AND REVOLUTION

A WEEKLY SERIES ON PHILOSOPHY (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 "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, 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 pronational 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. way to conclude and summar- bourgeoisie, distinguishing it ize this section is to quote at from all former ruling classes, length Engels' famous verdict that there is a turning point in on the politics of German its development after which capitalism, some of the most every further increase in its prophetic words ever written: means of power, that is in the first place every increase of 'The misfortune of the Ger- its capital, only tends to make man bourgeoisie is that in the it more and more incapable of favourite German manner it ruling politically.

arrived too late. The period of its ascendancy occurs at a time •"Behind the big bourgeois when the bourgeoisie of the stand the proletarians." To the extent that the bourgeoisie develops its industry, its comIt is a peculiarity of the merce and its means of com• To the extent that the bourgeoisie the same extent it also proa proletariat. And at a certain point... it begins to notice that this, its proletarian double. is outgrowing it. From that moment it loses the power for exclusive political domination; it looks around for allies with whom it shares... or to whom it cedes its whole domination munication, to the same extent it also produces the proletariat. And at a certain point—which need not appear everywhere at the same time or at the same stage of development - it begins to notice that this, its proletarian double, is outgrowing it. From that moment on, it loses the power for exclusive political domination; it looks round for allies with whom it shares its domination, or to whom it cedes its whole domination, as circumstances may demand.

In Germany this turning point came for the bourgeoisie as early as 1848. And actually the German bourgeoisie was frightened not so much by the German as by the French proletariat. The June battle in Paris, in 1848, showed the bourgeoisie what it had to expect; the German proletariat was just restless enough to make it clear that the seed of the same harvest had been sown in German soil also; and AND CLASS from that day on the edge was taken off all bourgeois political action. The bourgeoisie looked round for allies, bargained itself away to them regardless of price — and even today it is not a step further forward.' The consequence, as Engels noted four years • later in amending the same 'prefatory note' to his 'The Peasant War in Germany', was this:

it has been the pecuof Prussia to complete its bourgeois revolution, begun in 1803 to 1813 and advanced further in 1848, in the peasant form of Bonapartism at the end of this century, 19 At this. point, Engels cites his own earlier remarks in 'The Housing Question', which adequately refute any suggestion that for Marxist theory the governing personnel are idencal with the ruling class:

'But both in the old absolute monarchy and in the modern Bonapartist monarchy, the real governing power lies in the hands of a special caste of army officers and state officials. In Prussia this caste is supplemented partly from its own ranks, partly from the lesser aristocracy owning the (lIbid, p. 544.)

(Marx and Engels 'Sele Works' Vol II pp. 537-538 PART FIFTEEN entailed estates, more rarely the higher aristocracy and least of all from the bourgeoisie.

The independence of this caste, which appears to occupy a position outside and, so to speak, above society, gives the state the semblance of independence in relation to society."20 (Also important in this context are the articles by Marx on the political parties and government in England, in which he demonstrates the way in which the English bourbeoisie accepts the aristocratic landed families as the legitimate occupants of government office [cited in Bottomore and Rubel, 'Karl Marx, Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, pp. 191200].)

Engels even remarked in one of his letters that he /was coming round to the conclusion that 'the bourgeoisie has not the™ stuff in it for ruling directly itself'; so far was he from a mechanical theory of ruling class and state power. In England the bourgeoisie would pay the oligarchy to do the work, but elsewhere 'a Bonapartist semi-dictatorship is the normal form'. (Letter to Marx, April 13, 1866)

Abstract Marx and Engels recognized that parliamentary democracy, with its highly generalized and abstract notion of the citizen's rights, is the political equivalent of the bourgeois everyday economic order (not of its basic production relations), and therefore the ideology capitalism's most consistent political representatives in the period of its growth and positive contribution to progress.

But at the same time they devoted more attention to the class struggle produced by the production relations, whose intensity and whose dialectic rudely disrupted all possibility of the attainment of the bourgeois political ideal except in rare and transitory circumstances.

1848 was a watershed made by the praotical class struggle against all existing political 'principles'. This historical change was reflected scientifically only in that theory which begins from the struggle of classes rooted in property in means of production, Marxism. The class actions of 1848 thus did not only 'confirm' a theory; they enriched and advanced it, and made it possible for it to go on to grasp the actually changed situation produced by these actions.

Corpses

These 'theoretical' conclusions are again not separate from political ones. Once grasped, they make possible a revolutionary strategy which goes beyond all the varieties of radicalism, including those 'socialist' varieties which declare as their aim the unity of all true 'democrats' around the working class.

What 1848 showed was that, the greater the political independence and strength of the working class, the more imperative the turn of the bourgeoisie and those tied to it to anti - democracy, to counter-revolution.

The history of the socialist movement is littered with the political corpses of those who rejected this lesson, and tailored their programme to what suited the 'democrats', i.e. the petty bourgeoisie. The disasters attendant on this abandonment of the political independence of the working class were most brutally demonstrated in the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

(2oIbid,