Iron Foundry near erlin in 1847. Kemmnißifchen Martei.

Right: Title page of the Communist Manefesto, published in 1848.

Proteterier nker föndre Dereinigt rud Konhon.

AND CLASS PART FIFTEEN