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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, by Karl Marx
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
+
+Author: Karl Marx
+
+Translator: Daniel de Leon
+
+Release Date: June, 1998 [eBook #1346]
+[Most recently updated: April 19, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE ***
+
+
+
+
+The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
+
+by Karl Marx
+
+
+Contents
+
+ Translator’s Preface
+ I.
+ II.
+ III.
+ IV.
+ V.
+ VI.
+ VII.
+
+
+
+
+Translator’s Preface
+
+
+“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” is one of Karl Marx’ most
+profound and most brilliant monographs. It may be considered the best
+work extant on the philosophy of history, with an eye especially upon
+the history of the Movement of the Proletariat, together with the
+bourgeois and other manifestations that accompany the same, and the
+tactics that such conditions dictate.
+
+The recent populist uprising; the more recent “Debs Movement”; the
+thousand and one utopian and chimerical notions that are flaring up;
+the capitalist maneuvers; the hopeless, helpless grasping after straws,
+that characterize the conduct of the bulk of the working class; all of
+these, together with the empty-headed, ominous figures that are
+springing into notoriety for a time and have their day, mark the
+present period of the Labor Movement in the nation a critical one. The
+best information acquirable, the best mental training obtainable are
+requisite to steer through the existing chaos that the death-tainted
+social system of today creates all around us. To aid in this needed
+information and mental training, this instructive work is now made
+accessible to English readers, and is commended to the serious study of
+the serious.
+
+The teachings contained in this work are hung on an episode in recent
+French history. With some this fact may detract of its value. A
+pedantic, supercilious notion is extensively abroad among us that we
+are an “Anglo Saxon” nation; and an equally pedantic, supercilious
+habit causes many to look to England for inspiration, as from a racial
+birthplace. Nevertheless, for weal or for woe, there is no such thing
+extant as “Anglo-Saxon”—of all nations, said to be “Anglo-Saxon,” in
+the United States least. What we still have from England, much as
+appearances may seem to point the other way, is not of our
+bone-and-marrow, so to speak, but rather partakes of the nature of
+“importations.” We are no more English on account of them than we are
+Chinese because we all drink tea.
+
+Of all European nations, France is the on to which we come nearest.
+Besides its republican form of government—the directness of its
+history, the unity of its actions, the sharpness that marks its
+internal development, are all characteristics that find their parallel
+her best, and vice versa. In all essentials the study of modern French
+history, particularly when sketched by such a master hand as Marx’, is
+the most valuable one for the acquisition of that historic, social and
+biologic insight that our country stands particularly in need of, and
+that will be inestimable during the approaching critical days.
+
+For the assistance of those who, unfamiliar with the history of France,
+may be confused by some of the terms used by Marx, the following
+explanations may prove aidful:
+
+On the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9th), the post-revolutionary development of
+affairs in France enabled the first Napoleon to take a step that led
+with inevitable certainty to the imperial throne. The circumstance that
+fifty and odd years later similar events aided his nephew, Louis
+Bonaparte, to take a similar step with a similar result, gives the name
+to this work—“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.”
+
+As to the other terms and allusions that occur, the following sketch
+will suffice:
+
+Upon the overthrow of the first Napoleon came the restoration of the
+Bourbon throne (Louis XVIII, succeeded by Charles X). In July, 1830, an
+uprising of the upper tier of the bourgeoisie, or capitalist class—the
+aristocracy of finance—overthrew the Bourbon throne, or landed
+aristocracy, and set up the throne of Orleans, a younger branch of the
+house of Bourbon, with Louis Philippe as king. From the month in which
+this revolution occurred, Louis Philippe’s monarchy is called the “July
+Monarchy.” In February, 1848, a revolt of a lower tier of the
+capitalist class—the industrial bourgeoisie—against the aristocracy of
+finance, in turn dethroned Louis Philippe. The affair, also named from
+the month in which it took place, is the “February Revolution”. “The
+Eighteenth Brumaire” starts with that event.
+
+Despite the inapplicableness to our affairs of the political names and
+political leadership herein described, both these names and leaderships
+are to such an extent the products of an economic-social development
+that has here too taken place with even greater sharpens, and they have
+their present or threatened counterparts here so completely, that, by
+the light of this work of Marx’, we are best enabled to understand our
+own history, to know whence we came, and whither we are going and how
+to conduct ourselves.
+
+D.D.L. New York, Sept. 12, 1897
+
+
+
+
+THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+Hegel says somewhere that that great historic facts and personages
+recur twice. He forgot to add: “Once as tragedy, and again as farce.”
+Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the “Mountain” of
+1848-51 for the “Mountain” of 1793-05, the Nephew for the Uncle. The
+identical caricature marks also the conditions under which the second
+edition of the eighteenth Brumaire is issued.
+
+Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole
+cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out
+of such as he finds close at hand. The tradition of all past
+generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living. At the
+very time when men appear engaged in revolutionizing things and
+themselves, in bringing about what never was before, at such very
+epochs of revolutionary crisis do they anxiously conjure up into their
+service the spirits of the past, assume their names, their battle
+cries, their costumes to enact a new historic scene in such
+time-honored disguise and with such borrowed language Thus did Luther
+masquerade as the Apostle Paul; thus did the revolution of 1789-1814
+drape itself alternately as Roman Republic and as Roman Empire; nor did
+the revolution of 1818 know what better to do than to parody at one
+time the year 1789, at another the revolutionary traditions of 1793-95.
+Thus does the beginner, who has acquired a new language, keep on
+translating it back into his own mother tongue; only then has he
+grasped the spirit of the new language and is able freely to express
+himself therewith when he moves in it without recollections of the old,
+and has forgotten in its use his own hereditary tongue.
+
+When these historic configurations of the dead past are closely
+observed a striking difference is forthwith noticeable. Camille
+Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, St. Juste, Napoleon, the heroes as
+well as the parties and the masses of the old French revolution,
+achieved in Roman costumes and with Roman phrases the task of their
+time: the emancipation and the establishment of modern bourgeois
+society. One set knocked to pieces the old feudal groundwork and mowed
+down the feudal heads that had grown upon it; Napoleon brought about,
+within France, the conditions under which alone free competition could
+develop, the partitioned lands be exploited, the nation’s unshackled
+powers of industrial production be utilized; while, beyond the French
+frontier, he swept away everywhere the establishments of feudality, so
+far as requisite, to furnish the bourgeois social system of France with
+fit surroundings of the European continent, and such as were in keeping
+with the times. Once the new social establishment was set on foot, the
+antediluvian giants vanished, and, along with them, the resuscitated
+Roman world—the Brutuses, Gracchi, Publicolas, the Tribunes, the
+Senators, and Caesar himself. In its sober reality, bourgeois society
+had produced its own true interpretation in the Says, Cousins,
+Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants and Guizots; its real generals sat
+behind the office desks; and the mutton-head of Louis XVIII was its
+political lead. Wholly absorbed in the production of wealth and in the
+peaceful fight of competition, this society could no longer understand
+that the ghosts of the days of Rome had watched over its cradle. And
+yet, lacking in heroism as bourgeois society is, it nevertheless had
+stood in need of heroism, of self-sacrifice, of terror, of civil war,
+and of bloody battle fields to bring it into the world. Its gladiators
+found in the stern classic traditions of the Roman republic the ideals
+and the form, the self-deceptions, that they needed in order to conceal
+from themselves the narrow bourgeois substance of their own struggles,
+and to keep their passion up to the height of a great historic tragedy.
+Thus, at another stage of development a century before, did Cromwell
+and the English people draw from the Old Testament the language,
+passions and illusions for their own bourgeois revolution. When the
+real goal was reached, when the remodeling of English society was
+accomplished, Locke supplanted Habakuk.
+
+Accordingly, the reviving of the dead in those revolutions served the
+purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; it
+served the purpose of exaggerating to the imagination the given task,
+not to recoil before its practical solution; it served the purpose of
+rekindling the revolutionary spirit, not to trot out its ghost.
+
+In 1848-51 only the ghost of the old revolution wandered about, from
+Marrast the “Republicain en gaunts jaunes,” [#1 Silk-stocking
+republican] who disguised himself in old Bailly, down to the
+adventurer, who hid his repulsively trivial features under the iron
+death mask of Napoleon. A whole people, that imagines it has imparted
+to itself accelerated powers of motion through a revolution, suddenly
+finds itself transferred back to a dead epoch, and, lest there be any
+mistake possible on this head, the old dates turn up again; the old
+calendars; the old names; the old edicts, which long since had sunk to
+the level of the antiquarian’s learning; even the old bailiffs, who had
+long seemed mouldering with decay. The nation takes on the appearance
+of that crazy Englishman in Bedlam, who imagines he is living in the
+days of the Pharaohs, and daily laments the hard work that he must do
+in the Ethiopian mines as gold digger, immured in a subterranean
+prison, with a dim lamp fastened on his head, behind him the slave
+overseer with a long whip, and, at the mouths of the mine a mob of
+barbarous camp servants who understand neither the convicts in the
+mines nor one another, because they do not speak a common language.
+“And all this,” cries the crazy Englishman, “is demanded of me, the
+free-born Englishman, in order to make gold for old Pharaoh.” “In order
+to pay off the debts of the Bonaparte family”—sobs the French nation.
+The Englishman, so long as he was in his senses, could not rid himself
+of the rooted thought making gold. The Frenchmen, so long as they were
+busy with a revolution, could not rid then selves of the Napoleonic
+memory, as the election of December 10th proved. They longed to escape
+from the dangers of revolution back to the flesh pots of Egypt; the 2d
+of December, 1851 was the answer. They have not merely the character of
+the old Napoleon, but the old Napoleon himself—caricatured as he needs
+must appear in the middle of the nineteenth century.
+
+The social revolution of the nineteenth century can not draw its poetry
+from the past, it can draw that only from the future. It cannot start
+upon its work before it has stricken off all superstition concerning
+the past. Former revolutions require historic reminiscences in order to
+intoxicate themselves with their own issues. The revolution of the
+nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to reach
+its issue. With the former, the phrase surpasses the substance; with
+this one, the substance surpasses the phrase.
+
+The February revolution was a surprisal; old society was taken
+unawares; and the people proclaimed this political stroke a great
+historic act whereby the new era was opened. On the 2d of December, the
+February revolution is jockeyed by the trick of a false player, and
+what seems to be overthrown is no longer the monarchy, but the liberal
+concessions which had been wrung from it by centuries of struggles.
+Instead of society itself having conquered a new point, only the State
+appears to have returned to its oldest form, to the simply brazen rule
+of the sword and the club. Thus, upon the “coup de main” of February,
+1848, comes the response of the “coup de tete” December, 1851. So won,
+so lost. Meanwhile, the interval did not go by unutilized. During the
+years 1848-1851, French society retrieved in abbreviated, because
+revolutionary, method the lessons and teachings, which—if it was to be
+more than a disturbance of the surface—should have preceded the
+February revolution, had it developed in regular order, by rule, so to
+say. Now French society seems to have receded behind its point of
+departure; in fact, however, it was compelled to first produce its own
+revolutionary point of departure, the situation, circumstances,
+conditions, under which alone the modern revolution is in earnest.
+
+Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, rush
+onward rapidly from success to success, their stage effects outbid one
+another, men and things seem to be set in flaming brilliants, ecstasy
+is the prevailing spirit; but they are short-lived, they reach their
+climax speedily, then society relapses into a long fit of nervous
+reaction before it learns how to appropriate the fruits of its period
+of feverish excitement. Proletarian revolutions, on the contrary, such
+as those of the nineteenth century, criticize themselves constantly;
+constantly interrupt themselves in their own course; come back to what
+seems to have been accomplished, in order to start over anew; scorn
+with cruel thoroughness the half measures, weaknesses and meannesses of
+their first attempts; seem to throw down their adversary only in order
+to enable him to draw fresh strength from the earth, and again, to rise
+up against them in more gigantic stature; constantly recoil in fear
+before the undefined monster magnitude of their own objects—until
+finally that situation is created which renders all retreat impossible,
+and the conditions themselves cry out:
+
+“Hic Rhodus, hic salta!”
+[#2 Here is Rhodes, leap here! An allusion to Aesop’s Fables.]
+
+
+Every observer of average intelligence; even if he failed to follow
+step by step the course of French development, must have anticipated
+that an unheard of fiasco was in store for the revolution. It was
+enough to hear the self-satisfied yelpings of victory wherewith the
+Messieurs Democrats mutually congratulated one another upon the pardons
+of May 2d, 1852. Indeed, May 2d had become a fixed idea in their heads;
+it had become a dogma with them—something like the day on which Christ
+was to reappear and the Millennium to begin had formed in the heads of
+the Chiliasts. Weakness had, as it ever does, taken refuge in the
+wonderful; it believed the enemy was overcome if, in its imagination,
+it hocus-pocused him away; and it lost all sense of the present in the
+imaginary apotheosis of the future, that was at hand, and of the deeds,
+that it had “in petto,” but which it did not yet want to bring to the
+scratch. The heroes, who ever seek to refute their established
+incompetence by mutually bestowing their sympathy upon one another and
+by pulling together, had packed their satchels, taken their laurels in
+advance payments and were just engaged in the work of getting
+discounted “in partibus,” on the stock exchange, the republics for
+which, in the silence of their unassuming dispositions, they had
+carefully organized the government personnel. The 2d of December struck
+them like a bolt from a clear sky; and the peoples, who, in periods of
+timid despondency, gladly allow their hidden fears to be drowned by the
+loudest screamers, will perhaps have become convinced that the days are
+gone by when the cackling of geese could save the Capitol.
+
+The constitution, the national assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue
+and the red republicans, the heroes from Africa, the thunder from the
+tribune, the flash-lightnings from the daily press, the whole
+literature, the political names and the intellectual celebrities, the
+civil and the criminal law, the “liberte’, egalite’, fraternite’,”
+together with the 2d of May 1852—all vanished like a phantasmagoria
+before the ban of one man, whom his enemies themselves do not pronounce
+an adept at witchcraft. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only
+for a moment, to the end that, before the eyes of the whole world, it
+should make its own testament with its own hands, and, in the name of
+the people, declare: “All that exists deserves to perish.”
+
+It is not enough to say, as the Frenchmen do, that their nation was
+taken by surprise. A nation, no more than a woman, is excused for the
+unguarded hour when the first adventurer who comes along can do
+violence to her. The riddle is not solved by such shifts, it is only
+formulated in other words. There remains to be explained how a nation
+of thirty-six millions can be surprised by three swindlers, and taken
+to prison without resistance.
+
+Let us recapitulate in general outlines the phases which the French
+revolution of February 24th, 1848, to December, 1851, ran through.
+
+Three main periods are unmistakable:
+
+First—The February period;
+
+Second—The period of constituting the republic, or of the constitutive
+national assembly (May 4, 1848, to May 29th, 1849);
+
+Third—The period of the constitutional republic, or of the legislative
+national assembly (May 29, 1849, to December 2, 1851).
+
+The first period, from February 24, or the downfall of Louis Philippe,
+to May 4, 1848, the date of the assembling of the constitutive
+assembly—the February period proper—may be designated as the prologue
+of the revolution. It officially expressed its own character in this,
+that the government which it improvised declared itself “provisional;”
+and, like the government, everything that was broached, attempted, or
+uttered, pronounced itself provisional. Nobody and nothing dared to
+assume the right of permanent existence and of an actual fact. All the
+elements that had prepared or determined the revolution—dynastic
+opposition, republican bourgeoisie, democratic-republican small
+traders’ class, social-democratic labor element—all found
+“provisionally” their place in the February government.
+
+It could not be otherwise. The February days contemplated originally a
+reform of the suffrage laws, whereby the area of the politically
+privileged among the property-holding class was to be extended, while
+the exclusive rule of the aristocracy of finance was to be overthrown.
+When however, it came to a real conflict, when the people mounted the
+barricades, when the National Guard stood passive, when the army
+offered no serious resistance, and the kingdom ran away, then the
+republic seemed self-understood. Each party interpreted it in its own
+sense. Won, arms in hand, by the proletariat, they put upon it the
+stamp of their own class, and proclaimed the social republic. Thus the
+general purpose of modern revolutions was indicated, a purpose,
+however, that stood in most singular contradiction to every thing that,
+with the material at hand, with the stage of enlightenment that the
+masses had reached, and under existing circumstances and conditions,
+could be immediately used. On the other hand, the claims of all the
+other elements, that had cooperated in the revolution of February, were
+recognized by the lion’s share that they received in the government.
+Hence, in no period do we find a more motley mixture of high-sounding
+phrases together with actual doubt and helplessness; of more
+enthusiastic reform aspirations, together with a more slavish adherence
+to the old routine; more seeming harmony permeating the whole of
+society together with a deeper alienation of its several elements.
+While the Parisian proletariat was still gloating over the sight of the
+great perspective that had disclosed itself to their view, and was
+indulging in seriously meant discussions over the social problems, the
+old powers of society had groomed themselves, had gathered together,
+had deliberated and found an unexpected support in the mass of the
+nation—the peasants and small traders—all of whom threw themselves on a
+sudden upon the political stage, after the barriers of the July
+monarchy had fallen down.
+
+The second period, from May 4, 1848, to the end of May, 1849, is the
+period of the constitution, of the founding of the bourgeois republic
+immediately after the February days, not only was the dynastic
+opposition surprised by the republicans, and the republicans by the
+Socialists, but all France was surprised by Paris. The national
+assembly, that met on May 4, 1848, to frame a constitution, was the
+outcome of the national elections; it represented the nation. It was a
+living protest against the assumption of the February days, and it was
+intended to bring the results of the revolution back to the bourgeois
+measure. In vain did the proletariat of Paris, which forthwith
+understood the character of this national assembly, endeavor, a few
+days after its meeting; on May 15, to deny its existence by force, to
+dissolve it, to disperse the organic apparition, in which the reacting
+spirit of the nation was threatening them, and thus reduce it back to
+its separate component parts. As is known, the 15th of May had no other
+result than that of removing Blanqui and his associates, i.e. the real
+leaders of the proletarian party, from the public scene for the whole
+period of the cycle which we are here considering.
+
+Upon the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe, only the bourgeois
+republic could follow; that is to say, a limited portion of the
+bourgeoisie having ruled under the name of the king, now the whole
+bourgeoisie was to rule under the name of the people. The demands of
+the Parisian proletariat are utopian tom-fooleries that have to be done
+away with. To this declaration of the constitutional national assembly,
+the Paris proletariat answers with the June insurrection, the most
+colossal event in the history of European civil wars. The bourgeois
+republic won. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the
+industrial bourgeoisie; the middle class; the small traders’ class; the
+army; the slums, organized as Guarde Mobile; the intellectual
+celebrities, the parsons’ class, and the rural population. On the side
+of the Parisian proletariat stood none but itself. Over 3,000
+insurgents were massacred, after the victory 15,000 were transported
+without trial. With this defeat, the proletariat steps to the
+background on the revolutionary stage. It always seeks to crowd
+forward, so soon as the movement seems to acquire new impetus, but with
+ever weaker effort and ever smaller results; So soon as any of the
+above lying layers of society gets into revolutionary fermentation, it
+enters into alliance therewith and thus shares all the defeats which
+the several parties successively suffer. But these succeeding blows
+become ever weaker the more generally they are distributed over the
+whole surface of society. The more important leaders of the
+Proletariat, in its councils, and the press, fall one after another
+victims of the courts, and ever more questionable figures step to the
+front. It partly throws itself it upon doctrinaire experiments,
+“co-operative banking” and “labor exchange” schemes; in other words,
+movements, in which it goes into movements in which it gives up the
+task of revolutionizing the old world with its own large collective
+weapons and on the contrary, seeks to bring about its emancipation,
+behind the back of society, in private ways, within the narrow bounds
+of its own class conditions, and, consequently, inevitably fails. The
+proletariat seems to be able neither to find again the revolutionary
+magnitude within itself nor to draw new energy from the newly formed
+alliances until all the classes, with whom it contended in June, shall
+lie prostrate along with itself. But in all these defeats, the
+proletariat succumbs at least with the honor that attaches to great
+historic struggles; not France alone, all Europe trembles before the
+June earthquake, while the successive defeats inflicted upon the higher
+classes are bought so easily that they need the brazen exaggeration of
+the victorious party itself to be at all able to pass muster as an
+event; and these defeats become more disgraceful the further removed
+the defeated party stands from the proletariat.
+
+True enough, the defeat of the June insurgents prepared, leveled the
+ground, upon which the bourgeois republic could be founded and erected;
+but it, at the same time, showed that there are in Europe other issues
+besides that of “Republic or Monarchy.” It revealed the fact that here
+the Bourgeois Republic meant the unbridled despotism of one class over
+another. It proved that, with nations enjoying an older civilization,
+having developed class distinctions, modern conditions of production,
+an intellectual consciousness, wherein all traditions of old have been
+dissolved through the work of centuries, that with such countries the
+republic means only the political revolutionary form of bourgeois
+society, not its conservative form of existence, as is the case in the
+United States of America, where, true enough, the classes already
+exist, but have not yet acquired permanent character, are in constant
+flux and reflux, constantly changing their elements and yielding them
+up to one another where the modern means of production, instead of
+coinciding with a stagnant population, rather compensate for the
+relative scarcity of heads and hands; and, finally, where the
+feverishly youthful life of material production, which has to
+appropriate a new world to itself, has so far left neither time nor
+opportunity to abolish the illusions of old. [#3 This was written at
+the beginning of 1852.]
+
+All classes and parties joined hands in the June days in a “Party of
+Order” against the class of the proletariat, which was designated as
+the “Party of Anarchy,” of Socialism, of Communism. They claimed to
+have “saved” society against the “enemies of society.” They gave out
+the slogans of the old social order—“Property, Family, Religion,
+Order”—as the passwords for their army, and cried out to the
+counter-revolutionary crusaders: “In this sign thou wilt conquer!” From
+that moment on, so soon as any of the numerous parties, which had
+marshaled themselves under this sign against the June insurgents,
+tries, in turn, to take the revolutionary field in the interest of its
+own class, it goes down in its turn before the cry: “Property, Family,
+Religion, Order.” Thus it happens that “society is saved” as often as
+the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more
+exclusive interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for
+the most simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary
+liberalism, for the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest
+democracy, is forthwith punished as an “assault upon society,” and is
+branded as “Socialism.” Finally the High Priests of “Religion and
+Order” themselves are kicked off their tripods; are fetched out of
+their beds in the dark; hurried into patrol wagons, thrust into jail or
+sent into exile; their temple is razed to the ground, their mouths are
+sealed, their pen is broken, their law torn to pieces in the name of
+Religion, of Family, of Property, and of Order. Bourgeois, fanatic on
+the point of “Order,” are shot down on their own balconies by drunken
+soldiers, forfeit their family property, and their houses are bombarded
+for pastime—all in the name of Property, of Family, of Religion, and of
+Order. Finally, the refuse of bourgeois society constitutes the “holy
+phalanx of Order,” and the hero Crapulinsky makes his entry into the
+Tuileries as the “Savior of Society.”
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Let us resume the thread of events.
+
+The history of the Constitutional National Assembly from the June days
+on, is the history of the supremacy and dissolution of the republican
+bourgeois party, the party which is known under several names of
+“Tricolor Republican,” “True Republican,” “Political Republican,”
+“Formal Republican,” etc., etc. Under the bourgeois monarchy of Louis
+Philippe, this party had constituted the Official Republican
+Opposition, and consequently had been a recognized element in the then
+political world. It had its representatives in the Chambers, and
+commanded considerable influence in the press. Its Parisian organ, the
+“National,” passed, in its way, for as respectable a paper as the
+“Journal des Debats.” This position in the constitutional monarchy
+corresponded to its character. The party was not a fraction of the
+bourgeoisie, held together by great and common interests, and marked by
+special business requirements. It was a coterie of bourgeois with
+republican ideas—writers, lawyers, officers and civil employees, whose
+influence rested upon the personal antipathies of the country for Louis
+Philippe, upon reminiscences of the old Republic, upon the republican
+faith of a number of enthusiasts, and, above all, upon the spirit of
+French patriotism, whose hatred of the treaties of Vienna and of the
+alliance with England kept them perpetually on the alert. The
+“National” owed a large portion of its following under Louis Philippe
+to this covert imperialism, that, later under the republic, could stand
+up against it as a deadly competitor in the person of Louis Bonaparte.
+The paper fought the aristocracy of finance just the same as did the
+rest of the bourgeois opposition. The polemic against the budget, which
+in France, was closely connected with the opposition to the aristocracy
+of finance, furnished too cheap a popularity and too rich a material
+for Puritanical leading articles, not to be exploited. The industrial
+bourgeoisie was thankful to it for its servile defense of the French
+tariff system, which, however, the paper had taken up, more out of
+patriotic than economic reasons; the whole bourgeois class was thankful
+to it for its vicious denunciations of Communism and Socialism. For the
+rest, the party of the “National” was purely republican, i.e. it
+demanded a republican instead of a monarchic form of bourgeois
+government; above all, it demanded for the bourgeoisie the lion’s share
+of the government. As to how this transformation was to be
+accomplished, the party was far from being clear. What, however, was
+clear as day to it and was openly declared at the reform banquets
+during the last days of Louis Philippe’s reign, was its unpopularity
+with the democratic middle class, especially with the revolutionary
+proletariat. These pure republicans, as pure republicans go, were at
+first on the very point of contenting themselves with the regency of
+the Duchess of Orleans, when the February revolution broke out, and
+when it gave their best known representatives a place in the
+provisional government. Of course, they enjoyed from the start the
+confidence of the bourgeoisie and of the majority of the Constitutional
+National Assembly. The Socialist elements of the Provisional Government
+were promptly excluded from the Executive Committee which the Assembly
+had elected upon its convening, and the party of the “National”
+subsequently utilized the outbreak of the June insurrection to dismiss
+this Executive Committee also, and thus rid itself of its nearest
+rivals—the small traders’ class or democratic republicans
+(Ledru-Rollin, etc.). Cavaignac, the General of the bourgeois
+republican party, who commanded at the battle of June, stepped into the
+place of the Executive Committee with a sort of dictatorial power.
+Marrast, former editor-in-chief of the “National”, became permanent
+President of the Constitutional National Assembly, and the
+Secretaryship of State, together with all the other important posts,
+devolved upon the pure republicans.
+
+The republican bourgeois party, which since long had looked upon itself
+as the legitimate heir of the July monarchy, thus found itself
+surpassed in its own ideal; but it came to power, not as it had dreamed
+under Louis Philippe, through a liberal revolt of the bourgeoisie
+against the throne, but through a grape-shot-and-canistered mutiny of
+the proletariat against Capital. That which it imagined to be the most
+revolutionary, came about as the most counter-revolutionary event. The
+fruit fell into its lap, but it fell from the Tree of Knowledge, not
+from the Tree of Life.
+
+The exclusive power of the bourgeois republic lasted only from June 24
+to the 10th of December, 1848. It is summed up in the framing of a
+republican constitution and in the state of siege of Paris.
+
+The new Constitution was in substance only a republicanized edition of
+the constitutional charter of 1830. The limited suffrage of the July
+monarchy, which excluded even a large portion of the bourgeoisie from
+political power, was irreconcilable with the existence of the bourgeois
+republic. The February revolution had forthwith proclaimed direct and
+universal suffrage in place of the old law. The bourgeois republic
+could not annul this act. They had to content themselves with tacking
+to it the limitation a six months’ residence. The old organization of
+the administrative law, of municipal government, of court procedures of
+the army, etc., remained untouched, or, where the constitution did
+change them, the change affected their index, not their subject; their
+name, not their substance.
+
+The inevitable “General Staff” of the “freedoms” of 1848—personal
+freedom, freedom of the press, of speech, of association and of
+assemblage, freedom of instruction, of religion, etc.—received a
+constitutional uniform that rendered them invulnerable. Each of these
+freedoms is proclaimed the absolute right of the French citizen, but
+always with the gloss that it is unlimited in so far only as it be not
+curtailed by the “equal rights of others,” and by the “public safety,”
+or by the “laws,” which are intended to effect this harmony. For
+instance:
+
+“Citizens have the right of association, of peaceful and unarmed
+assemblage, of petitioning, and of expressing their opinions through
+the press or otherwise. The enjoyment of these rights has no limitation
+other than the equal rights of others and the public safety.” (Chap.
+II. of the French Constitution, Section 8.)
+
+“Education is free. The freedom of education shall be enjoyed under the
+conditions provided by law, and under the supervision of the State.”
+(Section 9.)
+
+“The domicile of the citizen is inviolable, except under the forms
+prescribed by law.” (Chap. I., Section 3), etc., etc.
+
+The Constitution, it will be noticed, constantly alludes to future
+organic laws, that are to carry out the glosses, and are intended to
+regulate the enjoyment of these unabridged freedoms, to the end that
+they collide neither with one another nor with the public safety. Later
+on, the organic laws are called into existence by the “Friends of
+Order,” and all the above named freedoms are so regulated that, in
+their enjoyment, the bourgeoisie encounter no opposition from the like
+rights of the other classes. Wherever the bourgeoisie wholly
+interdicted these rights to “others,” or allowed them their enjoyment
+under conditions that were but so many police snares, it was always
+done only in the interest of the “public safety,” i. e., of the
+bourgeoisie, as required by the Constitution.
+
+Hence it comes that both sides—the “Friends of Order,” who abolished
+all those freedoms, as, well as the democrats, who had demanded them
+all—appeal with full right to the Constitution: Each paragraph of the
+Constitution contains its own antithesis, its own Upper and Lower
+House—freedom as a generalization, the abolition of freedom as a
+specification. Accordingly, so long as the name of freedom was
+respected, and only its real enforcement was prevented in a legal way,
+of course the constitutional existence of freedom remained uninjured,
+untouched, however completely its common existence might be
+extinguished.
+
+This Constitution, so ingeniously made invulnerable, was, however, like
+Achilles, vulnerable at one point: not in its heel, but in its head, or
+rather, in the two heads into which it ran out—the Legislative
+Assembly, on the one hand, and the President on the other. Run through
+the Constitution and it will be found that only those paragraphs
+wherein the relation of the President to the Legislative Assembly is
+defined, are absolute, positive, uncontradictory, undistortable.
+
+Here the bourgeois republicans were concerned in securing their own
+position. Articles 45-70 of the Constitution are so framed that the
+National Assembly can constitutionally remove the President, but the
+President can set aside the National Assembly only unconstitutionally,
+he can set it aside only by setting aside the Constitution itself.
+Accordingly, by these provisions, the National Assembly challenges its
+own violent destruction. It not only consecrates, like the character of
+1830, the division of powers, but it extends this feature to an
+unbearably contradictory extreme. The “play of constitutional powers,”
+as Guizot styled the clapper-clawings between the legislative and the
+executive powers, plays permanent “vabanque” in the Constitution of
+1848. On the one side, 750 representatives of the people, elected and
+qualified for re-election by universal suffrage, who constitute an
+uncontrollable, indissoluble, indivisible National Assembly, a National
+Assembly that enjoys legislative omnipotence, that decides in the last
+instance over war, peace and commercial treaties, that alone has the
+power to grant amnesties, and that, through its perpetuity, continually
+maintains the foreground on the stage; on the other, a President, clad
+with all the attributes of royalty, with the right to appoint and
+remove his ministers independently from the national assembly, holding
+in his hands all the means of executive power, the dispenser of all
+posts, and thereby the arbiter of at least one and a half million
+existences in France, so many being dependent upon the 500,000 civil
+employees and upon the officers of all grades. He has the whole armed
+power behind him. He enjoys the privilege of granting pardons to
+individual criminals; suspending the National Guards; of removing with
+the consent of the Council of State the general, cantonal and municipal
+Councilmen, elected by the citizens themselves. The initiative and
+direction of all negotiations with foreign countries are reserved to
+him. While the Assembly itself is constantly acting upon the stage, and
+is exposed to the critically vulgar light of day, he leads a hidden
+life in the Elysian fields, only with Article 45 of the Constitution
+before his eyes and in his heart daily calling out to him, “Frere, il
+faut mourir!” [#1 Brother, you must die!] Your power expires on the
+second Sunday of the beautiful month of May, in the fourth year after
+your election! The glory is then at an end; the play is not performed
+twice; and, if you have any debts, see to it betimes that you pay them
+off with the 600,000 francs that the Constitution has set aside for
+you, unless, perchance, you should prefer traveling to Clichy [#2 The
+debtors’ prison.] on the second Monday of the beautiful month of May.
+
+While the Constitution thus clothes the President with actual power, it
+seeks to secure the moral power to the National Assembly. Apart from
+the circumstance that it is impossible to create a moral power through
+legislative paragraphs, the Constitution again neutralizes itself in
+that it causes the President to be chosen by all the Frenchmen through
+direct suffrage. While the votes of France are splintered to pieces
+upon the 750 members of the National Assembly they are here, on the
+contrary, concentrated upon one individual. While each separate
+Representative represents only this or that party, this or that city,
+this or that dunghill, or possibly only the necessity of electing some
+one Seven-hundred-and-fiftieth or other, with whom neither the issue
+nor the man is closely considered, that one, the President, on the
+contrary, is the elect of the nation, and the act of his election is
+the trump card, that, the sovereign people plays out once every four
+years. The elected National Assembly stands in a metaphysical, but the
+elected President in a personal, relation to the nation. True enough,
+the National Assembly presents in its several Representatives the
+various sides of the national spirit, but, in the President, this
+spirit is incarnated. As against the National Assembly, the President
+possesses a sort of divine right, he is by the grace of the people.
+
+Thetis, the sea-goddess, had prophesied to Achilles that he would die
+in the bloom of youth. The Constitution, which had its weak spot, like
+Achilles, had also, like Achilles, the presentiment that it would
+depart by premature death. It was enough for the pure republicans,
+engaged at the work of framing a constitution, to cast a glance from
+the misty heights of their ideal republic down upon the profane world
+in order to realize how the arrogance of the royalists, of the
+Bonapartists, of the democrats, of the Communists, rose daily, together
+with their own discredit, and in the same measure as they approached
+the completion of their legislative work of art, without Thetis having
+for this purpose to leave the sea and impart the secret to them. They
+ought to outwit fate by means of constitutional artifice, through
+Section 111 of the Constitution, according to which every motion to
+revise the Constitution had to be discussed three successive times
+between each of which a full month was to elapse and required at least
+a three-fourths majority, with the additional proviso that not less
+than 500 members of the National Assembly voted. They thereby only made
+the impotent attempt, still to exercise as a parliamentary minority, to
+which in their mind’s eye they prophetically saw themselves reduced, a
+power, that, at this very time, when they still disposed over the
+parliamentary majority and over all the machinery of government, was
+daily slipping from their weak hands.
+
+Finally, the Constitution entrusts itself for safe keeping, in a
+melodramatic paragraph, “to the watchfulness and patriotism of the
+whole French people, and of each individual Frenchman,” after having
+just before, in another paragraph entrusted the “watchful” and the
+“patriotic” themselves to the tender, inquisitorial attention of the
+High Court, instituted by itself.
+
+That was the Constitution of 1848, which on, the 2d of December, 1851,
+was not overthrown by one head, but tumbled down at the touch of a mere
+hat; though, true enough, that hat was a three-cornered Napoleon hat.
+
+While the bourgeois’ republicans were engaged in the Assembly with the
+work of splicing this Constitution, of discussing and voting,
+Cavaignac, on the outside, maintained the state of siege of Paris. The
+state of siege of Paris was the midwife of the constitutional assembly,
+during its republican pains of travail. When the Constitution is later
+on swept off the earth by the bayonet, it should not be forgotten that
+it was by the bayonet, likewise—and the bayonet turned against the
+people, at that—that it had to be protected in its mother’s womb, and
+that by the bayonet it had to be planted on earth. The ancestors of
+these “honest republicans” had caused their symbol, the tricolor, to
+make the tour of Europe. These, in their turn also made a discovery,
+which all of itself, found its way over the whole continent, but, with
+ever renewed love, came back to France, until, by this time, if had
+acquired the right of citizenship in one-half of her Departments—the
+state of siege. A wondrous discovery this was, periodically applied at
+each succeeding crisis in the course of the French revolution. But the
+barrack and the bivouac, thus periodically laid on the head of French
+society, to compress her brain and reduce her to quiet; the sabre and
+the musket, periodically made to perform the functions of judges and of
+administrators, of guardians and of censors, of police officers and of
+watchmen; the military moustache and the soldier’s jacket, periodically
+heralded as the highest wisdom and guiding stars of society;—were not
+all of these, the barrack and the bivouac, the sabre and the musket,
+the moustache and the soldier’s jacket bound, in the end, to hit upon
+the idea that they might as well save society once for all, by
+proclaiming their own regime as supreme, and relieve bourgeois society
+wholly of the care of ruling itself? The barrack and the bivouac, the
+sabre and the musket, the moustache and the soldier’s jacket were all
+the more bound to hit upon this idea, seeing that they could then also
+expect better cash payment for their increased deserts, while at the
+merely periodic states of siege and the transitory savings of society
+at the behest of this or that bourgeois faction, very little solid
+matter fell to them except some dead and wounded, besides some friendly
+bourgeois grimaces. Should not the military, finally, in and for its
+own interest, play the game of “state of siege,” and simultaneously
+besiege the bourgeois exchanges? Moreover, it must not be forgotten,
+and be it observed in passing, that Col. Bernard, the same President of
+the Military Committee, who, under Cavaignac, helped to deport 15,000
+insurgents without trial, moves at this period again at the head of the
+Military Committees now active in Paris.
+
+Although the honest, the pure republicans built with the state of siege
+the nursery in which the Praetorian guards of December 2, 1851, were to
+be reared, they, on the other hand, deserve praise in that, instead of
+exaggerating the feeling of patriotism, as under Louis Philippe, now;
+they themselves are in command of the national power, they crawl before
+foreign powers; instead of making Italy free, they allow her to be
+reconquered by Austrians and Neapolitans. The election of Louis
+Bonaparte for President on December 10, 1848, put an end to the
+dictatorship of Cavaignac and to the constitutional assembly.
+
+In Article 44 of the Constitution it is said “The President of the
+French Republic must never have lost his status as a French citizen.”
+The first President of the French Republic, L. N. Bonaparte, had not
+only lost his status as a French citizen, had not only been an English
+special constable, but was even a naturalized Swiss citizen.
+
+In the previous chapter I have explained the meaning of the election of
+December 10. I shall not here return to it. Suffice it here to say that
+it was a reaction of the farmers’ class, who had been expected to pay
+the costs of the February revolution, against the other classes of the
+nation: it was a reaction of the country against the city. It met with
+great favor among the soldiers, to whom the republicans of the
+“National” had brought neither fame nor funds; among the great
+bourgeoisie, who hailed Bonaparte as a bridge to the monarchy; and
+among the proletarians and small traders, who hailed him as a scourge
+to Cavaignac. I shall later have occasion to enter closer into the
+relation of the farmers to the French revolution.
+
+The epoch between December 20, 1848, and the dissolution of the
+constitutional assembly in May, 1849, embraces the history of the
+downfall of the bourgeois republicans. After they had founded a
+republic for the bourgeoisie, had driven the revolutionary proletariat
+from the field and had meanwhile silenced the democratic middle class,
+they are themselves shoved aside by the mass of the bourgeoisie who
+justly appropriate this republic as their property. This bourgeois mass
+was Royalist, however. A part thereof, the large landed proprietors,
+had ruled under the restoration, hence, was Legitimist; the other part,
+the aristocrats of finance and the large industrial capitalists, had
+ruled under the July monarchy, hence, was Orleanist. The high
+functionaries of the Army, of the University, of the Church, in the
+civil service, of the Academy and of the press, divided themselves on
+both sides, although in unequal parts. Here, in the bourgeois republic,
+that bore neither the name of Bourbon, nor of Orleans, but the name of
+Capital, they had found the form of government under which they could
+all rule in common. Already the June insurrection had united them all
+into a “Party of Order.” The next thing to do was to remove the
+bourgeois republicans who still held the seats in the National
+Assembly. As brutally as these pure republicans had abused their own
+physical power against the people, so cowardly, low-spirited,
+disheartened, broken, powerless did they yield, now when the issue was
+the maintenance of their own republicanism and their own legislative
+rights against the Executive power and the royalists I need not here
+narrate the shameful history of their dissolution. It was not a
+downfall, it was extinction. Their history is at an end for all time.
+In the period that follows, they figure, whether within or without the
+Assembly, only as memories—memories that seem again to come to life so
+soon as the question is again only the word “Republic,” and as often as
+the revolutionary conflict threatens to sink down to the lowest level.
+In passing, I might observe that the journal which gave to this party
+its name, the “National,” goes over to Socialism during the following
+period.
+
+Before we close this period, we must look back upon the two powers, one
+of destroys the other on December 2, 1851, while, from December 20,
+1848, down to the departure of the constitutional assembly, they live
+marital relations. We mean Louis Bonaparte, on the-one hand, on the
+other, the party of the allied royalists; of Order, and of the large
+bourgeoisie.
+
+At the inauguration of his presidency, Bonaparte forthwith framed a
+ministry out of the party of Order, at whose head he placed Odillon
+Barrot, be it noted, the old leader of the liberal wing of the
+parliamentary bourgeoisie. Mr. Barrot had finally hunted down a seat in
+the ministry, the spook of which had been pursuing him since 1830; and
+what is more, he had the chairmanship in this ministry, although not,
+as he had imagined under Louis Philippe, the promoted leader of the
+parliamentary opposition, but with the commission to kill a parliament,
+and, moreover, as an ally of all his arch enemies, the Jesuits and the
+Legitimists. Finally he leads the bride home, but only after she has
+been prostituted. As to Bonaparte, he seemed to eclipse himself
+completely. The party of Order acted for him.
+
+Immediately at the first session of the ministry the expedition to Rome
+was decided upon, which it was there agreed, was to be carried out
+behind I the back of the National Assembly, and the funds for which, it
+was equally agreed, were to be wrung from the Assembly under false
+pretences. Thus the start was made with a swindle on the National
+Assembly, together with a secret conspiracy with the absolute foreign
+powers against the revolutionary Roman republic. In the same way, and
+with a similar maneuver, did Bonaparte prepare his stroke of December 2
+against the royalist legislature and its constitutional republic. Let
+it not be forgotten that the same party, which, on December 20, 1848,
+constituted Bonaparte’s ministry, constituted also, on December 2,
+1851, the majority of the legislative National Assembly.
+
+In August the constitutive assembly decided not to dissolve until it
+had prepared and promulgated a whole series of organic laws, intended
+to supplement the Constitution. The party of Order proposed to the
+assembly, through Representative Rateau, on January 6, 1849, to let the
+Organic laws go, and rather to order its own dissolution. Not the
+ministry alone, with Mr. Odillon Barrot at its head, but all the
+royalist members of the National Assembly were also at this time
+hectoring to it that its dissolution was necessary for the restoration
+of the public credit, for the consolidation of order, to put an end to
+the existing uncertain and provisional, and establish a definite state
+of things; they claimed that its continued existence hindered the
+effectiveness of the new Government, that it sought to prolong its life
+out of pure malice, and that the country was tired of it. Bonaparte
+took notice of all these invectives hurled at the legislative power, he
+learned them by heart, and, on December 21, 1851, he showed the
+parliamentary royalists that he had learned from them. He repeated
+their own slogans against themselves.
+
+The Barrot ministry and the party of Order went further. They called
+all over France for petitions to the National Assembly in which that
+body was politely requested to disappear. Thus they led the people’s
+unorganic masses to the fray against the National Assembly, i.e., the
+constitutionally organized expression of people itself. They taught
+Bonaparte, to appeal from the parliamentary body to the people.
+Finally, on January 29, 1849, the day arrived when the constitutional
+assembly was to decide about its own dissolution. On that day the body
+found its building occupied by the military; Changarnier, the General
+of the party of Order, in whose hands was joined the supreme command of
+both the National Guards and the regulars, held that day a great
+military review, as though a battle were imminent; and the coalized
+royalists declared threateningly to the constitutional assembly that
+force would be applied if it did not act willingly. It was willing, and
+chaffered only for a very short respite. What else was the 29th of
+January, 1849, than the “coup d’etat” of December 2, 1851, only
+executed by the royalists with Napoleon’s aid against the republican
+National Assembly? These gentlemen did not notice, or did not want to
+notice, that Napoleon utilized the 29th of January, 1849, to cause a
+part of the troops to file before him in front of the Tuileries, and
+that he seized with avidity this very first open exercise of the
+military against the parliamentary power in order to hint at Caligula.
+The allied royalists saw only their own Changarnier.
+
+Another reason that particularly moved the party of Order forcibly to
+shorten the term of the constitutional assembly were the organic laws,
+the laws that were to supplement the Constitution, as, for instance,
+the laws on education, on religion, etc. The allied royalists had every
+interest in framing these laws themselves, and not allowing them to be
+framed by the already suspicious republicans. Among these organic laws,
+there was, however, one on the responsibility of the President of the
+republic. In 1851 the Legislature was just engaged in framing such a
+law when Bonaparte forestalled that political stroke by his own of
+December 2. What all would not the coalized royalists have given in
+their winter parliamentary campaign of 1851, had they but found this
+“Responsibility law” ready made, and framed at that, by the suspicious,
+the vicious republican Assembly!
+
+After, on January 29, 1849, the constitutive assembly had itself broken
+its last weapon, the Barrot ministry and the “Friends of Order”
+harassed it to death, left nothing undone to humiliate it, and wrung
+from its weakness, despairing of itself, laws that cost it the last
+vestige of respect with the public. Bonaparte, occupied with his own
+fixed Napoleonic idea, was audacious enough openly to exploit this
+degradation of the parliamentary power: When the National Assembly, on
+May 8, 1849, passed a vote of censure upon the Ministry on account of
+the occupation of Civita-Vecchia by Oudinot, and ordered that the Roman
+expedition be brought back to its alleged purpose, Bonaparte published
+that same evening in the “Moniteur” a letter to Oudinot, in which he
+congratulated him on his heroic feats, and already, in contrast with
+the quill-pushing parliamentarians, posed as the generous protector of
+the Army. The royalists smiled at this. They took him simply for their
+dupe. Finally, as Marrast, the President of the constitutional
+assembly, believed on a certain occasion the safety of the body to be
+in danger, and, resting on the Constitution, made a requisition upon a
+Colonel, together with his regiment, the Colonel refused obedience,
+took refuge behind the “discipline,” and referred Marrast to
+Changarnier, who scornfully sent him off with the remark that he did
+not like “bayonettes intelligentes.” [#1 Intelligent bayonets] In
+November, 1851, as the coalized royalists wanted to begin the decisive
+struggle with Bonaparte, they sought, by means of their notorious
+“Questors Bill,” to enforce the principle of the right of the President
+of the National Assembly to issue direct requisitions for troops. One
+of their Generals, Leflo, supported the motion. In vain did Changarnier
+vote for it, or did Thiers render homage to the cautious wisdom of the
+late constitutional assembly. The Minister of War, St. Arnaud, answered
+him as Changarnier had answered Marrast—and he did so amidst the
+plaudits of the Mountain.
+
+Thus did the party of Order itself, when as yet it was not the National
+Assembly, when as yet it was only a Ministry, brand the parliamentary
+regime. And yet this party objects vociferously when the 2d of
+December, 1851, banishes that regime from France!
+
+We wish it a happy journey.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+On May 29, 1849, the legislative National Assembly convened. On
+December 2, 1851, it was broken up. This period embraces the term of
+the Constitutional or Parliamentary public.
+
+In the first French revolution, upon the reign of the
+Constitutionalists succeeds that of the Girondins; and upon the reign
+of the Girondins follows that of the Jacobins. Each of these parties in
+succession rests upon its more advanced element. So soon as it has
+carried the revolution far enough not to be able to keep pace with,
+much less march ahead of it, it is shoved aside by its more daring
+allies, who stand behind it, and it is sent to the guillotine. Thus the
+revolution moves along an upward line.
+
+Just the reverse in 1848. The proletarian party appears as an appendage
+to the small traders’ or democratic party; it is betrayed by the latter
+and allowed to fall on April 16, May 15, and in the June days. In its
+turn, the democratic party leans upon the shoulders of the bourgeois
+republicans; barely do the bourgeois republicans believe themselves
+firmly in power, than they shake off these troublesome associates for
+the purpose of themselves leaning upon the shoulders of the party of
+Order. The party of Order draws in its shoulders, lets the bourgeois
+republicans tumble down heels over head, and throws itself upon the
+shoulders of the armed power. Finally, still of the mind that it is
+sustained by the shoulders of the armed power, the party of Order
+notices one fine morning that these shoulders have turned into
+bayonets. Each party kicks backward at those that are pushing forward,
+and leans forward upon those that are crowding backward; no wonder
+that, in this ludicrous posture, each loses its balance, and, after
+having cut the unavoidable grimaces, breaks down amid singular
+somersaults. Accordingly, the revolution moves along a downward line.
+It finds itself in this retreating motion before the last
+February-barricade is cleared away, and the first governmental
+authority of the revolution has been constituted.
+
+The period we now have before us embraces the motliest jumble of crying
+contradictions: constitutionalists, who openly conspire against the
+Constitution; revolutionists, who admittedly are constitutional; a
+National Assembly that wishes to be omnipotent yet remains
+parliamentary; a Mountain, that finds its occupation in submission,
+that parries its present defeats with prophecies of future victories;
+royalists, who constitute the “patres conscripti” of the republic, and
+are compelled by the situation to uphold abroad the hostile monarchic
+houses, whose adherents they are, while in France they support the
+republic that they hate; an Executive power that finds its strength in
+its very weakness, and its dignity in the contempt that it inspires; a
+republic, that is nothing else than the combined infamy of two
+monarchies—the Restoration and the July Monarchy—with an imperial
+label; unions, whose first clause is disunion; struggles, whose first
+law is in-decision; in the name of peace, barren and hollow agitation;
+in the name of the revolution, solemn sermonizings on peace; passions
+without truth; truths without passion; heroes without heroism; history
+without events; development, whose only moving force seems to be the
+calendar, and tiresome by the constant reiteration of the same tensions
+and relaxes; contrasts, that seem to intensify themselves periodically,
+only in order to wear themselves off and collapse without a solution;
+pretentious efforts made for show, and bourgeois frights at the danger
+of the destruction of the world, simultaneous with the carrying on of
+the pettiest intrigues and the performance of court comedies by the
+world’s saviours, who, in their “laisser aller,” recall the Day of
+Judgment not so much as the days of the Fronde; the official collective
+genius of France brought to shame by the artful stupidity of a single
+individual; the collective will of the nation, as often as it speaks
+through the general suffrage, seeking its true expression in the
+prescriptive enemies of the public interests until it finally finds it
+in the arbitrary will of a filibuster. If ever a slice from history is
+drawn black upon black, it is this. Men and events appear as reversed
+“Schlemihls,” [#1 The hero In Chamisso’s “Peter Schiemihi,” who loses
+his own shadow.] as shadows, the bodies of which have been lost. The
+revolution itself paralyzes its own apostles, and equips only its
+adversaries with passionate violence. When the “Red Spectre,”
+constantly conjured up and exorcised by the counter-revolutionists
+finally does appear, it does not appear with the Anarchist Phrygian cap
+on its head, but in the uniform of Order, in the Red Breeches of the
+French Soldier.
+
+We saw that the Ministry, which Bonaparte installed on December 20,
+1849, the day of his “Ascension,” was a ministry of the party of Order,
+of the Legitimist and Orleanist coalition. The Barrot-Falloux ministry
+had weathered the republican constitutive convention, whose term of
+life it had shortened with more or less violence, and found itself
+still at the helm. Changamier, the General of the allied royalists
+continued to unite in his person the command-in-chief of the First
+Military Division and of the Parisian National Guard. Finally, the
+general elections had secured the large majority in the National
+Assembly to the party of Order. Here the Deputies and Peers of Louis
+Phillipe met a saintly crowd of Legitimists, for whose benefit numerous
+ballots of the nation had been converted into admission tickets to the
+political stage. The Bonapartist representatives were too thinly sowed
+to be able to build an independent parliamentary party. They appeared
+only as “mauvaise queue” [#2 Practical joke] played upon the party of
+Order. Thus the party of Order was in possession of the Government, of
+the Army, and of the legislative body, in short, of the total power of
+the State, morally strengthened by the general elections, that caused
+their sovereignty to appear as the will of the people, and by the
+simultaneous victory of the counter-revolution on the whole continent
+of Europe.
+
+Never did party open its campaign with larger means at its disposal and
+under more favorable auspices.
+
+The shipwrecked pure republicans found themselves in the legislative
+National Assembly melted down to a clique of fifty men, with the
+African Generals Cavaignac, Lamorciere and Bedeau at its head. The
+great Opposition party was, however, formed by the Mountain. This
+parliamentary baptismal name was given to itself by the Social
+Democratic party. It disposed of more than two hundred votes out of the
+seven hundred and fifty in the National Assembly, and, hence, was at
+least just as powerful as any one of the three factions of the party of
+Order. Its relative minority to the total royalist coalition seemed
+counterbalanced by special circumstances. Not only did the Departmental
+election returns show that it had gained a considerable following among
+the rural population, but, furthermore, it numbered almost all the
+Paris Deputies in its camp; the Army had, by the election of three
+under-officers, made a confession of democratic faith; and the leader
+of the Mountain, Ledru-Rollin had in contrast to all the
+representatives of the party of Order, been raised to the rank of the
+“parliamentary nobility” by five Departments, who combined their
+suffrages upon him. Accordingly, in view of the inevitable collisions
+of the royalists among themselves, on the one hand, and of the whole
+party of Order with Bonaparte, on the other, the Mountain seemed on May
+29,1849, to have before it all the elements of success. A fortnight
+later, it had lost everything, its honor included.
+
+Before we follow this parliamentary history any further, a few
+observations are necessary, in order to avoid certain common deceptions
+concerning the whole character of the epoch that lies before us.
+According to the view of the democrats, the issue, during the period of
+the legislative National Assembly, was, the same as during the period
+of the constitutive assembly, simply the struggle between republicans
+and royalists; the movement itself was summed up by them in the
+catch-word Reaction—night, in which all cats are grey, and allows them
+to drawl out their drowsy commonplaces. Indeed, at first sight, the
+party of Order presents the appearance of a tangle of royalist
+factions, that, not only intrigue against each other, each aiming to
+raise its own Pretender to the throne, and exclude the Pretender of the
+Opposite party, but also are all united in a common hatred for and
+common attacks against the “Republic.” On its side, the Mountain
+appears, in counter-distinction to the royalist conspiracy, as the
+representative of the “Republic.” The party of Order seems constantly
+engaged in a “Reaction,” which, neither more nor less than in Prussia,
+is directed against the press, the right of association and the like,
+and is enforced by brutal police interventions on the part of the
+bureaucracy, the police and the public prosecutor—just as in Prussia;
+the Mountain on the contrary, is engaged with equal assiduity in
+parrying these attacks, and thus in defending the “eternal rights of
+man”—as every so-called people’s party has more or less done for the
+last hundred and fifty years. At a closer inspection, however, of the
+situation and of the parties, this superficial appearance, which veils
+the Class Struggle, together with the peculiar physiognomy of this
+period, vanishes wholly.
+
+Legitimists and Orleanists constituted, as said before, the two large
+factions of the party of Order. What held these two factions to their
+respective Pretenders, and inversely kept them apart from each other,
+what else was it but the lily and the tricolor, the House of Bourbon
+and the house of Orleans, different shades of royalty? Under the
+Bourbons, Large Landed Property ruled together with its parsons and
+lackeys; under the Orleanist, it was the high finance, large industry,
+large commerce, i.e., Capital, with its retinue of lawyers, professors
+and orators. The Legitimate kingdom was but the political expression
+for the hereditary rule of the landlords, as the July monarchy was bur
+the political expression for the usurped rule of the bourgeois
+upstarts. What, accordingly, kept these two factions apart was no
+so-called set of principles, it was their material conditions for
+life—two different sorts of property—; it was the old antagonism of the
+City and the Country, the rivalry between Capital and Landed property.
+That simultaneously old recollections; personal animosities, fears and
+hopes; prejudices and illusions; sympathies and antipathies;
+convictions, faith and principles bound these factions to one House or
+the other, who denies it? Upon the several forms of property, upon the
+social conditions of existence, a whole superstructure is reared of
+various and peculiarly shaped feelings, illusions, habits of thought
+and conceptions of life. The whole class produces and shapes these out
+of its material foundation and out of the corresponding social
+conditions. The individual unit to whom they flow through tradition and
+education, may fancy that they constitute the true reasons for and
+premises of his conduct. Although Orleanists and Legitimists, each of
+these factions, sought to make itself and the other believe that what
+kept the two apart was the attachment of each to its respective royal
+House; nevertheless, facts proved later that it rather was their
+divided interest that forbade the union of the two royal Houses. As, in
+private life, the distinction is made between what a man thinks of
+himself and says, and that which he really is and does, so, all the
+more, must the phrases and notions of parties in historic struggles be
+distinguished from the real organism, and their real interests, their
+notions and their reality. Orleanists and Legitimists found themselves
+in the republic beside each other with equal claims. Each side wishing,
+in opposition to the other, to carry out the restoration of its own
+royal House, meant nothing else than that each of the two great
+Interests into which the bourgeoisie is divided—Land and Capital—sought
+to restore its own supremacy and the subordinacy of the other. We speak
+of two bourgeois interests because large landed property, despite its
+feudal coquetry and pride of race, has become completely bourgeois
+through the development of modern society. Thus did the Tories of
+England long fancy that they were enthusiastic for the Kingdom, the
+Church and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day
+of danger wrung from them the admission that their enthusiasm was only
+for Ground Rent.
+
+The coalized royalists carried on their intrigues against each other in
+the press, in Ems, in Clarmont—outside of the parliament. Behind the
+scenes, they don again their old Orleanist and Legitimist liveries, and
+conduct their old tourneys; on the public stage, however, in their
+public acts, as a great parliamentary party, they dispose of their
+respective royal houses with mere courtesies, adjourn “in infinitum”
+the restoration of the monarchy. Their real business is transacted as
+Party of Order, i. e., under a Social, not a Political title; as
+representatives of the bourgeois social system; not as knights of
+traveling princesses, but as the bourgeois class against the other
+classes; not as royalists against republicans. Indeed, as party of
+Order they exercised a more unlimited and harder dominion over the
+other classes of society than ever before either under the restoration
+or the July monarchy-a thing possible only under the form of a
+parliamentary republic, because under this form alone could the two
+large divisions of the French bourgeoisie be united; in other words,
+only under this form could they place on the order of business the
+sovereignty of their class, in lieu of the regime of a privileged
+faction of the same. If, this notwithstanding, they are seen as the
+party of Order to insult the republic and express their antipathy for
+it, it happened not out of royalist traditions only: Instinct taught
+them that while, indeed, the republic completes their authority, it at
+the same time undermined their social foundation, in that, without
+intermediary, without the mask of the crown, without being able to turn
+aside the national interest by means of its subordinate struggles among
+its own conflicting elements and with the crown, the republic is
+compelled to stand up sharp against the subjugated classes, and wrestle
+with them. It was a sense of weakness that caused them to recoil before
+the unqualified demands of their own class rule, and to retreat to the
+less complete, less developed, and, for that very reason, less
+dangerous forms of the same. As often, on the contrary, as the allied
+royalists come into conflict with the Pretender who stands before
+them—with Bonaparte—, as often as they believe their parliamentary
+omnipotence to be endangered by the Executive, in other words, as often
+as they must trot out the political title of their authority, they step
+up as Republicans, not as Royalists—and this is done from the Orleanist
+Thiers, who warns the National Assembly that the republic divides them
+least, down to Legitimist Berryer, who, on December 2, 1851, the scarf
+of the tricolor around him, harangues the people assembled before the
+Mayor’s building of the Tenth Arrondissement, as a tribune in the name
+of the Republic; the echo, however, derisively answering back to him:
+“Henry V.! Henry V!” [#3 The candidate of the Bourbons, or Legitimists,
+for the throne.]
+
+However, against the allied bourgeois, a coalition was made between the
+small traders and the workingmen—the so-called Social Democratic party.
+The small traders found themselves ill rewarded after the June days of
+1848; they saw their material interests endangered, and the democratic
+guarantees, that were to uphold their interests, made doubtful. Hence,
+they drew closer to the workingmen. On the other hand, their
+parliamentary representatives—the Mountain—, after being shoved aside
+during the dictatorship of the bourgeois republicans, had, during the
+last half of the term of the constitutive convention, regained their
+lost popularity through the struggle with Bonaparte and the royalist
+ministers. They had made an alliance with the Socialist leaders. During
+February, 1849, reconciliation banquets were held. A common program was
+drafted, joint election committees were empanelled, and fusion
+candidates were set up. The revolutionary point was thereby broken off
+from the social demands of the proletariat and a democratic turn given
+to them; while, from the democratic claims of the small traders’ class,
+the mere political form was rubbed off and the Socialist point was
+pushed forward. Thus came the Social Democracy about. The new Mountain,
+the result of this combination, contained, with the exception of some
+figures from the working class and some Socialist sectarians, the
+identical elements of the old Mountain, only numerically stronger. In
+the course of events it had, however, changed, together with the class
+that it represented. The peculiar character of the Social Democracy is
+summed up in this that democratic-republican institutions are demanded
+as the means, not to remove the two extremes—Capital and Wage-slavery—,
+but in order to weaken their antagonism and transform them into a
+harmonious whole. However different the methods may be that are
+proposed for the accomplishment of this object, however much the object
+itself may be festooned with more or less revolutionary fancies, the
+substance remains the same. This substance is the transformation of
+society upon democratic lines, but a transformation within the
+boundaries of the small traders’ class. No one must run away with the
+narrow notion that the small traders’ class means on principle to
+enforce a selfish class interest. It believes rather that the special
+conditions for its own emancipation are the general conditions under
+which alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided.
+Likewise must we avoid running away with the notion that the Democratic
+Representatives are all “shopkeepers,” or enthuse for these. They
+may—by education and individual standing—be as distant from them as
+heaven is from earth. That which makes them representatives of the
+small traders’ class is that they do not intellectually leap the bounds
+which that class itself does not leap in practical life; that,
+consequently, they are theoretically driven to the same problems and
+solutions, to which material interests and social standing practically
+drive the latter. Such, in fact, is at all times the relation of the
+“political” and the “literary” representatives of a class to the class
+they represent.
+
+After the foregoing explanations, it goes with-out saying that, while
+the Mountain is constantly wrestling for the republic and the so-called
+“rights of man,” neither the republic nor the “rights of man” is its
+real goal, as little as an army, whose weapons it is sought to deprive
+it of and that defends itself, steps on the field of battle simply in
+order to remain in possession of implements of warfare.
+
+The party of Order provoked the Mountain immediately upon the convening
+of the assembly. The bourgeoisie now felt the necessity of disposing of
+the democratic small traders’ class, just as a year before it had
+understood the necessity of putting an end to the revolutionary
+proletariat.
+
+But the position of the foe had changed. The strength of the
+proletarian party was on the streets; that of the small traders’ class
+was in the National Assembly itself. The point was, accordingly, to
+wheedle them out of the National Assembly into the street, and to have
+them break their parliamentary power themselves, before time and
+opportunity could consolidate them. The Mountain jumped with loose
+reins into the trap.
+
+The bombardment of Rome by the French troops was the bait thrown at the
+Mountain. It violated Article V. of the Constitution, which forbade the
+French republic to use its forces against the liberties of other
+nations; besides, Article IV. forbade all declaration of war by the
+Executive without the consent of the National Assembly; furthermore,
+the constitutive assembly had censured the Roman expedition by its
+resolution of May 8. Upon these grounds, Ledru-Rollin submitted on June
+11, 1849, a motion impeaching Bonaparte and his Ministers. Instigated
+by the wasp-stings of Thiers, he even allowed himself to be carried
+away to the point of threatening to defend the Constitution by all
+means, even arms in hand. The Mountain rose as one man, and repeated
+the challenge. On June 12, the National Assembly rejected the notion to
+impeach, and the Mountain left the parliament. The events of June 13
+are known: the proclamation by a part of the Mountain pronouncing
+Napoleon and his Ministers “outside the pale of the Constitution”; the
+street parades of the democratic National Guards, who, unarmed as they
+were, flew apart at contact with the troops of Changarnier; etc., etc.
+Part of the Mountain fled abroad, another part was assigned to the High
+Court of Bourges, and a parliamentary regulation placed the rest under
+the school-master supervision of the President of the National
+Assembly. Paris was again put under a state of siege; and the
+democratic portion of the National Guards was disbanded. Thus the
+influence of the Mountain in parliament was broken, together with the
+power; of the small traders’ class in Paris.
+
+Lyons, where the 13th of June had given the signal to a bloody labor
+uprising, was, together with the five surrounding Departments, likewise
+pronounced in state of siege, a condition that continues down to this
+moment. [#4 January, 1852]
+
+The bulk of the Mountain had left its vanguard in the lurch by refusing
+their signatures to the proclamation; the press had deserted: only two
+papers dared to publish the pronunciamento; the small traders had
+betrayed their Representatives: the National Guards stayed away, or,
+where they did turn up, hindered the raising of barricades; the
+Representatives had duped the small traders: nowhere were the alleged
+affiliated members from the Army to be seen; finally, instead of
+gathering strength from them, the democratic party had infected the
+proletariat with its own weakness, and, as usual with democratic feats,
+the leaders had the satisfaction of charging “their people” with
+desertion, and the people had the satisfaction of charging their
+leaders with fraud.
+
+Seldom was an act announced with greater noise than the campaign
+contemplated by the Mountain; seldom was an event trumpeted ahead with
+more certainty and longer beforehand than the “inevitable victory of
+the democracy.” This is evident: the democrats believe in the trombones
+before whose blasts the walls of Jericho fall together; as often as
+they stand before the walls of despotism, they seek to imitate the
+miracle. If the Mountain wished to win in parliament, it should not
+appeal to arms; if it called to arms in parliament, it should not
+conduct itself parliamentarily on the street; if the friendly
+demonstration was meant seriously, it was silly not to foresee that it
+would meet with a warlike reception; if it was intended for actual war,
+it was rather original to lay aside the weapons with which war had to
+be conducted. But the revolutionary threats of the middle class and of
+their democratic representatives are mere attempts to frighten an
+adversary; when they have run themselves into a blind alley, when they
+have sufficiently compromised themselves and are compelled to execute
+their threats, the thing is done in a hesitating manner that avoids
+nothing so much as the means to the end, and catches at pretexts to
+succumb. The bray of the overture, that announces the fray, is lost in
+a timid growl so soon as this is to start; the actors cease to take
+themselves seriously, and the performance falls flat like an inflated
+balloon that is pricked with a needle.
+
+No party exaggerates to itself the means at its disposal more than the
+democratic, none deceives itself with greater heedlessness on the
+situation. A part of the Army voted for it, thereupon the Mountain is
+of the opinion that the Army would revolt in its favor. And by what
+occasion? By an occasion, that, from the standpoint of the troops,
+meant nothing else than that the revolutionary soldiers should take the
+part of the soldiers of Rome against French soldiers. On the other
+hand, the memory of June, 1848, was still too fresh not to keep alive a
+deep aversion on the part of the proletariat towards the National
+Guard, and a strong feeling of mistrust on the part of the leaders of
+the secret societies for the democratic leaders. In order to balance
+these differences, great common interests at stake were needed. The
+violation of an abstract constitutional paragraph could not supply such
+interests. Had not the constitution been repeatedly violated, according
+to the assurances of the democrats themselves? Had not the most popular
+papers branded them as a counter-revolutionary artifice? But the
+democrat—by reason of his representing the middle class, that is to
+say, a Transition Class, in which the interests of two other classes
+are mutually dulled—, imagines himself above all class contrast. The
+democrats grant that opposed to them stands a privileged class, but
+they, together with the whole remaining mass of the nation, constitute
+the “PEOPLE.” What they represent is the “people’s rights”; their
+interests are the “people’s interests.” Hence, they do not consider
+that, at an impending struggle, they need to examine the interests and
+attitude of the different classes. They need not too seriously weigh
+their own means. All they have to do is to give the signal in order to
+have the “people” fall upon the “oppressors” with all its inexhaustible
+resources. If, thereupon, in the execution, their interests turn out to
+be uninteresting, and their power to be impotence, it is ascribed
+either to depraved sophists, who split up the “undivisible people” into
+several hostile camps; or to the army being too far brutalized and
+blinded to appreciate the pure aims of the democracy as its own best;
+or to some detail in the execution that wrecks the whole plan; or,
+finally, to an unforeseen accident that spoiled the game this time. At
+all events, the democrat comes out of the disgraceful defeat as
+immaculate as he went innocently into it, and with the refreshed
+conviction that he must win; not that he himself and his party must
+give up their old standpoint, but that, on the contrary, conditions
+must come to his aid.
+
+For all this, one must not picture to himself the decimated, broken,
+and, by the new parliamentary regulation, humbled Mountain altogether
+too unhappy. If June 13 removed its leaders, it, on the other hand,
+made room for new ones of inferior capacity, who are flattered by their
+new position. If their impotence in parliament could no longer be
+doubted, they were now justified to limit their activity to outbursts
+of moral indignation. If the party of Order pretended to see in them,
+as the last official representatives of the revolution, all the horrors
+of anarchy incarnated, they were free to appear all the more flat and
+modest in reality. Over June 13 they consoled themselves with the
+profound expression: “If they but dare to assail universal suffrage . .
+. then . . . then we will show who we are!” Nous verrons. [#5 We shall
+see.]
+
+As to the “Mountaineers,” who had fled abroad, it suffices here to say
+that Ledru-Rollin—he having accomplished the feat of hopelessly
+ruining, in barely a fortnight, the powerful party at whose head he
+stood—, found himself called upon to build up a French government “in
+partibus;” that his figure, at a distance, removed from the field of
+action, seemed to gain in size in the measure that the level of the
+revolution sank and the official prominences of official France became
+more and more dwarfish; that he could figure as republican Pretender
+for 1852, and periodically issued to the Wallachians and other peoples
+circulars in which “despot of the continent” is threatened with the
+feats that he and his allies had in contemplation. Was Proudhon wholly
+wrong when he cried out to these gentlemen: “Vous n’êtes que des
+blaqueurs”? [#6 You are nothing but fakirs.]
+
+The party of Order had, on June 13, not only broken up the Mountain, it
+had also established the Subordination of the Constitution to the
+Majority Decisions of the National Assembly. So, indeed, did the
+republic understand it, to—wit, that the bourgeois ruled here in
+parliamentary form, without, as in the monarchy, finding a check in the
+veto of the Executive power, or the liability of parliament to
+dissolution. It was a “parliamentary republic,” as Thiers styled it.
+But if, on June 13, the bourgeoisie secured its omnipotence within the
+parliament building, did it not also strike the parliament itself, as
+against the Executive and the people, with incurable weakness by
+excluding its most popular part? By giving up numerous Deputies,
+without further ceremony to the mercies of the public prosecutor, it
+abolished its own parliamentary inviolability. The humiliating
+regulation, that it subjected the Mountain to, raised the President of
+the republic in the same measure that it lowered the individual
+Representatives of the people. By branding an insurrection in defense
+of the Constitution as anarchy, and as a deed looking to the overthrow
+of society, it interdicted to itself all appeal to insurrection
+whenever the Executive should violate the Constitution against it. And,
+indeed, the irony of history wills it that the very General, who by
+order of Bonaparte bombarded Rome, and thus gave the immediate occasion
+to the constitutional riot of June 13, that Oudinot, on December 22,
+1851, is the one imploringly and vainly to be offered to the people by
+the party of Order as the General of the Constitution. Another hero of
+June 13, Vieyra, who earned praise from the tribune of the National
+Assembly for the brutalities that he had committed in the democratic
+newspaper offices at the head of a gang of National Guards in the hire
+of the high finance—this identical Vieyra was initiated in the
+conspiracy of Bonaparte, and contributed materially in cutting off all
+protection that could come to the National Assembly, in the hour of its
+agony, from the side of the National Guard.
+
+June 13 had still another meaning. The Mountain had wanted to place
+Bonaparte under charges. Their defeat was, accordingly, a direct
+victory of Bonaparte; it was his personal triumph over his democratic
+enemies. The party of Order fought for the victory, Bonaparte needed
+only to pocket it. He did so. On June 14, a proclamation was to be read
+on the walls of Paris wherein the President, as it were, without his
+connivance, against his will, driven by the mere force of
+circumstances, steps forward from his cloisterly seclusion like
+misjudged virtue, complains of the calumnies of his antagonists, and,
+while seeming to identify his own person with the cause of order,
+rather identifies the cause of order with his own person. Besides this,
+the National Assembly had subsequently approved the expedition against
+Rome; Bonaparte, however, had taken the initiative in the affair. After
+he had led the High Priest Samuel back into the Vatican, he could hope
+as King David to occupy the Tuileries. He had won the parson-interests
+over to himself.
+
+The riot of June 13 limited itself, as we have seen, to a peaceful
+street procession. There were, consequently, no laurels to be won from
+it. Nevertheless, in these days, poor in heroes and events, the party
+of Order converted this bloodless battle into a second Austerlitz.
+Tribune and press lauded the army as the power of order against the
+popular multitude, and the impotence of anarchy; and Changarnier as the
+“bulwark of society”—a mystification that he finally believed in
+himself. Underhand, however, the corps that seemed doubtful were
+removed from Paris; the regiments whose suffrage had turned out most
+democratic were banished from France to Algiers the restless heads
+among the troops were consigned to penal quarters; finally, the
+shutting out of the press from the barracks, and of the barracks from
+contact with the citizens was systematically carried out.
+
+We stand here at the critical turning point in the history of the
+French National Guard. In 1830, it had decided the downfall of the
+restoration. Under Louis Philippe, every riot failed, at which the
+National Guard stood on the side of the troops. When, in the February
+days of 1848, it showed itself passive against the uprising and
+doubtful toward Louis Philippe himself, he gave himself up for lost.
+Thus the conviction cast root that a revolution could not win without,
+nor the Army against the National Guard. This was the superstitious
+faith of the Army in bourgeois omnipotence. The June days of 1548, when
+the whole National Guard, jointly with the regular troops, threw down
+the insurrection, had confirmed the superstition. After the
+inauguration of Bonaparte’s administration, the position of the
+National Guard sank somewhat through the unconstitutional joining of
+their command with the command of the First Military Division in the
+person of Changarnier.
+
+As the command of the National Guard appeared here merely an attribute
+of the military commander-in-chief, so did the Guard itself appear only
+as an appendage of the regular troops. Finally, on June 13, the
+National Guard was broken up, not through its partial dissolution only,
+that from that date forward was periodically repeated at all points of
+France, leaving only wrecks of its former self behind. The
+demonstration of June 13 was, above all, a demonstration of the
+National Guards. True, they had not carried their arms, but they had
+carried their uniforms against the Army—and the talisman lay just in
+these uniforms. The Army then learned that this uniform was but a
+woolen rag, like any other. The spell was broken. In the June days of
+1848, bourgeoisie and small traders were united as National Guard with
+the Army against the proletariat; on June 13, 1849, the bourgeoisie had
+the small traders’ National Guard broken up; on December 2, 1851, the
+National Guard of the bourgeoisie itself vanished, and Bonaparte
+attested the fact when he subsequently signed the decree for its
+disbandment. Thus the bourgeoisie had itself broken its last weapon
+against the army, from the moment when the small traders’ class no
+longer stood as a vassal behind, but as a rebel before it; indeed, it
+was bound to do so, as it was bound to destroy with its own hand all
+its means of defence against absolutism, so soon as itself was
+absolute.
+
+In the meantime, the party of Order celebrated the recovery of a power
+that seemed lost in 1848 only in order that, freed from its trammels in
+1849, it be found again through invectives against the republic and the
+Constitution; through the malediction of all future, present and past
+revolutions, that one included which its own leaders had made; and,
+finally, in laws by which the press was gagged, the right of
+association destroyed, and the stage of siege regulated as an organic
+institution. The National Assembly then adjourned from the middle of
+August to the middle of October, after it had appointed a Permanent
+Committee for the period of its absence. During these vacations, the
+Legitimists intrigued with Ems; the Orleanists with Claremont;
+Bonaparte through princely excursions; the Departmental Councilmen in
+conferences over the revision of the Constitution;—occurrences, all of
+which recurred regularly at the periodical vacations of the National
+Assembly, and upon which I shall not enter until they have matured into
+events. Be it here only observed that the National Assembly was
+impolitic in vanishing from the stage for long intervals, and leaving
+in view, at the head of the republic, only one, however sorry,
+figure—Louis Bonaparte’s—, while, to the public scandal, the party of
+Order broke up into its own royalist component parts, that pursued
+their conflicting aspirations after the restoration. As often as,
+during these vacations the confusing noise of the parliament was
+hushed, and its body was dissolved in the nation, it was unmistakably
+shown that only one thing was still wanting to complete the true figure
+of the republic: to make the vacation of the National Assembly
+permanent, and substitute its inscription—“Liberty, Equality,
+Fraternity”—by the unequivocal words, “Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery”.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+The National Assembly reconvened in the middle of October. On November
+1, Bonaparte surprised it with a message, in which he announced the
+dismissal of the Barrot-Falloux Ministry, and the framing of a new.
+Never have lackeys been chased from service with less ceremony than
+Bonaparte did his ministers. The kicks, that were eventually destined
+for the National Assembly, Barrot & Company received in the meantime.
+
+The Barrot Ministry was, as we have seen, composed of Legitimists and
+Orleanists; it was a Ministry of the party of Order. Bonaparte needed
+that Ministry in order to dissolve the republican constituent assembly,
+to effect the expedition against Rome, and to break up the democratic
+party. He had seemingly eclipsed himself behind this Ministry, yielded
+the reins to the hands of the party of Order, and assumed the modest
+mask, which, under Louis Philippe, had been worn by the responsible
+overseer of the newspapers—the mask of “homme de paille.” [#1 Man of
+straw] Now he threw off the mask, it being no longer the light curtain
+behind which he could conceal, but the Iron Mask, which prevented him
+from revealing his own physiognomy. He had instituted the Barrot
+Ministry in order to break up the republican National Assembly in the
+name of the party of Order; he now dismissed it in order to declare his
+own name independent of the parliament of the party of Order.
+
+There was no want of plausible pretexts for this dismissal. The Barrot
+Ministry had neglected even the forms of decency that would have
+allowed the president of the republic to appear as a power along with
+the National Assembly. For instance, during the vacation of the
+National Assembly, Bonaparte published a letter to Edgar Ney, in which
+he seemed to disapprove the liberal attitude of the Pope, just as, in
+opposition to the constitutive assembly, he had published a letter, in
+which he praised Oudinot for his attack upon the Roman republic; when
+the National Assembly came to vote on the budget for the Roman
+expedition, Victor Hugo, out of pretended liberalism, brought up that
+letter for discussion; the party of Order drowned this notion of
+Bonaparte’s under exclamations of contempt and incredulity as though
+notions of Bonaparte could not possibly have any political weight;—and
+none of the Ministers took up the gauntlet for him. On another
+occasion, Barrot, with his well-known hollow pathos, dropped, from the
+speakers’ tribune in the Assembly, words of indignation upon the
+“abominable machinations,” which, according to him, went on in the
+immediate vicinity of the President. Finally, while the Ministry
+obtained from the National Assembly a widow’s pension for the Duchess
+of Orleans, it denied every motion to raise the Presidential civil
+list;—and, in Bonaparte, be it always remembered, the Imperial
+Pretender was so closely blended with the impecunious adventurer, that
+the great idea of his being destined to restore the Empire was ever
+supplemented by that other, to-wit, that the French people was destined
+to pay his debts.
+
+The Barrot-Falloux Ministry was the first and last parliamentary
+Ministry that Bonaparte called into life. Its dismissal marks,
+accordingly, a decisive period. With the Ministry, the party of Order
+lost, never to regain, an indispensable post to the maintenance of the
+parliamentary regime,—the handle to the Executive power. It is readily
+understood that, in a country like France, where the Executive disposes
+over an army of more than half a million office-holders, and,
+consequently, keeps permanently a large mass of interests and
+existences in the completest dependence upon itself; where the
+Government surrounds, controls, regulates, supervises and guards
+society, from its mightiest acts of national life, down to its most
+insignificant motions; from its common life, down to the private life
+of each individual; where, due to such extraordinary centralization,
+this body of parasites acquires a ubiquity and omniscience, a quickened
+capacity for motion and rapidity that finds an analogue only in the
+helpless lack of self-reliance, in the unstrung weakness of the body
+social itself;—that in such a country the National Assembly lost, with
+the control of the ministerial posts, all real influence; unless it
+simultaneously simplified the administration; if possible, reduced the
+army of office-holders; and, finally, allowed society and public
+opinion to establish its own organs, independent of government
+censorship. But the Material Interest of the French bourgeoisie is most
+intimately bound up in maintenance of just such a large and extensively
+ramified governmental machine. There the bourgeoisie provides for its
+own superfluous membership; and supplies, in the shape of government
+salaries, what it can not pocket in the form of profit, interest, rent
+and fees. On the other hand, its Political Interests daily compel it to
+increase the power of repression, i.e., the means and the personnel of
+the government; it is at the same time forced to conduct an
+uninterrupted warfare against public opinion, and, full of suspicion,
+to hamstring and lame the independent organs of society—whenever it
+does not succeed in amputating them wholly. Thus the bourgeoisie of
+France was forced by its own class attitude, on the one hand, to
+destroy the conditions for all parliamentary power, its own included,
+and, on the other, to render irresistible the Executive power that
+stood hostile to it.
+
+The new Ministry was called the d’Hautpoul Ministry. Not that General
+d’Hautpoul had gained the rank of Ministerial President. Along with
+Barrot, Bonaparte abolished this dignity, which, it must be granted,
+condemned the President of the republic to the legal nothingness of a
+constitutional kind, of a constitutional king at that, without throne
+and crown, without sceptre and without sword, without irresponsibility,
+without the imperishable possession of the highest dignity in the
+State, and, what was most untoward of all—without a civil list. The
+d’Hautpoul Ministry numbered only one man of parliamentary reputation,
+the Jew Fould, one of the most notorious members of the high finance.
+To him fell the portfolio of finance. Turn to the Paris stock
+quotations, and it will be found that from November 1, 1849, French
+stocks fall and rise with the falling and rising of the Bonapartist
+shares. While Bonaparte had thus found his ally in the Bourse, he at
+the same time took possession of the Police through the appointment of
+Carlier as Prefect of Police.
+
+But the consequences of the change of Ministry could reveal themselves
+only in the course of events. So far, Bonaparte had taken only one step
+forward, to be all the more glaringly driven back. Upon his harsh
+message, followed the most servile declarations of submissiveness to
+the National Assembly. As often as the Ministers made timid attempts to
+introduce his own personal hobbies as bills, they themselves seemed
+unwilling and compelled only by their position to run the comic
+errands, of whose futility they were convinced in advance. As often as
+Bonaparte blabbed out his plans behind the backs of his Ministers, and
+sported his “idees napoleoniennes,” [#2 Napoleonic ideas.] his own
+Ministers disavowed him from the speakers’ tribune in the National
+Assembly. His aspirations after usurpation seemed to become audible
+only to the end that the ironical laughter of his adversaries should
+not die out. He deported himself like an unappreciated genius, whom the
+world takes for a simpleton. Never did lie enjoy in fuller measure the
+contempt of all classes than at this period. Never did the bourgeoisie
+rule more absolutely; never did it more boastfully display the insignia
+of sovereignty.
+
+It is not here my purpose to write the history of its legislative
+activity, which is summed up in two laws passed during this period: the
+law reestablishing the duty on wine, and the laws on education, to
+suppress infidelity. While the drinking of wine was made difficult to
+the Frenchmen, all the more bounteously was the water of pure life
+poured out to them. Although in the law on the duty on wine the
+bourgeoisie declares the old hated French tariff system to be
+inviolable, it sought, by means of the laws on education, to secure the
+old good will of the masses that made the former bearable. One wonders
+to see the Orleanists, the liberal bourgeois, these old apostles of
+Voltarianism and of eclectic philosophy, entrusting the supervision of
+the French intellect to their hereditary enemies, the Jesuits. But,
+while Orleanists and Legitimists could part company on the question of
+the Pretender to the crown, they understood full well that their joint
+reign dictated the joining of the means of oppression of two distinct
+epochs; that the means of subjugation of the July monarchy had to be
+supplemented with and strengthened by the means of subjugation of the
+restoration.
+
+The farmers, deceived in all their expectations, more than ever ground
+down by the law scale of the price of corn, on the one hand, and, on
+the other, by the growing load of taxation and mortgages, began to stir
+in the Departments. They were answered by the systematic baiting of the
+school masters, whom the Government subjected to the clergy; by the
+systematic baiting of the Mayors, whom it subjected to the Prefects;
+and by a system of espionage to which all were subjected. In Paris and
+the large towns, the reaction itself carries the physiognomy of its own
+epoch; it irritates more than it cows; in the country, it becomes low,
+moan, petty, tiresome, vexatious,—in a word, it becomes “gensdarme.” It
+is easily understood how three years of the gensdarme regime,
+sanctified by the regime of the clergyman, was bound to demoralize
+unripe masses.
+
+Whatever the mass of passion and declamation, that the party of Order
+expended from the speakers’ tribune in the National Assembly against
+the minority, its speech remained monosyllabic, like that of the
+Christian, whose speech was to be “Aye, aye; nay, nay.” It was
+monosyllabic, whether from the tribune or the press; dull as a
+conundrum, whose solution is known beforehand. Whether the question was
+the right of petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the press or
+free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual freedom
+or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever again,
+the theme is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready and
+unchanged: Socialism! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced
+socialistic; socialistic, alike, is pronounced popular education; and,
+likewise, socialistic national financial reform. It was socialistic to
+build a railroad where already a canal was; and it was socialistic to
+defend oneself with a stick when attacked with a sword.
+
+This was not a mere form of speech, a fashion, nor yet party tactics.
+The bourgeoisie perceives correctly that all the weapons, which it
+forged against feudalism, turn their edges against itself; that all the
+means of education, which it brought forth, rebel against its own
+civilization; that all the gods, which it made, have fallen away from
+it. It understands that all its so-called citizens’ rights and
+progressive organs assail and menace its class rule, both in its social
+foundation and its political superstructure—consequently, have become
+“socialistic.” It justly scents in this menace and assault the secret
+of Socialism, whose meaning and tendency it estimates more correctly
+than the spurious, so-called Socialism, is capable of estimating
+itself, and which, consequently, is unable to understand how it is that
+the bourgeoisie obdurately shuts up its ears to it, alike whether it
+sentimentally whines about the sufferings of humanity; or announces in
+Christian style the millennium and universal brotherhood; or twaddles
+humanistically about the soul, culture and freedom; or doctrinally
+matches out a system of harmony and wellbeing for all classes. What,
+however, the bourgeoisie does not understand is the consequence that
+its own parliamentary regime, its own political reign, is also of
+necessity bound to fall under the general ban of “socialistic.” So long
+as the rule of the bourgeoisie is not fully organized, has not acquired
+its purely political character, the contrast with the other classes
+cannot come into view in all its sharpness; and, where it does come
+into view, it cannot take that dangerous turn that converts every
+conflict with the Government into a conflict with Capital. When,
+however, the French bourgeoisie began to realize in every pulsation of
+society a menace to “peace,” how could it, at the head of society,
+pretend to uphold the regime of unrest, its own regime, the
+parliamentary regime, which, according to the expression of one of its
+own orators, lives in struggle, and through struggle? The parliamentary
+regime lives on discussion,—how can it forbid discussion? Every single
+interest, every single social institution is there converted into
+general thoughts, is treated as a thought,—how could any interest or
+institution claim to be above thought, and impose itself as an article
+of faith? The orators’ conflict in the tribune calls forth the conflict
+of the rowdies in the press the debating club in parliament is
+necessarily supplemented by debating clubs in the salons and the
+barrooms; the representatives, who are constantly appealing to popular
+opinion, justify popular opinion in expressing its real opinion in
+petitions. The parliamentary regime leaves everything to the decision
+of majorities,—how can the large majorities beyond parliament be
+expected not to wish to decide? If, from above, they hear the fiddle
+screeching, what else is to be expected than that those below should
+dance?
+
+Accordingly, by now persecuting as Socialist what formerly it had
+celebrated as Liberal, the bourgeoisie admits that its own interest
+orders it to raise itself above the danger of self government; that, in
+order to restore rest to the land, its own bourgeois parliament must,
+before all, be brought to rest; that, in order to preserve its social
+power unhurt, its political power must be broken; that the private
+bourgeois can continue to exploit the other classes and rejoice in
+“property,” “family,” “religion” and “order” only under the condition
+that his own class be condemned to the same political nullity of the
+other classes, that, in order to save their purse, the crown must be
+knocked off their heads, and the sword that was to shield them, must at
+the same time be hung over their heads as a sword of Damocles.
+
+In the domain of general bourgeois interests, the National Assembly
+proved itself so barren, that, for instance, the discussion over the
+Paris-Avignon railroad, opened in the winter of 1850, was not yet ripe
+for a vote on December 2, 1851. Wherever it did not oppress or was
+reactionary, the bourgeoisie was smitten with incurable barrenness.
+
+While Bonaparte’s Ministry either sought to take the initiative of laws
+in the spirit of the party of Order, or even exaggerated their severity
+in their enforcement and administration, he, on his part, sought to win
+popularity by means of childishly silly propositions, to exhibit the
+contrast between himself and the National Assembly, and to hint at a
+secret plan, held in reserve and only through circumstances temporarily
+prevented from disclosing its hidden treasures to the French people. Of
+this nature was the proposition to decree a daily extra pay of four
+sous to the under-officers; so, likewise, the proposition for a “word
+of honor” loan bank for working-men. To have money given and money
+borrowed—that was the perspective that he hoped to cajole the masses
+with. Presents and loans—to that was limited the financial wisdom of
+the slums, the high as well as the low; to that were limited the
+springs which Bonaparte knew how to set in motion. Never did Pretender
+speculate more dully upon the dullness of the masses.
+
+Again and again did the National Assembly fly into a passion at these
+unmistakable attempts to win popularity at its expense, and at the
+growing danger that this adventurer, lashed on by debts and
+unrestrained by reputation, might venture upon some desperate act. The
+strained relations between the party of Order and the President had
+taken on a threatening aspect, when an unforeseen event threw him back,
+rueful into its arms. We mean the supplementary elections of March,
+1850. These elections took place to fill the vacancies created in the
+National Assembly, after June 13, by imprisonment and exile. Paris
+elected only Social-Democratic candidates; it even united the largest
+vote upon one of the insurgents of June, 1848,—Deflotte. In this way
+the small traders’ world of Paris, now allied with the proletariat,
+revenged itself for the defeat of June 13, 1849. It seemed to have
+disappeared from the field of battle at the hour of danger only to step
+on it again at a more favorable opportunity, with increased forces for
+the fray, and with a bolder war cry. A circumstance seemed to heighten
+the danger of this electoral victory. The Army voted in Paris for a
+June insurgent against Lahitte, a Minister of Bonaparte’s, and, in the
+Departments, mostly for the candidates of the Mountain, who, there
+also, although not as decisively as in Paris, maintained the upper hand
+over their adversaries.
+
+Bonaparte suddenly saw himself again face to face with the revolution.
+As on January 29, 1849, as on June 13, 1849, on May 10, 1850, he
+vanished again behind the party of Order. He bent low; he timidly
+apologized; he offered to appoint any Ministry whatever at the behest
+of the parliamentary majority; he even implored the Orleanist and
+Legitimist party leaders—the Thiers, Berryers, Broglies, Moles, in
+short, the so-called burgraves—to take hold of the helm of State in
+person. The party of Order did not know how to utilize this
+opportunity, that was never to return. Instead of boldly taking
+possession of the proffered power, it did not even force Bonaparte to
+restore the Ministry dismissed on November 1; it contented itself with
+humiliating him with its pardon, and with affiliating Mr. Baroche to
+the d’Hautpoul Ministry. This Baroche had, as Public Prosecutor,
+stormed before the High Court at Bourges, once against the
+revolutionists of May 15, another time against the Democrats of June
+13, both times on the charge of “attentats” against the National
+Assembly. None of Bonaparte’s Ministers contributed later more towards
+the degradation of the National Assembly; and, after December 2, 1851,
+we meet him again as the comfortably stalled and dearly paid
+Vice-President of the Senate. He had spat into the soup of the
+revolutionists for Bonaparte to eat it.
+
+On its part, the Social Democratic party seemed only to look for
+pretexts in order to make its own victory doubtful, and to dull its
+edge. Vidal, one of the newly elected Paris representatives, was
+returned for Strassburg also. He was induced to decline the seat for
+Paris and accept the one for Strassburg. Thus, instead of giving a
+definite character to their victory at the hustings, and thereby
+compelling the party of Order forthwith to contest it in parliament;
+instead of thus driving the foe to battle at the season of popular
+enthusiasm and of a favorable temper in the Army, the democratic party
+tired out Paris with a new campaign during the months of March and
+April; it allowed the excited popular passions to wear themselves out
+in this second provisional electoral play it allowed the revolutionary
+vigor to satiate itself with constitutional successes, and lose its
+breath in petty intrigues, hollow declamation and sham moves; it gave
+the bourgeoisie time to collect itself and make its preparations
+finally, it allowed the significance of the March elections to find a
+sentimentally weakening commentary at the subsequent April election in
+the victory of Eugene Sue. In one word, it turned the 10th of March
+into an April Fool.
+
+The parliamentary majority perceived the weakness of its adversary. Its
+seventeen burgraves—Bonaparte had left to it the direction of and
+responsibility for the attack—, framed a new election law, the moving
+of which was entrusted to Mr. Faucher, who had applied for the honor.
+On May 8, he introduced the new law whereby universal suffrage was
+abolished; a three years residence in the election district imposed as
+a condition for voting; and, finally, the proof of this residence made
+dependent, for the working-man, upon the testimony of his employer.
+
+As revolutionarily as the democrats had agitated and stormed during the
+constitutional struggles, so constitutionally did they, now, when it
+was imperative to attest, arms in hand, the earnestness of their late
+electoral victories, preach order, “majestic calmness,” lawful conduct,
+i. e., blind submission to the will of the counter-revolution, which
+revealed itself as law. During the debate, the Mountain put the party
+of Order to shame by maintaining the passionless attitude of the
+law-abiding burger, who upholds the principle of law against
+revolutionary passions; and by twitting the party of Order with the
+fearful reproach of proceeding in a revolutionary manner. Even the
+newly elected deputies took pains to prove by their decent and
+thoughtful deportment what an act of misjudgment it was to decry them
+as anarchists, or explain their election as a victory of the
+revolution. The new election law was passed on May 31. The Mountain
+contented itself with smuggling a protest into the pockets of the
+President of the Assembly. To the election law followed a new press
+law, whereby the revolutionary press was completely done away with. It
+had deserved its fate. The “National” and the “Presse,” two bourgeois
+organs, remained after this deluge the extreme outposts of the
+revolution.
+
+We have seen how, during March and April, the democratic leaders did
+everything to involve the people of Paris in a sham battle, and how,
+after May 8, they did everything to keep it away from a real battle. We
+may not here forget that the year 1850 was one of the most brilliant
+years of industrial and commercial prosperity; consequently, that the
+Parisian proletariat was completely employed. But the election law of
+May 31, 1850 excluded them from all participation in political power;
+it cut the field of battle itself from under them; it threw the
+workingmen back into the state of pariahs, which they had occupied
+before the February revolution. In allowing themselves, in sight of
+such an occurrence, to be led by the democrats, and in forgetting the
+revolutionary interests of their class through temporary comfort, the
+workingmen abdicated the honor of being a conquering power; they
+submitted to their fate; they proved that the defeat of June, 1848, had
+incapacitated them from resistance for many a year to come finally,
+that the historic process must again, for the time being, proceed over
+their heads. As to the small traders’ democracy, which, on June 13, had
+cried out: “If they but dare to assail universal suffrage . . . then .
+. . then we will show who we are!”—they now consoled themselves with
+the thought that the counter-revolutionary blow, which had struck them,
+was no blow at all, and that the law of May 31 was no law. On May 2,
+1852, according to them, every Frenchman would appear at the hustings,
+in one hand the ballot, in the other the sword. With this prophecy they
+set their hearts at ease. Finally, the Army was punished by its
+superiors for the elections of May and April, 1850, as it was punished
+for the election of May 29, 1849. This time, however, it said to itself
+determinately: “The revolution shall not cheat us a third time.”
+
+The law of May 31, 1850, was the “coup d’etat” of the bourgeoisie. All
+its previous conquests over the revolution had only a temporary
+character: they became uncertain the moment the National Assembly
+stepped off the stage; they depended upon the accident of general
+elections, and the history of the elections since 1848 proved
+irrefutably that, in the same measure as the actual reign of the
+bourgeoisie gathered strength, its moral reign over the masses wore
+off. Universal suffrage pronounced itself on May 10 pointedly against
+the reign of the bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie answered with the
+banishment of universal suffrage. The law of May 31 was, accordingly,
+one of the necessities of the class struggle. On the other hand, the
+constitution required a minimum of two million votes for the valid
+ejection of the President of the republic. If none of the Presidential
+candidates polled this minimum, then the National Assembly was to elect
+the President out of the three candidates polling the highest votes. At
+the time that the constitutive body made this law, ten million voters
+were registered on the election rolls. In its opinion, accordingly,
+one-fifth of the qualified voters sufficed to make a choice for
+President valid. The law of May 31 struck at least three million voters
+off the rolls, reduced the number of qualified voters to seven
+millions, and yet, not withstanding, it kept the lawful minimum at two
+millions for the election of a President. Accordingly, it raised the
+lawful minimum from a fifth to almost a third of the qualified voters,
+i.e., it did all it could to smuggle the Presidential election out of
+the hands of the people into those of the National Assembly. Thus, by
+the election law of May 31, the party of Order seemed to have doubly
+secured its empire, in that it placed the election of both the National
+Assembly and the President of the republic in the keeping of the stable
+portion of society.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+The strife immediately broke out again between the National Assembly
+and Bonaparte, so soon as the revolutionary crisis was weathered, and
+universal suffrage was abolished.
+
+The Constitution had fixed the salary of Bonaparte at 600,000 francs.
+Barely half a year after his installation, he succeeded in raising this
+sum to its double: Odillon Barrot had wrung from the constitutive
+assembly a yearly allowance of 600,000 francs for so-called
+representation expenses. After June 13, Bonaparte hinted at similar
+solicitations, to which, however, Barrot then turned a deaf ear. Now,
+after May 31, he forthwith utilized the favorable moment, and caused
+his ministers to move a civil list of three millions in the National
+Assembly. A long adventurous, vagabond career had gifted him with the
+best developed antennae for feeling out the weak moments when he could
+venture upon squeezing money from his bourgeois. He carried on regular
+blackmail. The National Assembly had maimed the sovereignty of the
+people with his aid and his knowledge: he now threatened to denounce
+its crime to the tribunal of the people, if it did not pull out its
+purse and buy his silence with three millions annually. It had robbed
+three million Frenchmen of the suffrage: for every Frenchman thrown
+“out of circulation,” he demanded a franc “in circulation.” He, the
+elect of six million, demanded indemnity for the votes he had been
+subsequently cheated of. The Committee of the National Assembly turned
+the importunate fellow away. The Bonapartist press threatened: Could
+the National Assembly break with the President of the republic at a
+time when it had broken definitely and on principle with the mass of
+the nation? It rejected the annual civil list, but granted, for this
+once, an allowance of 2,160,000 francs. Thus it made itself guilty of
+the double weakness of granting the money, and, at the same time,
+showing by its anger that it did so only unwillingly. We shall
+presently see to what use Bonaparte put the money. After this
+aggravating after-play, that followed upon the heels of the abolition
+of universal suffrage, and in which Bonaparte exchanged his humble
+attitude of the days of the crisis of March and April for one of
+defiant impudence towards the usurping parliament, the National
+Assembly adjourned for three months, from August 11, to November 11. It
+left behind in its place a Permanent Committee of 18 members that
+contained no Bonapartist, but did contain a few moderate republicans.
+The Permanent Committee of the year 1849 had numbered only men of order
+and Bonapartists. At that time, however, the party of Order declared
+itself in permanence against the revolution; now the parliamentary
+republic declared itself in permanence against the President. After the
+law of May 31, only this rival still confronted the party of Order.
+
+When the National Assembly reconvened in November, 1850, instead of its
+former petty skirmishes with the President, a great headlong struggle,
+a struggle for life between the two powers, seemed to have become
+inevitable.
+
+As in the year 1849, the party of Order had during this year’s
+vacation, dissolved into its two separate factions, each occupied with
+its own restoration intrigues, which had received new impetus from the
+death of Louis Philippe. The Legitimist King, Henry V, had even
+appointed a regular Ministry, that resided in Paris, and in which sat
+members of the Permanent Committee. Hence, Bonaparte was, on his part,
+justified in making tours through the French Departments, and—according
+to the disposition of the towns that he happened to be gladdening with
+his presence—some times covertly, other times more openly blabbing out
+his own restoration plans, and gaining votes for himself On these
+excursions, which the large official “Moniteur” and the small private
+“Moniteurs” of Bonaparte were, of course, bound to celebrate as
+triumphal marches, he was constantly accompanied by affiliated members
+of the “Society of December 10” This society dated from the year 1849.
+Under the pretext of founding a benevolent association, the
+slum-proletariat of Paris was organized into secret sections, each
+section led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist General at the
+head of all. Along with ruined roues of questionable means of support
+and questionable antecedents, along with the foul and
+adventures-seeking dregs of the bourgeoisie, there were vagabonds,
+dismissed soldiers, discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves,
+sharpers, jugglers, lazzaroni, pickpockets, sleight-of-hand performers,
+gamblers, procurers, keepers of disorderly houses, porters, literati,
+organ grinders, rag pickers, scissors grinders, tinkers, beggars—in
+short, that whole undefined, dissolute, kicked-about mass that the
+Frenchmen style “la Boheme” With this kindred element, Bonaparte formed
+the stock of the “Society of December 10,” a “benevolent association”
+in so far as, like Bonaparte himself, all its members felt the need of
+being benevolent to themselves at the expense of the toiling nation.
+The Bonaparte, who here constitutes himself Chief of the
+Slum-Proletariat; who only here finds again in plenteous form the
+interests which he personally pursues; who, in this refuse, offal and
+wreck of all classes, recognizes the only class upon which he can
+depend unconditionally;—this is the real Bonaparte, the Bonaparte
+without qualification. An old and crafty roue, he looks upon the
+historic life of nations, upon their great and public acts, as comedies
+in the ordinary sense, as a carnival, where the great costumes, words
+and postures serve only as masks for the pettiest chicaneries. So, on
+the occasion of his expedition against Strassburg when a trained Swiss
+vulture impersonated the Napoleonic eagle; so, again, on the occasion
+of his raid upon Boulogne, when he struck a few London lackeys into
+French uniform: they impersonated the army; [#1 Under the reign of
+Louis Philippe, Bonaparte made two attempts to restore the throne of
+Napoleon: one in October, 1836, in an expedition from Switzerland upon
+Strassburg and one in August, 1840, in an expedition from England upon
+Boulogne.] and so now, in his “Society of December 10,” he collects
+10,000 loafers who are to impersonate the people as Snug the Joiner
+does the lion. At a period when the bourgeoisie itself is playing the
+sheerest comedy, but in the most solemn manner in the world, without
+doing violence to any of the pedantic requirements of French dramatic
+etiquette, and is itself partly deceived by, partly convinced of, the
+solemnity of its own public acts, the adventurer, who took the comedy
+for simple comedy, was bound to win. Only after he has removed his
+solemn opponent, when he himself takes seriously his own role of
+emperor, and, with the Napoleonic mask on, imagines he impersonates the
+real Napoleon, only then does he become the victim of his own peculiar
+conception of history—the serious clown, who no longer takes history
+for a comedy, but a comedy for history. What the national work-shops
+were to the socialist workingmen, what the “Gardes mobiles” were to the
+bourgeois republicans, that was to Bonaparte the “Society of December
+10,”—a force for partisan warfare peculiar to himself. On his journeys,
+the divisions of the Society, packed away on the railroads, improvised
+an audience for him, performed public enthusiasm, shouted “vive
+l’Empereur,” insulted and clubbed the republicans,—all, of course,
+under the protection of the police. On his return stages to Paris, this
+rabble constituted his vanguard, it forestalled or dispersed
+counter-demonstrations. The “Society of December 10” belonged to him,
+it was his own handiwork, his own thought. Whatever else he
+appropriates, the power of circumstances places in his hands; whatever
+else he does, either circumstances do for him, or he is content to copy
+from the deeds of others, but he posing before the citizens with the
+official phrases about “Order,” “Religion,” “Family,” “Property,” and,
+behind him, the secret society of skipjacks and picaroons, the society
+of disorder, of prostitution, and of theft,—that is Bonaparte himself
+as the original author; and the history of the “Society of December 10”
+is his own history. Now, then, it happened that Representatives
+belonging to the party of order occasionally got under the clubs of the
+Decembrists. Nay, more. Police Commissioner Yon, who had been assigned
+to the National Assembly, and was charged with the guardianship of its
+safety, reported to the Permanent Committee upon the testimony of one
+Alais, that a Section of the Decembrists had decided on the murder of
+General Changarnier and of Dupin, the President of the National
+Assembly, and had already settled upon the men to execute the decree.
+One can imagine the fright of Mr. Dupin. A parliamentary inquest over
+the “Society of December 10,” i. e., the profanation of the Bonapartist
+secret world now seemed inevitable. Just before the reconvening of the
+National Assembly, Bonaparte circumspectly dissolved his Society, of
+course, on paper only. As late as the end of 1851, Police Prefect
+Carlier vainly sought, in an exhaustive memorial, to move him to the
+real dissolution of the Decembrists.
+
+The “Society of December 10” was to remain the private army of
+Bonaparte until he should have succeeded in converting the public Army
+into a “Society of December 10.” Bonaparte made the first attempt in
+this direction shortly after the adjournment of the National Assembly,
+and he did so with the money which he had just wrung from it. As a
+fatalist, he lives devoted to the conviction that there are certain
+Higher Powers, whom man, particularly the soldier, cannot resist. First
+among these Powers he numbers cigars and champagne, cold poultry and
+garlic-sausage. Accordingly, in the apartments of the Elysee, he
+treated first the officers and under-officers to cigars and champagne,
+to cold poultry and garlic-sausage. On October 3, he repeats this
+manoeuvre with the rank and file of the troops by the review of St.
+Maur; and, on October 10, the same manoeuvre again, upon a larger
+scale, at the army parade of Satory. The Uncle bore in remembrance the
+campaigns of Alexander in Asia: the Nephew bore in remembrance the
+triumphal marches of Bacchus in the same country. Alexander was,
+indeed, a demigod; but Bacchus was a full-fledged god, and the patron
+deity, at that, of the “Society of December 10.”
+
+After the review of October 3, the Permanent Committee summoned the
+Minister of War, d’Hautpoul, before it. He promised that such breaches
+of discipline should not recur. We have seen how, on October 10th,
+Bonaparte kept d’Hautpoul’s word. At both reviews Changarnier had
+commanded as Commander-in-chief of the Army of Paris. He, at once
+member of the Permanent Committee, Chief of the National Guard, the
+“Savior” of January 29, and June 13, the “Bulwark of Society,”
+candidate of the Party of Order for the office of President, the
+suspected Monk of two monarchies,—he had never acknowledged his
+subordination to the Minister of War, had ever openly scoffed at the
+republican Constitution, and had pursued Bonaparte with a protection
+that was ambiguously distinguished. Now he became zealous for the
+discipline in opposition to Bonaparte. While, on October 10, a part of
+the cavalry cried: “Vive Napoleon! Vivent les saucissons;” [#2 Long
+live Napoleon! Long live the sausages!] Changarnier saw to it that at
+least the infantry, which filed by under the command of his friend
+Neumeyer, should observe an icy silence. In punishment, the Minister of
+War, at the instigation of Bonaparte, deposed General Neumeyer from his
+post in Paris, under the pretext of providing for him as
+Commander-in-chief of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Military Divisions.
+Neumeyer declined the exchange, and had, in consequence, to give his
+resignation. On his part, Changarnier published on November 2, an
+order, wherein he forbade the troops to indulge, while under arms, in
+any sort of political cries or demonstrations. The papers devoted to
+the Elysee interests attacked Changarnier; the papers of the party of
+Order attacked Bonaparte; the Permanent Committee held frequent secret
+sessions, at which it was repeatedly proposed to declare the fatherland
+in danger; the Army seemed divided into two hostile camps, with two
+hostile staffs; one at the Elysee, where Bonaparte, the other at the
+Tuileries, where Changarnier resided. All that seemed wanting for the
+signal of battle to sound was the convening of the National Assembly.
+The French public looked upon the friction between Bonaparte and
+Changarnier in the light of the English journalist, who characterized
+it in these words: “The political servant girls of France are mopping
+away the glowing lava of the revolution with old mops, and they scold
+each other while doing their work.”
+
+Meanwhile, Bonaparte hastened to depose the Minister of War,
+d’Hautpoul; to expedite him heels over head to Algiers; and to appoint
+in his place General Schramm as Minister of War. On November 12, he
+sent to the National Assembly a message of American excursiveness,
+overloaded with details, redolent of order, athirst for conciliation,
+resignful to the Constitution, dealing with all and everything, only
+not with the burning questions of the moment. As if in passing he
+dropped the words that according to the express provisions of the
+Constitution, the President alone disposes over the Army. The message
+closed with the following high-sounding protestations:
+
+“France demands, above all things, peace . . . Alone bound by an oath,
+I shall keep myself within the narrow bounds marked out by it to me . .
+. As to me, elected by the people, and owing my power to it alone, I
+shall always submit to its lawfully expressed will. Should you at this
+session decide upon the revision of the Constitution, a Constitutional
+Convention will regulate the position of the Executive power. If you do
+not, then, the people will, in 1852, solemnly announce its decision.
+But, whatever the solution may be that the future has in store, let us
+arrive at an understanding to the end that never may passion, surprise
+or violence decide over the fate of a great nation. . . . That which,
+above all, bespeaks my attention is, not who will, in 1852, rule over
+France, but to so devote the time at my disposal that the interval may
+pass by with-out agitation and disturbance. I have straightforwardly
+opened my heart to you, you will answer my frankness with your
+confidence, my good efforts with your co-operation. God will do the
+rest.”
+
+The honnete, hypocritically temperate, commonplace-virtuous language of
+the bourgeoisie reveals its deep meaning in the mouth of the
+self-appointed ruler of the “Society of December 10,” and of the
+picnic-hero of St. Maur and Satory.
+
+The burgraves of the party of Order did not for a moment deceive
+themselves on the confidence that this unbosoming deserved. They were
+long blase on oaths; they numbered among themselves veterans and
+virtuosi of perjury. The passage about the army did not, however,
+escape them. They observed with annoyance that the message, despite its
+prolix enumeration of the lately enacted laws, passed, with affected
+silence, over the most important of all, the election law, and,
+moreover, in case no revision of the Constitution was held, left the
+choice of the President, in 1852, with the people. The election law was
+the ball-and-chain to the feet of the party of Order, that hindered
+them from walking, and now assuredly from storming. Furthermore, by the
+official disbandment of the “Society of December 10,” and the dismissal
+of the Minister of War, d’Hautpoul, Bonaparte had, with his own hands,
+sacrificed the scapegoats on the altar of the fatherland. He had turned
+off the expected collision. Finally, the party of Order itself
+anxiously sought to avoid every decisive conflict with the Executive,
+to weaken and to blur it over. Fearing to lose its conquests over the
+revolution, it let its rival gather the fruits thereof. “France
+demands, above all things, peace,” with this language had the party of
+Order been apostrophizing the revolution, since February; with this
+language did Bonaparte’s message now apostrophize the party of Order:
+“France demands, above all things, peace.” Bonaparte committed acts
+that aimed at usurpation, but the party of Order committed a
+“disturbance of the peace,” if it raised the hue and cry, and explained
+them hypochrondriacally. The sausages of Satory were mouse-still when
+nobody talked about them;—France demands, above all things, “peace.”
+Accordingly, Bonaparte demanded that he be let alone; and the
+parliamentary party was lamed with a double fear: the fear of
+re-conjuring up the revolutionary disturbance of the peace, and the
+fear of itself appearing as the disturber of the peace in the eyes of
+its own class, of the bourgeosie. Seeing that, above all things, France
+demanded peace, the party of Order did not dare, after Bonaparte had
+said “peace” in his message, to answer “war.” The public, who had
+promised to itself the pleasure of seeing great scenes of scandal at
+the opening of the National Assembly, was cheated out of its
+expectations. The opposition deputies, who demanded the submission of
+the minutes of the Permanent Committee over the October occurrences,
+were outvoted. All debate that might excite was fled from on principle.
+The labors of the National Assembly during November and December, 1850,
+were without interest.
+
+Finally, toward the end of December, began a guerilla warfare about
+certain prerogatives of the parliament. The movement sank into the mire
+of petty chicaneries on the prerogative of the two powers, since, with
+the abolition of universal suffrage, the bourgeoisie had done away with
+the class struggle.
+
+A judgment for debt had been secured against Mauguin, one of the
+Representatives. Upon inquiry by the President of the Court, the
+Minister of Justice, Rouher, declared that an order of arrest should be
+made out without delay. Manguin was, accordingly, cast into the
+debtors’ prison. The National Assembly bristled up when it heard of the
+“attentat.” It not only ordered his immediate release, but had him
+forcibly taken out of Clichy the same evening by its own greffier. In
+order, nevertheless, to shield its belief in the “sacredness of private
+property,” and also with the ulterior thought of opening, in case of
+need, an asylum for troublesome Mountainers, it declared the
+imprisonment of a Representative for debt to be permissible upon its
+previous consent. It forgot to decree that the President also could be
+locked up for debt. By its act, it wiped out the last semblance of
+inviolability that surrounded the members of its own body.
+
+It will be remembered that, upon the testimony of one Allais, Police
+Commissioner Yon had charged a Section of Decembrists with a plan to
+murder Dupin and Changarnier. With an eye upon that, the questors
+proposed at the very first session, that the parliament organize a
+police force of its own, paid for out of the private budget of the
+National Assembly itself, and wholly independent of the Police
+Prefects. The Minister of the Interior, Baroche, protested against this
+trespass on his preserves. A miserable compromise followed, according
+to which the Police Commissioner of the Assembly was to be paid out of
+its own private budget and was to be subject to the appointment and
+dismissal of its own questors, but only upon previous agreement with
+the Minister of the Interior. In the meantime Allais had been
+prosecuted by the Government. It was an easy thing in Court, to present
+his testimony in the light of a mystification, and, through the mouth
+of the Public Prosecutor, to throw Dupin, Changarnier, Yon, together
+with the whole National Assembly, into a ridiculous light. Thereupon,
+on December 29, Minister Baroche writes a letter to Dupin, in which he
+demands the dismissal of Yon. The Committee of the National Assembly
+decides to keep Yon in office; nevertheless, the National Assembly,
+frightened by its own violence in the affair of Mauguin, and
+accustomed, every time it has shied a blow at the Executive, to receive
+back from it two in exchange, does not sanction this decision. It
+dismisses Yon in reward for his zeal in office, and robs itself of a
+parliamentary prerogative, indispensable against a person who does not
+decide by night to execute by day, but decides by day and executes by
+night.
+
+We have seen how, during the months of November and December, under
+great and severe provocations, the National Assembly evaded and refused
+the combat with the Executive power. Now we see it compelled to accept
+it on the smallest occasions. In the affair of Mauguin, it confirms in
+principle the liability of a Representative to imprisonment for debt,
+but to itself reserves the power of allowing the principle to be
+applied only to the Representatives whom it dislikes,-and for this
+infamous privilege we see it wrangling with the Minister of Justice.
+Instead of utilizing the alleged murder plan to the end of fastening an
+inquest upon the “Society of December 10,” and of exposing Bonaparte
+beyond redemption before France and his true figure, as the head of the
+slum-proletariat of Paris, it allows the collision to sink to a point
+where the only issue between itself and the Minister of the Interior
+is. Who has jurisdiction over the appointment and dismissal of a Police
+Commissioner? Thus we see the party of Order, during this whole period,
+compelled by its ambiguous position to wear out and fritter away its
+conflict with the Executive power in small quarrels about jurisdiction,
+in chicaneries, in pettifogging, in boundary disputes, and to turn the
+stalest questions of form into the very substance of its activity. It
+dares not accept the collision at the moment when it involves a
+principle, when the Executive power has really given itself a blank,
+and when the cause of the National Assembly would be the cause of the
+nation. It would thereby have issued to the nation an order of march;
+and it feared nothing so much as that the nation should move. Hence, on
+these occasions, it rejects the motions of the Mountain, and proceeds
+to the order of the day. After the issue has in this way lost all
+magnitude, the Executive power quietly awaits the moment when it can
+take it up again upon small and insignificant occasions; when, so to
+say, the issue offers only a parliamentary local interest. Then does
+the repressed valor of the party of Order break forth, then it tears
+away the curtain from the scene, then it denounces the President, then
+it declares the republic to be in danger,—but then all its pathos
+appears stale, and the occasion for the quarrel a hypocritical pretext,
+or not at all worth the effort. The parliamentary tempest becomes a
+tempest in a tea-pot, the struggle an intrigue, the collision a
+scandal. While the revolutionary classes gloat with sardonic laughter
+over the humiliation of the National Assembly—they, of course, being as
+enthusiastic for the prerogatives of the parliament as that body is for
+public freedom—the bourgeoisie, outside of the parliament, does not
+understand how the bourgeoisie, inside of the parliament, can squander
+its time with such petty bickerings, and can endanger peace by such
+wretched rivalries with the President. It is puzzled at a strategy that
+makes peace the very moment when everybody expects battles, and that
+attacks the very moment everybody believes peace has been concluded.
+
+On December 20, Pascal Duprat interpellated the Minister of the
+Interior on the “Goldbar Lottery.” This lottery was a “Daughter from
+Elysium”; Bonaparte, together with his faithful, had given her birth;
+and Police Prefect Carlier had placed her under his official
+protection, although the French law forbade all lotteries, with the
+exception of games for benevolent purposes. Seven million tickets, a
+franc a piece, and the profit ostensibly destined to the shipping of
+Parisian vagabonds to California. Golden dreams were to displace the
+Socialist dreams of the Parisian proletariat; the tempting prospect of
+a prize was to displace the doctrinal right to labor. Of course, the
+workingmen of Paris did not recognize in the lustre of the California
+gold bars the lack-lustre francs that had been wheedled out of their
+pockets. In the main, however, the scheme was an unmitigated swindle.
+The vagabonds, who meant to open California gold mines without taking
+the pains to leave Paris, were Bonaparte himself and his Round Table of
+desperate insolvents. The three millions granted by the National
+Assembly were rioted away; the Treasury had to be refilled somehow or
+another. In vain did Bonaparte open a national subscription, at the
+head of which he himself figured with a large sum, for the
+establishment of so-called “cites ouvrieres.” [#3 Work cities.] The
+hard-hearted bourgeois waited, distrustful, for the payment of his own
+shares; and, as this, of course, never took place, the speculation in
+Socialist castles in the air fell flat. The gold bars drew better.
+Bonaparte and his associates did not content themselves with putting
+into their own pockets part of the surplus of the seven millions over
+and above the bars that were to be drawn; they manufactured false
+tickets; they sold, of Number 10 alone, fifteen to twenty lots—a
+financial operation fully in the spirit of the “Society of December
+10”! The National Assembly did not here have before it the fictitious
+President of the Republic, but Bonaparte himself in flesh and blood.
+Here it could catch him in the act, not in conflict with the
+Constitution, but with the penal code. When, upon Duprat’s
+interpellation, the National Assembly went over to the order of the
+day, this did not happen simply because Girardin’s motion to declare
+itself “satisfied” reminded the party of Order of its own systematic
+corruption: the bourgeois, above all the bourgeois who has been
+inflated into a statesman, supplements his practical meanness with
+theoretical pompousness. As statesman, he becomes, like the Government
+facing him, a superior being, who can be fought only in a higher, more
+exalted manner.
+
+Bonaparte-who, for the very reason of his being a “bohemian,” a
+princely slum-proletarian, had over the scampish bourgeois the
+advantage that he could carry on the fight after the Assembly itself
+had carried him with its own hands over the slippery ground of the
+military banquets, of the reviews, of the “Society of December 10,”
+and, finally, of the penal code-now saw that the moment had arrived
+when he could move from the seemingly defensive to the offensive. He
+was but little troubled by the intermediate and trifling defeats of the
+Minister of Justice, of the Minister of War, of the Minister of the
+Navy, of the Minister of Finance, whereby the National Assembly
+indicated its growling displeasure. Not only did he prevent the
+Ministers from resigning, and thus recognizing the subordination of the
+executive power to the Parliament; he could now accomplish what during
+the vacation of the National Assembly he had commenced, the separation
+of the military power from the Assembly—the deposition of Changarnier.
+
+An Elysee paper published an order, issued during the month of May,
+ostensibly to the First Military Division, and, hence, proceeding from
+Changarnier, wherein the officers were recommended, in case of an
+uprising, to give no quarter to the traitors in their own ranks, to
+shoot them down on the spot, and to refuse troops to the National
+Assembly, should it make a requisition for such. On January 3, 1851,
+the Cabinet was interpellated on this order. The Cabinet demands for
+the examination of the affair at first three months, then one week,
+finally only twenty-four hours’ time. The Assembly orders an immediate
+explanation Changarnier rises and declares that this order never
+existed; he adds that he would ever hasten to respond to the calls of
+the National Assembly, and that, in case of a collision, they could
+count upon him. The Assembly receives his utterances with inexpressible
+applause, and decrees a vote of confidence to him. It thereby resign
+its own powers; it decrees its own impotence and the omnipotence of the
+Army by committing itself to the private protection of a general. But
+the general, in turn, deceives himself when he places at the Assembly’s
+disposal and against Bonaparte a power that he holds only as a fief
+from that same Bonaparte, and when, on his part, he expects protection
+from this Parliament, from his protege’, itself needful of protection.
+But Changarnier has faith in the mysterious power with which since
+January, 1849, he had been clad by the bourgeoisie. He takes himself
+for the Third Power, standing beside the other Powers of Government. He
+shares the faith of all the other heroes, or rather saints, of this
+epoch, whose greatness consists but in the interested good opinion that
+their own party holds of them, and who shrink into every-day figures so
+soon as circumstances invite them to perform miracles. Infidelity is,
+indeed, the deadly enemy of these supposed heroes and real saints.
+Hence their virtuously proud indignation at the unenthusiastic wits and
+scoffers.
+
+That same evening the Ministers were summoned to the Elysee; Bonaparte
+presses the removal of Changarnier; five Ministers refuse to sign the
+order; the “Moniteur” announces a Ministerial crisis; and the party of
+Order threatens the formation of a Parliamentary army under the command
+of Changarnier. The party of Order had the constitutional power hereto.
+It needed only to elect Changarnier President of the National Assembly
+in order to make a requisition for whatever military forces it needed
+for its own safety. It could do this all the more safely, seeing that
+Changarnier still stood at the head of the Army and of the Parisian
+National Guard, and only lay in wait to be summoned, together with the
+Army. The Bonapartist press did not even dare to question the right of
+the National Assembly to issue a direct requisition for troops;—a legal
+scruple, that, under the given circumstances, did not promise success.
+That the Army would have obeyed the orders of the National Assembly is
+probable, when it is considered that Bonaparte had to look eight days
+all over Paris to find two generals—Baraguay d’Hilliers and St. Jean
+d’Angley—who declared themselves ready to countersign the order
+cashiering Changamier. That, however, the party of Order would have
+found in its own ranks and in the parliament the requisite vote for
+such a decision is more than doubtful, when it is considered that,
+eight days later, 286 votes pulled away from it, and that, as late as
+December, 1851, at the last decisive hour, the Mountain rejected a
+similar proposition. Nevertheless, the burgraves might still have
+succeeded in driving the mass of their party to an act of heroism,
+consisting in feeling safe behind a forest of bayonets, and in
+accepting the services of the Army, which found itself deserted in its
+camp. Instead of this, the Messieurs Burgraves betook themselves to the
+Elysee on the evening of January 6, with the view of inducing
+Bonaparte, by means of politic words and considerations, to drop the
+removal of Changarnier. Him whom we must convince we recognize as the
+master of the situation. Bonaparte, made to feel secure by this step,
+appoints on January 12 a new Ministry, in which the leaders of the old,
+Fould and Baroche, are retained. St Jean d’Angley becomes Minister of
+War; the “Moniteur” announces the decree cashiering Changarnier; his
+command is divided up between Baraguay d’Hilliers, who receives the
+First Division, and Perrot, who is placed over the National Guard. The
+“Bulwark of Society” is turned down; and, although no dog barks over
+the event, in the Bourses the stock quotations rise.
+
+By repelling the Army, that, in Changarnier’s person, put itself at its
+disposal, and thus irrevocably stood up against the President, the
+party of Order declares that the bourgeoisie has lost its vocation to
+reign. Already there was no parliamentary Ministry. By losing,
+furthermore, the handle to the Army and to the National Guard, what
+instrument of force was there left to the National Assembly in order to
+maintain both the usurped power of the parliament over the people, and
+its constitutional power over the President? None. All that was left to
+it was the appeal to peaceful principles, that itself had always
+explained as “general rules” merely, to be prescribed to third parties,
+and only in order to enable itself to move all the more freely. With
+the removal of Changarnier, with the transfer of the military power to
+Bonaparte, closes the first part of the period that we are considering,
+the period of the struggle between the party of Order and the Executive
+power. The war between the two powers is now openly declared; it is
+conducted openly; but only after the party of Order has lost both arms
+and soldier. With-out a Ministry, without any army, without a people,
+without the support of public opinion; since its election law of May
+31, no longer the representative of the sovereign nation sans eyes,
+sans ears, sans teeth, sans everything, the National Assembly had
+gradually converted itself into a French Parliament of olden days, that
+must leave all action to the Government, and content itself with
+growling remonstrances “post festum.” [#4 After the act is done; after
+the fact.]
+
+The party of Order receives the new Ministry with a storm of
+indignation. General Bedeau calls to mind the mildness of the Permanent
+Committee during the vacation, and the excessive prudence with which it
+had renounced the privilege of disclosing its minutes. Now, the
+Minister of the Interior himself insists upon the disclosure of these
+minutes, that have now, of course, become dull as stagnant waters,
+reveal no new facts, and fall without making the slightest effect upon
+the blase public. Upon Remusat’s proposition, the National Assembly
+retreats into its Committees, and appoints a “Committee on
+Extraordinary Measures.” Paris steps all the less out of the ruts of
+its daily routine, seeing that business is prosperous at the time, the
+manufactories busy, the prices of cereals low, provisions abundant, the
+savings banks receiving daily new deposits. The “extraordinary
+measures,” that the parliament so noisily announced fizzle out on
+January 18 in a vote of lack of confidence against the Ministry,
+without General Changarnier’s name being even mentioned. The party of
+Order was forced to frame its motion in that way so as to secure the
+votes of the republicans, because, of all the acts of the Ministry,
+Changarnier’s dismissal only was the very one they approved, while the
+party of Order cannot in fact, condemn the other Ministerial acts which
+it had itself dictated. The January 18 vote of lack of confidence was
+decided by 415 ayes against 286 nays. It was, accordingly put through
+by a coalition of the uncompromising Legitimists and Orleanists with
+the pure republicans and the Mountain. Thus it revealed the fact that,
+in its conflicts with Bonaparte, not only the Ministry, not only the
+Army, but also its independent parliamentary majority; that a troop of
+Representatives had deserted its camp out of a fanatic zeal for
+harmony, out of fear of fight, out of lassitude, out of family
+considerations for the salaries of relatives in office, out of
+speculations on vacancies in the Ministry (Odillon Barrot), or out of
+that unmitigated selfishness that causes the average bourgeois to be
+ever inclined to sacrifice the interests of his class to this or that
+private motive. The Bonapartist Representatives belonged from the start
+to the party of Order only in the struggle against the revolution. The
+leader of the Catholic party, Montalembert, already then threw his
+influence in the scale of Bonaparte, since he despaired of the vitality
+of the parliamentary party. Finally, the leaders of this party itself,
+Thiers and Berryer—the Orleanist and the Legitimist—were compelled to
+proclaim themselves openly as republicans; to admit that their heart
+favored royalty, but their head the republic; that their parliamentary
+republic was the only possible form for the rule of the bourgeoisie
+Thus were they compelled to brand, before the eyes of the bourgeois
+class itself, as an intrigue—as dangerous as it was senseless—the
+restoration plans, which they continued to pursue indefatigably behind
+the back of the parliament.
+
+The January 18 vote of lack of confidence struck the Ministers, not the
+President. But it was not the Ministry, it was the President who had
+deposed Changarnier. Should the party of Order place Bonaparte himself
+under charges? On account of his restoration hankerings? These only
+supplemented their own. On account of his conspiracy at the military
+reviews and of the “Society of December 10”? They had long since buried
+these subjects under simple orders of business. On account of the
+discharge of the hero of January 29 and June 13, of the man who, in
+May, 1850, threatened, in case of riot, to set Paris on fire at all its
+four corners? Their allies of the Mountain and Cavaignac did not even
+allow them to console the fallen “Bulwark of Society” with an official
+testimony of their sympathy. They themselves could not deny the
+constitutional right of the President to remove a General. They stormed
+only because he made an unparliamentary use of his constitutional
+right. Had they not themselves constantly made an unconstitutional use
+of their parliamentary prerogative, notably by the abolition of
+universal suffrage? Consequently they were reminded to move exclusively
+within parliamentary bounds. Indeed, it required that peculiar disease,
+a disease that, since 1848, has raged over the whole continent,
+“Parliamentary Idiocy,”—that fetters those whom it infects to an
+imaginary world, and robs them of all sense, all remembrance, all
+understanding of the rude outside world;—it required this
+“Parliamentary Idiocy” in order that the party of Order, which had,
+with its own hands, destroyed all the conditions for parliamentary
+power, and, in its struggle with the other classes, was obliged to
+destroy them, still should consider its parliamentary victories as
+victories, and imagine it hit the President by striking his Ministers.
+They only afforded him an opportunity to humble the National Assembly
+anew in the eyes of the nation. On January 20, the “Moniteur” announced
+that the whole the dismissal of the whole Ministry was accepted. Under
+the pretext that none of the parliamentary parties had any longer the
+majority—as proved by the January 18 vote, that fruit of the coalition
+between mountain and royalists—, and, in order to await the
+re-formation of a majority, Bonaparte appointed a so-called transition
+Ministry, of whom no member belonged to the parliament-altogether
+wholly unknown and insignificant individuals; a Ministry of mere clerks
+and secretaries. The party of Order could now wear itself out in the
+game with these puppets; the Executive power no longer considered it
+worth the while to be seriously represented in the National Assembly.
+By this act Bonaparte concentrated the whole executive power all the
+more securely in his own person; he had all the freer elbow-room to
+exploit the same to his own ends, the more his Ministers became mere
+supernumeraries.
+
+The party of Order, now allied with the Mountain, revenged itself by
+rejecting the Presidential endowment project of 1,800.000 francs, which
+the chief of the “Society of December 10” had compelled his Ministerial
+clerks to present to the Assembly. This time a majority of only 102
+votes carried the day accordingly since January 18, 27 more votes had
+fallen off: the dissolution of the party of Order was making progress.
+Lest any one might for a moment be deceived touching the meaning of its
+coalition with the Mountain, the party of Order simultaneously scorned
+even to consider a motion, signed by 189 members of the Mountain, for a
+general amnesty to political criminals. It was enough that the Minister
+of the Interior, one Baisse, declared that the national tranquility was
+only in appearance, in secret there reigned deep agitation, in secret,
+ubiquitous societies were organized, the democratic papers were
+preparing to reappear, the reports from the Departments were
+unfavorable, the fugitives of Geneva conducted a conspiracy via Lyons
+through the whole of southern France, France stood on the verge of an
+industrial and commercial crisis, the manufacturers of Roubaix were
+working shorter hours, the prisoners of Belle Isle had mutinied;—it was
+enough that even a mere Baisse should conjure up the “Red Spectre” for
+the party of Order to reject without discussion a motion that would
+have gained for the National Assembly a tremendous popularity, and
+thrown Bonaparte back into its arms. Instead of allowing itself to be
+intimidated by the Executive power with the perspective of fresh
+disturbances, the party of Order should rather have allowed a little
+elbow-room to the class struggle, in order to secure the dependence of
+the Executive upon itself. But it did not feel itself equal to the task
+of playing with fire.
+
+Meanwhile, the so-called transition Ministry vegetated along until the
+middle of April. Bonaparte tired out and fooled the National Assembly
+with constantly new Ministerial combinations. Now he seemed to intend
+constructing a republican Ministry with Lamartine and Billault; then, a
+parliamentary one with the inevitable Odillon Barrot, whose name must
+never be absent when a dupe is needed; then again, a Legitimist, with
+Batismenil and Lenoist d’Azy; and yet again, an Orleansist, with
+Malleville. While thus throwing the several factions of the party of
+Order into strained relations with one another, and alarming them all
+with the prospect of a republican Ministry, together with the
+there-upon inevitable restoration of universal suffrage, Bonaparte
+simultaneously raises in the bourgeoisie the conviction that his
+sincere efforts for a parliamentary Ministry are wrecked upon the
+irreconcilable antagonism of the royalist factions. All the while the
+bourgeoisie was clamoring louder and louder for a “strong Government,”
+and was finding it less and less pardonable to leave France “without an
+administration,” in proportion as a general commercial crisis seemed to
+be under way and making recruits for Socialism in the cities, as did
+the ruinously low price of grain in the rural districts. Trade became
+daily duller; the unemployed hands increased perceptibly; in Paris, at
+least 10,000 workingmen were without bread; in Rouen, Muehlhausen,
+Lyons, Roubaix, Tourcoign, St. Etienue, Elbeuf, etc., numerous
+factories stood idle. Under these circumstances Bonaparte could venture
+to restore, on April 11, the Ministry of January 18; Messieurs Rouher,
+Fould, Baroche, etc., reinforced by Mr. Leon Faucher, whom the
+constitutive assembly had, during its last days, unanimously, with the
+exception of five Ministerial votes, branded with a vote of censure for
+circulating false telegraphic dispatches. Accordingly, the National
+Assembly had won a victory on January 18 over the Ministry, it had, for
+the period of three months, been battling with Bonaparte, and all this
+merely to the end that, on April 11, Fould and Baroche should be able
+to take up the Puritan Faucher as third in their ministerial league.
+
+In November, 1849, Bonaparte had satisfied himself with an
+Unparliamentary, in January, 1851, with an Extra-Parliamentary, on
+April 11, he felt strong enough to form an Anti-Parliamentary Ministry,
+that harmoniously combined within itself the votes of lack of
+confidence of both assemblies-the constitutive and the legislative, the
+republican and the royalist. This ministerial progression was a
+thermometer by which the parliament could measure the ebbing
+temperature of its own life. This had sunk so low by the end of April
+that, at a personal interview, Persigny could invite Changarnier to go
+over to the camp of the President. Bonaparte, he assured Changarnier,
+considered the influence of the National Assembly to be wholly
+annihilated, and already the proclamation was ready, that was to be
+published after the steadily contemplated, but again accidentally
+postponed “coup d’etat.” Changarnier communicated this announcement of
+its death to the leaders of the party of Order; but who was there to
+believe a bed-bug bite could kill? The parliament, however beaten,
+however dissolved, however death-tainted it was, could not persuade
+itself to see, in the duel with the grotesque chief of the “Society of
+December 10,” anything but a duel with a bed-bug. But Bonaparte
+answered the party of Order as Agesilaus did King Agis: “I seem to you
+an ant; but shall one day be a lion.”
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+The coalition with the Mountain and the pure republicans, to which the
+party of Order found itself condemned in its fruitless efforts to keep
+possession of the military and to reconquer supreme control over the
+Executive power, proved conclusively that it had forfeited its
+independent parliamentary majority. The calendar and clock merely gave,
+on May 29, the signal for its complete dissolution. With May 29
+commenced the last year of the life of the National Assembly. It now
+had to decide for the unchanged continuance or the revision of the
+Constitution. But a revision of the Constitution meant not only the
+definitive supremacy of either the bourgeoisie of the small traders’
+democracy, of either democracy or proletarian anarchy, of either a
+parliamentary republic or Bonaparte, it meant also either Orleans or
+Bourbon! Thus fell into the very midst of the parliament the apple of
+discord, around which the conflict of interests, that cut up the party
+of Order into hostile factions, was to kindle into an open
+conflagration. The party of Order was a combination of heterogeneous
+social substances. The question of revision raised a political
+temperature, in which the product was reduced to its original
+components.
+
+The interest of the Bonapartists in the revision was simple: they were
+above all concerned in the abolition of Article 45, which forbade
+Bonaparte’s reelection and the prolongation of his term. Not less
+simple seemed to be the position of the republicans; they rejected all
+revision, seeing in that only a general conspiracy against the
+republic; as they disposed over more than one-fourth of the votes in
+the National Assembly, and, according to the Constitution, a
+three-fourths majority was requisite to revise and to call a revisory
+convention, they needed only to count their own votes to be certain of
+victory. Indeed, they were certain of it.
+
+Over and against these clear-cut positions, the party of Order found
+itself tangled in inextricable contradictions. If it voted against the
+revision, it endangered the “status quo,” by leaving to Bonaparte only
+one expedient—that of violence and handing France over, on May 2, 1852,
+at the very time of election, a prey to revolutionary anarchy, with a
+President whose authority was at an end; with a parliament that the
+party had long ceased to own, and with a people that it meant to
+re-conquer. If it voted constitutionally for a revision, it knew that
+it voted in vain and would constitutionally have to go under before the
+veto of the republicans. If, unconstitutionally, it pronounced a simple
+majority binding, it could hope to control the revolution only in case
+it surrendered unconditionally to the domination of the Executive
+power: it then made Bonaparte master of the Constitution, of the
+revision and of itself. A merely partial revision, prolonging the term
+of the President, opened the way to imperial usurpation; a general
+revision, shortening the existence of the republic, threw the dynastic
+claims into an inevitable conflict: the conditions for a Bourbon and
+those for an Orleanist restoration were not only different, they
+mutually excluded each other.
+
+The parliamentary republic was more than a neutral ground on which the
+two factions of the French bourgeoisie—Legitimists and Orleanists,
+large landed property and manufacture—could lodge together with equal
+rights. It was the indispensable condition for their common reign, the
+only form of government in which their common class interest could
+dominate both the claims of their separate factions and all the other
+classes of society. As royalists, they relapsed into their old
+antagonism into the struggle for the overlordship of either landed
+property or of money; and the highest expression of this antagonism,
+its personification, were the two kings themselves, their dynasties.
+Hence the resistance of the party of Order to the recall of the
+Bourbons.
+
+The Orleanist Representative Creton moved periodically in 1849, 1850
+and 1851 the repeal of the decree of banishment against the royal
+families; as periodically did the parliament present the spectacle of
+an Assembly of royalists who stubbornly shut to their banished kings
+the door through which they could return home. Richard III murdered
+Henry VI, with the remark that he was too good for this world, and
+belonged in heaven. They declared France too bad to have her kings back
+again. Forced by the power of circumstances, they had become
+republicans, and repeatedly sanctioned the popular mandate that exiled
+their kings from France.
+
+The revision of the Constitution, and circumstances compelled its
+consideration, at once made uncertain not only the republic itself, but
+also the joint reign of the two bourgeois factions; and it revived,
+with the possibility of the monarchy, both the rivalry of interests
+which these two factions had alternately allowed to preponderate, and
+the struggle for the supremacy of the one over the other. The diplomats
+of the party of Order believed they could allay the struggle by a
+combination of the two dynasties through a so-called fusion of the
+royalist parties and their respective royal houses. The true fusion of
+the restoration and the July monarchy was, however, the parliamentary
+republic, in which the Orleanist and Legitimist colors were dissolved,
+and the bourgeois species vanished in the plain bourgeois, in the
+bourgeois genus. Now however, the plan was to turn the Orleanist
+Legitimist and the Legitimist Orleanist. The kingship, in which their
+antagonism was personified, was to incarnate their unity, the
+expression of their exclusive faction interests was to become the
+expression of their common class interest; the monarchy was to
+accomplish what only the abolition of two monarchies—the republic could
+and did accomplish. This was the philosopher’s stone, for the finding
+of which the doctors of the party of Order were breaking their heads.
+As though the Legitimate monarchy ever could be the monarchy of the
+industrial bourgeoisie, or the bourgeois monarchy the monarchy of the
+hereditary landed aristocracy! As though landed property and industry
+could fraternize under one crown, where the crown could fall only upon
+one head, the head of the older or the younger brother! As though
+industry could at all deal upon a footing of equality with landed
+property, so long as landed property did not decide itself to become
+industrial. If Henry V were to die tomorrow, the Count of Paris would
+not, therefore, become the king of the Legitimists, unless he ceased to
+be the King of the Orleanists. Nevertheless, the fusion philosophers,
+who became louder in the measure that the question of revision stepped
+to the fore, who had provided themselves with a daily organ in the
+“Assemblee Nationale,” who, even at this very moment (February, 1852)
+are again at work, explained the whole difficulty by the opposition and
+rivalries of the two dynasties. The attempts to reconcile the family of
+Orleans with Henry V., begun since the death of Louis Philippe, but, as
+all these dynastic intrigues carried on only during the vacation of the
+National Assembly, between acts, behind the scenes, more as a
+sentimental coquetry with the old superstition than as a serious
+affair, were now raised by the party of Order to the dignity of a great
+State question, and were conducted upon the public stage, instead of,
+as heretofore in the amateurs’ theater. Couriers flew from Paris to
+Venice, from Venice to Claremont, from Claremont to Paris. The Duke of
+Chambord issues a manifesto in which he announces not his own, but the
+“national” restoration, “with the aid of all the members of his
+family.” The Oleanist Salvandy throws himself at the feet of Henry V.
+The Legitimist leaders Berryer, Benoit d’Azy, St. Priest travel to
+Claremont, to persuade the Orleans; but in vain. The fusionists learn
+too late that the interests of the two bourgeois factions neither lose
+in exclusiveness nor gain in pliancy where they sharpen to a point in
+the form of family interests, of the interests of the two royal houses.
+When Henry V. recognized the Count of Paris as his successor—the only
+success that the fusion could at best score—the house of Orleans
+acquired no claim that the childlessness of Henry V. had not already
+secured to it; but, on the other hand, it lost all the claims that it
+had conquered by the July revolution. It renounced its original claims,
+all the title, that, during a struggle nearly one hundred years long,
+it had wrested from the older branch of the Bourbons; it bartered away
+its historic prerogative, the prerogative of its family-tree. Fusion,
+accordingly, amounted to nothing else than the resignation of the house
+of Orleans, its Legitimist resignation, a repentful return from the
+Protestant State Church into the Catholic;—a return, at that, that did
+not even place it on the throne that it had lost, but on the steps of
+the throne on which it was born. The old Orleanist Ministers Guizot,
+Duchatel, etc., who likewise hastened to Claremont, to advocate the
+fusion, represented in fact only the nervous reaction of the July
+monarchy; despair, both in the citizen kingdom and the kingdom of
+citizens; the superstitious belief in legitimacy as the last amulet
+against anarchy. Mediators, in their imagination, between Orleans and
+Bourbon, they were in reality but apostate Orleanists, and as such were
+they received by the Prince of Joinville. The virile, bellicose part of
+the Orleanists, on the contrary—Thiers, Baze, etc.—, persuaded the
+family of Louis Philippe all the easier that, seeing every plan for the
+immediate restoration of the monarchy presupposed the fusion of the two
+dynasties, and every plan for fusion the resignation of the house of
+Orleans, it corresponded, on the contrary, wholly with the tradition of
+its ancestors to recognize the republic for the time being, and to wait
+until circumstances permitted I the conversion of the Presidential
+chair into a throne. Joinville’s candidacy was set afloat as a rumor,
+public curiosity was held in suspense, and a few months later, after
+the revision was rejected, openly proclaimed in September.
+
+Accordingly, the essay of a royalist fusion between Orleanists and
+Legitimists did not miscarry only, it broke up their parliamentary
+fusion, the republican form that they had adopted in common, and it
+decomposed the party of Order into its original components. But the
+wider the breach became between Venice and Claremont, the further they
+drifted away from each I other, and the greater the progress made by
+the Joinville agitation, all the more active and earnest became the
+negotiations between Faucher, the Minister of Bonaparte, and the
+Legitimists.
+
+The dissolution of the party of Order went beyond its original
+elements. Each of the two large factions fell in turn into new
+fragments. It was as if all the old political shades, that formerly
+fought and crowded one another within each of the two circles—be it
+that of the Legitimists or that of the Orleanists—, had been thawed out
+like dried infusoria by contact with water; as if they had recovered
+enough vitality to build their own groups and assert their own
+antagonisms. The Legitimists dreamed they were back amidst the quarrels
+between the Tuileries and the pavilion Marsan, between Villele and
+Polignac; the Orleanists lived anew through the golden period of the
+tourneys between Guizot, Mole, Broglie, Thiers, and Odillon Barrot.
+
+That portion of the party of Order—eager for a revision of the
+Constitution but disagreed upon the extent of revision—made up of the
+Legitimists under Berryer and Falloux and of those under Laroche
+Jacquelein, together with the tired-out Orleanists under Mole, Broglie,
+Montalembert and Odillon Barrot, united with the Bonapartist
+Representatives in the following indefinite and loosely drawn motion:
+
+“The undersigned Representatives, with the end in view of restoring to
+the nation the full exercise of her sovereignty, move that the
+Constitution be revised.”
+
+At the same time, however, they unanimously declared through their
+spokesman, Tocqueville, that the National Assembly had not the right to
+move the abolition of the republic, that right being vested only in a
+Constitutional Convention. For the rest, the Constitution could be
+revised only in a “legal” way, that is to say, only in case a
+three-fourths majority decided in favor of revision, as prescribed by
+the Constitution. After a six days’ stormy debate, the revision was
+rejected on July 19, as was to be foreseen. In its favor 446 votes were
+cast, against it 278. The resolute Oleanists, Thiers, Changarnier,
+etc., voted with the republicans and the Mountain.
+
+Thus the majority of the parliament pronounced itself against the
+Constitution, while the Constitution itself pronounced itself for the
+minority, and its decision binding. But had not the party of Order on
+May 31, 1850, had it not on June 13, 1849, subordinated the
+Constitution to the parliamentary majority? Did not the whole republic
+they had been hitherto having rest upon the subordination of the
+Constitutional clauses to the majority decisions of the parliament? Had
+they not left to the democrats the Old Testament superstitious belief
+in the letter of the law, and had they not chastised the democrats
+therefor? At this moment, however, revision meant nothing else than the
+continuance of the Presidential power, as the continuance of the
+Constitution meant nothing else than the deposition of Bonaparte. The
+parliament had pronounced itself for him, but the Constitution
+pronounced itself against the parliament. Accordingly, he acted both in
+the sense of the parliament when he tore up the Constitution, and in
+the sense of the Constitution when he chased away the parliament.
+
+The parliament pronounced the Constitution, and, thereby, also, its own
+reign, “outside of the pale of the majority”; by its decision, it
+repealed the Constitution, and continued the Presidential power, and it
+at once declared that neither could the one live nor the other die so
+long as itself existed. The feet of those who were to bury it stood at
+the door. While it was debating the subject of revision, Bonaparte
+removed General Baraguay d’Hilliers, who showed himself irresolute,
+from the command of the First Military Division, and appointed in his
+place General Magnan, the conqueror of Lyon; the hero of the December
+days, one of his own creatures, who already under Louis Philippe, on
+the occasion of the Boulogne expedition, had somewhat compromised
+himself in his favor.
+
+By its decision on the revision, the party of Order proved that it knew
+neither how to rule nor how to obey; neither how to live nor how to
+die; neither how to bear with the republic nor how to overthrow it;
+neither how to maintain the Constitution nor how to throw it overboard;
+neither how to co-operate with the President nor how to break with him.
+From what quarter did it then, look to for the solution of all the
+existing perplexities? From the calendar, from the course of events. It
+ceased to assume the control of events. It, accordingly, invited events
+to don its authority and also the power to which in its struggle with
+the people, it had yielded one attribute after another until it finally
+stood powerless before the same. To the end that the Executive be able
+all the more freely to formulate his plan of campaign against it,
+strengthen his means of attack, choose his tools, fortify his
+positions, the party of Order decided, in the very midst of this
+critical moment, to step off the stage, and adjourn for three months,
+from August 10 to November 4.
+
+Not only was the parliamentary party dissolved into its two great
+factions, not only was each of these dissolved within itself, but the
+party of Order, inside of the parliament, was at odds with the party of
+Order, outside of the parliament. The learned speakers and writers of
+the bourgeoisie, their tribunes and their press, in short, the
+ideologists of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie itself, the
+representatives and the represented, stood estranged from, and no
+longer understood one another.
+
+The Legitimists in the provinces, with their cramped horizon and their
+boundless enthusiasm, charged their parliamentary leaders Berryer and
+Falloux with desertion to the Bonapartist camp, and with apostacy from
+Henry V. Their lilymind [#1 An allusion to the lilies of the Bourbon
+coat-of-arms] believed in the fall of man, but not in diplomacy.
+
+More fatal and completer, though different, was the breach between the
+commercial bourgeoisie and its politicians. It twitted them, not as the
+Legitimists did theirs, with having apostatized from their principle,
+but, on the contrary, with adhering to principles that had become
+useless.
+
+I have already indicated that, since the entry of Fould in the
+Ministry, that portion of the commercial bourgeoisie that had enjoyed
+the lion’s share in Louis Philippe’s reign, to-wit, the aristocracy of
+finance, had become Bonapartist. Fould not only represented Bonaparte’s
+interests at the Bourse, he represented also the interests of the
+Bourse with Bonaparte. A passage from the London “Economist,” the
+European organ of the aristocracy of finance, described most strikingly
+the attitude of this class. In its issue of February 1, 1851, its Paris
+correspondent writes: “Now we have it stated from numerous quarters
+that France wishes above all things for repose. The President declares
+it in his message to the Legislative Assembly; it is echoed from the
+tribune; it is asserted in the journals; it is announced from the
+pulpit; it is demonstrated by the sensitiveness of the public funds at
+the least prospect of disturbance, and their firmness the instant it is
+made manifest that the Executive is far superior in wisdom and power to
+the factious ex-officials of all former governments.”
+
+In its issue of November 29, 1851, the “Economist” declares
+editorially: “The President is now recognized as the guardian of order
+on every Stock Exchange of Europe.” Accordingly, the Aristocracy of
+Finance condemned the parliamentary strife of the party of Order with
+the Executive as a “disturbance of order,” and hailed every victory of
+the President over its reputed representatives as a “victory of order.”
+Under “aristocracy of finance” must not, however, be understood merely
+the large bond negotiators and speculators in government securities, of
+whom it may be readily understood that their interests and the
+interests of the Government coincide. The whole modern money trade, the
+whole banking industry, is most intimately interwoven with the public
+credit. Part of their business capital requires to be invested in
+interest-bearing government securities that are promptly convertible
+into money; their deposits, i. e., the capital placed at their disposal
+and by them distributed among merchants and industrial establishments,
+flow partly out of the dividends on government securities. The whole
+money market, together with the priests of this market, is part and
+parcel of this “aristocracy of finance” at every epoch when the
+stability of the government is to them synonymous with “Moses and his
+prophets.” This is so even before things have reached the present stage
+when every deluge threatens to carry away the old governments
+themselves.
+
+But the industrial Bourgeoisie also, in its fanaticism for order, was
+annoyed at the quarrels of the Parliamentary party of Order with the
+Executive. Thiers, Anglas, Sainte Beuve, etc., received, after their
+vote of January 18, on the occasion of the discharge of Changarnier,
+public reprimands from their constituencies, located in the industrial
+districts, branding their coalition with the Mountain as an act of high
+treason to the cause of order. Although, true enough, the boastful,
+vexatious and petty intrigues, through which the struggle of the party
+of Order with the President manifested itself, deserved no better
+reception, yet notwithstanding, this bourgeois party, that expects of
+its representatives to allow the military power to pass without
+resistance out of the hands of their own Parliament into those of an
+adventurous Pretender, is not worth even the intrigues that were wasted
+in its behalf. It showed that the struggle for the maintenance of their
+public interests, of their class interests, of their political power
+only incommoded and displeased them, as a disturbance of their private
+business.
+
+The bourgeois dignitaries of the provincial towns, the magistrates,
+commercial judges, etc., with hardly any exception, received Bonaparte
+everywhere on his excursions in the most servile manner, even when, as
+in Dijon, he attacked the National Assembly and especially the party of
+Order without reserve.
+
+Business being brisk, as still at the beginning of 1851, the commercial
+bourgeoisie stormed against every Parliamentary strife, lest business
+be put out of temper. Business being dull, as from the end of February,
+1851, on, the bourgeoisie accused the Parliamentary strifes as the
+cause of the stand-still, and clamored for quiet in order that business
+may revive. The debates on revision fell just in the bad times. Seeing
+the question now was the to be or not to be of the existing form of
+government, the bourgeoisie felt itself all the more justified in
+demanding of its Representatives that they put an end to this
+tormenting provisional status, and preserve the “status quo.” This was
+no contradiction. By putting an end to the provisional status, it
+understood its continuance, the indefinite putting off of the moment
+when a final decision had to be arrived at. The “status quo” could be
+preserved in only one of two ways: either by the prolongation of
+Bonaparte’s term of office or by his constitutional withdrawal and the
+election of Cavaignac. A part of the bourgeoisie preferred the latter
+solution, and knew no better advice to give their Representatives than
+to be silent, to avoid the burning point. If their Representatives did
+not speak, so argued they, Bonaparte would not act. They desired an
+ostrich Parliament that would hide its head, in order not to be seen.
+Another part of the bourgeoisie preferred that Bonaparte, being once in
+the Presidential chair, be left in the Presidential chair, in order
+that everything might continue to run in the old ruts. They felt
+indignant that their Parliament did not openly break the Constitution
+and resign without further ado. The General Councils of the
+Departments, these provisional representative bodies of the large
+bourgeoisie, who had adjourned during the vacation of the National
+Assembly since August 25, pronounced almost unanimously for revision,
+that is to say, against the Parliament and for Bonaparte.
+
+Still more unequivocally than in its falling out with its Parliamentary
+Representatives, did the bourgeoisie exhibit its wrath at its literary
+Representatives, its own press. The verdicts of the bourgeois juries,
+inflicting excessive fines and shameless sentences of imprisonment for
+every attack of the bourgeois press upon the usurping aspirations of
+Bonaparte, for every attempt of the press to defend the political
+rights of the bourgeoisie against the Executive power, threw, not
+France alone, but all Europe into amazement.
+
+While on the one hand, as I have indicated, the Parliamentary party of
+Order ordered itself to keep the peace by screaming for peace; and
+while it pronounced the political rule of the bourgeoisie
+irreconcilable with the safety and the existence of the bourgeoisie, by
+destroying with its own hands in its struggle with the other classes of
+society all the conditions for its own, the Parliamentary regime; on
+the other hand, the mass of the bourgeoisie, outside of the Parliament,
+urged Bonaparte—by its servility towards the President, by its insults
+to the Parliament, by the brutal treatment of its own press—to suppress
+and annihilate its speaking and writing organs, its politicians and its
+literati, its orators’ tribune and its press, to the end that, under
+the protection of a strong and unhampered Government, it might ply its
+own private pursuits in safety. It declared unmistakably that it longed
+to be rid of its own political rule, in order to escape the troubles
+and dangers of ruling.
+
+And this bourgeoisie, that had rebelled against even the Parliamentary
+and literary contest for the supremacy of its own class, that had
+betrayed its leaders in this contest, it now has the effrontery to
+blame the proletariat for not having risen in its defence in a bloody
+struggle, in a struggle for life! Those bourgeois, who at every turn
+sacrificed their common class interests to narrow and dirty private
+interests, and who demanded a similar sacrifice from their own
+Representatives, now whine that the proletariat has sacrificed their
+idea-political to its own material interests! This bourgeois class now
+strikes the attitude of a pure soul, misunderstood and abandoned, at a
+critical moment, by the proletariat, that has been misled by the
+Socialists. And its cry finds a general echo in the bourgeois world. Of
+course, I do not refer to German crossroad politicians and kindred
+blockheads. I refer, for instance, to the “Economist,” which, as late
+as November 29, 1851, that is to say, four days before the “coup
+d’etat” pronounced Bonaparte the “Guardian of Order” and Thiers and
+Berryer “Anarchists,” and as early as December 27, 1851, after
+Bonaparte had silenced those very Anarchists, cries out about the
+treason committed by “the ignorant, untrained and stupid proletaires
+against the skill, knowledge, discipline, mental influence,
+intellectual resources an moral weight of the middle and upper ranks.”
+The stupid, ignorant and contemptible mass was none other than the
+bourgeoisie itself.
+
+France had, indeed; experienced a sort of commercial crisis in 1851. At
+the end of February, there was a falling off of exports as compared
+with 1850; in March, business languished and factories shut down; in
+April, the condition of the industrial departments seemed as desperate
+as after the February days; in May, business did not yet pick up; as
+late as June 28, the reports of the Bank of France revealed through a
+tremendous increase of deposits and an equal decrease of loans on
+exchange notes, the standstill of production; not until the middle of
+October did a steady improvement of business set in. The French
+bourgeoisie accounted for this stagnation of business with purely
+political reasons; it imputed the dull times to the strife between the
+Parliament and the Executive power, to the uncertainty of a provisional
+form of government, to the alarming prospects of May 2, 1852. I shall
+not deny that all these causes did depress some branches of industry in
+Paris and in the Departments. At any rate, this effect of political
+circumstances was only local and trifling. Is there any other proof
+needed than that the improvement in business set in at the very time
+when the political situation was growing worse, when the political
+horizon was growing darker, and when at every moment a stroke of
+lightning was expected out of the Elysee—in the middle of October? The
+French bourgeois, whose “skill, knowledge, mental influence and
+intellectual resources,” reach no further than his nose, could,
+moreover, during the whole period of the Industrial Exposition in
+London, have struck with his nose the cause of his own business misery.
+At the same time that, in France, the factories were being closed,
+commercial failures broke out in England. While the industrial panic
+reached its height during April and May in France, in England the
+commercial panic reached its height in April and May. The same as the
+French, the English woolen industries suffered, and, as the French, so
+did the English silk manufacture. Though the English cotton factories
+went on working, it, nevertheless, was not with the same old profit of
+1849 and 1850. The only difference was this: that in France, the crisis
+was an industrial, in England it was a commercial one; that while in
+France the factories stood still, they spread themselves in England,
+but under less favorable circumstances than they had done the years
+just previous; that, in France, the export, in England, the import
+trade suffered the heaviest blows. The common cause, which, as a matter
+of fact, is not to be looked for with-in the bounds of the French
+political horizon, was obvious. The years 1849 and 1850 were years of
+the greatest material prosperity, and of an overproduction that did not
+manifest itself until 1851. This was especially promoted at the
+beginning of 1851 by the prospect of the Industrial Exposition; and, as
+special causes, there were added, first, the failure of the cotton crop
+of 1850 and 1851; second, the certainty of a larger cotton crop than
+was expected: first, the rise, then the sudden drop; in short, the
+oscillations of the cotton market. The crop of raw silk in France had
+been below the average. Finally, the manufacture of woolen goods had
+received such an increment since 1849, that the production of wool
+could not keep step with it, and the price of the raw material rose
+greatly out of proportion to the price of the manufactured goods.
+Accordingly, we have here in the raw material of three staple articles
+a threefold material for a commercial crisis. Apart from these special
+circumstances, the seeming crisis of the year 1851 was, after all,
+nothing but the halt that overproduction and overspeculation make
+regularly in the course of the industrial cycle, before pulling all
+their forces together in order to rush feverishly over the last
+stretch, and arrive again at their point of departure—the General
+Commercial Crisis. At such intervals in the history of trade,
+commercial failures break out in England, while, in France, industry
+itself is stopped, partly because it is compelled to retreat through
+the competition of the English, that, at such times becomes resistless
+in all markets, and partly because, as an industry of luxuries, it is
+affected with preference by every stoppage of trade. Thus, besides the
+general crisis, France experiences her own national crises, which,
+how-ever, are determined by and conditioned upon the general state of
+the world’s market much more than by local French influences. It will
+not be devoid of interest to contrast the prejudgment of the French
+bourgeois with the judgment of the English bourgeois. One of the
+largest Liverpool firms writes in its yearly report of trade for 1851:
+“Few years have more completely disappointed the expectations
+entertained at their beginning than the year that has just passed;
+instead of the great prosperity, that was unanimously looked forward
+to, it proved itself one of the most discouraging years during the last
+quarter of a century. This applies, of course, only to the mercantile,
+not to the industrial classes. And yet, surely there were grounds at
+the beginning of the year from which to draw a contrary conclusion; the
+stock of products was scanty, capital was abundant, provisions cheap, a
+rich autumn was assured, there was uninterrupted peace on the continent
+and no political and financial disturbances at home; indeed, never were
+the wings of trade more unshackled. . . . What is this unfavorable
+result to be ascribed to? We believe to excessive trade in imports as
+well as exports. If our merchants do not themselves rein in their
+activity, nothing can keep us going, except a panic every three years.”
+
+Imagine now the French bourgeois, in the midst of this business panic,
+having his trade-sick brain tortured, buzzed at and deafened with
+rumors of a “coup d’etat” and the restoration of universal suffrage;
+with the struggle between the Legislature and the Executive; with the
+Fronde warfare between Orleanists and Legitimists; with communistic
+conspiracies in southern France; with alleged Jacqueries [#2 Peasant
+revolts] in the Departments of Nievre and Cher; with the advertisements
+of the several candidates for President; with “social solutions”
+huckstered about by the journals; with the threats of the republicans
+to uphold, arms in hand, the Constitution and universal suffrage; with
+the gospels, according to the emigrant heroes “in partibus,” who
+announced the destruction of the world for May 2,—imagine that, and one
+can understand how the bourgeois, in this unspeakable and noisy
+confusion of fusion, revision, prorogation, constitution, conspiracy,
+coalition, emigration, usurpation and revolution, blurts out at his
+parliamentary republic: “Rather an End With Fright, Than a Fright
+Without End.”
+
+Bonaparte understood this cry. His perspicacity was sharpened by the
+growing anxiety of the creditors’ class, who, with every sunset, that
+brought nearer the day of payment, the 2d of May, 1852, saw in the
+motion of the stars a protest against their earthly drafts. They had
+become regular astrologers The National Assembly had cut off
+Bonaparte’s hope of a constitutional prolongation of his term; the
+candidature of the Prince of Joinville tolerated no further
+vacillation.
+
+If ever an event cast its shadow before it long before its occurrence,
+it was Bonaparte’s “coup d’etat.” Already on January 29, 1849, barely a
+month after his election, he had made to Changarnier a proposition to
+that effect. His own Prime Minister. Odillon Barrot, had covertly, in
+1849, and Thiers openly in the winter of 1850, revealed the scheme of
+the “coup d’etat.” In May, 1851, Persigny had again sought to win
+Changarnier over to the “coup,” and the “Miessager de l’Assemblee”
+newspaper had published this conversation. At every parliamentary
+storm, the Bonapartist papers threatened a “coup,” and the nearer the
+crisis approached, all the louder grew their tone. At the orgies, that
+Bonaparte celebrated every night with a swell mob of males and females,
+every time the hour of midnight drew nigh and plenteous libations had
+loosened the tongues and heated the minds of the revelers, the “coup”
+was resolved upon for the next morning. Swords were then drawn, glasses
+clinked, the Representatives were thrown out at the windows, the
+imperial mantle fell upon the shoulders of Bonaparte, until the next
+morning again drove away the spook, and astonished Paris learned, from
+not very reserved Vestals and indiscreet Paladins, the danger it had
+once more escaped. During the months of September and October, the
+rumors of a “coup d’etat” tumbled close upon one another’s heels. At
+the same time the shadow gathered color, like a confused daguerreotype.
+Follow the issues of the European daily press for the months of
+September and October, and items like this will be found literally:
+
+“Rumors of a ‘coup’ fill Paris. The capital, it is said, is to be
+filled with troops by night and the next morning decrees are to be
+issued dissolving the National Assembly, placing the Department of the
+Seine in state of siege restoring universal suffrage, and appealing to
+the people. Bonaparte is rumored to be looking for Ministers to execute
+these illegal decrees.”
+
+The newspaper correspondence that brought this news always close
+ominously with “postponed.” The “coup” was ever the fixed idea of
+Bonaparte. With this idea he had stepped again upon French soil. It had
+such full possession of him that he was constantly betraying and
+blabbing it out. He was so weak that he was as constantly giving it up
+again. The shadow of the “coup” had become so familiar a spectre to the
+Parisians, that they refused to believe it when it finally did appear
+in flesh and blood. Consequently, it was neither the reticent
+backwardness of the chief of the “Society of December 10,” nor an
+unthought of surprise of the National Assembly that caused the success
+of the “coup.” When it succeeded, it did so despite his indiscretion
+and with its anticipation—a necessary, unavoidable result of the
+development that had preceded.
+
+On October 10, Bonaparte announced to his Ministers his decision to
+restore universal suffrage; on the 16th day they handed in their
+resignations; on the 26th Paris learned of the formation of the
+Thorigny Ministry. The Prefect of Police, Carlier, was simultaneously
+replaced by Maupas; and the chief of the First Military Division
+Magnan, concentrated the most reliable regiments in the capital. On
+November 4, the National Assembly re-opened its sessions. There was
+nothing left for it to do but to repeat, in short recapitulation, the
+course it had traversed, and to prove that it had been buried only
+after it had expired. The first post that it had forfeited in the
+struggle with the Executive was the Ministry. It had solemnly to admit
+this loss by accepting as genuine the Thorigny Ministry, which was but
+a pretence. The permanent Committee had received Mr. Giraud with
+laughter when he introduced himself in the name of the new Ministers.
+So weak a Ministry for so strong a measure as the restoration of
+universal suffrage! The question, however, then was to do nothing in,
+everything against the parliament.
+
+On the very day of its re-opening, the National Assembly received the
+message from Bonaparte demanding the restoration of universal suffrage
+and the repeal of the law of May 31, 1850. On the same day, his
+Ministers introduced a decree to that effect. The Assembly promptly
+rejected the motion of urgency made by the Ministers, but repealed the
+law itself, on November 13, by a vote of 355 against 348. Thus it once
+more tore to pieces its own mandate, once more certified to the fact
+that it had transformed itself from a freely chosen representative body
+of the nation into the usurpatory parliament of a class; it once more
+admitted that it had itself severed the muscles that connected the
+parliamentary head with the body of the nation.
+
+While the Executive power appealed from the National Assembly to the
+people by its motion for the restoration of universal suffrage, the
+Legislative power appealed from the people to the Army by its
+“Questors’ Bill.” This bill was to establish its right to immediate
+requisitions for troops, to build up a parliamentary army. By thus
+appointing the Army umpire between itself and the people, between
+itself and Bonaparte; by thus recognizing the Army as the decisive
+power in the State, the National Assembly was constrained to admit that
+it had long given up all claim to supremacy. By debating the right to
+make requisitions for troops, instead of forthwith collecting them, it
+betrayed its own doubts touching its own power. By thus subsequently
+rejecting the “Questors’ Bill,” it publicly confessed it impotence. The
+bill fell through with a minority of 108 votes; the Mountain had,
+accordingly, thrown the casting vote It now found itself in the
+predicament of Buridan’s donkey, not, indeed, between two sacks of hay,
+forced to decide which of the two was the more attractive, but between
+two showers of blows, forced to decide which of the two was the harder;
+fear of Changarnier, on one side, fear of Bonaparte, on the other. It
+must be admitted the position was not a heroic one.
+
+On November 18, an amendment was moved to the Act, passed by the party
+of Order, on municipal elections to the effect that, instead of three
+years, a domicile of one year should suffice. The amendment was lost by
+a single vote—but this vote, it soon transpired, was a mistake. Owing
+to the divisions within its own hostile factions, the party of Order
+had long since forfeited its independent parliamentary majority. It was
+now plain that there was no longer any majority in the parliament. The
+National Assembly had become impotent even to decide. Its atomic parts
+were no longer held together by any cohesive power; it had expended its
+last breath, it was dead.
+
+Finally, the mass of the bourgeoisie outside of the parliament was once
+more solemnly to confirm its rupture with the bourgeoisie inside of the
+parliament a few days before the catastrophe. Thiers, as a
+parliamentary hero conspicuously smitten by that incurable
+disease—Parliamentary Idiocy—, had hatched out jointly with the Council
+of State, after the death of the parliament, a new parliamentary
+intrigue in the shape of a “Responsibility Law,” that was intended to
+lock up the President within the walls of the Constitution. The same
+as, on September 15, Bonaparte bewitched the fishwives, like a second
+Massaniello, on the occasion of laying the corner-stone for the Market
+of Paris,—though, it must be admitted, one fishwife was equal to
+seventeen Burgraves in real power—; the same as, after the introduction
+of the “Questors’ Bill,” he enthused the lieutenants, who were being
+treated at the Elysee;—so, likewise, did he now, on November 25, carry
+away with him the industrial bourgeoisie, assembled at the Circus, to
+receive from his hands the prize-medals that had been awarded at the
+London Industrial Exposition. I here reproduce the typical part of his
+speech, from the “Journal des Debats”:
+
+“With such unhoped for successes, I am justified to repeat how great
+the French republic would be if she were only allowed to pursue her
+real interests, and reform her institutions, instead of being
+constantly disturbed in this by demagogues, on one side, and, on the
+other, by monarchic hallucinations. (Loud, stormy and continued
+applause from all parts of the amphitheater). The monarchic
+hallucinations hamper all progress and all serious departments of
+industry. Instead of progress, we have struggle only. Men, formerly the
+most zealous supporters of royal authority and prerogative, become the
+partisans of a convention that has no purpose other than to weaken an
+authority that is born of universal suffrage. (Loud and prolonged
+applause). We see men, who have suffered most from the revolution and
+complained bitterest of it, provoking a new one for the sole purpose of
+putting fetters on the will of the nation. . . . I promise you peace
+for the future.” (Bravo! Bravo! Stormy bravos.)
+
+Thus the industrial bourgeoisie shouts its servile “Bravo!” to the
+“coup d’etat” of December 2, to the destruction of the parliament, to
+the downfall of their own reign, to the dictatorship of Bonaparte. The
+rear of the applause of November 25 was responded to by the roar of
+cannon on December 4, and the house of Mr. Sallandrouze, who had been
+loudest in applauding, was the one demolished by most of the bombs.
+
+Cromwell, when he dissolved the Long Parliament, walked alone into its
+midst, pulled out his watch in order that the body should not continue
+to exist one minute beyond the term fixed for it by him, and drove out
+each individual member with gay and humorous invectives. Napoleon,
+smaller than his prototype, at least went on the 18th Brumaire into the
+legislative body, and, though in a tremulous voice, read to it its
+sentence of death. The second Bonaparte, who, moreover, found himself
+in possession of an executive power very different from that of either
+Cromwell or Napoleon, did not look for his model in the annals of
+universal history, but in the annals of the “Society of December 10,”
+in the annals of criminal jurisprudence. He robs the Bank of France of
+twenty-five million francs; buys General Magnan with one million and
+the soldiers with fifteen francs and a drink to each; comes secretly
+together with his accomplices like a thief by night; has the houses of
+the most dangerous leaders in the parliament broken into; Cavalignac,
+Lamorciere, Leflo, Changarnier, Charras, Thiers, Baze, etc., taken out
+of their beds; the principal places of Paris, the building of the
+parliament included, occupied with troops; and, early the next morning,
+loud-sounding placards posted on all the walls proclaiming the
+dissolution of the National Assembly and of the Council of State, the
+restoration of universal suffrage, and the placing of the Department of
+the Seine under the state of siege. In the same way he shortly after
+sneaked into the “Moniteur” a false document, according to which
+influential parliamentary names had grouped themselves round him in a
+Committee of the Nation.
+
+Amidst cries of “Long live the Republic!”, the rump-parliament,
+assembled at the Mayor’s building of the Tenth Arrondissement, and
+composed mainly of Legitimists and Orleanists, resolves to depose
+Bonaparte; it harangues in vain the gaping mass gathered before the
+building, and is finally dragged first, under the escort of African
+sharpshooters, to the barracks of Orsay, and then bundled into
+convicts’ wagons and transported to the prisons of Mazas, Ham and
+Vincennes. Thus ended the party of Order, the Legislative Assembly and
+the February revolution.
+
+Before hastening to the end, let us sum up shortly the plan of its
+history:
+
+I.—First Period. From February 24 to May 4, 1848. February period.
+Prologue. Universal fraternity swindle.
+
+II.—Second Period. Period in which the republic is constituted, and of
+the Constitutive National Assembly.
+
+1. May 4 to June 25, 1848. Struggle of all the classes against the
+house of Mr. proletariat. Defeat of the proletariat in the June days.
+
+2. June 25 to December 10, 1848. Dictatorship of the pure bourgeois
+republicans. Drafting of the Constitution. The state of siege hangs
+over Paris. The Bourgeois dictatorship set aside on December 10 by the
+election of Bonaparte as President.
+
+3. December 20, 1848, to May 20, 1849. Struggle of the Constitutive
+Assembly with Bonaparte and with the united party of Order. Death of
+the Constitutive Assembly. Downfall of the republican bourgeoisie.
+
+III.—Third Period. Period of the constitutional republic and of the
+Legislative National Assembly.
+
+1. May 29 to June 13, 1849. Struggle of the small traders’, middle
+class with the bourgeoisie and with Bonaparte. Defeat of the small
+traders’ democracy.
+
+2. June 13, 1849, to May, 1850. Parliamentary dictatorship of the party
+of Order. Completes its reign by the abolition of universal suffrage,
+but loses the parliamentary Ministry.
+
+3. May 31, 1850, to December 2, 1851. Struggle between the
+parliamentary bourgeoisie and Bonaparte.
+
+a. May 31, 1850, to January 12, 1851. The parliament loses the supreme
+command over the Army.
+
+b. January 12 to April 11, 1851. The parliament succumbs in the
+attempts to regain possession of the administrative power. The party of
+Order loses its independent parliamentary majority. Its coalition with
+the republicans and the Mountain.
+
+c. April 11 to October 9, 1851. Attempts at revision, fusion and
+prorogation. The party of Order dissolves into its component parts. The
+breach between the bourgeois parliament and the bourgeois press, on the
+one hand, and the bourgeois mass, on the other, becomes permanent.
+
+d. October 9 to December 2, 1851. Open breach between the parliament
+and the executive power. It draws up its own decree of death, and goes
+under, left in the lurch by its own class, by the Army, and by all the
+other classes. Downfall of the parliamentary regime and of the reign of
+the bourgeoisie. Bonaparte’s triumph. Parody of the imperialist
+restoration.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+The Social Republic appeared as a mere phrase, as a prophecy on the
+threshold of the February Revolution; it was smothered in the blood of
+the Parisian proletariat during the days of 1848 but it stalks about as
+a spectre throughout the following acts of the drama. The Democratic
+Republic next makes its bow; it goes out in a fizzle on June 13, 1849,
+with its runaway small traders; but, on fleeing, it scatters behind it
+all the more bragging announcements of what it means do to. The
+Parliamentary Republic, together with the bourgeoisie, then
+appropriates the whole stage; it lives its life to the full extent of
+its being; but the 2d of December, 1851, buries it under the
+terror-stricken cry of the allied royalists: “Long live the Republic!”
+
+The French bourgeoisie reared up against the reign of the working
+proletariat;—it brought to power the slum-proletariat, with the chief
+of the “Society of December 10” at its head. It kept France in
+breathless fear over the prospective terror of “red anarchy;”—Bonaparte
+discounted the prospect when, on December 4, he had the leading
+citizens of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Boulevard des Italiens
+shot down from their windows by the grog-inspired “Army of Order.” It
+made the apotheosis of the sabre; now the sabre rules it. It destroyed
+the revolutionary press;—now its own press is annihilated. It placed
+public meetings under police surveillance;—now its own salons are
+subject to police inspection. It disbanded the democratic National
+Guards;—now its own National Guard is disbanded. It instituted the
+state of siege;—now itself is made subject thereto. It supplanted the
+jury by military commissions;—now military commissions supplant its own
+juries. It subjected the education of the people to the parsons’
+interests;—the parsons’ interests now subject it to their own systems.
+It ordered transportations without trial;—now itself is transported
+without trial. It suppressed every movement of society with physical
+force;—now every movement of its own class is suppressed by physical
+force. Out of enthusiasm for the gold bag, it rebelled against its own
+political leaders and writers;—now, its political leaders and writers
+are set aside, but the gold hag is plundered, after the mouth of the
+bourgeoisie has been gagged and its pen broken. The bourgeoisie
+tirelessly shouted to the revolution, in the language of St. Orsenius
+to the Christians: “Fuge, Tace, Quiesce!”—flee, be silent, submit!—;
+Bonaparte shouts to the bourgeoisie: “Fuge, Tace, Oniesce!”—flee, be
+silent, submit!
+
+The French bourgeoisie had long since solved Napoleon’s dilemma: “Dans
+cinquante ans l’Europe sera republicaine ou cosaque.” [#1 Within fifty
+years Europe will be either republican or Cossack.] It found the
+solution in the “republique cosaque.” [#2 Cossack republic.] No Circe
+distorted with wicked charms the work of art of the bourgeois republic
+into a monstrosity. That republic lost nothing but the appearance of
+decency. The France of to-day was ready-made within the womb of the
+Parliamentary republic. All that was wanted was a bayonet thrust, in
+order that the bubble burst, and the monster leap forth to sight.
+
+Why did not the Parisian proletariat rise after the 2d of December?
+
+The downfall of the bourgeoisie was as yet merely decreed; the decree
+was not yet executed. Any earnest uprising of the proletariat would
+have forthwith revived this bourgeoisie, would have brought on its
+reconciliation with the army, and would have insured a second June rout
+to the workingmen.
+
+On December 4, the proletariat was incited to fight by Messrs.
+Bourgeois & Small-Trader. On the evening of that day, several legions
+of the National Guard promised to appear armed and uniformed on the
+place of battle. This arose from the circumstance that Messrs.
+Bourgeois & Small-Trader had got wind that, in one of his decrees of
+December 2, Bonaparte abolished the secret ballot, and ordered them to
+enter the words “Yes” and “No” after their names in the official
+register. Bonaparte took alarm at the stand taken on December 4. During
+the night he caused placards to be posted on all the street corners of
+Paris, announcing the restoration of the secret ballot. Messrs.
+Bourgeois & Small-Trader believed they had gained their point. The
+absentees, the next morning, were Messieurs. Bourgeois & Small-Trader.
+
+During the night of December 1 and 2, the Parisian proletariat was
+robbed of its leaders and chiefs of barricades by a raid of
+Bonaparte’s. An army without officers, disinclined by the recollections
+of June, 1848 and 1849, and May, 1850, to fight under the banner of the
+Montagnards, it left to its vanguard, the secret societies, the work of
+saving the insurrectionary honor of Paris, which the bourgeoisie had
+yielded to the soldiery so submissively that Bonaparte was later
+justified in disarming the National Guard upon the scornful ground that
+he feared their arms would be used against themselves by the
+Anarchists!
+
+“C’est Ic triomphe complet et definitif du Socialism!” Thus did Guizot
+characterize the 2d of December. But, although the downfall of the
+parliamentary republic carries with it the germ of the triumph of the
+proletarian revolution, its immediate and tangible result was the
+triumph of Bonaparte over parliament, of the Executive over the
+Legislative power, of force without phrases over the force of phrases.
+In the parliament, the nation raised its collective will to the dignity
+of law, i.e., it raised the law of the ruling class to the dignity of
+its collective will. Before the Executive power, the nation abdicates
+all will of its own, and submits to the orders of an outsider of
+Authority. In contrast with the Legislative, the Executive power
+expresses the heteronomy of the nation in contrast with its autonomy.
+Accordingly, France seems to have escaped the despotism of a class only
+in order to fall under the despotism of an individual, under the
+authority, at that of an individual without authority The struggle
+seems to settle down to the point where all classes drop down on their
+knees, equally impotent and equally dumb.
+
+All the same, the revolution is thoroughgoing. It still is on its
+passage through purgatory. It does its work methodically: Down to
+December 2, 1851, it had fulfilled one-half of its programme, it now
+fulfils the other half. It first ripens the power of the Legislature
+into fullest maturity in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it
+has accomplished that, the revolution proceeds to ripen the power of
+the Executive into equal maturity; it reduces this power to its purest
+expression; isolates it; places it before itself as the sole subject
+for reproof in order to concentrate against it all the revolutionary
+forces of destruction. When the revolution shall have accomplished this
+second part of its preliminary programme, Europe will jump up from her
+seat to exclaim: “Well hast thou grubbed, old mole!”
+
+The Executive power, with its tremendous bureaucratic and military
+organization; with its wide-spreading and artificial machinery of
+government—an army of office-holders, half a million strong, together
+with a military force of another million men—; this fearful body of
+parasites, that coils itself like a snake around French society,
+stopping all its pores, originated at the time of the absolute
+monarchy, along with the decline of feudalism, which it helped to
+hasten. The princely privileges of the landed proprietors and cities
+were transformed into so many at-tributes of the Executive power; the
+feudal dignitaries into paid office-holders; and the confusing design
+of conflicting medieval seigniories, into the well regulated plan of a
+government, work is subdivided and centralized as in the factory. The
+first French revolution, having as a mission to sweep away all local,
+territorial, urban and provincial special privileges, with the object
+of establishing the civic unity of the nation, was hound to develop
+what the absolute monarchy had begun—the work of centralization,
+together with the range, the attributes and the menials of government.
+Napoleon completed this governmental machinery. The Legitimist and the
+July Monarchy contribute nothing thereto, except a greater subdivision
+of labor, that grew in the same measure as the division and subdivision
+of labor within bourgeois society raised new groups and interests,
+i.e., new material for the administration of government. Each Common
+interest was in turn forthwith removed from society, set up against it
+as a higher Collective interest, wrested from the individual activity
+of the members of society, and turned into a subject for governmental
+administration, from the bridges, the school house and the communal
+property of a village community, up to the railroads, the national
+wealth and the national University of France. Finally, the
+parliamentary republic found itself, in its struggle against the
+revolution, compelled, with its repressive measures, to strengthen the
+means and the centralization of the government. Each overturn, instead
+of breaking up, carried this machine to higher perfection. The parties,
+that alternately wrestled for supremacy, looked upon the possession of
+this tremendous governmental structure as the principal spoils of their
+victory.
+
+Nevertheless, under the absolute monarchy, was only the means whereby
+the first revolution, and under Napoleon, to prepare the class rule of
+the bourgeoisie; under the restoration, under Louis Philippe, and under
+the parliamentary republic, it was the instrument of the ruling class,
+however eagerly this class strained after autocracy. Not before the
+advent of the second Bonaparte does the government seem to have made
+itself fully independent. The machinery of government has by this time
+so thoroughly fortified itself against society, that the chief of the
+“Society of December 10” is thought good enough to be at its head; a
+fortune-hunter, run in from abroad, is raised on its shield by a
+drunken soldiery, bought by himself with liquor and sausages, and whom
+he is forced ever again to throw sops to. Hence the timid despair, the
+sense of crushing humiliation and degradation that oppresses the breast
+of France and makes her to choke. She feels dishonored.
+
+And yet the French Government does not float in the air. Bonaparte
+represents an economic class, and that the most numerous in the
+commonweal of France—the Allotment Farmer. [#4 The first French
+Revolution distributed the bulk of the territory of France, held at the
+time by the feudal lords, in small patches among the cultivators of the
+soil. This allotment of lands created the French farmer class.]
+
+As the Bourbons are the dynasty of large landed property, as the
+Orleans are the dynasty of money, so are the Bonapartes the dynasty of
+the farmer, i.e. of the French masses. Not the Bonaparte, who threw
+himself at the feet of the bourgeois parliament, but the Bonaparte, who
+swept away the bourgeois parliament, is the elect of this farmer class.
+For three years the cities had succeeded in falsifying the meaning of
+the election of December 10, and in cheating the farmer out of the
+restoration of the Empire. The election of December 10, 1848, is not
+carried out until the “coup d’etat” of December 2, 1851.
+
+The allotment farmers are an immense mass, whose individual members
+live in identical conditions, without, however, entering into manifold
+relations with one another. Their method of production isolates them
+from one another, instead of drawing them into mutual intercourse. This
+isolation is promoted by the poor means of communication in France,
+together with the poverty of the farmers themselves. Their field of
+production, the small allotment of land that each cultivates, allows no
+room for a division of labor, and no opportunity for the application of
+science; in other words, it shuts out manifoldness of development,
+diversity of talent, and the luxury of social relations. Every single
+farmer family is almost self-sufficient; itself produces directly the
+greater part of what it consumes; and it earns its livelihood more by
+means of an interchange with nature than by intercourse with society.
+We have the allotted patch of land, the farmer and his family;
+alongside of that another allotted patch of land, another farmer and
+another family. A bunch of these makes up a village; a bunch of
+villages makes up a Department. Thus the large mass of the French
+nation is constituted by the simple addition of equal magnitudes—much
+as a bag with potatoes constitutes a potato-bag. In so far as millions
+of families live under economic conditions that separate their mode of
+life, their interests and their culture from those of the other
+classes, and that place them in an attitude hostile toward the latter,
+they constitute a class; in so far as there exists only a local
+connection among these farmers, a connection which the individuality
+and exclusiveness of their interests prevent from generating among them
+any unity of interest, national connections, and political
+organization, they do not constitute a class. Consequently, they are
+unable to assert their class interests in their own name, be it by a
+parliament or by convention. They can not represent one another, they
+must themselves be represented. Their representative must at the same
+time appear as their master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited
+governmental power, that protects them from above, bestows rain and
+sunshine upon them. Accordingly, the political influence of the
+allotment farmer finds its ultimate expression in an Executive power
+that subjugates the commonweal to its own autocratic will.
+
+Historic tradition has given birth to the superstition among the French
+farmers that a man named Napoleon would restore to them all manner of
+glory. Now, then, an individual turns I up, who gives himself out as
+that man because, obedient to the “Code Napoleon,” which provides that
+“La recherche de la paternite est interdite,” [#5 The inquiry into
+paternity is forbidden.] he carries the name of Napoleon. [#6 L. N.
+Bonaparte is said to have been an illegitimate son.] After a
+vagabondage of twenty years, and a series of grotesque adventures, the
+myth is verified, and that man becomes the Emperor of the French. The
+rooted thought of the Nephew becomes a reality because it coincided
+with the rooted thought of the most numerous class among the French.
+
+“But,” I shall be objected to, “what about the farmers’ uprisings over
+half France, the raids of the Army upon the farmers, the wholesale
+imprisonment and transportation of farmers?”
+
+Indeed, since Louis XIV., France has not experienced such persecutions
+of the farmer on the ground of his demagogic machinations.
+
+But this should be well understood: The Bonaparte dynasty does not
+represent the revolutionary, it represents the conservative farmer; it
+does not represent the farmer, who presses beyond his own economic
+conditions, his little allotment of land it represents him rather who
+would confirm these conditions; it does not represent the rural
+population, that, thanks to its own inherent energy, wishes, jointly
+with the cities to overthrow the old order, it represents, on the
+contrary, the rural population that, hide-bound in the old order, seeks
+to see itself, together with its allotments, saved and favored by the
+ghost of the Empire; it represents, not the intelligence, but the
+superstition of the farmer; not his judgment, but his bias; not his
+future, but his past; not his modern Cevennes; [#7 The Cevennes were
+the theater of the most numerous revolutionary uprisings of the farmer
+class.] but his modern Vendee. [#8 La Vendee was the theater of
+protracted reactionary uprisings of the farmer class under the first
+Revolution.]
+
+The three years’ severe rule of the parliamentary republic had freed a
+part of the French farmers from the Napoleonic illusion, and, though
+even only superficially; had revolutionized them The bourgeoisie threw
+them, however, violently back every time that they set themselves in
+motion. Under the parliamentary republic, the modern wrestled with the
+traditional consciousness of the French farmer. The process went on in
+the form of a continuous struggle between the school teachers and the
+parsons;—the bourgeoisie knocked the school teachers down. For the
+first time, the farmer made an effort to take an independent stand in
+the government of the country; this manifested itself in the prolonged
+conflicts of the Mayors with the Prefects;—the bourgeoisie deposed the
+Mayors. Finally, during period of the parliamentary republic, the
+farmers of several localities rose against their own product, the
+Army;—the bourgeoisie punished them with states of siege and
+executions. And this is the identical bourgeoisie, that now howls over
+the “stupidity of the masses,” over the “vile multitude,” which, it
+claims, betrayed it to Bonaparte. Itself has violently fortified the
+imperialism of the farmer class; it firmly maintained the conditions
+that Constitute the birth-place of this farmer-religion. Indeed, the
+bourgeoisie has every reason to fear the stupidity of the masses—so
+long as they remain conservative; and their intelligence—so soon as
+they become revolutionary.
+
+In the revolts that took place after the “coup d’etat” a part of the
+French farmers protested, arms in hand, against their own vote of
+December 10, 1848. The school house had, since 1848, sharpened their
+wits. But they had bound themselves over to the nether world of
+history, and history kept them to their word. Moreover, the majority of
+this population was still so full of prejudices that, just in the
+“reddest” Departments, it voted openly for Bonaparte. The National
+Assembly prevented, as it thought, this population from walking; the
+farmers now snapped the fetters which the cities had struck upon the
+will of the country districts. In some places they even indulged the
+grotesque hallucination of a “Convention together with a Napoleon.”
+
+After the first revolution had converted the serf farmers into
+freeholders, Napoleon fixed and regulated the conditions under which,
+unmolested, they could exploit the soil of France, that had just fallen
+into their hands, and expiate the youthful passion for property. But
+that which now bears the French farmer down is that very allotment of
+land, it is the partition of the soil, the form of ownership, which
+Napoleon had consolidated. These are the material condition that turned
+French feudal peasant into a small or allotment farmer, and Napoleon
+into an Emperor. Two generations have sufficed to produce the
+inevitable result the progressive deterioration of agriculture, and the
+progressive encumbering of the agriculturist The “Napoleonic” form of
+ownership, which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century was the
+condition for the emancipation and enrichment of the French rural
+population, has, in the course of the century, developed into the law
+of their enslavement and pauperism. Now, then, this very law is the
+first of the “idees Napoleoniennes,” which the second Bonaparte must
+uphold. If he still shares with the farmers the illusion of seeking,
+not in the system of the small allotment itself, but outside of that
+system, in the influence of secondary conditions, the cause of their
+ruin, his experiments are bound to burst like soap-bubbles against the
+modern system of production.
+
+The economic development of the allotment system has turned bottom
+upward the relation of the farmer to the other classes of society.
+Under Napoleon, the parceling out of the agricultural lands into small
+allotments supplemented in the country the free competition and the
+incipient large production of the cities. The farmer class was the
+ubiquitous protest against the aristocracy of land, just then
+overthrown. The roots that the system of small allotments cast into the
+soil of France, deprived feudalism of all nutriment. Its boundary-posts
+constituted the natural buttress of the bourgeoisie against every
+stroke of the old overlords. But in the course of the nineteenth
+century, the City Usurer stepped into the shoes of the Feudal Lord, the
+Mortgage substituted the Feudal Duties formerly yielded by the soil,
+bourgeois Capital took the place of the aristocracy of Landed Property.
+The former allotments are now only a pretext that allows the capitalist
+class to draw profit, interest and rent from agricultural lands, and to
+leave to the farmer himself the task of seeing to it that he knock out
+his wages. The mortgage indebtedness that burdens the soil of France
+imposes upon the French farmer class they payment of an interest as
+great as the annual interest on the whole British national debt. In
+this slavery of capital, whither its development drives it
+irresistibly, the allotment system has transformed the mass of the
+French nation into troglodytes. Sixteen million farmers (women and
+children included), house in hovels most of which have only one
+opening, some two, and the few most favored ones three. Windows are to
+a house what the five senses are to the head. The bourgeois social
+order, which, at the beginning of the century, placed the State as a
+sentinel before the newly instituted allotment, and that manured this
+with laurels, has become a vampire that sucks out its heart-blood and
+its very brain, and throws it into the alchemist’s pot of capital. The
+“Code Napoleon” is now but the codex of execution, of sheriff’s sales
+and of intensified taxation. To the four million (children, etc.,
+included) official paupers, vagabonds, criminals and prostitutes, that
+France numbers, must be added five million souls who hover over the
+precipice of life, and either sojourn in the country itself, or float
+with their rags and their children from the country to the cities, and
+from the cities back to the country. Accordingly, the interests of the
+farmers are no longer, as under Napoleon, in harmony but in conflict
+with the interests of the bourgeoisie, i.e., with capital; they find
+their natural allies and leaders among the urban proletariat, whose
+mission is the overthrow of the bourgeois social order. But the “strong
+and unlimited government”—and this is the second of the “idees
+Napoleoniennes,” which the second Napoleon has to carried out—, has for
+its mission the forcible defence of this very “material” social order,
+a “material order” that furnishes the slogan in Bonaparte’s
+proclamations against the farmers in revolt.
+
+Along with the mortgage, imposed by capital upon the farmer’s
+allotment, this is burdened by taxation. Taxation is the fountain of
+life to the bureaucracy, the Army, the parsons and the court, in short
+to the whole apparatus of the Executive power. A strong government, and
+heavy taxes are identical. The system of ownership, involved in the
+system of allotments lends itself by nature for the groundwork of a
+powerful and numerous bureaucracy: it produces an even level of
+conditions and of persons over the whole surface of the country; it,
+therefore, allows the exercise of an even influence upon all parts of
+this even mass from a high central point downwards: it annihilates the
+aristocratic gradations between the popular masses and the Government;
+it, consequently, calls from all sides for the direct intervention of
+the Government and for the intervention of the latter’s immediate
+organs; and, finally, it produces an unemployed excess of population,
+that finds no room either in the country or in the cities, that,
+consequently, snatches after public office as a sort of dignified alms,
+and provokes the creation of further offices. With the new markets,
+which he opened at the point of the bayonet, and with the plunder of
+the continent, Napoleon returned to the farmer class with interest the
+taxes wrung from them. These taxes were then a goad to the industry of
+the farmer, while now, on the contrary, they rob his industry of its
+last source of support, and completely sap his power to resist poverty.
+Indeed, an enormous bureaucracy, richly gallooned and well fed is that
+“idee Napoleonienne” that above all others suits the requirements of
+the second Bonaparte. How else should it be, seeing he is forced to
+raise alongside of the actual classes of society, an artificial class,
+to which the maintenance of his own regime must be a knife-and-fork
+question? One of his first financial operations was, accordingly, the
+raising of the salaries of the government employees to their former
+standard and the creation of new sinecures.
+
+Another “idee Napoleonienne” is the rule of the parsons as an
+instrument of government. But while the new-born allotment, in harmony
+with society, in its dependence upon the powers of nature, and in its
+subordination to the authority that protected it from above, was
+naturally religious, the debt-broken allotment, on the contrary, at
+odds with society and authority, and driven beyond its own narrow
+bounds, becomes as naturally irreligious. Heaven was quite a pretty
+gift thrown in with the narrow strip of land that had just been won,
+all the more as it makes the weather; it, however, becomes an insult
+from the moment it is forced upon the farmer as a substitute for his
+allotment. Then the parson appears merely as the anointed blood-hound
+of the earthly police,—yet another “idee Napoleonienne.” The expedition
+against Rome will next time take place in France, but in a reverse
+sense from that of M. de Montalembert.
+
+Finally, the culminating point of the “idees Napoleoniennes” is the
+preponderance of the Army. The Army was the “point of honor” with the
+allotment farmers: it was themselves turned into masters, defending
+abroad their newly established property, glorifying their recently
+conquered nationality, plundering and revolutionizing the world. The
+uniform was their State costume; war was their poetry; the allotment,
+expanded and rounded up in their phantasy, was the fatherland; and
+patriotism became the ideal form of property. But the foe, against whom
+the French farmer must now defend his property, are not the Cossacks,
+they are the sheriffs and the tax collectors. The allotment no longer
+lies in the so-called fatherland, but in the register of mortgages. The
+Army itself no longer is the flower of the youth of the farmers, it is
+the swamp-blossom of the slum-proletariat of the farmer class. It
+consists of “remplacants,” substitutes, just as the second Bonaparte
+himself is but a “remplacant,” a substitute, for Napoleon. Its feats of
+heroism are now performed in raids instituted against farmers and in
+the service of the police;—and when the internal contradictions of his
+own system shall drive the chief of the “Society of December 10” across
+the French frontier, that Army will, after a few bandit-raids, gather
+no laurels but only hard knocks.
+
+It is evident that all the “idees Napoleoniennes” are the ideas of the
+undeveloped and youthfully fresh allotment; they are an absurdity for
+the allotment that now survives. They are only the hallucinations of
+its death struggle; words turned to hollow phrases, spirits turned to
+spooks. But this parody of the Empire was requisite in order to free
+the mass of the French nation from the weight of tradition, and to
+elaborate sharply the contrast between Government and Society. Along
+with the progressive decay of the allotment, the governmental
+structure, reared upon it, breaks down. The centralization of
+Government, required by modern society, rises only upon the ruins of
+the military and bureaucratic governmental machinery that was forged in
+contrast to feudalism.
+
+The conditions of the French farmers’ class solve to us the riddle of
+the general elections of December 20 and 21, that led the second
+Bonaparte to the top of Sinai, not to receive, but to decree laws.
+
+The bourgeoisie had now, manifestly, no choice but to elect Bonaparte.
+When at the Council of Constance, the puritans complained of the sinful
+life of the Popes, and moaned about the need of a reform in morals,
+Cardinal d’Ailly thundered into their faces: “Only the devil in his Own
+person can now save the Catholic Church, and you demand angels.” So,
+likewise, did the French bourgeoisie cry out after the “coup d’etat”:
+“Only the chief of the ‘Society of December 10’ can now save bourgeois
+society, only theft can save property, only perjury religion, only
+bastardy the family, only disorder order!”
+
+Bonaparte, as autocratic Executive power, fulfills his mission to
+secure “bourgeois order.” But the strength of this bourgeois order lies
+in the middle class. He feels himself the representative of the middle
+class, and issues his decrees in that sense. Nevertheless, he is
+something only because he has broken the political power of this class,
+and daily breaks it anew. Hence he feels himself the adversary of the
+political and the literary power of the middle class. But, by
+protecting their material, he nourishes anew their political power.
+Consequently, the cause must be kept alive, but the result, wherever it
+manifests itself, swept out of existence. But this procedure is
+impossible without slight mistakings of causes and effects, seeing that
+both, in their mutual action and reaction, lose their distinctive
+marks. Thereupon, new decrees, that blur the line of distinction.
+Bonaparte, furthermore, feels himself, as against the bourgeoisie, the
+representative of the farmer and the people in general, who, within
+bourgeois society, is to render the lower classes of society happy. To
+this end, new decrees, intended to exploit the “true Socialists,”
+together with their governmental wisdom. But, above all, Bonaparte
+feels himself the chief of the “Society of December 10,” the
+representative of the slum-proletariat, to which he himself, his
+immediate surroundings, his Government, and his army alike belong, the
+main object with all of whom is to be good to themselves, and draw
+Californian tickets out of the national treasury. An he affirms his
+chieftainship of the “Society of December 10” with decrees, without
+decrees, and despite decrees.
+
+This contradictory mission of the man explains the contradictions of
+his own Government, and that confused groping about, that now seeks to
+win, then to humiliate now this class and then that, and finishes by
+arraying against itself all the classes; whose actual insecurity
+constitutes a highly comical contrast with the imperious, categoric
+style of the Government acts, copied closely from the Uncle.
+
+Industry and commerce, i.e., the business of the middle class, are to
+be made to blossom in hot-house style under the “strong Government.”
+Loans for a number of railroad grants. But the Bonapartist
+slum-proletariat is to enrich itself. Peculation is carried on with
+railroad concessions on the Bourse by the initiated; but no capital is
+forthcoming for the railroads. The bank then pledges itself to make
+advances upon railroad stock; but the bank is itself to be exploited;
+hence, it must be cajoled; it is released of the obligation to publish
+its reports weekly. Then follows a leonine treaty between the bank and
+the Government. The people are to be occupied: public works are
+ordered; but the public works raise the tax rates upon the people;
+thereupon the taxes are reduced by an attack upon the national
+bond-holders through the conversion of the five per cent “rentes” [#9
+The name of the French national bonds.] into four-and-halves. Yet the
+middle class must again be tipped: to this end, the tax on wine is
+doubled for the people, who buy it at retail, and is reduced to
+one-half for the middle class, that drink it at wholesale. Genuine
+labor organizations are dissolved, but promises are made of future
+wonders to accrue from organization. The farmers are to be helped:
+mortgage-banks are set up that must promote the indebtedness; of the
+farmer and the concentration of property but again, these banks are to
+be utilized especially to the end of squeezing money out of the
+confiscated estates of the House of Orleans; no capitalist will listen
+to this scheme, which, moreover, is not mentioned in the decree; the
+mortgage bank remains a mere decree, etc., etc.
+
+Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all
+classes; but he can give to none without taking from the others. As was
+said of the Duke of Guise, at the time of the Fronde, that he was the
+most obliging man in France because he had converted all his estates
+into bonds upon himself for his Parisians, so would Napoleon like to be
+the most obliging man in France and convert all property and all labor
+of France into a personal bond upon himself. He would like to steal the
+whole of France to make a present thereof to France, or rather to be
+able to purchase France back again with French money;—as chief of the
+“Society of December 10,” he must purchase that which is to be his. All
+the State institutions, the Senate, the Council of State, the
+Legislature, the Legion of Honor, the Soldiers’ decorations, the public
+baths, the public buildings, the railroads, the General Staff of the
+National Guard, exclusive of the rank and file, the confiscated estates
+of the House of Orleans,—all are converted into institutions for
+purchase and sale. Every place in the Army and the machinery of
+Government becomes a purchasing power. The most important thing,
+however, in this process, whereby France is taken to be given back to
+herself, are the percentages that, in the transfer, drop into the hands
+of the chief and the members of the “Society of December 10.” The
+witticisms with which the Countess of L., the mistress of de Morny,
+characterized the confiscations of the Orleanist estates: “C’est le
+premier vol de l’aigle,” [#10 “It is the first flight of the eagle” The
+French word “vol” means theft as well as flight.] fits every fight of
+the eagle that is rather a crow. He himself and his followers daily
+call out to themselves, like the Italian Carthusian monk in the legend
+does to the miser, who displayfully counted the goods on which he could
+live for many years to come: “Tu fai conto sopra i beni, bisogna prima
+far il conto sopra gli anni.” [#11 “You count your property you should
+rather count the years left to you.”] In order not to make a mistake in
+the years, they count by minutes. A crowd of fellows, of the best among
+whom all that can be said is that one knows not whence he comes—a
+noisy, restless “Boheme,” greedy after plunder, that crawls about in
+gallooned frocks with the same grotesque dignity as Soulonque’s [#12
+Soulonque was the negro Emperor of the short-lived negro Empire of
+Hayti.] Imperial dignitaries—, thronged the court crowded the
+ministries, and pressed upon the head of the Government and of the
+Army. One can picture to himself this upper crust of the “Society of
+December 10” by considering that Veron Crevel [#13 Crevel is a
+character of Balzac, drawn after Dr. Veron, the proprietor of the
+“Constitutional” newspaper, as a type of the dissolute Parisian
+Philistine.] is their preacher of morality, and Granier de Cassagnac
+their thinker. When Guizot, at the time he was Minister, employed this
+Granier on an obscure sheet against the dynastic opposition, he used to
+praise him with the term: “C’est le roi des droles.” [#14 “He Is the
+king of the clowns.”] It were a mistake to recall the days of the
+Regency or of Louis XV. by the court and the kit of Louis Bonaparte’s:
+“Often did France have a mistress-administration, but never yet an
+administration of kept men.” [#15 Madame de Girardin.]
+
+Harassed by the contradictory demands of his situation, and compelled,
+like a sleight-of-hands performer, to keep, by means of constant
+surprises, the eyes of the public riveted upon himself as the
+substitute of Napoleon, compelled, consequently, everyday to accomplish
+a sort of “coup” on a small scale, Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois
+social system into disorder; he broaches everything that seemed
+unbroachable by the revolution of 1848; he makes one set people patient
+under the revolution and another anxious for it; he produces anarchy
+itself in the name of order by rubbing off from the whole machinery of
+Government the veneer of sanctity, by profaning it, by rendering it at
+once nauseating and laughable. He rehearses in Paris the cult of the
+sacred coat of Trier with the cult of the Napoleonic Imperial mantle.
+But when the Imperial Mantle shall have finally fallen upon the
+shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, then will also the iron statue of
+Napoleon drop down from the top of the Vendome column. [#16 A prophecy
+that a few years later, after Bonaparte’s coronation as Emperor, was
+literally fulfilled. By order of Emperor Louis Napoleon, the military
+statue of the Napoleon that originally surmounted the Vendome was taken
+down and replaced by one of first Napoleon in imperial robes.]
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, by Karl Marx</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
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+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Karl Marx</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Translator: Daniel de Leon</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June, 1998 [eBook #1346]<br />
+[Most recently updated: April 19, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE ***</div>
+
+<h1>The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by Karl Marx</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#pref01">Translator&rsquo;s Preface</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">I.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">II.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">III.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">IV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">V.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">VI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">VII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="pref01"></a>Translator&rsquo;s Preface</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte&rdquo; is one of Karl
+Marx&rsquo; most profound and most brilliant monographs. It may be considered
+the best work extant on the philosophy of history, with an eye especially upon
+the history of the Movement of the Proletariat, together with the bourgeois and
+other manifestations that accompany the same, and the tactics that such
+conditions dictate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The recent populist uprising; the more recent &ldquo;Debs Movement&rdquo;; the
+thousand and one utopian and chimerical notions that are flaring up; the
+capitalist maneuvers; the hopeless, helpless grasping after straws, that
+characterize the conduct of the bulk of the working class; all of these,
+together with the empty-headed, ominous figures that are springing into
+notoriety for a time and have their day, mark the present period of the Labor
+Movement in the nation a critical one. The best information acquirable, the
+best mental training obtainable are requisite to steer through the existing
+chaos that the death-tainted social system of today creates all around us. To
+aid in this needed information and mental training, this instructive work is
+now made accessible to English readers, and is commended to the serious study
+of the serious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The teachings contained in this work are hung on an episode in recent French
+history. With some this fact may detract of its value. A pedantic, supercilious
+notion is extensively abroad among us that we are an &ldquo;Anglo Saxon&rdquo;
+nation; and an equally pedantic, supercilious habit causes many to look to
+England for inspiration, as from a racial birthplace. Nevertheless, for weal or
+for woe, there is no such thing extant as &ldquo;Anglo-Saxon&rdquo;&mdash;of
+all nations, said to be &ldquo;Anglo-Saxon,&rdquo; in the United States least.
+What we still have from England, much as appearances may seem to point the
+other way, is not of our bone-and-marrow, so to speak, but rather partakes of
+the nature of &ldquo;importations.&rdquo; We are no more English on account of
+them than we are Chinese because we all drink tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of all European nations, France is the on to which we come nearest. Besides its
+republican form of government&mdash;the directness of its history, the unity of
+its actions, the sharpness that marks its internal development, are all
+characteristics that find their parallel her best, and vice versa. In all
+essentials the study of modern French history, particularly when sketched by
+such a master hand as Marx&rsquo;, is the most valuable one for the acquisition
+of that historic, social and biologic insight that our country stands
+particularly in need of, and that will be inestimable during the approaching
+critical days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the assistance of those who, unfamiliar with the history of France, may be
+confused by some of the terms used by Marx, the following explanations may
+prove aidful:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9th), the post-revolutionary development of affairs
+in France enabled the first Napoleon to take a step that led with inevitable
+certainty to the imperial throne. The circumstance that fifty and odd years
+later similar events aided his nephew, Louis Bonaparte, to take a similar step
+with a similar result, gives the name to this work&mdash;&ldquo;The Eighteenth
+Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As to the other terms and allusions that occur, the following sketch will
+suffice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon the overthrow of the first Napoleon came the restoration of the Bourbon
+throne (Louis XVIII, succeeded by Charles X). In July, 1830, an uprising of the
+upper tier of the bourgeoisie, or capitalist class&mdash;the aristocracy of
+finance&mdash;overthrew the Bourbon throne, or landed aristocracy, and set up
+the throne of Orleans, a younger branch of the house of Bourbon, with Louis
+Philippe as king. From the month in which this revolution occurred, Louis
+Philippe&rsquo;s monarchy is called the &ldquo;July Monarchy.&rdquo; In
+February, 1848, a revolt of a lower tier of the capitalist class&mdash;the
+industrial bourgeoisie&mdash;against the aristocracy of finance, in turn
+dethroned Louis Philippe. The affair, also named from the month in which it
+took place, is the &ldquo;February Revolution&rdquo;. &ldquo;The Eighteenth
+Brumaire&rdquo; starts with that event.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Despite the inapplicableness to our affairs of the political names and
+political leadership herein described, both these names and leaderships are to
+such an extent the products of an economic-social development that has here too
+taken place with even greater sharpens, and they have their present or
+threatened counterparts here so completely, that, by the light of this work of
+Marx&rsquo;, we are best enabled to understand our own history, to know whence
+we came, and whither we are going and how to conduct ourselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+D.D.L. New York, Sept. 12, 1897
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>I.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Hegel says somewhere that that great historic facts and personages recur twice.
+He forgot to add: &ldquo;Once as tragedy, and again as farce.&rdquo;
+Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the &ldquo;Mountain&rdquo;
+of 1848-51 for the &ldquo;Mountain&rdquo; of 1793-05, the Nephew for the Uncle.
+The identical caricature marks also the conditions under which the second
+edition of the eighteenth Brumaire is issued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he
+does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he
+finds close at hand. The tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp
+upon the brain of the living. At the very time when men appear engaged in
+revolutionizing things and themselves, in bringing about what never was before,
+at such very epochs of revolutionary crisis do they anxiously conjure up into
+their service the spirits of the past, assume their names, their battle cries,
+their costumes to enact a new historic scene in such time-honored disguise and
+with such borrowed language Thus did Luther masquerade as the Apostle Paul;
+thus did the revolution of 1789-1814 drape itself alternately as Roman Republic
+and as Roman Empire; nor did the revolution of 1818 know what better to do than
+to parody at one time the year 1789, at another the revolutionary traditions of
+1793-95. Thus does the beginner, who has acquired a new language, keep on
+translating it back into his own mother tongue; only then has he grasped the
+spirit of the new language and is able freely to express himself therewith when
+he moves in it without recollections of the old, and has forgotten in its use
+his own hereditary tongue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When these historic configurations of the dead past are closely observed a
+striking difference is forthwith noticeable. Camille Desmoulins, Danton,
+Robespierre, St. Juste, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the parties and the
+masses of the old French revolution, achieved in Roman costumes and with Roman
+phrases the task of their time: the emancipation and the establishment of
+modern bourgeois society. One set knocked to pieces the old feudal groundwork
+and mowed down the feudal heads that had grown upon it; Napoleon brought about,
+within France, the conditions under which alone free competition could develop,
+the partitioned lands be exploited, the nation&rsquo;s unshackled powers of
+industrial production be utilized; while, beyond the French frontier, he swept
+away everywhere the establishments of feudality, so far as requisite, to
+furnish the bourgeois social system of France with fit surroundings of the
+European continent, and such as were in keeping with the times. Once the new
+social establishment was set on foot, the antediluvian giants vanished, and,
+along with them, the resuscitated Roman world&mdash;the Brutuses, Gracchi,
+Publicolas, the Tribunes, the Senators, and Caesar himself. In its sober
+reality, bourgeois society had produced its own true interpretation in the
+Says, Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants and Guizots; its real
+generals sat behind the office desks; and the mutton-head of Louis XVIII was
+its political lead. Wholly absorbed in the production of wealth and in the
+peaceful fight of competition, this society could no longer understand that the
+ghosts of the days of Rome had watched over its cradle. And yet, lacking in
+heroism as bourgeois society is, it nevertheless had stood in need of heroism,
+of self-sacrifice, of terror, of civil war, and of bloody battle fields to
+bring it into the world. Its gladiators found in the stern classic traditions
+of the Roman republic the ideals and the form, the self-deceptions, that they
+needed in order to conceal from themselves the narrow bourgeois substance of
+their own struggles, and to keep their passion up to the height of a great
+historic tragedy. Thus, at another stage of development a century before, did
+Cromwell and the English people draw from the Old Testament the language,
+passions and illusions for their own bourgeois revolution. When the real goal
+was reached, when the remodeling of English society was accomplished, Locke
+supplanted Habakuk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Accordingly, the reviving of the dead in those revolutions served the purpose
+of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; it served the
+purpose of exaggerating to the imagination the given task, not to recoil before
+its practical solution; it served the purpose of rekindling the revolutionary
+spirit, not to trot out its ghost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In 1848-51 only the ghost of the old revolution wandered about, from Marrast
+the &ldquo;Republicain en gaunts jaunes,&rdquo; [#1 Silk-stocking republican]
+who disguised himself in old Bailly, down to the adventurer, who hid his
+repulsively trivial features under the iron death mask of Napoleon. A whole
+people, that imagines it has imparted to itself accelerated powers of motion
+through a revolution, suddenly finds itself transferred back to a dead epoch,
+and, lest there be any mistake possible on this head, the old dates turn up
+again; the old calendars; the old names; the old edicts, which long since had
+sunk to the level of the antiquarian&rsquo;s learning; even the old bailiffs,
+who had long seemed mouldering with decay. The nation takes on the appearance
+of that crazy Englishman in Bedlam, who imagines he is living in the days of
+the Pharaohs, and daily laments the hard work that he must do in the Ethiopian
+mines as gold digger, immured in a subterranean prison, with a dim lamp
+fastened on his head, behind him the slave overseer with a long whip, and, at
+the mouths of the mine a mob of barbarous camp servants who understand neither
+the convicts in the mines nor one another, because they do not speak a common
+language. &ldquo;And all this,&rdquo; cries the crazy Englishman, &ldquo;is
+demanded of me, the free-born Englishman, in order to make gold for old
+Pharaoh.&rdquo; &ldquo;In order to pay off the debts of the Bonaparte
+family&rdquo;&mdash;sobs the French nation. The Englishman, so long as he was
+in his senses, could not rid himself of the rooted thought making gold. The
+Frenchmen, so long as they were busy with a revolution, could not rid then
+selves of the Napoleonic memory, as the election of December 10th proved. They
+longed to escape from the dangers of revolution back to the flesh pots of
+Egypt; the 2d of December, 1851 was the answer. They have not merely the
+character of the old Napoleon, but the old Napoleon himself&mdash;caricatured
+as he needs must appear in the middle of the nineteenth century.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The social revolution of the nineteenth century can not draw its poetry from
+the past, it can draw that only from the future. It cannot start upon its work
+before it has stricken off all superstition concerning the past. Former
+revolutions require historic reminiscences in order to intoxicate themselves
+with their own issues. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the
+dead bury their dead in order to reach its issue. With the former, the phrase
+surpasses the substance; with this one, the substance surpasses the phrase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The February revolution was a surprisal; old society was taken unawares; and
+the people proclaimed this political stroke a great historic act whereby the
+new era was opened. On the 2d of December, the February revolution is jockeyed
+by the trick of a false player, and what seems to be overthrown is no longer
+the monarchy, but the liberal concessions which had been wrung from it by
+centuries of struggles. Instead of society itself having conquered a new point,
+only the State appears to have returned to its oldest form, to the simply
+brazen rule of the sword and the club. Thus, upon the &ldquo;coup de
+main&rdquo; of February, 1848, comes the response of the &ldquo;coup de
+tete&rdquo; December, 1851. So won, so lost. Meanwhile, the interval did not go
+by unutilized. During the years 1848-1851, French society retrieved in
+abbreviated, because revolutionary, method the lessons and teachings,
+which&mdash;if it was to be more than a disturbance of the surface&mdash;should
+have preceded the February revolution, had it developed in regular order, by
+rule, so to say. Now French society seems to have receded behind its point of
+departure; in fact, however, it was compelled to first produce its own
+revolutionary point of departure, the situation, circumstances, conditions,
+under which alone the modern revolution is in earnest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, rush onward
+rapidly from success to success, their stage effects outbid one another, men
+and things seem to be set in flaming brilliants, ecstasy is the prevailing
+spirit; but they are short-lived, they reach their climax speedily, then
+society relapses into a long fit of nervous reaction before it learns how to
+appropriate the fruits of its period of feverish excitement. Proletarian
+revolutions, on the contrary, such as those of the nineteenth century,
+criticize themselves constantly; constantly interrupt themselves in their own
+course; come back to what seems to have been accomplished, in order to start
+over anew; scorn with cruel thoroughness the half measures, weaknesses and
+meannesses of their first attempts; seem to throw down their adversary only in
+order to enable him to draw fresh strength from the earth, and again, to rise
+up against them in more gigantic stature; constantly recoil in fear before the
+undefined monster magnitude of their own objects&mdash;until finally that
+situation is created which renders all retreat impossible, and the conditions
+themselves cry out:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Hic Rhodus, hic salta!&rdquo;<br />
+[#2 Here is Rhodes, leap here! An allusion to Aesop&rsquo;s Fables.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every observer of average intelligence; even if he failed to follow step by
+step the course of French development, must have anticipated that an unheard of
+fiasco was in store for the revolution. It was enough to hear the
+self-satisfied yelpings of victory wherewith the Messieurs Democrats mutually
+congratulated one another upon the pardons of May 2d, 1852. Indeed, May 2d had
+become a fixed idea in their heads; it had become a dogma with
+them&mdash;something like the day on which Christ was to reappear and the
+Millennium to begin had formed in the heads of the Chiliasts. Weakness had, as
+it ever does, taken refuge in the wonderful; it believed the enemy was overcome
+if, in its imagination, it hocus-pocused him away; and it lost all sense of the
+present in the imaginary apotheosis of the future, that was at hand, and of the
+deeds, that it had &ldquo;in petto,&rdquo; but which it did not yet want to
+bring to the scratch. The heroes, who ever seek to refute their established
+incompetence by mutually bestowing their sympathy upon one another and by
+pulling together, had packed their satchels, taken their laurels in advance
+payments and were just engaged in the work of getting discounted &ldquo;in
+partibus,&rdquo; on the stock exchange, the republics for which, in the silence
+of their unassuming dispositions, they had carefully organized the government
+personnel. The 2d of December struck them like a bolt from a clear sky; and the
+peoples, who, in periods of timid despondency, gladly allow their hidden fears
+to be drowned by the loudest screamers, will perhaps have become convinced that
+the days are gone by when the cackling of geese could save the Capitol.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The constitution, the national assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and the
+red republicans, the heroes from Africa, the thunder from the tribune, the
+flash-lightnings from the daily press, the whole literature, the political
+names and the intellectual celebrities, the civil and the criminal law, the
+&ldquo;liberte&rsquo;, egalite&rsquo;, fraternite&rsquo;,&rdquo; together with
+the 2d of May 1852&mdash;all vanished like a phantasmagoria before the ban of
+one man, whom his enemies themselves do not pronounce an adept at witchcraft.
+Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for a moment, to the end that,
+before the eyes of the whole world, it should make its own testament with its
+own hands, and, in the name of the people, declare: &ldquo;All that exists
+deserves to perish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not enough to say, as the Frenchmen do, that their nation was taken by
+surprise. A nation, no more than a woman, is excused for the unguarded hour
+when the first adventurer who comes along can do violence to her. The riddle is
+not solved by such shifts, it is only formulated in other words. There remains
+to be explained how a nation of thirty-six millions can be surprised by three
+swindlers, and taken to prison without resistance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us recapitulate in general outlines the phases which the French revolution
+of February 24th, 1848, to December, 1851, ran through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three main periods are unmistakable:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First&mdash;The February period;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Second&mdash;The period of constituting the republic, or of the constitutive
+national assembly (May 4, 1848, to May 29th, 1849);
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Third&mdash;The period of the constitutional republic, or of the legislative
+national assembly (May 29, 1849, to December 2, 1851).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first period, from February 24, or the downfall of Louis Philippe, to May
+4, 1848, the date of the assembling of the constitutive assembly&mdash;the
+February period proper&mdash;may be designated as the prologue of the
+revolution. It officially expressed its own character in this, that the
+government which it improvised declared itself &ldquo;provisional;&rdquo; and,
+like the government, everything that was broached, attempted, or uttered,
+pronounced itself provisional. Nobody and nothing dared to assume the right of
+permanent existence and of an actual fact. All the elements that had prepared
+or determined the revolution&mdash;dynastic opposition, republican bourgeoisie,
+democratic-republican small traders&rsquo; class, social-democratic labor
+element&mdash;all found &ldquo;provisionally&rdquo; their place in the February
+government.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It could not be otherwise. The February days contemplated originally a reform
+of the suffrage laws, whereby the area of the politically privileged among the
+property-holding class was to be extended, while the exclusive rule of the
+aristocracy of finance was to be overthrown. When however, it came to a real
+conflict, when the people mounted the barricades, when the National Guard stood
+passive, when the army offered no serious resistance, and the kingdom ran away,
+then the republic seemed self-understood. Each party interpreted it in its own
+sense. Won, arms in hand, by the proletariat, they put upon it the stamp of
+their own class, and proclaimed the social republic. Thus the general purpose
+of modern revolutions was indicated, a purpose, however, that stood in most
+singular contradiction to every thing that, with the material at hand, with the
+stage of enlightenment that the masses had reached, and under existing
+circumstances and conditions, could be immediately used. On the other hand, the
+claims of all the other elements, that had cooperated in the revolution of
+February, were recognized by the lion&rsquo;s share that they received in the
+government. Hence, in no period do we find a more motley mixture of
+high-sounding phrases together with actual doubt and helplessness; of more
+enthusiastic reform aspirations, together with a more slavish adherence to the
+old routine; more seeming harmony permeating the whole of society together with
+a deeper alienation of its several elements. While the Parisian proletariat was
+still gloating over the sight of the great perspective that had disclosed
+itself to their view, and was indulging in seriously meant discussions over the
+social problems, the old powers of society had groomed themselves, had gathered
+together, had deliberated and found an unexpected support in the mass of the
+nation&mdash;the peasants and small traders&mdash;all of whom threw themselves
+on a sudden upon the political stage, after the barriers of the July monarchy
+had fallen down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The second period, from May 4, 1848, to the end of May, 1849, is the period of
+the constitution, of the founding of the bourgeois republic immediately after
+the February days, not only was the dynastic opposition surprised by the
+republicans, and the republicans by the Socialists, but all France was
+surprised by Paris. The national assembly, that met on May 4, 1848, to frame a
+constitution, was the outcome of the national elections; it represented the
+nation. It was a living protest against the assumption of the February days,
+and it was intended to bring the results of the revolution back to the
+bourgeois measure. In vain did the proletariat of Paris, which forthwith
+understood the character of this national assembly, endeavor, a few days after
+its meeting; on May 15, to deny its existence by force, to dissolve it, to
+disperse the organic apparition, in which the reacting spirit of the nation was
+threatening them, and thus reduce it back to its separate component parts. As
+is known, the 15th of May had no other result than that of removing Blanqui and
+his associates, i.e. the real leaders of the proletarian party, from the public
+scene for the whole period of the cycle which we are here considering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe, only the bourgeois republic
+could follow; that is to say, a limited portion of the bourgeoisie having ruled
+under the name of the king, now the whole bourgeoisie was to rule under the
+name of the people. The demands of the Parisian proletariat are utopian
+tom-fooleries that have to be done away with. To this declaration of the
+constitutional national assembly, the Paris proletariat answers with the June
+insurrection, the most colossal event in the history of European civil wars.
+The bourgeois republic won. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the
+industrial bourgeoisie; the middle class; the small traders&rsquo; class; the
+army; the slums, organized as Guarde Mobile; the intellectual celebrities, the
+parsons&rsquo; class, and the rural population. On the side of the Parisian
+proletariat stood none but itself. Over 3,000 insurgents were massacred, after
+the victory 15,000 were transported without trial. With this defeat, the
+proletariat steps to the background on the revolutionary stage. It always seeks
+to crowd forward, so soon as the movement seems to acquire new impetus, but
+with ever weaker effort and ever smaller results; So soon as any of the above
+lying layers of society gets into revolutionary fermentation, it enters into
+alliance therewith and thus shares all the defeats which the several parties
+successively suffer. But these succeeding blows become ever weaker the more
+generally they are distributed over the whole surface of society. The more
+important leaders of the Proletariat, in its councils, and the press, fall one
+after another victims of the courts, and ever more questionable figures step to
+the front. It partly throws itself it upon doctrinaire experiments,
+&ldquo;co-operative banking&rdquo; and &ldquo;labor exchange&rdquo; schemes; in
+other words, movements, in which it goes into movements in which it gives up
+the task of revolutionizing the old world with its own large collective weapons
+and on the contrary, seeks to bring about its emancipation, behind the back of
+society, in private ways, within the narrow bounds of its own class conditions,
+and, consequently, inevitably fails. The proletariat seems to be able neither
+to find again the revolutionary magnitude within itself nor to draw new energy
+from the newly formed alliances until all the classes, with whom it contended
+in June, shall lie prostrate along with itself. But in all these defeats, the
+proletariat succumbs at least with the honor that attaches to great historic
+struggles; not France alone, all Europe trembles before the June earthquake,
+while the successive defeats inflicted upon the higher classes are bought so
+easily that they need the brazen exaggeration of the victorious party itself to
+be at all able to pass muster as an event; and these defeats become more
+disgraceful the further removed the defeated party stands from the proletariat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True enough, the defeat of the June insurgents prepared, leveled the ground,
+upon which the bourgeois republic could be founded and erected; but it, at the
+same time, showed that there are in Europe other issues besides that of
+&ldquo;Republic or Monarchy.&rdquo; It revealed the fact that here the
+Bourgeois Republic meant the unbridled despotism of one class over another. It
+proved that, with nations enjoying an older civilization, having developed
+class distinctions, modern conditions of production, an intellectual
+consciousness, wherein all traditions of old have been dissolved through the
+work of centuries, that with such countries the republic means only the
+political revolutionary form of bourgeois society, not its conservative form of
+existence, as is the case in the United States of America, where, true enough,
+the classes already exist, but have not yet acquired permanent character, are
+in constant flux and reflux, constantly changing their elements and yielding
+them up to one another where the modern means of production, instead of
+coinciding with a stagnant population, rather compensate for the relative
+scarcity of heads and hands; and, finally, where the feverishly youthful life
+of material production, which has to appropriate a new world to itself, has so
+far left neither time nor opportunity to abolish the illusions of old. [#3 This
+was written at the beginning of 1852.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All classes and parties joined hands in the June days in a &ldquo;Party of
+Order&rdquo; against the class of the proletariat, which was designated as the
+&ldquo;Party of Anarchy,&rdquo; of Socialism, of Communism. They claimed to
+have &ldquo;saved&rdquo; society against the &ldquo;enemies of society.&rdquo;
+They gave out the slogans of the old social order&mdash;&ldquo;Property,
+Family, Religion, Order&rdquo;&mdash;as the passwords for their army, and cried
+out to the counter-revolutionary crusaders: &ldquo;In this sign thou wilt
+conquer!&rdquo; From that moment on, so soon as any of the numerous parties,
+which had marshaled themselves under this sign against the June insurgents,
+tries, in turn, to take the revolutionary field in the interest of its own
+class, it goes down in its turn before the cry: &ldquo;Property, Family,
+Religion, Order.&rdquo; Thus it happens that &ldquo;society is saved&rdquo; as
+often as the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more
+exclusive interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for the most
+simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for the
+most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy, is forthwith
+punished as an &ldquo;assault upon society,&rdquo; and is branded as
+&ldquo;Socialism.&rdquo; Finally the High Priests of &ldquo;Religion and
+Order&rdquo; themselves are kicked off their tripods; are fetched out of their
+beds in the dark; hurried into patrol wagons, thrust into jail or sent into
+exile; their temple is razed to the ground, their mouths are sealed, their pen
+is broken, their law torn to pieces in the name of Religion, of Family, of
+Property, and of Order. Bourgeois, fanatic on the point of &ldquo;Order,&rdquo;
+are shot down on their own balconies by drunken soldiers, forfeit their family
+property, and their houses are bombarded for pastime&mdash;all in the name of
+Property, of Family, of Religion, and of Order. Finally, the refuse of
+bourgeois society constitutes the &ldquo;holy phalanx of Order,&rdquo; and the
+hero Crapulinsky makes his entry into the Tuileries as the &ldquo;Savior of
+Society.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>II.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Let us resume the thread of events.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The history of the Constitutional National Assembly from the June days on, is
+the history of the supremacy and dissolution of the republican bourgeois party,
+the party which is known under several names of &ldquo;Tricolor
+Republican,&rdquo; &ldquo;True Republican,&rdquo; &ldquo;Political
+Republican,&rdquo; &ldquo;Formal Republican,&rdquo; etc., etc. Under the
+bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe, this party had constituted the Official
+Republican Opposition, and consequently had been a recognized element in the
+then political world. It had its representatives in the Chambers, and commanded
+considerable influence in the press. Its Parisian organ, the
+&ldquo;National,&rdquo; passed, in its way, for as respectable a paper as the
+&ldquo;Journal des Debats.&rdquo; This position in the constitutional monarchy
+corresponded to its character. The party was not a fraction of the bourgeoisie,
+held together by great and common interests, and marked by special business
+requirements. It was a coterie of bourgeois with republican
+ideas&mdash;writers, lawyers, officers and civil employees, whose influence
+rested upon the personal antipathies of the country for Louis Philippe, upon
+reminiscences of the old Republic, upon the republican faith of a number of
+enthusiasts, and, above all, upon the spirit of French patriotism, whose hatred
+of the treaties of Vienna and of the alliance with England kept them
+perpetually on the alert. The &ldquo;National&rdquo; owed a large portion of
+its following under Louis Philippe to this covert imperialism, that, later
+under the republic, could stand up against it as a deadly competitor in the
+person of Louis Bonaparte. The paper fought the aristocracy of finance just the
+same as did the rest of the bourgeois opposition. The polemic against the
+budget, which in France, was closely connected with the opposition to the
+aristocracy of finance, furnished too cheap a popularity and too rich a
+material for Puritanical leading articles, not to be exploited. The industrial
+bourgeoisie was thankful to it for its servile defense of the French tariff
+system, which, however, the paper had taken up, more out of patriotic than
+economic reasons; the whole bourgeois class was thankful to it for its vicious
+denunciations of Communism and Socialism. For the rest, the party of the
+&ldquo;National&rdquo; was purely republican, i.e. it demanded a republican
+instead of a monarchic form of bourgeois government; above all, it demanded for
+the bourgeoisie the lion&rsquo;s share of the government. As to how this
+transformation was to be accomplished, the party was far from being clear.
+What, however, was clear as day to it and was openly declared at the reform
+banquets during the last days of Louis Philippe&rsquo;s reign, was its
+unpopularity with the democratic middle class, especially with the
+revolutionary proletariat. These pure republicans, as pure republicans go, were
+at first on the very point of contenting themselves with the regency of the
+Duchess of Orleans, when the February revolution broke out, and when it gave
+their best known representatives a place in the provisional government. Of
+course, they enjoyed from the start the confidence of the bourgeoisie and of
+the majority of the Constitutional National Assembly. The Socialist elements of
+the Provisional Government were promptly excluded from the Executive Committee
+which the Assembly had elected upon its convening, and the party of the
+&ldquo;National&rdquo; subsequently utilized the outbreak of the June
+insurrection to dismiss this Executive Committee also, and thus rid itself of
+its nearest rivals&mdash;the small traders&rsquo; class or democratic
+republicans (Ledru-Rollin, etc.). Cavaignac, the General of the bourgeois
+republican party, who commanded at the battle of June, stepped into the place
+of the Executive Committee with a sort of dictatorial power. Marrast, former
+editor-in-chief of the &ldquo;National&rdquo;, became permanent President of
+the Constitutional National Assembly, and the Secretaryship of State, together
+with all the other important posts, devolved upon the pure republicans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The republican bourgeois party, which since long had looked upon itself as the
+legitimate heir of the July monarchy, thus found itself surpassed in its own
+ideal; but it came to power, not as it had dreamed under Louis Philippe,
+through a liberal revolt of the bourgeoisie against the throne, but through a
+grape-shot-and-canistered mutiny of the proletariat against Capital. That which
+it imagined to be the most revolutionary, came about as the most
+counter-revolutionary event. The fruit fell into its lap, but it fell from the
+Tree of Knowledge, not from the Tree of Life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The exclusive power of the bourgeois republic lasted only from June 24 to the
+10th of December, 1848. It is summed up in the framing of a republican
+constitution and in the state of siege of Paris.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The new Constitution was in substance only a republicanized edition of the
+constitutional charter of 1830. The limited suffrage of the July monarchy,
+which excluded even a large portion of the bourgeoisie from political power,
+was irreconcilable with the existence of the bourgeois republic. The February
+revolution had forthwith proclaimed direct and universal suffrage in place of
+the old law. The bourgeois republic could not annul this act. They had to
+content themselves with tacking to it the limitation a six months&rsquo;
+residence. The old organization of the administrative law, of municipal
+government, of court procedures of the army, etc., remained untouched, or,
+where the constitution did change them, the change affected their index, not
+their subject; their name, not their substance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The inevitable &ldquo;General Staff&rdquo; of the &ldquo;freedoms&rdquo; of
+1848&mdash;personal freedom, freedom of the press, of speech, of association
+and of assemblage, freedom of instruction, of religion, etc.&mdash;received a
+constitutional uniform that rendered them invulnerable. Each of these freedoms
+is proclaimed the absolute right of the French citizen, but always with the
+gloss that it is unlimited in so far only as it be not curtailed by the
+&ldquo;equal rights of others,&rdquo; and by the &ldquo;public safety,&rdquo;
+or by the &ldquo;laws,&rdquo; which are intended to effect this harmony. For
+instance:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Citizens have the right of association, of peaceful and unarmed
+assemblage, of petitioning, and of expressing their opinions through the press
+or otherwise. The enjoyment of these rights has no limitation other than the
+equal rights of others and the public safety.&rdquo; (Chap. II. of the French
+Constitution, Section 8.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Education is free. The freedom of education shall be enjoyed under the
+conditions provided by law, and under the supervision of the State.&rdquo;
+(Section 9.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The domicile of the citizen is inviolable, except under the forms
+prescribed by law.&rdquo; (Chap. I., Section 3), etc., etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Constitution, it will be noticed, constantly alludes to future organic
+laws, that are to carry out the glosses, and are intended to regulate the
+enjoyment of these unabridged freedoms, to the end that they collide neither
+with one another nor with the public safety. Later on, the organic laws are
+called into existence by the &ldquo;Friends of Order,&rdquo; and all the above
+named freedoms are so regulated that, in their enjoyment, the bourgeoisie
+encounter no opposition from the like rights of the other classes. Wherever the
+bourgeoisie wholly interdicted these rights to &ldquo;others,&rdquo; or allowed
+them their enjoyment under conditions that were but so many police snares, it
+was always done only in the interest of the &ldquo;public safety,&rdquo; i. e.,
+of the bourgeoisie, as required by the Constitution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hence it comes that both sides&mdash;the &ldquo;Friends of Order,&rdquo; who
+abolished all those freedoms, as, well as the democrats, who had demanded them
+all&mdash;appeal with full right to the Constitution: Each paragraph of the
+Constitution contains its own antithesis, its own Upper and Lower
+House&mdash;freedom as a generalization, the abolition of freedom as a
+specification. Accordingly, so long as the name of freedom was respected, and
+only its real enforcement was prevented in a legal way, of course the
+constitutional existence of freedom remained uninjured, untouched, however
+completely its common existence might be extinguished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This Constitution, so ingeniously made invulnerable, was, however, like
+Achilles, vulnerable at one point: not in its heel, but in its head, or rather,
+in the two heads into which it ran out&mdash;the Legislative Assembly, on the
+one hand, and the President on the other. Run through the Constitution and it
+will be found that only those paragraphs wherein the relation of the President
+to the Legislative Assembly is defined, are absolute, positive,
+uncontradictory, undistortable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here the bourgeois republicans were concerned in securing their own position.
+Articles 45-70 of the Constitution are so framed that the National Assembly can
+constitutionally remove the President, but the President can set aside the
+National Assembly only unconstitutionally, he can set it aside only by setting
+aside the Constitution itself. Accordingly, by these provisions, the National
+Assembly challenges its own violent destruction. It not only consecrates, like
+the character of 1830, the division of powers, but it extends this feature to
+an unbearably contradictory extreme. The &ldquo;play of constitutional
+powers,&rdquo; as Guizot styled the clapper-clawings between the legislative
+and the executive powers, plays permanent &ldquo;vabanque&rdquo; in the
+Constitution of 1848. On the one side, 750 representatives of the people,
+elected and qualified for re-election by universal suffrage, who constitute an
+uncontrollable, indissoluble, indivisible National Assembly, a National
+Assembly that enjoys legislative omnipotence, that decides in the last instance
+over war, peace and commercial treaties, that alone has the power to grant
+amnesties, and that, through its perpetuity, continually maintains the
+foreground on the stage; on the other, a President, clad with all the
+attributes of royalty, with the right to appoint and remove his ministers
+independently from the national assembly, holding in his hands all the means of
+executive power, the dispenser of all posts, and thereby the arbiter of at
+least one and a half million existences in France, so many being dependent upon
+the 500,000 civil employees and upon the officers of all grades. He has the
+whole armed power behind him. He enjoys the privilege of granting pardons to
+individual criminals; suspending the National Guards; of removing with the
+consent of the Council of State the general, cantonal and municipal Councilmen,
+elected by the citizens themselves. The initiative and direction of all
+negotiations with foreign countries are reserved to him. While the Assembly
+itself is constantly acting upon the stage, and is exposed to the critically
+vulgar light of day, he leads a hidden life in the Elysian fields, only with
+Article 45 of the Constitution before his eyes and in his heart daily calling
+out to him, &ldquo;Frere, il faut mourir!&rdquo; [#1 Brother, you must die!]
+Your power expires on the second Sunday of the beautiful month of May, in the
+fourth year after your election! The glory is then at an end; the play is not
+performed twice; and, if you have any debts, see to it betimes that you pay
+them off with the 600,000 francs that the Constitution has set aside for you,
+unless, perchance, you should prefer traveling to Clichy [#2 The debtors&rsquo;
+prison.] on the second Monday of the beautiful month of May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the Constitution thus clothes the President with actual power, it seeks
+to secure the moral power to the National Assembly. Apart from the circumstance
+that it is impossible to create a moral power through legislative paragraphs,
+the Constitution again neutralizes itself in that it causes the President to be
+chosen by all the Frenchmen through direct suffrage. While the votes of France
+are splintered to pieces upon the 750 members of the National Assembly they are
+here, on the contrary, concentrated upon one individual. While each separate
+Representative represents only this or that party, this or that city, this or
+that dunghill, or possibly only the necessity of electing some one
+Seven-hundred-and-fiftieth or other, with whom neither the issue nor the man is
+closely considered, that one, the President, on the contrary, is the elect of
+the nation, and the act of his election is the trump card, that, the sovereign
+people plays out once every four years. The elected National Assembly stands in
+a metaphysical, but the elected President in a personal, relation to the
+nation. True enough, the National Assembly presents in its several
+Representatives the various sides of the national spirit, but, in the
+President, this spirit is incarnated. As against the National Assembly, the
+President possesses a sort of divine right, he is by the grace of the people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thetis, the sea-goddess, had prophesied to Achilles that he would die in the
+bloom of youth. The Constitution, which had its weak spot, like Achilles, had
+also, like Achilles, the presentiment that it would depart by premature death.
+It was enough for the pure republicans, engaged at the work of framing a
+constitution, to cast a glance from the misty heights of their ideal republic
+down upon the profane world in order to realize how the arrogance of the
+royalists, of the Bonapartists, of the democrats, of the Communists, rose
+daily, together with their own discredit, and in the same measure as they
+approached the completion of their legislative work of art, without Thetis
+having for this purpose to leave the sea and impart the secret to them. They
+ought to outwit fate by means of constitutional artifice, through Section 111
+of the Constitution, according to which every motion to revise the Constitution
+had to be discussed three successive times between each of which a full month
+was to elapse and required at least a three-fourths majority, with the
+additional proviso that not less than 500 members of the National Assembly
+voted. They thereby only made the impotent attempt, still to exercise as a
+parliamentary minority, to which in their mind&rsquo;s eye they prophetically
+saw themselves reduced, a power, that, at this very time, when they still
+disposed over the parliamentary majority and over all the machinery of
+government, was daily slipping from their weak hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, the Constitution entrusts itself for safe keeping, in a melodramatic
+paragraph, &ldquo;to the watchfulness and patriotism of the whole French
+people, and of each individual Frenchman,&rdquo; after having just before, in
+another paragraph entrusted the &ldquo;watchful&rdquo; and the
+&ldquo;patriotic&rdquo; themselves to the tender, inquisitorial attention of
+the High Court, instituted by itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was the Constitution of 1848, which on, the 2d of December, 1851, was not
+overthrown by one head, but tumbled down at the touch of a mere hat; though,
+true enough, that hat was a three-cornered Napoleon hat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the bourgeois&rsquo; republicans were engaged in the Assembly with the
+work of splicing this Constitution, of discussing and voting, Cavaignac, on the
+outside, maintained the state of siege of Paris. The state of siege of Paris
+was the midwife of the constitutional assembly, during its republican pains of
+travail. When the Constitution is later on swept off the earth by the bayonet,
+it should not be forgotten that it was by the bayonet, likewise&mdash;and the
+bayonet turned against the people, at that&mdash;that it had to be protected in
+its mother&rsquo;s womb, and that by the bayonet it had to be planted on earth.
+The ancestors of these &ldquo;honest republicans&rdquo; had caused their
+symbol, the tricolor, to make the tour of Europe. These, in their turn also
+made a discovery, which all of itself, found its way over the whole continent,
+but, with ever renewed love, came back to France, until, by this time, if had
+acquired the right of citizenship in one-half of her Departments&mdash;the
+state of siege. A wondrous discovery this was, periodically applied at each
+succeeding crisis in the course of the French revolution. But the barrack and
+the bivouac, thus periodically laid on the head of French society, to compress
+her brain and reduce her to quiet; the sabre and the musket, periodically made
+to perform the functions of judges and of administrators, of guardians and of
+censors, of police officers and of watchmen; the military moustache and the
+soldier&rsquo;s jacket, periodically heralded as the highest wisdom and guiding
+stars of society;&mdash;were not all of these, the barrack and the bivouac, the
+sabre and the musket, the moustache and the soldier&rsquo;s jacket bound, in
+the end, to hit upon the idea that they might as well save society once for
+all, by proclaiming their own regime as supreme, and relieve bourgeois society
+wholly of the care of ruling itself? The barrack and the bivouac, the sabre and
+the musket, the moustache and the soldier&rsquo;s jacket were all the more
+bound to hit upon this idea, seeing that they could then also expect better
+cash payment for their increased deserts, while at the merely periodic states
+of siege and the transitory savings of society at the behest of this or that
+bourgeois faction, very little solid matter fell to them except some dead and
+wounded, besides some friendly bourgeois grimaces. Should not the military,
+finally, in and for its own interest, play the game of &ldquo;state of
+siege,&rdquo; and simultaneously besiege the bourgeois exchanges? Moreover, it
+must not be forgotten, and be it observed in passing, that Col. Bernard, the
+same President of the Military Committee, who, under Cavaignac, helped to
+deport 15,000 insurgents without trial, moves at this period again at the head
+of the Military Committees now active in Paris.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although the honest, the pure republicans built with the state of siege the
+nursery in which the Praetorian guards of December 2, 1851, were to be reared,
+they, on the other hand, deserve praise in that, instead of exaggerating the
+feeling of patriotism, as under Louis Philippe, now; they themselves are in
+command of the national power, they crawl before foreign powers; instead of
+making Italy free, they allow her to be reconquered by Austrians and
+Neapolitans. The election of Louis Bonaparte for President on December 10,
+1848, put an end to the dictatorship of Cavaignac and to the constitutional
+assembly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Article 44 of the Constitution it is said &ldquo;The President of the French
+Republic must never have lost his status as a French citizen.&rdquo; The first
+President of the French Republic, L. N. Bonaparte, had not only lost his status
+as a French citizen, had not only been an English special constable, but was
+even a naturalized Swiss citizen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the previous chapter I have explained the meaning of the election of
+December 10. I shall not here return to it. Suffice it here to say that it was
+a reaction of the farmers&rsquo; class, who had been expected to pay the costs
+of the February revolution, against the other classes of the nation: it was a
+reaction of the country against the city. It met with great favor among the
+soldiers, to whom the republicans of the &ldquo;National&rdquo; had brought
+neither fame nor funds; among the great bourgeoisie, who hailed Bonaparte as a
+bridge to the monarchy; and among the proletarians and small traders, who
+hailed him as a scourge to Cavaignac. I shall later have occasion to enter
+closer into the relation of the farmers to the French revolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The epoch between December 20, 1848, and the dissolution of the constitutional
+assembly in May, 1849, embraces the history of the downfall of the bourgeois
+republicans. After they had founded a republic for the bourgeoisie, had driven
+the revolutionary proletariat from the field and had meanwhile silenced the
+democratic middle class, they are themselves shoved aside by the mass of the
+bourgeoisie who justly appropriate this republic as their property. This
+bourgeois mass was Royalist, however. A part thereof, the large landed
+proprietors, had ruled under the restoration, hence, was Legitimist; the other
+part, the aristocrats of finance and the large industrial capitalists, had
+ruled under the July monarchy, hence, was Orleanist. The high functionaries of
+the Army, of the University, of the Church, in the civil service, of the
+Academy and of the press, divided themselves on both sides, although in unequal
+parts. Here, in the bourgeois republic, that bore neither the name of Bourbon,
+nor of Orleans, but the name of Capital, they had found the form of government
+under which they could all rule in common. Already the June insurrection had
+united them all into a &ldquo;Party of Order.&rdquo; The next thing to do was
+to remove the bourgeois republicans who still held the seats in the National
+Assembly. As brutally as these pure republicans had abused their own physical
+power against the people, so cowardly, low-spirited, disheartened, broken,
+powerless did they yield, now when the issue was the maintenance of their own
+republicanism and their own legislative rights against the Executive power and
+the royalists I need not here narrate the shameful history of their
+dissolution. It was not a downfall, it was extinction. Their history is at an
+end for all time. In the period that follows, they figure, whether within or
+without the Assembly, only as memories&mdash;memories that seem again to come
+to life so soon as the question is again only the word &ldquo;Republic,&rdquo;
+and as often as the revolutionary conflict threatens to sink down to the lowest
+level. In passing, I might observe that the journal which gave to this party
+its name, the &ldquo;National,&rdquo; goes over to Socialism during the
+following period.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before we close this period, we must look back upon the two powers, one of
+destroys the other on December 2, 1851, while, from December 20, 1848, down to
+the departure of the constitutional assembly, they live marital relations. We
+mean Louis Bonaparte, on the-one hand, on the other, the party of the allied
+royalists; of Order, and of the large bourgeoisie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the inauguration of his presidency, Bonaparte forthwith framed a ministry
+out of the party of Order, at whose head he placed Odillon Barrot, be it noted,
+the old leader of the liberal wing of the parliamentary bourgeoisie. Mr. Barrot
+had finally hunted down a seat in the ministry, the spook of which had been
+pursuing him since 1830; and what is more, he had the chairmanship in this
+ministry, although not, as he had imagined under Louis Philippe, the promoted
+leader of the parliamentary opposition, but with the commission to kill a
+parliament, and, moreover, as an ally of all his arch enemies, the Jesuits and
+the Legitimists. Finally he leads the bride home, but only after she has been
+prostituted. As to Bonaparte, he seemed to eclipse himself completely. The
+party of Order acted for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately at the first session of the ministry the expedition to Rome was
+decided upon, which it was there agreed, was to be carried out behind I the
+back of the National Assembly, and the funds for which, it was equally agreed,
+were to be wrung from the Assembly under false pretences. Thus the start was
+made with a swindle on the National Assembly, together with a secret conspiracy
+with the absolute foreign powers against the revolutionary Roman republic. In
+the same way, and with a similar maneuver, did Bonaparte prepare his stroke of
+December 2 against the royalist legislature and its constitutional republic.
+Let it not be forgotten that the same party, which, on December 20, 1848,
+constituted Bonaparte&rsquo;s ministry, constituted also, on December 2, 1851,
+the majority of the legislative National Assembly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In August the constitutive assembly decided not to dissolve until it had
+prepared and promulgated a whole series of organic laws, intended to supplement
+the Constitution. The party of Order proposed to the assembly, through
+Representative Rateau, on January 6, 1849, to let the Organic laws go, and
+rather to order its own dissolution. Not the ministry alone, with Mr. Odillon
+Barrot at its head, but all the royalist members of the National Assembly were
+also at this time hectoring to it that its dissolution was necessary for the
+restoration of the public credit, for the consolidation of order, to put an end
+to the existing uncertain and provisional, and establish a definite state of
+things; they claimed that its continued existence hindered the effectiveness of
+the new Government, that it sought to prolong its life out of pure malice, and
+that the country was tired of it. Bonaparte took notice of all these invectives
+hurled at the legislative power, he learned them by heart, and, on December 21,
+1851, he showed the parliamentary royalists that he had learned from them. He
+repeated their own slogans against themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Barrot ministry and the party of Order went further. They called all over
+France for petitions to the National Assembly in which that body was politely
+requested to disappear. Thus they led the people&rsquo;s unorganic masses to
+the fray against the National Assembly, i.e., the constitutionally organized
+expression of people itself. They taught Bonaparte, to appeal from the
+parliamentary body to the people. Finally, on January 29, 1849, the day arrived
+when the constitutional assembly was to decide about its own dissolution. On
+that day the body found its building occupied by the military; Changarnier, the
+General of the party of Order, in whose hands was joined the supreme command of
+both the National Guards and the regulars, held that day a great military
+review, as though a battle were imminent; and the coalized royalists declared
+threateningly to the constitutional assembly that force would be applied if it
+did not act willingly. It was willing, and chaffered only for a very short
+respite. What else was the 29th of January, 1849, than the &ldquo;coup
+d&rsquo;etat&rdquo; of December 2, 1851, only executed by the royalists with
+Napoleon&rsquo;s aid against the republican National Assembly? These gentlemen
+did not notice, or did not want to notice, that Napoleon utilized the 29th of
+January, 1849, to cause a part of the troops to file before him in front of the
+Tuileries, and that he seized with avidity this very first open exercise of the
+military against the parliamentary power in order to hint at Caligula. The
+allied royalists saw only their own Changarnier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another reason that particularly moved the party of Order forcibly to shorten
+the term of the constitutional assembly were the organic laws, the laws that
+were to supplement the Constitution, as, for instance, the laws on education,
+on religion, etc. The allied royalists had every interest in framing these laws
+themselves, and not allowing them to be framed by the already suspicious
+republicans. Among these organic laws, there was, however, one on the
+responsibility of the President of the republic. In 1851 the Legislature was
+just engaged in framing such a law when Bonaparte forestalled that political
+stroke by his own of December 2. What all would not the coalized royalists have
+given in their winter parliamentary campaign of 1851, had they but found this
+&ldquo;Responsibility law&rdquo; ready made, and framed at that, by the
+suspicious, the vicious republican Assembly!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After, on January 29, 1849, the constitutive assembly had itself broken its
+last weapon, the Barrot ministry and the &ldquo;Friends of Order&rdquo;
+harassed it to death, left nothing undone to humiliate it, and wrung from its
+weakness, despairing of itself, laws that cost it the last vestige of respect
+with the public. Bonaparte, occupied with his own fixed Napoleonic idea, was
+audacious enough openly to exploit this degradation of the parliamentary power:
+When the National Assembly, on May 8, 1849, passed a vote of censure upon the
+Ministry on account of the occupation of Civita-Vecchia by Oudinot, and ordered
+that the Roman expedition be brought back to its alleged purpose, Bonaparte
+published that same evening in the &ldquo;Moniteur&rdquo; a letter to Oudinot,
+in which he congratulated him on his heroic feats, and already, in contrast
+with the quill-pushing parliamentarians, posed as the generous protector of the
+Army. The royalists smiled at this. They took him simply for their dupe.
+Finally, as Marrast, the President of the constitutional assembly, believed on
+a certain occasion the safety of the body to be in danger, and, resting on the
+Constitution, made a requisition upon a Colonel, together with his regiment,
+the Colonel refused obedience, took refuge behind the &ldquo;discipline,&rdquo;
+and referred Marrast to Changarnier, who scornfully sent him off with the
+remark that he did not like &ldquo;bayonettes intelligentes.&rdquo; [#1
+Intelligent bayonets] In November, 1851, as the coalized royalists wanted to
+begin the decisive struggle with Bonaparte, they sought, by means of their
+notorious &ldquo;Questors Bill,&rdquo; to enforce the principle of the right of
+the President of the National Assembly to issue direct requisitions for troops.
+One of their Generals, Leflo, supported the motion. In vain did Changarnier
+vote for it, or did Thiers render homage to the cautious wisdom of the late
+constitutional assembly. The Minister of War, St. Arnaud, answered him as
+Changarnier had answered Marrast&mdash;and he did so amidst the plaudits of the
+Mountain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus did the party of Order itself, when as yet it was not the National
+Assembly, when as yet it was only a Ministry, brand the parliamentary regime.
+And yet this party objects vociferously when the 2d of December, 1851, banishes
+that regime from France!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We wish it a happy journey.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>III.</h2>
+
+<p>
+On May 29, 1849, the legislative National Assembly convened. On December 2,
+1851, it was broken up. This period embraces the term of the Constitutional or
+Parliamentary public.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the first French revolution, upon the reign of the Constitutionalists
+succeeds that of the Girondins; and upon the reign of the Girondins follows
+that of the Jacobins. Each of these parties in succession rests upon its more
+advanced element. So soon as it has carried the revolution far enough not to be
+able to keep pace with, much less march ahead of it, it is shoved aside by its
+more daring allies, who stand behind it, and it is sent to the guillotine. Thus
+the revolution moves along an upward line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just the reverse in 1848. The proletarian party appears as an appendage to the
+small traders&rsquo; or democratic party; it is betrayed by the latter and
+allowed to fall on April 16, May 15, and in the June days. In its turn, the
+democratic party leans upon the shoulders of the bourgeois republicans; barely
+do the bourgeois republicans believe themselves firmly in power, than they
+shake off these troublesome associates for the purpose of themselves leaning
+upon the shoulders of the party of Order. The party of Order draws in its
+shoulders, lets the bourgeois republicans tumble down heels over head, and
+throws itself upon the shoulders of the armed power. Finally, still of the mind
+that it is sustained by the shoulders of the armed power, the party of Order
+notices one fine morning that these shoulders have turned into bayonets. Each
+party kicks backward at those that are pushing forward, and leans forward upon
+those that are crowding backward; no wonder that, in this ludicrous posture,
+each loses its balance, and, after having cut the unavoidable grimaces, breaks
+down amid singular somersaults. Accordingly, the revolution moves along a
+downward line. It finds itself in this retreating motion before the last
+February-barricade is cleared away, and the first governmental authority of the
+revolution has been constituted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The period we now have before us embraces the motliest jumble of crying
+contradictions: constitutionalists, who openly conspire against the
+Constitution; revolutionists, who admittedly are constitutional; a National
+Assembly that wishes to be omnipotent yet remains parliamentary; a Mountain,
+that finds its occupation in submission, that parries its present defeats with
+prophecies of future victories; royalists, who constitute the &ldquo;patres
+conscripti&rdquo; of the republic, and are compelled by the situation to uphold
+abroad the hostile monarchic houses, whose adherents they are, while in France
+they support the republic that they hate; an Executive power that finds its
+strength in its very weakness, and its dignity in the contempt that it
+inspires; a republic, that is nothing else than the combined infamy of two
+monarchies&mdash;the Restoration and the July Monarchy&mdash;with an imperial
+label; unions, whose first clause is disunion; struggles, whose first law is
+in-decision; in the name of peace, barren and hollow agitation; in the name of
+the revolution, solemn sermonizings on peace; passions without truth; truths
+without passion; heroes without heroism; history without events; development,
+whose only moving force seems to be the calendar, and tiresome by the constant
+reiteration of the same tensions and relaxes; contrasts, that seem to intensify
+themselves periodically, only in order to wear themselves off and collapse
+without a solution; pretentious efforts made for show, and bourgeois frights at
+the danger of the destruction of the world, simultaneous with the carrying on
+of the pettiest intrigues and the performance of court comedies by the
+world&rsquo;s saviours, who, in their &ldquo;laisser aller,&rdquo; recall the
+Day of Judgment not so much as the days of the Fronde; the official collective
+genius of France brought to shame by the artful stupidity of a single
+individual; the collective will of the nation, as often as it speaks through
+the general suffrage, seeking its true expression in the prescriptive enemies
+of the public interests until it finally finds it in the arbitrary will of a
+filibuster. If ever a slice from history is drawn black upon black, it is this.
+Men and events appear as reversed &ldquo;Schlemihls,&rdquo; [#1 The hero In
+Chamisso&rsquo;s &ldquo;Peter Schiemihi,&rdquo; who loses his own shadow.] as
+shadows, the bodies of which have been lost. The revolution itself paralyzes
+its own apostles, and equips only its adversaries with passionate violence.
+When the &ldquo;Red Spectre,&rdquo; constantly conjured up and exorcised by the
+counter-revolutionists finally does appear, it does not appear with the
+Anarchist Phrygian cap on its head, but in the uniform of Order, in the Red
+Breeches of the French Soldier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We saw that the Ministry, which Bonaparte installed on December 20, 1849, the
+day of his &ldquo;Ascension,&rdquo; was a ministry of the party of Order, of
+the Legitimist and Orleanist coalition. The Barrot-Falloux ministry had
+weathered the republican constitutive convention, whose term of life it had
+shortened with more or less violence, and found itself still at the helm.
+Changamier, the General of the allied royalists continued to unite in his
+person the command-in-chief of the First Military Division and of the Parisian
+National Guard. Finally, the general elections had secured the large majority
+in the National Assembly to the party of Order. Here the Deputies and Peers of
+Louis Phillipe met a saintly crowd of Legitimists, for whose benefit numerous
+ballots of the nation had been converted into admission tickets to the
+political stage. The Bonapartist representatives were too thinly sowed to be
+able to build an independent parliamentary party. They appeared only as
+&ldquo;mauvaise queue&rdquo; [#2 Practical joke] played upon the party of
+Order. Thus the party of Order was in possession of the Government, of the
+Army, and of the legislative body, in short, of the total power of the State,
+morally strengthened by the general elections, that caused their sovereignty to
+appear as the will of the people, and by the simultaneous victory of the
+counter-revolution on the whole continent of Europe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never did party open its campaign with larger means at its disposal and under
+more favorable auspices.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shipwrecked pure republicans found themselves in the legislative National
+Assembly melted down to a clique of fifty men, with the African Generals
+Cavaignac, Lamorciere and Bedeau at its head. The great Opposition party was,
+however, formed by the Mountain. This parliamentary baptismal name was given to
+itself by the Social Democratic party. It disposed of more than two hundred
+votes out of the seven hundred and fifty in the National Assembly, and, hence,
+was at least just as powerful as any one of the three factions of the party of
+Order. Its relative minority to the total royalist coalition seemed
+counterbalanced by special circumstances. Not only did the Departmental
+election returns show that it had gained a considerable following among the
+rural population, but, furthermore, it numbered almost all the Paris Deputies
+in its camp; the Army had, by the election of three under-officers, made a
+confession of democratic faith; and the leader of the Mountain, Ledru-Rollin
+had in contrast to all the representatives of the party of Order, been raised
+to the rank of the &ldquo;parliamentary nobility&rdquo; by five Departments,
+who combined their suffrages upon him. Accordingly, in view of the inevitable
+collisions of the royalists among themselves, on the one hand, and of the whole
+party of Order with Bonaparte, on the other, the Mountain seemed on May
+29,1849, to have before it all the elements of success. A fortnight later, it
+had lost everything, its honor included.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before we follow this parliamentary history any further, a few observations are
+necessary, in order to avoid certain common deceptions concerning the whole
+character of the epoch that lies before us. According to the view of the
+democrats, the issue, during the period of the legislative National Assembly,
+was, the same as during the period of the constitutive assembly, simply the
+struggle between republicans and royalists; the movement itself was summed up
+by them in the catch-word Reaction&mdash;night, in which all cats are grey, and
+allows them to drawl out their drowsy commonplaces. Indeed, at first sight, the
+party of Order presents the appearance of a tangle of royalist factions, that,
+not only intrigue against each other, each aiming to raise its own Pretender to
+the throne, and exclude the Pretender of the Opposite party, but also are all
+united in a common hatred for and common attacks against the
+&ldquo;Republic.&rdquo; On its side, the Mountain appears, in
+counter-distinction to the royalist conspiracy, as the representative of the
+&ldquo;Republic.&rdquo; The party of Order seems constantly engaged in a
+&ldquo;Reaction,&rdquo; which, neither more nor less than in Prussia, is
+directed against the press, the right of association and the like, and is
+enforced by brutal police interventions on the part of the bureaucracy, the
+police and the public prosecutor&mdash;just as in Prussia; the Mountain on the
+contrary, is engaged with equal assiduity in parrying these attacks, and thus
+in defending the &ldquo;eternal rights of man&rdquo;&mdash;as every so-called
+people&rsquo;s party has more or less done for the last hundred and fifty
+years. At a closer inspection, however, of the situation and of the parties,
+this superficial appearance, which veils the Class Struggle, together with the
+peculiar physiognomy of this period, vanishes wholly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Legitimists and Orleanists constituted, as said before, the two large factions
+of the party of Order. What held these two factions to their respective
+Pretenders, and inversely kept them apart from each other, what else was it but
+the lily and the tricolor, the House of Bourbon and the house of Orleans,
+different shades of royalty? Under the Bourbons, Large Landed Property ruled
+together with its parsons and lackeys; under the Orleanist, it was the high
+finance, large industry, large commerce, i.e., Capital, with its retinue of
+lawyers, professors and orators. The Legitimate kingdom was but the political
+expression for the hereditary rule of the landlords, as the July monarchy was
+bur the political expression for the usurped rule of the bourgeois upstarts.
+What, accordingly, kept these two factions apart was no so-called set of
+principles, it was their material conditions for life&mdash;two different sorts
+of property&mdash;; it was the old antagonism of the City and the Country, the
+rivalry between Capital and Landed property. That simultaneously old
+recollections; personal animosities, fears and hopes; prejudices and illusions;
+sympathies and antipathies; convictions, faith and principles bound these
+factions to one House or the other, who denies it? Upon the several forms of
+property, upon the social conditions of existence, a whole superstructure is
+reared of various and peculiarly shaped feelings, illusions, habits of thought
+and conceptions of life. The whole class produces and shapes these out of its
+material foundation and out of the corresponding social conditions. The
+individual unit to whom they flow through tradition and education, may fancy
+that they constitute the true reasons for and premises of his conduct. Although
+Orleanists and Legitimists, each of these factions, sought to make itself and
+the other believe that what kept the two apart was the attachment of each to
+its respective royal House; nevertheless, facts proved later that it rather was
+their divided interest that forbade the union of the two royal Houses. As, in
+private life, the distinction is made between what a man thinks of himself and
+says, and that which he really is and does, so, all the more, must the phrases
+and notions of parties in historic struggles be distinguished from the real
+organism, and their real interests, their notions and their reality. Orleanists
+and Legitimists found themselves in the republic beside each other with equal
+claims. Each side wishing, in opposition to the other, to carry out the
+restoration of its own royal House, meant nothing else than that each of the
+two great Interests into which the bourgeoisie is divided&mdash;Land and
+Capital&mdash;sought to restore its own supremacy and the subordinacy of the
+other. We speak of two bourgeois interests because large landed property,
+despite its feudal coquetry and pride of race, has become completely bourgeois
+through the development of modern society. Thus did the Tories of England long
+fancy that they were enthusiastic for the Kingdom, the Church and the beauties
+of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the
+admission that their enthusiasm was only for Ground Rent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The coalized royalists carried on their intrigues against each other in the
+press, in Ems, in Clarmont&mdash;outside of the parliament. Behind the scenes,
+they don again their old Orleanist and Legitimist liveries, and conduct their
+old tourneys; on the public stage, however, in their public acts, as a great
+parliamentary party, they dispose of their respective royal houses with mere
+courtesies, adjourn &ldquo;in infinitum&rdquo; the restoration of the monarchy.
+Their real business is transacted as Party of Order, i. e., under a Social, not
+a Political title; as representatives of the bourgeois social system; not as
+knights of traveling princesses, but as the bourgeois class against the other
+classes; not as royalists against republicans. Indeed, as party of Order they
+exercised a more unlimited and harder dominion over the other classes of
+society than ever before either under the restoration or the July monarchy-a
+thing possible only under the form of a parliamentary republic, because under
+this form alone could the two large divisions of the French bourgeoisie be
+united; in other words, only under this form could they place on the order of
+business the sovereignty of their class, in lieu of the regime of a privileged
+faction of the same. If, this notwithstanding, they are seen as the party of
+Order to insult the republic and express their antipathy for it, it happened
+not out of royalist traditions only: Instinct taught them that while, indeed,
+the republic completes their authority, it at the same time undermined their
+social foundation, in that, without intermediary, without the mask of the
+crown, without being able to turn aside the national interest by means of its
+subordinate struggles among its own conflicting elements and with the crown,
+the republic is compelled to stand up sharp against the subjugated classes, and
+wrestle with them. It was a sense of weakness that caused them to recoil before
+the unqualified demands of their own class rule, and to retreat to the less
+complete, less developed, and, for that very reason, less dangerous forms of
+the same. As often, on the contrary, as the allied royalists come into conflict
+with the Pretender who stands before them&mdash;with Bonaparte&mdash;, as often
+as they believe their parliamentary omnipotence to be endangered by the
+Executive, in other words, as often as they must trot out the political title
+of their authority, they step up as Republicans, not as Royalists&mdash;and
+this is done from the Orleanist Thiers, who warns the National Assembly that
+the republic divides them least, down to Legitimist Berryer, who, on December
+2, 1851, the scarf of the tricolor around him, harangues the people assembled
+before the Mayor&rsquo;s building of the Tenth Arrondissement, as a tribune in
+the name of the Republic; the echo, however, derisively answering back to him:
+&ldquo;Henry V.! Henry V!&rdquo; [#3 The candidate of the Bourbons, or
+Legitimists, for the throne.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, against the allied bourgeois, a coalition was made between the small
+traders and the workingmen&mdash;the so-called Social Democratic party. The
+small traders found themselves ill rewarded after the June days of 1848; they
+saw their material interests endangered, and the democratic guarantees, that
+were to uphold their interests, made doubtful. Hence, they drew closer to the
+workingmen. On the other hand, their parliamentary representatives&mdash;the
+Mountain&mdash;, after being shoved aside during the dictatorship of the
+bourgeois republicans, had, during the last half of the term of the
+constitutive convention, regained their lost popularity through the struggle
+with Bonaparte and the royalist ministers. They had made an alliance with the
+Socialist leaders. During February, 1849, reconciliation banquets were held. A
+common program was drafted, joint election committees were empanelled, and
+fusion candidates were set up. The revolutionary point was thereby broken off
+from the social demands of the proletariat and a democratic turn given to them;
+while, from the democratic claims of the small traders&rsquo; class, the mere
+political form was rubbed off and the Socialist point was pushed forward. Thus
+came the Social Democracy about. The new Mountain, the result of this
+combination, contained, with the exception of some figures from the working
+class and some Socialist sectarians, the identical elements of the old
+Mountain, only numerically stronger. In the course of events it had, however,
+changed, together with the class that it represented. The peculiar character of
+the Social Democracy is summed up in this that democratic-republican
+institutions are demanded as the means, not to remove the two
+extremes&mdash;Capital and Wage-slavery&mdash;, but in order to weaken their
+antagonism and transform them into a harmonious whole. However different the
+methods may be that are proposed for the accomplishment of this object, however
+much the object itself may be festooned with more or less revolutionary
+fancies, the substance remains the same. This substance is the transformation
+of society upon democratic lines, but a transformation within the boundaries of
+the small traders&rsquo; class. No one must run away with the narrow notion
+that the small traders&rsquo; class means on principle to enforce a selfish
+class interest. It believes rather that the special conditions for its own
+emancipation are the general conditions under which alone modern society can be
+saved and the class struggle avoided. Likewise must we avoid running away with
+the notion that the Democratic Representatives are all
+&ldquo;shopkeepers,&rdquo; or enthuse for these. They may&mdash;by education
+and individual standing&mdash;be as distant from them as heaven is from earth.
+That which makes them representatives of the small traders&rsquo; class is that
+they do not intellectually leap the bounds which that class itself does not
+leap in practical life; that, consequently, they are theoretically driven to
+the same problems and solutions, to which material interests and social
+standing practically drive the latter. Such, in fact, is at all times the
+relation of the &ldquo;political&rdquo; and the &ldquo;literary&rdquo;
+representatives of a class to the class they represent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the foregoing explanations, it goes with-out saying that, while the
+Mountain is constantly wrestling for the republic and the so-called
+&ldquo;rights of man,&rdquo; neither the republic nor the &ldquo;rights of
+man&rdquo; is its real goal, as little as an army, whose weapons it is sought
+to deprive it of and that defends itself, steps on the field of battle simply
+in order to remain in possession of implements of warfare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The party of Order provoked the Mountain immediately upon the convening of the
+assembly. The bourgeoisie now felt the necessity of disposing of the democratic
+small traders&rsquo; class, just as a year before it had understood the
+necessity of putting an end to the revolutionary proletariat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the position of the foe had changed. The strength of the proletarian party
+was on the streets; that of the small traders&rsquo; class was in the National
+Assembly itself. The point was, accordingly, to wheedle them out of the
+National Assembly into the street, and to have them break their parliamentary
+power themselves, before time and opportunity could consolidate them. The
+Mountain jumped with loose reins into the trap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bombardment of Rome by the French troops was the bait thrown at the
+Mountain. It violated Article V. of the Constitution, which forbade the French
+republic to use its forces against the liberties of other nations; besides,
+Article IV. forbade all declaration of war by the Executive without the consent
+of the National Assembly; furthermore, the constitutive assembly had censured
+the Roman expedition by its resolution of May 8. Upon these grounds,
+Ledru-Rollin submitted on June 11, 1849, a motion impeaching Bonaparte and his
+Ministers. Instigated by the wasp-stings of Thiers, he even allowed himself to
+be carried away to the point of threatening to defend the Constitution by all
+means, even arms in hand. The Mountain rose as one man, and repeated the
+challenge. On June 12, the National Assembly rejected the notion to impeach,
+and the Mountain left the parliament. The events of June 13 are known: the
+proclamation by a part of the Mountain pronouncing Napoleon and his Ministers
+&ldquo;outside the pale of the Constitution&rdquo;; the street parades of the
+democratic National Guards, who, unarmed as they were, flew apart at contact
+with the troops of Changarnier; etc., etc. Part of the Mountain fled abroad,
+another part was assigned to the High Court of Bourges, and a parliamentary
+regulation placed the rest under the school-master supervision of the President
+of the National Assembly. Paris was again put under a state of siege; and the
+democratic portion of the National Guards was disbanded. Thus the influence of
+the Mountain in parliament was broken, together with the power; of the small
+traders&rsquo; class in Paris.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lyons, where the 13th of June had given the signal to a bloody labor uprising,
+was, together with the five surrounding Departments, likewise pronounced in
+state of siege, a condition that continues down to this moment. [#4 January,
+1852]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bulk of the Mountain had left its vanguard in the lurch by refusing their
+signatures to the proclamation; the press had deserted: only two papers dared
+to publish the pronunciamento; the small traders had betrayed their
+Representatives: the National Guards stayed away, or, where they did turn up,
+hindered the raising of barricades; the Representatives had duped the small
+traders: nowhere were the alleged affiliated members from the Army to be seen;
+finally, instead of gathering strength from them, the democratic party had
+infected the proletariat with its own weakness, and, as usual with democratic
+feats, the leaders had the satisfaction of charging &ldquo;their people&rdquo;
+with desertion, and the people had the satisfaction of charging their leaders
+with fraud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seldom was an act announced with greater noise than the campaign contemplated
+by the Mountain; seldom was an event trumpeted ahead with more certainty and
+longer beforehand than the &ldquo;inevitable victory of the democracy.&rdquo;
+This is evident: the democrats believe in the trombones before whose blasts the
+walls of Jericho fall together; as often as they stand before the walls of
+despotism, they seek to imitate the miracle. If the Mountain wished to win in
+parliament, it should not appeal to arms; if it called to arms in parliament,
+it should not conduct itself parliamentarily on the street; if the friendly
+demonstration was meant seriously, it was silly not to foresee that it would
+meet with a warlike reception; if it was intended for actual war, it was rather
+original to lay aside the weapons with which war had to be conducted. But the
+revolutionary threats of the middle class and of their democratic
+representatives are mere attempts to frighten an adversary; when they have run
+themselves into a blind alley, when they have sufficiently compromised
+themselves and are compelled to execute their threats, the thing is done in a
+hesitating manner that avoids nothing so much as the means to the end, and
+catches at pretexts to succumb. The bray of the overture, that announces the
+fray, is lost in a timid growl so soon as this is to start; the actors cease to
+take themselves seriously, and the performance falls flat like an inflated
+balloon that is pricked with a needle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No party exaggerates to itself the means at its disposal more than the
+democratic, none deceives itself with greater heedlessness on the situation. A
+part of the Army voted for it, thereupon the Mountain is of the opinion that
+the Army would revolt in its favor. And by what occasion? By an occasion, that,
+from the standpoint of the troops, meant nothing else than that the
+revolutionary soldiers should take the part of the soldiers of Rome against
+French soldiers. On the other hand, the memory of June, 1848, was still too
+fresh not to keep alive a deep aversion on the part of the proletariat towards
+the National Guard, and a strong feeling of mistrust on the part of the leaders
+of the secret societies for the democratic leaders. In order to balance these
+differences, great common interests at stake were needed. The violation of an
+abstract constitutional paragraph could not supply such interests. Had not the
+constitution been repeatedly violated, according to the assurances of the
+democrats themselves? Had not the most popular papers branded them as a
+counter-revolutionary artifice? But the democrat&mdash;by reason of his
+representing the middle class, that is to say, a Transition Class, in which the
+interests of two other classes are mutually dulled&mdash;, imagines himself
+above all class contrast. The democrats grant that opposed to them stands a
+privileged class, but they, together with the whole remaining mass of the
+nation, constitute the &ldquo;PEOPLE.&rdquo; What they represent is the
+&ldquo;people&rsquo;s rights&rdquo;; their interests are the
+&ldquo;people&rsquo;s interests.&rdquo; Hence, they do not consider that, at an
+impending struggle, they need to examine the interests and attitude of the
+different classes. They need not too seriously weigh their own means. All they
+have to do is to give the signal in order to have the &ldquo;people&rdquo; fall
+upon the &ldquo;oppressors&rdquo; with all its inexhaustible resources. If,
+thereupon, in the execution, their interests turn out to be uninteresting, and
+their power to be impotence, it is ascribed either to depraved sophists, who
+split up the &ldquo;undivisible people&rdquo; into several hostile camps; or to
+the army being too far brutalized and blinded to appreciate the pure aims of
+the democracy as its own best; or to some detail in the execution that wrecks
+the whole plan; or, finally, to an unforeseen accident that spoiled the game
+this time. At all events, the democrat comes out of the disgraceful defeat as
+immaculate as he went innocently into it, and with the refreshed conviction
+that he must win; not that he himself and his party must give up their old
+standpoint, but that, on the contrary, conditions must come to his aid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For all this, one must not picture to himself the decimated, broken, and, by
+the new parliamentary regulation, humbled Mountain altogether too unhappy. If
+June 13 removed its leaders, it, on the other hand, made room for new ones of
+inferior capacity, who are flattered by their new position. If their impotence
+in parliament could no longer be doubted, they were now justified to limit
+their activity to outbursts of moral indignation. If the party of Order
+pretended to see in them, as the last official representatives of the
+revolution, all the horrors of anarchy incarnated, they were free to appear all
+the more flat and modest in reality. Over June 13 they consoled themselves with
+the profound expression: &ldquo;If they but dare to assail universal suffrage .
+. . then . . . then we will show who we are!&rdquo; Nous verrons. [#5 We shall
+see.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As to the &ldquo;Mountaineers,&rdquo; who had fled abroad, it suffices here to
+say that Ledru-Rollin&mdash;he having accomplished the feat of hopelessly
+ruining, in barely a fortnight, the powerful party at whose head he
+stood&mdash;, found himself called upon to build up a French government
+&ldquo;in partibus;&rdquo; that his figure, at a distance, removed from the
+field of action, seemed to gain in size in the measure that the level of the
+revolution sank and the official prominences of official France became more and
+more dwarfish; that he could figure as republican Pretender for 1852, and
+periodically issued to the Wallachians and other peoples circulars in which
+&ldquo;despot of the continent&rdquo; is threatened with the feats that he and
+his allies had in contemplation. Was Proudhon wholly wrong when he cried out to
+these gentlemen: &ldquo;Vous n&rsquo;êtes que des blaqueurs&rdquo;? [#6 You are
+nothing but fakirs.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The party of Order had, on June 13, not only broken up the Mountain, it had
+also established the Subordination of the Constitution to the Majority
+Decisions of the National Assembly. So, indeed, did the republic understand it,
+to&mdash;wit, that the bourgeois ruled here in parliamentary form, without, as
+in the monarchy, finding a check in the veto of the Executive power, or the
+liability of parliament to dissolution. It was a &ldquo;parliamentary
+republic,&rdquo; as Thiers styled it. But if, on June 13, the bourgeoisie
+secured its omnipotence within the parliament building, did it not also strike
+the parliament itself, as against the Executive and the people, with incurable
+weakness by excluding its most popular part? By giving up numerous Deputies,
+without further ceremony to the mercies of the public prosecutor, it abolished
+its own parliamentary inviolability. The humiliating regulation, that it
+subjected the Mountain to, raised the President of the republic in the same
+measure that it lowered the individual Representatives of the people. By
+branding an insurrection in defense of the Constitution as anarchy, and as a
+deed looking to the overthrow of society, it interdicted to itself all appeal
+to insurrection whenever the Executive should violate the Constitution against
+it. And, indeed, the irony of history wills it that the very General, who by
+order of Bonaparte bombarded Rome, and thus gave the immediate occasion to the
+constitutional riot of June 13, that Oudinot, on December 22, 1851, is the one
+imploringly and vainly to be offered to the people by the party of Order as the
+General of the Constitution. Another hero of June 13, Vieyra, who earned praise
+from the tribune of the National Assembly for the brutalities that he had
+committed in the democratic newspaper offices at the head of a gang of National
+Guards in the hire of the high finance&mdash;this identical Vieyra was
+initiated in the conspiracy of Bonaparte, and contributed materially in cutting
+off all protection that could come to the National Assembly, in the hour of its
+agony, from the side of the National Guard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+June 13 had still another meaning. The Mountain had wanted to place Bonaparte
+under charges. Their defeat was, accordingly, a direct victory of Bonaparte; it
+was his personal triumph over his democratic enemies. The party of Order fought
+for the victory, Bonaparte needed only to pocket it. He did so. On June 14, a
+proclamation was to be read on the walls of Paris wherein the President, as it
+were, without his connivance, against his will, driven by the mere force of
+circumstances, steps forward from his cloisterly seclusion like misjudged
+virtue, complains of the calumnies of his antagonists, and, while seeming to
+identify his own person with the cause of order, rather identifies the cause of
+order with his own person. Besides this, the National Assembly had subsequently
+approved the expedition against Rome; Bonaparte, however, had taken the
+initiative in the affair. After he had led the High Priest Samuel back into the
+Vatican, he could hope as King David to occupy the Tuileries. He had won the
+parson-interests over to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The riot of June 13 limited itself, as we have seen, to a peaceful street
+procession. There were, consequently, no laurels to be won from it.
+Nevertheless, in these days, poor in heroes and events, the party of Order
+converted this bloodless battle into a second Austerlitz. Tribune and press
+lauded the army as the power of order against the popular multitude, and the
+impotence of anarchy; and Changarnier as the &ldquo;bulwark of
+society&rdquo;&mdash;a mystification that he finally believed in himself.
+Underhand, however, the corps that seemed doubtful were removed from Paris; the
+regiments whose suffrage had turned out most democratic were banished from
+France to Algiers the restless heads among the troops were consigned to penal
+quarters; finally, the shutting out of the press from the barracks, and of the
+barracks from contact with the citizens was systematically carried out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We stand here at the critical turning point in the history of the French
+National Guard. In 1830, it had decided the downfall of the restoration. Under
+Louis Philippe, every riot failed, at which the National Guard stood on the
+side of the troops. When, in the February days of 1848, it showed itself
+passive against the uprising and doubtful toward Louis Philippe himself, he
+gave himself up for lost. Thus the conviction cast root that a revolution could
+not win without, nor the Army against the National Guard. This was the
+superstitious faith of the Army in bourgeois omnipotence. The June days of
+1548, when the whole National Guard, jointly with the regular troops, threw
+down the insurrection, had confirmed the superstition. After the inauguration
+of Bonaparte&rsquo;s administration, the position of the National Guard sank
+somewhat through the unconstitutional joining of their command with the command
+of the First Military Division in the person of Changarnier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the command of the National Guard appeared here merely an attribute of the
+military commander-in-chief, so did the Guard itself appear only as an
+appendage of the regular troops. Finally, on June 13, the National Guard was
+broken up, not through its partial dissolution only, that from that date
+forward was periodically repeated at all points of France, leaving only wrecks
+of its former self behind. The demonstration of June 13 was, above all, a
+demonstration of the National Guards. True, they had not carried their arms,
+but they had carried their uniforms against the Army&mdash;and the talisman lay
+just in these uniforms. The Army then learned that this uniform was but a
+woolen rag, like any other. The spell was broken. In the June days of 1848,
+bourgeoisie and small traders were united as National Guard with the Army
+against the proletariat; on June 13, 1849, the bourgeoisie had the small
+traders&rsquo; National Guard broken up; on December 2, 1851, the National
+Guard of the bourgeoisie itself vanished, and Bonaparte attested the fact when
+he subsequently signed the decree for its disbandment. Thus the bourgeoisie had
+itself broken its last weapon against the army, from the moment when the small
+traders&rsquo; class no longer stood as a vassal behind, but as a rebel before
+it; indeed, it was bound to do so, as it was bound to destroy with its own hand
+all its means of defence against absolutism, so soon as itself was absolute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the meantime, the party of Order celebrated the recovery of a power that
+seemed lost in 1848 only in order that, freed from its trammels in 1849, it be
+found again through invectives against the republic and the Constitution;
+through the malediction of all future, present and past revolutions, that one
+included which its own leaders had made; and, finally, in laws by which the
+press was gagged, the right of association destroyed, and the stage of siege
+regulated as an organic institution. The National Assembly then adjourned from
+the middle of August to the middle of October, after it had appointed a
+Permanent Committee for the period of its absence. During these vacations, the
+Legitimists intrigued with Ems; the Orleanists with Claremont; Bonaparte
+through princely excursions; the Departmental Councilmen in conferences over
+the revision of the Constitution;&mdash;occurrences, all of which recurred
+regularly at the periodical vacations of the National Assembly, and upon which
+I shall not enter until they have matured into events. Be it here only observed
+that the National Assembly was impolitic in vanishing from the stage for long
+intervals, and leaving in view, at the head of the republic, only one, however
+sorry, figure&mdash;Louis Bonaparte&rsquo;s&mdash;, while, to the public
+scandal, the party of Order broke up into its own royalist component parts,
+that pursued their conflicting aspirations after the restoration. As often as,
+during these vacations the confusing noise of the parliament was hushed, and
+its body was dissolved in the nation, it was unmistakably shown that only one
+thing was still wanting to complete the true figure of the republic: to make
+the vacation of the National Assembly permanent, and substitute its
+inscription&mdash;&ldquo;Liberty, Equality, Fraternity&rdquo;&mdash;by the
+unequivocal words, &ldquo;Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery&rdquo;.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>IV.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The National Assembly reconvened in the middle of October. On November 1,
+Bonaparte surprised it with a message, in which he announced the dismissal of
+the Barrot-Falloux Ministry, and the framing of a new. Never have lackeys been
+chased from service with less ceremony than Bonaparte did his ministers. The
+kicks, that were eventually destined for the National Assembly, Barrot &amp;
+Company received in the meantime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Barrot Ministry was, as we have seen, composed of Legitimists and
+Orleanists; it was a Ministry of the party of Order. Bonaparte needed that
+Ministry in order to dissolve the republican constituent assembly, to effect
+the expedition against Rome, and to break up the democratic party. He had
+seemingly eclipsed himself behind this Ministry, yielded the reins to the hands
+of the party of Order, and assumed the modest mask, which, under Louis
+Philippe, had been worn by the responsible overseer of the newspapers&mdash;the
+mask of &ldquo;homme de paille.&rdquo; [#1 Man of straw] Now he threw off the
+mask, it being no longer the light curtain behind which he could conceal, but
+the Iron Mask, which prevented him from revealing his own physiognomy. He had
+instituted the Barrot Ministry in order to break up the republican National
+Assembly in the name of the party of Order; he now dismissed it in order to
+declare his own name independent of the parliament of the party of Order.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no want of plausible pretexts for this dismissal. The Barrot Ministry
+had neglected even the forms of decency that would have allowed the president
+of the republic to appear as a power along with the National Assembly. For
+instance, during the vacation of the National Assembly, Bonaparte published a
+letter to Edgar Ney, in which he seemed to disapprove the liberal attitude of
+the Pope, just as, in opposition to the constitutive assembly, he had published
+a letter, in which he praised Oudinot for his attack upon the Roman republic;
+when the National Assembly came to vote on the budget for the Roman expedition,
+Victor Hugo, out of pretended liberalism, brought up that letter for
+discussion; the party of Order drowned this notion of Bonaparte&rsquo;s under
+exclamations of contempt and incredulity as though notions of Bonaparte could
+not possibly have any political weight;&mdash;and none of the Ministers took up
+the gauntlet for him. On another occasion, Barrot, with his well-known hollow
+pathos, dropped, from the speakers&rsquo; tribune in the Assembly, words of
+indignation upon the &ldquo;abominable machinations,&rdquo; which, according to
+him, went on in the immediate vicinity of the President. Finally, while the
+Ministry obtained from the National Assembly a widow&rsquo;s pension for the
+Duchess of Orleans, it denied every motion to raise the Presidential civil
+list;&mdash;and, in Bonaparte, be it always remembered, the Imperial Pretender
+was so closely blended with the impecunious adventurer, that the great idea of
+his being destined to restore the Empire was ever supplemented by that other,
+to-wit, that the French people was destined to pay his debts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Barrot-Falloux Ministry was the first and last parliamentary Ministry that
+Bonaparte called into life. Its dismissal marks, accordingly, a decisive
+period. With the Ministry, the party of Order lost, never to regain, an
+indispensable post to the maintenance of the parliamentary regime,&mdash;the
+handle to the Executive power. It is readily understood that, in a country like
+France, where the Executive disposes over an army of more than half a million
+office-holders, and, consequently, keeps permanently a large mass of interests
+and existences in the completest dependence upon itself; where the Government
+surrounds, controls, regulates, supervises and guards society, from its
+mightiest acts of national life, down to its most insignificant motions; from
+its common life, down to the private life of each individual; where, due to
+such extraordinary centralization, this body of parasites acquires a ubiquity
+and omniscience, a quickened capacity for motion and rapidity that finds an
+analogue only in the helpless lack of self-reliance, in the unstrung weakness
+of the body social itself;&mdash;that in such a country the National Assembly
+lost, with the control of the ministerial posts, all real influence; unless it
+simultaneously simplified the administration; if possible, reduced the army of
+office-holders; and, finally, allowed society and public opinion to establish
+its own organs, independent of government censorship. But the Material Interest
+of the French bourgeoisie is most intimately bound up in maintenance of just
+such a large and extensively ramified governmental machine. There the
+bourgeoisie provides for its own superfluous membership; and supplies, in the
+shape of government salaries, what it can not pocket in the form of profit,
+interest, rent and fees. On the other hand, its Political Interests daily
+compel it to increase the power of repression, i.e., the means and the
+personnel of the government; it is at the same time forced to conduct an
+uninterrupted warfare against public opinion, and, full of suspicion, to
+hamstring and lame the independent organs of society&mdash;whenever it does not
+succeed in amputating them wholly. Thus the bourgeoisie of France was forced by
+its own class attitude, on the one hand, to destroy the conditions for all
+parliamentary power, its own included, and, on the other, to render
+irresistible the Executive power that stood hostile to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The new Ministry was called the d&rsquo;Hautpoul Ministry. Not that General
+d&rsquo;Hautpoul had gained the rank of Ministerial President. Along with
+Barrot, Bonaparte abolished this dignity, which, it must be granted, condemned
+the President of the republic to the legal nothingness of a constitutional
+kind, of a constitutional king at that, without throne and crown, without
+sceptre and without sword, without irresponsibility, without the imperishable
+possession of the highest dignity in the State, and, what was most untoward of
+all&mdash;without a civil list. The d&rsquo;Hautpoul Ministry numbered only one
+man of parliamentary reputation, the Jew Fould, one of the most notorious
+members of the high finance. To him fell the portfolio of finance. Turn to the
+Paris stock quotations, and it will be found that from November 1, 1849, French
+stocks fall and rise with the falling and rising of the Bonapartist shares.
+While Bonaparte had thus found his ally in the Bourse, he at the same time took
+possession of the Police through the appointment of Carlier as Prefect of
+Police.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the consequences of the change of Ministry could reveal themselves only in
+the course of events. So far, Bonaparte had taken only one step forward, to be
+all the more glaringly driven back. Upon his harsh message, followed the most
+servile declarations of submissiveness to the National Assembly. As often as
+the Ministers made timid attempts to introduce his own personal hobbies as
+bills, they themselves seemed unwilling and compelled only by their position to
+run the comic errands, of whose futility they were convinced in advance. As
+often as Bonaparte blabbed out his plans behind the backs of his Ministers, and
+sported his &ldquo;idees napoleoniennes,&rdquo; [#2 Napoleonic ideas.] his own
+Ministers disavowed him from the speakers&rsquo; tribune in the National
+Assembly. His aspirations after usurpation seemed to become audible only to the
+end that the ironical laughter of his adversaries should not die out. He
+deported himself like an unappreciated genius, whom the world takes for a
+simpleton. Never did lie enjoy in fuller measure the contempt of all classes
+than at this period. Never did the bourgeoisie rule more absolutely; never did
+it more boastfully display the insignia of sovereignty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not here my purpose to write the history of its legislative activity,
+which is summed up in two laws passed during this period: the law
+reestablishing the duty on wine, and the laws on education, to suppress
+infidelity. While the drinking of wine was made difficult to the Frenchmen, all
+the more bounteously was the water of pure life poured out to them. Although in
+the law on the duty on wine the bourgeoisie declares the old hated French
+tariff system to be inviolable, it sought, by means of the laws on education,
+to secure the old good will of the masses that made the former bearable. One
+wonders to see the Orleanists, the liberal bourgeois, these old apostles of
+Voltarianism and of eclectic philosophy, entrusting the supervision of the
+French intellect to their hereditary enemies, the Jesuits. But, while
+Orleanists and Legitimists could part company on the question of the Pretender
+to the crown, they understood full well that their joint reign dictated the
+joining of the means of oppression of two distinct epochs; that the means of
+subjugation of the July monarchy had to be supplemented with and strengthened
+by the means of subjugation of the restoration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmers, deceived in all their expectations, more than ever ground down by
+the law scale of the price of corn, on the one hand, and, on the other, by the
+growing load of taxation and mortgages, began to stir in the Departments. They
+were answered by the systematic baiting of the school masters, whom the
+Government subjected to the clergy; by the systematic baiting of the Mayors,
+whom it subjected to the Prefects; and by a system of espionage to which all
+were subjected. In Paris and the large towns, the reaction itself carries the
+physiognomy of its own epoch; it irritates more than it cows; in the country,
+it becomes low, moan, petty, tiresome, vexatious,&mdash;in a word, it becomes
+&ldquo;gensdarme.&rdquo; It is easily understood how three years of the
+gensdarme regime, sanctified by the regime of the clergyman, was bound to
+demoralize unripe masses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whatever the mass of passion and declamation, that the party of Order expended
+from the speakers&rsquo; tribune in the National Assembly against the minority,
+its speech remained monosyllabic, like that of the Christian, whose speech was
+to be &ldquo;Aye, aye; nay, nay.&rdquo; It was monosyllabic, whether from the
+tribune or the press; dull as a conundrum, whose solution is known beforehand.
+Whether the question was the right of petition or the duty on wine, the liberty
+of the press or free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual
+freedom or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever again,
+the theme is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready and unchanged:
+Socialism! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced socialistic; socialistic,
+alike, is pronounced popular education; and, likewise, socialistic national
+financial reform. It was socialistic to build a railroad where already a canal
+was; and it was socialistic to defend oneself with a stick when attacked with a
+sword.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was not a mere form of speech, a fashion, nor yet party tactics. The
+bourgeoisie perceives correctly that all the weapons, which it forged against
+feudalism, turn their edges against itself; that all the means of education,
+which it brought forth, rebel against its own civilization; that all the gods,
+which it made, have fallen away from it. It understands that all its so-called
+citizens&rsquo; rights and progressive organs assail and menace its class rule,
+both in its social foundation and its political
+superstructure&mdash;consequently, have become &ldquo;socialistic.&rdquo; It
+justly scents in this menace and assault the secret of Socialism, whose meaning
+and tendency it estimates more correctly than the spurious, so-called
+Socialism, is capable of estimating itself, and which, consequently, is unable
+to understand how it is that the bourgeoisie obdurately shuts up its ears to
+it, alike whether it sentimentally whines about the sufferings of humanity; or
+announces in Christian style the millennium and universal brotherhood; or
+twaddles humanistically about the soul, culture and freedom; or doctrinally
+matches out a system of harmony and wellbeing for all classes. What, however,
+the bourgeoisie does not understand is the consequence that its own
+parliamentary regime, its own political reign, is also of necessity bound to
+fall under the general ban of &ldquo;socialistic.&rdquo; So long as the rule of
+the bourgeoisie is not fully organized, has not acquired its purely political
+character, the contrast with the other classes cannot come into view in all its
+sharpness; and, where it does come into view, it cannot take that dangerous
+turn that converts every conflict with the Government into a conflict with
+Capital. When, however, the French bourgeoisie began to realize in every
+pulsation of society a menace to &ldquo;peace,&rdquo; how could it, at the head
+of society, pretend to uphold the regime of unrest, its own regime, the
+parliamentary regime, which, according to the expression of one of its own
+orators, lives in struggle, and through struggle? The parliamentary regime
+lives on discussion,&mdash;how can it forbid discussion? Every single interest,
+every single social institution is there converted into general thoughts, is
+treated as a thought,&mdash;how could any interest or institution claim to be
+above thought, and impose itself as an article of faith? The orators&rsquo;
+conflict in the tribune calls forth the conflict of the rowdies in the press
+the debating club in parliament is necessarily supplemented by debating clubs
+in the salons and the barrooms; the representatives, who are constantly
+appealing to popular opinion, justify popular opinion in expressing its real
+opinion in petitions. The parliamentary regime leaves everything to the
+decision of majorities,&mdash;how can the large majorities beyond parliament be
+expected not to wish to decide? If, from above, they hear the fiddle
+screeching, what else is to be expected than that those below should dance?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Accordingly, by now persecuting as Socialist what formerly it had celebrated as
+Liberal, the bourgeoisie admits that its own interest orders it to raise itself
+above the danger of self government; that, in order to restore rest to the
+land, its own bourgeois parliament must, before all, be brought to rest; that,
+in order to preserve its social power unhurt, its political power must be
+broken; that the private bourgeois can continue to exploit the other classes
+and rejoice in &ldquo;property,&rdquo; &ldquo;family,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;religion&rdquo; and &ldquo;order&rdquo; only under the condition that
+his own class be condemned to the same political nullity of the other classes,
+that, in order to save their purse, the crown must be knocked off their heads,
+and the sword that was to shield them, must at the same time be hung over their
+heads as a sword of Damocles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the domain of general bourgeois interests, the National Assembly proved
+itself so barren, that, for instance, the discussion over the Paris-Avignon
+railroad, opened in the winter of 1850, was not yet ripe for a vote on December
+2, 1851. Wherever it did not oppress or was reactionary, the bourgeoisie was
+smitten with incurable barrenness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Bonaparte&rsquo;s Ministry either sought to take the initiative of laws
+in the spirit of the party of Order, or even exaggerated their severity in
+their enforcement and administration, he, on his part, sought to win popularity
+by means of childishly silly propositions, to exhibit the contrast between
+himself and the National Assembly, and to hint at a secret plan, held in
+reserve and only through circumstances temporarily prevented from disclosing
+its hidden treasures to the French people. Of this nature was the proposition
+to decree a daily extra pay of four sous to the under-officers; so, likewise,
+the proposition for a &ldquo;word of honor&rdquo; loan bank for working-men. To
+have money given and money borrowed&mdash;that was the perspective that he
+hoped to cajole the masses with. Presents and loans&mdash;to that was limited
+the financial wisdom of the slums, the high as well as the low; to that were
+limited the springs which Bonaparte knew how to set in motion. Never did
+Pretender speculate more dully upon the dullness of the masses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again and again did the National Assembly fly into a passion at these
+unmistakable attempts to win popularity at its expense, and at the growing
+danger that this adventurer, lashed on by debts and unrestrained by reputation,
+might venture upon some desperate act. The strained relations between the party
+of Order and the President had taken on a threatening aspect, when an
+unforeseen event threw him back, rueful into its arms. We mean the
+supplementary elections of March, 1850. These elections took place to fill the
+vacancies created in the National Assembly, after June 13, by imprisonment and
+exile. Paris elected only Social-Democratic candidates; it even united the
+largest vote upon one of the insurgents of June, 1848,&mdash;Deflotte. In this
+way the small traders&rsquo; world of Paris, now allied with the proletariat,
+revenged itself for the defeat of June 13, 1849. It seemed to have disappeared
+from the field of battle at the hour of danger only to step on it again at a
+more favorable opportunity, with increased forces for the fray, and with a
+bolder war cry. A circumstance seemed to heighten the danger of this electoral
+victory. The Army voted in Paris for a June insurgent against Lahitte, a
+Minister of Bonaparte&rsquo;s, and, in the Departments, mostly for the
+candidates of the Mountain, who, there also, although not as decisively as in
+Paris, maintained the upper hand over their adversaries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bonaparte suddenly saw himself again face to face with the revolution. As on
+January 29, 1849, as on June 13, 1849, on May 10, 1850, he vanished again
+behind the party of Order. He bent low; he timidly apologized; he offered to
+appoint any Ministry whatever at the behest of the parliamentary majority; he
+even implored the Orleanist and Legitimist party leaders&mdash;the Thiers,
+Berryers, Broglies, Moles, in short, the so-called burgraves&mdash;to take hold
+of the helm of State in person. The party of Order did not know how to utilize
+this opportunity, that was never to return. Instead of boldly taking possession
+of the proffered power, it did not even force Bonaparte to restore the Ministry
+dismissed on November 1; it contented itself with humiliating him with its
+pardon, and with affiliating Mr. Baroche to the d&rsquo;Hautpoul Ministry. This
+Baroche had, as Public Prosecutor, stormed before the High Court at Bourges,
+once against the revolutionists of May 15, another time against the Democrats
+of June 13, both times on the charge of &ldquo;attentats&rdquo; against the
+National Assembly. None of Bonaparte&rsquo;s Ministers contributed later more
+towards the degradation of the National Assembly; and, after December 2, 1851,
+we meet him again as the comfortably stalled and dearly paid Vice-President of
+the Senate. He had spat into the soup of the revolutionists for Bonaparte to
+eat it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On its part, the Social Democratic party seemed only to look for pretexts in
+order to make its own victory doubtful, and to dull its edge. Vidal, one of the
+newly elected Paris representatives, was returned for Strassburg also. He was
+induced to decline the seat for Paris and accept the one for Strassburg. Thus,
+instead of giving a definite character to their victory at the hustings, and
+thereby compelling the party of Order forthwith to contest it in parliament;
+instead of thus driving the foe to battle at the season of popular enthusiasm
+and of a favorable temper in the Army, the democratic party tired out Paris
+with a new campaign during the months of March and April; it allowed the
+excited popular passions to wear themselves out in this second provisional
+electoral play it allowed the revolutionary vigor to satiate itself with
+constitutional successes, and lose its breath in petty intrigues, hollow
+declamation and sham moves; it gave the bourgeoisie time to collect itself and
+make its preparations finally, it allowed the significance of the March
+elections to find a sentimentally weakening commentary at the subsequent April
+election in the victory of Eugene Sue. In one word, it turned the 10th of March
+into an April Fool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The parliamentary majority perceived the weakness of its adversary. Its
+seventeen burgraves&mdash;Bonaparte had left to it the direction of and
+responsibility for the attack&mdash;, framed a new election law, the moving of
+which was entrusted to Mr. Faucher, who had applied for the honor. On May 8, he
+introduced the new law whereby universal suffrage was abolished; a three years
+residence in the election district imposed as a condition for voting; and,
+finally, the proof of this residence made dependent, for the working-man, upon
+the testimony of his employer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As revolutionarily as the democrats had agitated and stormed during the
+constitutional struggles, so constitutionally did they, now, when it was
+imperative to attest, arms in hand, the earnestness of their late electoral
+victories, preach order, &ldquo;majestic calmness,&rdquo; lawful conduct, i.
+e., blind submission to the will of the counter-revolution, which revealed
+itself as law. During the debate, the Mountain put the party of Order to shame
+by maintaining the passionless attitude of the law-abiding burger, who upholds
+the principle of law against revolutionary passions; and by twitting the party
+of Order with the fearful reproach of proceeding in a revolutionary manner.
+Even the newly elected deputies took pains to prove by their decent and
+thoughtful deportment what an act of misjudgment it was to decry them as
+anarchists, or explain their election as a victory of the revolution. The new
+election law was passed on May 31. The Mountain contented itself with smuggling
+a protest into the pockets of the President of the Assembly. To the election
+law followed a new press law, whereby the revolutionary press was completely
+done away with. It had deserved its fate. The &ldquo;National&rdquo; and the
+&ldquo;Presse,&rdquo; two bourgeois organs, remained after this deluge the
+extreme outposts of the revolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We have seen how, during March and April, the democratic leaders did everything
+to involve the people of Paris in a sham battle, and how, after May 8, they did
+everything to keep it away from a real battle. We may not here forget that the
+year 1850 was one of the most brilliant years of industrial and commercial
+prosperity; consequently, that the Parisian proletariat was completely
+employed. But the election law of May 31, 1850 excluded them from all
+participation in political power; it cut the field of battle itself from under
+them; it threw the workingmen back into the state of pariahs, which they had
+occupied before the February revolution. In allowing themselves, in sight of
+such an occurrence, to be led by the democrats, and in forgetting the
+revolutionary interests of their class through temporary comfort, the
+workingmen abdicated the honor of being a conquering power; they submitted to
+their fate; they proved that the defeat of June, 1848, had incapacitated them
+from resistance for many a year to come finally, that the historic process must
+again, for the time being, proceed over their heads. As to the small
+traders&rsquo; democracy, which, on June 13, had cried out: &ldquo;If they but
+dare to assail universal suffrage . . . then . . . then we will show who we
+are!&rdquo;&mdash;they now consoled themselves with the thought that the
+counter-revolutionary blow, which had struck them, was no blow at all, and that
+the law of May 31 was no law. On May 2, 1852, according to them, every
+Frenchman would appear at the hustings, in one hand the ballot, in the other
+the sword. With this prophecy they set their hearts at ease. Finally, the Army
+was punished by its superiors for the elections of May and April, 1850, as it
+was punished for the election of May 29, 1849. This time, however, it said to
+itself determinately: &ldquo;The revolution shall not cheat us a third
+time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The law of May 31, 1850, was the &ldquo;coup d&rsquo;etat&rdquo; of the
+bourgeoisie. All its previous conquests over the revolution had only a
+temporary character: they became uncertain the moment the National Assembly
+stepped off the stage; they depended upon the accident of general elections,
+and the history of the elections since 1848 proved irrefutably that, in the
+same measure as the actual reign of the bourgeoisie gathered strength, its
+moral reign over the masses wore off. Universal suffrage pronounced itself on
+May 10 pointedly against the reign of the bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie answered
+with the banishment of universal suffrage. The law of May 31 was, accordingly,
+one of the necessities of the class struggle. On the other hand, the
+constitution required a minimum of two million votes for the valid ejection of
+the President of the republic. If none of the Presidential candidates polled
+this minimum, then the National Assembly was to elect the President out of the
+three candidates polling the highest votes. At the time that the constitutive
+body made this law, ten million voters were registered on the election rolls.
+In its opinion, accordingly, one-fifth of the qualified voters sufficed to make
+a choice for President valid. The law of May 31 struck at least three million
+voters off the rolls, reduced the number of qualified voters to seven millions,
+and yet, not withstanding, it kept the lawful minimum at two millions for the
+election of a President. Accordingly, it raised the lawful minimum from a fifth
+to almost a third of the qualified voters, i.e., it did all it could to smuggle
+the Presidential election out of the hands of the people into those of the
+National Assembly. Thus, by the election law of May 31, the party of Order
+seemed to have doubly secured its empire, in that it placed the election of
+both the National Assembly and the President of the republic in the keeping of
+the stable portion of society.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>V.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The strife immediately broke out again between the National Assembly and
+Bonaparte, so soon as the revolutionary crisis was weathered, and universal
+suffrage was abolished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Constitution had fixed the salary of Bonaparte at 600,000 francs. Barely
+half a year after his installation, he succeeded in raising this sum to its
+double: Odillon Barrot had wrung from the constitutive assembly a yearly
+allowance of 600,000 francs for so-called representation expenses. After June
+13, Bonaparte hinted at similar solicitations, to which, however, Barrot then
+turned a deaf ear. Now, after May 31, he forthwith utilized the favorable
+moment, and caused his ministers to move a civil list of three millions in the
+National Assembly. A long adventurous, vagabond career had gifted him with the
+best developed antennae for feeling out the weak moments when he could venture
+upon squeezing money from his bourgeois. He carried on regular blackmail. The
+National Assembly had maimed the sovereignty of the people with his aid and his
+knowledge: he now threatened to denounce its crime to the tribunal of the
+people, if it did not pull out its purse and buy his silence with three
+millions annually. It had robbed three million Frenchmen of the suffrage: for
+every Frenchman thrown &ldquo;out of circulation,&rdquo; he demanded a franc
+&ldquo;in circulation.&rdquo; He, the elect of six million, demanded indemnity
+for the votes he had been subsequently cheated of. The Committee of the
+National Assembly turned the importunate fellow away. The Bonapartist press
+threatened: Could the National Assembly break with the President of the
+republic at a time when it had broken definitely and on principle with the mass
+of the nation? It rejected the annual civil list, but granted, for this once,
+an allowance of 2,160,000 francs. Thus it made itself guilty of the double
+weakness of granting the money, and, at the same time, showing by its anger
+that it did so only unwillingly. We shall presently see to what use Bonaparte
+put the money. After this aggravating after-play, that followed upon the heels
+of the abolition of universal suffrage, and in which Bonaparte exchanged his
+humble attitude of the days of the crisis of March and April for one of defiant
+impudence towards the usurping parliament, the National Assembly adjourned for
+three months, from August 11, to November 11. It left behind in its place a
+Permanent Committee of 18 members that contained no Bonapartist, but did
+contain a few moderate republicans. The Permanent Committee of the year 1849
+had numbered only men of order and Bonapartists. At that time, however, the
+party of Order declared itself in permanence against the revolution; now the
+parliamentary republic declared itself in permanence against the President.
+After the law of May 31, only this rival still confronted the party of Order.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the National Assembly reconvened in November, 1850, instead of its former
+petty skirmishes with the President, a great headlong struggle, a struggle for
+life between the two powers, seemed to have become inevitable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As in the year 1849, the party of Order had during this year&rsquo;s vacation,
+dissolved into its two separate factions, each occupied with its own
+restoration intrigues, which had received new impetus from the death of Louis
+Philippe. The Legitimist King, Henry V, had even appointed a regular Ministry,
+that resided in Paris, and in which sat members of the Permanent Committee.
+Hence, Bonaparte was, on his part, justified in making tours through the French
+Departments, and&mdash;according to the disposition of the towns that he
+happened to be gladdening with his presence&mdash;some times covertly, other
+times more openly blabbing out his own restoration plans, and gaining votes for
+himself On these excursions, which the large official &ldquo;Moniteur&rdquo;
+and the small private &ldquo;Moniteurs&rdquo; of Bonaparte were, of course,
+bound to celebrate as triumphal marches, he was constantly accompanied by
+affiliated members of the &ldquo;Society of December 10&rdquo; This society
+dated from the year 1849. Under the pretext of founding a benevolent
+association, the slum-proletariat of Paris was organized into secret sections,
+each section led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist General at the head
+of all. Along with ruined roues of questionable means of support and
+questionable antecedents, along with the foul and adventures-seeking dregs of
+the bourgeoisie, there were vagabonds, dismissed soldiers, discharged convicts,
+runaway galley slaves, sharpers, jugglers, lazzaroni, pickpockets,
+sleight-of-hand performers, gamblers, procurers, keepers of disorderly houses,
+porters, literati, organ grinders, rag pickers, scissors grinders, tinkers,
+beggars&mdash;in short, that whole undefined, dissolute, kicked-about mass that
+the Frenchmen style &ldquo;la Boheme&rdquo; With this kindred element,
+Bonaparte formed the stock of the &ldquo;Society of December 10,&rdquo; a
+&ldquo;benevolent association&rdquo; in so far as, like Bonaparte himself, all
+its members felt the need of being benevolent to themselves at the expense of
+the toiling nation. The Bonaparte, who here constitutes himself Chief of the
+Slum-Proletariat; who only here finds again in plenteous form the interests
+which he personally pursues; who, in this refuse, offal and wreck of all
+classes, recognizes the only class upon which he can depend
+unconditionally;&mdash;this is the real Bonaparte, the Bonaparte without
+qualification. An old and crafty roue, he looks upon the historic life of
+nations, upon their great and public acts, as comedies in the ordinary sense,
+as a carnival, where the great costumes, words and postures serve only as masks
+for the pettiest chicaneries. So, on the occasion of his expedition against
+Strassburg when a trained Swiss vulture impersonated the Napoleonic eagle; so,
+again, on the occasion of his raid upon Boulogne, when he struck a few London
+lackeys into French uniform: they impersonated the army; [#1 Under the reign of
+Louis Philippe, Bonaparte made two attempts to restore the throne of Napoleon:
+one in October, 1836, in an expedition from Switzerland upon Strassburg and one
+in August, 1840, in an expedition from England upon Boulogne.] and so now, in
+his &ldquo;Society of December 10,&rdquo; he collects 10,000 loafers who are to
+impersonate the people as Snug the Joiner does the lion. At a period when the
+bourgeoisie itself is playing the sheerest comedy, but in the most solemn
+manner in the world, without doing violence to any of the pedantic requirements
+of French dramatic etiquette, and is itself partly deceived by, partly
+convinced of, the solemnity of its own public acts, the adventurer, who took
+the comedy for simple comedy, was bound to win. Only after he has removed his
+solemn opponent, when he himself takes seriously his own role of emperor, and,
+with the Napoleonic mask on, imagines he impersonates the real Napoleon, only
+then does he become the victim of his own peculiar conception of
+history&mdash;the serious clown, who no longer takes history for a comedy, but
+a comedy for history. What the national work-shops were to the socialist
+workingmen, what the &ldquo;Gardes mobiles&rdquo; were to the bourgeois
+republicans, that was to Bonaparte the &ldquo;Society of December
+10,&rdquo;&mdash;a force for partisan warfare peculiar to himself. On his
+journeys, the divisions of the Society, packed away on the railroads,
+improvised an audience for him, performed public enthusiasm, shouted
+&ldquo;vive l&rsquo;Empereur,&rdquo; insulted and clubbed the
+republicans,&mdash;all, of course, under the protection of the police. On his
+return stages to Paris, this rabble constituted his vanguard, it forestalled or
+dispersed counter-demonstrations. The &ldquo;Society of December 10&rdquo;
+belonged to him, it was his own handiwork, his own thought. Whatever else he
+appropriates, the power of circumstances places in his hands; whatever else he
+does, either circumstances do for him, or he is content to copy from the deeds
+of others, but he posing before the citizens with the official phrases about
+&ldquo;Order,&rdquo; &ldquo;Religion,&rdquo; &ldquo;Family,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Property,&rdquo; and, behind him, the secret society of skipjacks and
+picaroons, the society of disorder, of prostitution, and of theft,&mdash;that
+is Bonaparte himself as the original author; and the history of the
+&ldquo;Society of December 10&rdquo; is his own history. Now, then, it happened
+that Representatives belonging to the party of order occasionally got under the
+clubs of the Decembrists. Nay, more. Police Commissioner Yon, who had been
+assigned to the National Assembly, and was charged with the guardianship of its
+safety, reported to the Permanent Committee upon the testimony of one Alais,
+that a Section of the Decembrists had decided on the murder of General
+Changarnier and of Dupin, the President of the National Assembly, and had
+already settled upon the men to execute the decree. One can imagine the fright
+of Mr. Dupin. A parliamentary inquest over the &ldquo;Society of December
+10,&rdquo; i. e., the profanation of the Bonapartist secret world now seemed
+inevitable. Just before the reconvening of the National Assembly, Bonaparte
+circumspectly dissolved his Society, of course, on paper only. As late as the
+end of 1851, Police Prefect Carlier vainly sought, in an exhaustive memorial,
+to move him to the real dissolution of the Decembrists.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The &ldquo;Society of December 10&rdquo; was to remain the private army of
+Bonaparte until he should have succeeded in converting the public Army into a
+&ldquo;Society of December 10.&rdquo; Bonaparte made the first attempt in this
+direction shortly after the adjournment of the National Assembly, and he did so
+with the money which he had just wrung from it. As a fatalist, he lives devoted
+to the conviction that there are certain Higher Powers, whom man, particularly
+the soldier, cannot resist. First among these Powers he numbers cigars and
+champagne, cold poultry and garlic-sausage. Accordingly, in the apartments of
+the Elysee, he treated first the officers and under-officers to cigars and
+champagne, to cold poultry and garlic-sausage. On October 3, he repeats this
+manoeuvre with the rank and file of the troops by the review of St. Maur; and,
+on October 10, the same manoeuvre again, upon a larger scale, at the army
+parade of Satory. The Uncle bore in remembrance the campaigns of Alexander in
+Asia: the Nephew bore in remembrance the triumphal marches of Bacchus in the
+same country. Alexander was, indeed, a demigod; but Bacchus was a full-fledged
+god, and the patron deity, at that, of the &ldquo;Society of December
+10.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the review of October 3, the Permanent Committee summoned the Minister of
+War, d&rsquo;Hautpoul, before it. He promised that such breaches of discipline
+should not recur. We have seen how, on October 10th, Bonaparte kept
+d&rsquo;Hautpoul&rsquo;s word. At both reviews Changarnier had commanded as
+Commander-in-chief of the Army of Paris. He, at once member of the Permanent
+Committee, Chief of the National Guard, the &ldquo;Savior&rdquo; of January 29,
+and June 13, the &ldquo;Bulwark of Society,&rdquo; candidate of the Party of
+Order for the office of President, the suspected Monk of two
+monarchies,&mdash;he had never acknowledged his subordination to the Minister
+of War, had ever openly scoffed at the republican Constitution, and had pursued
+Bonaparte with a protection that was ambiguously distinguished. Now he became
+zealous for the discipline in opposition to Bonaparte. While, on October 10, a
+part of the cavalry cried: &ldquo;Vive Napoleon! Vivent les saucissons;&rdquo;
+[#2 Long live Napoleon! Long live the sausages!] Changarnier saw to it that at
+least the infantry, which filed by under the command of his friend Neumeyer,
+should observe an icy silence. In punishment, the Minister of War, at the
+instigation of Bonaparte, deposed General Neumeyer from his post in Paris,
+under the pretext of providing for him as Commander-in-chief of the Fourteenth
+and Fifteenth Military Divisions. Neumeyer declined the exchange, and had, in
+consequence, to give his resignation. On his part, Changarnier published on
+November 2, an order, wherein he forbade the troops to indulge, while under
+arms, in any sort of political cries or demonstrations. The papers devoted to
+the Elysee interests attacked Changarnier; the papers of the party of Order
+attacked Bonaparte; the Permanent Committee held frequent secret sessions, at
+which it was repeatedly proposed to declare the fatherland in danger; the Army
+seemed divided into two hostile camps, with two hostile staffs; one at the
+Elysee, where Bonaparte, the other at the Tuileries, where Changarnier resided.
+All that seemed wanting for the signal of battle to sound was the convening of
+the National Assembly. The French public looked upon the friction between
+Bonaparte and Changarnier in the light of the English journalist, who
+characterized it in these words: &ldquo;The political servant girls of France
+are mopping away the glowing lava of the revolution with old mops, and they
+scold each other while doing their work.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, Bonaparte hastened to depose the Minister of War, d&rsquo;Hautpoul;
+to expedite him heels over head to Algiers; and to appoint in his place General
+Schramm as Minister of War. On November 12, he sent to the National Assembly a
+message of American excursiveness, overloaded with details, redolent of order,
+athirst for conciliation, resignful to the Constitution, dealing with all and
+everything, only not with the burning questions of the moment. As if in passing
+he dropped the words that according to the express provisions of the
+Constitution, the President alone disposes over the Army. The message closed
+with the following high-sounding protestations:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;France demands, above all things, peace . . . Alone bound by an oath, I
+shall keep myself within the narrow bounds marked out by it to me . . . As to
+me, elected by the people, and owing my power to it alone, I shall always
+submit to its lawfully expressed will. Should you at this session decide upon
+the revision of the Constitution, a Constitutional Convention will regulate the
+position of the Executive power. If you do not, then, the people will, in 1852,
+solemnly announce its decision. But, whatever the solution may be that the
+future has in store, let us arrive at an understanding to the end that never
+may passion, surprise or violence decide over the fate of a great nation. . . .
+That which, above all, bespeaks my attention is, not who will, in 1852, rule
+over France, but to so devote the time at my disposal that the interval may
+pass by with-out agitation and disturbance. I have straightforwardly opened my
+heart to you, you will answer my frankness with your confidence, my good
+efforts with your co-operation. God will do the rest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The honnete, hypocritically temperate, commonplace-virtuous language of the
+bourgeoisie reveals its deep meaning in the mouth of the self-appointed ruler
+of the &ldquo;Society of December 10,&rdquo; and of the picnic-hero of St. Maur
+and Satory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The burgraves of the party of Order did not for a moment deceive themselves on
+the confidence that this unbosoming deserved. They were long blase on oaths;
+they numbered among themselves veterans and virtuosi of perjury. The passage
+about the army did not, however, escape them. They observed with annoyance that
+the message, despite its prolix enumeration of the lately enacted laws, passed,
+with affected silence, over the most important of all, the election law, and,
+moreover, in case no revision of the Constitution was held, left the choice of
+the President, in 1852, with the people. The election law was the
+ball-and-chain to the feet of the party of Order, that hindered them from
+walking, and now assuredly from storming. Furthermore, by the official
+disbandment of the &ldquo;Society of December 10,&rdquo; and the dismissal of
+the Minister of War, d&rsquo;Hautpoul, Bonaparte had, with his own hands,
+sacrificed the scapegoats on the altar of the fatherland. He had turned off the
+expected collision. Finally, the party of Order itself anxiously sought to
+avoid every decisive conflict with the Executive, to weaken and to blur it
+over. Fearing to lose its conquests over the revolution, it let its rival
+gather the fruits thereof. &ldquo;France demands, above all things,
+peace,&rdquo; with this language had the party of Order been apostrophizing the
+revolution, since February; with this language did Bonaparte&rsquo;s message
+now apostrophize the party of Order: &ldquo;France demands, above all things,
+peace.&rdquo; Bonaparte committed acts that aimed at usurpation, but the party
+of Order committed a &ldquo;disturbance of the peace,&rdquo; if it raised the
+hue and cry, and explained them hypochrondriacally. The sausages of Satory were
+mouse-still when nobody talked about them;&mdash;France demands, above all
+things, &ldquo;peace.&rdquo; Accordingly, Bonaparte demanded that he be let
+alone; and the parliamentary party was lamed with a double fear: the fear of
+re-conjuring up the revolutionary disturbance of the peace, and the fear of
+itself appearing as the disturber of the peace in the eyes of its own class, of
+the bourgeosie. Seeing that, above all things, France demanded peace, the party
+of Order did not dare, after Bonaparte had said &ldquo;peace&rdquo; in his
+message, to answer &ldquo;war.&rdquo; The public, who had promised to itself
+the pleasure of seeing great scenes of scandal at the opening of the National
+Assembly, was cheated out of its expectations. The opposition deputies, who
+demanded the submission of the minutes of the Permanent Committee over the
+October occurrences, were outvoted. All debate that might excite was fled from
+on principle. The labors of the National Assembly during November and December,
+1850, were without interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, toward the end of December, began a guerilla warfare about certain
+prerogatives of the parliament. The movement sank into the mire of petty
+chicaneries on the prerogative of the two powers, since, with the abolition of
+universal suffrage, the bourgeoisie had done away with the class struggle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A judgment for debt had been secured against Mauguin, one of the
+Representatives. Upon inquiry by the President of the Court, the Minister of
+Justice, Rouher, declared that an order of arrest should be made out without
+delay. Manguin was, accordingly, cast into the debtors&rsquo; prison. The
+National Assembly bristled up when it heard of the &ldquo;attentat.&rdquo; It
+not only ordered his immediate release, but had him forcibly taken out of
+Clichy the same evening by its own greffier. In order, nevertheless, to shield
+its belief in the &ldquo;sacredness of private property,&rdquo; and also with
+the ulterior thought of opening, in case of need, an asylum for troublesome
+Mountainers, it declared the imprisonment of a Representative for debt to be
+permissible upon its previous consent. It forgot to decree that the President
+also could be locked up for debt. By its act, it wiped out the last semblance
+of inviolability that surrounded the members of its own body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It will be remembered that, upon the testimony of one Allais, Police
+Commissioner Yon had charged a Section of Decembrists with a plan to murder
+Dupin and Changarnier. With an eye upon that, the questors proposed at the very
+first session, that the parliament organize a police force of its own, paid for
+out of the private budget of the National Assembly itself, and wholly
+independent of the Police Prefects. The Minister of the Interior, Baroche,
+protested against this trespass on his preserves. A miserable compromise
+followed, according to which the Police Commissioner of the Assembly was to be
+paid out of its own private budget and was to be subject to the appointment and
+dismissal of its own questors, but only upon previous agreement with the
+Minister of the Interior. In the meantime Allais had been prosecuted by the
+Government. It was an easy thing in Court, to present his testimony in the
+light of a mystification, and, through the mouth of the Public Prosecutor, to
+throw Dupin, Changarnier, Yon, together with the whole National Assembly, into
+a ridiculous light. Thereupon, on December 29, Minister Baroche writes a letter
+to Dupin, in which he demands the dismissal of Yon. The Committee of the
+National Assembly decides to keep Yon in office; nevertheless, the National
+Assembly, frightened by its own violence in the affair of Mauguin, and
+accustomed, every time it has shied a blow at the Executive, to receive back
+from it two in exchange, does not sanction this decision. It dismisses Yon in
+reward for his zeal in office, and robs itself of a parliamentary prerogative,
+indispensable against a person who does not decide by night to execute by day,
+but decides by day and executes by night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We have seen how, during the months of November and December, under great and
+severe provocations, the National Assembly evaded and refused the combat with
+the Executive power. Now we see it compelled to accept it on the smallest
+occasions. In the affair of Mauguin, it confirms in principle the liability of
+a Representative to imprisonment for debt, but to itself reserves the power of
+allowing the principle to be applied only to the Representatives whom it
+dislikes,-and for this infamous privilege we see it wrangling with the Minister
+of Justice. Instead of utilizing the alleged murder plan to the end of
+fastening an inquest upon the &ldquo;Society of December 10,&rdquo; and of
+exposing Bonaparte beyond redemption before France and his true figure, as the
+head of the slum-proletariat of Paris, it allows the collision to sink to a
+point where the only issue between itself and the Minister of the Interior is.
+Who has jurisdiction over the appointment and dismissal of a Police
+Commissioner? Thus we see the party of Order, during this whole period,
+compelled by its ambiguous position to wear out and fritter away its conflict
+with the Executive power in small quarrels about jurisdiction, in chicaneries,
+in pettifogging, in boundary disputes, and to turn the stalest questions of
+form into the very substance of its activity. It dares not accept the collision
+at the moment when it involves a principle, when the Executive power has really
+given itself a blank, and when the cause of the National Assembly would be the
+cause of the nation. It would thereby have issued to the nation an order of
+march; and it feared nothing so much as that the nation should move. Hence, on
+these occasions, it rejects the motions of the Mountain, and proceeds to the
+order of the day. After the issue has in this way lost all magnitude, the
+Executive power quietly awaits the moment when it can take it up again upon
+small and insignificant occasions; when, so to say, the issue offers only a
+parliamentary local interest. Then does the repressed valor of the party of
+Order break forth, then it tears away the curtain from the scene, then it
+denounces the President, then it declares the republic to be in
+danger,&mdash;but then all its pathos appears stale, and the occasion for the
+quarrel a hypocritical pretext, or not at all worth the effort. The
+parliamentary tempest becomes a tempest in a tea-pot, the struggle an intrigue,
+the collision a scandal. While the revolutionary classes gloat with sardonic
+laughter over the humiliation of the National Assembly&mdash;they, of course,
+being as enthusiastic for the prerogatives of the parliament as that body is
+for public freedom&mdash;the bourgeoisie, outside of the parliament, does not
+understand how the bourgeoisie, inside of the parliament, can squander its time
+with such petty bickerings, and can endanger peace by such wretched rivalries
+with the President. It is puzzled at a strategy that makes peace the very
+moment when everybody expects battles, and that attacks the very moment
+everybody believes peace has been concluded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On December 20, Pascal Duprat interpellated the Minister of the Interior on the
+&ldquo;Goldbar Lottery.&rdquo; This lottery was a &ldquo;Daughter from
+Elysium&rdquo;; Bonaparte, together with his faithful, had given her birth; and
+Police Prefect Carlier had placed her under his official protection, although
+the French law forbade all lotteries, with the exception of games for
+benevolent purposes. Seven million tickets, a franc a piece, and the profit
+ostensibly destined to the shipping of Parisian vagabonds to California. Golden
+dreams were to displace the Socialist dreams of the Parisian proletariat; the
+tempting prospect of a prize was to displace the doctrinal right to labor. Of
+course, the workingmen of Paris did not recognize in the lustre of the
+California gold bars the lack-lustre francs that had been wheedled out of their
+pockets. In the main, however, the scheme was an unmitigated swindle. The
+vagabonds, who meant to open California gold mines without taking the pains to
+leave Paris, were Bonaparte himself and his Round Table of desperate
+insolvents. The three millions granted by the National Assembly were rioted
+away; the Treasury had to be refilled somehow or another. In vain did Bonaparte
+open a national subscription, at the head of which he himself figured with a
+large sum, for the establishment of so-called &ldquo;cites ouvrieres.&rdquo;
+[#3 Work cities.] The hard-hearted bourgeois waited, distrustful, for the
+payment of his own shares; and, as this, of course, never took place, the
+speculation in Socialist castles in the air fell flat. The gold bars drew
+better. Bonaparte and his associates did not content themselves with putting
+into their own pockets part of the surplus of the seven millions over and above
+the bars that were to be drawn; they manufactured false tickets; they sold, of
+Number 10 alone, fifteen to twenty lots&mdash;a financial operation fully in
+the spirit of the &ldquo;Society of December 10&rdquo;! The National Assembly
+did not here have before it the fictitious President of the Republic, but
+Bonaparte himself in flesh and blood. Here it could catch him in the act, not
+in conflict with the Constitution, but with the penal code. When, upon
+Duprat&rsquo;s interpellation, the National Assembly went over to the order of
+the day, this did not happen simply because Girardin&rsquo;s motion to declare
+itself &ldquo;satisfied&rdquo; reminded the party of Order of its own
+systematic corruption: the bourgeois, above all the bourgeois who has been
+inflated into a statesman, supplements his practical meanness with theoretical
+pompousness. As statesman, he becomes, like the Government facing him, a
+superior being, who can be fought only in a higher, more exalted manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bonaparte-who, for the very reason of his being a &ldquo;bohemian,&rdquo; a
+princely slum-proletarian, had over the scampish bourgeois the advantage that
+he could carry on the fight after the Assembly itself had carried him with its
+own hands over the slippery ground of the military banquets, of the reviews, of
+the &ldquo;Society of December 10,&rdquo; and, finally, of the penal code-now
+saw that the moment had arrived when he could move from the seemingly defensive
+to the offensive. He was but little troubled by the intermediate and trifling
+defeats of the Minister of Justice, of the Minister of War, of the Minister of
+the Navy, of the Minister of Finance, whereby the National Assembly indicated
+its growling displeasure. Not only did he prevent the Ministers from resigning,
+and thus recognizing the subordination of the executive power to the
+Parliament; he could now accomplish what during the vacation of the National
+Assembly he had commenced, the separation of the military power from the
+Assembly&mdash;the deposition of Changarnier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An Elysee paper published an order, issued during the month of May, ostensibly
+to the First Military Division, and, hence, proceeding from Changarnier,
+wherein the officers were recommended, in case of an uprising, to give no
+quarter to the traitors in their own ranks, to shoot them down on the spot, and
+to refuse troops to the National Assembly, should it make a requisition for
+such. On January 3, 1851, the Cabinet was interpellated on this order. The
+Cabinet demands for the examination of the affair at first three months, then
+one week, finally only twenty-four hours&rsquo; time. The Assembly orders an
+immediate explanation Changarnier rises and declares that this order never
+existed; he adds that he would ever hasten to respond to the calls of the
+National Assembly, and that, in case of a collision, they could count upon him.
+The Assembly receives his utterances with inexpressible applause, and decrees a
+vote of confidence to him. It thereby resign its own powers; it decrees its own
+impotence and the omnipotence of the Army by committing itself to the private
+protection of a general. But the general, in turn, deceives himself when he
+places at the Assembly&rsquo;s disposal and against Bonaparte a power that he
+holds only as a fief from that same Bonaparte, and when, on his part, he
+expects protection from this Parliament, from his protege&rsquo;, itself
+needful of protection. But Changarnier has faith in the mysterious power with
+which since January, 1849, he had been clad by the bourgeoisie. He takes
+himself for the Third Power, standing beside the other Powers of Government. He
+shares the faith of all the other heroes, or rather saints, of this epoch,
+whose greatness consists but in the interested good opinion that their own
+party holds of them, and who shrink into every-day figures so soon as
+circumstances invite them to perform miracles. Infidelity is, indeed, the
+deadly enemy of these supposed heroes and real saints. Hence their virtuously
+proud indignation at the unenthusiastic wits and scoffers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That same evening the Ministers were summoned to the Elysee; Bonaparte presses
+the removal of Changarnier; five Ministers refuse to sign the order; the
+&ldquo;Moniteur&rdquo; announces a Ministerial crisis; and the party of Order
+threatens the formation of a Parliamentary army under the command of
+Changarnier. The party of Order had the constitutional power hereto. It needed
+only to elect Changarnier President of the National Assembly in order to make a
+requisition for whatever military forces it needed for its own safety. It could
+do this all the more safely, seeing that Changarnier still stood at the head of
+the Army and of the Parisian National Guard, and only lay in wait to be
+summoned, together with the Army. The Bonapartist press did not even dare to
+question the right of the National Assembly to issue a direct requisition for
+troops;&mdash;a legal scruple, that, under the given circumstances, did not
+promise success. That the Army would have obeyed the orders of the National
+Assembly is probable, when it is considered that Bonaparte had to look eight
+days all over Paris to find two generals&mdash;Baraguay d&rsquo;Hilliers and
+St. Jean d&rsquo;Angley&mdash;who declared themselves ready to countersign the
+order cashiering Changamier. That, however, the party of Order would have found
+in its own ranks and in the parliament the requisite vote for such a decision
+is more than doubtful, when it is considered that, eight days later, 286 votes
+pulled away from it, and that, as late as December, 1851, at the last decisive
+hour, the Mountain rejected a similar proposition. Nevertheless, the burgraves
+might still have succeeded in driving the mass of their party to an act of
+heroism, consisting in feeling safe behind a forest of bayonets, and in
+accepting the services of the Army, which found itself deserted in its camp.
+Instead of this, the Messieurs Burgraves betook themselves to the Elysee on the
+evening of January 6, with the view of inducing Bonaparte, by means of politic
+words and considerations, to drop the removal of Changarnier. Him whom we must
+convince we recognize as the master of the situation. Bonaparte, made to feel
+secure by this step, appoints on January 12 a new Ministry, in which the
+leaders of the old, Fould and Baroche, are retained. St Jean d&rsquo;Angley
+becomes Minister of War; the &ldquo;Moniteur&rdquo; announces the decree
+cashiering Changarnier; his command is divided up between Baraguay
+d&rsquo;Hilliers, who receives the First Division, and Perrot, who is placed
+over the National Guard. The &ldquo;Bulwark of Society&rdquo; is turned down;
+and, although no dog barks over the event, in the Bourses the stock quotations
+rise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By repelling the Army, that, in Changarnier&rsquo;s person, put itself at its
+disposal, and thus irrevocably stood up against the President, the party of
+Order declares that the bourgeoisie has lost its vocation to reign. Already
+there was no parliamentary Ministry. By losing, furthermore, the handle to the
+Army and to the National Guard, what instrument of force was there left to the
+National Assembly in order to maintain both the usurped power of the parliament
+over the people, and its constitutional power over the President? None. All
+that was left to it was the appeal to peaceful principles, that itself had
+always explained as &ldquo;general rules&rdquo; merely, to be prescribed to
+third parties, and only in order to enable itself to move all the more freely.
+With the removal of Changarnier, with the transfer of the military power to
+Bonaparte, closes the first part of the period that we are considering, the
+period of the struggle between the party of Order and the Executive power. The
+war between the two powers is now openly declared; it is conducted openly; but
+only after the party of Order has lost both arms and soldier. With-out a
+Ministry, without any army, without a people, without the support of public
+opinion; since its election law of May 31, no longer the representative of the
+sovereign nation sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans everything, the
+National Assembly had gradually converted itself into a French Parliament of
+olden days, that must leave all action to the Government, and content itself
+with growling remonstrances &ldquo;post festum.&rdquo; [#4 After the act is
+done; after the fact.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The party of Order receives the new Ministry with a storm of indignation.
+General Bedeau calls to mind the mildness of the Permanent Committee during the
+vacation, and the excessive prudence with which it had renounced the privilege
+of disclosing its minutes. Now, the Minister of the Interior himself insists
+upon the disclosure of these minutes, that have now, of course, become dull as
+stagnant waters, reveal no new facts, and fall without making the slightest
+effect upon the blase public. Upon Remusat&rsquo;s proposition, the National
+Assembly retreats into its Committees, and appoints a &ldquo;Committee on
+Extraordinary Measures.&rdquo; Paris steps all the less out of the ruts of its
+daily routine, seeing that business is prosperous at the time, the
+manufactories busy, the prices of cereals low, provisions abundant, the savings
+banks receiving daily new deposits. The &ldquo;extraordinary measures,&rdquo;
+that the parliament so noisily announced fizzle out on January 18 in a vote of
+lack of confidence against the Ministry, without General Changarnier&rsquo;s
+name being even mentioned. The party of Order was forced to frame its motion in
+that way so as to secure the votes of the republicans, because, of all the acts
+of the Ministry, Changarnier&rsquo;s dismissal only was the very one they
+approved, while the party of Order cannot in fact, condemn the other
+Ministerial acts which it had itself dictated. The January 18 vote of lack of
+confidence was decided by 415 ayes against 286 nays. It was, accordingly put
+through by a coalition of the uncompromising Legitimists and Orleanists with
+the pure republicans and the Mountain. Thus it revealed the fact that, in its
+conflicts with Bonaparte, not only the Ministry, not only the Army, but also
+its independent parliamentary majority; that a troop of Representatives had
+deserted its camp out of a fanatic zeal for harmony, out of fear of fight, out
+of lassitude, out of family considerations for the salaries of relatives in
+office, out of speculations on vacancies in the Ministry (Odillon Barrot), or
+out of that unmitigated selfishness that causes the average bourgeois to be
+ever inclined to sacrifice the interests of his class to this or that private
+motive. The Bonapartist Representatives belonged from the start to the party of
+Order only in the struggle against the revolution. The leader of the Catholic
+party, Montalembert, already then threw his influence in the scale of
+Bonaparte, since he despaired of the vitality of the parliamentary party.
+Finally, the leaders of this party itself, Thiers and Berryer&mdash;the
+Orleanist and the Legitimist&mdash;were compelled to proclaim themselves openly
+as republicans; to admit that their heart favored royalty, but their head the
+republic; that their parliamentary republic was the only possible form for the
+rule of the bourgeoisie Thus were they compelled to brand, before the eyes of
+the bourgeois class itself, as an intrigue&mdash;as dangerous as it was
+senseless&mdash;the restoration plans, which they continued to pursue
+indefatigably behind the back of the parliament.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The January 18 vote of lack of confidence struck the Ministers, not the
+President. But it was not the Ministry, it was the President who had deposed
+Changarnier. Should the party of Order place Bonaparte himself under charges?
+On account of his restoration hankerings? These only supplemented their own. On
+account of his conspiracy at the military reviews and of the &ldquo;Society of
+December 10&rdquo;? They had long since buried these subjects under simple
+orders of business. On account of the discharge of the hero of January 29 and
+June 13, of the man who, in May, 1850, threatened, in case of riot, to set
+Paris on fire at all its four corners? Their allies of the Mountain and
+Cavaignac did not even allow them to console the fallen &ldquo;Bulwark of
+Society&rdquo; with an official testimony of their sympathy. They themselves
+could not deny the constitutional right of the President to remove a General.
+They stormed only because he made an unparliamentary use of his constitutional
+right. Had they not themselves constantly made an unconstitutional use of their
+parliamentary prerogative, notably by the abolition of universal suffrage?
+Consequently they were reminded to move exclusively within parliamentary
+bounds. Indeed, it required that peculiar disease, a disease that, since 1848,
+has raged over the whole continent, &ldquo;Parliamentary
+Idiocy,&rdquo;&mdash;that fetters those whom it infects to an imaginary world,
+and robs them of all sense, all remembrance, all understanding of the rude
+outside world;&mdash;it required this &ldquo;Parliamentary Idiocy&rdquo; in
+order that the party of Order, which had, with its own hands, destroyed all the
+conditions for parliamentary power, and, in its struggle with the other
+classes, was obliged to destroy them, still should consider its parliamentary
+victories as victories, and imagine it hit the President by striking his
+Ministers. They only afforded him an opportunity to humble the National
+Assembly anew in the eyes of the nation. On January 20, the
+&ldquo;Moniteur&rdquo; announced that the whole the dismissal of the whole
+Ministry was accepted. Under the pretext that none of the parliamentary parties
+had any longer the majority&mdash;as proved by the January 18 vote, that fruit
+of the coalition between mountain and royalists&mdash;, and, in order to await
+the re-formation of a majority, Bonaparte appointed a so-called transition
+Ministry, of whom no member belonged to the parliament-altogether wholly
+unknown and insignificant individuals; a Ministry of mere clerks and
+secretaries. The party of Order could now wear itself out in the game with
+these puppets; the Executive power no longer considered it worth the while to
+be seriously represented in the National Assembly. By this act Bonaparte
+concentrated the whole executive power all the more securely in his own person;
+he had all the freer elbow-room to exploit the same to his own ends, the more
+his Ministers became mere supernumeraries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The party of Order, now allied with the Mountain, revenged itself by rejecting
+the Presidential endowment project of 1,800.000 francs, which the chief of the
+&ldquo;Society of December 10&rdquo; had compelled his Ministerial clerks to
+present to the Assembly. This time a majority of only 102 votes carried the day
+accordingly since January 18, 27 more votes had fallen off: the dissolution of
+the party of Order was making progress. Lest any one might for a moment be
+deceived touching the meaning of its coalition with the Mountain, the party of
+Order simultaneously scorned even to consider a motion, signed by 189 members
+of the Mountain, for a general amnesty to political criminals. It was enough
+that the Minister of the Interior, one Baisse, declared that the national
+tranquility was only in appearance, in secret there reigned deep agitation, in
+secret, ubiquitous societies were organized, the democratic papers were
+preparing to reappear, the reports from the Departments were unfavorable, the
+fugitives of Geneva conducted a conspiracy via Lyons through the whole of
+southern France, France stood on the verge of an industrial and commercial
+crisis, the manufacturers of Roubaix were working shorter hours, the prisoners
+of Belle Isle had mutinied;&mdash;it was enough that even a mere Baisse should
+conjure up the &ldquo;Red Spectre&rdquo; for the party of Order to reject
+without discussion a motion that would have gained for the National Assembly a
+tremendous popularity, and thrown Bonaparte back into its arms. Instead of
+allowing itself to be intimidated by the Executive power with the perspective
+of fresh disturbances, the party of Order should rather have allowed a little
+elbow-room to the class struggle, in order to secure the dependence of the
+Executive upon itself. But it did not feel itself equal to the task of playing
+with fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, the so-called transition Ministry vegetated along until the middle
+of April. Bonaparte tired out and fooled the National Assembly with constantly
+new Ministerial combinations. Now he seemed to intend constructing a republican
+Ministry with Lamartine and Billault; then, a parliamentary one with the
+inevitable Odillon Barrot, whose name must never be absent when a dupe is
+needed; then again, a Legitimist, with Batismenil and Lenoist d&rsquo;Azy; and
+yet again, an Orleansist, with Malleville. While thus throwing the several
+factions of the party of Order into strained relations with one another, and
+alarming them all with the prospect of a republican Ministry, together with the
+there-upon inevitable restoration of universal suffrage, Bonaparte
+simultaneously raises in the bourgeoisie the conviction that his sincere
+efforts for a parliamentary Ministry are wrecked upon the irreconcilable
+antagonism of the royalist factions. All the while the bourgeoisie was
+clamoring louder and louder for a &ldquo;strong Government,&rdquo; and was
+finding it less and less pardonable to leave France &ldquo;without an
+administration,&rdquo; in proportion as a general commercial crisis seemed to
+be under way and making recruits for Socialism in the cities, as did the
+ruinously low price of grain in the rural districts. Trade became daily duller;
+the unemployed hands increased perceptibly; in Paris, at least 10,000
+workingmen were without bread; in Rouen, Muehlhausen, Lyons, Roubaix,
+Tourcoign, St. Etienue, Elbeuf, etc., numerous factories stood idle. Under
+these circumstances Bonaparte could venture to restore, on April 11, the
+Ministry of January 18; Messieurs Rouher, Fould, Baroche, etc., reinforced by
+Mr. Leon Faucher, whom the constitutive assembly had, during its last days,
+unanimously, with the exception of five Ministerial votes, branded with a vote
+of censure for circulating false telegraphic dispatches. Accordingly, the
+National Assembly had won a victory on January 18 over the Ministry, it had,
+for the period of three months, been battling with Bonaparte, and all this
+merely to the end that, on April 11, Fould and Baroche should be able to take
+up the Puritan Faucher as third in their ministerial league.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In November, 1849, Bonaparte had satisfied himself with an Unparliamentary, in
+January, 1851, with an Extra-Parliamentary, on April 11, he felt strong enough
+to form an Anti-Parliamentary Ministry, that harmoniously combined within
+itself the votes of lack of confidence of both assemblies-the constitutive and
+the legislative, the republican and the royalist. This ministerial progression
+was a thermometer by which the parliament could measure the ebbing temperature
+of its own life. This had sunk so low by the end of April that, at a personal
+interview, Persigny could invite Changarnier to go over to the camp of the
+President. Bonaparte, he assured Changarnier, considered the influence of the
+National Assembly to be wholly annihilated, and already the proclamation was
+ready, that was to be published after the steadily contemplated, but again
+accidentally postponed &ldquo;coup d&rsquo;etat.&rdquo; Changarnier
+communicated this announcement of its death to the leaders of the party of
+Order; but who was there to believe a bed-bug bite could kill? The parliament,
+however beaten, however dissolved, however death-tainted it was, could not
+persuade itself to see, in the duel with the grotesque chief of the
+&ldquo;Society of December 10,&rdquo; anything but a duel with a bed-bug. But
+Bonaparte answered the party of Order as Agesilaus did King Agis: &ldquo;I seem
+to you an ant; but shall one day be a lion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>VI.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The coalition with the Mountain and the pure republicans, to which the party of
+Order found itself condemned in its fruitless efforts to keep possession of the
+military and to reconquer supreme control over the Executive power, proved
+conclusively that it had forfeited its independent parliamentary majority. The
+calendar and clock merely gave, on May 29, the signal for its complete
+dissolution. With May 29 commenced the last year of the life of the National
+Assembly. It now had to decide for the unchanged continuance or the revision of
+the Constitution. But a revision of the Constitution meant not only the
+definitive supremacy of either the bourgeoisie of the small traders&rsquo;
+democracy, of either democracy or proletarian anarchy, of either a
+parliamentary republic or Bonaparte, it meant also either Orleans or Bourbon!
+Thus fell into the very midst of the parliament the apple of discord, around
+which the conflict of interests, that cut up the party of Order into hostile
+factions, was to kindle into an open conflagration. The party of Order was a
+combination of heterogeneous social substances. The question of revision raised
+a political temperature, in which the product was reduced to its original
+components.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The interest of the Bonapartists in the revision was simple: they were above
+all concerned in the abolition of Article 45, which forbade Bonaparte&rsquo;s
+reelection and the prolongation of his term. Not less simple seemed to be the
+position of the republicans; they rejected all revision, seeing in that only a
+general conspiracy against the republic; as they disposed over more than
+one-fourth of the votes in the National Assembly, and, according to the
+Constitution, a three-fourths majority was requisite to revise and to call a
+revisory convention, they needed only to count their own votes to be certain of
+victory. Indeed, they were certain of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Over and against these clear-cut positions, the party of Order found itself
+tangled in inextricable contradictions. If it voted against the revision, it
+endangered the &ldquo;status quo,&rdquo; by leaving to Bonaparte only one
+expedient&mdash;that of violence and handing France over, on May 2, 1852, at
+the very time of election, a prey to revolutionary anarchy, with a President
+whose authority was at an end; with a parliament that the party had long ceased
+to own, and with a people that it meant to re-conquer. If it voted
+constitutionally for a revision, it knew that it voted in vain and would
+constitutionally have to go under before the veto of the republicans. If,
+unconstitutionally, it pronounced a simple majority binding, it could hope to
+control the revolution only in case it surrendered unconditionally to the
+domination of the Executive power: it then made Bonaparte master of the
+Constitution, of the revision and of itself. A merely partial revision,
+prolonging the term of the President, opened the way to imperial usurpation; a
+general revision, shortening the existence of the republic, threw the dynastic
+claims into an inevitable conflict: the conditions for a Bourbon and those for
+an Orleanist restoration were not only different, they mutually excluded each
+other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The parliamentary republic was more than a neutral ground on which the two
+factions of the French bourgeoisie&mdash;Legitimists and Orleanists, large
+landed property and manufacture&mdash;could lodge together with equal rights.
+It was the indispensable condition for their common reign, the only form of
+government in which their common class interest could dominate both the claims
+of their separate factions and all the other classes of society. As royalists,
+they relapsed into their old antagonism into the struggle for the overlordship
+of either landed property or of money; and the highest expression of this
+antagonism, its personification, were the two kings themselves, their
+dynasties. Hence the resistance of the party of Order to the recall of the
+Bourbons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Orleanist Representative Creton moved periodically in 1849, 1850 and 1851
+the repeal of the decree of banishment against the royal families; as
+periodically did the parliament present the spectacle of an Assembly of
+royalists who stubbornly shut to their banished kings the door through which
+they could return home. Richard III murdered Henry VI, with the remark that he
+was too good for this world, and belonged in heaven. They declared France too
+bad to have her kings back again. Forced by the power of circumstances, they
+had become republicans, and repeatedly sanctioned the popular mandate that
+exiled their kings from France.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The revision of the Constitution, and circumstances compelled its
+consideration, at once made uncertain not only the republic itself, but also
+the joint reign of the two bourgeois factions; and it revived, with the
+possibility of the monarchy, both the rivalry of interests which these two
+factions had alternately allowed to preponderate, and the struggle for the
+supremacy of the one over the other. The diplomats of the party of Order
+believed they could allay the struggle by a combination of the two dynasties
+through a so-called fusion of the royalist parties and their respective royal
+houses. The true fusion of the restoration and the July monarchy was, however,
+the parliamentary republic, in which the Orleanist and Legitimist colors were
+dissolved, and the bourgeois species vanished in the plain bourgeois, in the
+bourgeois genus. Now however, the plan was to turn the Orleanist Legitimist and
+the Legitimist Orleanist. The kingship, in which their antagonism was
+personified, was to incarnate their unity, the expression of their exclusive
+faction interests was to become the expression of their common class interest;
+the monarchy was to accomplish what only the abolition of two
+monarchies&mdash;the republic could and did accomplish. This was the
+philosopher&rsquo;s stone, for the finding of which the doctors of the party of
+Order were breaking their heads. As though the Legitimate monarchy ever could
+be the monarchy of the industrial bourgeoisie, or the bourgeois monarchy the
+monarchy of the hereditary landed aristocracy! As though landed property and
+industry could fraternize under one crown, where the crown could fall only upon
+one head, the head of the older or the younger brother! As though industry
+could at all deal upon a footing of equality with landed property, so long as
+landed property did not decide itself to become industrial. If Henry V were to
+die tomorrow, the Count of Paris would not, therefore, become the king of the
+Legitimists, unless he ceased to be the King of the Orleanists. Nevertheless,
+the fusion philosophers, who became louder in the measure that the question of
+revision stepped to the fore, who had provided themselves with a daily organ in
+the &ldquo;Assemblee Nationale,&rdquo; who, even at this very moment (February,
+1852) are again at work, explained the whole difficulty by the opposition and
+rivalries of the two dynasties. The attempts to reconcile the family of Orleans
+with Henry V., begun since the death of Louis Philippe, but, as all these
+dynastic intrigues carried on only during the vacation of the National
+Assembly, between acts, behind the scenes, more as a sentimental coquetry with
+the old superstition than as a serious affair, were now raised by the party of
+Order to the dignity of a great State question, and were conducted upon the
+public stage, instead of, as heretofore in the amateurs&rsquo; theater.
+Couriers flew from Paris to Venice, from Venice to Claremont, from Claremont to
+Paris. The Duke of Chambord issues a manifesto in which he announces not his
+own, but the &ldquo;national&rdquo; restoration, &ldquo;with the aid of all the
+members of his family.&rdquo; The Oleanist Salvandy throws himself at the feet
+of Henry V. The Legitimist leaders Berryer, Benoit d&rsquo;Azy, St. Priest
+travel to Claremont, to persuade the Orleans; but in vain. The fusionists learn
+too late that the interests of the two bourgeois factions neither lose in
+exclusiveness nor gain in pliancy where they sharpen to a point in the form of
+family interests, of the interests of the two royal houses. When Henry V.
+recognized the Count of Paris as his successor&mdash;the only success that the
+fusion could at best score&mdash;the house of Orleans acquired no claim that
+the childlessness of Henry V. had not already secured to it; but, on the other
+hand, it lost all the claims that it had conquered by the July revolution. It
+renounced its original claims, all the title, that, during a struggle nearly
+one hundred years long, it had wrested from the older branch of the Bourbons;
+it bartered away its historic prerogative, the prerogative of its family-tree.
+Fusion, accordingly, amounted to nothing else than the resignation of the house
+of Orleans, its Legitimist resignation, a repentful return from the Protestant
+State Church into the Catholic;&mdash;a return, at that, that did not even
+place it on the throne that it had lost, but on the steps of the throne on
+which it was born. The old Orleanist Ministers Guizot, Duchatel, etc., who
+likewise hastened to Claremont, to advocate the fusion, represented in fact
+only the nervous reaction of the July monarchy; despair, both in the citizen
+kingdom and the kingdom of citizens; the superstitious belief in legitimacy as
+the last amulet against anarchy. Mediators, in their imagination, between
+Orleans and Bourbon, they were in reality but apostate Orleanists, and as such
+were they received by the Prince of Joinville. The virile, bellicose part of
+the Orleanists, on the contrary&mdash;Thiers, Baze, etc.&mdash;, persuaded the
+family of Louis Philippe all the easier that, seeing every plan for the
+immediate restoration of the monarchy presupposed the fusion of the two
+dynasties, and every plan for fusion the resignation of the house of Orleans,
+it corresponded, on the contrary, wholly with the tradition of its ancestors to
+recognize the republic for the time being, and to wait until circumstances
+permitted I the conversion of the Presidential chair into a throne.
+Joinville&rsquo;s candidacy was set afloat as a rumor, public curiosity was
+held in suspense, and a few months later, after the revision was rejected,
+openly proclaimed in September.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Accordingly, the essay of a royalist fusion between Orleanists and Legitimists
+did not miscarry only, it broke up their parliamentary fusion, the republican
+form that they had adopted in common, and it decomposed the party of Order into
+its original components. But the wider the breach became between Venice and
+Claremont, the further they drifted away from each I other, and the greater the
+progress made by the Joinville agitation, all the more active and earnest
+became the negotiations between Faucher, the Minister of Bonaparte, and the
+Legitimists.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dissolution of the party of Order went beyond its original elements. Each
+of the two large factions fell in turn into new fragments. It was as if all the
+old political shades, that formerly fought and crowded one another within each
+of the two circles&mdash;be it that of the Legitimists or that of the
+Orleanists&mdash;, had been thawed out like dried infusoria by contact with
+water; as if they had recovered enough vitality to build their own groups and
+assert their own antagonisms. The Legitimists dreamed they were back amidst the
+quarrels between the Tuileries and the pavilion Marsan, between Villele and
+Polignac; the Orleanists lived anew through the golden period of the tourneys
+between Guizot, Mole, Broglie, Thiers, and Odillon Barrot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That portion of the party of Order&mdash;eager for a revision of the
+Constitution but disagreed upon the extent of revision&mdash;made up of the
+Legitimists under Berryer and Falloux and of those under Laroche Jacquelein,
+together with the tired-out Orleanists under Mole, Broglie, Montalembert and
+Odillon Barrot, united with the Bonapartist Representatives in the following
+indefinite and loosely drawn motion:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The undersigned Representatives, with the end in view of restoring to
+the nation the full exercise of her sovereignty, move that the Constitution be
+revised.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the same time, however, they unanimously declared through their spokesman,
+Tocqueville, that the National Assembly had not the right to move the abolition
+of the republic, that right being vested only in a Constitutional Convention.
+For the rest, the Constitution could be revised only in a &ldquo;legal&rdquo;
+way, that is to say, only in case a three-fourths majority decided in favor of
+revision, as prescribed by the Constitution. After a six days&rsquo; stormy
+debate, the revision was rejected on July 19, as was to be foreseen. In its
+favor 446 votes were cast, against it 278. The resolute Oleanists, Thiers,
+Changarnier, etc., voted with the republicans and the Mountain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus the majority of the parliament pronounced itself against the Constitution,
+while the Constitution itself pronounced itself for the minority, and its
+decision binding. But had not the party of Order on May 31, 1850, had it not on
+June 13, 1849, subordinated the Constitution to the parliamentary majority? Did
+not the whole republic they had been hitherto having rest upon the
+subordination of the Constitutional clauses to the majority decisions of the
+parliament? Had they not left to the democrats the Old Testament superstitious
+belief in the letter of the law, and had they not chastised the democrats
+therefor? At this moment, however, revision meant nothing else than the
+continuance of the Presidential power, as the continuance of the Constitution
+meant nothing else than the deposition of Bonaparte. The parliament had
+pronounced itself for him, but the Constitution pronounced itself against the
+parliament. Accordingly, he acted both in the sense of the parliament when he
+tore up the Constitution, and in the sense of the Constitution when he chased
+away the parliament.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The parliament pronounced the Constitution, and, thereby, also, its own reign,
+&ldquo;outside of the pale of the majority&rdquo;; by its decision, it repealed
+the Constitution, and continued the Presidential power, and it at once declared
+that neither could the one live nor the other die so long as itself existed.
+The feet of those who were to bury it stood at the door. While it was debating
+the subject of revision, Bonaparte removed General Baraguay d&rsquo;Hilliers,
+who showed himself irresolute, from the command of the First Military Division,
+and appointed in his place General Magnan, the conqueror of Lyon; the hero of
+the December days, one of his own creatures, who already under Louis Philippe,
+on the occasion of the Boulogne expedition, had somewhat compromised himself in
+his favor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By its decision on the revision, the party of Order proved that it knew neither
+how to rule nor how to obey; neither how to live nor how to die; neither how to
+bear with the republic nor how to overthrow it; neither how to maintain the
+Constitution nor how to throw it overboard; neither how to co-operate with the
+President nor how to break with him. From what quarter did it then, look to for
+the solution of all the existing perplexities? From the calendar, from the
+course of events. It ceased to assume the control of events. It, accordingly,
+invited events to don its authority and also the power to which in its struggle
+with the people, it had yielded one attribute after another until it finally
+stood powerless before the same. To the end that the Executive be able all the
+more freely to formulate his plan of campaign against it, strengthen his means
+of attack, choose his tools, fortify his positions, the party of Order decided,
+in the very midst of this critical moment, to step off the stage, and adjourn
+for three months, from August 10 to November 4.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not only was the parliamentary party dissolved into its two great factions, not
+only was each of these dissolved within itself, but the party of Order, inside
+of the parliament, was at odds with the party of Order, outside of the
+parliament. The learned speakers and writers of the bourgeoisie, their tribunes
+and their press, in short, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie and the
+bourgeoisie itself, the representatives and the represented, stood estranged
+from, and no longer understood one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Legitimists in the provinces, with their cramped horizon and their
+boundless enthusiasm, charged their parliamentary leaders Berryer and Falloux
+with desertion to the Bonapartist camp, and with apostacy from Henry V. Their
+lilymind [#1 An allusion to the lilies of the Bourbon coat-of-arms] believed in
+the fall of man, but not in diplomacy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More fatal and completer, though different, was the breach between the
+commercial bourgeoisie and its politicians. It twitted them, not as the
+Legitimists did theirs, with having apostatized from their principle, but, on
+the contrary, with adhering to principles that had become useless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have already indicated that, since the entry of Fould in the Ministry, that
+portion of the commercial bourgeoisie that had enjoyed the lion&rsquo;s share
+in Louis Philippe&rsquo;s reign, to-wit, the aristocracy of finance, had become
+Bonapartist. Fould not only represented Bonaparte&rsquo;s interests at the
+Bourse, he represented also the interests of the Bourse with Bonaparte. A
+passage from the London &ldquo;Economist,&rdquo; the European organ of the
+aristocracy of finance, described most strikingly the attitude of this class.
+In its issue of February 1, 1851, its Paris correspondent writes: &ldquo;Now we
+have it stated from numerous quarters that France wishes above all things for
+repose. The President declares it in his message to the Legislative Assembly;
+it is echoed from the tribune; it is asserted in the journals; it is announced
+from the pulpit; it is demonstrated by the sensitiveness of the public funds at
+the least prospect of disturbance, and their firmness the instant it is made
+manifest that the Executive is far superior in wisdom and power to the factious
+ex-officials of all former governments.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In its issue of November 29, 1851, the &ldquo;Economist&rdquo; declares
+editorially: &ldquo;The President is now recognized as the guardian of order on
+every Stock Exchange of Europe.&rdquo; Accordingly, the Aristocracy of Finance
+condemned the parliamentary strife of the party of Order with the Executive as
+a &ldquo;disturbance of order,&rdquo; and hailed every victory of the President
+over its reputed representatives as a &ldquo;victory of order.&rdquo; Under
+&ldquo;aristocracy of finance&rdquo; must not, however, be understood merely
+the large bond negotiators and speculators in government securities, of whom it
+may be readily understood that their interests and the interests of the
+Government coincide. The whole modern money trade, the whole banking industry,
+is most intimately interwoven with the public credit. Part of their business
+capital requires to be invested in interest-bearing government securities that
+are promptly convertible into money; their deposits, i. e., the capital placed
+at their disposal and by them distributed among merchants and industrial
+establishments, flow partly out of the dividends on government securities. The
+whole money market, together with the priests of this market, is part and
+parcel of this &ldquo;aristocracy of finance&rdquo; at every epoch when the
+stability of the government is to them synonymous with &ldquo;Moses and his
+prophets.&rdquo; This is so even before things have reached the present stage
+when every deluge threatens to carry away the old governments themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the industrial Bourgeoisie also, in its fanaticism for order, was annoyed
+at the quarrels of the Parliamentary party of Order with the Executive. Thiers,
+Anglas, Sainte Beuve, etc., received, after their vote of January 18, on the
+occasion of the discharge of Changarnier, public reprimands from their
+constituencies, located in the industrial districts, branding their coalition
+with the Mountain as an act of high treason to the cause of order. Although,
+true enough, the boastful, vexatious and petty intrigues, through which the
+struggle of the party of Order with the President manifested itself, deserved
+no better reception, yet notwithstanding, this bourgeois party, that expects of
+its representatives to allow the military power to pass without resistance out
+of the hands of their own Parliament into those of an adventurous Pretender, is
+not worth even the intrigues that were wasted in its behalf. It showed that the
+struggle for the maintenance of their public interests, of their class
+interests, of their political power only incommoded and displeased them, as a
+disturbance of their private business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bourgeois dignitaries of the provincial towns, the magistrates, commercial
+judges, etc., with hardly any exception, received Bonaparte everywhere on his
+excursions in the most servile manner, even when, as in Dijon, he attacked the
+National Assembly and especially the party of Order without reserve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Business being brisk, as still at the beginning of 1851, the commercial
+bourgeoisie stormed against every Parliamentary strife, lest business be put
+out of temper. Business being dull, as from the end of February, 1851, on, the
+bourgeoisie accused the Parliamentary strifes as the cause of the stand-still,
+and clamored for quiet in order that business may revive. The debates on
+revision fell just in the bad times. Seeing the question now was the to be or
+not to be of the existing form of government, the bourgeoisie felt itself all
+the more justified in demanding of its Representatives that they put an end to
+this tormenting provisional status, and preserve the &ldquo;status quo.&rdquo;
+This was no contradiction. By putting an end to the provisional status, it
+understood its continuance, the indefinite putting off of the moment when a
+final decision had to be arrived at. The &ldquo;status quo&rdquo; could be
+preserved in only one of two ways: either by the prolongation of
+Bonaparte&rsquo;s term of office or by his constitutional withdrawal and the
+election of Cavaignac. A part of the bourgeoisie preferred the latter solution,
+and knew no better advice to give their Representatives than to be silent, to
+avoid the burning point. If their Representatives did not speak, so argued
+they, Bonaparte would not act. They desired an ostrich Parliament that would
+hide its head, in order not to be seen. Another part of the bourgeoisie
+preferred that Bonaparte, being once in the Presidential chair, be left in the
+Presidential chair, in order that everything might continue to run in the old
+ruts. They felt indignant that their Parliament did not openly break the
+Constitution and resign without further ado. The General Councils of the
+Departments, these provisional representative bodies of the large bourgeoisie,
+who had adjourned during the vacation of the National Assembly since August 25,
+pronounced almost unanimously for revision, that is to say, against the
+Parliament and for Bonaparte.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still more unequivocally than in its falling out with its Parliamentary
+Representatives, did the bourgeoisie exhibit its wrath at its literary
+Representatives, its own press. The verdicts of the bourgeois juries,
+inflicting excessive fines and shameless sentences of imprisonment for every
+attack of the bourgeois press upon the usurping aspirations of Bonaparte, for
+every attempt of the press to defend the political rights of the bourgeoisie
+against the Executive power, threw, not France alone, but all Europe into
+amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While on the one hand, as I have indicated, the Parliamentary party of Order
+ordered itself to keep the peace by screaming for peace; and while it
+pronounced the political rule of the bourgeoisie irreconcilable with the safety
+and the existence of the bourgeoisie, by destroying with its own hands in its
+struggle with the other classes of society all the conditions for its own, the
+Parliamentary regime; on the other hand, the mass of the bourgeoisie, outside
+of the Parliament, urged Bonaparte&mdash;by its servility towards the
+President, by its insults to the Parliament, by the brutal treatment of its own
+press&mdash;to suppress and annihilate its speaking and writing organs, its
+politicians and its literati, its orators&rsquo; tribune and its press, to the
+end that, under the protection of a strong and unhampered Government, it might
+ply its own private pursuits in safety. It declared unmistakably that it longed
+to be rid of its own political rule, in order to escape the troubles and
+dangers of ruling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And this bourgeoisie, that had rebelled against even the Parliamentary and
+literary contest for the supremacy of its own class, that had betrayed its
+leaders in this contest, it now has the effrontery to blame the proletariat for
+not having risen in its defence in a bloody struggle, in a struggle for life!
+Those bourgeois, who at every turn sacrificed their common class interests to
+narrow and dirty private interests, and who demanded a similar sacrifice from
+their own Representatives, now whine that the proletariat has sacrificed their
+idea-political to its own material interests! This bourgeois class now strikes
+the attitude of a pure soul, misunderstood and abandoned, at a critical moment,
+by the proletariat, that has been misled by the Socialists. And its cry finds a
+general echo in the bourgeois world. Of course, I do not refer to German
+crossroad politicians and kindred blockheads. I refer, for instance, to the
+&ldquo;Economist,&rdquo; which, as late as November 29, 1851, that is to say,
+four days before the &ldquo;coup d&rsquo;etat&rdquo; pronounced Bonaparte the
+&ldquo;Guardian of Order&rdquo; and Thiers and Berryer
+&ldquo;Anarchists,&rdquo; and as early as December 27, 1851, after Bonaparte
+had silenced those very Anarchists, cries out about the treason committed by
+&ldquo;the ignorant, untrained and stupid proletaires against the skill,
+knowledge, discipline, mental influence, intellectual resources an moral weight
+of the middle and upper ranks.&rdquo; The stupid, ignorant and contemptible
+mass was none other than the bourgeoisie itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+France had, indeed; experienced a sort of commercial crisis in 1851. At the end
+of February, there was a falling off of exports as compared with 1850; in
+March, business languished and factories shut down; in April, the condition of
+the industrial departments seemed as desperate as after the February days; in
+May, business did not yet pick up; as late as June 28, the reports of the Bank
+of France revealed through a tremendous increase of deposits and an equal
+decrease of loans on exchange notes, the standstill of production; not until
+the middle of October did a steady improvement of business set in. The French
+bourgeoisie accounted for this stagnation of business with purely political
+reasons; it imputed the dull times to the strife between the Parliament and the
+Executive power, to the uncertainty of a provisional form of government, to the
+alarming prospects of May 2, 1852. I shall not deny that all these causes did
+depress some branches of industry in Paris and in the Departments. At any rate,
+this effect of political circumstances was only local and trifling. Is there
+any other proof needed than that the improvement in business set in at the very
+time when the political situation was growing worse, when the political horizon
+was growing darker, and when at every moment a stroke of lightning was expected
+out of the Elysee&mdash;in the middle of October? The French bourgeois, whose
+&ldquo;skill, knowledge, mental influence and intellectual resources,&rdquo;
+reach no further than his nose, could, moreover, during the whole period of the
+Industrial Exposition in London, have struck with his nose the cause of his own
+business misery. At the same time that, in France, the factories were being
+closed, commercial failures broke out in England. While the industrial panic
+reached its height during April and May in France, in England the commercial
+panic reached its height in April and May. The same as the French, the English
+woolen industries suffered, and, as the French, so did the English silk
+manufacture. Though the English cotton factories went on working, it,
+nevertheless, was not with the same old profit of 1849 and 1850. The only
+difference was this: that in France, the crisis was an industrial, in England
+it was a commercial one; that while in France the factories stood still, they
+spread themselves in England, but under less favorable circumstances than they
+had done the years just previous; that, in France, the export, in England, the
+import trade suffered the heaviest blows. The common cause, which, as a matter
+of fact, is not to be looked for with-in the bounds of the French political
+horizon, was obvious. The years 1849 and 1850 were years of the greatest
+material prosperity, and of an overproduction that did not manifest itself
+until 1851. This was especially promoted at the beginning of 1851 by the
+prospect of the Industrial Exposition; and, as special causes, there were
+added, first, the failure of the cotton crop of 1850 and 1851; second, the
+certainty of a larger cotton crop than was expected: first, the rise, then the
+sudden drop; in short, the oscillations of the cotton market. The crop of raw
+silk in France had been below the average. Finally, the manufacture of woolen
+goods had received such an increment since 1849, that the production of wool
+could not keep step with it, and the price of the raw material rose greatly out
+of proportion to the price of the manufactured goods. Accordingly, we have here
+in the raw material of three staple articles a threefold material for a
+commercial crisis. Apart from these special circumstances, the seeming crisis
+of the year 1851 was, after all, nothing but the halt that overproduction and
+overspeculation make regularly in the course of the industrial cycle, before
+pulling all their forces together in order to rush feverishly over the last
+stretch, and arrive again at their point of departure&mdash;the General
+Commercial Crisis. At such intervals in the history of trade, commercial
+failures break out in England, while, in France, industry itself is stopped,
+partly because it is compelled to retreat through the competition of the
+English, that, at such times becomes resistless in all markets, and partly
+because, as an industry of luxuries, it is affected with preference by every
+stoppage of trade. Thus, besides the general crisis, France experiences her own
+national crises, which, how-ever, are determined by and conditioned upon the
+general state of the world&rsquo;s market much more than by local French
+influences. It will not be devoid of interest to contrast the prejudgment of
+the French bourgeois with the judgment of the English bourgeois. One of the
+largest Liverpool firms writes in its yearly report of trade for 1851:
+&ldquo;Few years have more completely disappointed the expectations entertained
+at their beginning than the year that has just passed; instead of the great
+prosperity, that was unanimously looked forward to, it proved itself one of the
+most discouraging years during the last quarter of a century. This applies, of
+course, only to the mercantile, not to the industrial classes. And yet, surely
+there were grounds at the beginning of the year from which to draw a contrary
+conclusion; the stock of products was scanty, capital was abundant, provisions
+cheap, a rich autumn was assured, there was uninterrupted peace on the
+continent and no political and financial disturbances at home; indeed, never
+were the wings of trade more unshackled. . . . What is this unfavorable result
+to be ascribed to? We believe to excessive trade in imports as well as exports.
+If our merchants do not themselves rein in their activity, nothing can keep us
+going, except a panic every three years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Imagine now the French bourgeois, in the midst of this business panic, having
+his trade-sick brain tortured, buzzed at and deafened with rumors of a
+&ldquo;coup d&rsquo;etat&rdquo; and the restoration of universal suffrage; with
+the struggle between the Legislature and the Executive; with the Fronde warfare
+between Orleanists and Legitimists; with communistic conspiracies in southern
+France; with alleged Jacqueries [#2 Peasant revolts] in the Departments of
+Nievre and Cher; with the advertisements of the several candidates for
+President; with &ldquo;social solutions&rdquo; huckstered about by the
+journals; with the threats of the republicans to uphold, arms in hand, the
+Constitution and universal suffrage; with the gospels, according to the
+emigrant heroes &ldquo;in partibus,&rdquo; who announced the destruction of the
+world for May 2,&mdash;imagine that, and one can understand how the bourgeois,
+in this unspeakable and noisy confusion of fusion, revision, prorogation,
+constitution, conspiracy, coalition, emigration, usurpation and revolution,
+blurts out at his parliamentary republic: &ldquo;Rather an End With Fright,
+Than a Fright Without End.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bonaparte understood this cry. His perspicacity was sharpened by the growing
+anxiety of the creditors&rsquo; class, who, with every sunset, that brought
+nearer the day of payment, the 2d of May, 1852, saw in the motion of the stars
+a protest against their earthly drafts. They had become regular astrologers The
+National Assembly had cut off Bonaparte&rsquo;s hope of a constitutional
+prolongation of his term; the candidature of the Prince of Joinville tolerated
+no further vacillation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If ever an event cast its shadow before it long before its occurrence, it was
+Bonaparte&rsquo;s &ldquo;coup d&rsquo;etat.&rdquo; Already on January 29, 1849,
+barely a month after his election, he had made to Changarnier a proposition to
+that effect. His own Prime Minister. Odillon Barrot, had covertly, in 1849, and
+Thiers openly in the winter of 1850, revealed the scheme of the &ldquo;coup
+d&rsquo;etat.&rdquo; In May, 1851, Persigny had again sought to win Changarnier
+over to the &ldquo;coup,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Miessager de
+l&rsquo;Assemblee&rdquo; newspaper had published this conversation. At every
+parliamentary storm, the Bonapartist papers threatened a &ldquo;coup,&rdquo;
+and the nearer the crisis approached, all the louder grew their tone. At the
+orgies, that Bonaparte celebrated every night with a swell mob of males and
+females, every time the hour of midnight drew nigh and plenteous libations had
+loosened the tongues and heated the minds of the revelers, the
+&ldquo;coup&rdquo; was resolved upon for the next morning. Swords were then
+drawn, glasses clinked, the Representatives were thrown out at the windows, the
+imperial mantle fell upon the shoulders of Bonaparte, until the next morning
+again drove away the spook, and astonished Paris learned, from not very
+reserved Vestals and indiscreet Paladins, the danger it had once more escaped.
+During the months of September and October, the rumors of a &ldquo;coup
+d&rsquo;etat&rdquo; tumbled close upon one another&rsquo;s heels. At the same
+time the shadow gathered color, like a confused daguerreotype. Follow the
+issues of the European daily press for the months of September and October, and
+items like this will be found literally:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rumors of a &lsquo;coup&rsquo; fill Paris. The capital, it is said, is
+to be filled with troops by night and the next morning decrees are to be issued
+dissolving the National Assembly, placing the Department of the Seine in state
+of siege restoring universal suffrage, and appealing to the people. Bonaparte
+is rumored to be looking for Ministers to execute these illegal decrees.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The newspaper correspondence that brought this news always close ominously with
+&ldquo;postponed.&rdquo; The &ldquo;coup&rdquo; was ever the fixed idea of
+Bonaparte. With this idea he had stepped again upon French soil. It had such
+full possession of him that he was constantly betraying and blabbing it out. He
+was so weak that he was as constantly giving it up again. The shadow of the
+&ldquo;coup&rdquo; had become so familiar a spectre to the Parisians, that they
+refused to believe it when it finally did appear in flesh and blood.
+Consequently, it was neither the reticent backwardness of the chief of the
+&ldquo;Society of December 10,&rdquo; nor an unthought of surprise of the
+National Assembly that caused the success of the &ldquo;coup.&rdquo; When it
+succeeded, it did so despite his indiscretion and with its anticipation&mdash;a
+necessary, unavoidable result of the development that had preceded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On October 10, Bonaparte announced to his Ministers his decision to restore
+universal suffrage; on the 16th day they handed in their resignations; on the
+26th Paris learned of the formation of the Thorigny Ministry. The Prefect of
+Police, Carlier, was simultaneously replaced by Maupas; and the chief of the
+First Military Division Magnan, concentrated the most reliable regiments in the
+capital. On November 4, the National Assembly re-opened its sessions. There was
+nothing left for it to do but to repeat, in short recapitulation, the course it
+had traversed, and to prove that it had been buried only after it had expired.
+The first post that it had forfeited in the struggle with the Executive was the
+Ministry. It had solemnly to admit this loss by accepting as genuine the
+Thorigny Ministry, which was but a pretence. The permanent Committee had
+received Mr. Giraud with laughter when he introduced himself in the name of the
+new Ministers. So weak a Ministry for so strong a measure as the restoration of
+universal suffrage! The question, however, then was to do nothing in,
+everything against the parliament.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the very day of its re-opening, the National Assembly received the message
+from Bonaparte demanding the restoration of universal suffrage and the repeal
+of the law of May 31, 1850. On the same day, his Ministers introduced a decree
+to that effect. The Assembly promptly rejected the motion of urgency made by
+the Ministers, but repealed the law itself, on November 13, by a vote of 355
+against 348. Thus it once more tore to pieces its own mandate, once more
+certified to the fact that it had transformed itself from a freely chosen
+representative body of the nation into the usurpatory parliament of a class; it
+once more admitted that it had itself severed the muscles that connected the
+parliamentary head with the body of the nation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the Executive power appealed from the National Assembly to the people by
+its motion for the restoration of universal suffrage, the Legislative power
+appealed from the people to the Army by its &ldquo;Questors&rsquo; Bill.&rdquo;
+This bill was to establish its right to immediate requisitions for troops, to
+build up a parliamentary army. By thus appointing the Army umpire between
+itself and the people, between itself and Bonaparte; by thus recognizing the
+Army as the decisive power in the State, the National Assembly was constrained
+to admit that it had long given up all claim to supremacy. By debating the
+right to make requisitions for troops, instead of forthwith collecting them, it
+betrayed its own doubts touching its own power. By thus subsequently rejecting
+the &ldquo;Questors&rsquo; Bill,&rdquo; it publicly confessed it impotence. The
+bill fell through with a minority of 108 votes; the Mountain had, accordingly,
+thrown the casting vote It now found itself in the predicament of
+Buridan&rsquo;s donkey, not, indeed, between two sacks of hay, forced to decide
+which of the two was the more attractive, but between two showers of blows,
+forced to decide which of the two was the harder; fear of Changarnier, on one
+side, fear of Bonaparte, on the other. It must be admitted the position was not
+a heroic one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On November 18, an amendment was moved to the Act, passed by the party of
+Order, on municipal elections to the effect that, instead of three years, a
+domicile of one year should suffice. The amendment was lost by a single
+vote&mdash;but this vote, it soon transpired, was a mistake. Owing to the
+divisions within its own hostile factions, the party of Order had long since
+forfeited its independent parliamentary majority. It was now plain that there
+was no longer any majority in the parliament. The National Assembly had become
+impotent even to decide. Its atomic parts were no longer held together by any
+cohesive power; it had expended its last breath, it was dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, the mass of the bourgeoisie outside of the parliament was once more
+solemnly to confirm its rupture with the bourgeoisie inside of the parliament a
+few days before the catastrophe. Thiers, as a parliamentary hero conspicuously
+smitten by that incurable disease&mdash;Parliamentary Idiocy&mdash;, had
+hatched out jointly with the Council of State, after the death of the
+parliament, a new parliamentary intrigue in the shape of a
+&ldquo;Responsibility Law,&rdquo; that was intended to lock up the President
+within the walls of the Constitution. The same as, on September 15, Bonaparte
+bewitched the fishwives, like a second Massaniello, on the occasion of laying
+the corner-stone for the Market of Paris,&mdash;though, it must be admitted,
+one fishwife was equal to seventeen Burgraves in real power&mdash;; the same
+as, after the introduction of the &ldquo;Questors&rsquo; Bill,&rdquo; he
+enthused the lieutenants, who were being treated at the Elysee;&mdash;so,
+likewise, did he now, on November 25, carry away with him the industrial
+bourgeoisie, assembled at the Circus, to receive from his hands the
+prize-medals that had been awarded at the London Industrial Exposition. I here
+reproduce the typical part of his speech, from the &ldquo;Journal des
+Debats&rdquo;:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With such unhoped for successes, I am justified to repeat how great the
+French republic would be if she were only allowed to pursue her real interests,
+and reform her institutions, instead of being constantly disturbed in this by
+demagogues, on one side, and, on the other, by monarchic hallucinations. (Loud,
+stormy and continued applause from all parts of the amphitheater). The
+monarchic hallucinations hamper all progress and all serious departments of
+industry. Instead of progress, we have struggle only. Men, formerly the most
+zealous supporters of royal authority and prerogative, become the partisans of
+a convention that has no purpose other than to weaken an authority that is born
+of universal suffrage. (Loud and prolonged applause). We see men, who have
+suffered most from the revolution and complained bitterest of it, provoking a
+new one for the sole purpose of putting fetters on the will of the nation. . .
+. I promise you peace for the future.&rdquo; (Bravo! Bravo! Stormy bravos.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus the industrial bourgeoisie shouts its servile &ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo; to the
+&ldquo;coup d&rsquo;etat&rdquo; of December 2, to the destruction of the
+parliament, to the downfall of their own reign, to the dictatorship of
+Bonaparte. The rear of the applause of November 25 was responded to by the roar
+of cannon on December 4, and the house of Mr. Sallandrouze, who had been
+loudest in applauding, was the one demolished by most of the bombs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cromwell, when he dissolved the Long Parliament, walked alone into its midst,
+pulled out his watch in order that the body should not continue to exist one
+minute beyond the term fixed for it by him, and drove out each individual
+member with gay and humorous invectives. Napoleon, smaller than his prototype,
+at least went on the 18th Brumaire into the legislative body, and, though in a
+tremulous voice, read to it its sentence of death. The second Bonaparte, who,
+moreover, found himself in possession of an executive power very different from
+that of either Cromwell or Napoleon, did not look for his model in the annals
+of universal history, but in the annals of the &ldquo;Society of December
+10,&rdquo; in the annals of criminal jurisprudence. He robs the Bank of France
+of twenty-five million francs; buys General Magnan with one million and the
+soldiers with fifteen francs and a drink to each; comes secretly together with
+his accomplices like a thief by night; has the houses of the most dangerous
+leaders in the parliament broken into; Cavalignac, Lamorciere, Leflo,
+Changarnier, Charras, Thiers, Baze, etc., taken out of their beds; the
+principal places of Paris, the building of the parliament included, occupied
+with troops; and, early the next morning, loud-sounding placards posted on all
+the walls proclaiming the dissolution of the National Assembly and of the
+Council of State, the restoration of universal suffrage, and the placing of the
+Department of the Seine under the state of siege. In the same way he shortly
+after sneaked into the &ldquo;Moniteur&rdquo; a false document, according to
+which influential parliamentary names had grouped themselves round him in a
+Committee of the Nation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Amidst cries of &ldquo;Long live the Republic!&rdquo;, the rump-parliament,
+assembled at the Mayor&rsquo;s building of the Tenth Arrondissement, and
+composed mainly of Legitimists and Orleanists, resolves to depose Bonaparte; it
+harangues in vain the gaping mass gathered before the building, and is finally
+dragged first, under the escort of African sharpshooters, to the barracks of
+Orsay, and then bundled into convicts&rsquo; wagons and transported to the
+prisons of Mazas, Ham and Vincennes. Thus ended the party of Order, the
+Legislative Assembly and the February revolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before hastening to the end, let us sum up shortly the plan of its history:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I.&mdash;First Period. From February 24 to May 4, 1848. February period.
+Prologue. Universal fraternity swindle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+II.&mdash;Second Period. Period in which the republic is constituted, and of
+the Constitutive National Assembly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+1. May 4 to June 25, 1848. Struggle of all the classes against the house of Mr.
+proletariat. Defeat of the proletariat in the June days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+2. June 25 to December 10, 1848. Dictatorship of the pure bourgeois
+republicans. Drafting of the Constitution. The state of siege hangs over Paris.
+The Bourgeois dictatorship set aside on December 10 by the election of
+Bonaparte as President.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+3. December 20, 1848, to May 20, 1849. Struggle of the Constitutive Assembly
+with Bonaparte and with the united party of Order. Death of the Constitutive
+Assembly. Downfall of the republican bourgeoisie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+III.&mdash;Third Period. Period of the constitutional republic and of the
+Legislative National Assembly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+1. May 29 to June 13, 1849. Struggle of the small traders&rsquo;, middle class
+with the bourgeoisie and with Bonaparte. Defeat of the small traders&rsquo;
+democracy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+2. June 13, 1849, to May, 1850. Parliamentary dictatorship of the party of
+Order. Completes its reign by the abolition of universal suffrage, but loses
+the parliamentary Ministry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+3. May 31, 1850, to December 2, 1851. Struggle between the parliamentary
+bourgeoisie and Bonaparte.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+a. May 31, 1850, to January 12, 1851. The parliament loses the supreme command
+over the Army.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+b. January 12 to April 11, 1851. The parliament succumbs in the attempts to
+regain possession of the administrative power. The party of Order loses its
+independent parliamentary majority. Its coalition with the republicans and the
+Mountain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+c. April 11 to October 9, 1851. Attempts at revision, fusion and prorogation.
+The party of Order dissolves into its component parts. The breach between the
+bourgeois parliament and the bourgeois press, on the one hand, and the
+bourgeois mass, on the other, becomes permanent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+d. October 9 to December 2, 1851. Open breach between the parliament and the
+executive power. It draws up its own decree of death, and goes under, left in
+the lurch by its own class, by the Army, and by all the other classes. Downfall
+of the parliamentary regime and of the reign of the bourgeoisie.
+Bonaparte&rsquo;s triumph. Parody of the imperialist restoration.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>VII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The Social Republic appeared as a mere phrase, as a prophecy on the threshold
+of the February Revolution; it was smothered in the blood of the Parisian
+proletariat during the days of 1848 but it stalks about as a spectre throughout
+the following acts of the drama. The Democratic Republic next makes its bow; it
+goes out in a fizzle on June 13, 1849, with its runaway small traders; but, on
+fleeing, it scatters behind it all the more bragging announcements of what it
+means do to. The Parliamentary Republic, together with the bourgeoisie, then
+appropriates the whole stage; it lives its life to the full extent of its
+being; but the 2d of December, 1851, buries it under the terror-stricken cry of
+the allied royalists: &ldquo;Long live the Republic!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The French bourgeoisie reared up against the reign of the working
+proletariat;&mdash;it brought to power the slum-proletariat, with the chief of
+the &ldquo;Society of December 10&rdquo; at its head. It kept France in
+breathless fear over the prospective terror of &ldquo;red
+anarchy;&rdquo;&mdash;Bonaparte discounted the prospect when, on December 4, he
+had the leading citizens of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Boulevard des
+Italiens shot down from their windows by the grog-inspired &ldquo;Army of
+Order.&rdquo; It made the apotheosis of the sabre; now the sabre rules it. It
+destroyed the revolutionary press;&mdash;now its own press is annihilated. It
+placed public meetings under police surveillance;&mdash;now its own salons are
+subject to police inspection. It disbanded the democratic National
+Guards;&mdash;now its own National Guard is disbanded. It instituted the state
+of siege;&mdash;now itself is made subject thereto. It supplanted the jury by
+military commissions;&mdash;now military commissions supplant its own juries.
+It subjected the education of the people to the parsons&rsquo;
+interests;&mdash;the parsons&rsquo; interests now subject it to their own
+systems. It ordered transportations without trial;&mdash;now itself is
+transported without trial. It suppressed every movement of society with
+physical force;&mdash;now every movement of its own class is suppressed by
+physical force. Out of enthusiasm for the gold bag, it rebelled against its own
+political leaders and writers;&mdash;now, its political leaders and writers are
+set aside, but the gold hag is plundered, after the mouth of the bourgeoisie
+has been gagged and its pen broken. The bourgeoisie tirelessly shouted to the
+revolution, in the language of St. Orsenius to the Christians: &ldquo;Fuge,
+Tace, Quiesce!&rdquo;&mdash;flee, be silent, submit!&mdash;; Bonaparte shouts
+to the bourgeoisie: &ldquo;Fuge, Tace, Oniesce!&rdquo;&mdash;flee, be silent,
+submit!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The French bourgeoisie had long since solved Napoleon&rsquo;s dilemma:
+&ldquo;Dans cinquante ans l&rsquo;Europe sera republicaine ou cosaque.&rdquo;
+[#1 Within fifty years Europe will be either republican or Cossack.] It found
+the solution in the &ldquo;republique cosaque.&rdquo; [#2 Cossack republic.] No
+Circe distorted with wicked charms the work of art of the bourgeois republic
+into a monstrosity. That republic lost nothing but the appearance of decency.
+The France of to-day was ready-made within the womb of the Parliamentary
+republic. All that was wanted was a bayonet thrust, in order that the bubble
+burst, and the monster leap forth to sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why did not the Parisian proletariat rise after the 2d of December?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The downfall of the bourgeoisie was as yet merely decreed; the decree was not
+yet executed. Any earnest uprising of the proletariat would have forthwith
+revived this bourgeoisie, would have brought on its reconciliation with the
+army, and would have insured a second June rout to the workingmen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On December 4, the proletariat was incited to fight by Messrs. Bourgeois &amp;
+Small-Trader. On the evening of that day, several legions of the National Guard
+promised to appear armed and uniformed on the place of battle. This arose from
+the circumstance that Messrs. Bourgeois &amp; Small-Trader had got wind that,
+in one of his decrees of December 2, Bonaparte abolished the secret ballot, and
+ordered them to enter the words &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; and &ldquo;No&rdquo; after
+their names in the official register. Bonaparte took alarm at the stand taken
+on December 4. During the night he caused placards to be posted on all the
+street corners of Paris, announcing the restoration of the secret ballot.
+Messrs. Bourgeois &amp; Small-Trader believed they had gained their point. The
+absentees, the next morning, were Messieurs. Bourgeois &amp; Small-Trader.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the night of December 1 and 2, the Parisian proletariat was robbed of
+its leaders and chiefs of barricades by a raid of Bonaparte&rsquo;s. An army
+without officers, disinclined by the recollections of June, 1848 and 1849, and
+May, 1850, to fight under the banner of the Montagnards, it left to its
+vanguard, the secret societies, the work of saving the insurrectionary honor of
+Paris, which the bourgeoisie had yielded to the soldiery so submissively that
+Bonaparte was later justified in disarming the National Guard upon the scornful
+ground that he feared their arms would be used against themselves by the
+Anarchists!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;C&rsquo;est Ic triomphe complet et definitif du Socialism!&rdquo; Thus
+did Guizot characterize the 2d of December. But, although the downfall of the
+parliamentary republic carries with it the germ of the triumph of the
+proletarian revolution, its immediate and tangible result was the triumph of
+Bonaparte over parliament, of the Executive over the Legislative power, of
+force without phrases over the force of phrases. In the parliament, the nation
+raised its collective will to the dignity of law, i.e., it raised the law of
+the ruling class to the dignity of its collective will. Before the Executive
+power, the nation abdicates all will of its own, and submits to the orders of
+an outsider of Authority. In contrast with the Legislative, the Executive power
+expresses the heteronomy of the nation in contrast with its autonomy.
+Accordingly, France seems to have escaped the despotism of a class only in
+order to fall under the despotism of an individual, under the authority, at
+that of an individual without authority The struggle seems to settle down to
+the point where all classes drop down on their knees, equally impotent and
+equally dumb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the same, the revolution is thoroughgoing. It still is on its passage
+through purgatory. It does its work methodically: Down to December 2, 1851, it
+had fulfilled one-half of its programme, it now fulfils the other half. It
+first ripens the power of the Legislature into fullest maturity in order to be
+able to overthrow it. Now that it has accomplished that, the revolution
+proceeds to ripen the power of the Executive into equal maturity; it reduces
+this power to its purest expression; isolates it; places it before itself as
+the sole subject for reproof in order to concentrate against it all the
+revolutionary forces of destruction. When the revolution shall have
+accomplished this second part of its preliminary programme, Europe will jump up
+from her seat to exclaim: &ldquo;Well hast thou grubbed, old mole!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Executive power, with its tremendous bureaucratic and military
+organization; with its wide-spreading and artificial machinery of
+government&mdash;an army of office-holders, half a million strong, together
+with a military force of another million men&mdash;; this fearful body of
+parasites, that coils itself like a snake around French society, stopping all
+its pores, originated at the time of the absolute monarchy, along with the
+decline of feudalism, which it helped to hasten. The princely privileges of the
+landed proprietors and cities were transformed into so many at-tributes of the
+Executive power; the feudal dignitaries into paid office-holders; and the
+confusing design of conflicting medieval seigniories, into the well regulated
+plan of a government, work is subdivided and centralized as in the factory. The
+first French revolution, having as a mission to sweep away all local,
+territorial, urban and provincial special privileges, with the object of
+establishing the civic unity of the nation, was hound to develop what the
+absolute monarchy had begun&mdash;the work of centralization, together with the
+range, the attributes and the menials of government. Napoleon completed this
+governmental machinery. The Legitimist and the July Monarchy contribute nothing
+thereto, except a greater subdivision of labor, that grew in the same measure
+as the division and subdivision of labor within bourgeois society raised new
+groups and interests, i.e., new material for the administration of government.
+Each Common interest was in turn forthwith removed from society, set up against
+it as a higher Collective interest, wrested from the individual activity of the
+members of society, and turned into a subject for governmental administration,
+from the bridges, the school house and the communal property of a village
+community, up to the railroads, the national wealth and the national University
+of France. Finally, the parliamentary republic found itself, in its struggle
+against the revolution, compelled, with its repressive measures, to strengthen
+the means and the centralization of the government. Each overturn, instead of
+breaking up, carried this machine to higher perfection. The parties, that
+alternately wrestled for supremacy, looked upon the possession of this
+tremendous governmental structure as the principal spoils of their victory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, under the absolute monarchy, was only the means whereby the first
+revolution, and under Napoleon, to prepare the class rule of the bourgeoisie;
+under the restoration, under Louis Philippe, and under the parliamentary
+republic, it was the instrument of the ruling class, however eagerly this class
+strained after autocracy. Not before the advent of the second Bonaparte does
+the government seem to have made itself fully independent. The machinery of
+government has by this time so thoroughly fortified itself against society,
+that the chief of the &ldquo;Society of December 10&rdquo; is thought good
+enough to be at its head; a fortune-hunter, run in from abroad, is raised on
+its shield by a drunken soldiery, bought by himself with liquor and sausages,
+and whom he is forced ever again to throw sops to. Hence the timid despair, the
+sense of crushing humiliation and degradation that oppresses the breast of
+France and makes her to choke. She feels dishonored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet the French Government does not float in the air. Bonaparte represents
+an economic class, and that the most numerous in the commonweal of
+France&mdash;the Allotment Farmer. [#4 The first French Revolution distributed
+the bulk of the territory of France, held at the time by the feudal lords, in
+small patches among the cultivators of the soil. This allotment of lands
+created the French farmer class.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the Bourbons are the dynasty of large landed property, as the Orleans are
+the dynasty of money, so are the Bonapartes the dynasty of the farmer, i.e. of
+the French masses. Not the Bonaparte, who threw himself at the feet of the
+bourgeois parliament, but the Bonaparte, who swept away the bourgeois
+parliament, is the elect of this farmer class. For three years the cities had
+succeeded in falsifying the meaning of the election of December 10, and in
+cheating the farmer out of the restoration of the Empire. The election of
+December 10, 1848, is not carried out until the &ldquo;coup d&rsquo;etat&rdquo;
+of December 2, 1851.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The allotment farmers are an immense mass, whose individual members live in
+identical conditions, without, however, entering into manifold relations with
+one another. Their method of production isolates them from one another, instead
+of drawing them into mutual intercourse. This isolation is promoted by the poor
+means of communication in France, together with the poverty of the farmers
+themselves. Their field of production, the small allotment of land that each
+cultivates, allows no room for a division of labor, and no opportunity for the
+application of science; in other words, it shuts out manifoldness of
+development, diversity of talent, and the luxury of social relations. Every
+single farmer family is almost self-sufficient; itself produces directly the
+greater part of what it consumes; and it earns its livelihood more by means of
+an interchange with nature than by intercourse with society. We have the
+allotted patch of land, the farmer and his family; alongside of that another
+allotted patch of land, another farmer and another family. A bunch of these
+makes up a village; a bunch of villages makes up a Department. Thus the large
+mass of the French nation is constituted by the simple addition of equal
+magnitudes&mdash;much as a bag with potatoes constitutes a potato-bag. In so
+far as millions of families live under economic conditions that separate their
+mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the other
+classes, and that place them in an attitude hostile toward the latter, they
+constitute a class; in so far as there exists only a local connection among
+these farmers, a connection which the individuality and exclusiveness of their
+interests prevent from generating among them any unity of interest, national
+connections, and political organization, they do not constitute a class.
+Consequently, they are unable to assert their class interests in their own
+name, be it by a parliament or by convention. They can not represent one
+another, they must themselves be represented. Their representative must at the
+same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited
+governmental power, that protects them from above, bestows rain and sunshine
+upon them. Accordingly, the political influence of the allotment farmer finds
+its ultimate expression in an Executive power that subjugates the commonweal to
+its own autocratic will.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Historic tradition has given birth to the superstition among the French farmers
+that a man named Napoleon would restore to them all manner of glory. Now, then,
+an individual turns I up, who gives himself out as that man because, obedient
+to the &ldquo;Code Napoleon,&rdquo; which provides that &ldquo;La recherche de
+la paternite est interdite,&rdquo; [#5 The inquiry into paternity is
+forbidden.] he carries the name of Napoleon. [#6 L. N. Bonaparte is said to
+have been an illegitimate son.] After a vagabondage of twenty years, and a
+series of grotesque adventures, the myth is verified, and that man becomes the
+Emperor of the French. The rooted thought of the Nephew becomes a reality
+because it coincided with the rooted thought of the most numerous class among
+the French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; I shall be objected to, &ldquo;what about the farmers&rsquo;
+uprisings over half France, the raids of the Army upon the farmers, the
+wholesale imprisonment and transportation of farmers?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indeed, since Louis XIV., France has not experienced such persecutions of the
+farmer on the ground of his demagogic machinations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this should be well understood: The Bonaparte dynasty does not represent
+the revolutionary, it represents the conservative farmer; it does not represent
+the farmer, who presses beyond his own economic conditions, his little
+allotment of land it represents him rather who would confirm these conditions;
+it does not represent the rural population, that, thanks to its own inherent
+energy, wishes, jointly with the cities to overthrow the old order, it
+represents, on the contrary, the rural population that, hide-bound in the old
+order, seeks to see itself, together with its allotments, saved and favored by
+the ghost of the Empire; it represents, not the intelligence, but the
+superstition of the farmer; not his judgment, but his bias; not his future, but
+his past; not his modern Cevennes; [#7 The Cevennes were the theater of the
+most numerous revolutionary uprisings of the farmer class.] but his modern
+Vendee. [#8 La Vendee was the theater of protracted reactionary uprisings of
+the farmer class under the first Revolution.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The three years&rsquo; severe rule of the parliamentary republic had freed a
+part of the French farmers from the Napoleonic illusion, and, though even only
+superficially; had revolutionized them The bourgeoisie threw them, however,
+violently back every time that they set themselves in motion. Under the
+parliamentary republic, the modern wrestled with the traditional consciousness
+of the French farmer. The process went on in the form of a continuous struggle
+between the school teachers and the parsons;&mdash;the bourgeoisie knocked the
+school teachers down. For the first time, the farmer made an effort to take an
+independent stand in the government of the country; this manifested itself in
+the prolonged conflicts of the Mayors with the Prefects;&mdash;the bourgeoisie
+deposed the Mayors. Finally, during period of the parliamentary republic, the
+farmers of several localities rose against their own product, the
+Army;&mdash;the bourgeoisie punished them with states of siege and executions.
+And this is the identical bourgeoisie, that now howls over the &ldquo;stupidity
+of the masses,&rdquo; over the &ldquo;vile multitude,&rdquo; which, it claims,
+betrayed it to Bonaparte. Itself has violently fortified the imperialism of the
+farmer class; it firmly maintained the conditions that Constitute the
+birth-place of this farmer-religion. Indeed, the bourgeoisie has every reason
+to fear the stupidity of the masses&mdash;so long as they remain conservative;
+and their intelligence&mdash;so soon as they become revolutionary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the revolts that took place after the &ldquo;coup d&rsquo;etat&rdquo; a part
+of the French farmers protested, arms in hand, against their own vote of
+December 10, 1848. The school house had, since 1848, sharpened their wits. But
+they had bound themselves over to the nether world of history, and history kept
+them to their word. Moreover, the majority of this population was still so full
+of prejudices that, just in the &ldquo;reddest&rdquo; Departments, it voted
+openly for Bonaparte. The National Assembly prevented, as it thought, this
+population from walking; the farmers now snapped the fetters which the cities
+had struck upon the will of the country districts. In some places they even
+indulged the grotesque hallucination of a &ldquo;Convention together with a
+Napoleon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the first revolution had converted the serf farmers into freeholders,
+Napoleon fixed and regulated the conditions under which, unmolested, they could
+exploit the soil of France, that had just fallen into their hands, and expiate
+the youthful passion for property. But that which now bears the French farmer
+down is that very allotment of land, it is the partition of the soil, the form
+of ownership, which Napoleon had consolidated. These are the material condition
+that turned French feudal peasant into a small or allotment farmer, and
+Napoleon into an Emperor. Two generations have sufficed to produce the
+inevitable result the progressive deterioration of agriculture, and the
+progressive encumbering of the agriculturist The &ldquo;Napoleonic&rdquo; form
+of ownership, which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century was the
+condition for the emancipation and enrichment of the French rural population,
+has, in the course of the century, developed into the law of their enslavement
+and pauperism. Now, then, this very law is the first of the &ldquo;idees
+Napoleoniennes,&rdquo; which the second Bonaparte must uphold. If he still
+shares with the farmers the illusion of seeking, not in the system of the small
+allotment itself, but outside of that system, in the influence of secondary
+conditions, the cause of their ruin, his experiments are bound to burst like
+soap-bubbles against the modern system of production.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The economic development of the allotment system has turned bottom upward the
+relation of the farmer to the other classes of society. Under Napoleon, the
+parceling out of the agricultural lands into small allotments supplemented in
+the country the free competition and the incipient large production of the
+cities. The farmer class was the ubiquitous protest against the aristocracy of
+land, just then overthrown. The roots that the system of small allotments cast
+into the soil of France, deprived feudalism of all nutriment. Its
+boundary-posts constituted the natural buttress of the bourgeoisie against
+every stroke of the old overlords. But in the course of the nineteenth century,
+the City Usurer stepped into the shoes of the Feudal Lord, the Mortgage
+substituted the Feudal Duties formerly yielded by the soil, bourgeois Capital
+took the place of the aristocracy of Landed Property. The former allotments are
+now only a pretext that allows the capitalist class to draw profit, interest
+and rent from agricultural lands, and to leave to the farmer himself the task
+of seeing to it that he knock out his wages. The mortgage indebtedness that
+burdens the soil of France imposes upon the French farmer class they payment of
+an interest as great as the annual interest on the whole British national debt.
+In this slavery of capital, whither its development drives it irresistibly, the
+allotment system has transformed the mass of the French nation into
+troglodytes. Sixteen million farmers (women and children included), house in
+hovels most of which have only one opening, some two, and the few most favored
+ones three. Windows are to a house what the five senses are to the head. The
+bourgeois social order, which, at the beginning of the century, placed the
+State as a sentinel before the newly instituted allotment, and that manured
+this with laurels, has become a vampire that sucks out its heart-blood and its
+very brain, and throws it into the alchemist&rsquo;s pot of capital. The
+&ldquo;Code Napoleon&rdquo; is now but the codex of execution, of
+sheriff&rsquo;s sales and of intensified taxation. To the four million
+(children, etc., included) official paupers, vagabonds, criminals and
+prostitutes, that France numbers, must be added five million souls who hover
+over the precipice of life, and either sojourn in the country itself, or float
+with their rags and their children from the country to the cities, and from the
+cities back to the country. Accordingly, the interests of the farmers are no
+longer, as under Napoleon, in harmony but in conflict with the interests of the
+bourgeoisie, i.e., with capital; they find their natural allies and leaders
+among the urban proletariat, whose mission is the overthrow of the bourgeois
+social order. But the &ldquo;strong and unlimited government&rdquo;&mdash;and
+this is the second of the &ldquo;idees Napoleoniennes,&rdquo; which the second
+Napoleon has to carried out&mdash;, has for its mission the forcible defence of
+this very &ldquo;material&rdquo; social order, a &ldquo;material order&rdquo;
+that furnishes the slogan in Bonaparte&rsquo;s proclamations against the
+farmers in revolt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Along with the mortgage, imposed by capital upon the farmer&rsquo;s allotment,
+this is burdened by taxation. Taxation is the fountain of life to the
+bureaucracy, the Army, the parsons and the court, in short to the whole
+apparatus of the Executive power. A strong government, and heavy taxes are
+identical. The system of ownership, involved in the system of allotments lends
+itself by nature for the groundwork of a powerful and numerous bureaucracy: it
+produces an even level of conditions and of persons over the whole surface of
+the country; it, therefore, allows the exercise of an even influence upon all
+parts of this even mass from a high central point downwards: it annihilates the
+aristocratic gradations between the popular masses and the Government; it,
+consequently, calls from all sides for the direct intervention of the
+Government and for the intervention of the latter&rsquo;s immediate organs;
+and, finally, it produces an unemployed excess of population, that finds no
+room either in the country or in the cities, that, consequently, snatches after
+public office as a sort of dignified alms, and provokes the creation of further
+offices. With the new markets, which he opened at the point of the bayonet, and
+with the plunder of the continent, Napoleon returned to the farmer class with
+interest the taxes wrung from them. These taxes were then a goad to the
+industry of the farmer, while now, on the contrary, they rob his industry of
+its last source of support, and completely sap his power to resist poverty.
+Indeed, an enormous bureaucracy, richly gallooned and well fed is that
+&ldquo;idee Napoleonienne&rdquo; that above all others suits the requirements
+of the second Bonaparte. How else should it be, seeing he is forced to raise
+alongside of the actual classes of society, an artificial class, to which the
+maintenance of his own regime must be a knife-and-fork question? One of his
+first financial operations was, accordingly, the raising of the salaries of the
+government employees to their former standard and the creation of new
+sinecures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another &ldquo;idee Napoleonienne&rdquo; is the rule of the parsons as an
+instrument of government. But while the new-born allotment, in harmony with
+society, in its dependence upon the powers of nature, and in its subordination
+to the authority that protected it from above, was naturally religious, the
+debt-broken allotment, on the contrary, at odds with society and authority, and
+driven beyond its own narrow bounds, becomes as naturally irreligious. Heaven
+was quite a pretty gift thrown in with the narrow strip of land that had just
+been won, all the more as it makes the weather; it, however, becomes an insult
+from the moment it is forced upon the farmer as a substitute for his allotment.
+Then the parson appears merely as the anointed blood-hound of the earthly
+police,&mdash;yet another &ldquo;idee Napoleonienne.&rdquo; The expedition
+against Rome will next time take place in France, but in a reverse sense from
+that of M. de Montalembert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, the culminating point of the &ldquo;idees Napoleoniennes&rdquo; is the
+preponderance of the Army. The Army was the &ldquo;point of honor&rdquo; with
+the allotment farmers: it was themselves turned into masters, defending abroad
+their newly established property, glorifying their recently conquered
+nationality, plundering and revolutionizing the world. The uniform was their
+State costume; war was their poetry; the allotment, expanded and rounded up in
+their phantasy, was the fatherland; and patriotism became the ideal form of
+property. But the foe, against whom the French farmer must now defend his
+property, are not the Cossacks, they are the sheriffs and the tax collectors.
+The allotment no longer lies in the so-called fatherland, but in the register
+of mortgages. The Army itself no longer is the flower of the youth of the
+farmers, it is the swamp-blossom of the slum-proletariat of the farmer class.
+It consists of &ldquo;remplacants,&rdquo; substitutes, just as the second
+Bonaparte himself is but a &ldquo;remplacant,&rdquo; a substitute, for
+Napoleon. Its feats of heroism are now performed in raids instituted against
+farmers and in the service of the police;&mdash;and when the internal
+contradictions of his own system shall drive the chief of the &ldquo;Society of
+December 10&rdquo; across the French frontier, that Army will, after a few
+bandit-raids, gather no laurels but only hard knocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is evident that all the &ldquo;idees Napoleoniennes&rdquo; are the ideas of
+the undeveloped and youthfully fresh allotment; they are an absurdity for the
+allotment that now survives. They are only the hallucinations of its death
+struggle; words turned to hollow phrases, spirits turned to spooks. But this
+parody of the Empire was requisite in order to free the mass of the French
+nation from the weight of tradition, and to elaborate sharply the contrast
+between Government and Society. Along with the progressive decay of the
+allotment, the governmental structure, reared upon it, breaks down. The
+centralization of Government, required by modern society, rises only upon the
+ruins of the military and bureaucratic governmental machinery that was forged
+in contrast to feudalism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The conditions of the French farmers&rsquo; class solve to us the riddle of the
+general elections of December 20 and 21, that led the second Bonaparte to the
+top of Sinai, not to receive, but to decree laws.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bourgeoisie had now, manifestly, no choice but to elect Bonaparte. When at
+the Council of Constance, the puritans complained of the sinful life of the
+Popes, and moaned about the need of a reform in morals, Cardinal d&rsquo;Ailly
+thundered into their faces: &ldquo;Only the devil in his Own person can now
+save the Catholic Church, and you demand angels.&rdquo; So, likewise, did the
+French bourgeoisie cry out after the &ldquo;coup d&rsquo;etat&rdquo;:
+&ldquo;Only the chief of the &lsquo;Society of December 10&rsquo; can now save
+bourgeois society, only theft can save property, only perjury religion, only
+bastardy the family, only disorder order!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bonaparte, as autocratic Executive power, fulfills his mission to secure
+&ldquo;bourgeois order.&rdquo; But the strength of this bourgeois order lies in
+the middle class. He feels himself the representative of the middle class, and
+issues his decrees in that sense. Nevertheless, he is something only because he
+has broken the political power of this class, and daily breaks it anew. Hence
+he feels himself the adversary of the political and the literary power of the
+middle class. But, by protecting their material, he nourishes anew their
+political power. Consequently, the cause must be kept alive, but the result,
+wherever it manifests itself, swept out of existence. But this procedure is
+impossible without slight mistakings of causes and effects, seeing that both,
+in their mutual action and reaction, lose their distinctive marks. Thereupon,
+new decrees, that blur the line of distinction. Bonaparte, furthermore, feels
+himself, as against the bourgeoisie, the representative of the farmer and the
+people in general, who, within bourgeois society, is to render the lower
+classes of society happy. To this end, new decrees, intended to exploit the
+&ldquo;true Socialists,&rdquo; together with their governmental wisdom. But,
+above all, Bonaparte feels himself the chief of the &ldquo;Society of December
+10,&rdquo; the representative of the slum-proletariat, to which he himself, his
+immediate surroundings, his Government, and his army alike belong, the main
+object with all of whom is to be good to themselves, and draw Californian
+tickets out of the national treasury. An he affirms his chieftainship of the
+&ldquo;Society of December 10&rdquo; with decrees, without decrees, and despite
+decrees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This contradictory mission of the man explains the contradictions of his own
+Government, and that confused groping about, that now seeks to win, then to
+humiliate now this class and then that, and finishes by arraying against itself
+all the classes; whose actual insecurity constitutes a highly comical contrast
+with the imperious, categoric style of the Government acts, copied closely from
+the Uncle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Industry and commerce, i.e., the business of the middle class, are to be made
+to blossom in hot-house style under the &ldquo;strong Government.&rdquo; Loans
+for a number of railroad grants. But the Bonapartist slum-proletariat is to
+enrich itself. Peculation is carried on with railroad concessions on the Bourse
+by the initiated; but no capital is forthcoming for the railroads. The bank
+then pledges itself to make advances upon railroad stock; but the bank is
+itself to be exploited; hence, it must be cajoled; it is released of the
+obligation to publish its reports weekly. Then follows a leonine treaty between
+the bank and the Government. The people are to be occupied: public works are
+ordered; but the public works raise the tax rates upon the people; thereupon
+the taxes are reduced by an attack upon the national bond-holders through the
+conversion of the five per cent &ldquo;rentes&rdquo; [#9 The name of the French
+national bonds.] into four-and-halves. Yet the middle class must again be
+tipped: to this end, the tax on wine is doubled for the people, who buy it at
+retail, and is reduced to one-half for the middle class, that drink it at
+wholesale. Genuine labor organizations are dissolved, but promises are made of
+future wonders to accrue from organization. The farmers are to be helped:
+mortgage-banks are set up that must promote the indebtedness; of the farmer and
+the concentration of property but again, these banks are to be utilized
+especially to the end of squeezing money out of the confiscated estates of the
+House of Orleans; no capitalist will listen to this scheme, which, moreover, is
+not mentioned in the decree; the mortgage bank remains a mere decree, etc.,
+etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes;
+but he can give to none without taking from the others. As was said of the Duke
+of Guise, at the time of the Fronde, that he was the most obliging man in
+France because he had converted all his estates into bonds upon himself for his
+Parisians, so would Napoleon like to be the most obliging man in France and
+convert all property and all labor of France into a personal bond upon himself.
+He would like to steal the whole of France to make a present thereof to France,
+or rather to be able to purchase France back again with French money;&mdash;as
+chief of the &ldquo;Society of December 10,&rdquo; he must purchase that which
+is to be his. All the State institutions, the Senate, the Council of State, the
+Legislature, the Legion of Honor, the Soldiers&rsquo; decorations, the public
+baths, the public buildings, the railroads, the General Staff of the National
+Guard, exclusive of the rank and file, the confiscated estates of the House of
+Orleans,&mdash;all are converted into institutions for purchase and sale. Every
+place in the Army and the machinery of Government becomes a purchasing power.
+The most important thing, however, in this process, whereby France is taken to
+be given back to herself, are the percentages that, in the transfer, drop into
+the hands of the chief and the members of the &ldquo;Society of December
+10.&rdquo; The witticisms with which the Countess of L., the mistress of de
+Morny, characterized the confiscations of the Orleanist estates:
+&ldquo;C&rsquo;est le premier vol de l&rsquo;aigle,&rdquo; [#10 &ldquo;It is
+the first flight of the eagle&rdquo; The French word &ldquo;vol&rdquo; means
+theft as well as flight.] fits every fight of the eagle that is rather a crow.
+He himself and his followers daily call out to themselves, like the Italian
+Carthusian monk in the legend does to the miser, who displayfully counted the
+goods on which he could live for many years to come: &ldquo;Tu fai conto sopra
+i beni, bisogna prima far il conto sopra gli anni.&rdquo; [#11 &ldquo;You count
+your property you should rather count the years left to you.&rdquo;] In order
+not to make a mistake in the years, they count by minutes. A crowd of fellows,
+of the best among whom all that can be said is that one knows not whence he
+comes&mdash;a noisy, restless &ldquo;Boheme,&rdquo; greedy after plunder, that
+crawls about in gallooned frocks with the same grotesque dignity as
+Soulonque&rsquo;s [#12 Soulonque was the negro Emperor of the short-lived negro
+Empire of Hayti.] Imperial dignitaries&mdash;, thronged the court crowded the
+ministries, and pressed upon the head of the Government and of the Army. One
+can picture to himself this upper crust of the &ldquo;Society of December
+10&rdquo; by considering that Veron Crevel [#13 Crevel is a character of
+Balzac, drawn after Dr. Veron, the proprietor of the
+&ldquo;Constitutional&rdquo; newspaper, as a type of the dissolute Parisian
+Philistine.] is their preacher of morality, and Granier de Cassagnac their
+thinker. When Guizot, at the time he was Minister, employed this Granier on an
+obscure sheet against the dynastic opposition, he used to praise him with the
+term: &ldquo;C&rsquo;est le roi des droles.&rdquo; [#14 &ldquo;He Is the king
+of the clowns.&rdquo;] It were a mistake to recall the days of the Regency or
+of Louis XV. by the court and the kit of Louis Bonaparte&rsquo;s: &ldquo;Often
+did France have a mistress-administration, but never yet an administration of
+kept men.&rdquo; [#15 Madame de Girardin.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Harassed by the contradictory demands of his situation, and compelled, like a
+sleight-of-hands performer, to keep, by means of constant surprises, the eyes
+of the public riveted upon himself as the substitute of Napoleon, compelled,
+consequently, everyday to accomplish a sort of &ldquo;coup&rdquo; on a small
+scale, Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois social system into disorder; he
+broaches everything that seemed unbroachable by the revolution of 1848; he
+makes one set people patient under the revolution and another anxious for it;
+he produces anarchy itself in the name of order by rubbing off from the whole
+machinery of Government the veneer of sanctity, by profaning it, by rendering
+it at once nauseating and laughable. He rehearses in Paris the cult of the
+sacred coat of Trier with the cult of the Napoleonic Imperial mantle. But when
+the Imperial Mantle shall have finally fallen upon the shoulders of Louis
+Bonaparte, then will also the iron statue of Napoleon drop down from the top of
+the Vendome column. [#16 A prophecy that a few years later, after
+Bonaparte&rsquo;s coronation as Emperor, was literally fulfilled. By order of
+Emperor Louis Napoleon, the military statue of the Napoleon that originally
+surmounted the Vendome was taken down and replaced by one of first Napoleon in
+imperial robes.]
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE ***</div>
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diff --git a/old/old/1346.txt b/old/old/1346.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/old/old/1346.txt
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+Project Gutenberg's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, by Karl Marx
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
+
+Author: Karl Marx
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2006 [EBook #1346]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOUIS BONAPARTE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE
+
+by Karl Marx
+
+
+
+
+Translator's Preface
+
+
+"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" is one of Karl Marx' most
+profound and most brilliant monographs. It may be considered the best
+work extant on the philosophy of history, with an eye especially upon
+the history of the Movement of the Proletariat, together with the
+bourgeois and other manifestations that accompany the same, and the
+tactics that such conditions dictate.
+
+The recent populist uprising; the more recent "Debs Movement"; the
+thousand and one utopian and chimerical notions that are flaring up; the
+capitalist maneuvers; the hopeless, helpless grasping after straws, that
+characterize the conduct of the bulk of the working class; all of these,
+together with the empty-headed, ominous figures that are springing into
+notoriety for a time and have their day, mark the present period of
+the Labor Movement in the nation a critical one. The best information
+acquirable, the best mental training obtainable are requisite to steer
+through the existing chaos that the death-tainted social system of today
+creates all around us. To aid in this needed information and mental
+training, this instructive work is now made accessible to English
+readers, and is commended to the serious study of the serious.
+
+The teachings contained in this work are hung on an episode in recent
+French history. With some this fact may detract of its value. A
+pedantic, supercilious notion is extensively abroad among us that we
+are an "Anglo Saxon" nation; and an equally pedantic, supercilious
+habit causes many to look to England for inspiration, as from a racial
+birthplace Nevertheless, for weal or for woe, there is no such thing
+extant as "Anglo-Saxon"--of all nations, said to be "Anglo-Saxon,"
+in the United States least. What we still have from England, much
+as appearances may seem to point the other way, is not of our
+bone-and-marrow, so to speak, but rather partakes of the nature of
+"importations." We are no more English on account of them than we are
+Chinese because we all drink tea.
+
+Of all European nations, France is the on to which we come nearest.
+Besides its republican form of government--the directness of its
+history, the unity of its actions, the sharpness that marks its internal
+development, are all characteristics that find their parallel her best,
+and vice versa. In all essentials the study of modern French history,
+particularly when sketched by such a master hand as Marx', is the most
+valuable one for the acquisition of that historic, social and biologic
+insight that our country stands particularly in need of, and that will
+be inestimable during the approaching critical days.
+
+For the assistance of those who, unfamiliar with the history of France,
+may be confused by some of the terms used by Marx, the following
+explanations may prove aidful:
+
+On the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9th), the post-revolutionary development of
+affairs in France enabled the first Napoleon to take a step that led
+with inevitable certainty to the imperial throne. The circumstance
+that fifty and odd years later similar events aided his nephew, Louis
+Bonaparte, to take a similar step with a similar result, gives the name
+to this work--"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte."
+
+As to the other terms and allusions that occur, the following sketch
+will suffice:
+
+Upon the overthrow of the first Napoleon came the restoration of the
+Bourbon throne (Louis XVIII, succeeded by Charles X). In July, 1830, an
+uprising of the upper tier of the bourgeoisie, or capitalist class--the
+aristocracy of finance--overthrew the Bourbon throne, or landed
+aristocracy, and set up the throne of Orleans, a younger branch of the
+house of Bourbon, with Louis Philippe as king. From the month in which
+this revolution occurred, Louis Philippe's monarchy is called the "July
+Monarchy." In February, 1848, a revolt of a lower tier of the capitalist
+class--the industrial bourgeoisie--against the aristocracy of finance,
+in turn dethroned Louis Philippe. The affair, also named from the month
+in which it took place, is the "February Revolution". "The Eighteenth
+Brumaire" starts with that event.
+
+Despite the inapplicableness to our affairs of the political names and
+political leadership herein described, both these names and leaderships
+are to such an extent the products of an economic-social development
+that has here too taken place with even greater sharpens, and they have
+their present or threatened counterparts here so completely, that, by
+the light of this work of Marx', we are best enabled to understand our
+own history, to know whence we came, and whither we are going and how to
+conduct ourselves.
+
+D.D.L. New York, Sept. 12, 1897
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+
+Hegel says somewhere that that great historic facts and personages
+recur twice. He forgot to add: "Once as tragedy, and again as farce."
+Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the "Mountain" of
+1848-51 for the "Mountain" of 1793-05, the Nephew for the Uncle. The
+identical caricature marks also the conditions under which the second
+edition of the eighteenth Brumaire is issued.
+
+Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole
+cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out
+of such as he finds close at hand. The tradition of all past generations
+weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living. At the very time when
+men appear engaged in revolutionizing things and themselves, in bringing
+about what never was before, at such very epochs of revolutionary crisis
+do they anxiously conjure up into their service the spirits of the past,
+assume their names, their battle cries, their costumes to enact a new
+historic scene in such time-honored disguise and with such borrowed
+language Thus did Luther masquerade as the Apostle Paul; thus did the
+revolution of 1789-1814 drape itself alternately as Roman Republic and
+as Roman Empire; nor did the revolution of 1818 know what better to do
+than to parody at one time the year 1789, at another the revolutionary
+traditions of 1793-95 Thus does the beginner, who has acquired a new
+language, keep on translating it back into his own mother tongue; only
+then has he grasped the spirit of the new language and is able freely to
+express himself therewith when he moves in it without recollections of
+the old, and has forgotten in its use his own hereditary tongue.
+
+When these historic configurations of the dead past are closely observed
+a striking difference is forthwith noticeable. Camille Desmoulins,
+Danton, Robespierre, St. Juste, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the
+parties and the masses of the old French revolution, achieved in Roman
+costumes and with Roman phrases the task of their time: the emancipation
+and the establishment of modern bourgeois society. One set knocked to
+pieces the old feudal groundwork and mowed down the feudal heads that
+had grown upon it; Napoleon brought about, within France, the conditions
+under which alone free competition could develop, the partitioned lands
+be exploited the nation's unshackled powers of industrial production be
+utilized; while, beyond the French frontier, he swept away everywhere
+the establishments of feudality, so far as requisite, to furnish the
+bourgeois social system of France with fit surroundings of the European
+continent, and such as were in keeping with the times. Once the new
+social establishment was set on foot, the antediluvian giants vanished,
+and, along with them, the resuscitated Roman world--the Brutuses,
+Gracchi, Publicolas, the Tribunes, the Senators, and Caesar himself.
+In its sober reality, bourgeois society had produced its own true
+interpretation in the Says, Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants
+and Guizots; its real generals sat behind the office desks; and the
+mutton-head of Louis XVIII was its political lead. Wholly absorbed in
+the production of wealth and in the peaceful fight of competition, this
+society could no longer understand that the ghosts of the days of Rome
+had watched over its cradle. And yet, lacking in heroism as bourgeois
+society is, it nevertheless had stood in need of heroism, of
+self-sacrifice, of terror, of civil war, and of bloody battle fields
+to bring it into the world. Its gladiators found in the stern
+classic traditions of the Roman republic the ideals and the form, the
+self-deceptions, that they needed in order to conceal from themselves
+the narrow bourgeois substance of their own struggles, and to keep their
+passion up to the height of a great historic tragedy. Thus, at another
+stage of development a century before, did Cromwell and the English
+people draw from the Old Testament the language, passions and illusions
+for their own bourgeois revolution. When the real goal was reached, when
+the remodeling of English society was accomplished, Locke supplanted
+Habakuk.
+
+Accordingly, the reviving of the dead in those revolutions served the
+purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; it
+served the purpose of exaggerating to the imagination the given task,
+not to recoil before its practical solution; it served the purpose of
+rekindling the revolutionary spirit, not to trot out its ghost.
+
+In 1848-51 only the ghost of the old revolution wandered about,
+from Marrast the "Republicain en gaunts jaunes," [#1 Silk-stocking
+republican] who disguised himself in old Bailly, down to the adventurer,
+who hid his repulsively trivial features under the iron death mask
+of Napoleon. A whole people, that imagines it has imparted to itself
+accelerated powers of motion through a revolution, suddenly finds
+itself transferred back to a dead epoch, and, lest there be any mistake
+possible on this head, the old dates turn up again; the old calendars;
+the old names; the old edicts, which long since had sunk to the level of
+the antiquarian's learning; even the old bailiffs, who had long seemed
+mouldering with decay. The nation takes on the appearance of that crazy
+Englishman in Bedlam, who imagines he is living in the days of the
+Pharaohs, and daily laments the hard work that he must do in the
+Ethiopian mines as gold digger, immured in a subterranean prison, with a
+dim lamp fastened on his head, behind him the slave overseer with a long
+whip, and, at the mouths of the mine a mob of barbarous camp servants
+who understand neither the convicts in the mines nor one another,
+because they do not speak a common language. "And all this," cries the
+crazy Englishman, "is demanded of me, the free-born Englishman, in order
+to make gold for old Pharaoh." "In order to pay off the debts of the
+Bonaparte family"--sobs the French nation. The Englishman, so long as
+he was in his senses, could not rid himself of the rooted thought making
+gold. The Frenchmen, so long as they were busy with a revolution,
+could not rid then selves of the Napoleonic memory, as the election
+of December 10th proved. They longed to escape from the dangers of
+revolution back to the flesh pots of Egypt; the 2d of December, 1851 was
+the answer. They have not merely the character of the old Napoleon,
+but the old Napoleon himself-caricatured as he needs must appear in the
+middle of the nineteenth century.
+
+The social revolution of the nineteenth century can not draw its poetry
+from the past, it can draw that only from the future. It cannot start
+upon its work before it has stricken off all superstition concerning
+the past. Former revolutions require historic reminiscences in order
+to intoxicate themselves with their own issues. The revolution of the
+nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to reach
+its issue. With the former, the phrase surpasses the substance; with
+this one, the substance surpasses the phrase.
+
+The February revolution was a surprisal; old society was taken unawares;
+and the people proclaimed this political stroke a great historic act
+whereby the new era was opened. On the 2d of December, the February
+revolution is jockeyed by the trick of a false player, and what is seer
+to be overthrown is no longer the monarchy, but the liberal concessions
+which had been wrung from it by centuries of struggles. Instead of
+society itself having conquered a new point, only the State appears to
+have returned to its oldest form, to the simply brazen rule of the sword
+and the club. Thus, upon the "coup de main" of February, 1848, comes
+the response of the "coup de tete" December, 1851. So won, so lost.
+Meanwhile, the interval did not go by unutilized. During the
+years 1848-1851, French society retrieved in abbreviated, because
+revolutionary, method the lessons and teachings, which--if it was to be
+more than a disturbance of the surface-should have preceded the February
+revolution, had it developed in regular order, by rule, so to say. Now
+French society seems to have receded behind its point of departure; in
+fact, however, it was compelled to first produce its own revolutionary
+point of departure, the situation, circumstances, conditions, under
+which alone the modern revolution is in earnest.
+
+Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, rush onward
+rapidly from success to success, their stage effects outbid one another,
+men and things seem to be set in flaming brilliants, ecstasy is the
+prevailing spirit; but they are short-lived, they reach their climax
+speedily, then society relapses into a long fit of nervous reaction
+before it learns how to appropriate the fruits of its period of feverish
+excitement. Proletarian revolutions, on the contrary, such as those
+of the nineteenth century, criticize themselves constantly; constantly
+interrupt themselves in their own course; come back to what seems to
+have been accomplished, in order to start over anew; scorn with cruel
+thoroughness the half measures, weaknesses and meannesses of their first
+attempts; seem to throw down their adversary only in order to enable
+him to draw fresh strength from the earth, and again, to rise up against
+them in more gigantic stature; constantly recoil in fear before the
+undefined monster magnitude of their own objects--until finally that
+situation is created which renders all retreat impossible, and the
+conditions themselves cry out:
+
+"Hic Rhodus, hic salta!" [#2 Here is Rhodes, leap here! An allusion to
+Aesop's Fables.]
+
+Every observer of average intelligence; even if he failed to follow step
+by step the course of French development, must have anticipated that an
+unheard of fiasco was in store for the revolution. It was enough to hear
+the self-satisfied yelpings of victory wherewith the Messieurs Democrats
+mutually congratulated one another upon the pardons of May 2d, 1852.
+Indeed, May 2d had become a fixed idea in their heads; it had become a
+dogma with them--something like the day on which Christ was to reappear
+and the Millennium to begin had formed in the heads of the Chiliasts.
+Weakness had, as it ever does, taken refuge in the wonderful; it
+believed the enemy was overcome if, in its imagination, it hocus-pocused
+him away; and it lost all sense of the present in the imaginary
+apotheosis of the future, that was at hand, and of the deeds, that it
+had "in petto," but which it did not yet want to bring to the scratch.
+The heroes, who ever seek to refute their established incompetence
+by mutually bestowing their sympathy upon one another and by pulling
+together, had packed their satchels, taken their laurels in advance
+payments and were just engaged in the work of getting discounted "in
+partibus," on the stock exchange, the republics for which, in the
+silence of their unassuming dispositions, they had carefully organized
+the government personnel. The 2d of December struck them like a
+bolt from a clear sky; and the 'peoples, who, in periods of timid
+despondency, gladly allow their hidden fears to be drowned by the
+loudest screamers, will perhaps have become convinced that the days are
+gone by when the cackling of geese could save the Capitol.
+
+The constitution, the national assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue
+and the red republicans, the heroes from Africa, the thunder from
+the tribune, the flash-lightnings from the daily press, the whole
+literature, the political names and the intellectual celebrities, the
+civil and the criminal law, the "liberte', egalite', fraternite',"
+together with the 2d of May 1852--all vanished like a phantasmagoria
+before the ban of one man, whom his enemies themselves do not pronounce
+an adept at witchcraft. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only
+for a moment, to the end that, before the eyes of the whole world, it
+should make its own testament with its own hands, and, in the name of
+the people, declare: "All that exists deserves to perish."
+
+It is not enough to say, as the Frenchmen do, that their nation was
+taken by surprise. A nation, no more than a woman, is excused for the
+unguarded hour when the first adventurer who comes along can do violence
+to her. The riddle is not solved by such shifts, it is only formulated
+in other words. There remains to be explained how a nation of thirty-six
+millions can be surprised by three swindlers, and taken to prison
+without resistance.
+
+Let us recapitulate in general outlines the phases which the French
+revolution of' February 24th, 1848, to December, 1851, ran through.
+
+Three main periods are unmistakable:
+
+First--The February period;
+
+Second--The period of constituting the republic, or of the constitutive
+national assembly (May 4, 1848, to May 29th, 1849);
+
+Third--The period of the constitutional republic, or of the legislative
+national assembly (May 29, 1849, to December 2, 1851).
+
+The first period, from February 24, or the downfall of Louis Philippe,
+to May 4, 1848, the date of the assembling of the constitutive
+assembly--the February period proper--may be designated as the prologue
+of the revolution. It officially expressed its' own character in this,
+that the government which it improvised declared itself "provisional;"
+and, like the government, everything that was broached, attempted, or
+uttered, pronounced itself provisional. Nobody and nothing dared to
+assume the right of permanent existence and of an actual fact. All
+the elements that had prepared or determined the revolution--dynastic
+opposition, republican bourgeoisie, democratic-republican small traders'
+class, social-democratic labor element-all found "provisionally" their
+place in the February government.
+
+It could not be otherwise. The February days contemplated originally
+a reform of the suffrage laws, whereby the area of the politically
+privileged among the property-holding class was to be extended, while
+the exclusive rule of the aristocracy of finance was to be overthrown.
+When however, it came to a real conflict, when the people mounted the
+barricades, when the National Guard stood passive, when the army offered
+no serious resistance, and the kingdom ran away, then the republic
+seemed self-understood. Each party interpreted it in its own sense. Won,
+arms in hand, by the proletariat, they put upon it the stamp of their
+own class, and proclaimed the social republic. Thus the general purpose
+of modern revolutions was indicated, a purpose, however, that stood in
+most singular contradiction to every thing that, with the material at
+hand, with the stage of enlightenment that the masses had reached, and
+under existing circumstances and conditions, could be immediately
+used. On the other hand, the claims of all the other elements, that had
+cooperated in the revolution of February, were recognized by the lion's
+share that they received in the government. Hence, in no period do we
+find a more motley mixture of high-sounding phrases together with
+actual doubt and helplessness; of more enthusiastic reform aspirations,
+together with a more slavish adherence to the old routine; more
+seeming harmony permeating the whole of society together with a deeper
+alienation of its several elements. While the Parisian proletariat
+was still gloating over the sight of the great perspective that had
+disclosed itself to their view, and was indulging in seriously meant
+discussions over the social problems, the old powers of society had
+groomed themselves, had gathered together, had deliberated and found
+an unexpected support in the mass of the nation--the peasants and small
+traders--all of whom threw themselves on a sudden upon the political
+stage, after the barriers of the July monarchy had fallen down.
+
+The second period, from May 4, 1848, to the end of May, 1849, is the
+period of the constitution, of the founding of the bourgeois republic
+immediately after the February days, not only was the dynastic
+opposition surprised by the republicans, and the republicans by
+the Socialists, but all France was surprised by Paris. The national
+assembly, that met on May 4, 1848, to frame a constitution, was the
+outcome of the national elections; it represented the nation. It was a
+living protest against the assumption of the February days, and it was
+intended to bring the results of the revolution back to the bourgeois
+measure. In vain did the proletariat of Paris, which forthwith
+understood the character of this national assembly, endeavor, a few
+days after its meeting; on May 15, to deny its existence by force, to
+dissolve it, to disperse the organic apparition, in which the reacting
+spirit of the nation was threatening them, and thus reduce it back to
+its separate component parts. As is known, the 15th of May had no other
+result than that of removing Blanqui and his associates, i.e. the real
+leaders of the proletarian party, from the public scene for the whole
+period of the cycle which we are here considering.
+
+Upon the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe, only the bourgeois
+republic could follow; that is to say, a limited portion of the
+bourgeoisie having ruled under the name of the king, now the whole
+bourgeoisie was to rule under the name of the people. The demands of the
+Parisian proletariat are utopian tom-fooleries that have to be done away
+with. To this declaration of the constitutional national assembly, the
+Paris proletariat answers with the June insurrection, the most colossal
+event in the history of European civil wars. The bourgeois republic
+won. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the industrial
+bourgeoisie; the middle class; the small traders' class; the army; the
+slums, organized as Guarde Mobile; the intellectual celebrities, the
+parsons' class, and the rural population. On the side of the Parisian
+proletariat stood none but itself. Over 3,000 insurgents were massacred,
+after the victory 15,000 were transported without trial. With this
+defeat, the proletariat steps to the background on the revolutionary
+stage. It always seeks to crowd forward, so soon as the movement seems
+to acquire new impetus, but with ever weaker effort and ever smaller
+results; So soon as any of the above lying layers of society gets into
+revolutionary fermentation, it enters into alliance therewith and thus
+shares all the defeats which the several parties successively suffer.
+But these succeeding blows become ever weaker the more generally they
+are distributed over the whole surface of society. The more important
+leaders of the Proletariat, in its councils, and the press, fall one
+after another victims of the courts, and ever more questionable
+figures step to the front. It partly throws itself it upon doctrinaire
+experiments, "co-operative banking" and "labor exchange" schemes; in
+other words, movements, in which it goes into movements in which it
+gives up the task of revolutionizing the old world with its own large
+collective weapons and on the contrary, seeks to bring about its
+emancipation, behind the back of society, in private ways, within the
+narrow bounds of its own class conditions, and, consequently, inevitably
+fails. The proletariat seems to be able neither to find again the
+revolutionary magnitude within itself nor to draw new energy from the
+newly formed alliances until all the classes, with whom it contended in
+June, shall lie prostrate along with itself. But in all these defeats,
+the proletariat succumbs at least with the honor that attaches to great
+historic struggles; not France alone, all Europe trembles before the
+June earthquake, while the successive defeats inflicted upon the higher
+classes are bought so easily that they need the brazen exaggeration
+of the victorious party itself to be at all able to pass muster as an
+event; and these defeats become more disgraceful the further removed the
+defeated party stands from the proletariat.
+
+True enough, the defeat of the June insurgents prepared, leveled the
+ground, upon which the bourgeois republic could be founded and erected;
+but it, at the same time, showed that there are in Europe other issues
+besides that of "Republic or Monarchy." It revealed the fact that here
+the Bourgeois Republic meant the unbridled despotism of one class over
+another. It proved that, with nations enjoying an older civilization,
+having developed class distinctions, modern conditions of production,
+an intellectual consciousness, wherein all traditions of old have been
+dissolved through the work of centuries, that with such countries
+the republic means only the political revolutionary form of bourgeois
+society, not its conservative form of existence, as is the case in the
+United States of America, where, true enough, the classes already exist,
+but have not yet acquired permanent character, are in constant flux and
+reflux, constantly changing their elements and yielding them up to one
+another where the modern means of production, instead of coinciding with
+a stagnant population, rather compensate for the relative scarcity of
+heads and hands; and, finally, where the feverishly youthful life of
+material production, which has to appropriate a new world to itself,
+has so far left neither time nor opportunity to abolish the illusions of
+old. [#3 This was written at the beginning of 1852.]
+
+All classes and parties joined hands in the June days in a "Party of
+Order" against the class of the proletariat, which was designated as
+the "Party of Anarchy," of Socialism, of Communism. They claimed to
+have "saved" society against the "enemies of society." They gave out the
+slogans of the old social order--"Property, Family, Religion, Order"--as
+the passwords for their army, and cried out to the counter-revolutionary
+crusaders: "In this sign thou wilt conquer!" From that moment on, so
+soon as any of the numerous parties, which had marshaled themselves
+under this sign against the June insurgents, tries, in turn, to take the
+revolutionary field in the interest of its own class, it goes down in
+its turn before the cry: "Property, Family, Religion, Order." Thus it
+happens that "society is saved" as often as the circle of its ruling
+class is narrowed, as often as a more exclusive interest asserts itself
+over the general. Every demand for the most simple bourgeois financial
+reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for the most commonplace
+republicanism, for the flattest democracy, is forthwith punished as an
+"assault upon society," and is branded as "Socialism." Finally the High
+Priests of "Religion and Order" themselves are kicked off their tripods;
+are fetched out of their beds in the dark; hurried into patrol wagons,
+thrust into jail or sent into exile; their temple is razed to the
+ground, their mouths are sealed, their pen is broken, their law torn to
+pieces in the name of Religion, of Family, of Property, and of Order.
+Bourgeois, fanatic on the point of "Order," are shot down on their own
+balconies by drunken soldiers, forfeit their family property, and
+their houses are bombarded for pastime--all in the name of Property,
+of Family, of Religion, and of Order. Finally, the refuse of bourgeois
+society constitutes the "holy phalanx of Order," and the hero
+Crapulinsky makes his entry into the Tuileries as the "Savior of
+Society."
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+Let us resume the thread of events.
+
+The history of the Constitutional National Assembly from the June days
+on, is the history of the supremacy and dissolution of the republican
+bourgeois party, the party which is known under several names of
+"Tricolor Republican," "True Republican," "Political Republican,"
+"Formal Republican," etc., etc. Under the bourgeois monarchy of Louis
+Philippe, this party had constituted the Official Republican Opposition,
+and consequently had been a recognized element in the then political
+world. It had its representatives in the Chambers, and commanded
+considerable influence in the press. Its Parisian organ, the "National,"
+passed, in its way, for as respectable a paper as the "Journal des
+Debats." This position in the constitutional monarchy corresponded to
+its character. The party was not a fraction of the bourgeoisie, held
+together by great and common interests, and marked by special
+business requirements. It was a coterie of bourgeois with republican
+ideas-writers, lawyers, officers and civil employees, whose influence
+rested upon the personal antipathies of the country for Louis Philippe,
+upon reminiscences of the old Republic, upon the republican faith of
+a number of enthusiasts, and, above all, upon the spirit of French
+patriotism, whose hatred of the treaties of Vienna and of the alliance
+with England kept them perpetually on the alert. The "National" owed
+a large portion of its following under Louis Philippe to this covert
+imperialism, that, later under the republic, could stand up against it
+as a deadly competitor in the person of Louis Bonaparte. The fought the
+aristocracy of finance just the same as did the rest of the bourgeois
+opposition. The polemic against the budget, which in France, was closely
+connected with the opposition to the aristocracy of finance, furnished
+too cheap a popularity and too rich a material for Puritanical leading
+articles, not to be exploited. The industrial bourgeoisie was thankful
+to it for its servile defense of the French tariff system, which,
+however, the paper had taken up, more out of patriotic than economic
+reasons the whole bourgeois class was thankful to it for its vicious
+denunciations of Communism and Socialism For the rest, the party of the
+"National" was purely republican, i.e. it demanded a republican instead
+of a monarchic form of bourgeois government; above all, it demanded
+for the bourgeoisie the lion's share of the government. As to how this
+transformation was to be accomplished, the party was far from being
+clear. What, however, was clear as day to it and was openly declared at
+the reform banquets during the last days of Louis Philippe's reign, was
+its unpopularity with the democratic middle class, especially with the
+revolutionary proletariat. These pure republicans, as pure republicans
+go, were at first on the very point of contenting themselves with the
+regency of the Duchess of Orleans, when the February revolution broke
+out, and when it gave their best known representatives a place in the
+provisional government. Of course, they enjoyed from the start the
+confidence of the bourgeoisie and of the majority of the Constitutional
+National Assembly. The Socialist elements of the Provisional Government
+were promptly excluded from the Executive Committee which the Assembly
+had elected upon its convening, and the party of the "National"
+subsequently utilized the outbreak of the June insurrection to dismiss
+this Executive Committee also, and thus rid itself of its nearest
+rivals--the small traders' class or democratic republicans
+(Ledru-Rollin, etc.). Cavaignac, the General of the bourgeois republican
+party, who command at the battle of June, stepped into the place of the
+Executive Committee with a sort of dictatorial power. Marrast, former
+editor-in-chief of the "National", became permanent President of the
+Constitutional National Assembly, and the Secretaryship of State,
+together with all the other important posts, devolved upon the pure
+republicans.
+
+The republican bourgeois party, which since long had looked upon itself
+as the legitimate heir of the July monarchy, thus found itself surpassed
+in its own ideal; but it cam to power, not as it had dreamed under
+Louis Philippe, through a liberal revolt of the bourgeoisie against
+the throne, but through a grape-shot-and-canistered mutiny of the
+proletariat against Capital. That which it imagined to be the most
+revolutionary, came about as the most counter-revolutionary event. The
+fruit fell into its lap, but it fell from the Tree of Knowledge, not
+from the Tree of life.
+
+The exclusive power of the bourgeois republic lasted only from June
+24 to the 10th of December, 1848. It is summed up in the framing of a
+republican constitution and in the state of siege of Paris.
+
+The new Constitution was in substance only a republicanized edition of
+the constitutional charter of 1830. The limited suffrage of the July
+monarchy, which excluded even a large portion of the bourgeoisie from
+political power, was irreconcilable with the existence of the bourgeois
+republic. The February revolution had forthwith proclaimed direct and
+universal suffrage in place of the old law. The bourgeois republic could
+not annul this act. They had to content themselves with tacking to it
+the limitation a six months' residence. The old organization of the
+administrative law, of municipal government, of court procedures of the
+army, etc., remained untouched, or, where the constitution did change
+them, the change affected their index, not their subject; their name,
+not their substance.
+
+The inevitable "General Staff" of the "freedoms" of 1848--personal
+freedom, freedom of the press, of speech, of association and of
+assemblage, freedom of instruction, of religion, etc.--received a
+constitutional uniform that rendered them invulnerable. Each of these
+freedoms is proclaimed the absolute right of the French citizen, but
+always with the gloss that it is unlimited in so far only as it be not
+curtailed by the "equal rights of others," and by the "public safety,"
+or by the "laws," which are intended to effect this harmony. For
+instance:
+
+"Citizens have the right of association, of peaceful and unarmed
+assemblage, of petitioning, and of expressing their opinions through
+the press or otherwise. The enjoyment of these rights has no limitation
+other than the equal rights of others and the public safety." (Chap. II.
+of the French Constitution, Section 8.)
+
+"Education is free. The freedom of education shall be enjoyed under the
+conditions provided by law, and under the supervision of the State."
+(Section 9.)
+
+"The domicile of the citizen is inviolable, except under the forms
+prescribed by law." (Chap. I., Section 3), etc., etc.
+
+The Constitution, it will be noticed, constantly alludes to future
+organic laws, that are to carry out the glosses, and are intended to
+regulate the enjoyment of these unabridged freedoms, to the end that
+they collide neither with one another nor with the public safety.
+Later on, the organic laws are called into existence by the "Friends of
+Order," and all the above named freedoms are so regulated that, in their
+enjoyment, the bourgeoisie encounter no opposition from the like rights
+of the other classes. Wherever the bourgeoisie wholly interdicted these
+rights to "others," or allowed them their enjoyment under conditions
+that were but so many police snares, it was always done only in the
+interest of the "public safety," i. e., of the bourgeoisie, as required
+by the Constitution.
+
+Hence it comes that both sides-the "Friends of Order," who abolished
+all those freedoms, as, well as the democrats, who had demanded them
+all--appeal with full right to the Constitution: Each paragraph of
+the Constitution contains its own antithesis, its own Upper and Lower
+House-freedom as a generalization, the abolition of freedom as
+a specification. Accordingly, so long as the name of freedom was
+respected, and only its real enforcement was prevented in a legal way,
+of course the constitutional existence of freedom remained uninjured,
+untouched, however completely its common existence might be
+extinguished.
+
+This Constitution, so ingeniously made invulnerable, was, however, like
+Achilles, vulnerable at one point: not in its heel, but in its head, or
+rather, in the two heads into which it ran out-the Legislative Assembly,
+on the one hand, and the President on the other. Run through the
+Constitution and it will be found that only those paragraphs wherein the
+relation of the President to the Legislative Assembly is defined, are
+absolute, positive, uncontradictory, undistortable.
+
+Here the bourgeois republicans were concerned in securing their own
+position. Articles 45-70 of the Constitution are so framed that the
+National Assembly can constitutionally remove the President, but the
+President can set aside the National Assembly only unconstitutionally,
+he can set it aside only by setting aside the Constitution itself.
+Accordingly, by these provisions, the National Assembly challenges its
+own violent destruction. It not only consecrates, like the character
+of 1830, the division of powers, but it extends this feature to an
+unbearably contradictory extreme. The "play of constitutional powers,"
+as Guizot styled the clapper-clawings between the legislative and the
+executive powers, plays permanent "vabanque" in the Constitution of
+1848. On the one side, 750 representatives of the people, elected and
+qualified for re-election by universal suffrage, who constitute an
+uncontrollable, indissoluble, indivisible National Assembly, a National
+Assembly that enjoys legislative omnipotence, that decides in the last
+instance over war, peace and commercial treaties, that alone has the
+power to grant amnesties, and that, through its perpetuity, continually
+maintains the foreground on the stage; on the other, a President, clad
+with all the attributes of royalty, with the right to appoint and remove
+his ministers independently from the national assembly, holding in his
+hands all the means of executive power, the dispenser of all posts, and
+thereby the arbiter of at least one and a half million existences in
+France, so many being dependent upon the 500,000 civil employees and
+upon the officers of all grades. He has the whole armed power behind
+him. He enjoys the privilege of granting pardons to individual
+criminals; suspending the National Guards; of removing with the consent
+of the Council of State the general, cantonal and municipal Councilmen,
+elected by the citizens themselves. The initiative and direction of
+all negotiations with foreign countries are reserved to him. While the
+Assembly itself is constantly acting upon the stage, and is exposed
+to the critically vulgar light of day, he leads a hidden life in the
+Elysian fields, only with Article 45 of the Constitution before his eyes
+and in his heart daily calling out to him, "Frere, il faut mourir!" [#1
+Brother, you must die!] Your power expires on the second Sunday of the
+beautiful month of May, in the fourth year after your election! The
+glory is then at an end; the play is not performed twice; and, if you
+have any debts, see to it betimes that you pay them off with the 600,000
+francs that the Constitution has set aside for you, unless, perchance,
+you should prefer traveling to Clichy [#2 The debtors' prison.] on the
+second Monday of the beautiful month of May.
+
+While the Constitution thus clothes the President with actual power, it
+seeks to secure the moral power to the National Assembly. Apart from
+the circumstance that it is impossible to create a moral power through
+legislative paragraphs, the Constitution again neutralizes itself in
+that it causes the President to be chosen by all the Frenchmen through
+direct suffrage. While the votes of France are splintered to pieces upon
+the 750 members of the National Assembly they are here, on the contrary,
+concentrated upon one individual. While each separate Representative
+represents only this or that party, this or that city, this or
+that dunghill, or possibly only the necessity of electing some one
+Seven-hundred-and-fiftieth or other, with whom neither the issue nor the
+man is closely considered, that one, the President, on the contrary, is
+the elect of the nation, and the act of his election is the trump card,
+that, the sovereign people plays out once every four years. The elected
+National Assembly stands in a metaphysical, but the elected President in
+a personal, relation to the nation. True enough, the National Assembly
+presents in its several Representatives the various sides of the
+national spirit, but, in the President, this spirit is incarnated. As
+against the National Assembly, the President possesses a sort of divine
+right, he is by the grace of the people.
+
+Thetis, the sea-goddess, had prophesied to Achilles that he would die
+in the bloom of youth. The Constitution, which had its weak spot, like
+Achilles, had also, like Achilles, the presentiment that it would depart
+by premature death. It was enough for the pure republicans, engaged
+at the work of framing a constitution, to cast a glance from the misty
+heights of their ideal republic down upon the profane world in order to
+realize how the arrogance of the royalists, of the Bonapartists, of
+the democrats, of the Communists, rose daily, together with their own
+discredit, and in the same measure as they approached the completion of
+their legislative work of art, without Thetis having for this purpose to
+leave the sea and impart the secret to them. They ought to outwit
+fate by means of constitutional artifice, through Section 111 of the
+Constitution, according to which every motion to revise the Constitution
+had to be discussed three successive times between each of which a full
+month was to elapse and required at least a three-fourths majority, with
+the additional proviso that not less than 500 members of the National
+Assembly voted. They thereby only made the impotent attempt, still to
+exercise as a parliamentary minority, to which in their mind's eye they
+prophetically saw themselves reduced, a power, that, at this very time,
+when they still disposed over the parliamentary majority and over all
+the machinery of government, was daily slipping from their weak hands.
+
+Finally, the Constitution entrusts itself for safe keeping, in a
+melodramatic paragraph, "to the watchfulness and patriotism of the whole
+French people, and of each individual Frenchman," after having
+just before, in another paragraph entrusted the "watchful" and the
+"patriotic" themselves to the tender, inquisitorial attention of the
+High Court, instituted by itself.
+
+That was the Constitution of 1848, which on, the 2d of December, 1851,
+was not overthrown by one head, but tumbled down at the touch of a mere
+hat; though, true enough, that hat was a three-cornered Napoleon hat.
+
+While the bourgeois' republicans were engaged in the Assembly with the
+work of splicing this Constitution, of discussing and voting, Cavaignac,
+on the outside, maintained the state of siege of Paris. The state of
+siege of Paris was the midwife of the constitutional assembly, during
+its republican pains of travail. When the Constitution is later on swept
+off the earth by the bayonet, it should not be forgotten that it was
+by the bayonet, likewise--and the bayonet turned against the people, at
+that--that it had to be protected in its mother's womb, and that by the
+bayonet it had to be planted on earth. The ancestors of these "honest
+republicans" had caused their symbol, the tricolor, to make the tour of
+Europe. These, in their turn also made a discovery, which all of itself,
+found its way over the whole continent, but, with ever renewed love,
+came back to France, until, by this time, if had acquired the right
+of citizenship in one-half of her Departments--the state of siege. A
+wondrous discovery this was, periodically applied at each succeeding
+crisis in the course of the French revolution. But the barrack and
+the bivouac, thus periodically laid on the head of French society, to
+compress her brain and reduce her to quiet; the sabre and the
+musket, periodically made to perform the functions of judges and of
+administrators, of guardians and of censors, of police officers and of
+watchmen; the military moustache and the soldier's jacket, periodically
+heralded as the highest wisdom and guiding stars of society;--were not
+all of these, the barrack and the bivouac, the sabre and the musket, the
+moustache and the soldier's jacket bound, in the end, to hit upon the
+idea that they might as well save, society once for all, by proclaiming
+their own regime as supreme, and relieve bourgeois society wholly of the
+care of ruling itself? The barrack and the bivouac, the sabre and the
+musket, the moustache and the soldier's jacket were all the more bound
+to hit upon this idea, seeing that they could then also expect better
+cash payment for their increased deserts, while at the merely periodic
+states of siege and the transitory savings of society at the behest of
+this or that bourgeois faction, very little solid matter fell to them
+except some dead and wounded, besides some friendly bourgeois grimaces.
+Should not the military, finally, in and for its own interest, play
+the game of "state of siege," and simultaneously besiege the bourgeois
+exchanges? Moreover, it must not be forgotten, and be it observed
+in passing, that Col. Bernard, the same President of the Military
+Committee, who, under Cavaignac, helped to deport 15,000 insurgents
+without trial, moves at this period again at the head of the Military
+Committees now active in Paris.
+
+Although the honest, the pure republicans built with the state of siege
+the nursery in which the Praetorian guards of December 2, 1851, were to
+be reared, they, on the other hand, deserve praise in that, instead of
+exaggerating the feeling of patriotism, as under Louis Philippe, now;
+they themselves are in command of the national power, they crawl before
+foreign powers; instead of making Italy free, they allow her to
+be reconquered by Austrians and Neapolitans. The election of Louis
+Bonaparte for President on December 10, 1848, put an end to the
+dictatorship of Cavaignac and to the constitutional assembly.
+
+In Article 44 of the Constitution it is said "The President of the
+French Republic must never have lost his status as a French citizen."
+The first President of the French Republic, L. N. Bonaparte, had not
+only lost his status as a French citizen, had not only been an English
+special constable, but was even a naturalized Swiss citizen.
+
+In the previous chapter I have explained the meaning of the election of
+December 10. I shall not here return to it. Suffice it here to say that
+it was a reaction of the farmers' class, who had been expected to pay
+the costs of the February revolution, against the other classes of the
+nation: it was a reaction of the country against the city. It met
+with great favor among the soldiers, to whom the republicans of
+the "National" had brought neither fame nor funds; among the great
+bourgeoisie, who hailed Bonaparte as a bridge to the monarchy; and
+among the proletarians and small traders, who hailed him as a scourge to
+Cavaignac. I shall later have occasion to enter closer into the relation
+of the farmers to the French revolution.
+
+The epoch between December 20, 1848, and the dissolution of the
+constitutional assembly in May, 1849, embraces the history of the
+downfall of the bourgeois republicans. After they had founded a republic
+for the bourgeoisie, had driven the revolutionary proletariat from the
+field and had meanwhile silenced the democratic middle class, they
+are themselves shoved aside by the mass of the bourgeoisie who justly
+appropriate this republic as their property. This bourgeois mass was
+Royalist, however. A part thereof, the large landed proprietors, had
+ruled under the restoration, hence, was Legitimist; the other part, the
+aristocrats of finance and the large industrial capitalists, had ruled
+under the July monarchy, hence, was Orleanist. The high functionaries of
+the Army, of the University, of the Church, in the civil service, of the
+Academy and of the press, divided themselves on both sides, although in
+unequal parts. Here, in the bourgeois republic, that bore neither the
+name of Bourbon, nor of Orleans, but the name of Capital, they had
+found the form of government under which they could all rule in common.
+Already the June insurrection had united them all into a "Party of
+Order." The next thing to do was to remove the bourgeois republicans who
+still held the seats in the National Assembly. As brutally as these pure
+republicans had abused their own physical power against the people, so
+cowardly, low-spirited, disheartened, broken, powerless did they yield,
+now when the issue was the maintenance of their own republicanism
+and their own legislative rights against the Executive power and
+the royalists I need not here narrate the shameful history of their
+dissolution. It was not a downfall, it was extinction. Their history is
+at an end for all time. In the period that follows, they figure, whether
+within or without the Assembly, only as memories--memories that seem
+again to come to life so soon as the question is again only the word
+"Republic," and as often as the revolutionary conflict threatens to sink
+down to the lowest level. In passing, I might observe that the journal
+which gave to this party its name, the "National," goes over to
+Socialism during the following period.
+
+Before we close this period, we must look back upon the two powers,
+one of destroys the other on December 2, 1851, while, from December 20,
+1848, down to the departure of the constitutional assembly, they live
+marital relations. We mean Louis Bonaparte, on the-one hand, on the
+other, the party of the allied royalists; of Order, and of the large
+bourgeoisie.
+
+At the inauguration of his presidency, Bonaparte forthwith framed a
+ministry out of the party of Order, at whose head he placed Odillon
+Barrot, be it noted, the old leader of the liberal wing of the
+parliamentary bourgeoisie. Mr. Barrot had finally hunted down a seat in
+the ministry, the spook of which had been pursuing him since 1830; and
+what is more, he had the chairmanship in this ministry, although not,
+as he had imagined under Louis Philippe, the promoted leader of the
+parliamentary opposition, but with the commission to kill a parliament,
+and, moreover, as an ally of all his arch enemies, the Jesuits and the
+Legitimists. Finally he leads the bride home, but only after she
+has been prostituted. As to Bonaparte, he seemed to eclipse himself
+completely. The party of Order acted for him.
+
+Immediately at the first session of the ministry the expedition to
+Rome was decided upon, which it was there agreed, was to be carried out
+behind I the back of the National Assembly, and the funds for which,
+it was equally agreed, were to be wrung from the Assembly under false
+pretences. Thus the start was made with a swindle on the National
+Assembly, together with a secret conspiracy with the absolute foreign
+powers against the revolutionary Roman republic. In the same way, and
+with a similar maneuver, did Bonaparte prepare his stroke of December 2
+against the royalist legislature and its constitutional republic. Let
+it not be forgotten that the same party, which, on December 20, 1848,
+constituted Bonaparte's ministry, constituted also, on December 2, 1851,
+the majority of the legislative National Assembly.
+
+In August the constitutive assembly decided not to dissolve until it
+had prepared and promulgated a whole series of organic laws, intended
+to supplement the Constitution. The party of Order proposed to the
+assembly, through Representative Rateau, on January 6, 1849, to let
+the Organic laws go, and rather to order its own dissolution. Not
+the ministry alone, with Mr. Odillon Barrot at its head, but all
+the royalist members of the National Assembly were also at this time
+hectoring to it that its dissolution was necessary for the restoration
+of the public credit, for the consolidation of order, to put an end to
+the existing uncertain and provisional, and establish a definite state
+of things; they claimed that its continued existence hindered the
+effectiveness of the new Government, that it sought to prolong its life
+out of pure malice, and that the country was tired of it. Bonaparte
+took notice of all these invectives hurled at the legislative power,
+he learned them by heart, and, on December 21, 1851, he showed the
+parliamentary royalists that he had learned from them. He repeated their
+own slogans against themselves.
+
+The Barrot ministry and the party of Order went further. They called all
+over France for petitions to the National Assembly in which that
+body was politely requested to disappear. Thus they led the people's
+unorganic masses to the fray against the National Assembly, i.e., the
+constitutionally organized expression of people itself. They taught
+Bonaparte, to appeal from the parliamentary body to the people. Finally,
+on January 29, 1849, the day arrived when the constitutional assembly
+was to decide about its own dissolution. On that day the body found its
+building occupied by the military; Changarnier, the General of the party
+of Order, in whose hands was joined the supreme command of both the
+National Guards and the regulars, held that day a great military review,
+as though a battle were imminent; and the coalized royalists declared
+threateningly to the constitutional assembly that force would be applied
+if it did not act willingly. It was willing, and chaffered only for a
+very short respite. What else was the 29th of January, 1849, than the
+"coup d'etat" of December 2, 1851, only executed by the royalists with
+Napoleon's aid against the republican National Assembly? These gentlemen
+did not notice, or did not want to notice, that Napoleon utilized the
+29th of January, 1849, to cause a part of the troops to file before him
+in front of the Tuileries, and that he seized with avidity this very
+first open exercise of the military against the parliamentary power
+in order to hint at Caligula. The allied royalists saw only their own
+Changarnier.
+
+Another reason that particularly moved the party of Order forcibly to
+shorten the term of the constitutional assembly were the organic laws,
+the laws that were to supplement the Constitution, as, for instance,
+the laws on education, on religion, etc. The allied royalists had every
+interest in framing these laws themselves, and not allowing them to be
+framed by the already suspicious republicans. Among these organic laws,
+there was, however, one on the responsibility of the President of the
+republic. In 1851 the Legislature was just engaged in framing such a law
+when Bonaparte forestalled that political stroke by his own of December
+2. What all would not the coalized royalists have given in their winter
+parliamentary campaign of 1851, had they but found this "Responsibility
+law" ready made, and framed at that, by the suspicious, the vicious
+republican Assembly!
+
+After, on January 29, 1849, the constitutive assembly had itself broken
+its last weapon, the Barrot ministry and the "Friends of Order" harassed
+it to death, left nothing undone to humiliate it, and wrung from its
+weakness, despairing of itself, laws that cost it the last vestige
+of respect with the public. Bonaparte, occupied with his own fixed
+Napoleonic idea, was audacious enough openly to exploit this degradation
+of the parliamentary power: When the National Assembly, on May 8, 1849,
+passed a vote of censure upon the Ministry on account of the occupation
+of Civita-Vecchia by Oudinot, and ordered that the Roman expedition
+be brought back to its alleged purpose, Bonaparte published that same
+evening in the "Moniteur" a letter to Oudinot, in which he congratulated
+him on his heroic feats, and already, in contrast with the quill-pushing
+parliamentarians, posed as the generous protector of the Army. The
+royalists smiled at this. They took him simply for their dupe. Finally,
+as Marrast, the President of the constitutional assembly, believed on a
+certain occasion the safety of the body to be in danger, and, resting on
+the Constitution, made a requisition upon a Colonel, together with
+his regiment, the Colonel refused obedience, took refuge behind the
+"discipline," and referred Marrast to Changarnier, who scornfully sent
+him off with the remark that he did not like "bayonettes intelligentes."
+[#1 Intelligent bayonets] In November, 1851, as the coalized royalists
+wanted to begin the decisive struggle with Bonaparte, they sought, by
+means of their notorious "Questors Bill," to enforce the principle of
+the right of the President of the National Assembly to issue direct
+requisitions for troops. One of their Generals, Leflo, supported the
+motion. In vain did Changarnier vote for it, or did Thiers render homage
+to the cautious wisdom of the late constitutional assembly. The
+Minister of War, St. Arnaud, answered him as Changarnier had answered
+Marrast--and he did so amidst the plaudits of the Mountain.
+
+Thus did the party of Order itself, when as yet it was not the National
+Assembly, when as yet it was only a Ministry, brand the parliamentary
+regime. And yet this party objects vociferously when the 2d of December,
+1851, banishes that regime from France!
+
+We wish it a happy journey.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+On May 29, 1849, the legislative National Assembly convened. On
+December 2, 1851, it was broken up. This period embraces the term of the
+Constitutional or Parliamentary public.
+
+In the first French revolution, upon the reign of the Constitutionalists
+succeeds that of the Girondins; and upon the reign of the Girondins
+follows that of the Jacobins. Each of these parties in succession rests
+upon its more advanced element. So soon as it has carried the revolution
+far enough not to be able to keep pace with, much less march ahead of
+it, it is shoved aside by its more daring allies, who stand behind it,
+and it is sent to the guillotine. Thus the revolution moves along an
+upward line.
+
+Just the reverse in 1848. The proletarian party appears as an appendage
+to the small traders' or democratic party; it is betrayed by the latter
+and allowed to fall on April 16, May 15, and in the June days. In its
+turn, the democratic party leans upon the shoulders of the bourgeois
+republicans; barely do the bourgeois republicans believe themselves
+firmly in power, than they shake off these troublesome associates for
+the purpose of themselves leaning upon the shoulders of the party of
+Order. The party of Order draws in its shoulders, lets the bourgeois
+republicans tumble down heels over head, and throws itself upon the
+shoulders of the armed power. Finally, still of the mind that it is
+sustained by the shoulders of the armed power, the party of Order
+notices one fine morning that these shoulders have turned into bayonets.
+Each party kicks backward at those that are pushing forward, and leans
+forward upon those that are crowding backward; no wonder that, in this
+ludicrous posture, each loses its balance, and, after having cut
+the unavoidable grimaces, breaks down amid singular somersaults.
+Accordingly, the revolution moves along a downward line. It finds itself
+in this retreating motion before the last February-barricade is cleared
+away, and the first governmental authority of the revolution has been
+constituted.
+
+The period we now have before us embraces the motliest jumble of crying
+contradictions: constitutionalists, who openly conspire against the
+Constitution; revolutionists, who admittedly are constitutional;
+a National Assembly that wishes to be omnipotent yet remains
+parliamentary; a Mountain, that finds its occupation in submission,
+that parries its present defeats with prophecies of future victories;
+royalists, who constitute the "patres conscripti" of the republic, and
+are compelled by the situation to uphold abroad the hostile monarchic
+houses, whose adherents they are, while in France they support the
+republic that they hate; an Executive power that finds its strength in
+its very weakness, and its dignity in the contempt that it inspires;
+a republic, that is nothing else than the combined infamy of two
+monarchies--the Restoration and the July Monarchy--with an imperial
+label; unions, whose first clause is disunion; struggles, whose first
+law is in-decision; in the name of peace, barren and hollow agitation;
+in the name of the revolution, solemn sermonizings on peace; passions
+without truth; truths without passion; heroes without heroism; history
+without events; development, whose only moving force seems to be the
+calendar, and tiresome by the constant reiteration of the same tensions
+and relaxes; contrasts, that seem to intensify themselves periodically,
+only in order to wear themselves off and collapse without a solution;
+pretentious efforts made for show, and bourgeois frights at the danger
+of the destruction of the world, simultaneous with the carrying on of
+the pettiest intrigues and the performance of court comedies by the
+world's saviours, who, in their "laisser aller," recall the Day of
+Judgment not so much as the days of the Fronde; the official collective
+genius of France brought to shame by the artful stupidity of a single
+individual; the collective will of the nation, as often as it speaks
+through the general suffrage, seeking its true expression in the
+prescriptive enemies of the public interests until it finally finds it
+in the arbitrary will of a filibuster. If ever a slice from history is
+drawn black upon black, it is this. Men and events appear as reversed
+"Schlemihls," [#1 The hero In Chamisso's "Peter Schiemihi," who loses
+his own shadow.] as shadows, the bodies of which have been lost. The
+revolution itself paralyzes its own apostles, and equips only its
+adversaries with passionate violence. When the "Red Spectre," constantly
+conjured up and exorcised by the counter-revolutionists finally does
+appear, it does not appear with the Anarchist Phrygian cap on its head,
+but in the uniform of Order, in the Red Breeches of the French Soldier.
+
+We saw that the Ministry, which Bonaparte installed on December 20,
+1849, the day of his "Ascension," was a ministry of the party of Order,
+of the Legitimist and Orleanist coalition. The Barrot-Falloux ministry
+had weathered the republican constitutive convention, whose term of life
+it had shortened with more or less violence, and found itself still at
+the helm. Changamier, the General of the allied royalists continued to
+unite in his person the command-in-chief of the First Military Division
+and of the Parisian National Guard. Finally, the general elections had
+secured the large majority in the National Assembly to the party of
+Order. Here the Deputies and Peers of Louis Phillipe met a saintly crowd
+of Legitimists, for whose benefit numerous ballots of the nation had
+been converted into admission tickets to the political stage. The
+Bonapartist representatives were too thinly sowed to be able to build an
+independent parliamentary party. They appeared only as "mauvaise queue"
+[#2 Practical joke] played upon the party of Order. Thus the party
+of Order was in possession of the Government, of the Army, and of the
+legislative body, in short, of the total power of the State, morally
+strengthened by the general elections, that caused their sovereignty to
+appear as the will of the people, and by the simultaneous victory of the
+counter-revolution on the whole continent of Europe.
+
+Never did party open its campaign with larger means at its disposal and
+under more favorable auspices.
+
+The shipwrecked pure republicans found themselves in the legislative
+National Assembly melted down to a clique of fifty men, with the
+African Generals Cavaignac, Lamorciere and Bedeau at its head. The
+great Opposition party was, however, formed by the Mountain. This
+parliamentary baptismal name was given to itself by the Social
+Democratic party. It disposed of more than two hundred votes out of the
+seven hundred and fifty in the National Assembly, and, hence, was at
+least just as powerful as any one of the three factions of the party
+of Order. Its relative minority to the total royalist coalition seemed
+counterbalanced by special circumstances. Not only did the Departmental
+election returns show that it had gained a considerable following among
+the rural population, but, furthermore, it numbered almost all the
+Paris Deputies in its camp; the Army had, by the election of three
+under-officers, made a confession of democratic faith; and the leader of
+the Mountain, Ledru-Rollin had in contrast to all the representatives
+of the party of Order, been raised to the rank of the "parliamentary
+nobility" by five Departments, who combined their suffrages upon him.
+Accordingly, in view of the inevitable collisions of the royalists
+among themselves, on the one hand, and of the whole party of Order with
+Bonaparte, on the other, the Mountain seemed on May 29,1849, to have
+before it all the elements of success. A fortnight later, it had lost
+everything, its honor included.
+
+Before we follow this parliamentary history any further, a few
+observations are necessary, in order to avoid certain common deceptions
+concerning the whole character of the epoch that lies before us.
+According to the view of the democrats, the issue, during the period of
+the legislative National Assembly, was, the same as during the period of
+the constitutive assembly, simply the struggle between republicans and
+royalists; the movement itself was summed up by them in the catch-word
+Reaction--night, in which all cats are grey, and allows them to drawl
+out their drowsy commonplaces. Indeed, at first sight, the party of
+Order presents the appearance of a tangle of royalist factions, that,
+not only intrigue against each other, each aiming to raise its own
+Pretender to the throne, and exclude the Pretender of the Opposite
+party, but also are all united in a common hatred for and common
+attacks against the "Republic." On its side, the Mountain appears, in
+counter-distinction to the royalist conspiracy, as the representative
+of the "Republic." The party of Order seems constantly engaged in a
+"Reaction," which, neither more nor less than in Prussia, is directed
+against the press, the right of association and the like, and is
+enforced by brutal police interventions on the part of the bureaucracy,
+the police and the public prosecutor--just as in Prussia; the Mountain
+on the contrary, is engaged with equal assiduity in parrying these
+attacks, and thus in defending the "eternal rights of man"--as every
+so-called people's party has more or less done for the last hundred and
+fifty years. At a closer inspection, however, of the situation and
+of the parties, this superficial appearance, which veils the Class
+Struggle, together with the peculiar physiognomy of this period,
+vanishes wholly.
+
+Legitimists and Orleanists constituted, as said before, the two large
+factions of the party of Order. What held these two factions to their
+respective Pretenders, and inversely kept them apart from each other,
+what else was it but the lily and the tricolor, the House of Bourbon and
+the house of Orleans, different shades of royalty? Under the Bourbons,
+Large Landed Property ruled together with its parsons and lackeys; under
+the Orleanist, it was the high finance, large industry, large commerce,
+i.e., Capital, with its retinue of lawyers, professors and orators. The
+Legitimate kingdom was but the political expression for the hereditary
+rule of the landlords, as the July monarchy was bur the political
+expression for the usurped rule of the bourgeois upstarts. What,
+accordingly, kept these two factions apart was no so-called set of
+principles, it was their material conditions for life--two different
+sorts of property--; it was the old antagonism of the City and
+the Country, the rivalry between Capital and Landed property. That
+simultaneously old recollections; personal animosities, fears and hopes;
+prejudices and illusions; sympathies and antipathies; convictions,
+faith and principles bound these factions to one House or the other,
+who denies it? Upon the several forms of property, upon the social
+conditions of existence, a whole superstructure is reared of various and
+peculiarly shaped feelings, illusions, habits of thought and conceptions
+of life. The whole class produces and shapes these out of its material
+foundation and out of the corresponding social conditions. The
+individual unit to whom they flow through tradition and education, may
+fancy that they constitute the true reasons for and premises of his
+conduct. Although Orleanists and Legitimists, each of these factions,
+sought to make itself and the other believe that what kept the two apart
+was the attachment of each to its respective royal House; nevertheless,
+facts proved later that it rather was their divided interest that
+forbade the union of the two royal Houses. As, in private life, the
+distinction is made between what a man thinks of himself and says, and
+that which he really is and does, so, all the more, must the phrases and
+notions of parties in historic struggles be distinguished from the real
+organism, and their real interests, their notions and their reality.
+Orleanists and Legitimists found themselves in the republic beside each
+other with equal claims. Each side wishing, in opposition to the other,
+to carry out the restoration of its own royal House, meant nothing else
+than that each of the two great Interests into which the bourgeoisie is
+divided--Land and Capital--sought to restore its own supremacy and the
+subordinacy of the other. We speak of two bourgeois interests because
+large landed property, despite its feudal coquetry and pride of race,
+has become completely bourgeois through the development of modern
+society. Thus did the Tories of England long fancy that they were
+enthusiastic for the Kingdom, the Church and the beauties of the old
+English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the
+admission that their enthusiasm was only for Ground Rent.
+
+The coalized royalists carried on their intrigues against each other in
+the press, in Ems, in Clarmont--outside of the parliament. Behind the
+scenes, they don again their old Orleanist and Legitimist liveries,
+and conduct their old tourneys; on the public stage, however, in their
+public acts, as a great parliamentary party, they dispose of their
+respective royal houses with mere courtesies, adjourn "in infinitum" the
+restoration of the monarchy. Their real business is transacted as
+Party of Order, i. e., under a Social, not a Political title; as
+representatives of the bourgeois social system; not as knights of
+traveling princesses, but as the bourgeois class against the other
+classes; not as royalists against republicans. Indeed, as party of
+Order they exercised a more unlimited and harder dominion over the other
+classes of society than ever before either under the restoration or the
+July monarchy-a thing possible only under the form of a parliamentary
+republic, because under this form alone could the two large divisions of
+the French bourgeoisie be united; in other words, only under this form
+could they place on the order of business the sovereignty of their
+class, in lieu of the regime of a privileged faction of the same. If,
+this notwithstanding, they are seen as the party of Order to insult
+the republic and express their antipathy for it, it happened not out of
+royalist traditions only: Instinct taught them that while, indeed, the
+republic completes their authority, it at the same time undermined their
+social foundation, in that, without intermediary, without the mask of
+the crown, without being able to turn aside the national interest by
+means of its subordinate struggles among its own conflicting elements
+and with the crown, the republic is compelled to stand up sharp against
+the subjugated classes, and wrestle with them. It was a sense of
+weakness that caused them to recoil before the unqualified demands
+of their own class rule, and to retreat to the less complete, less
+developed, and, for that very reason, less dangerous forms of the same.
+As often, on the contrary, as the allied royalists come into conflict
+with the Pretender who stands before them--with Bonaparte--, as often
+as they believe their parliamentary omnipotence to be endangered by the
+Executive, in other words, as often as they must trot out the
+political title of their authority, they step up as Republicans, not
+as Royalists--and this is done from the Orleanist Thiers, who warns
+the National Assembly that the republic divides them least, down to
+Legitimist Berryer, who, on December 2, 1851, the scarf of the tricolor
+around him, harangues the people assembled before the Mayor's building
+of the Tenth Arrondissement, as a tribune in the name of the Republic;
+the echo, however, derisively answering back to him: "Henry V.! Henry
+V!" [#3 The candidate of the Bourbons, or Legitimists, for the throne.]
+
+However, against the allied bourgeois, a coalition was made between the
+small traders and the workingmen--the so-called Social Democratic party.
+The small traders found themselves ill rewarded after the June days of
+1848; they saw their material interests endangered, and the democratic
+guarantees, that were to uphold their interests, made doubtful.
+Hence, they drew closer to the workingmen. On the other hand, their
+parliamentary representatives--the Mountain--, after being shoved aside
+during the dictatorship of the bourgeois republicans, had, during the
+last half of the term of the constitutive convention, regained their
+lost popularity through the struggle with Bonaparte and the royalist
+ministers. They had made an alliance with the Socialist leaders. During
+February, 1849, reconciliation banquets were held. A common program
+was drafted, joint election committees were empanelled, and fusion
+candidates were set up. The revolutionary point was thereby broken off
+from the social demands of the proletariat and a democratic turn given
+to them; while, from the democratic claims of the small traders' class,
+the mere political form was rubbed off and the Socialist point was
+pushed forward. Thus came the Social Democracy about. The new Mountain,
+the result of this combination, contained, with the exception of some
+figures from the working class and some Socialist sectarians, the
+identical elements of the old Mountain, only numerically stronger. In
+the course of events it had, however, changed, together with the class
+that it represented. The peculiar character of the Social Democracy is
+summed up in this that democratic-republican institutions are
+demanded as the means, not to remove the two extremes--Capital and
+Wage-slavery--, but in order to weaken their antagonism and transform
+them into a harmonious whole. However different the methods may be that
+are proposed for the accomplishment of this object, however much the
+object itself may be festooned with more or less revolutionary fancies,
+the substance remains the same. This substance is the transformation
+of society upon democratic lines, but a transformation within the
+boundaries of the small traders' class. No one must run away with
+the narrow notion that the small traders' class means on principle to
+enforce a selfish class interest. It believes rather that the special
+conditions for its own emancipation are the general conditions under
+which alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided.
+Likewise must we avoid running away with the notion that the Democratic
+Representatives are all "shopkeepers," or enthuse for these. They
+may--by education and individual standing--be as distant from them as
+heaven is from earth. That which makes them representatives of the small
+traders' class is that they do not intellectually leap the bounds which
+that class itself does not leap in practical life; that, consequently,
+they are theoretically driven to the same problems and solutions, to
+which material interests and social standing practically drive the
+latter. Such, in fact, is at all times the relation of the "political"
+and the "literary" representatives of a class to the class they
+represent.
+
+After the foregoing explanations, it goes with-out saying that, while
+the Mountain is constantly wrestling for the republic and the so-called
+"rights of man," neither the republic nor the "rights of man" is its
+real goal, as little as an army, whose weapons it is sought to deprive
+it of and that defends itself, steps on the field of battle simply in
+order to remain in possession of implements of warfare.
+
+The party of Order provoked the Mountain immediately upon the convening
+of the assembly. The bourgeoisie now felt the necessity of disposing
+of the democratic small traders' class, just as a year before it
+had understood the necessity of putting an end to the revolutionary
+proletariat.
+
+But the position of the foe had changed. The strength of the proletarian
+party was on the streets; that of the small traders' class was in the
+National Assembly itself. The point was, accordingly, to wheedle them
+out of the National Assembly into the street, and to have them break
+their parliamentary power themselves, before time and opportunity could
+consolidate them. The Mountain jumped with loose reins into the trap.
+
+The bombardment of Rome by the French troops was the bait thrown at the
+Mountain. It violated Article V. of the Constitution, which forbade
+the French republic to use its forces against the liberties of other
+nations; besides, Article IV. forbade all declaration of war by the
+Executive without the consent of the National Assembly; furthermore,
+the constitutive assembly had censured the Roman expedition by its
+resolution of May 8. Upon these grounds, Ledru-Rollin submitted on June
+11, 1849, a motion impeaching Bonaparte and his Ministers. Instigated by
+the wasp-stings of Thiers, he even allowed himself to be carried away to
+the point of threatening to defend the Constitution by all means, even
+arms in hand. The Mountain rose as one man, and repeated the challenge.
+On June 12, the National Assembly rejected the notion to impeach, and
+the Mountain left the parliament. The events of June 13 are known: the
+proclamation by a part of the Mountain pronouncing Napoleon and his
+Ministers "outside the pale of the Constitution"; the street parades of
+the democratic National Guards, who, unarmed as they were, flew apart at
+contact with the troops of Changarnier; etc., etc. Part of the Mountain
+fled abroad, another part was assigned to the High Court of Bourges,
+and a parliamentary regulation placed the rest under the school-master
+supervision of the President of the National Assembly. Paris was again
+put under a state of siege; and the democratic portion of the National
+Guards was disbanded. Thus the influence of the Mountain in parliament
+was broken, together with the power; of the small traders' class in
+Paris.
+
+Lyons, where the 13th of June had given the signal to a bloody labor
+uprising, was, together with the five surrounding Departments, likewise
+pronounced in state of siege, a condition that continues down to this
+moment. [#4 January, 1852]
+
+The bulk of the Mountain had left its vanguard in the lurch by refusing
+their signatures to the proclamation; the press had deserted: only
+two papers dared to publish the pronunciamento; the small traders had
+betrayed their Representatives: the National Guards stayed away,
+or, where they did turn up, hindered the raising of barricades; the
+Representatives had duped the small traders: nowhere were the alleged
+affiliated members from the Army to be seen; finally, instead of
+gathering strength from them, the democratic party had infected the
+proletariat with its own weakness, and, as usual with democratic
+feats, the leaders had the satisfaction of charging "their people" with
+desertion, and the people had the satisfaction of charging their leaders
+with fraud.
+
+Seldom was an act announced with greater noise than the campaign
+contemplated by the Mountain; seldom was an event trumpeted ahead with
+more certainty and longer beforehand than the "inevitable victory of
+the democracy." This is evident: the democrats believe in the trombones
+before whose blasts the walls of Jericho fall together; as often as they
+stand before the walls of despotism, they seek to imitate the miracle.
+If the Mountain wished to win in parliament, it should not appeal to
+arms; if it called to arms in parliament, it should not conduct itself
+parliamentarily on the street; if the friendly demonstration was meant
+seriously, it was silly not to foresee that it would meet with a warlike
+reception; if it was intended for actual war, it was rather original
+to lay aside the weapons with which war had to be conducted. But the
+revolutionary threats of the middle class and of their democratic
+representatives are mere attempts to frighten an adversary; when they
+have run themselves into a blind alley, when they have sufficiently
+compromised themselves and are compelled to execute their threats, the
+thing is done in a hesitating manner that avoids nothing so much as the
+means to the end, and catches at pretexts to succumb. The bray of the
+overture, that announces the fray, is lost in a timid growl so soon as
+this is to start; the actors cease to take themselves seriously, and the
+performance falls flat like an inflated balloon that is pricked with a
+needle.
+
+No party exaggerates to itself the means at its disposal more than
+the democratic, none deceives itself with greater heedlessness on the
+situation. A part of the Army voted for it, thereupon the Mountain is
+of the opinion that the Army would revolt in its favor. And by what
+occasion? By an occasion, that, from the standpoint of the troops, meant
+nothing else than that the revolutionary soldiers should take the part
+of the soldiers of Rome against French soldiers. On the other hand,
+the memory of June, 1848, was still too fresh not to keep alive a deep
+aversion on the part of the proletariat towards the National Guard, and
+a strong feeling of mistrust on the part of the leaders of the secret
+societies for the democratic leaders. In order to balance these
+differences, great common interests at stake were needed. The violation
+of an abstract constitutional paragraph could not supply such interests.
+Had not the constitution been repeatedly violated, according to the
+assurances of the democrats themselves? Had not the most popular papers
+branded them as a counter-revolutionary artifice? But the democrat--by
+reason of his representing the middle class, that is to say, a
+Transition Class, in which the interests of two other classes are
+mutually dulled--, imagines himself above all class contrast. The
+democrats grant that opposed to them stands a privileged class, but
+they, together with the whole remaining mass of the nation, constitute
+the "PEOPLE." What they represent is the "people's rights"; their
+interests are the "people's interests." Hence, they do not consider
+that, at an impending struggle, they need to examine the interests and
+attitude of the different classes. They need not too seriously weigh
+their own means. All they have to do is to give the signal in order to
+have the "people" fall upon the "oppressors" with all its inexhaustible
+resources. If, thereupon, in the execution, their interests turn out to
+be uninteresting, and their power to be impotence, it is ascribed either
+to depraved sophists, who split up the "undivisible people" into several
+hostile camps; or to the army being too far brutalized and blinded to
+appreciate the pure aims of the democracy as its own best; or to some
+detail in the execution that wrecks the whole plan; or, finally, to an
+unforeseen accident that spoiled the game this time. At all events, the
+democrat comes out of the disgraceful defeat as immaculate as he went
+innocently into it, and with the refreshed conviction that he must win;
+not that he himself and his party must give up their old standpoint, but
+that, on the contrary, conditions must come to his aid.
+
+For all this, one must not picture to himself the decimated, broken,
+and, by the new parliamentary regulation, humbled Mountain altogether
+too unhappy. If June 13 removed its leaders, it, on the other hand, made
+room for new ones of inferior capacity, who are flattered by their new
+position. If their impotence in parliament could no longer be doubted,
+they were now justified to limit their activity to outbursts of moral
+indignation. If the party of Order pretended to see in them, as the last
+official representatives of the revolution, all the horrors of anarchy
+incarnated, they were free to appear all the more flat and modest
+in reality. Over June 13 they consoled themselves with the profound
+expression: "If they but dare to assail universal suffrage . . . then
+. . . then we will show who we are!" Nous verrons. [#5 We shall see.]
+
+As to the "Mountaineers," who had fled abroad, it suffices here to
+say that Ledru-Rollin--he having accomplished the feat of hopelessly
+ruining, in barely a fortnight, the powerful party at whose head he
+stood--, found himself called upon to build up a French government "in
+partibus;" that his figure, at a distance, removed from the field of
+action, seemed to gain in size in the measure that the level of the
+revolution sank and the official prominences of official France became
+more and more dwarfish; that he could figure as republican Pretender
+for 1852, and periodically issued to the Wallachians and other peoples
+circulars in which "despot of the continent" is threatened with the
+feats that he and his allies had in contemplation. Was Proudhon wholly
+wrong when he cried out to these gentlemen: "Vous n'etes que des
+blaqueurs"? [#6 You are nothing but fakirs.]
+
+The party of Order had, on June 13, not only broken up the Mountain,
+it had also established the Subordination of the Constitution to
+the Majority Decisions of the National Assembly. So, indeed, did the
+republic understand it, to--wit, that the bourgeois ruled here in
+parliamentary form, without, as in the monarchy, finding a check in
+the veto of the Executive power, or the liability of parliament to
+dissolution. It was a "parliamentary republic," as Thiers styled it.
+But if, on June 13, the bourgeoisie secured its omnipotence within the
+parliament building, did it not also strike the parliament itself,
+as against the Executive and the people, with incurable weakness by
+excluding its most popular part? By giving up numerous Deputies, without
+further ceremony to the mercies of the public prosecutor, it abolished
+its own parliamentary inviolability. The humiliating regulation, that it
+subjected the Mountain to, raised the President of the republic in
+the same measure that it lowered the individual Representatives of the
+people. By branding an insurrection in defense of the Constitution
+as anarchy, and as a deed looking to the overthrow of society, it
+interdicted to itself all appeal to insurrection whenever the Executive
+should violate the Constitution against it. And, indeed, the irony
+of history wills it that the very General, who by order of Bonaparte
+bombarded Rome, and thus gave the immediate occasion to the
+constitutional riot of June 13, that Oudinot, on December 22, 1851, is
+the one imploringly and vainly to be offered to the people by the party
+of Order as the General of the Constitution. Another hero of June 13,
+Vieyra, who earned praise from the tribune of the National Assembly
+for the brutalities that he had committed in the democratic newspaper
+offices at the head of a gang of National Guards in the hire of the
+high finance--this identical Vieyra was initiated in the conspiracy of
+Bonaparte, and contributed materially in cutting off all protection that
+could come to the National Assembly, in the hour of its agony, from the
+side of the National Guard.
+
+June 13 had still another meaning. The Mountain had wanted to place
+Bonaparte under charges. Their defeat was, accordingly, a direct victory
+of Bonaparte; it was his personal triumph over his democratic enemies.
+The party of Order fought for the victory, Bonaparte needed only to
+pocket it. He did so. On June 14, a proclamation was to be read on
+the walls of Paris wherein the President, as it were, without his
+connivance, against his will, driven by the mere force of circumstances,
+steps forward from his cloisterly seclusion like misjudged virtue,
+complains of the calumnies of his antagonists, and, while seeming to
+identify his own person with the cause of order, rather identifies the
+cause of order with his own person. Besides this, the National Assembly
+had subsequently approved the expedition against Rome; Bonaparte,
+however, had taken the initiative in the affair. After he had led the
+High Priest Samuel back into the Vatican, he could hope as King David to
+occupy the Tuileries. He had won the parson-interests over to himself.
+
+The riot of June 13 limited itself, as we have seen, to a peaceful
+street procession. There were, consequently, no laurels to be won from
+it. Nevertheless, in these days, poor in heroes and events, the party of
+Order converted this bloodless battle into a second Austerlitz. Tribune
+and press lauded the army as the power of order against the popular
+multitude, and the impotence of anarchy; and Changarnier as the "bulwark
+of society"--a mystification that he finally believed in himself.
+Underhand, however, the corps that seemed doubtful were removed from
+Paris; the regiments whose suffrage had turned out most democratic were
+banished from France to Algiers the restless heads among the troops were
+consigned to penal quarters; finally, the shutting out of the press
+from the barracks, and of the barracks from contact with the citizens
+was systematically carried out.
+
+We stand here at the critical turning point in the history of the French
+National Guard. In 1830, it had decided the downfall of the restoration.
+Under Louis Philippe, every riot failed, at which the National Guard
+stood on the side of the troops. When, in the February days of 1848,
+it showed itself passive against the uprising and doubtful toward Louis
+Philippe himself, he gave himself up for lost. Thus the conviction cast
+root that a revolution could not win without, nor the Army against
+the National Guard. This was the superstitious faith of the Army in
+bourgeois omnipotence. The June days of 1548, when the whole National
+Guard, jointly with the regular troops, threw down the insurrection,
+had confirmed the superstition. After the inauguration of Bonaparte's
+administration, the position of the National Guard sank somewhat through
+the unconstitutional joining of their command with the command of the
+First Military Division in the person of Changarnier.
+
+As the command of the National Guard appeared here merely an attribute
+of the military commander-in-chief, so did the Guard itself appear only
+as an appendage of the regular troops. Finally, on June 13, the National
+Guard was broken up, not through its partial dissolution only, that from
+that date forward was periodically repeated at all points of France,
+leaving only wrecks of its former self behind. The demonstration of June
+13 was, above all, a demonstration of the National Guards. True, they
+had not carried their arms, but they had carried their uniforms against
+the Army--and the talisman lay just in these uniforms. The Army then
+learned that this uniform was but a woolen rag, like any other. The
+spell was broken. In the June days of 1848, bourgeoisie and small
+traders were united as National Guard with the Army against the
+proletariat; on June 13, 1849, the bourgeoisie had the small traders'
+National Guard broken up; on December 2, 1851, the National Guard of
+the bourgeoisie itself vanished, and Bonaparte attested the fact when he
+subsequently signed the decree for its disbandment. Thus the bourgeoisie
+had itself broken its last weapon against the army, from the moment when
+the small traders' class no longer stood as a vassal behind, but as
+a rebel before it; indeed, it was bound to do so, as it was bound to
+destroy with its own hand all its means of defence against absolutism,
+so soon as itself was absolute.
+
+In the meantime, the party of Order celebrated the recovery of a power
+that seemed lost in 1848 only in order that, freed from its trammels in
+1849, it be found again through invectives against the republic and the
+Constitution; through the malediction of all future, present and past
+revolutions, that one included which its own leaders had made; and,
+finally, in laws by which the press was gagged, the right of association
+destroyed, and the stage of siege regulated as an organic institution.
+The National Assembly then adjourned from the middle of August to the
+middle of October, after it had appointed a Permanent Committee for the
+period of its absence. During these vacations, the Legitimists intrigued
+with Ems; the Orleanists with Claremont; Bonaparte through princely
+excursions; the Departmental Councilmen in conferences over the revision
+of the Constitution;--occurrences, all of which recurred regularly at
+the periodical vacations of the National Assembly, and upon which I
+shall not enter until they have matured into events. Be it here only
+observed that the National Assembly was impolitic in vanishing from
+the stage for long intervals, and leaving in view, at the head of the
+republic, only one, however sorry, figure--Louis Bonaparte's--, while,
+to the public scandal, the party of Order broke up into its own royalist
+component parts, that pursued their conflicting aspirations after the
+restoration. As often as, during these vacations the confusing noise of
+the parliament was hushed, and its body was dissolved in the nation, it
+was unmistakably shown that only one thing was still wanting to complete
+the true figure of the republic: to make the vacation of the National
+Assembly permanent, and substitute its inscription--"Liberty, Equality,
+Fraternity"--by the unequivocal words, "Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery".
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The National Assembly reconvened in the middle of October. On November
+1, Bonaparte surprised it with a message, in which he announced the
+dismissal of the Barrot-Falloux Ministry, and the framing of a new.
+Never have lackeys been chased from service with less ceremony than
+Bonaparte did his ministers. The kicks, that were eventually destined
+for the National Assembly, Barrot & Company received in the meantime.
+
+The Barrot Ministry was, as we have seen, composed of Legitimists and
+Orleanists; it was a Ministry of the party of Order. Bonaparte needed
+that Ministry in order to dissolve the republican constituent assembly,
+to effect the expedition against Rome, and to break up the democratic
+party. He had seemingly eclipsed himself behind this Ministry, yielded
+the reins to the hands of the party of Order, and assumed the modest
+mask, which, under Louis Philippe, had been worn by the responsible
+overseer of the newspapers--the mask of "homme de paille." [#1 Man of
+straw] Now he threw off the mask, it being no longer the light curtain
+behind which he could conceal, but the Iron Mask, which prevented
+him from revealing his own physiognomy. He had instituted the Barrot
+Ministry in order to break up the republican National Assembly in the
+name of the party of Order; he now dismissed it in order to declare his
+own name independent of the parliament of the party of Order.
+
+There was no want of plausible pretexts for this dismissal. The Barrot
+Ministry had neglected even the forms of decency that would have allowed
+the president of the republic to appear as a power along with the
+National Assembly. For instance, during the vacation of the National
+Assembly, Bonaparte published a letter to Edgar Ney, in which he seemed
+to disapprove the liberal attitude of the Pope, just as, in opposition
+to the constitutive assembly, he had published a letter, in which
+he praised Oudinot for his attack upon the Roman republic; when the
+National Assembly came to vote on the budget for the Roman expedition,
+Victor Hugo, out of pretended liberalism, brought up that letter for
+discussion; the party of Order drowned this notion of Bonaparte's under
+exclamations of contempt and incredulity as though notions of Bonaparte
+could not possibly have any political weight;--and none of the Ministers
+took up the gauntlet for him. On another occasion, Barrot, with his
+well-known hollow pathos, dropped, from the speakers' tribune in the
+Assembly, words of indignation upon the "abominable machinations,"
+which, according to him, went on in the immediate vicinity of the
+President. Finally, while the Ministry obtained from the National
+Assembly a widow's pension for the Duchess of Orleans, it denied every
+motion to raise the Presidential civil list;--and, in Bonaparte, be it
+always remembered, the Imperial Pretender was so closely blended with
+the impecunious adventurer, that the great idea of his being destined to
+restore the Empire was ever supplemented by that other, to-wit, that the
+French people was destined to pay his debts.
+
+The Barrot-Falloux Ministry was the first and last parliamentary
+Ministry that Bonaparte called into life. Its dismissal marks,
+accordingly, a decisive period. With the Ministry, the party of Order
+lost, never to regain, an indispensable post to the maintenance of the
+parliamentary regime,--the handle to the Executive power. It is readily
+understood that, in a country like France, where the Executive
+disposes over an army of more than half a million office-holders, and,
+consequently, keeps permanently a large mass of interests and existences
+in the completest dependence upon itself; where the Government
+surrounds, controls, regulates, supervises and guards society, from its
+mightiest acts of national life, down to its most insignificant motions;
+from its common life, down to the private life of each individual;
+where, due to such extraordinary centralization, this body of parasites
+acquires a ubiquity and omniscience, a quickened capacity for motion
+and rapidity that finds an analogue only in the helpless lack of
+self-reliance, in the unstrung weakness of the body social itself;--that
+in such a country the National Assembly lost, with the control of
+the ministerial posts, all real influence; unless it simultaneously
+simplified the administration; if possible, reduced the army of
+office-holders; and, finally, allowed society and public opinion to
+establish its own organs, independent of government censorship. But the
+Material Interest of the French bourgeoisie is most intimately bound
+up in maintenance of just such a large and extensively ramified
+governmental machine. There the bourgeoisie provides for its own
+superfluous membership; and supplies, in the shape of government
+salaries, what it can not pocket in the form of profit, interest, rent
+and fees. On the other hand, its Political Interests daily compel it to
+increase the power of repression, i.e., the means and the personnel
+of the government; it is at the same time forced to conduct an
+uninterrupted warfare against public opinion, and, full of suspicion, to
+hamstring and lame the independent organs of society--whenever it does
+not succeed in amputating them wholly. Thus the bourgeoisie of France
+was forced by its own class attitude, on the one hand, to destroy the
+conditions for all parliamentary power, its own included, and, on the
+other, to render irresistible the Executive power that stood hostile to
+it.
+
+The new Ministry was called the d'Hautpoul Ministry. Not that General
+d'Hautpoul had gained the rank of Ministerial President. Along with
+Barrot, Bonaparte abolished this dignity, which, it must be granted,
+condemned the President of the republic to the legal nothingness of a
+constitutional kind, of a constitutional king at that, without throne
+and crown, without sceptre and without sword, without irresponsibility,
+without the imperishable possession of the highest dignity in the State,
+and, what was most untoward of all--without a civil list. The d'Hautpoul
+Ministry numbered only one man of parliamentary reputation, the Jew
+Fould, one of the most notorious members of the high finance. To him
+fell the portfolio of finance. Turn to the Paris stock quotations, and
+it will be found that from November 1, 1849, French stocks fall and rise
+with the falling and rising of the Bonapartist shares. While Bonaparte
+had thus found his ally in the Bourse, he at the same time took
+possession of the Police through the appointment of Carlier as Prefect
+of Police.
+
+But the consequences of the change of Ministry could reveal themselves
+only in the course of events. So far, Bonaparte had taken only one
+step forward, to be all the more glaringly driven back. Upon his harsh
+message, followed the most servile declarations of submissiveness to
+the National Assembly. As often as the Ministers made timid attempts
+to introduce his own personal hobbies as bills, they themselves seemed
+unwilling and compelled only by their position to run the comic errands,
+of whose futility they were convinced in advance. As often as Bonaparte
+blabbed out his plans behind the backs of his Ministers, and sported
+his "idees napoleoniennes," [#2 Napoleonic ideas.] his own Ministers
+disavowed him from the speakers' tribune in the National Assembly. His
+aspirations after usurpation seemed to become audible only to the end
+that the ironical laughter of his adversaries should not die out. He
+deported himself like an unappreciated genius, whom the world takes for
+a simpleton. Never did lie enjoy in fuller measure the contempt of
+all classes than at this period. Never did the bourgeoisie rule more
+absolutely; never did it more boastfully display the insignia of
+sovereignty.
+
+It is not here my purpose to write the history of its legislative
+activity, which is summed up in two laws passed during this period:
+the law reestablishing the duty on wine, and the laws on education, to
+suppress infidelity. While the drinking of wine was made difficult
+to the Frenchmen, all the more bounteously was the water of pure
+life poured out to them. Although in the law on the duty on wine
+the bourgeoisie declares the old hated French tariff system to be
+inviolable, it sought, by means of the laws on education, to secure the
+old good will of the masses that made the former bearable. One wonders
+to see the Orleanists, the liberal bourgeois, these old apostles of
+Voltarianism and of eclectic philosophy, entrusting the supervision
+of the French intellect to their hereditary enemies, the Jesuits. But,
+while Orleanists and Legitimists could part company on the question of
+the Pretender to the crown, they understood full well that their joint
+reign dictated the joining of the means of oppression of two distinct
+epochs; that the means of subjugation of the July monarchy had to be
+supplemented with and strengthened by the means of subjugation of the
+restoration.
+
+The farmers, deceived in all their expectations, more than ever ground
+down by the law scale of the price of corn, on the one hand, and, on the
+other, by the growing load of taxation and mortgages, began to stir in
+the Departments. They were answered by the systematic baiting of the
+school masters, whom the Government subjected to the clergy; by the
+systematic baiting of the Mayors, whom it subjected to the Prefects; and
+by a system of espionage to which all were subjected. In Paris and the
+large towns, the reaction itself carries the physiognomy of its own
+epoch; it irritates more than it cows; in the country, it becomes low,
+moan, petty, tiresome, vexatious,--in a word, it becomes "gensdarme." It
+is easily understood how three years of the gensdarme regime, sanctified
+by the regime of the clergyman, was bound to demoralize unripe masses.
+
+Whatever the mass of passion and declamation, that the party of Order
+expended from the speakers' tribune in the National Assembly against the
+minority, its speech remained monosyllabic, like that of the Christian,
+whose speech was to be "Aye, aye; nay, nay." It was monosyllabic,
+whether from the tribune or the press; dull as a conundrum, whose
+solution is known beforehand. Whether the question was the right of
+petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the press or free trade,
+clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual freedom or the
+regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever again, the
+theme is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready and unchanged:
+Socialism! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced socialistic;
+socialistic, alike, is pronounced popular education; and, likewise,
+socialistic national financial reform. It was socialistic to build a
+railroad where already a canal was; and it was socialistic to defend
+oneself with a stick when attacked with a sword.
+
+This was not a mere form of speech, a fashion, nor yet party tactics.
+The bourgeoisie perceives correctly that all the weapons, which it
+forged against feudalism, turn their edges against itself; that all
+the means of education, which it brought forth, rebel against its own
+civilization; that all the gods, which it made, have fallen away
+from it. It understands that all its so-called citizens' rights and
+progressive organs assail and menace its class rule, both in its social
+foundation and its political superstructure--consequently, have become
+"socialistic." It justly scents in this menace and assault the secret of
+Socialism, whose meaning and tendency it estimates more correctly than
+the spurious, so-called Socialism, is capable of estimating itself,
+and which, consequently, is unable to understand how it is that the
+bourgeoisie obdurately shuts up its ears to it, alike whether it
+sentimentally whines about the sufferings of humanity; or announces in
+Christian style the millennium and universal brotherhood; or twaddles
+humanistically about the soul, culture and freedom; or doctrinally
+matches out a system of harmony and wellbeing for all classes. What,
+however, the bourgeoisie does not understand is the consequence that its
+own parliamentary regime, its own political reign, is also of necessity
+bound to fall under the general ban of "socialistic." So long as the
+rule of the bourgeoisie is not fully organized, has not acquired its
+purely political character, the contrast with the other classes cannot
+come into view in all its sharpness; and, where it does come into view,
+it cannot take that dangerous turn that converts every conflict with
+the Government into a conflict with Capital. When, however, the French
+bourgeoisie began to realize in every pulsation of society a menace to
+"peace," how could it, at the head of society, pretend to uphold the
+regime of unrest, its own regime, the parliamentary regime, which,
+according to the expression of one of its own orators, lives in
+struggle, and through struggle? The parliamentary regime lives on
+discussion,--how can it forbid discussion? Every single interest, every
+single social institution is there converted into general thoughts, is
+treated as a thought,--how could any interest or institution claim to
+be above thought, and impose itself as an article of faith? The orators'
+conflict in the tribune calls forth the conflict of the rowdies in the
+press the debating club in parliament is necessarily supplemented by
+debating clubs in the salons and the barrooms; the representatives, who
+are constantly appealing to popular opinion, justify popular opinion
+in expressing its real opinion in petitions. The parliamentary regime
+leaves everything to the decision of majorities,--how can the large
+majorities beyond parliament be expected not to wish to decide? If, from
+above, they hear the fiddle screeching, what else is to be expected than
+that those below should dance?
+
+Accordingly, by now persecuting as Socialist what formerly it had
+celebrated as Liberal, the bourgeoisie admits that its own interest
+orders it to raise itself above the danger of self government; that,
+in order to restore rest to the land, its own bourgeois parliament must,
+before all, be brought to rest; that, in order to preserve its social
+power unhurt, its political power must be broken; that the private
+bourgeois can continue to exploit the other classes and rejoice in
+"property," "family," "religion" and "order" only under the condition
+that his own class be condemned to the same political nullity of the
+other classes, that, in order to save their purse, the crown must be
+knocked off their heads, and the sword that was to shield them, must at
+the same time be hung over their heads as a sword of Damocles.
+
+In the domain of general bourgeois interests, the National Assembly
+proved itself so barren, that, for instance, the discussion over the
+Paris-Avignon railroad, opened in the winter of 1850, was not yet ripe
+for a vote on December 2, 1851. Wherever it did not oppress or was
+reactionary, the bourgeoisie was smitten with incurable barrenness.
+
+While Bonaparte's Ministry either sought to take the initiative of laws
+in the spirit of the party of Order, or even exaggerated their severity
+in their enforcement and administration, he, on his part, sought to win
+popularity by means of childishly silly propositions, to exhibit the
+contrast between himself and the National Assembly, and to hint at a
+secret plan, held in reserve and only through circumstances temporarily
+prevented from disclosing its hidden treasures to the French people. Of
+this nature was the proposition to decree a daily extra pay of four
+sous to the under-officers; so, likewise, the proposition for a "word
+of honor" loan bank for working-men. To have money given and money
+borrowed--that was the perspective that he hoped to cajole the masses
+with. Presents and loans--to that was limited the financial wisdom of
+the slums, the high as well as the low; to that were limited the springs
+which Bonaparte knew how to set in motion. Never did Pretender speculate
+more dully upon the dullness of the masses.
+
+Again and again did the National Assembly fly into a passion at these
+unmistakable attempts to win popularity at its expense, and at the
+growing danger that this adventurer, lashed on by debts and unrestrained
+by reputation, might venture upon some desperate act. The strained
+relations between the party of Order and the President had taken on a
+threatening aspect, when an unforeseen event threw him back, rueful
+into its arms. We mean the supplementary elections of March, 1850.
+These elections took place to fill the vacancies created in the National
+Assembly, after June 13, by imprisonment and exile. Paris elected only
+Social-Democratic candidates; it even united the largest vote upon
+one of the insurgents of June, 1848,--Deflotte. In this way the small
+traders' world of Paris, now allied with the proletariat, revenged
+itself for the defeat of June 13, 1849. It seemed to have disappeared
+from the field of battle at the hour of danger only to step on it again
+at a more favorable opportunity, with increased forces for the fray, and
+with a bolder war cry. A circumstance seemed to heighten the danger of
+this electoral victory. The Army voted in Paris for a June insurgent
+against Lahitte, a Minister of Bonaparte's, and, in the Departments,
+mostly for the candidates of the Mountain, who, there also, although
+not as decisively as in Paris, maintained the upper hand over their
+adversaries.
+
+Bonaparte suddenly saw himself again face to face with the revolution.
+As on January 29, 1849, as on June 13, 1849, on May 10, 1850, he
+vanished again behind the party of Order. He bent low; he timidly
+apologized; he offered to appoint any Ministry whatever at the behest
+of the parliamentary majority; he even implored the Orleanist and
+Legitimist party leaders--the Thiers, Berryers, Broglies, Moles, in
+short, the so-called burgraves--to take hold of the helm of State in
+person. The party of Order did not know how to utilize this opportunity,
+that was never to return. Instead of boldly taking possession of the
+proffered power, it did not even force Bonaparte to restore the Ministry
+dismissed on November 1; it contented itself with humiliating him with
+its pardon, and with affiliating Mr. Baroche to the d'Hautpoul Ministry.
+This Baroche had, as Public Prosecutor, stormed before the High Court at
+Bourges, once against the revolutionists of May 15, another time against
+the Democrats of June 13, both times on the charge of "attentats"
+against the National Assembly. None of Bonaparte's Ministers contributed
+later more towards the degradation of the National Assembly; and, after
+December 2, 1851, we meet him again as the comfortably stalled and
+dearly paid Vice-President of the Senate. He had spat into the soup of
+the revolutionists for Bonaparte to eat it.
+
+On its part, the Social Democratic party seemed only to look for
+pretexts in order to make its own victory doubtful, and to dull its
+edge. Vidal, one of the newly elected Paris representatives, was
+returned for Strassburg also. He was induced to decline the seat for
+Paris and accept the one for Strassburg. Thus, instead of giving
+a definite character to their victory at the hustings, and thereby
+compelling the party of Order forthwith to contest it in parliament;
+instead of thus driving the foe to battle at the season of popular
+enthusiasm and of a favorable temper in the Army, the democratic party
+tired out Paris with a new campaign during the months of March and
+April; it allowed the excited popular passions to wear themselves out
+in this second provisional electoral play it allowed the revolutionary
+vigor to satiate itself with constitutional successes, and lose its
+breath in petty intrigues, hollow declamation and sham moves; it
+gave the bourgeoisie time to collect itself and make its preparations
+finally, it allowed the significance of the March elections to find a
+sentimentally weakening commentary at the subsequent April election in
+the victory of Eugene Sue. In one word, it turned the 10th of March into
+an April Fool.
+
+The parliamentary majority perceived the weakness of its adversary.
+Its seventeen burgraves--Bonaparte had left to it the direction of and
+responsibility for the attack--, framed a new election law, the moving
+of which was entrusted to Mr. Faucher, who had applied for the honor.
+On May 8, he introduced the new law whereby universal suffrage was
+abolished; a three years residence in the election district imposed as
+a condition for voting; and, finally, the proof of this residence made
+dependent, for the working-man, upon the testimony of his employer.
+
+As revolutionarily as the democrats had agitated and stormed during the
+constitutional struggles, so constitutionally did they, now, when it
+was imperative to attest, arms in hand, the earnestness of their late
+electoral victories, preach order, "majestic calmness," lawful conduct,
+i. e., blind submission to the will of the counter-revolution, which
+revealed itself as law. During the debate, the Mountain put the party
+of Order to shame by maintaining the passionless attitude of
+the law-abiding burger, who upholds the principle of law against
+revolutionary passions; and by twitting the party of Order with the
+fearful reproach of proceeding in a revolutionary manner. Even the newly
+elected deputies took pains to prove by their decent and thoughtful
+deportment what an act of misjudgment it was to decry them as
+anarchists, or explain their election as a victory of the revolution.
+The new election law was passed on May 31. The Mountain contented
+itself with smuggling a protest into the pockets of the President of
+the Assembly. To the election law followed a new press law, whereby the
+revolutionary press was completely done away with. It had deserved its
+fate. The "National" and the "Presse," two bourgeois organs, remained
+after this deluge the extreme outposts of the revolution.
+
+We have seen how, during March and April, the democratic leaders did
+everything to involve the people of Paris in a sham battle, and how,
+after May 8, they did everything to keep it away from a real battle.
+We may not here forget that the year 1850 was one of the most brilliant
+years of industrial and commercial prosperity; consequently, that the
+Parisian proletariat was completely employed. But the election law of
+May 31, 1850 excluded them from all participation in political power; it
+cut the field of battle itself from under them; it threw the workingmen
+back into the state of pariahs, which they had occupied before the
+February revolution. In allowing themselves, in sight of such
+an occurrence, to be led by the democrats, and in forgetting the
+revolutionary interests of their class through temporary comfort,
+the workingmen abdicated the honor of being a conquering power; they
+submitted to their fate; they proved that the defeat of June, 1848, had
+incapacitated them from resistance for many a year to come finally, that
+the historic process must again, for the time being, proceed over their
+heads. As to the small traders' democracy, which, on June 13, had cried
+out: "If they but dare to assail universal suffrage . . . then . . .
+then we will show who we are!"--they now consoled themselves with the
+thought that the counter-revolutionary blow, which had struck them, was
+no blow at all, and that the law of May 31 was no law. On May 2, 1852,
+according to them, every Frenchman would appear at the hustings, in one
+hand the ballot, in the other the sword. With this prophecy they set
+their hearts at ease. Finally, the Army was punished by its superiors
+for the elections of May and April, 1850, as it was punished for
+the election of May 29, 1849. This time, however, it said to itself
+determinately: "The revolution shall not cheat us a third time."
+
+The law of May 31, 1850, was the "coup d'etat" of the bourgeoisie.
+All its previous conquests over the revolution had only a temporary
+character: they became uncertain the moment the National Assembly
+stepped off the stage; they depended upon the accident of general
+elections, and the history of the elections since 1848 proved
+irrefutably that, in the same measure as the actual reign of the
+bourgeoisie gathered strength, its moral reign over the masses wore off.
+Universal suffrage pronounced itself on May 10 pointedly against the
+reign of the bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie answered with the banishment
+of universal suffrage. The law of May 31 was, accordingly, one of the
+necessities of the class struggle. On the other hand, the constitution
+required a minimum of two million votes for the valid ejection of the
+President of the republic. If none of the Presidential candidates polled
+this minimum, then the National Assembly was to elect the President out
+of the three candidates polling the highest votes. At the time that the
+constitutive body made this law, ten million voters were registered
+on the election rolls. In its opinion, accordingly, one-fifth of the
+qualified voters sufficed to make a choice for President valid. The law
+of May 31 struck at least three million voters off the rolls, reduced
+the number of qualified voters to seven millions, and yet, not
+withstanding, it kept the lawful minimum at two millions for the
+election of a President. Accordingly, it raised the lawful minimum from
+a fifth to almost a third of the qualified voters, i.e., it did all
+it could to smuggle the Presidential election out of the hands of the
+people into those of the National Assembly. Thus, by the election law of
+May 31, the party of Order seemed to have doubly secured its empire,
+in that it placed the election of both the National Assembly and the
+President of the republic in the keeping of the stable portion of
+society.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+The strife immediately broke out again between the National Assembly
+and Bonaparte, so soon as the revolutionary crisis was weathered, and
+universal suffrage was abolished.
+
+The Constitution had fixed the salary of Bonaparte at 600,000 francs.
+Barely half a year after his installation, he succeeded in raising
+this sum to its double: Odillon Barrot had wrung from the constitutive
+assembly a yearly allowance of 600,000 francs for so-called
+representation expenses. After June 13, Bonaparte hinted at similar
+solicitations, to which, however, Barrot then turned a deaf ear. Now,
+after May 31, he forthwith utilized the favorable moment, and caused
+his ministers to move a civil list of three millions in the National
+Assembly. A long adventurous, vagabond career had gifted him with the
+best developed antennae for feeling out the weak moments when he could
+venture upon squeezing money from his bourgeois. He carried on regular
+blackmail. The National Assembly had maimed the sovereignty of the
+people with his aid and his knowledge: he now threatened to denounce its
+crime to the tribunal of the people, if it did not pull out its purse
+and buy his silence with three millions annually. It had robbed three
+million Frenchmen of the suffrage: for every Frenchman thrown "out of
+circulation," he demanded a franc "in circulation." He, the elect of
+six million, demanded indemnity for the votes he had been subsequently
+cheated of. The Committee of the National Assembly turned the
+importunate fellow away. The Bonapartist press threatened: Could the
+National Assembly break with the President of the republic at a time
+when it had broken definitely and on principle with the mass of the
+nation? It rejected the annual civil list, but granted, for this once,
+an allowance of 2,160,000 francs. Thus it made itself guilty of the
+double weakness of granting the money, and, at the same time, showing
+by its anger that it did so only unwillingly. We shall presently see
+to what use Bonaparte put the money. After this aggravating after-play,
+that followed upon the heels of the abolition of universal suffrage,
+and in which Bonaparte exchanged his humble attitude of the days of
+the crisis of March and April for one of defiant impudence towards the
+usurping parliament, the National Assembly adjourned for three months,
+from August 11, to November 11. It left behind in its place a Permanent
+Committee of 18 members that contained no Bonapartist, but did contain
+a few moderate republicans. The Permanent Committee of the year 1849 had
+numbered only men of order and Bonapartists. At that time, however, the
+party of Order declared itself in permanence against the revolution;
+now the parliamentary republic declared itself in permanence against the
+President. After the law of May 31, only this rival still confronted the
+party of Order.
+
+When the National Assembly reconvened in November, 1850, instead of its
+former petty skirmishes with the President, a great headlong struggle,
+a struggle for life between the two powers, seemed to have become
+inevitable.
+
+As in the year 1849, the party of Order had during this year's vacation,
+dissolved into its two separate factions, each occupied with its own
+restoration intrigues, which had received new impetus from the death
+of Louis Philippe. The Legitimist King, Henry V, had even appointed a
+regular Ministry, that resided in Paris, and in which sat members of
+the Permanent Committee. Hence, Bonaparte was, on his part, justified
+in making tours through the French Departments, and--according to the
+disposition of the towns that he happened to be gladdening with his
+presence--some times covertly, other times more openly blabbing out
+his own restoration plans, and gaining votes for himself On these
+excursions, which the large official "Moniteur" and the small private
+"Moniteurs" of Bonaparte were, of course, bound to celebrate as
+triumphal marches, he was constantly accompanied by affiliated members
+of the "Society of December 10" This society dated from the year
+1849. Under the pretext of founding a benevolent association, the
+slum-proletariat of Paris was organized into secret sections, each
+section led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist General at the
+head of all. Along with ruined roues of questionable means of support
+and questionable antecedents, along with the foul and adventures-seeking
+dregs of the bourgeoisie, there were vagabonds, dismissed soldiers,
+discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves, sharpers, jugglers,
+lazzaroni, pickpockets, sleight-of-hand performers, gamblers, procurers,
+keepers of disorderly houses, porters, literati, organ grinders, rag
+pickers, scissors grinders, tinkers, beggars--in short, that whole
+undefined, dissolute, kicked-about mass that the Frenchmen style "la
+Boheme" With this kindred element, Bonaparte formed the stock of the
+"Society of December 10," a "benevolent association" in so far as, like
+Bonaparte himself, all its members felt the need of being benevolent to
+themselves at the expense of the toiling nation. The Bonaparte, who here
+constitutes himself Chief of the Slum-Proletariat; who only here finds
+again in plenteous form the interests which he personally pursues; who,
+in this refuse, offal and wreck of all classes, recognizes the only
+class upon which he can depend unconditionally;--this is the real
+Bonaparte, the Bonaparte without qualification. An old and crafty roue,
+he looks upon the historic life of nations, upon their great and public
+acts, as comedies in the ordinary sense, as a carnival, where the
+great costumes, words and postures serve only as masks for the pettiest
+chicaneries. So, on the occasion of his expedition against Strassburg
+when a trained Swiss vulture impersonated the Napoleonic eagle; so,
+again, on the occasion of his raid upon Boulogne, when he struck a few
+London lackeys into French uniform: they impersonated the army; [#1
+Under the reign of Louis Philippe, Bonaparte made two attempts to
+restore the throne of Napoleon: one in October, 1836, in an expedition
+from Switzerland upon Strassburg and one in August, 1840, in an
+expedition from England upon Boulogne.] and so now, in his "Society
+of December 10," he collects 10,000 loafers who are to impersonate
+the people as Snug the Joiner does the lion. At a period when the
+bourgeoisie itself is playing the sheerest comedy, but in the most
+solemn manner in the world, without doing violence to any of the
+pedantic requirements of French dramatic etiquette, and is itself partly
+deceived by, partly convinced of, the solemnity of its own public acts,
+the adventurer, who took the comedy for simple comedy, was bound to win.
+Only after he has removed his solemn opponent, when he himself takes
+seriously his own role of emperor, and, with the Napoleonic mask on,
+imagines he impersonates the real Napoleon, only then does he become the
+victim of his own peculiar conception of history--the serious clown, who
+no longer takes history for a comedy, but a comedy for history. What the
+national work-shops were to the socialist workingmen, what the "Gardes
+mobiles" were to the bourgeois republicans, that was to Bonaparte the
+"Society of December 10,"--a force for partisan warfare peculiar to
+himself. On his journeys, the divisions of the Society, packed away
+on the railroads, improvised an audience for him, performed public
+enthusiasm, shouted "vive l'Empereur," insulted and clubbed the
+republicans,--all, of course, under the protection of the police. On
+his return stages to Paris, this rabble constituted his vanguard,
+it forestalled or dispersed counter-demonstrations. The "Society of
+December 10" belonged to him, it was his own handiwork, his own thought.
+Whatever else he appropriates, the power of circumstances places in his
+hands; whatever else he does, either circumstances do for him, or he
+is content to copy from the deeds of others, but he posing before the
+citizens with the official phrases about "Order," "Religion," "Family,"
+"Property," and, behind him, the secret society of skipjacks and
+picaroons, the society of disorder, of prostitution, and of theft,--that
+is Bonaparte himself as the original author; and the history of the
+"Society of December 10" is his own history. Now, then, it happened that
+Representatives belonging to the party of order occasionally got under
+the clubs of the Decembrists. Nay, more. Police Commissioner Yon, who
+had been assigned to the National Assembly, and was charged with the
+guardianship of its safety, reported to the Permanent Committee upon the
+testimony of one Alais, that a Section of the Decembrists had decided
+on the murder of General Changarnier and of Dupin, the President of the
+National Assembly, and had already settled upon the men to execute the
+decree. One can imagine the fright of Mr. Dupin. A parliamentary
+inquest over the "Society of December 10," i. e., the profanation of
+the Bonapartist secret world now seemed inevitable. Just before the
+reconvening of the National Assembly, Bonaparte circumspectly dissolved
+his Society, of course, on paper only. As late as the end of 1851,
+Police Prefect Carlier vainly sought, in an exhaustive memorial, to move
+him to the real dissolution of the Decembrists.
+
+The "Society of December 10" was to remain the private army of Bonaparte
+until he should have succeeded in converting the public Army into a
+"Society of December 10." Bonaparte made the first attempt in this
+direction shortly after the adjournment of the National Assembly, and he
+did so with the money which he had just wrung from it. As a fatalist,
+he lives devoted to the conviction that there are certain Higher Powers,
+whom man, particularly the soldier, cannot resist. First among these
+Powers he numbers cigars and champagne, cold poultry and garlic-sausage.
+Accordingly, in the apartments of the Elysee, he treated first the
+officers and under-officers to cigars and champagne, to cold poultry and
+garlic-sausage. On October 3, he repeats this manoeuvre with the rank
+and file of the troops by the review of St. Maur; and, on October 10,
+the same manoeuvre again, upon a larger scale, at the army parade of
+Satory. The Uncle bore in remembrance the campaigns of Alexander in
+Asia: the Nephew bore in remembrance the triumphal marches of Bacchus
+in the same country. Alexander was, indeed, a demigod; but Bacchus was
+a full-fledged god, and the patron deity, at that, of the "Society of
+December 10."
+
+After the review of October 3, the Permanent Committee summoned the
+Minister of War, d'Hautpoul, before it. He promised that such breaches
+of discipline should not recur. We have seen how, on October 10th,
+Bonaparte kept d'Hautpoul's word. At both reviews Changarnier had
+commanded as Commander-in-chief of the Army of Paris. He, at once member
+of the Permanent Committee, Chief of the National Guard, the "Savior"
+of January 29, and June 13, the "Bulwark of Society," candidate of the
+Party of Order for the office of President, the suspected Monk of two
+monarchies,--he had never acknowledged his subordination to the Minister
+of War, had ever openly scoffed at the republican Constitution, and had
+pursued Bonaparte with a protection that was ambiguously distinguished.
+Now he became zealous for the discipline in opposition to Bonaparte.
+While, on October 10, a part of the cavalry cried: "Vive Napoleon!
+Vivent les saucissons;" [#2 Long live Napoleon! Long live the sausages!]
+Changarnier saw to it that at least the infantry, which filed by under
+the command of his friend Neumeyer, should observe an icy silence.
+In punishment, the Minister of War, at the instigation of Bonaparte,
+deposed General Neumeyer from his post in Paris, under the pretext of
+providing for him as Commander-in-chief of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
+Military Divisions. Neumeyer declined the exchange, and had, in
+consequence, to give his resignation. On his part, Changarnier published
+on November 2, an order, wherein he forbade the troops to indulge, while
+under arms, in any sort of political cries or demonstrations. The papers
+devoted to the Elysee interests attacked Changarnier; the papers of the
+party of Order attacked Bonaparte; the Permanent Committee held frequent
+secret sessions, at which it was repeatedly proposed to declare the
+fatherland in danger; the Army seemed divided into two hostile camps,
+with two hostile staffs; one at the Elysee, where Bonaparte, the other
+at the Tuileries, where Changarnier resided. All that seemed wanting
+for the signal of battle to sound was the convening of the National
+Assembly. The French public looked upon the friction between
+Bonaparte and Changarnier in the light of the English journalist, who
+characterized it in these words: "The political servant girls of France
+are mopping away the glowing lava of the revolution with old mops, and
+they scold each other while doing their work."
+
+Meanwhile, Bonaparte hastened to depose the Minister of War, d'Hautpoul;
+to expedite him heels over head to Algiers; and to appoint in his place
+General Schramm as Minister of War. On November 12, he sent to the
+National Assembly a message of American excursiveness, overloaded with
+details, redolent of order, athirst for conciliation, resignful to the
+Constitution, dealing with all and everything, only not with the burning
+questions of the moment. As if in passing he dropped the words that
+according to the express provisions of the Constitution, the President
+alone disposes over the Army. The message closed with the following
+high-sounding protestations:
+
+"France demands, above all things, peace . . . Alone bound by an oath, I
+shall keep myself within the narrow bounds marked out by it to me . . .
+As to me, elected by the people, and owing my power to it alone, I shall
+always submit to its lawfully expressed will. Should you at this
+session decide upon the revision of the Constitution, a Constitutional
+Convention will regulate the position of the Executive power. If you
+do not, then, the people will, in 1852, solemnly announce its decision.
+But, whatever the solution may be that the future has in store, let us
+arrive at an understanding to the end that never may passion, surprise
+or violence decide over the fate of a great nation. . . . That which,
+above all, bespeaks my attention is, not who will, in 1852, rule over
+France, but to so devote the time at my disposal that the interval may
+pass by with-out agitation and disturbance. I have straightforwardly
+opened my heart to you, you will answer my frankness with your
+confidence, my good efforts with your co-operation. God will do the
+rest."
+
+The honnete, hypocritically temperate, commonplace-virtuous language
+of the bourgeoisie reveals its deep meaning in the mouth of the
+self-appointed ruler of the "Society of December 10," and of the
+picnic-hero of St. Maur and Satory.
+
+The burgraves of the party of Order did not for a moment deceive
+themselves on the confidence that this unbosoming deserved. They
+were long blase on oaths; they numbered among themselves veterans and
+virtuosi of perjury. The passage about the army did not, however, escape
+them. They observed with annoyance that the message, despite its prolix
+enumeration of the lately enacted laws, passed, with affected silence,
+over the most important of all, the election law, and, moreover, in
+case no revision of the Constitution was held, left the choice of
+the President, in 1852, with the people. The election law was the
+ball-and-chain to the feet of the party of Order, that hindered them
+from walking, and now assuredly from storming. Furthermore, by the
+official disbandment of the "Society of December 10," and the dismissal
+of the Minister of War, d'Hautpoul, Bonaparte had, with his own hands,
+sacrificed the scapegoats on the altar of the fatherland. He had turned
+off the expected collision. Finally, the party of Order itself anxiously
+sought to avoid every decisive conflict with the Executive, to weaken
+and to blur it over. Fearing to lose its conquests over the revolution,
+it let its rival gather the fruits thereof. "France demands, above
+all things, peace," with this language had the party of Order been
+apostrophizing the revolution, since February; with this language
+did Bonaparte's message now apostrophize the party of Order: "France
+demands, above all things, peace." Bonaparte committed acts that aimed
+at usurpation, but the party of Order committed a "disturbance of
+the peace," if it raised the hue and cry, and explained them
+hypochrondriacally. The sausages of Satory were mouse-still when
+nobody talked about them;--France demands, above all things, "peace."
+Accordingly, Bonaparte demanded that he be let alone; and the
+parliamentary party was lamed with a double fear: the fear of
+re-conjuring up the revolutionary disturbance of the peace, and the fear
+of itself appearing as the disturber of the peace in the eyes of its own
+class, of the bourgeosie. Seeing that, above all things, France demanded
+peace, the party of Order did not dare, after Bonaparte had said "peace"
+in his message, to answer "war." The public, who had promised to itself
+the pleasure of seeing great scenes of scandal at the opening of the
+National Assembly, was cheated out of its expectations. The opposition
+deputies, who demanded the submission of the minutes of the Permanent
+Committee over the October occurrences, were outvoted. All debate that
+might excite was fled from on principle. The labors of the National
+Assembly during November and December, 1850, were without interest.
+
+Finally, toward the end of December, began a guerilla warfare about
+certain prerogatives of the parliament. The movement sank into the mire
+of petty chicaneries on the prerogative of the two powers, since, with
+the abolition of universal suffrage, the bourgeoisie had done away with
+the class struggle.
+
+A judgment for debt had been secured against Mauguin, one of the
+Representatives. Upon inquiry by the President of the Court, the
+Minister of Justice, Rouher, declared that an order of arrest should be
+made out without delay. Manguin was, accordingly, cast into the
+debtors' prison. The National Assembly bristled up when it heard of
+the "attentat." It not only ordered his immediate release, but had him
+forcibly taken out of Clichy the same evening by its own greffier. In
+order, nevertheless, to shield its belief in the "sacredness of private
+property," and also with the ulterior thought of opening, in case
+of need, an asylum for troublesome Mountainers, it declared the
+imprisonment of a Representative for debt to be permissible upon its
+previous consent. It forgot to decree that the President also could
+be locked up for debt. By its act, it wiped out the last semblance of
+inviolability that surrounded the members of its own body.
+
+It will be remembered that, upon the testimony of one Allais, Police
+Commissioner Yon had charged a Section of Decembrists with a plan
+to murder Dupin and Changarnier. With an eye upon that, the questors
+proposed at the very first session, that the parliament organize a
+police force of its own, paid for out of the private budget of the
+National Assembly itself, and wholly independent of the Police Prefects.
+The Minister of the Interior, Baroche, protested against this trespass
+on his preserves. A miserable compromise followed, according to which
+the Police Commissioner of the Assembly was to be paid out of its own
+private budget and was to be subject to the appointment and dismissal of
+its own questors, but only upon previous agreement with the Minister
+of the Interior. In the meantime Allais had been prosecuted by the
+Government. It was an easy thing in Court, to present his testimony
+in the light of a mystification, and, through the mouth of the Public
+Prosecutor, to throw Dupin, Changarnier, Yon, together with the whole
+National Assembly, into a ridiculous light. Thereupon, on December
+29, Minister Baroche writes a letter to Dupin, in which he demands the
+dismissal of Yon. The Committee of the National Assembly decides to keep
+Yon in office; nevertheless, the National Assembly, frightened by its
+own violence in the affair of Mauguin, and accustomed, every time it has
+shied a blow at the Executive, to receive back from it two in exchange,
+does not sanction this decision. It dismisses Yon in reward for his zeal
+in office, and robs itself of a parliamentary prerogative, indispensable
+against a person who does not decide by night to execute by day, but
+decides by day and executes by night.
+
+We have seen how, during the months of November and December, under
+great and severe provocations, the National Assembly evaded and refused
+the combat with the Executive power. Now we see it compelled to accept
+it on the smallest occasions. In the affair of Mauguin, it confirms in
+principle the liability of a Representative to imprisonment for debt,
+but to itself reserves the power of allowing the principle to be applied
+only to the Representatives whom it dislikes,-and for this infamous
+privilege we see it wrangling with the Minister of Justice. Instead of
+utilizing the alleged murder plan to the end of fastening an inquest
+upon the "Society of December 10," and of exposing Bonaparte beyond
+redemption before France and his true figure, as the head of the
+slum-proletariat of Paris, it allows the collision to sink to a point
+where the only issue between itself and the Minister of the Interior
+is. Who has jurisdiction over the appointment and dismissal of a Police
+Commissioner? Thus we see the party of Order, during this whole period,
+compelled by its ambiguous position to wear out and fritter away its
+conflict with the Executive power in small quarrels about jurisdiction,
+in chicaneries, in pettifogging, in boundary disputes, and to turn the
+stalest questions of form into the very substance of its activity.
+It dares not accept the collision at the moment when it involves a
+principle, when the Executive power has really given itself a blank,
+and when the cause of the National Assembly would be the cause of the
+nation. It would thereby have issued to the nation an order of march;
+and it feared nothing so much as that the nation should move. Hence, on
+these occasions, it rejects the motions of the Mountain, and proceeds
+to the order of the day. After the issue has in this way lost all
+magnitude, the Executive power quietly awaits the moment when it can
+take it up again upon small and insignificant occasions; when, so to
+say, the issue offers only a parliamentary local interest. Then does the
+repressed valor of the party of Order break forth, then it tears away
+the curtain from the scene, then it denounces the President, then it
+declares the republic to be in danger,--but then all its pathos appears
+stale, and the occasion for the quarrel a hypocritical pretext, or not
+at all worth the effort. The parliamentary tempest becomes a tempest in
+a tea-pot, the struggle an intrigue, the collision a scandal. While the
+revolutionary classes gloat with sardonic laughter over the humiliation
+of the National Assembly--they, of course, being as enthusiastic for the
+prerogatives of the parliament as that body is for public freedom--the
+bourgeoisie, outside of the parliament, does not understand how the
+bourgeoisie, inside of the parliament, can squander its time with such
+petty bickerings, and can endanger peace by such wretched rivalries with
+the President. It is puzzled at a strategy that makes peace the very
+moment when everybody expects battles, and that attacks the very moment
+everybody believes peace has been concluded.
+
+On December 20, Pascal Duprat interpellated the Minister of the Interior
+on the "Goldbar Lottery." This lottery was a "Daughter from Elysium";
+Bonaparte, together with his faithful, had given her birth; and Police
+Prefect Carlier had placed her under his official protection, although
+the French law forbade all lotteries, with the exception of games for
+benevolent purposes. Seven million tickets, a franc a piece, and the
+profit ostensibly destined to the shipping of Parisian vagabonds to
+California. Golden dreams were to displace the Socialist dreams of the
+Parisian proletariat; the tempting prospect of a prize was to displace
+the doctrinal right to labor. Of course, the workingmen of Paris did
+not recognize in the lustre of the California gold bars the lack-lustre
+francs that had been wheedled out of their pockets. In the main,
+however, the scheme was an unmitigated swindle. The vagabonds, who meant
+to open California gold mines without taking the pains to leave Paris,
+were Bonaparte himself and his Round Table of desperate insolvents. The
+three millions granted by the National Assembly were rioted away; the
+Treasury had to be refilled somehow or another. In vain did Bonaparte
+open a national subscription, at the head of which he himself figured
+with a large sum, for the establishment of so-called "cites ouvrieres."
+[#3 Work cities.] The hard-hearted bourgeois waited, distrustful, for
+the payment of his own shares; and, as this, of course, never took
+place, the speculation in Socialist castles in the air fell flat. The
+gold bars drew better. Bonaparte and his associates did not content
+themselves with putting into their own pockets part of the surplus of
+the seven millions over and above the bars that were to be drawn; they
+manufactured false tickets; they sold, of Number 10 alone, fifteen to
+twenty lots--a financial operation fully in the spirit of the "Society
+of December 10"! The National Assembly did not here have before it the
+fictitious President of the Republic, but Bonaparte himself in flesh
+and blood. Here it could catch him in the act, not in conflict with
+the Constitution, but with the penal code. When, upon Duprat's
+interpellation, the National Assembly went over to the order of the day,
+this did not happen simply because Girardin's motion to declare
+itself "satisfied" reminded the party of Order of its own systematic
+corruption: the bourgeois, above all the bourgeois who has been inflated
+into a statesman, supplements his practical meanness with theoretical
+pompousness. As statesman, he becomes, like the Government facing him, a
+superior being, who can be fought only in a higher, more exalted manner.
+
+Bonaparte-who, for the very reason of his being a "bohemian," a princely
+slum-proletarian, had over the scampish bourgeois the advantage that he
+could carry on the fight after the Assembly itself had carried him with
+its own hands over the slippery ground of the military banquets, of the
+reviews, of the "Society of December 10," and, finally, of the penal
+code-now saw that the moment had arrived when he could move from the
+seemingly defensive to the offensive. He was but little troubled by the
+intermediate and trifling defeats of the Minister of Justice, of
+the Minister of War, of the Minister of the Navy, of the Minister
+of Finance, whereby the National Assembly indicated its growling
+displeasure. Not only did he prevent the Ministers from resigning,
+and thus recognizing the subordination of the executive power to the
+Parliament; he could now accomplish what during the vacation of the
+National Assembly he had commenced, the separation of the military power
+from the Assembly--the deposition of Changarnier.
+
+An Elysee paper published an order, issued during the month of May,
+ostensibly to the First Military Division, and, hence, proceeding
+from Changarnier, wherein the officers were recommended, in case of
+an uprising, to give no quarter to the traitors in their own ranks,
+to shoot them down on the spot, and to refuse troops to the National
+Assembly, should it make a requisition for such. On January 3, 1851,
+the Cabinet was interpellated on this order. The Cabinet demands for the
+examination of the affair at first three months, then one week,
+finally only twenty-four hours' time. The Assembly orders an immediate
+explanation Changarnier rises and declares that this order never
+existed; he adds that he would ever hasten to respond to the calls of
+the National Assembly, and that, in case of a collision, they could
+count upon him. The Assembly receives his utterances with inexpressible
+applause, and decrees a vote of confidence to him. It thereby resign its
+own powers; it decrees its own impotence and the omnipotence of the Army
+by committing itself to the private protection of a general. But the
+general, in turn, deceives himself when he places at the Assembly's
+disposal and against Bonaparte a power that he holds only as a fief from
+that same Bonaparte, and when, on his part, he expects protection from
+this Parliament, from his protege', itself needful of protection. But
+Changarnier has faith in the mysterious power with which since January,
+1849, he had been clad by the bourgeoisie. He takes himself for the
+Third Power, standing beside the other Powers of Government. He shares
+the faith of all the other heroes, or rather saints, of this epoch,
+whose greatness consists but in the interested good opinion that their
+own party holds of them, and who shrink into every-day figures so soon
+as circumstances invite them to perform miracles. Infidelity is, indeed,
+the deadly enemy of these supposed heroes and real saints. Hence their
+virtuously proud indignation at the unenthusiastic wits and scoffers.
+
+That same evening the Ministers were summoned to the Elysee; Bonaparte
+presses the removal of Changarnier; five Ministers refuse to sign the
+order; the "Moniteur" announces a Ministerial crisis; and the party of
+Order threatens the formation of a Parliamentary army under the command
+of Changarnier. The party of Order had the constitutional power hereto.
+It needed only to elect Changarnier President of the National Assembly
+in order to make a requisition for whatever military forces it needed
+for its own safety. It could do this all the more safely, seeing that
+Changarnier still stood at the head of the Army and of the Parisian
+National Guard, and only lay in wait to be summoned, together with the
+Army. The Bonapartist press did not even dare to question the right of
+the National Assembly to issue a direct requisition for troops;--a legal
+scruple, that, under the given circumstances, did not promise success.
+That the Army would have obeyed the orders of the National Assembly is
+probable, when it is considered that Bonaparte had to look eight days
+all over Paris to find two generals--Baraguay d'Hilliers and St.
+Jean d'Angley--who declared themselves ready to countersign the order
+cashiering Changamier. That, however, the party of Order would have
+found in its own ranks and in the parliament the requisite vote for such
+a decision is more than doubtful, when it is considered that, eight days
+later, 286 votes pulled away from it, and that, as late as December,
+1851, at the last decisive hour, the Mountain rejected a similar
+proposition. Nevertheless, the burgraves might still have succeeded
+in driving the mass of their party to an act of heroism, consisting in
+feeling safe behind a forest of bayonets, and in accepting the services
+of the Army, which found itself deserted in its camp. Instead of this,
+the Messieurs Burgraves betook themselves to the Elysee on the evening
+of January 6, with the view of inducing Bonaparte, by means of politic
+words and considerations, to drop the removal of Changarnier. Him whom
+we must convince we recognize as the master of the situation. Bonaparte,
+made to feel secure by this step, appoints on January 12 a new Ministry,
+in which the leaders of the old, Fould and Baroche, are retained. St
+Jean d'Angley becomes Minister of War; the "Moniteur" announces the
+decree cashiering Changarnier; his command is divided up between
+Baraguay d'Hilliers, who receives the First Division, and Perrot, who is
+placed over the National Guard. The "Bulwark of Society" is turned down;
+and, although no dog barks over the event, in the Bourses the stock
+quotations rise.
+
+By repelling the Army, that, in Changarnier's person, put itself at its
+disposal, and thus irrevocably stood up against the President, the party
+of Order declares that the bourgeoisie has lost its vocation to reign.
+Already there was no parliamentary Ministry. By losing, furthermore, the
+handle to the Army and to the National Guard, what instrument of force
+was there left to the National Assembly in order to maintain both the
+usurped power of the parliament over the people, and its constitutional
+power over the President? None. All that was left to it was the appeal
+to peaceful principles, that itself had always explained as "general
+rules" merely, to be prescribed to third parties, and only in order
+to enable itself to move all the more freely. With the removal of
+Changarnier, with the transfer of the military power to Bonaparte,
+closes the first part of the period that we are considering, the period
+of the struggle between the party of Order and the Executive power.
+The war between the two powers is now openly declared; it is conducted
+openly; but only after the party of Order has lost both arms and
+soldier. With-out a Ministry, without any army, without a people,
+without the support of public opinion; since its election law of May
+31, no longer the representative of the sovereign nation sans eyes, sans
+ears, sans teeth, sans everything, the National Assembly had gradually
+converted itself into a French Parliament of olden days, that must
+leave all action to the Government, and content itself with growling
+remonstrances "post festum." [#4 After the act is done; after the fact.]
+
+The party of Order receives the new Ministry with a storm of
+indignation. General Bedeau calls to mind the mildness of the Permanent
+Committee during the vacation, and the excessive prudence with which it
+had renounced the privilege of disclosing its minutes. Now, the Minister
+of the Interior himself insists upon the disclosure of these minutes,
+that have now, of course, become dull as stagnant waters, reveal no
+new facts, and fall without making the slightest effect upon the blase
+public. Upon Remusat's proposition, the National Assembly retreats into
+its Committees, and appoints a "Committee on Extraordinary Measures."
+Paris steps all the less out of the ruts of its daily routine, seeing
+that business is prosperous at the time, the manufactories busy, the
+prices of cereals low, provisions abundant, the savings banks receiving
+daily new deposits. The "extraordinary measures," that the parliament
+so noisily announced fizzle out on January 18 in a vote of lack of
+confidence against the Ministry, without General Changarnier's name
+being even mentioned. The party of Order was forced to frame its motion
+in that way so as to secure the votes of the republicans, because, of
+all the acts of the Ministry, Changarnier's dismissal only was the very
+one they approved, while the party of Order cannot in fact, condemn the
+other Ministerial acts which it had itself dictated. The January 18 vote
+of lack of confidence was decided by 415 ayes against 286 nays. It was,
+accordingly put through by a coalition of the uncompromising Legitimists
+and Orleanists with the pure republicans and the Mountain. Thus it
+revealed the fact that, in its conflicts with Bonaparte, not only the
+Ministry, not only the Army, but also its independent parliamentary
+majority; that a troop of Representatives had deserted its camp out of a
+fanatic zeal for harmony, out of fear of fight, out of lassitude, out
+of family considerations for the salaries of relatives in office, out
+of speculations on vacancies in the Ministry (Odillon Barrot), or out
+of that unmitigated selfishness that causes the average bourgeois to be
+ever inclined to sacrifice the interests of his class to this or that
+private motive. The Bonapartist Representatives belonged from the start
+to the party of Order only in the struggle against the revolution.
+The leader of the Catholic party, Montalembert, already then threw his
+influence in the scale of Bonaparte, since he despaired of the vitality
+of the parliamentary party. Finally, the leaders of this party itself,
+Thiers and Berryer--the Orleanist and the Legitimist--were compelled
+to proclaim themselves openly as republicans; to admit that their heart
+favored royalty, but their head the republic; that their parliamentary
+republic was the only possible form for the rule of the bourgeoisie Thus
+were they compelled to brand, before the eyes of the bourgeois
+class itself, as an intrigue--as dangerous as it was senseless--the
+restoration plans, which they continued to pursue indefatigably behind
+the back of the parliament.
+
+The January 18 vote of lack of confidence struck the Ministers, not the
+President. But it was not the Ministry, it was the President who had
+deposed Changarnier. Should the party of Order place Bonaparte himself
+under charges? On account of his restoration hankerings? These only
+supplemented their own. On account of his conspiracy at the military
+reviews and of the "Society of December 10"? They had long since buried
+these subjects under simple orders of business. On account of the
+discharge of the hero of January 29 and June 13, of the man who, in May,
+1850, threatened, in case of riot, to set Paris on fire at all its four
+corners? Their allies of the Mountain and Cavaignac did not even
+allow them to console the fallen "Bulwark of Society" with an official
+testimony of their sympathy. They themselves could not deny the
+constitutional right of the President to remove a General. They stormed
+only because he made an unparliamentary use of his constitutional right.
+Had they not themselves constantly made an unconstitutional use of
+their parliamentary prerogative, notably by the abolition of universal
+suffrage? Consequently they were reminded to move exclusively within
+parliamentary bounds. Indeed, it required that peculiar disease,
+a disease that, since 1848, has raged over the whole continent,
+"Parliamentary Idiocy,"--that fetters those whom it infects to an
+imaginary world, and robs them of all sense, all remembrance,
+all understanding of the rude outside world;--it required this
+"Parliamentary Idiocy" in order that the party of Order, which had, with
+its own hands, destroyed all the conditions for parliamentary power,
+and, in its struggle with the other classes, was obliged to destroy
+them, still should consider its parliamentary victories as victories,
+and imagine it hit the President by striking his Ministers. They only
+afforded him an opportunity to humble the National Assembly anew in the
+eyes of the nation. On January 20, the "Moniteur" announced that the
+whole the dismissal of the whole Ministry was accepted. Under the
+pretext that none of the parliamentary parties had any longer the
+majority--as proved by the January 18 vote, that fruit of the
+coalition between mountain and royalists--, and, in order to await the
+re-formation of a majority, Bonaparte appointed a so-called transition
+Ministry, of whom no member belonged to the parliament-altogether wholly
+unknown and insignificant individuals; a Ministry of mere clerks and
+secretaries. The party of Order could now wear itself out in the game
+with these puppets; the Executive power no longer considered it worth
+the while to be seriously represented in the National Assembly. By
+this act Bonaparte concentrated the whole executive power all the more
+securely in his own person; he had all the freer elbow-room to
+exploit the same to his own ends, the more his Ministers became mere
+supernumeraries.
+
+The party of Order, now allied with the Mountain, revenged itself by
+rejecting the Presidential endowment project of 1,800.000 francs, which
+the chief of the "Society of December 10" had compelled his Ministerial
+clerks to present to the Assembly. This time a majority of only 102
+votes carried the day accordingly since January 18, 27 more votes had
+fallen off: the dissolution of the party of Order was making progress.
+Lest any one might for a moment be deceived touching the meaning of its
+coalition with the Mountain, the party of Order simultaneously scorned
+even to consider a motion, signed by 189 members of the Mountain, for a
+general amnesty to political criminals. It was enough that the Minister
+of the Interior, one Baisse, declared that the national tranquility was
+only in appearance, in secret there reigned deep agitation, in secret,
+ubiquitous societies were organized, the democratic papers were
+preparing to reappear, the reports from the Departments were
+unfavorable, the fugitives of Geneva conducted a conspiracy via Lyons
+through the whole of southern France, France stood on the verge of an
+industrial and commercial crisis, the manufacturers of Roubaix were
+working shorter hours, the prisoners of Belle Isle had mutinied;--it was
+enough that even a mere Baisse should conjure up the "Red Spectre" for
+the party of Order to reject without discussion a motion that would have
+gained for the National Assembly a tremendous popularity, and thrown
+Bonaparte back into its arms. Instead of allowing itself to be
+intimidated by the Executive power with the perspective of fresh
+disturbances, the party of Order should rather have allowed a little
+elbow-room to the class struggle, in order to secure the dependence of
+the Executive upon itself. But it did not feel itself equal to the task
+of playing with fire.
+
+Meanwhile, the so-called transition Ministry vegetated along until the
+middle of April. Bonaparte tired out and fooled the National Assembly
+with constantly new Ministerial combinations. Now he seemed to intend
+constructing a republican Ministry with Lamartine and Billault; then,
+a parliamentary one with the inevitable Odillon Barrot, whose name must
+never be absent when a dupe is needed; then again, a Legitimist,
+with Batismenil and Lenoist d'Azy; and yet again, an Orleansist, with
+Malleville. While thus throwing the several factions of the party of
+Order into strained relations with one another, and alarming them all
+with the prospect of a republican Ministry, together with the there-upon
+inevitable restoration of universal suffrage, Bonaparte simultaneously
+raises in the bourgeoisie the conviction that his sincere efforts for a
+parliamentary Ministry are wrecked upon the irreconcilable antagonism
+of the royalist factions. All the while the bourgeoisie was clamoring
+louder and louder for a "strong Government," and was finding it less
+and less pardonable to leave France "without an administration," in
+proportion as a general commercial crisis seemed to be under way and
+making recruits for Socialism in the cities, as did the ruinously low
+price of grain in the rural districts. Trade became daily duller;
+the unemployed hands increased perceptibly; in Paris, at least 10,000
+workingmen were without bread; in Rouen, Muehlhausen, Lyons, Roubaix,
+Tourcoign, St. Etienue, Elbeuf, etc., numerous factories stood idle.
+Under these circumstances Bonaparte could venture to restore, on April
+11, the Ministry of January 18; Messieurs Rouher, Fould, Baroche, etc.,
+reinforced by Mr. Leon Faucher, whom the constitutive assembly
+had, during its last days, unanimously, with the exception of five
+Ministerial votes, branded with a vote of censure for circulating false
+telegraphic dispatches. Accordingly, the National Assembly had won a
+victory on January 18 over the Ministry, it had, for the period of three
+months, been battling with Bonaparte, and all this merely to the end
+that, on April 11, Fould and Baroche should be able to take up the
+Puritan Faucher as third in their ministerial league.
+
+In November, 1849, Bonaparte had satisfied himself with an
+Unparliamentary, in January, 1851, with an Extra-Parliamentary, on April
+11, he felt strong enough to form an Anti-Parliamentary Ministry, that
+harmoniously combined within itself the votes of lack of confidence of
+both assemblies-the constitutive and the legislative, the republican and
+the royalist. This ministerial progression was a thermometer by which
+the parliament could measure the ebbing temperature of its own life.
+This had sunk so low by the end of April that, at a personal interview,
+Persigny could invite Changarnier to go over to the camp of the
+President. Bonaparte, he assured Changarnier, considered the influence
+of the National Assembly to be wholly annihilated, and already the
+proclamation was ready, that was to be published after the steadily
+contemplated, but again accidentally postponed "coup d'etat."
+Changarnier communicated this announcement of its death to the leaders
+of the party of Order; but who was there to believe a bed-bug bite
+could kill? The parliament, however beaten, however dissolved, however
+death-tainted it was, could not persuade itself to see, in the duel with
+the grotesque chief of the "Society of December 10," anything but a duel
+with a bed-bug. But Bonaparte answered the party of Order as Agesilaus
+did King Agis: "I seem to you an ant; but shall one day be a lion."
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The coalition with the Mountain and the pure republicans, to which the
+party of Order found itself condemned in its fruitless efforts to keep
+possession of the military and to reconquer supreme control over
+the Executive power, proved conclusively that it had forfeited its
+independent parliamentary majority. The calendar and clock merely
+gave, on May 29, the signal for its complete dissolution. With May 29
+commenced the last year of the life of the National Assembly. It now
+had to decide for the unchanged continuance or the revision of the
+Constitution. But a revision of the Constitution meant not only the
+definitive supremacy of either the bourgeoisie of the small traders'
+democracy, of either democracy or proletarian anarchy, of either a
+parliamentary republic or Bonaparte, it meant also either Orleans or
+Bourbon! Thus fell into the very midst of the parliament the apple of
+discord, around which the conflict of interests, that cut up the
+party of Order into hostile factions, was to kindle into an open
+conflagration. The party of Order was a combination of heterogeneous
+social substances. The question of revision raised a political
+temperature, in which the product was reduced to its original
+components.
+
+The interest of the Bonapartists in the revision was simple: they
+were above all concerned in the abolition of Article 45, which forbade
+Bonaparte's reelection and the prolongation of his term. Not less
+simple seemed to be the position of the republicans; they rejected all
+revision, seeing in that only a general conspiracy against the republic;
+as they disposed over more than one-fourth of the votes in the National
+Assembly, and, according to the Constitution, a three-fourths majority
+was requisite to revise and to call a revisory convention, they needed
+only to count their own votes to be certain of victory. Indeed, they
+were certain of it.
+
+Over and against these clear-cut positions, the party of Order found
+itself tangled in inextricable contradictions. If it voted against the
+revision, it endangered the "status quo," by leaving to Bonaparte only
+one expedient--that of violence and handing France over, on May 2, 1852,
+at the very time of election, a prey to revolutionary anarchy, with
+a President whose authority was at an end; with a parliament that
+the party had long ceased to own, and with a people that it meant to
+re-conquer. If it voted constitutionally for a revision, it knew that
+it voted in vain and would constitutionally have to go under before the
+veto of the republicans. If, unconstitutionally, it pronounced a simple
+majority binding, it could hope to control the revolution only in case
+it surrendered unconditionally to the domination of the Executive power:
+it then made Bonaparte master of the Constitution, of the revision
+and of itself. A merely partial revision, prolonging the term of the
+President, opened the way to imperial usurpation; a general revision,
+shortening the existence of the republic, threw the dynastic claims into
+an inevitable conflict: the conditions for a Bourbon and those for an
+Orleanist restoration were not only different, they mutually excluded
+each other.
+
+The parliamentary republic was more than a neutral ground on which the
+two factions of the French bourgeoisie--Legitimists and Orleanists,
+large landed property and manufacture--could lodge together with equal
+rights. It was the indispensable condition for their common reign,
+the only form of government in which their common class interest could
+dominate both the claims of their separate factions and all the
+other classes of society. As royalists, they relapsed into their old
+antagonism into the struggle for the overlordship of either landed
+property or of money; and the highest expression of this antagonism, its
+personification, were the two kings themselves, their dynasties. Hence
+the resistance of the party of Order to the recall of the Bourbons.
+
+The Orleanist Representative Creton moved periodically in 1849, 1850 and
+1851 the repeal of the decree of banishment against the royal families;
+as periodically did the parliament present the spectacle of an Assembly
+of royalists who stubbornly shut to their banished kings the door
+through which they could return home. Richard III murdered Henry VI,
+with the remark that he was too good for this world, and belonged in
+heaven. They declared France too bad to have her kings back again.
+Forced by the power of circumstances, they had become republicans, and
+repeatedly sanctioned the popular mandate that exiled their kings from
+France.
+
+The revision of the Constitution, and circumstances compelled its
+consideration, at once made uncertain not only the republic itself, but
+also the joint reign of the two bourgeois factions; and it revived, with
+the possibility of the monarchy, both the rivalry of interests which
+these two factions had alternately allowed to preponderate, and the
+struggle for the supremacy of the one over the other. The diplomats
+of the party of Order believed they could allay the struggle by a
+combination of the two dynasties through a so-called fusion of the
+royalist parties and their respective royal houses. The true fusion of
+the restoration and the July monarchy was, however, the parliamentary
+republic, in which the Orleanist and Legitimist colors were dissolved,
+and the bourgeois species vanished in the plain bourgeois, in the
+bourgeois genus. Now however, the plan was to turn the Orleanist
+Legitimist and the Legitimist Orleanist. The kingship, in which their
+antagonism was personified, was to incarnate their unity, the expression
+of their exclusive faction interests was to become the expression of
+their common class interest; the monarchy was to accomplish what only
+the abolition of two monarchies--the republic could and did accomplish.
+This was the philosopher's stone, for the finding of which the
+doctors of the party of Order were breaking their heads. As though
+the Legitimate monarchy ever could be the monarchy of the industrial
+bourgeoisie, or the bourgeois monarchy the monarchy of the hereditary
+landed aristocracy! As though landed property and industry could
+fraternize under one crown, where the crown could fall only upon one
+head, the head of the older or the younger brother! As though industry
+could at all deal upon a footing of equality with landed property, so
+long as landed property did not decide itself to become industrial. If
+Henry V were to die tomorrow, the Count of Paris would not, therefore,
+become the king of the Legitimists, unless he ceased to be the King of
+the Orleanists. Nevertheless, the fusion philosophers, who became louder
+in the measure that the question of revision stepped to the fore, who
+had provided themselves with a daily organ in the "Assemblee Nationale,"
+who, even at this very moment (February, 1852) are again at work,
+explained the whole difficulty by the opposition and rivalries of the
+two dynasties. The attempts to reconcile the family of Orleans with
+Henry V., begun since the death of Louis Philippe, but, as all these
+dynastic intrigues carried on only during the vacation of the National
+Assembly, between acts, behind the scenes, more as a sentimental
+coquetry with the old superstition than as a serious affair, were now
+raised by the party of Order to the dignity of a great State question,
+and were conducted upon the public stage, instead of, as heretofore in
+the amateurs' theater. Couriers flew from Paris to Venice, from Venice
+to Claremont, from Claremont to Paris. The Duke of Chambord issues
+a manifesto in which he announces not his own, but the "national"
+restoration, "with the aid of all the members of his family." The
+Oleanist Salvandy throws himself at the feet of Henry V. The Legitimist
+leaders Berryer, Benoit d'Azy, St. Priest travel to Claremont, to
+persuade the Orleans; but in vain. The fusionists learn too late
+that the interests of the two bourgeois factions neither lose in
+exclusiveness nor gain in pliancy where they sharpen to a point in the
+form of family interests, of the interests of the two royal houses.
+When Henry V. recognized the Count of Paris as his successor--the
+only success that the fusion could at best score--the house of Orleans
+acquired no claim that the childlessness of Henry V. had not already
+secured to it; but, on the other hand, it lost all the claims that it
+had conquered by the July revolution. It renounced its original claims,
+all the title, that, during a struggle nearly one hundred years long, it
+had wrested from the older branch of the Bourbons; it bartered away
+its historic prerogative, the prerogative of its family-tree. Fusion,
+accordingly, amounted to nothing else than the resignation of the house
+of Orleans, its Legitimist resignation, a repentful return from the
+Protestant State Church into the Catholic;--a return, at that, that did
+not even place it on the throne that it had lost, but on the steps of
+the throne on which it was born. The old Orleanist Ministers Guizot,
+Duchatel, etc., who likewise hastened to Claremont, to advocate the
+fusion, represented in fact only the nervous reaction of the July
+monarchy; despair, both in the citizen kingdom and the kingdom of
+citizens; the superstitious belief in legitimacy as the last amulet
+against anarchy. Mediators, in their imagination, between Orleans and
+Bourbon, they were in reality but apostate Orleanists, and as such were
+they received by the Prince of Joinville. The virile, bellicose part
+of the Orleanists, on the contrary--Thiers, Baze, etc.--, persuaded the
+family of Louis Philippe all the easier that, seeing every plan for the
+immediate restoration of the monarchy presupposed the fusion of the two
+dynasties, and every plan for fusion the resignation of the house of
+Orleans, it corresponded, on the contrary, wholly with the tradition of
+its ancestors to recognize the republic for the time being, and to wait
+until circumstances permitted I the conversion of the Presidential chair
+into a throne. Joinville's candidacy was set afloat as a rumor, public
+curiosity was held in suspense, and a few months later, after the
+revision was rejected, openly proclaimed in September.
+
+Accordingly, the essay of a royalist fusion between Orleanists and
+Legitimists did not miscarry only, it broke up their parliamentary
+fusion, the republican form that they had adopted in common, and it
+decomposed the party of Order into its original components. But the
+wider the breach became between Venice and Claremont, the further they
+drifted away from each I other, and the greater the progress made by
+the Joinville agitation, all the more active and earnest became the
+negotiations between Faucher, the Minister of Bonaparte, and the
+Legitimists.
+
+The dissolution of the party of Order went beyond its original elements.
+Each of the two large factions fell in turn into new fragments. It was
+as if all the old political shades, that formerly fought and crowded one
+another within each of the two circles--be it that of the Legitimists
+or that of the Orleanists--, had been thawed out like dried infusoria
+by contact with water; as if they had recovered enough vitality to
+build their own groups and assert their own antagonisms. The Legitimists
+dreamed they were back amidst the quarrels between the Tuileries and the
+pavilion Marsan, between Villele and Polignac; the Orleanists lived anew
+through the golden period of the tourneys between Guizot, Mole, Broglie,
+Thiers, and Odillon Barrot.
+
+That portion of the party of Order--eager for a revision of the
+Constitution but disagreed upon the extent of revision--made up of
+the Legitimists under Berryer and Falloux and of those under Laroche
+Jacquelein, together with the tired-out Orleanists under Mole,
+Broglie, Montalembert and Odillon Barrot, united with the Bonapartist
+Representatives in the following indefinite and loosely drawn motion:
+
+"The undersigned Representatives, with the end in view of restoring
+to the nation the full exercise of her sovereignty, move that the
+Constitution be revised."
+
+At the same time, however, they unanimously declared through their
+spokesman, Tocqueville, that the National Assembly had not the right to
+move the abolition of the republic, that right being vested only in
+a Constitutional Convention. For the rest, the Constitution could
+be revised only in a "legal" way, that is to say, only in case a
+three-fourths majority decided in favor of revision, as prescribed by
+the Constitution. After a six days' stormy debate, the revision was
+rejected on July 19, as was to be foreseen. In its favor 446 votes were
+cast, against it 278. The resolute Oleanists, Thiers, Changarnier, etc.,
+voted with the republicans and the Mountain.
+
+Thus the majority of the parliament pronounced itself against the
+Constitution, while the Constitution itself pronounced itself for the
+minority, and its decision binding. But had not the party of Order on
+May 31, 1850, had it not on June 13, 1849, subordinated the Constitution
+to the parliamentary majority? Did not the whole republic they had
+been hitherto having rest upon the subordination of the Constitutional
+clauses to the majority decisions of the parliament? Had they not left
+to the democrats the Old Testament superstitious belief in the letter
+of the law, and had they not chastised the democrats therefor? At this
+moment, however, revision meant nothing else than the continuance of the
+Presidential power, as the continuance of the Constitution meant nothing
+else than the deposition of Bonaparte. The parliament had pronounced
+itself for him, but the Constitution pronounced itself against the
+parliament. Accordingly, he acted both in the sense of the parliament
+when he tore up the Constitution, and in the sense of the Constitution
+when he chased away the parliament.
+
+The parliament pronounced the Constitution, and, thereby, also, its
+own reign, "outside of the pale of the majority"; by its decision, it
+repealed the Constitution, and continued the Presidential power, and it
+at once declared that neither could the one live nor the other die so
+long as itself existed. The feet of those who were to bury it stood
+at the door. While it was debating the subject of revision, Bonaparte
+removed General Baraguay d'Hilliers, who showed himself irresolute, from
+the command of the First Military Division, and appointed in his place
+General Magnan, the conqueror of Lyon; the hero of the December days,
+one of his own creatures, who already under Louis Philippe, on the
+occasion of the Boulogne expedition, had somewhat compromised himself in
+his favor.
+
+By its decision on the revision, the party of Order proved that it knew
+neither how to rule nor how to obey; neither how to live nor how to die;
+neither how to bear with the republic nor how to overthrow it; neither
+how to maintain the Constitution nor how to throw it overboard; neither
+how to co-operate with the President nor how to break with him. From
+what quarter did it then, look to for the solution of all the existing
+perplexities? From the calendar, from the course of events. It ceased to
+assume the control of events. It, accordingly, invited events to don its
+authority and also the power to which in its struggle with the people,
+it had yielded one attribute after another until it finally stood
+powerless before the same. To the end that the Executive be able all the
+more freely to formulate his plan of campaign against it, strengthen his
+means of attack, choose his tools, fortify his positions, the party of
+Order decided, in the very midst of this critical moment, to step off
+the stage, and adjourn for three months, from August 10 to November 4.
+
+Not only was the parliamentary party dissolved into its two great
+factions, not only was each of these dissolved within itself, but the
+party of Order, inside of the parliament, was at odds with the party of
+Order, outside of the parliament. The learned speakers and writers
+of the bourgeoisie, their tribunes and their press, in short, the
+ideologists of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie itself, the
+representatives and the represented, stood estranged from, and no longer
+understood one another.
+
+The Legitimists in the provinces, with their cramped horizon and their
+boundless enthusiasm, charged their parliamentary leaders Berryer and
+Falloux with desertion to the Bonapartist camp, and with apostacy from
+Henry V. Their lilymind [#1 An allusion to the lilies of the Bourbon
+coat-of-arms] believed in the fall of man, but not in diplomacy.
+
+More fatal and completer, though different, was the breach between the
+commercial bourgeoisie and its politicians. It twitted them, not as the
+Legitimists did theirs, with having apostatized from their principle,
+but, on the contrary, with adhering to principles that had become
+useless.
+
+I have already indicated that, since the entry of Fould in the Ministry,
+that portion of the commercial bourgeoisie that had enjoyed the lion's
+share in Louis Philippe's reign, to-wit, the aristocracy of finance, had
+become Bonapartist. Fould not only represented Bonaparte's interests
+at the Bourse, he represented also the interests of the Bourse with
+Bonaparte. A passage from the London "Economist," the European organ of
+the aristocracy of finance, described most strikingly the attitude of
+this class. In its issue of February 1, 1851, its Paris correspondent
+writes: "Now we have it stated from numerous quarters that France wishes
+above all things for repose. The President declares it in his message to
+the Legislative Assembly; it is echoed from the tribune; it is asserted
+in the journals; it is announced from the pulpit; it is demonstrated
+by the sensitiveness of the public funds at the least prospect of
+disturbance, and their firmness the instant it is made manifest that
+the Executive is far superior in wisdom and power to the factious
+ex-officials of all former governments."
+
+In its issue of November 29, 1851, the "Economist" declares editorially:
+"The President is now recognized as the guardian of order on every Stock
+Exchange of Europe." Accordingly, the Aristocracy of Finance condemned
+the parliamentary strife of the party of Order with the Executive as a
+"disturbance of order," and hailed every victory of the President over
+its reputed representatives as a "victory of order." Under "aristocracy
+of finance" must not, however, be understood merely the large bond
+negotiators and speculators in government securities, of whom it may
+be readily understood that their interests and the interests of the
+Government coincide. The whole modern money trade, the whole banking
+industry, is most intimately interwoven with the public credit. Part
+of their business capital requires to be invested in interest-bearing
+government securities that are promptly convertible into money; their
+deposits, i. e., the capital placed at their disposal and by them
+distributed among merchants and industrial establishments, flow partly
+out of the dividends on government securities. The whole money market,
+together with the priests of this market, is part and parcel of this
+"aristocracy of finance" at every epoch when the stability of the
+government is to them synonymous with "Moses and his prophets." This is
+so even before things have reached the present stage when every deluge
+threatens to carry away the old governments themselves.
+
+But the industrial Bourgeoisie also, in its fanaticism for order, was
+annoyed at the quarrels of the Parliamentary party of Order with the
+Executive. Thiers, Anglas, Sainte Beuve, etc., received, after their
+vote of January 18, on the occasion of the discharge of Changarnier,
+public reprimands from their constituencies, located in the industrial
+districts, branding their coalition with the Mountain as an act of high
+treason to the cause of order. Although, true enough, the boastful,
+vexatious and petty intrigues, through which the struggle of the party
+of Order with the President manifested itself, deserved no better
+reception, yet notwithstanding, this bourgeois party, that expects
+of its representatives to allow the military power to pass without
+resistance out of the hands of their own Parliament into those of an
+adventurous Pretender, is not worth even the intrigues that were wasted
+in its behalf. It showed that the struggle for the maintenance of their
+public interests, of their class interests, of their political power
+only incommoded and displeased them, as a disturbance of their private
+business.
+
+The bourgeois dignitaries of the provincial towns, the magistrates,
+commercial judges, etc., with hardly any exception, received Bonaparte
+everywhere on his excursions in the most servile manner, even when, as
+in Dijon, he attacked the National Assembly and especially the party of
+Order without reserve.
+
+Business being brisk, as still at the beginning of 1851, the commercial
+bourgeoisie stormed against every Parliamentary strife, lest business
+be put out of temper. Business being dull, as from the end of February,
+1851, on, the bourgeoisie accused the Parliamentary strifes as the cause
+of the stand-still, and clamored for quiet in order that business may
+revive. The debates on revision fell just in the bad times. Seeing
+the question now was the to be or not to be of the existing form of
+government, the bourgeoisie felt itself all the more justified in
+demanding of its Representatives that they put an end to this tormenting
+provisional status, and preserve the "status quo." This was no
+contradiction. By putting an end to the provisional status, it
+understood its continuance, the indefinite putting off of the moment
+when a final decision had to be arrived at. The "status quo" could
+be preserved in only one of two ways: either by the prolongation of
+Bonaparte's term of office or by his constitutional withdrawal and the
+election of Cavaignac. A part of the bourgeoisie preferred the latter
+solution, and knew no better advice to give their Representatives than
+to be silent, to avoid the burning point. If their Representatives did
+not speak, so argued they, Bonaparte would not act. They desired an
+ostrich Parliament that would hide its head, in order not to be seen.
+Another part of the bourgeoisie preferred that Bonaparte, being once in
+the Presidential chair, be left in the Presidential chair, in order that
+everything might continue to run in the old ruts. They felt indignant
+that their Parliament did not openly break the Constitution and resign
+without further ado. The General Councils of the Departments, these
+provisional representative bodies of the large bourgeoisie, who had
+adjourned during the vacation of the National Assembly since August 25,
+pronounced almost unanimously for revision, that is to say, against the
+Parliament and for Bonaparte.
+
+Still more unequivocally than in its falling out with its Parliamentary
+Representatives, did the bourgeoisie exhibit its wrath at its literary
+Representatives, its own press. The verdicts of the bourgeois juries,
+inflicting excessive fines and shameless sentences of imprisonment for
+every attack of the bourgeois press upon the usurping aspirations of
+Bonaparte, for every attempt of the press to defend the political rights
+of the bourgeoisie against the Executive power, threw, not France alone,
+but all Europe into amazement.
+
+While on the one hand, as I have indicated, the Parliamentary party of
+Order ordered itself to keep the peace by screaming for peace; and while
+it pronounced the political rule of the bourgeoisie irreconcilable with
+the safety and the existence of the bourgeoisie, by destroying with
+its own hands in its struggle with the other classes of society all the
+conditions for its own, the Parliamentary regime; on the other hand, the
+mass of the bourgeoisie, outside of the Parliament, urged Bonaparte--by
+its servility towards the President, by its insults to the Parliament,
+by the brutal treatment of its own press--to suppress and annihilate
+its speaking and writing organs, its politicians and its literati, its
+orators' tribune and its press, to the end that, under the protection
+of a strong and unhampered Government, it might ply its own private
+pursuits in safety. It declared unmistakably that it longed to be rid of
+its own political rule, in order to escape the troubles and dangers of
+ruling.
+
+And this bourgeoisie, that had rebelled against even the Parliamentary
+and literary contest for the supremacy of its own class, that had
+betrayed its leaders in this contest, it now has the effrontery to
+blame the proletariat for not having risen in its defence in a bloody
+struggle, in a struggle for life! Those bourgeois, who at every turn
+sacrificed their common class interests to narrow and dirty private
+interests, and who demanded a similar sacrifice from their own
+Representatives, now whine that the proletariat has sacrificed their
+idea-political to its own material interests! This bourgeois class now
+strikes the attitude of a pure soul, misunderstood and abandoned, at
+a critical moment, by the proletariat, that has been misled by the
+Socialists. And its cry finds a general echo in the bourgeois world.
+Of course, I do not refer to German crossroad politicians and kindred
+blockheads. I refer, for instance, to the "Economist," which, as late
+as November 29, 1851, that is to say, four days before the "coup d'etat"
+pronounced Bonaparte the "Guardian of Order" and Thiers and Berryer
+"Anarchists," and as early as December 27, 1851, after Bonaparte had
+silenced those very Anarchists, cries out about the treason committed
+by "the ignorant, untrained and stupid proletaires against the skill,
+knowledge, discipline, mental influence, intellectual resources an
+moral weight of the middle and upper ranks." The stupid, ignorant and
+contemptible mass was none other than the bourgeoisie itself.
+
+France had, indeed; experienced a sort of commercial crisis in 1851. At
+the end of February, there was a falling off of exports as compared with
+1850; in March, business languished and factories shut down; in April,
+the condition of the industrial departments seemed as desperate as after
+the February days; in May, business did not yet pick up; as late as
+June 28, the reports of the Bank of France revealed through a tremendous
+increase of deposits and an equal decrease of loans on exchange notes,
+the standstill of production; not until the middle of October did a
+steady improvement of business set in. The French bourgeoisie accounted
+for this stagnation of business with purely political reasons; it
+imputed the dull times to the strife between the Parliament and the
+Executive power, to the uncertainty of a provisional form of government,
+to the alarming prospects of May 2, 1852. I shall not deny that all
+these causes did depress some branches of industry in Paris and in the
+Departments. At any rate, this effect of political circumstances was
+only local and trifling. Is there any other proof needed than that
+the improvement in business set in at the very time when the political
+situation was growing worse, when the political horizon was growing
+darker, and when at every moment a stroke of lightning was expected out
+of the Elysee--in the middle of October? The French bourgeois, whose
+"skill, knowledge, mental influence and intellectual resources," reach
+no further than his nose, could, moreover, during the whole period of
+the Industrial Exposition in London, have struck with his nose the
+cause of his own business misery. At the same time that, in France, the
+factories were being closed, commercial failures broke out in England.
+While the industrial panic reached its height during April and May in
+France, in England the commercial panic reached its height in April and
+May. The same as the French, the English woolen industries suffered,
+and, as the French, so did the English silk manufacture. Though the
+English cotton factories went on working, it, nevertheless, was not with
+the same old profit of 1849 and 1850. The only difference was this: that
+in France, the crisis was an industrial, in England it was a commercial
+one; that while in France the factories stood still, they spread
+themselves in England, but under less favorable circumstances than
+they had done the years just previous; that, in France, the export, in
+England, the import trade suffered the heaviest blows. The common cause,
+which, as a matter of fact, is not to be looked for with-in the bounds
+of the French political horizon, was obvious. The years 1849 and 1850
+were years of the greatest material prosperity, and of an overproduction
+that did not manifest itself until 1851. This was especially promoted at
+the beginning of 1851 by the prospect of the Industrial Exposition; and,
+as special causes, there were added, first, the failure of the cotton
+crop of 1850 and 1851; second, the certainty of a larger cotton crop
+than was expected: first, the rise, then the sudden drop; in short, the
+oscillations of the cotton market. The crop of raw silk in France had
+been below the average. Finally, the manufacture of woolen goods had
+received such an increment since 1849, that the production of wool could
+not keep step with it, and the price of the raw material rose greatly
+out of proportion to the price of the manufactured goods. Accordingly,
+we have here in the raw material of three staple articles a
+threefold material for a commercial crisis. Apart from these special
+circumstances, the seeming crisis of the year 1851 was, after all,
+nothing but the halt that overproduction and overspeculation make
+regularly in the course of the industrial cycle, before pulling all
+their forces together in order to rush feverishly over the last stretch,
+and arrive again at their point of departure--the General Commercial
+Crisis. At such intervals in the history of trade, commercial failures
+break out in England, while, in France, industry itself is stopped,
+partly because it is compelled to retreat through the competition of
+the English, that, at such times becomes resistless in all markets,
+and partly because, as an industry of luxuries, it is affected with
+preference by every stoppage of trade. Thus, besides the general
+crisis, France experiences her own national crises, which, how-ever,
+are determined by and conditioned upon the general state of the world's
+market much more than by local French influences. It will not be devoid
+of interest to contrast the prejudgment of the French bourgeois with the
+judgment of the English bourgeois. One of the largest Liverpool firms
+writes in its yearly report of trade for 1851: "Few years have more
+completely disappointed the expectations entertained at their beginning
+than the year that has just passed; instead of the great prosperity,
+that was unanimously looked forward to, it proved itself one of the most
+discouraging years during the last quarter of a century. This applies,
+of course, only to the mercantile, not to the industrial classes. And
+yet, surely there were grounds at the beginning of the year from which
+to draw a contrary conclusion; the stock of products was scanty, capital
+was abundant, provisions cheap, a rich autumn was assured, there was
+uninterrupted peace on the continent and no political and financial
+disturbances at home; indeed, never were the wings of trade more
+unshackled. . . . What is this unfavorable result to be ascribed to?
+We believe to excessive trade in imports as well as exports. If our
+merchants do not themselves rein in their activity, nothing can keep us
+going, except a panic every three years."
+
+Imagine now the French bourgeois, in the midst of this business panic,
+having his trade-sick brain tortured, buzzed at and deafened with rumors
+of a "coup d'etat" and the restoration of universal suffrage; with the
+struggle between the Legislature and the Executive; with the
+Fronde warfare between Orleanists and Legitimists; with communistic
+conspiracies in southern France; with alleged Jacqueries [#2 Peasant
+revolts] in the Departments of Nievre and Cher; with the advertisements
+of the several candidates for President; with "social solutions"
+huckstered about by the journals; with the threats of the republicans to
+uphold, arms in hand, the Constitution and universal suffrage; with the
+gospels, according to the emigrant heroes "in partibus," who announced
+the destruction of the world for May 2,--imagine that, and one can
+understand how the bourgeois, in this unspeakable and noisy confusion
+of fusion, revision, prorogation, constitution, conspiracy, coalition,
+emigration, usurpation and revolution, blurts out at his parliamentary
+republic: "Rather an End With Fright, Than a Fright Without End."
+
+Bonaparte understood this cry. His perspicacity was sharpened by the
+growing anxiety of the creditors' class, who, with every sunset, that
+brought nearer the day of payment, the 2d of May, 1852, saw in the
+motion of the stars a protest against their earthly drafts. They had
+become regular astrologers The National Assembly had cut off Bonaparte's
+hope of a constitutional prolongation of his term; the candidature of
+the Prince of Joinville tolerated no further vacillation.
+
+If ever an event cast its shadow before it long before its occurrence,
+it was Bonaparte's "coup d'etat." Already on January 29, 1849, barely
+a month after his election, he had made to Changarnier a proposition to
+that effect. His own Prime Minister. Odillon Barrot, had covertly, in
+1849, and Thiers openly in the winter of 1850, revealed the scheme
+of the "coup d'etat." In May, 1851, Persigny had again sought to win
+Changarnier over to the "coup," and the "Miessager de l'Assemblee"
+newspaper had published this conversation. At every parliamentary storm,
+the Bonapartist papers threatened a "coup," and the nearer the crisis
+approached, all the louder grew their tone. At the orgies, that
+Bonaparte celebrated every night with a swell mob of males and females,
+every time the hour of midnight drew nigh and plenteous libations had
+loosened the tongues and heated the minds of the revelers, the "coup"
+was resolved upon for the next morning. Swords were then drawn, glasses
+clinked, the Representatives were thrown out at the windows, the
+imperial mantle fell upon the shoulders of Bonaparte, until the next
+morning again drove away the spook, and astonished Paris learned, from
+not very reserved Vestals and indiscreet Paladins, the danger it had
+once more escaped. During the months of September and October, the
+rumors of a "coup d'etat" tumbled close upon one another's heels. At
+the same time the shadow gathered color, like a confused daguerreotype.
+Follow the issues of the European daily press for the months of
+September and October, and items like this will be found literally:
+
+"Rumors of a 'coup' fill Paris. The capital, it is said, is to be filled
+with troops by night and the next morning decrees are to be issued
+dissolving the National Assembly, placing the Department of the Seine
+in state of siege restoring universal suffrage, and appealing to the
+people. Bonaparte is rumored to be looking for Ministers to execute
+these illegal decrees."
+
+The newspaper correspondence that brought this news always close
+ominously with "postponed." The "coup" was ever the fixed idea of
+Bonaparte. With this idea he had stepped again upon French soil. It
+had such full possession of him that he was constantly betraying and
+blabbing it out. He was so weak that he was as constantly giving it up
+again. The shadow of the "coup" had become so familiar a spectre to the
+Parisians, that they refused to believe it when it finally did appear in
+flesh and blood. Consequently, it was neither the reticent backwardness
+of the chief of the "Society of December 10," nor an unthought of
+surprise of the National Assembly that caused the success of the "coup."
+When it succeeded, it did so despite his indiscretion and with its
+anticipation--a necessary, unavoidable result of the development that
+had preceded.
+
+On October 10, Bonaparte announced to his Ministers his decision
+to restore universal suffrage; on the 16th day they handed in their
+resignations; on the 26th Paris learned of the formation of the Thorigny
+Ministry. The Prefect of Police, Carlier, was simultaneously replaced
+by Maupas; and the chief of the First Military Division Magnan,
+concentrated the most reliable regiments in the capital. On November 4,
+the National Assembly re-opened its sessions. There was nothing left
+for it to do but to repeat, in short recapitulation, the course it
+had traversed, and to prove that it had been buried only after it had
+expired. The first post that it had forfeited in the struggle with
+the Executive was the Ministry. It had solemnly to admit this loss by
+accepting as genuine the Thorigny Ministry, which was but a pretence.
+The permanent Committee had received Mr. Giraud with laughter when he
+introduced himself in the name of the new Ministers. So weak a Ministry
+for so strong a measure as the restoration of universal suffrage! The
+question, however, then was to do nothing in, everything against the
+parliament.
+
+On the very day of its re-opening, the National Assembly received the
+message from Bonaparte demanding the restoration of universal suffrage
+and the repeal of the law of May 31, 1850. On the same day, his
+Ministers introduced a decree to that effect. The Assembly promptly
+rejected the motion of urgency made by the Ministers, but repealed the
+law itself, on November 13, by a vote of 355 against 348. Thus it once
+more tore to pieces its own mandate, once more certified to the fact
+that it had transformed itself from a freely chosen representative body
+of the nation into the usurpatory parliament of a class; it once more
+admitted that it had itself severed the muscles that connected the
+parliamentary head with the body of the nation.
+
+While the Executive power appealed from the National Assembly to the
+people by its motion for the restoration of universal suffrage, the
+Legislative power appealed from the people to the Army by its "Questors'
+Bill." This bill was to establish its right to immediate requisitions
+for troops, to build up a parliamentary army. By thus appointing the
+Army umpire between itself and the people, between itself and Bonaparte;
+by thus recognizing the Army as the decisive power in the State, the
+National Assembly was constrained to admit that it had long given up
+all claim to supremacy. By debating the right to make requisitions for
+troops, instead of forthwith collecting them, it betrayed its own doubts
+touching its own power. By thus subsequently rejecting the "Questors'
+Bill," it publicly confessed it impotence. The bill fell through with a
+minority of 108 votes; the Mountain had, accordingly, thrown the casting
+vote It now found itself in the predicament of Buridan's donkey, not,
+indeed, between two sacks of hay, forced to decide which of the two was
+the more attractive, but between two showers of blows, forced to decide
+which of the two was the harder; fear of Changarnier, on one side, fear
+of Bonaparte, on the other. It must be admitted the position was not a
+heroic one.
+
+On November 18, an amendment was moved to the Act, passed by the party
+of Order, on municipal elections to the effect that, instead of three
+years, a domicile of one year should suffice. The amendment was lost by
+a single vote--but this vote, it soon transpired, was a mistake. Owing
+to the divisions within its own hostile factions, the party of Order had
+long since forfeited its independent parliamentary majority. It was
+now plain that there was no longer any majority in the parliament. The
+National Assembly had become impotent even to decide. Its atomic parts
+were no longer held together by any cohesive power; it had expended its
+last breath, it was dead.
+
+Finally, the mass of the bourgeoisie outside of the parliament was once
+more solemnly to confirm its rupture with the bourgeoisie inside of the
+parliament a few days before the catastrophe. Thiers, as a parliamentary
+hero conspicuously smitten by that incurable disease--Parliamentary
+Idiocy--, had hatched out jointly with the Council of State, after the
+death of the parliament, a new parliamentary intrigue in the shape of a
+"Responsibility Law," that was intended to lock up the President within
+the walls of the Constitution. The same as, on September 15, Bonaparte
+bewitched the fishwives, like a second Massaniello, on the occasion of
+laying the corner-stone for the Market of Paris,--though, it must be
+admitted, one fishwife was equal to seventeen Burgraves in real power--;
+the same as, after the introduction of the "Questors' Bill," he enthused
+the lieutenants, who were being treated at the Elysee;--so, likewise,
+did he now, on November 25, carry away with him the industrial
+bourgeoisie, assembled at the Circus, to receive from his hands the
+prize-medals that had been awarded at the London Industrial Exposition.
+I here reproduce the typical part of his speech, from the "Journal des
+Debats":
+
+"With such unhoped for successes, I am justified to repeat how great
+the French republic would be if she were only allowed to pursue her
+real interests, and reform her institutions, instead of being constantly
+disturbed in this by demagogues, on one side, and, on the other, by
+monarchic hallucinations. (Loud, stormy and continued applause from
+all parts of the amphitheater). The monarchic hallucinations hamper all
+progress and all serious departments of industry. Instead of progress,
+we have struggle only. Men, formerly the most zealous supporters of
+royal authority and prerogative, become the partisans of a convention
+that has no purpose other than to weaken an authority that is born of
+universal suffrage. (Loud and prolonged applause). We see men, who
+have suffered most from the revolution and complained bitterest of it,
+provoking a new one for the sole purpose of putting fetters on the will
+of the nation. . . . I promise you peace for the future." (Bravo! Bravo!
+Stormy bravos.)
+
+Thus the industrial bourgeoisie shouts its servile "Bravo!" to the "coup
+d'etat" of December 2, to the destruction of the parliament, to the
+downfall of their own reign, to the dictatorship of Bonaparte. The rear
+of the applause of November 25 was responded to by the roar of cannon on
+December 4, and the house of Mr. Sallandrouze, who had been loudest in
+applauding, was the one demolished by most of the bombs.
+
+Cromwell, when he dissolved the Long Parliament, walked alone into its
+midst, pulled out his watch in order that the body should not continue
+to exist one minute beyond the term fixed for it by him, and drove
+out each individual member with gay and humorous invectives. Napoleon,
+smaller than his prototype, at least went on the 18th Brumaire into
+the legislative body, and, though in a tremulous voice, read to it its
+sentence of death. The second Bonaparte, who, moreover, found himself
+in possession of an executive power very different from that of either
+Cromwell or Napoleon, did not look for his model in the annals of
+universal history, but in the annals of the "Society of December 10,"
+in the annals of criminal jurisprudence. He robs the Bank of France of
+twenty-five million francs; buys General Magnan with one million and
+the soldiers with fifteen francs and a drink to each; comes secretly
+together with his accomplices like a thief by night; has the houses of
+the most dangerous leaders in the parliament broken into; Cavalignac,
+Lamorciere, Leflo, Changarnier, Charras, Thiers, Baze, etc., taken
+out of their beds; the principal places of Paris, the building of the
+parliament included, occupied with troops; and, early the next
+morning, loud-sounding placards posted on all the walls proclaiming the
+dissolution of the National Assembly and of the Council of State, the
+restoration of universal suffrage, and the placing of the Department
+of the Seine under the state of siege. In the same way he shortly
+after sneaked into the "Moniateur" a false document, according to which
+influential parliamentary names had grouped themselves round him in a
+Committee of the Nation.
+
+Amidst cries of "Long live the Republic!", the rump-parliament,
+assembled at the Mayor's building of the Tenth Arrondissement, and
+composed mainly of Legitimists and Orleanists, resolves to depose
+Bonaparte; it harangues in vain the gaping mass gathered before the
+building, and is finally dragged first, under the escort of African
+sharpshooters, to the barracks of Orsay, and then bundled into convicts'
+wagons and transported to the prisons of Mazas, Ham and Vincennes. Thus
+ended the party of Order, the Legislative Assembly and the February
+revolution.
+
+Before hastening to the end, let us sum up shortly the plan of its
+history:
+
+I.--First Period. From February 24 to May 4, 1848. February period.
+Prologue. Universal fraternity swindle.
+
+II.--Second Period. Period in which the republic is constituted, and of
+the Constitutive National Assembly.
+
+1. May 4 to June 25, 1848. Struggle of all the classes against the house
+of Mr. proletariat. Defeat of the proletariat in the June days.
+
+2. June 25 to December 10, 1848. Dictatorship of the pure bourgeois
+republicans. Drafting of the Constitution. The state of siege hangs
+over Paris. The Bourgeois dictatorship set aside on December 10 by the
+election of Bonaparte as President.
+
+3. December 20, 1848, to May 20, 1849. Struggle of the Constitutive
+Assembly with Bonaparte and with the united party of Order. Death of the
+Constitutive Assembly. Downfall of the republican bourgeoisie.
+
+III.--Third Period. Period of the constitutional republic and of the
+Legislative National Assembly.
+
+1. May 29 to June 13, 1849. Struggle of the small traders', middle class
+with the bourgeoisie and with Bonaparte. Defeat of the small traders'
+democracy.
+
+2. June 13, 1849, to May, 1850. Parliamentary dictatorship of the party
+of Order. Completes its reign by the abolition of universal suffrage,
+but loses the parliamentary Ministry.
+
+3. May 31, 1850, to December 2, 1851. Struggle between the parliamentary
+bourgeoisie and Bonaparte.
+
+a. May 31, 1850, to January 12, 1851. The parliament loses the supreme
+command over the Army.
+
+b. January 12 to April 11, 1851. The parliament succumbs in the attempts
+to regain possession of the administrative power. The party of Order
+loses its independent parliamentary majority. Its coalition with the
+republicans and the Mountain.
+
+c. April 11 to October 9, 1851. Attempts at revision, fusion and
+prorogation. The party of Order dissolves into its component parts. The
+breach between the bourgeois parliament and the bourgeois press, on the
+one hand, and the bourgeois mass, on the other, becomes permanent.
+
+d. October 9 to December 2, 1851. Open breach between the parliament
+and the executive power. It draws up its own decree of death, and goes
+under, left in the lurch by its own class, by the Army, and by all the
+other classes. Downfall of the parliamentary regime and of the reign
+of the bourgeoisie. Bonaparte's triumph. Parody of the imperialist
+restoration.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The Social Republic appeared as a mere phrase, as a prophecy on the
+threshold of the February Revolution; it was smothered in the blood of
+the Parisian proletariat during the days of 1848 but it stalks about
+as a spectre throughout the following acts of the drama. The Democratic
+Republic next makes its bow; it goes out in a fizzle on June 13, 1849,
+with its runaway small traders; but, on fleeing, it scatters behind
+it all the more bragging announcements of what it means do to. The
+Parliamentary Republic, together with the bourgeoisie, then appropriates
+the whole stage; it lives its life to the full extent of its being; but
+the 2d of December, 1851, buries it under the terror-stricken cry of the
+allied royalists: "Long live the Republic!"
+
+The French bourgeoisie reared up against the reign of the working
+proletariat;--it brought to power the slum-proletariat, with the
+chief of the "Society of December 10" at its head. It kept France in
+breathless fear over the prospective terror of "red anarchy;"--Bonaparte
+discounted the prospect when, on December 4, he had the leading citizens
+of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Boulevard des Italiens shot down
+from their windows by the grog-inspired "Army of Order." It made the
+apotheosis of the sabre; now the sabre rules it. It destroyed the
+revolutionary press;--now its own press is annihilated. It placed public
+meetings under police surveillance;--now its own salons are subject to
+police inspection. It disbanded the democratic National Guards;--now its
+own National Guard is disbanded. It instituted the state of siege;--now
+itself is made subject thereto. It supplanted the jury by military
+commissions;--now military commissions supplant its own juries. It
+subjected the education of the people to the parsons' interests;--the
+parsons' interests now subject it to their own systems. It ordered
+transportations without trial;--now itself is transported without trial.
+It suppressed every movement of society with physical force;--now
+every movement of its own class is suppressed by physical force. Out
+of enthusiasm for the gold bag, it rebelled against its own political
+leaders and writers;--now, its political leaders and writers are set
+aside, but the gold hag is plundered, after the mouth of the bourgeoisie
+has been gagged and its pen broken. The bourgeoisie tirelessly shouted
+to the revolution, in the language of St. Orsenius to the Christians:
+"Fuge, Tace, Quiesce!"--flee, be silent, submit!--; Bonaparte shouts to
+the bourgeoisie: "Fuge, Tace, Oniesce!"--flee, be silent, submit!
+
+The French bourgeoisie had long since solved Napoleon's dilemma: "Dans
+cinquante ans l'Europe sera republicaine ou cosaque." [#1 Within
+fifty years Europe will be either republican or Cossack.] It found the
+solution in the "republique cosaque." [#2 Cossack republic.] No Circe
+distorted with wicked charms the work of art of the bourgeois republic
+into a monstrosity. That republic lost nothing but the appearance of
+decency. The France of to-day was ready-made within the womb of the
+Parliamentary republic. All that was wanted was a bayonet thrust, in
+order that the bubble burst, and the monster leap forth to sight.
+
+Why did not the Parisian proletariat rise after the 2d of December?
+
+The downfall of the bourgeoisie was as yet merely decreed; the decree
+was not yet executed. Any earnest uprising of the proletariat would
+have forthwith revived this bourgeoisie, would have brought on its
+reconciliation with the army, and would have insured a second June rout
+to the workingmen.
+
+On December 4, the proletariat was incited to fight by Messrs. Bourgeois
+& Small-Trader. On the evening of that day, several legions of the
+National Guard promised to appear armed and uniformed on the place
+of battle. This arose from the circumstance that Messrs. Bourgeois &
+Small-Trader had got wind that, in one of his decrees of December 2,
+Bonaparte abolished the secret ballot, and ordered them to enter
+the words "Yes" and "No" after their names in the official register.
+Bonaparte took alarm at the stand taken on December 4. During the night
+he caused placards to be posted on all the street corners of Paris,
+announcing the restoration of the secret ballot. Messrs. Bourgeois &
+Small-Trader believed they had gained their point. The absentees, the
+next morning, were Messieurs. Bourgeois & Small-Trader.
+
+During the night of December 1 and 2, the Parisian proletariat was
+robbed of its leaders and chiefs of barricades by a raid of Bonaparte's.
+An army without officers, disinclined by the recollections of June, 1848
+and 1849, and May, 1850, to fight under the banner of the Montagnards,
+it left to its vanguard, the secret societies, the work of saving the
+insurrectionary honor of Paris, which the bourgeoisie had yielded to the
+soldiery so submissively that Bonaparte was later justified in disarming
+the National Guard upon the scornful ground that he feared their arms
+would be used against themselves by the Anarchists!
+
+"C'est Ic triomphe complet et definitif du Socialism!"' Thus did Guizot
+characterize the 2d of December. But, although the downfall of the
+parliamentary republic carries with it the germ of the triumph of
+the proletarian revolution, its immediate and tangible result was
+the triumph of Bonaparte over parliament, of the Executive over the
+Legislative power, of force without phrases over the force of phrases.
+In the parliament, the nation raised its collective will to the dignity
+of law, i.e., it raised the law of the ruling class to the dignity of
+its collective will. Before the Executive power, the nation abdicates
+all will of its own, and submits to the orders of an outsider of
+Authority. In contrast with the Legislative, the Executive power
+expresses the heteronomy of the nation in contrast with its autonomy.
+Accordingly, France seems to have escaped the despotism of a class
+only in order to fall under the despotism of an individual, under the
+authority, at that of an individual without authority The struggle seems
+to settle down to the point where all classes drop down on their knees,
+equally impotent and equally dumb.
+
+All the same, the revolution is thoroughgoing. It still is on its
+passage through purgatory. It does its work methodically: Down to
+December 2, 1851, it had fulfilled one-half of its programme, it now
+fulfils the other half. It first ripens the power of the Legislature
+into fullest maturity in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it
+has accomplished that, the revolution proceeds to ripen the power of
+the Executive into equal maturity; it reduces this power to its purest
+expression; isolates it; places it before itself as the sole subject for
+reproof in order to concentrate against it all the revolutionary forces
+of destruction. When the revolution shall have accomplished this second
+part of its preliminary programme, Europe will jump up from her seat to
+exclaim: "Well hast thou grubbed, old mole!"
+
+The Executive power, with its tremendous bureaucratic and military
+organization; with its wide-spreading and artificial machinery of
+government--an army of office-holders, half a million strong, together
+with a military force of another million men--; this fearful body
+of parasites, that coils itself like a snake around French society,
+stopping all its pores, originated at the time of the absolute monarchy,
+along with the decline of feudalism, which it helped to hasten.
+The princely privileges of the landed proprietors and cities were
+transformed into so many at-tributes of the Executive power; the feudal
+dignitaries into paid office-holders; and the confusing design of
+conflicting medieval seigniories, into the well regulated plan of a
+government, work is subdivided and centralized as in the factory. The
+first French revolution, having as a mission to sweep away all local,
+territorial, urban and provincial special privileges, with the object
+of establishing the civic unity of the nation, was hound to develop what
+the absolute monarchy had begun--the work of centralization, together
+with the range, the attributes and the menials of government. Napoleon
+completed this governmental machinery. The Legitimist and the July
+Monarchy contribute nothing thereto, except a greater subdivision of
+labor, that grew in the same measure as the division and subdivision of
+labor within bourgeois society raised new groups and interests, i.e.,
+new material for the administration of government. Each Common interest
+was in turn forthwith removed from society, set up against it as a
+higher Collective interest, wrested from the individual activity of
+the members of society, and turned into a subject for governmental
+administration, from the bridges, the school house and the communal
+property of a village community, up to the railroads, the national
+wealth and the national University of France. Finally, the parliamentary
+republic found itself, in its struggle against the revolution,
+compelled, with its repressive measures, to strengthen the means and the
+centralization of the government. Each overturn, instead of breaking up,
+carried this machine to higher perfection. The parties, that alternately
+wrestled for supremacy, looked upon the possession of this tremendous
+governmental structure as the principal spoils of their victory.
+
+Nevertheless, under the absolute monarchy, was only the means whereby
+the first revolution, and under Napoleon, to prepare the class rule of
+the bourgeoisie; under the restoration, under Louis Philippe, and under
+the parliamentary republic, it was the instrument of the ruling class,
+however eagerly this class strained after autocracy. Not before the
+advent of the second Bonaparte does the government seem to have made
+itself fully independent. The machinery of government has by this time
+so thoroughly fortified itself against society, that the chief of the
+"Society of December 10" is thought good enough to be at its head; a
+fortune-hunter, run in from abroad, is raised on its shield by a drunken
+soldiery, bought by himself with liquor and sausages, and whom he is
+forced ever again to throw sops to. Hence the timid despair, the sense
+of crushing humiliation and degradation that oppresses the breast of
+France and makes her to choke. She feels dishonored.
+
+And yet the French Government does not float in the air. Bonaparte
+represents an economic class, and that the most numerous in the
+commonweal of France--the Allotment Farmer. [#4 The first French
+Revolution distributed the bulk of the territory of France, held at the
+time by the feudal lords, in small patches among the cultivators of the
+soil. This allotment of lands created the French farmer class.]
+
+As the Bourbons are the dynasty of large landed property, as the Orleans
+are the dynasty of money, so are the Bonapartes the dynasty of the
+farmer, i.e. of the French masses. Not the Bonaparte, who threw himself
+at the feet of the bourgeois parliament, but the Bonaparte, who swept
+away the bourgeois parliament, is the elect of this farmer class. For
+three years the cities had succeeded in falsifying the meaning of
+the election of December 10, and in cheating the farmer out of the
+restoration of the Empire. The election of December 10, 1848, is not
+carried out until the "coup d'etat" of December 2, 1851.
+
+The allotment farmers are an immense mass, whose individual members
+live in identical conditions, without, however, entering into manifold
+relations with one another. Their method of production isolates them
+from one another, instead of drawing them into mutual intercourse. This
+isolation is promoted by the poor means of communication in France,
+together with the poverty of the farmers themselves. Their field of
+production, the small allotment of land that each cultivates, allows no
+room for a division of labor, and no opportunity for the application
+of science; in other words, it shuts out manifoldness of development,
+diversity of talent, and the luxury of social relations. Every single
+farmer family is almost self-sufficient; itself produces directly the
+greater part of what it consumes; and it earns its livelihood more by
+means of an interchange with nature than by intercourse with society. We
+have the allotted patch of land, the farmer and his family; alongside of
+that another allotted patch of land, another farmer and another family.
+A bunch of these makes up a village; a bunch of villages makes up a
+Department. Thus the large mass of the French nation is constituted by
+the simple addition of equal magnitudes--much as a bag with potatoes
+constitutes a potato-bag. In so far as millions of families live under
+economic conditions that separate their mode of life, their interests
+and their culture from those of the other classes, and that place them
+in an attitude hostile toward the latter, they constitute a class; in
+so far as there exists only a local connection among these farmers, a
+connection which the individuality and exclusiveness of their interests
+prevent from generating among them any unity of interest, national
+connections, and political organization, they do not constitute a class.
+Consequently, they are unable to assert their class interests in their
+own name, be it by a parliament or by convention. They can not represent
+one another, they must themselves be represented. Their representative
+must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over
+them, as an unlimited governmental power, that protects them from
+above, bestows rain and sunshine upon them. Accordingly, the political
+influence of the allotment farmer finds its ultimate expression in an
+Executive power that subjugates the commonweal to its own autocratic
+will.
+
+Historic tradition has given birth to the superstition among the French
+farmers that a man named Napoleon would restore to them all manner of
+glory. Now, then, an individual turns I up, who gives himself out as
+that man because, obedient to the "Code Napoleon," which provides that
+"La recherche de la paternite est interdite," [#5 The inquiry into
+paternity is forbidden.] he carries the name of Napoleon. [#6 L. N.
+Bonaparte is said to have been an illegitimate son.] After a vagabondage
+of twenty years, and a series of grotesque adventures, the myth is
+verified, and that man becomes the Emperor of the French. The rooted
+thought of the Nephew becomes a reality because it coincided with the
+rooted thought of the most numerous class among the French.
+
+"But," I shall be objected to, "what about the farmers' uprisings over
+half France, the raids of the Army upon the farmers, the wholesale
+imprisonment and transportation of farmers?"
+
+Indeed, since Louis XIV., France has not experienced such persecutions
+of the farmer on the ground of his demagogic machinations.
+
+But this should be well understood: The Bonaparte dynasty does not
+represent the revolutionary, it represents the conservative farmer;
+it does not represent the farmer, who presses beyond his own economic
+conditions, his little allotment of land it represents him rather
+who would confirm these conditions; it does not represent the rural
+population, that, thanks to its own inherent energy, wishes, jointly
+with the cities to overthrow the old order, it represents, on the
+contrary, the rural population that, hide-bound in the old order, seeks
+to see itself, together with its allotments, saved and favored by
+the ghost of the Empire; it represents, not the intelligence, but the
+superstition of the farmer; not his judgment, but his bias; not his
+future, but his past; not his modern Cevennes; [#7 The Cevennes were
+the theater of the most numerous revolutionary uprisings of the
+farmer class.] but his modern Vendee. [#8 La Vendee was the theater of
+protracted reactionary uprisings of the farmer class under the first
+Revolution.]
+
+The three years' severe rule of the parliamentary republic had freed
+a part of the French farmers from the Napoleonic illusion, and, though
+even only superficially; had revolutionized them The bourgeoisie threw
+them, however, violently back every time that they set themselves in
+motion. Under the parliamentary republic, the modern wrestled with the
+traditional consciousness of the French farmer. The process went on in
+the form of a continuous struggle between the school teachers and the
+parsons;--the bourgeoisie knocked the school teachers down. For the
+first time, the farmer made an effort to take an independent stand in
+the government of the country; this manifested itself in the prolonged
+conflicts of the Mayors with the Prefects;--the bourgeoisie deposed
+the Mayors. Finally, during period of the parliamentary republic,
+the farmers of several localities rose against their own product,
+the Army;--the bourgeoisie punished them with states of siege and
+executions. And this is the identical bourgeoisie, that now howls over
+the "stupidity of the masses," over the "vile multitude," which, it
+claims, betrayed it to Bonaparte. Itself has violently fortified the
+imperialism of the farmer class; it firmly maintained the conditions
+that Constitute the birth-place of this farmer-religion. Indeed, the
+bourgeoisie has every reason to fear the stupidity of the masses--so
+long as they remain conservative; and their intelligence--so soon as
+they become revolutionary.
+
+In the revolts that took place after the "coup d'etat" a part of the
+French farmers protested, arms in hand, against their own vote of
+December 10, 1848. The school house had, since 1848, sharpened their
+wits. But they had bound themselves over to the nether world of history,
+and history kept them to their word. Moreover, the majority of this
+population was still so full of prejudices that, just in the "reddest"
+Departments, it voted openly for Bonaparte. The National Assembly
+prevented, as it thought, this population from walking; the farmers now
+snapped the fetters which the cities had struck upon the will of the
+country districts. In some places they even indulged the grotesque
+hallucination of a "Convention together with a Napoleon."
+
+After the first revolution had converted the serf farmers into
+freeholders, Napoleon fixed and regulated the conditions under which,
+unmolested, they could exploit the soil of France, that had just fallen
+into their hands, and expiate the youthful passion for property. But
+that which now bears the French farmer down is that very allotment of
+land, it is the partition of the soil, the form of ownership, which
+Napoleon had consolidated. These are the material condition that turned
+French feudal peasant into a small or allotment farmer, and Napoleon
+into an Emperor. Two generations have sufficed to produce the inevitable
+result the progressive deterioration of agriculture, and the progressive
+encumbering of the agriculturist The "Napoleonic" form of ownership,
+which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century was the condition for
+the emancipation and enrichment of the French rural population, has, in
+the course of the century, developed into the law of their enslavement
+and pauperism. Now, then, this very law is the first of the "idees
+Napoleoniennes," which the second Bonaparte must uphold. If he still
+shares with the farmers the illusion of seeking, not in the system of
+the small allotment itself, but outside of that system, in the influence
+of secondary conditions, the cause of their ruin, his experiments
+are bound to burst like soap-bubbles against the modern system of
+production.
+
+The economic development of the allotment system has turned bottom
+upward the relation of the farmer to the other classes of society.
+Under Napoleon, the parceling out of the agricultural lands into small
+allotments supplemented in the country the free competition and the
+incipient large production of the cities. The farmer class was
+the ubiquitous protest against the aristocracy of land, just then
+overthrown. The roots that the system of small allotments cast into the
+soil of France, deprived feudalism of all nutriment. Its boundary-posts
+constituted the natural buttress of the bourgeoisie against every stroke
+of the old overlords. But in the course of the nineteenth century, the
+City Usurer stepped into the shoes of the Feudal Lord, the Mortgage
+substituted the Feudal Duties formerly yielded by the soil, bourgeois
+Capital took the place of the aristocracy of Landed Property. The former
+allotments are now only a pretext that allows the capitalist class to
+draw profit, interest and rent from agricultural lands, and to leave to
+the farmer himself the task of seeing to it that he knock out his wages.
+The mortgage indebtedness that burdens the soil of France imposes upon
+the French farmer class they payment of an interest as great as the
+annual interest on the whole British national debt. In this slavery of
+capital, whither its development drives it irresistibly, the allotment
+system has transformed the mass of the French nation into troglodytes.
+Sixteen million farmers (women and children included), house in hovels
+most of which have only one opening, some two, and the few most favored
+ones three. Windows are to a house what the five senses are to the head.
+The bourgeois social order, which, at the beginning of the century,
+placed the State as a sentinel before the newly instituted allotment,
+and that manured this with laurels, has become a vampire that sucks out
+its heart-blood and its very brain, and throws it into the alchemist's
+pot of capital. The "Code Napoleon" is now but the codex of execution,
+of sheriff's sales and of intensified taxation. To the four million
+(children, etc., included) official paupers, vagabonds, criminals and
+prostitutes, that France numbers, must be added five million souls who
+hover over the precipice of life, and either sojourn in the country
+itself, or float with their rags and their children from the country to
+the cities, and from the cities back to the country. Accordingly, the
+interests of the farmers are no longer, as under Napoleon, in harmony
+but in conflict with the interests of the bourgeoisie, i.e., with
+capital; they find their natural allies and leaders among the urban
+proletariat, whose mission is the overthrow of the bourgeois social
+order. But the "strong and unlimited government"--and this is the second
+of the "idees Napoleoniennes," which the second Napoleon has to carried
+out--, has for its mission the forcible defence of this very "material"
+social order, a "material order" that furnishes the slogan in
+Bonaparte's proclamations against the farmers in revolt.
+
+Along with the mortgage, imposed by capital upon the farmer's allotment,
+this is burdened by taxation. Taxation is the fountain of life to the
+bureaucracy, the Army, the parsons and the court, in short to the whole
+apparatus of the Executive power. A strong government, and heavy taxes
+are identical. The system of ownership, involved in the system of
+allotments lends itself by nature for the groundwork of a powerful and
+numerous bureaucracy: it produces an even level of conditions and of
+persons over the whole surface of the country; it, therefore, allows the
+exercise of an even influence upon all parts of this even mass from a
+high central point downwards: it annihilates the aristocratic gradations
+between the popular masses and the Government; it, consequently, calls
+from all sides for the direct intervention of the Government and for the
+intervention of the latter's immediate organs; and, finally, it produces
+an unemployed excess of population, that finds no room either in the
+country or in the cities, that, consequently, snatches after public
+office as a sort of dignified alms, and provokes the creation of further
+offices. With the new markets, which he opened at the point of the
+bayonet, and with the plunder of the continent, Napoleon returned to the
+farmer class with interest the taxes wrung from them. These taxes were
+then a goad to the industry of the farmer, while now, on the contrary,
+they rob his industry of its last source of support, and completely sap
+his power to resist poverty. Indeed, an enormous bureaucracy, richly
+gallooned and well fed is that "idee Napoleonienne" that above all
+others suits the requirements of the second Bonaparte. How else should
+it be, seeing he is forced to raise alongside of the actual classes of
+society, an artificial class, to which the maintenance of his own regime
+must be a knife-and-fork question? One of his first financial operations
+was, accordingly, the raising of the salaries of the government
+employees to their former standard and the creation of new sinecures.
+
+Another "idee Napoleonienne" is the rule of the parsons as an instrument
+of government. But while the new-born allotment, in harmony with
+society, in its dependence upon the powers of nature, and in its
+subordination to the authority that protected it from above, was
+naturally religious, the debt-broken allotment, on the contrary, at odds
+with society and authority, and driven beyond its own narrow bounds,
+becomes as naturally irreligious. Heaven was quite a pretty gift thrown
+in with the narrow strip of land that had just been won, all the more as
+it makes the weather; it, however, becomes an insult from the moment it
+is forced upon the farmer as a substitute for his allotment. Then
+the parson appears merely as the anointed blood-hound of the earthly
+police,--yet another "idee Napoleonienne." The expedition against Rome
+will next time take place in France, but in a reverse sense from that of
+M. de Montalembert.
+
+Finally, the culminating point of the "idees Napoleoniennes" is the
+preponderance of the Army. The Army was the "point of honor" with the
+allotment farmers: it was themselves turned into masters, defending
+abroad their newly established property, glorifying their recently
+conquered nationality, plundering and revolutionizing the world. The
+uniform was their State costume; war was their poetry; the allotment,
+expanded and rounded up in their phantasy, was the fatherland; and
+patriotism became the ideal form of property. But the foe, against whom
+the French farmer must now defend his property, are not the Cossacks,
+they are the sheriffs and the tax collectors. The allotment no longer
+lies in the so-called fatherland, but in the register of mortgages. The
+Army itself no longer is the flower of the youth of the farmers, it
+is the swamp-blossom of the slum-proletariat of the farmer class. It
+consists of "remplacants," substitutes, just as the second Bonaparte
+himself is but a "remplacant," a substitute, for Napoleon. Its feats of
+heroism are now performed in raids instituted against farmers and in the
+service of the police;--and when the internal contradictions of his own
+system shall drive the chief of the "Society of December 10" across the
+French frontier, that Army will, after a few bandit-raids, gather no
+laurels but only hard knocks.
+
+It is evident that all the "idees Napoleoniennes" are the ideas of the
+undeveloped and youthfully fresh allotment; they are an absurdity for
+the allotment that now survives. They are only the hallucinations of
+its death struggle; words turned to hollow phrases, spirits turned to
+spooks. But this parody of the Empire was requisite in order to free the
+mass of the French nation from the weight of tradition, and to elaborate
+sharply the contrast between Government and Society. Along with the
+progressive decay of the allotment, the governmental structure, reared
+upon it, breaks down. The centralization of Government, required
+by modern society, rises only upon the ruins of the military and
+bureaucratic governmental machinery that was forged in contrast to
+feudalism.
+
+The conditions of the French farmers' class solve to us the riddle
+of the general elections of December 20 and 21, that led the second
+Bonaparte to the top of Sinai, not to receive, but to decree laws.
+
+The bourgeoisie had now, manifestly, no choice but to elect Bonaparte.
+When at the Council of Constance, the puritans complained of the sinful
+life of the Popes, and moaned about the need of a reform in morals,
+Cardinal d'Ailly thundered into their faces: "Only the devil in his Own
+person can now save the Catholic Church, and you demand angels." So,
+likewise, did the French bourgeoisie cry out after the "coup d'etat":
+"Only the chief of the 'Society of December 10' can now save bourgeois
+society, only theft can save property, only perjury religion, only
+bastardy the family, only disorder order!"
+
+Bonaparte, as autocratic Executive power, fulfills his mission to secure
+"bourgeois order." But the strength of this bourgeois order lies in the
+middle class. He feels himself the representative of the middle class,
+and issues his decrees in that sense. Nevertheless, he is something
+only because he has broken the political power of this class, and daily
+breaks it anew. Hence he feels himself the adversary of the political
+and the literary power of the middle class. But, by protecting their
+material, he nourishes anew their political power. Consequently, the
+cause must be kept alive, but the result, wherever it manifests itself,
+swept out of existence. But this procedure is impossible without slight
+mistakings of causes and effects, seeing that both, in their mutual
+action and reaction, lose their distinctive marks. Thereupon, new
+decrees, that blur the line of distinction. Bonaparte, furthermore,
+feels himself, as against the bourgeoisie, the representative of the
+farmer and the people in general, who, within bourgeois society, is to
+render the lower classes of society happy. To this end, new decrees,
+intended to exploit the "true Socialists," together with their
+governmental wisdom. But, above all, Bonaparte feels himself the
+chief of the "Society of December 10," the representative of the
+slum-proletariat, to which he himself, his immediate surroundings, his
+Government, and his army alike belong, the main object with all of whom
+is to be good to themselves, and draw Californian tickets out of the
+national treasury. An he affirms his chieftainship of the "Society of
+December 10" with decrees, without decrees, and despite decrees.
+
+This contradictory mission of the man explains the contradictions of his
+own Government, and that confused groping about, that now seeks to win,
+then to humiliate now this class and then that, and finishes by arraying
+against itself all the classes; whose actual insecurity constitutes
+a highly comical contrast with the imperious, categoric style of the
+Government acts, copied closely from the Uncle.
+
+Industry and commerce, i.e., the business of the middle class, are to be
+made to blossom in hot-house style under the "strong Government." Loans
+for a number of railroad grants. But the Bonapartist slum-proletariat is
+to enrich itself. Peculation is carried on with railroad concessions
+on the Bourse by the initiated; but no capital is forthcoming for the
+railroads. The bank then pledges itself to make advances upon railroad
+stock; but the bank is itself to be exploited; hence, it must be
+cajoled; it is released of the obligation to publish its reports weekly.
+Then follows a leonine treaty between the bank and the Government. The
+people are to be occupied: public works are ordered; but the public
+works raise the tax rates upon the people; thereupon the taxes are
+reduced by an attack upon the national bond-holders through the
+conversion of the five per cent "rentes" [#9 The name of the French
+national bonds.] into four-and-halves. Yet the middle class must again
+be tipped: to this end, the tax on wine is doubled for the people, who
+buy it at retail, and is reduced to one-half for the middle class, that
+drink it at wholesale. Genuine labor organizations are dissolved, but
+promises are made of future wonders to accrue from organization. The
+farmers are to be helped: mortgage-banks are set up that must promote
+the indebtedness; of the farmer and the concentration of property but
+again, these banks are to be utilized especially to the end of squeezing
+money out of the confiscated estates of the House of Orleans; no
+capitalist will listen to this scheme, which, moreover, is not mentioned
+in the decree; the mortgage bank remains a mere decree, etc., etc.
+
+Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all
+classes; but he can give to none without taking from the others. As was
+said of the Duke of Guise, at the time of the Fronde, that he was the
+most obliging man in France because he had converted all his estates
+into bonds upon himself for his Parisians, so would Napoleon like to be
+the most obliging man in France and convert all property and all labor
+of France into a personal bond upon himself. He would like to steal the
+whole of France to make a present thereof to France, or rather to be
+able to purchase France back again with French money;--as chief of the
+"Society of December 10," he must purchase that which is to be his.
+All the State institutions, the Senate, the Council of State, the
+Legislature, the Legion of Honor, the Soldiers' decorations, the public
+baths, the public buildings, the railroads, the General Staff of the
+National Guard, exclusive of the rank and file, the confiscated estates
+of the House of Orleans,--all are converted into institutions for
+purchase and sale. Every place in the Army and the machinery of
+Government becomes a purchasing power. The most important thing,
+however, in this process, whereby France is taken to be given back to
+herself, are the percentages that, in the transfer, drop into the
+hands of the chief and the members of the "Society of December 10."
+The witticisms with which the Countess of L., the mistress of de Morny,
+characterized the confiscations of the Orleanist estates: "C'est le
+premier vol de l'aigle," [#10 "It is the first flight of the eagle" The
+French word "vol" means theft as well as flight.] fits every fight of
+the eagle that is rather a crow. He himself and his followers daily call
+out to themselves, like the Italian Carthusian monk in the legend does
+to the miser, who displayfully counted the goods on which he could live
+for many years to come: "Tu fai conto sopra i beni, bisogna prima far il
+conto sopra gli anni." [#11 "You count your property you should rather
+count the years left to you."] In order not to make a mistake in the
+years, they count by minutes. A crowd of fellows, of the best among whom
+all that can be said is that one knows not whence he comes--a noisy,
+restless "Boheme," greedy after plunder, that crawls about in gallooned
+frocks with the same grotesque dignity as Soulonque's [#12 Soulonque was
+the negro Emperor of the short-lived negro Empire of Hayti.] Imperial
+dignitaries--, thronged the court crowded the ministries, and pressed
+upon the head of the Government and of the Army. One can picture to
+himself this upper crust of the "Society of December 10" by considering
+that Veron Crevel [#13 Crevel is a character of Balzac, drawn after Dr.
+Veron, the proprietor of the "Constitutional" newspaper, as a type of
+the dissolute Parisian Philistine.] is their preacher of morality, and
+Granier de Cassagnac their thinker. When Guizot, at the time he was
+Minister, employed this Granier on an obscure sheet against the dynastic
+opposition, he used to praise him with the term: "C'est le roi des
+droles." [#14 "He Is the king of the clowns."] It were a mistake to
+recall the days of the Regency or of Louis XV. by the court and the kit
+of Louis Bonaparte's: "Often did France have a mistress-administration,
+but never yet an administration of kept men." [#15 Madame de Girardin.]
+
+Harassed by the contradictory demands of his situation, and compelled,
+like a sleight-of-hands performer, to keep, by means of constant
+surprises, the eyes of the public riveted upon himself as the substitute
+of Napoleon, compelled, consequently, everyday to accomplish a sort of
+"coup" on a small scale, Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois social
+system into disorder; he broaches everything that seemed unbroachable
+by the revolution of 1848; he makes one set people patient under the
+revolution and another anxious for it; he produces anarchy itself in the
+name of order by rubbing off from the whole machinery of Government the
+veneer of sanctity, by profaning it, by rendering it at once nauseating
+and laughable. He rehearses in Paris the cult of the sacred coat of
+Trier with the cult of the Napoleonic Imperial mantle. But when the
+Imperial Mantle shall have finally fallen upon the shoulders of Louis
+Bonaparte, then will also the iron statue of Napoleon drop down from the
+top of the Vendome column. [#16 A prophecy that a few years later, after
+Bonaparte's coronation as Emperor, was literally fulfilled. By order
+of Emperor Louis Napoleon, the military statue of the Napoleon that
+originally surmounted the Vendome was taken down and replaced by one of
+first Napoleon in imperial robes.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
+Bonaparte, by Karl Marx
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+The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
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+
+The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
+
+by Karl Marx
+
+
+
+
+Translator's Preface
+
+
+
+
+"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" is one of Karl Marx' most
+profound and most brilliant monographs.  It may be considered the best
+work extant on the philosophy of history, with an eye especially upon
+the history of the Movement of the Proletariat, together with the
+bourgeois and other manifestations that accompany the same, and the
+tactics that such conditions dictate.
+
+The recent populist uprising; the more recent "Debs Movement"; the
+thousand and one utopian and chimerical notions that are flaring up; the
+capitalist maneuvers; the hopeless, helpless grasping after straws, that
+characterize the conduct of the bulk of the working class; all of these,
+together with the empty-headed, ominous figures that are springing into
+notoriety for a time and have their day, mark the present period of the
+Labor Movement in the nation a critical one.  The best information
+acquirable, the best mental training obtainable are requisite to steer
+through the existing chaos that the death-tainted social system of today
+creates all around us.  To aid in this needed information and mental
+training, this instructive work is now made accessible to English
+readers, and is commended to the serious study of the serious.
+
+The teachings contained in this work are hung on an episode in recent
+French history.  With some this fact may detract of its value.  A
+pedantic, supercilious notion is extensively abroad among us that we are
+an "Anglo Saxon" nation; and an equally pedantic, supercilious habit
+causes many to look to England for inspiration, as from a racial
+birthplace Nevertheless, for weal or for woe, there is no such thing
+extant as "Anglo-Saxon"--of al nations, said to be "Anglo-Saxon," in the
+United States least.  What we still have from England, much as
+appearances may seem to point the other way, is not of our
+bone-and-marrow, so to speak, but rather partakes of the nature of
+"importations.  "We are no more English on account of them than we are
+Chinese because we all drink tea.
+
+Of all European nations, France is the on to which we come nearest.
+Besides its republican form of government--the directness of its
+history, the unity of its actions, the sharpness that marks its internal
+development, are all characteristics that find their parallel her best,
+and vice versa.  In all essentials the study of modern French history,
+particularly when sketched by such a master hand as Marx', is the most
+valuable one for the acquisition of that historic, social and biologic
+insight that our country stands particularly in need of, and that will
+be inestimable during the approaching critical days.
+
+For the assistance of those who, unfamiliar with the history of France,
+may be confused by some of the terms used by Marx, the following
+explanations may prove aidful:
+
+On the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9th), the post-revolutionary development of
+affairs in France enabled the first Napoleon to take a step that led
+with inevitable certainty to the imperial throne.  The circumstance that
+fifty and odd years later similar events aided his nephew, Louis
+Bonaparte, to take a similar step with a similar result, gives the name
+to this work--"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte."
+
+As to the other terms and allusions that occur, the following sketch
+will suffice:
+
+Upon the overthrow of the first Napoleon came the restoration of the
+Bourbon throne (Louis XVIII, succeeded by Charles X).  In July, 1830, an
+uprising of the upper tier of the bourgeoisie, or capitalist class--the
+aristocracy of finance-- overthrew the Bourbon throne, or landed
+aristocracy, and set up the throne of Orleans, a younger branch of the
+house of Bourbon, with Louis Philippe as king.  From the month in which
+this revolution occurred, Louis Philippe's monarchy is called the "July
+Monarchy.  "In February, 1848, a revolt of a lower tier of the
+capitalist class-the industrial bourgeoisie--, against the aristocracy
+of finance, in turn dethroned Louis Philippe.  The affair, also named
+from the month in which it took place, is the "February Revolution.
+"The "Eighteenth Brumaire" starts with that event
+
+Despite the inapplicableness to our affairs of the political names and
+political leadership herein described, both these names and leaderships
+are to such an extent the products of an economic-social development
+that has here too taken place with even greater sharpens, and they have
+their present or threatened counterparts here so completely, that, by
+the light of this work of Marx', we are best enabled to understand our
+own history, to know whence we came, and whither we are going and how to
+conduct ourselves.
+
+
+
+D.D.L. New York, Sept. 12, 1897
+
+
+
+The Eighteenth Brumaire Of Louis Bonaparte
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+
+Hegel says somewhere that that great historic facts and personages recur
+twice.  He forgot to add: "Once as tragedy, and again as farce.
+"Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the "Mountain" of
+1848-51 for the "Mountain" of 1793-05, the Nephew for the Uncle.  The
+identical caricature marks also the conditions under which the second
+edition of the eighteenth Brumaire is issued.
+
+Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole
+cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out
+of such as he finds close at hand.  The tradition of all past
+generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living.  At the
+very time when men appear engaged in revolutionizing things and
+themselves, in bringing about what never was before, at such very epochs
+of revolutionary crisis do they anxiously conjure up into their service
+the spirits of the past, assume their names, their battle cries, their
+costumes to enact a new historic scene in such time-honored disguise and
+with such borrowed language Thus did Luther masquerade as the Apostle
+Paul; thus did the revolution of 1789-1814 drape itself alternately as
+Roman Republic and as Roman Empire; nor did the revolution of 1818 know
+what better to do than to parody at one time the year 1789, at another
+the revolutionary traditions of 1793-95 Thus does the beginner, who has
+acquired a new language, keep on translating it back into his own mother
+tongue; only then has he grasped the spirit of the new language and is
+able freely to express himself therewith when he moves in it without
+recollections of the old, and has forgotten in its use his own
+hereditary tongue.
+
+When these historic configurations of the dead past are closely observed
+a striking difference is forthwith noticeable.  Camille Desmoulins,
+Danton, Robespierre, St. Juste, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the
+parties and the masses of the old French revolution, achieved in Roman
+costumes and with Roman phrases the task of their time: the emancipation
+and the establishment of modern bourgeois society.  One set knocked to
+pieces the old feudal groundwork and mowed down the feudal heads that
+had grown upon it; Napoleon brought about, within France, the conditions
+under which alone free competition could develop, the partitioned lands
+be exploited the nation's unshackled powers of industrial production be
+utilized; while, beyond the French frontier, he swept away everywhere
+the establishments of feudality, so far as requisite, to furnish the
+bourgeois social system of France with fit surroundings of the European
+continent, and such as were in keeping with the times.  Once the new
+social establishment was set on foot, the antediluvian giants vanished,
+and, along with them, the resuscitated Roman world--the Brutuses,
+Gracchi, Publicolas, the Tribunes, the Senators, and Caesar himself.  In
+its sober reality, bourgeois society had produced its own true
+interpretation in the Says, Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants
+and Guizots; its real generals sat behind the office desks; and the
+mutton-head of Louis XVIII was its political lead.  Wholly absorbed in
+the production of wealth and in the peaceful fight of competition, this
+society could no longer understand that the ghosts of the days of Rome
+had watched over its cradle.  And yet, lacking in heroism as bourgeois
+society is, it nevertheless had stood in need of heroism, of
+self-sacrifice, of terror, of civil war, and of bloody battle fields to
+bring it into the world.  Its gladiators found in the stern classic
+traditions of the Roman republic the ideals and the form, the
+self-deceptions, that they needed in order to conceal from themselves
+the narrow bourgeois substance of their own struggles, and to keep their
+passion up to the height of a great historic tragedy.  Thus, at another
+stage of development a century before, did Cromwell and the English
+people draw from the Old Testament the language, passions and illusions
+for their own bourgeois revolution.  When the real goal was reached,
+when the remodeling of English society was accomplished, Locke
+supplanted Habakuk.
+
+Accordingly, the reviving of the dead in those revolutions served the
+purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; it
+served the purpose of exaggerating to the imagination the given task,
+not to recoil before its practical solution; it served the purpose of
+rekindling the revolutionary spirit, not to trot out its ghost.
+
+In 1848-51 only the ghost of the old revolution wandered about, from
+Marrast the "Relpublicain en gaunts jaunes," [#1 Silk-stocking
+republican] who disguised himself in old Bailly, down to the adventurer,
+who hid his repulsively trivial features under the iron death mask of
+Napoleon.  A whole people, that imagines it has imparted to itself
+accelerated powers of motion through a revolution, suddenly finds itself
+transferred back to a dead epoch, and, lest there be any mistake
+possible on this head, the old dates turn up again; the old calendars;
+the old names; the old edicts, which long since had sunk to the level of
+the antiquarian's learning; even the old bailiffs, who had long seemed
+mouldering with decay.  The nation takes on the appearance of that crazy
+Englishman in Bedlam, who imagines he is living in the days of the
+Pharaohs, and daily laments the hard work that he must do in the
+Ethiopian mines as gold digger, immured in a subterranean prison, with a
+dim lamp fastened on his head, behind him the slave overseer with a long
+whip, and, at the mouths of the mine a mob of barbarous camp servants
+who understand neither the convicts in the mines nor one another,
+because they do not speak a common language.  "And all this," cries the
+crazy Englishman, "is demanded of me, the free-born Englishman, in order
+to make gold for old Pharaoh."  "In order to pay off the debts of the
+Bonaparte family"--sobs the French nation.  The Englishman, so long as
+he was in his senses, could not rid himself of the rooted thought making
+gold.  The Frenchmen, so long as they were busy with a revolution, could
+not rid then selves of the Napoleonic memory, as the election of
+December 10th proved.  They longed to escape from the dangers of
+revolution back to the flesh pots of Egypt; the 2d of December, 1851 was
+the answer.  They have not merely the character of the old Napoleon, but
+the old Napoleon himself-caricatured as he needs must appear in the
+middle of the nineteenth century.
+
+The social revolution of the nineteenth century can not draw its poetry
+from the past, it can draw that only from the future.  It cannot start
+upon its work before it has stricken off all superstition concerning the
+past.  Former revolutions require historic reminiscences in order to
+intoxicate themselves with their own issues.  The revolution of the
+nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to reach
+its issue.  With the former, the phrase surpasses the substance; with
+this one, the substance surpasses the phrase.
+
+The February revolution was a surprisal; old society was taken unawares;
+and the people proclaimed this political stroke a great historic act
+whereby the new era was opened.  On the 2d of December, the February
+revolution is jockeyed by the trick of a false player, and what is seer
+to be overthrown is no longer the monarchy, but the liberal concessions
+which had been wrung from it by centuries of struggles.  Instead of
+society itself having conquered a new point, only the State appears to
+have returned to its oldest form, to the simply brazen rule of the sword
+and the club.  Thus, upon the "coup de main" of February, 1848, comes
+the response of the "coup de tete" December, 1851.  So won, so lost.
+Meanwhile, the interval did not go by unutilized.  During the years
+1848-1851, French society retrieved in abbreviated, because
+revolutionary, method the lessons and teachings, which--if it was to be
+more than a disturbance of the surface-should have preceded the February
+revolution, had it developed in regular order, by rule, so to say.  Now
+French society seems to have receded behind its point of departure; in
+fact, however, it was compelled to first produce its own revolutionary
+point of departure, the situation, circumstances, conditions, under
+which alone the modern revolution is in earnest.
+
+Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, rush onward
+rapidly from success to success, their stage effects outbid one another,
+men and things seem to be set in flaming brilliants, ecstasy is the
+prevailing spirit; but they are short-lived, they reach their climax
+speedily, then society relapses into a long fit of nervous reaction
+before it learns how to appropriate the fruits of its period of feverish
+excitement.  Proletarian revolutions, on the contrary, such as those of
+the nineteenth century, criticize themselves constantly; constantly
+interrupt themselves in their own course; come back to what seems to
+have been accomplished, in order to start over anew; scorn with cruel
+thoroughness the half measures, weaknesses and meannesses of their first
+attempts; seem to throw down their adversary only in order to enable him
+to draw fresh strength from the earth, and again, to rise up against
+them in more gigantic stature; constantly recoil in fear before the
+undefined monster magnitude of their own objects--until finally that
+situation is created which renders all retreat impossible, and the
+conditions themselves cry out:
+
+"Hic Rhodus, hic salta !" [#2 Here is Rhodes, leap here! An allusion to
+Aesop's Fables.]
+
+Every observer of average intelligence; even if he failed to follow step
+by step the course of French development, must have anticipated that an
+unheard of fiasco was in store for the revolution.  It was enough to
+hear the self-satisfied yelpings of victory wherewith the Messieurs
+Democrats mutually congratulated one another upon the pardons of May 2d,
+1852.  Indeed, May 2d had become a fixed idea in their heads; it had
+become a dogma with them--something like the day on which Christ was to
+reappear and the Millennium to begin had formed in the heads of the
+Chiliasts.  Weakness had, as it ever does, taken refuge in the
+wonderful; it believed the enemy was overcome if, in its imagination, it
+hocus-pocused him away; and it lost all sense of the present in the
+imaginary apotheosis of the future, that was at hand, and of the deeds,
+that it had "in petto," but which it did not yet want to bring to the
+scratch.  The heroes, who ever seek to refute their established
+incompetence by mutually bestowing their sympathy upon one another and
+by pulling together, had packed their satchels, taken their laurels in
+advance payments and were just engaged in the work of getting discounted
+"in partibus," on the stock exchange, the republics for which, in the
+silence of their unassuming dispositions, they had carefully organized
+the government personnel.  The 2d of December struck them like a bolt
+from a clear sky; and the 'peoples, who, in periods of timid
+despondency, gladly allow their hidden fears to be drowned by the
+loudest screamers, will perhaps have become convinced that the days are
+gone by when the cackling of geese could save the Capitol.
+
+The constitution, the national assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue
+and the red republicans, the heroes from Africa, the thunder from the
+tribune, the flash-lightnings from the daily press, the whole
+literature, the political names and the intellectual celebrities, the
+civil and the criminal law, the "liberte', egalite', fraternite',"
+together with the 2d of May 1852--all vanished like a phantasmagoria
+before the ban of one man, whom his enemies themselves do not pronounce
+an adept at witchcraft.  Universal suffrage seems to have survived only
+for a moment, to the end that, before the eyes of the whole world, it
+should make its own testament with its own hands, and, in the name of
+the people, declare: "All that exists deserves to perish."
+
+It is not enough to say, as the Frenchmen do, that their nation was
+taken by surprise.  A nation, no more than a woman, is excused for the
+unguarded hour when the first adventurer who comes along can do violence
+to her.  The riddle is not solved by such shifts, it is only formulated
+in other words.  There remains to be explained how a nation of
+thirty-six millions can be surprised by three swindlers, and taken to
+prison without resistance.
+
+Let us recapitulate in general outlines the phases which the French
+revolution of' February 24th, 1848, to December, 1851, ran through.
+
+Three main periods are unmistakable:
+
+First--The February period;
+
+Second--The period of constituting the republic, or of the constitutive
+national assembly (May 4, 1848, to May 29th, 1849);
+
+Third--The period of the constitutional republic, or of the legislative
+national assembly (May 29, 1849, to December 2, 1851).
+
+The first period, from February 24, or the downfall of Louis Philippe,
+to May 4, 1848, the date of the assembling of the constitutive
+assembly--the February period proper--may be designated as the prologue
+of the revolution.  It officially expressed its' own character in this,
+that the government which it improvised declared itself "provisional;"
+and, like the government, everything that was broached, attempted, or
+uttered, pronounced itself provisional.  Nobody and nothing dared to
+assume the right of permanent existence and of an actual fact.  All the
+elements that had prepared or determined the revolution--dynastic
+opposition, republican bourgeoisie, democratic-republican small traders'
+class, social-democratic labor element-all found "provisionally" their
+place in the February government.
+
+It could not be otherwise.  The February days contemplated originally a
+reform of the suffrage laws, whereby the area of the politically
+privileged among the property-holding class was to be extended, while
+the exclusive rule of the aristocracy of finance was to be overthrown.
+When however, it came to a real conflict, when the people mounted the
+barricades, when the National Guard stood passive, when the army offered
+no serious resistance, and the kingdom ran away, then the republic
+seemed self-understood.  Each party interpreted it in its own sense.
+Won, arms in hand, by the proletariat, they put upon it the stamp of
+their own class, and proclaimed the social republic.  Thus the general
+purpose of modern revolutions was indicated, a purpose, however, that
+stood in most singular contradiction to every thing that, with the
+material at hand, with the stage of enlightenment that the masses had
+reached, and under existing circumstances and conditions, could be
+immediately used.  On the other hand, the claims of all the other
+elements, that had cooperated in the revolution of February, were
+recognized by the lion's share that they received in the government.
+Hence, in no period do we find a more motley mixture of high-sounding
+phrases together with actual doubt and helplessness; of more
+enthusiastic reform aspirations, together with a more slavish adherence
+to the old routine; more seeming harmony permeating the whole of society
+together with a deeper alienation of its several elements.  While the
+Parisian proletariat was still gloating over the sight of the great
+perspective that had disclosed itself to their view, and was indulging
+in seriously meant discussions over the social problems, the old powers
+of society had groomed themselves, had gathered together, had
+deliberated and found an unexpected support in the mass of the
+nation--the peasants and small traders--all of whom threw themselves on
+a sudden upon the political stage, after the barriers of the July
+monarchy had fallen down.
+
+The second period, from May 4, 1848, to the end of May, 1849, is the
+period of the constitution, of the founding of the bourgeois republic
+immediately after the February days, not only was the dynastic
+opposition surprised by the republicans, and the republicans by the
+Socialists, but all France was surprised by Paris.  The national
+assembly, that met on May 4, 1848, to frame a constitution, was the
+outcome of the national elections; it represented the nation.  It was a
+living protest against the assumption of the February days, and it was
+intended to bring the results of the revolution back to the bourgeois
+measure.  In vain did the proletariat of Paris, which forthwith
+understood the character of this national assembly, endeavor, a few days
+after its meeting; on May 15, to deny its existence by force, to
+dissolve it, to disperse the organic apparition, in which the reacting
+spirit of the nation was threatening them, and thus reduce it back to
+its separate component parts.  As is known, the 15th of May had no other
+result than that of removing Blanqui and his associates, i.e. the real
+leaders of the proletarian party, from the public scene for the whole
+period of the cycle which we are here considering.
+
+Upon the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe, only the bourgeois
+republic could follow; that is to say, a limited portion of the
+bourgeoisie having ruled under the name of the king, now the whole
+bourgeoisie was to rule under the name of the people.  The demands of
+the Parisian proletariat are utopian tom-fooleries that have to be done
+away with.  To this declaration of the constitutional national assembly,
+the Paris proletariat answers with the June insurrection, the most
+colossal event in the history of European civil wars.  The bourgeois
+republic won.  On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the
+industrial bourgeoisie; the middle class; the small traders' class; the
+army; the slums, organized as Guarde Mobile; the intellectual
+celebrities, the parsons' class, and the rural population.  On the side
+of the Parisian proletariat stood none but itself.  Over 3,000
+insurgents were massacred, after the victory 15,000 were transported
+without trial.  With this defeat, the proletariat steps to the
+background on the revolutionary stage.  It always seeks to crowd
+forward, so soon as the movement seems to acquire new impetus, but with
+ever weaker effort and ever smaller results; So soon as any of the above
+lying layers of society gets into revolutionary fermentation, it enters
+into alliance therewith and thus shares all the defeats which the
+several parties successively suffer.  But these succeeding blows become
+ever weaker the more generally they are distributed over the whole
+surface of society.  The more important leaders of the Proletariat, in
+its councils, and the press, fall one after another victims of the
+courts, and ever more questionable figures step to the front.  It partly
+throws itself it upon doctrinaire experiments, "co-operative banking"
+and "labor exchange" schemes; in other words, movements, in which it
+goes into movements in which it gives up the task of revolutionizing the
+old world with its own large collective weapons and on the contrary,
+seeks to bring about its emancipation, behind the back of society, in
+private ways, within the narrow bounds of its own class conditions, and,
+consequently, inevitably fails.  The proletariat seems to be able
+neither to find again the revolutionary magnitude within itself nor to
+draw new energy from the newly formed alliances until all the classes,
+with whom it contended in June, shall lie prostrate along with itself.
+But in all these defeats, the proletariat succumbs at least with the
+honor that attaches to great historic struggles; not France alone, all
+Europe trembles before the June earthquake, while the successive defeats
+inflicted upon the higher classes are bought so easily that they need
+the brazen exaggeration of the victorious party itself to be at all able
+to pass muster as an event; and these defeats become more disgraceful
+the further removed the defeated party stands from the proletariat.
+
+True enough, the defeat of the June insurgents prepared, leveled the
+ground, upon which the bourgeois republic could be founded and erected;
+but it, at the same time, showed that there are in Europe other issues
+besides that of "Republic or Monarchy."  It revealed the fact that here
+the Bourgeois Republic meant the unbridled despotism of one class over
+another.  It proved that, with nations enjoying an older civilization,
+having developed class distinctions, modern conditions of production, an
+intellectual consciousness, wherein all traditions of old have been
+dissolved through the work of centuries, that with such countries the
+republic means only the political revolutionary form of bourgeois
+society, not its conservative form of existence, as is the case in the
+United States of America, where, true enough, the classes already exist,
+but have not yet acquired permanent character, are in constant flux and
+reflux, constantly changing their elements and yielding them up to one
+another where the modern means of production, instead of coinciding with
+a stagnant population, rather compensate for the relative scarcity of
+heads and hands; and, finally, where the feverishly youthful life of
+material production, which has to appropriate a new world to itself, has
+so far left neither time nor opportunity to abolish the illusions of
+old. [#3 This was written at the beginning of 1852.]
+
+All classes and parties joined hands in the June days in a "Party of
+Order" against the class of the proletariat, which was designated as the
+"Party of Anarchy," of Socialism, of Communism.  They claimed to have
+"saved" society against the "enemies of society."  They gave out the
+slogans of the old social order--"Property, Family, Religion, Order"--as
+the pass-words for their army, and cried out to the
+counter-revolutionary crusaders: "In this sign thou wilt conquer!" From
+that moment on, so soon as any of the numerous parties, which had
+marshaled themselves under this sign against the June insurgents, tries,
+in turn, to take the revolutionary field in the interest of its own
+class, it goes down in its turn before the cry: "Property, Family,
+Religion, Order."  Thus it happens that "society is saved" as often as
+the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more exclusive
+interest asserts itself over the general.  Every demand for the most
+simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for
+the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy, is
+forthwith punished as an "assault upon society," and is branded as
+"Socialism."  Finally the High Priests of "Religion and Order"
+themselves are kicked off their tripods; are fetched out of their beds
+in the dark; hurried into patrol wagons, thrust into jail or sent into
+exile; their temple is razed to the ground, their mouths are sealed,
+their pen is broken, their law torn to pieces in the name of Religion,
+of Family, of Property, and of Order.  Bourgeois, fanatic on the point
+of "Order," are shot down on their own balconies by drunken soldiers,
+forfeit their family property, and their houses are bombarded for
+pastime--all in the name of Property, of Family, of Religion, and of
+Order.  Finally, the refuse of bourgeois society constitutes the "holy
+phalanx of Order," and the hero Crapulinsky makes his entry into the
+Tuileries as the "Savior of Society."
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+Let us resume the thread of events.
+
+The history of the Constitutional National Assembly from the June days
+on, is the history of the supremacy and dissolution of the republican
+bourgeois party, the party which is known under several names of
+"Tricolor Republican," "True Republican," "Political Republican,"
+"Formal Republican," etc., etc.  Under the bourgeois monarchy of Louis
+Philippe, this party had constituted the Official Republican Opposition,
+and consequently had been a recognized element in the then political
+world.  It had its representatives in the Chambers, and commanded
+considerable influence in the press.  Its Parisian organ, the
+"National," passed, in its way, for as respectable a paper as the
+"Journal des Debats."  This position in the constitutional monarchy
+corresponded to its character.  The party was not a fraction of the
+bourgeoisie, held together by great and common interests, and marked by
+special business requirements.  It was a coterie of bourgeois with
+republican ideas-writers, lawyers, officers and civil employees, whose
+influence rested upon the personal antipathies of the country for Louis
+Philippe, upon reminiscences of the old Republic, upon the republican
+faith of a number of enthusiasts, and, above all, upon the spirit of
+French patriotism, whose hatred of the treaties of Vienna and of the
+alliance with England kept them perpetually on the alert.  The
+"National" owed a large portion of its following under Louis Philippe to
+this covert imperialism, that, later under the republic, could stand up
+against it as a deadly competitor in the person of Louis Bonaparte.  The
+fought the aristocracy of finance just the same as did the rest of the
+bourgeois opposition.  The polemic against the budget, which in France,
+was closely connected with the opposition to the aristocracy of finance,
+furnished too cheap a popularity and too rich a material for Puritanical
+leading articles, not to be exploited.  The industrial bourgeoisie was
+thankful to it for its servile defense of the French tariff system,
+which, however, the paper had taken up , more out of patriotic than
+economic reasons the whole bourgeois class was thankful to it for its
+vicious denunciations of Communism and Socialism For the rest, the party
+of the "National" was purely republican, i.e. it demanded a republican
+instead of a monarchic form of bourgeois government; above all, it
+demanded for the bourgeoisie the lion's share of the government.  As to
+how this transformation was to be accomplished, the party was far from
+being clear.  What, however, was clear as day to it and was openly
+declared at the reform banquets during the last days of Louis Philippe's
+reign, was its unpopularity with the democratic middle class, especially
+with the revolutionary proletariat.  These pure republicans, as pure
+republicans go, were at first on the very point of contenting themselves
+with the regency of the Duchess of Orleans, when the February revolution
+broke out, and when it gave their best known representatives a place in
+the provisional government.  Of course, they enjoyed from the start the
+confidence of the bourgeoisie and of the majority of the Constitutional
+National Assembly.  The Socialist elements of the Provisional Government
+were promptly excluded from the Executive Committee which the Assembly
+had elected upon its convening, and the party of the "National"
+subsequently utilized the outbreak of the June insurrection to dismiss
+this Executive Committee also, and thus rid itself of its nearest
+rivals--the small traders' class or democratic republicans
+(Ledru-Rollin, etc.).  Cavaignac, the General of the bourgeois
+republican party, who command at the battle of June, stepped into the
+place of the Executive Committee with a sort of dictatorial power.
+Marrast, former editor-in-chief of the "National", became permanent
+President of the Constitutional National Assembly, and the Secretaryship
+of State, together with all the other important posts, devolved upon the
+pure republicans.
+
+The republican bourgeois party, which since long had looked upon itself
+as the legitimate heir of the July monarchy, thus found itself surpassed
+in its own ideal; but it cam to power, not as it had dreamed under Louis
+Philippe, through a liberal revolt of the bourgeoisie against the
+throne, but through a grape-shot-and-canistered mutiny of the
+proletariat against Capital.  That which it imagined to be the most
+revolutionary, came about as the most counter-revolutionary event.  The
+fruit fell into its lap, but it fell from the Tree of Knowledge, not
+from the Tree of life.
+
+The exclusive power of the bourgeois republic lasted only from June 24
+to the 10th of December, 1848.  It is summed up in the framing of a
+republican constitution and in the state of siege of Paris.
+
+The new Constitution was in substance only a republicanized edition of
+the constitutional charter of 1830.  The limited suffrage of the July
+monarchy, which excluded even a large portion of the bourgeoisie from
+political power, was irreconcilable with the existence of the bourgeois
+republic.  The February revolution had forthwith proclaimed direct and
+universal suffrage in place of the old law.  The bourgeois republic
+could not annul this act.  They had to content themselves with tacking
+to it the limitation a six months' residence.  The old organization of
+the administrative law, of municipal government, of court procedures of
+the army, etc., remained untouched, or, where the constitution did
+change them, the change affected their index, not their subject; their
+name, not their substance.
+
+The inevitable "General Staff" of the "freedoms" of 1848--personal
+freedom, freedom of the press, of speech, of association and of
+assemblage, freedom of instruction, of religion, etc.--received a
+constitutional uniform that rendered them invulnerable.  Each of these
+freedoms is proclaimed the absolute right of the French citizen, but
+always with the gloss that it is unlimited in so far only as it be not
+curtailed by the "equal rights of others," and by the "public safety,"
+or by the "laws," which are intended to effect this harmony.  For
+instance:
+
+"Citizens have the right of association, of peaceful and unarmed
+assemblage, of petitioning, and of expressing their opinions through the
+press or otherwise.  The enjoyment of these rights has no limitation
+other than the equal rights of others and the public safety."
+(Chap. II. of the French Constitution, Section 8.)
+
+"Education is free.  The freedom of education shall be enjoyed under the
+conditions provided by law, and under the supervision of the State."
+(Section 9.)
+
+"The domicile of the citizen is inviolable, except under the forms
+prescribed by law."  (Chap. I., Section 3), etc., etc.
+
+The Constitution, it will be noticed, constantly alludes to future
+organic laws, that are to carry out the glosses, and are intended to
+regulate the enjoyment of these unabridged freedoms, to the end that
+they collide neither with one another nor with the public safety.  Later
+on, the organic laws are called into existence by the "Friends of
+Order," and all the above named freedoms are so regulated that, in their
+enjoyment, the bourgeoisie encounter no opposition from the like rights
+of the other classes.  Wherever the bourgeoisie wholly interdicted these
+rights to "others," or allowed them their enjoyment under conditions
+that were but so many police snares, it was always done only in the
+interest of the "public safety," i. e., of the bourgeoisie, as required
+by the Constitution.
+
+Hence it comes that both sides-the "Friends of Order," who abolished all
+those freedoms, as, well as the democrats, who had demanded them
+all--appeal with full right to the Constitution: Each paragraph of the
+Constitution contains its own antithesis, its own Upper and Lower
+House-freedom as a generalization, the abolition of freedom as a
+specification.  Accordingly, so long as the name of freedom was
+respected, and only its real enforcement was prevented in a legal way,
+of course the constitutional existence of freedom remained uninjured,
+untouched, however completely its common existence might be
+extinguished.
+
+This Constitution, so ingeniously made invulnerable, was, however, like
+Achilles, vulnerable at one point: not in its heel, but in its head, or
+rather, in the two heads into which it ran out-the Legislative Assembly,
+on the one hand, and the President on the other.  Run through the
+Constitution and it will be found that only those paragraphs wherein the
+relation of the President to the Legislative Assembly is defined, are
+absolute, positive, uncontradictory, undistortable.
+
+Here the bourgeois republicans were concerned in securing their own
+position.  Articles 45-70 of the Constitution are so framed that the
+National Assembly can constitutionally remove the President, but the
+President can set aside the National Assembly only unconstitutionally,
+he can set it aside only by setting aside the Constitution itself.
+Accordingly, by these provisions, the National Assembly challenges its
+own violent destruction.  It not only consecrates, like the character of
+1830, the division of powers, but it extends this feature to an
+unbearably contradictory extreme.  The "play of constitutional powers,"
+as Guizot styled the clapper-clawings between the legislative and the
+executive powers, plays permanent "vabanque" in the Constitution of
+1848.  On the one side, 750 representatives of the people, elected and
+qualified for re-election by universal suffrage, who constitute an
+uncontrollable, indissoluble, indivisible National Assembly, a National
+Assembly that enjoys legislative omnipotence, that decides in the last
+instance over war, peace and commercial treaties, that alone has the
+power to grant amnesties, and that, through its perpetuity, continually
+maintains the foreground on the stage; on the other, a President, clad
+with all the attributes of royalty, with the right to appoint and remove
+his ministers independently from the national assembly, holding in his
+hands all the means of executive power, the dispenser of all posts, and
+thereby the arbiter of at least one and a half million existences in
+France, so many being dependent upon the 500,000 civil employees and
+upon the officers of all grades.  He has the whole armed power behind
+him.  He enjoys the privilege of granting pardons to individual
+criminals; suspending the National Guards; of removing with the consent
+of the Council of State the general, cantonal and municipal Councilmen,
+elected by the citizens themselves.  The initiative and direction of all
+negotiations with foreign countries are reserved to him.  While the
+Assembly itself is constantly acting upon the stage, and is exposed to
+the critically vulgar light of day, he leads a hidden life in the
+Elysian fields, only with Article 45 of the Constitution before his eyes
+and in his heart daily calling out to him, "Frere, il faut mourir!" [#1
+Brother, you must die!]  Your power expires on the second Sunday of the
+beautiful month of May, in the fourth year after your election! The
+glory is then at an end; the play is not performed twice; and, if you
+have any debts, see to it betimes that you pay them off with the 600,000
+francs that the Constitution has set aside for you, unless, perchance,
+you should prefer traveling to Clichy [#2 The debtors' prison.] on the
+second Monday of the beautiful month of May."
+
+While the Constitution thus clothes the President with actual power, it
+seeks to secure the moral power to the National Assembly.  Apart from
+the circumstance that it is impossible to create a moral power through
+legislative paragraphs, the Constitution again neutralizes itself in
+that it causes the President to be chosen by all the Frenchmen through
+direct suffrage.  While the votes of France are splintered to pieces
+upon the 750 members of the National Assembly they are here, on the
+contrary, concentrated upon one individual.  While each separate
+Representative represents only this or that party, this or that city,
+this or that dunghill, or possibly only the necessity of electing some
+one Seven-hundred-and-fiftieth or other, with whom neither the issue nor
+the man is closely considered, that one, the President, on the contrary,
+is the elect of the nation, and the act of his election is the trump
+card, that, the sovereign people plays out once every four years.  The
+elected National Assembly stands in a metaphysical, but the elected
+President in a personal, relation to the nation.  True enough, the
+National Assembly presents in its several Representatives the various
+sides of the national spirit, but, in the President, this spirit is
+incarnated.  As against the National Assembly, the President possesses a
+sort of divine right, he is by the grace of the people.
+
+Thetis, the sea-goddess, had prophesied to Achilles that he would die in
+the bloom of youth.  The Constitution, which had its weak spot, like
+Achilles, had also, like Achilles, the presentiment that it would depart
+by premature death.  It was enough for the pure republicans, engaged at
+the work of framing a constitution, to cast a glance from the misty
+heights of their ideal republic down upon the profane world in order to
+realize how the arrogance of the royalists, of the Bonapartists, of the
+democrats, of the Communists, rose daily, together with their own
+discredit, and in the same measure as they approached the completion of
+their legislative work of art, without Thetis having for this purpose to
+leave the sea and impart the secret to them.  They ought to outwit fate
+by means of constitutional artifice, through Section 111 of the
+Constitution, according to which every motion to revise the Constitution
+had to be discussed three successive times between each of which a full
+month was to elapse and required at least a three-fourths majority, with
+the additional proviso that not less than 500 members of the National
+Assembly voted.  They thereby only made the impotent attempt, still to
+exercise as a parliamentary minority, to which in their mind's eye they
+prophetically saw themselves reduced, a power, that, at this very time,
+when they still disposed over the parliamentary majority and over all
+the machinery of government, was daily slipping from their weak hands.
+
+Finally, the Constitution entrusts itself for safe keeping, in a
+melodramatic paragraph, "to the watchfulness and patriotism of the whole
+French people, and of each individual Frenchman," after having just
+before, in another paragraph entrusted the "watchful" and the
+"patriotic" themselves to the tender, inquisitorial attention of the
+High Court, instituted by itself.
+
+That was the Constitution of 1848, which on, the 2d of December, 1851,
+was not overthrown by one head, but tumbled down at the touch of a mere
+hat; though, true enough, that hat was a three-cornered Napoleon hat.
+
+While the bourgeois' republicans were engaged in the Assembly with the
+work of splicing this Constitution, of discussing and voting, Cavaignac,
+on the outside, maintained the state of siege of Paris.  The state of
+siege of Paris was the midwife of the constitutional assembly, during
+its republican pains of travail.  When the Constitution is later on
+swept off the earth by the bayonet,
+
+it should not be forgotten that it was by the bayonet, likewise--and the
+bayonet turned against the people, at that--that it had to be protected
+in its mother's womb, and that by the bayonet it had to be planted on
+earth.  The ancestors of these "honest republicans" had caused their
+symbol, the tricolor, to make the tour of Europe.  These, in their turn
+also made a discovery, which all of itself, found its way over the whole
+continent, but, with ever renewed love, came back to France, until, by
+this time, if had acquired the right of citizenship in one-half of her
+Departments--the state of siege.  A wondrous discovery this was,
+periodically applied at each succeeding crisis in the course of the
+French revolution.  But the barrack and the bivouac, thus periodically
+laid on the head of French society, to compress her brain and reduce her
+to quiet; the sabre and the musket, periodically made to perform the
+functions of judges and of administrators, of guardians and of censors,
+of police officers and of watchmen; the military moustache and the
+soldier's jacket, periodically heralded as the highest wisdom and
+guiding stars of society;--were not all of these, the barrack and the
+bivouac, the sabre and the musket, the moustache and the soldier's
+jacket bound, in the end, to hit upon the idea that they might as well
+save, society once for all, by proclaiming their own regime as supreme,
+and relieve bourgeois society wholly of the care of ruling itself?  The
+barrack and the bivouac, the sabre and the musket, the moustache and the
+soldier's jacket were all the more bound to hit upon this idea, seeing
+that they could then also expect better cash payment for their increased
+deserts, while at the merely periodic states of siege and the transitory
+savings of society at the behest of this or that bourgeois faction, very
+little solid matter fell to them except some dead and wounded, besides
+some friendly bourgeois grimaces.  Should not the military, finally, in
+and for its own interest, play the game of "state of siege," and
+simultaneously besiege the bourgeois exchanges?  Moreover, it must not
+be forgotten, and be it observed in passing, that Col. Bernard, the same
+President of the Military Committee, who, under Cavaignac, helped to
+deport 15,000 insurgents without trial, moves at this period again at
+the head of the Military Committees now active in Paris.
+
+Although the honest, the pure republicans built with the state of siege
+the nursery in which the Praetorian guards of December 2, 1851, were to
+be reared, they, on the other hand, deserve praise in that, instead of
+exaggerating the feeling of patriotism, as under Louis Philippe, now;
+they themselves are in command of the national power, they crawl before
+foreign powers; instead of making Italy free, they allow her to be
+reconquered by Austrians and Neapolitans.  The election of Louis
+Bonaparte for President on December 10, 1848, put an end to the
+dictatorship of Cavaignac and to the constitutional assembly.
+
+In Article 44 of the Constitution it is said "The President of the
+French Republic must never have lost his status as a French citizen."
+The first President of the French Republic, L. N. Bonaparte, had not
+only lost his status as a French citizen, had not only been an English
+special constable, but was even a naturalized Swiss citizen.
+
+In the previous chapter I have explained the meaning of the election of
+December 10.  I shall not here return to it.  Suffice it here to say
+that it was a reaction of the farmers' class, who had been expected to
+pay the costs of the February revolution, against the other classes of
+the nation: it was a reaction of the country against the city.  It met
+with great favor among the soldiers, to whom the republicans of the
+"National" had brought neither fame nor funds; among the great
+bourgeoisie, who hailed Bonaparte as a bridge to the monarchy; and among
+the proletarians and small traders, who hailed him as a scourge to
+Cavaignac.  I shall later have occasion to enter closer into the
+relation of the farmers to the French revolution.
+
+The epoch between December 20, 1848, and the dissolution of the
+constitutional assembly in May, 1849, embraces the history of the
+downfall of the bourgeois republicans.  After they had founded a
+republic for the bourgeoisie, had driven the revolutionary proletariat
+from the field and had meanwhile silenced the democratic middle class,
+they are themselves shoved aside by the mass of the bourgeoisie who
+justly appropriate this republic as their property.  This bourgeois mass
+was Royalist, however.  A part thereof, the large landed proprietors,
+had ruled under the restoration, hence, was Legitimist; the other part,
+the aristocrats of finance and the large industrial capitalists, had
+ruled under the July monarchy, hence, was Orleanist.  The high
+functionaries of the Army, of the University, of the Church, in the
+civil service, of the Academy and of the press, divided themselves on
+both sides, although in unequal parts.  Here, in the bourgeois republic,
+that bore neither the name of Bourbon, nor of Orleans, but the name of
+Capital, they had found the form of government under which they could
+all rule in common.  Already the June insurrection had united them all
+into a "Party of Order."  The next thing to do was to remove the
+bourgeois republicans who still held the seats in the National Assembly.
+As brutally as these pure republicans had abused their own physical
+power against the people, so cowardly, low-spirited, disheartened,
+broken, powerless did they yield, now when the issue was the maintenance
+of their own republicanism and their own legislative rights against the
+Executive power and the royalists I need not here narrate the shameful
+history of their dissolution.  It was not a downfall, it was extinction.
+Their history is at an end for all time.  In the period that follows,
+they figure, whether within or without the Assembly, only as
+memories--memories that seem again to come to life so soon as the
+question is again only the word "Republic," and as often as the
+revolutionary conflict threatens to sink down to the lowest level.  In
+passing, I might observe that the journal which gave to this party its
+name, the "National," goes over to Socialism during the following
+period.
+
+Before we close this period, we must look back upon the two powers, one
+of destroys the other on December 2, 1851, while, from December 20,
+1848, down to the departure of the constitutional assembly, they live
+marital relations.  We mean Louis Bonaparte, on the-one hand, on the
+other, the party of the allied royalists; of Order, and of the large
+bourgeoisie.
+
+At the inauguration of his presidency, Bonaparte forthwith framed a
+ministry out of the party of Order, at whose head he placed Odillon
+Barrot, be it noted, the old leader of the liberal wing of the
+parliamentary bourgeoisie.  Mr. Barrot had finally hunted down a seat in
+the ministry, the spook of which had been pursuing him since 1830; and
+what is more, he had the chairmanship in this ministry, although not, as
+he had imagined under Louis Philippe, the promoted leader of the
+parliamentary opposition, but with the commission to kill a parliament,
+and, moreover, as an ally of all his arch enemies, the Jesuits and the
+Legitimists.  Finally he leads the bride home, but only after she has
+been prostituted.  As to Bonaparte, he seemed to eclipse himself
+completely.  The party of Order acted for him.
+
+Immediately at the first session of the ministry the expedition to Rome
+was decided upon, which it was there agreed, was to be carried out
+behind I the back of the National Assembly, and the funds for which, it
+was equally agreed, were to be wrung from the Assembly under false
+pretences.  Thus the start was made with a swindle on the National
+Assembly, together with a secret conspiracy with the absolute foreign
+powers against the revolutionary Roman republic.  In the same way, and
+with a similar maneuver, did Bonaparte prepare his stroke of December 2
+against the royalist legislature and its constitutional republic.  Let
+it not be forgotten that the same party, which, on December 20, 1848,
+constituted Bonaparte's ministry, constituted also, on December 2, 1851,
+the majority of the legislative National Assembly.
+
+In August the constitutive assembly decided not to dissolve until it had
+prepared and promulgated a whole series of organic laws, intended to
+supplement the Constitution.  The party of Order proposed to the
+assembly, through Representative Rateau, on January 6, 1849, to let the
+Organic laws go, and rather to order its own dissolution.  Not the
+ministry alone, with Mr.  Odillon Barrot at its head, but all the
+royalist members of the National Assembly were also at this time
+hectoring to it that its dissolution was necessary for the restoration
+of the public credit, for the consolidation of order, to put an end to
+the existing uncertain and provisional, and establish a definite state
+of things; they claimed that its continued existence hindered the
+effectiveness of the new Government, that it sought to prolong its life
+out of pure malice, and that the country was tired of it.  Bonaparte
+took notice of all these invectives hurled at the legislative power, he
+learned them by heart, and, on December 21, 1851, he showed the
+parliamentary royalists that he had learned from them.  He repeated
+their own slogans against themselves.
+
+The Barrot ministry and the party of Order went further.  They called
+all over France for petitions to the National Assembly in which that
+body was politely requested to disappear.  Thus they led the people's
+unorganic masses to the fray against the National Assembly, i.e., the
+constitutionally organized expression of people itself.  They taught
+Bonaparte, to appeal from the parliamentary body to the people.
+Finally, on January 29, 1849, the day arrived when the constitutional
+assembly was to decide about its own dissolution.  On that day the body
+found its building occupied by the military; Changarnier, the General of
+the party of Order, in whose hands was joined the supreme command of
+both the National Guards and the regulars, held that day a great
+military review, as though a battle were imminent; and the coalized
+royalists declared threateningly to the constitutional assembly that
+force would be applied if it did not act willingly.  It was willing, and
+chaffered only for a very short respite.  What else was the 29th of
+January, 1849, than the "coup d'etat" of December 2, 1851, only executed
+by the royalists with Napoleon's aid against the republican National
+Assembly?  These gentlemen did not notice, or did not want to notice,
+that Napoleon utilized the 29th of January, 1849, to cause a part of the
+troops to file before him in front of the Tuileries, and that he seized
+with avidity this very first open exercise of the military against the
+parliamentary power in order to hint at Caligula.  The allied royalists
+saw only their own Changarnier.
+
+Another reason that particularly moved the party of Order forcibly to
+shorten the term of the constitutional assembly were the organic laws,
+the laws that were to supplement the Constitution, as, for instance, the
+laws on education, on religion, etc.  The allied royalists had every
+interest in framing these laws themselves, and not allowing them to be
+framed by the already suspicious republicans.  Among these organic laws,
+there was, however, one on the responsibility of the President of the
+republic.  In 1851 the Legislature was just engaged in framing such a
+law when Bonaparte forestalled that political stroke by his own of
+December 2.  What all would not the coalized royalists have given in
+their winter parliamentary campaign of 1851, had they but found this
+"Responsibility law" ready made, and framed at that, by the suspicious,
+the vicious republican Assembly!
+
+After, on January 29, 1849, the constitutive assembly had itself broken
+its last weapon, the Barrot ministry and the "Friends of Order" harassed
+it to death, left nothing undone to humiliate it, and wrung from its
+weakness, despairing of itself, laws that cost it the last vestige of
+respect with the public.  Bonaparte, occupied with his own fixed
+Napoleonic idea, was audacious enough openly to exploit this degradation
+of the parliamentary power: When the National Assembly, on May 8, 1849,
+passed a vote of censure upon the Ministry on account of the occupation
+of Civita-Vecchia by Oudinot, and ordered that the Roman expedition be
+brought back to its alleged purpose, Bonaparte published that same
+evening in the "Moniteur" a letter to Oudinot, in which he congratulated
+him on his heroic feats, and already, in contrast with the quill-pushing
+parliamentarians, posed as the generous protector of the Army.  The
+royalists smiled at this.  They took him simply for their dupe.
+Finally, as Marrast, the President of the constitutional assembly,
+believed on a certain occasion the safety of the body to be in danger,
+and, resting on the Constitution, made a requisition upon a Colonel,
+together with his regiment, the Colonel refused obedience, took refuge
+behind the "discipline," and referred Marrast to Changarnier, who
+scornfully sent him off with the remark that he did not like "bayonettes
+intelligentes."  [#1 Intelligent bayonets] In November, 1851, as the
+coalized royalists wanted to begin the decisive struggle with Bonaparte,
+they sought, by means of their notorious "Questors Bill," to enforce the
+principle of the right of the President of the National Assembly to
+issue direct requisitions for troops.  One of their Generals, Leflo,
+supported the motion.  In vain did Changarnier vote for it, or did
+Thiers render homage to the cautious wisdom of the late constitutional
+assembly.  The Minister of War, St. Arnaud, answered him as Changarnier
+had answered Marrast--and he did so amidst the plaudits of the Mountain.
+
+Thus did the party of Order itself, when as yet it was not the National
+Assembly, when as yet it was only a Ministry, brand the parliamentary
+regime.  And yet this party objects vociferously when the 2d of
+December, 1851, banishes that regime from France!
+
+We wish it a happy journey.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+On May 29, 1849, the legislative National Assembly convened.  On
+December 2, 1851, it was broken up.  This period embraces the term of
+the Constitutional or Parliamentary public.
+
+In the first French revolution, upon the reign of the Constitutionalists
+succeeds that of the Girondins; and upon the reign of the Girondins
+follows that of the Jacobins.  Each of these parties in succession rests
+upon its more advanced element.  So soon as it has carried the
+revolution far enough not to be able to keep pace with, much less march
+ahead of it, it is shoved aside by its more daring allies, who stand
+behind it, and it is sent to the guillotine.  Thus the revolution moves
+along an upward line.
+
+Just the reverse in 1848.  The proletarian party appears as an appendage
+to the small traders' or democratic party; it is betrayed by the latter
+and allowed to fall on April 16, May 15, and in the June days.  In its
+turn, the democratic party leans upon the shoulders of the bourgeois
+republicans; barely do the bourgeois republicans believe themselves
+firmly in power, than they shake off these troublesome associates for
+the purpose of themselves leaning upon the shoulders of the party of
+Order.  The party of Order draws in its shoulders, lets the bourgeois
+republicans tumble down heels over head, and throws itself upon the
+shoulders of the armed power.  Finally, still of the mind that it is
+sustained by the shoulders of the armed power, the party of Order
+notices one fine morning that these shoulders have turned into bayonets.
+Each party kicks backward at those that are pushing forward, and leans
+forward upon those that are crowding backward; no wonder that, in this
+ludicrous posture, each loses its balance, and, after having cut the
+unavoidable grimaces, breaks down amid singular somersaults.
+Accordingly, the revolution moves along a downward line.  It finds
+itself in this retreating motion before the last February-barricade is
+cleared away, and the first governmental authority of the revolution has
+been constituted.
+
+The period we now have before us embraces the motliest jumble of crying
+contradictions: constitutionalists, who openly conspire against the
+Constitution; revolutionists, who admittedly are constitutional; a
+National Assembly that wishes to be omnipotent yet remains
+parliamentary; a Mountain, that finds its occupation in submission, that
+parries its present defeats with prophecies of future victories;
+royalists, who constitute the "patres conscripti" of the republic, and
+are compelled by the situation to uphold abroad the hostile monarchic
+houses, whose adherents they are, while in France they support the
+republic that they hate; an Executive power that finds its strength in
+its very weakness, and its dignity in the contempt that it inspires; a
+republic, that is nothing else than the combined infamy of two
+monarchies--the Restoration and the July Monarchy--with an imperial
+label; unions, whose first clause is disunion; struggles, whose first
+law is in-decision; in the name of peace, barren and hollow agitation;
+in the name of the revolution, solemn sermonizings on peace; passions
+without truth; truths without passion; heroes without heroism; history
+without events; development, whose only moving force seems to be the
+calendar, and tiresome by the constant reiteration of the same tensions
+and relaxes; contrasts, that seem to intensify themselves periodically,
+only in order to wear themselves off and collapse without a solution;
+pretentious efforts made for show, and bourgeois frights at the danger
+of the destruction of the world, simultaneous with the carrying on of
+the pettiest intrigues and the performance of court comedies by the
+world's saviours, who, in their "laisser aller," recall the Day of
+Judgment not so much as the days of the Fronde; the official collective
+genius of France brought to shame by the artful stupidity of a single
+individual; the collective will of the nation, as often as it speaks
+through the general suffrage, seeking its true expression in the
+prescriptive enemies of the public interests until it finally finds it
+in the arbitrary will of a filibuster.  If ever a slice from history is
+drawn black upon black, it is this.  Men and events appear as reversed
+"Schlemihls," [#1 The hero In Chamisso's "Peter Schiemihi," who loses
+his own shadow.] as shadows, the bodies of which have been lost.  The
+revolution itself paralyzes its own apostles, and equips only its
+adversaries with passionate violence.  When the "Red Spectre,"
+constantly conjured up and exorcised by the counter-revolutionists
+finally does appear, it does not appear with the Anarchist Phrygian cap
+on its head, but in the uniform of Order, in the Red Breeches of the
+French Soldier.
+
+We saw that the Ministry, which Bonaparte installed on December 20,
+1849, the day of his "Ascension," was a ministry of the party of Order,
+of the Legitimist and Orleanist coalition.  The Barrot-Falloux ministry
+had weathered the republican constitutive convention, whose term of life
+it had shortened with more or less violence, and found itself still at
+the helm.  Changamier, the General of the allied royalists continued to
+unite in his person the command-in-chief of the First Military Division
+and of the Parisian National Guard.  Finally, the general elections had
+secured the large majority in the National Assembly to the party of
+Order.  Here the Deputies and Peers of Louis Phillipe met a saintly
+crowd of Legitimists, for whose benefit numerous ballots of the nation
+had been converted into admission tickets to the political stage.  The
+Bonapartist representatives were too thinly sowed to be able to build an
+independent parliamentary party.  They appeared only as "mauvaise queue"
+[#2 Practical joke] played upon the party of Order.  Thus the party of
+Order was in possession of the Government, of the Army, and of the
+legislative body, in short, of the total power of the State, morally
+strengthened by the general elections, that caused their sovereignty to
+appear as the will of the people, and by the simultaneous victory of the
+counter-revolution on the whole continent of Europe.
+
+Never did party open its campaign with larger means at its disposal and
+under more favorable auspices.
+
+The shipwrecked pure republicans found themselves in the legislative
+National Assembly melted down to a clique of fifty men, with the African
+Generals Cavaignac, Lamorciere and Bedeau at its head.  The great
+Opposition party was, however, formed by the Mountain.  This
+parliamentary baptismal name was given to itself by the Social
+Democratic party.  It disposed of more than two hundred votes out of the
+seven hundred and fifty in the National Assembly, and, hence, was at
+least just as powerful as any one of the three factions of the party of
+Order.  Its relative minority to the total royalist coalition seemed
+counterbalanced by special circumstances.  Not only did the Departmental
+election returns show that it had gained a considerable following among
+the rural population, but, furthermore, it numbered almost all the Paris
+Deputies in its camp; the Army had, by the election of three
+under-officers, made a confession of democratic faith; and the leader of
+the Mountain, Ledru-Rollin had in contrast to all the representatives of
+the party of Order, been raised to the rank of the "parliamentary
+nobility" by five Departments, who combined their suffrages upon him.
+Accordingly, in view of the inevitable collisions of the royalists among
+themselves, on the one hand, and of the whole party of Order with
+Bonaparte, on the other, the Mountain seemed on May 29,1849, to have
+before it all the elements of success.  A fortnight later, it had lost
+everything, its honor included.
+
+Before we follow this parliamentary history any further, a few
+observations are necessary, in order to avoid certain common deceptions
+concerning the whole character of the epoch that lies before us.
+According to the view of the democrats, the issue, during the period of
+the legislative National Assembly, was, the same as during the period of
+the constitutive assembly, simply the struggle between republicans and
+royalists; the movement itself was summed up by them in the catch-word
+Reaction--night, in which all cats are grey, and allows them to drawl
+out their drowsy commonplaces.  Indeed, at first sight, the party of
+Order presents the appearance of a tangle of royalist factions, that,
+not only intrigue against each other, each aiming to raise its own
+Pretender to the throne, and exclude the Pretender of the Opposite
+party, but also are all united in a common hatred for and common attacks
+against the "Republic."  On its side, the Mountain appears, in
+counter-distinction to the royalist conspiracy, as the representative of
+the "Republic."  The party of Order seems constantly engaged in a
+"Reaction," which, neither more nor less than in Prussia, is directed
+against the press, the right of association and the like, and is
+enforced by brutal police interventions on the part of the bureaucracy,
+the police and the public prosecutor--just as in Prussia; the Mountain
+on the contrary, is engaged with equal assiduity in parrying these
+attacks, and thus in defending the "eternal rights of man"--as every
+so-called people's party has more or less done for the last hundred and
+fifty years.  At a closer inspection, however, of the situation and of
+the parties, this superficial appearance, which veils the Class
+Struggle, together with the peculiar physiognomy of this period,
+vanishes wholly.
+
+Legitimists and Orleanists constituted, as said before, the two large
+factions of the party of Order.  What held these two factions to their
+respective Pretenders, and inversely kept them apart from each other,
+what else was it but the lily and the tricolor, the House of Bourbon and
+the house of Orleans, different shades of royalty?  Under the Bourbons,
+Large Landed Property ruled together with its parsons and lackeys; under
+the Orleanist, it was the high finance, large industry, large commerce,
+i.e., Capital, with its retinue of lawyers, professors and orators.  The
+Legitimate kingdom was but the political expression for the hereditary
+rule of the landlords, as the July monarchy was bur the political
+expression for the usurped rule of the bourgeois upstarts.  What,
+accordingly, kept these two factions apart was no so-called set of
+principles, it was their material conditions for life--two different
+sorts of property--; it was the old antagonism of the City and the
+Country, the rivalry between Capital and Landed property.  That
+simultaneously old recollections; personal animosities, fears and hopes;
+prejudices and illusions; sympathies and antipathies; convictions, faith
+and principles bound these factions to one House or the other, who
+denies it?  Upon the several forms of property, upon the social
+conditions of existence, a whole superstructure is reared of various and
+peculiarly shaped feelings, illusions, habits of thought and conceptions
+of life.  The whole class produces and shapes these out of its material
+foundation and out of the corresponding social conditions.  The
+individual unit to whom they flow through tradition and education, may
+fancy that they constitute the true reasons for and premises of his
+conduct.  Although Orleanists and Legitimists, each of these factions,
+sought to make itself and the other believe that what kept the two apart
+was the attachment of each to its respective royal House; nevertheless,
+facts proved later that it rather was their divided interest that
+forbade the union of the two royal Houses.  As, in private life, the
+distinction is made between what a man thinks of himself and says, and
+that which he really is and does, so, all the more, must the phrases and
+notions of parties in historic struggles be distinguished from the real
+organism, and their real interests, their notions and their reality.
+Orleanists and Legitimists found themselves in the republic beside each
+other with equal claims.  Each side wishing, in opposition to the other,
+to carry out the restoration of its own royal House, meant nothing else
+than that each of the two great Interests into which the bourgeoisie is
+divided--Land and Capital--sought to restore its own supremacy and the
+subordinacy of the other.  We speak of two bourgeois interests because
+large landed property, despite its feudal coquetry and pride of race,
+has become completely bourgeois through the development of modern
+society.  Thus did the Tories of England long fancy that they were
+enthusiastic for the Kingdom, the Church and the beauties of the old
+English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the
+admission that their enthusiasm was only for Ground Rent.
+
+The coalized royalists carried on their intrigues against each other in
+the press, in Ems, in Clarmont--outside of the parliament.  Behind the
+scenes, they don again their old Orleanist and Legitimist liveries, and
+conduct their old tourneys; on the public stage, however, in their
+public acts, as a great parliamentary party, they dispose of their
+respective royal houses with mere courtesies, adjourn "in infinitum" the
+restoration of the monarchy.  Their real business is transacted as Party
+of Order, i. e., under a Social, not a Political title; as
+representatives of the bourgeois social system; not as knights of
+traveling princesses, but as the bourgeois class against the other
+classes; not as royalists against republicans.  Indeed, as party of
+Order they exercised a more unlimited and harder dominion over the other
+classes of society than ever before either under the restoration or the
+July monarchy-a thing possible only under the form of a parliamentary
+republic, because under this form alone could the two large divisions of
+the French bourgeoisie be united; in other words, only under this form
+could they place on the order of business the sovereignty of their
+class, in lieu of the regime of a privileged faction of the same.  If,
+this notwithstanding, they are seen as the party of Order to insult the
+republic and express their antipathy for it, it happened not out of
+royalist traditions only: Instinct taught them that while, indeed, the
+republic completes their authority, it at the same time undermined their
+social foundation, in that, without intermediary, without the mask of
+the crown, without being able to turn aside the national interest by
+means of its subordinate struggles among its own conflicting elements
+and with the crown, the republic is compelled to stand up sharp against
+the subjugated classes, and wrestle with them.  It was a sense of
+weakness that caused them to recoil before the unqualified demands of
+their own class rule, and to retreat to the less complete, less
+developed, and, for that very reason, less dangerous forms of the same.
+As often, on the contrary, as the allied royalists come into conflict
+with the Pretender who stands before them--with Bonaparte--, as often as
+they believe their parliamentary omnipotence to be endangered by the
+Executive, in other words, as often as they must trot out the political
+title of their authority, they step up as Republicans, not as
+Royalists--and this is done from the Orleanist Thiers, who warns the
+National Assembly that the republic divides them least, down to
+Legitimist Berryer, who, on December 2, 1851, the scarf of the tricolor
+around him, harangues the people assembled before the Mayor's building
+of the Tenth Arrondissement, as a tribune in the name of the Republic;
+the echo, however, derisively answering back to him: "Henry V.! Henry
+V!" [#3 The candidate of the Bourbons, or Legitimists, for the throne.]
+
+However, against the allied bourgeois, a coalition was made between the
+small traders and the workingmen--the so-called Social Democratic party.
+The small traders found themselves ill rewarded after the June days of
+1848; they saw their material interests endangered, and the democratic
+guarantees, that were to uphold their interests, made doubtful.  Hence,
+they drew closer to the workingmen.  On the other hand, their
+parliamentary representatives--the Mountain--, after being shoved aside
+during the dictatorship of the bourgeois republicans, had, during the
+last half of the term of the constitutive convention, regained their
+lost popularity through the struggle with Bonaparte and the royalist
+ministers.  They had made an alliance with the Socialist leaders.
+During February, 1849, reconciliation banquets were held.  A common
+program was drafted, joint election committees were empanelled, and
+fusion candidates were set up.  The revolutionary point was thereby
+broken off from the social demands of the proletariat and a democratic
+turn given to them; while, from the democratic claims of the small
+traders' class, the mere political form was rubbed off and the Socialist
+point was pushed forward.  Thus came the Social Democracy about.  The
+new Mountain, the result of this combination, contained, with the
+exception of some figures from the working class and some Socialist
+sectarians, the identical elements of the old Mountain, only numerically
+stronger.  In the course of events it had, however, changed, together
+with the class that it represented.  The peculiar character of the
+Social Democracy is summed up in this that democratic-republican
+institutions are demanded as the means, not to remove the two
+extremes--Capital and Wage-slavery--, but in order to weaken their
+antagonism and transform them into a harmonious whole.  However
+different the methods may be that are proposed for the accomplishment of
+this object, however much the object itself may be festooned with more
+or less revolutionary fancies, the substance remains the same.  This
+substance is the transformation of society upon democratic lines, but a
+transformation within the boundaries of the small traders' class.  No
+one must run away with the narrow notion that the small traders' class
+means on principle to enforce a selfish class interest.  It believes
+rather that the special conditions for its own emancipation are the
+general conditions under which alone modern society can be saved and the
+class struggle avoided.  Likewise must we avoid running away with the
+notion that the Democratic Representatives are all "shopkeepers," or
+enthuse for these.  They may--by education and individual standing--be
+as distant from them as heaven is from earth.  That which makes them
+representatives of the small traders' class is that they do not
+intellectually leap the bounds which that class itself does not leap in
+practical life; that, consequently, they are theoretically driven to the
+same problems and solutions, to which material interests and social
+standing practically drive the latter.  Such, in fact, is at all times
+the relation of the "political" and the "literary" representatives of a
+class to the class they represent.
+
+After the foregoing explanations, it goes with-out saying that, while
+the Mountain is constantly wrestling for the republic and the so-called
+"rights of man," neither the republic nor the "rights of man" is its
+real goal, as little as an army, whose weapons it is sought to deprive
+it of and that defends itself, steps on the field of battle simply in
+order to remain in possession of implements of warfare.
+
+The party of Order provoked the Mountain immediately upon the convening
+of the assembly.  The bourgeoisie now felt the necessity of disposing of
+the democratic small traders' class, just as a year before it had
+understood the necessity of putting an end to the revolutionary
+proletariat.
+
+But the position of the foe had changed.  The strength of the
+proletarian party was on the streets ; that of the small traders' class
+was in the National Assembly itself.  The point was, accordingly, to
+wheedle them out of the National Assembly into the street, and to have
+them break their parliamentary power themselves, before I time and
+opportunity could consolidate them.  The Mountain jumped with loose
+reins into the trap.
+
+The bombardment of Rome by the French troops was the bait thrown at the
+Mountain.  It violated Article V. of the Constitution, which forbade the
+French republic to use its forces against the liberties of other
+nations; besides, Article IV. forbade all declaration of war by the
+Executive without the consent of the National Assembly; furthermore, the
+constitutive assembly had censured the Roman expedition by its
+resolution of May 8.  Upon these grounds, Ledru-Rollin submitted on June
+11, 1849, a motion impeaching Bonaparte and his Ministers.  Instigated
+by the wasp-stings of Thiers, he even allowed himself to be carried away
+to the point of threatening to defend the Constitution by all means,
+even arms in hand.  The Mountain rose as one man, and repeated the
+challenge.  On June 12, the National Assembly rejected the notion to
+impeach, and the Mountain left the parliament.  The events of June 13
+are known: the proclamation by a part of the Mountain pronouncing
+Napoleon and his Ministers "outside the pale of the Constitution"; the
+street parades of the democratic National Guards, who, unarmed as they
+were, flew apart at contact with the troops of Changarnier; etc., etc.
+Part of the Mountain fled abroad, another part was assigned to the High
+Court of Bourges, and a parliamentary regulation placed the rest under
+the school-master supervision of the President of the National Assembly.
+Paris was again put under a state of siege; and the democratic portion
+of the National Guards was disbanded.  Thus the influence of the
+Mountain in parliament was broken, together with the power; of the small
+traders' class in Paris.
+
+Lyons, where the 13th of June had given the signal to a bloody labor
+uprising, was, together with the five surrounding Departments, likewise
+pronounced in state of siege, a condition that continues down to this
+moment.  [#4 January, 1852]
+
+The bulk of the Mountain had left its vanguard in the lurch by refusing
+their signatures to the proclamation; the press had deserted: only two
+papers dared to publish the pronunciamento; the small traders had
+betrayed their Representatives: the National Guards stayed away, or,
+where they did turn up, hindered the raising of barricades; the
+Representatives had duped the small traders: nowhere were the alleged
+affiliated members from the Army to be seen; finally, instead of
+gathering strength from them, the democratic party had infected the
+proletariat with its own weakness, and, as usual with democratic feats,
+the leaders had the satisfaction of charging "their people" with
+desertion, and the people had the satisfaction of charging their leaders
+with fraud.
+
+Seldom was an act announced with greater noise than the campaign
+contemplated by the Mountain; seldom was an event trumpeted ahead with
+more certainty and longer beforehand than tile "inevitable victory of
+the democracy."  This is evident: the democrats believe in the trombones
+before whose blasts the walls of Jericho fall together; as often as they
+stand before the walls of despotism, they seek to imitate the miracle.
+If the Mountain wished to win in parliament, it should not appeal to
+arms; if it called to arms in parliament, it should not conduct itself
+parliamentarily on the street; if the friendly demonstration was meant
+seriously, it was silly not to foresee that it would meet with a warlike
+reception; if it was intended for actual war, it was rather original to
+lay aside the weapons with which war had to be conducted.  But the
+revolutionary threats of the middle class and of their democratic
+representatives are mere attempts to frighten an adversary; when they
+have run themselves into a blind alley, when they have sufficiently
+compromised themselves and are compelled to execute their threats, the
+thing is done in a hesitating manner that avoids nothing so much as the
+means to the end, and catches at pretexts to succumb.  The bray of the
+overture, that announces the fray, is lost in a timid growl so soon as
+this is to start; the actors cease to take themselves seriously, and the
+performance falls flat like an inflated balloon that is pricked with a
+needle.
+
+No party exaggerates to itself the means at its disposal more than the
+democratic, none deceives itself with greater heedlessness on the
+situation.  A part of the Army voted for it, thereupon the Mountain is
+of the opinion that the Army would revolt in its favor.  And by what
+occasion?  By an occasion, that, from the standpoint of the troops,
+meant nothing else than that the revolutionary soldiers should take the
+part of the soldiers of Rome against French soldiers.  On the other
+hand, the memory of June, 1848, was still too fresh not to keep alive a
+deep aversion on the part of the proletariat towards the National Guard,
+and a strong feeling of mistrust on the part of the leaders of the
+secret societies for the democratic leaders.  In order to balance these
+differences, great common interests at stake were needed.  The violation
+of an abstract constitutional paragraph could not supply such interests.
+Had not the constitution been repeatedly violated, according to the
+assurances of the democrats themselves?  Had not the most popular papers
+branded them as a counter-revolutionary artifice?  But the democrat--by
+reason of his representing the middle class, that is to say, a
+Transition Class, in which the interests of two other classes are
+mutually dulled--, imagines himself above all class contrast.  The
+democrats grant that opposed to them stands a privileged class, but
+they, together with the whole remaining mass of the nation, constitute
+the "PEOPLE."  What they represent is the "people's rights"; their
+interests are the "people's interests."  Hence, they do not consider
+that, at an impending struggle, they need to examine the interests and
+attitude of the different classes.  They need not too seriously weigh
+their own means.  All they have to do is to give the signal in order to
+have the "people" fall upon the "oppressors with all its inexhaustible
+resources.  If, thereupon, in the execution, their interests turn out to
+be uninteresting, and their power to be impotence, it is ascribed either
+to depraved sophists, who split up the "undivisible people" into several
+hostile camps; or to the army being too far brutalized and blinded to
+appreciate the pure aims of the democracy as its own best; or to some
+detail in the execution that wrecks the whole plan; or, finally, to an
+unforeseen accident that spoiled the game this time.  At all events, the
+democrat comes out of the disgraceful defeat as immaculate as he went
+innocently into it, and with the refreshed conviction that he must win;
+not that he himself and his party must give up their old standpoint, but
+that, on the contrary, conditions must come to his aid.
+
+For all this, one must not picture to himself the decimated, broken,
+and, by the new parliamentary regulation, humbled Mountain altogether
+too unhappy.  If June 13 removed its leaders, it, on the other hand,
+made room for new ones of inferior capacity, who are flattered by their
+new position.  If their impotence in parliament could no longer be
+doubted, they were now justified to limit their activity to outbursts of
+moral indignation.  If the party of Order pretended to see in them, as
+the last official representatives of the revolution, all the horrors of
+anarchy incarnated, they were free to appear all the more flat and
+modest in reality.  Over June 13 they consoled themselves with the
+profound expression: "If they but dare to assail universal suffrage
+. . . then . . . then we will show who we are!" Nous verrons.  [#5 We
+shall see.]
+
+As to the "Mountaineers," who had fled abroad, it suffices here to say
+that Ledru-Rollin--he having accomplished the feat of hopelessly
+ruining, in barely a fortnight, the powerful party at whose head he
+stood--, found himself called upon to build up a French government "in
+partibus;" that his figure, at a distance, removed from the field of
+action, seemed to gain in size in the measure that the level of the
+revolution sank and the official prominences of official France became
+more and more dwarfish; that he could figure as republican Pretender for
+1852, and periodically issued to the Wallachians and other peoples
+circulars in which "despot of the continent" is threatened with the
+feats that he and his allies had in contemplation.  Was Proudhon wholly
+wrong when he cried out to these gentlemen: "Vous n'etes que des
+blaqueurs"?  [#6 You are nothing but fakirs.]
+
+The party of Order had, on June 13, not only broken up the Mountain, it
+had also established the Subordination of the Constitution to the
+Majority Decisions of the National Assembly.  So, indeed, did the
+republic understand it, to--wit, that the bourgeois ruled here in
+parliamentary form, without, as in the monarchy, finding a check in the
+veto of the Executive power, or the liability of parliament to
+dissolution.  It was a "parliamentary republic," as Thiers styled it.
+But if, on June 13, the bourgeoisie secured its omnipotence within the
+parliament building, did it not also strike the parliament itself, as
+against the Executive and the people, with incurable weakness by
+excluding its most popular part?  By giving up numerous Deputies,
+without further ceremony to the mercies of the public prosecutor, it
+abolished its own parliamentary inviolability.  The humiliating
+regulation, that it subjected the Mountain to, raised the President of
+the republic in the same measure that it lowered the individual
+Representatives of the people.  By branding an insurrection in defense
+of the Constitution as anarchy, and as a deed looking to the overthrow
+of society, it interdicted to itself all appeal to insurrection whenever
+the Executive should violate the Constitution against it.  And, indeed,
+the irony of history wills it that the very General, who by order of
+Bonaparte bombarded Rome, and thus gave the immediate occasion to the
+constitutional riot of June 13, that Oudinot, on December 22, 1851, is
+the one imploringly and vainly to be offered to the people by the party
+of Order as the General of the Constitution.  Another hero of June 13,
+Vieyra, who earned praise from the tribune of the National Assembly for
+the brutalities that he had committed in the democratic newspaper
+offices at the head of a gang of National Guards in the hire of the high
+finance--this identical Vieyra was initiated in the conspiracy of
+Bonaparte, and contributed materially in cutting off all protection that
+could come to the National Assembly, in the hour of its agony, from the
+side of the National Guard.
+
+June 13 had still another meaning.  The Mountain had wanted to place
+Bonaparte under charges.  Their defeat was, accordingly, a direct
+victory of Bonaparte; it was his personal triumph over his democratic
+enemies.  The party of Order fought for the victory, Bonaparte needed
+only to pocket it.  He did so.  On June 14, a proclamation was to be
+read on the walls of Paris wherein the President, as it were, without
+his connivance, against his will, driven by the mere force of
+circumstances, steps forward from his cloisterly seclusion like
+misjudged virtue, complains of the calumnies of his antagonists, and,
+while seeming to identify his own person with the cause of order, rather
+identifies the cause of order with his own person.  Besides this, the
+National Assembly had subsequently approved the expedition against Rome;
+Bonaparte, however, had taken the initiative in the affair.  After he
+had led the High Priest Samuel back into the Vatican, he could hope as
+King David to occupy the Tuileries.  He had won the parson-interests
+over to himself.
+
+The riot of June 13 limited itself, as we have seen, to a peaceful
+street procession.  There were, consequently, no laurels to be won from
+it.  Nevertheless, in these days, poor in heroes and events, the party
+of Order converted this bloodless battle into a second Austerlitz.
+Tribune and press lauded the army as the power of order against the
+popular multitude, and the impotence of anarchy; and Changarnier as the
+"bulwark of society"--a mystification that he finally believed in
+himself.  Underhand, however, the corps that seemed doubtful were
+removed from Paris; the regiments whose suffrage had turned out most
+democratic were banished from France to Algiers the restless heads among
+the troops were consigned to pennal quarters; finally, the shutting out
+of the press from the barracks, and of the barracks from contact with
+the citizens was systematically carried out.
+
+We stand here at the critical turning point in the history of the French
+National Guard.  In 1830, it had decided the downfall of the
+restoration.  Under Louis Philippe, every riot failed, at
+
+which the National Guard stood on the side of the troops.  When, in the
+February days of 1848, it showed itself passive against the uprising and
+doubtful toward Louis Philippe himself, he gave himself up for lost.
+Thus the conviction cast root that a revolution could not win without,
+nor the Army against the National Guard.  This was the superstitious
+faith of the Army in bourgeois omnipotence.  The June days of 1548, when
+the whole National Guard, jointly with the regular troops, threw down
+the insurrection, had confirmed the superstition.  After the
+inauguration of Bonaparte's administration, the position of the National
+Guard sank somewhat through the unconstitutional joining of their
+command with the command of the First Military Division in the person of
+Changarnier.
+
+As the command of the National Guard appeared here merely an attribute
+of the military commander-in-chief, so did the Guard itself appear only
+as an appendage of the regular troops.  Finally, on June 13, the
+National Guard was broken up, not through its partial dissolution only,
+that from that date forward was periodically repeated at all points of
+France, leaving only wrecks of its former self behind.  The
+demonstration of June 13 was, above all, a demonstration of the National
+Guards.  True, they had not carried their arms, but they had carried
+their uniforms against the Army--and the talisman lay just in these
+uniforms.  The Army then learned that this uniform was but a woolen rag,
+like any other.  The spell was broken.  In the June days of 1848,
+bourgeoisie and small traders were united as National Guard with the
+Army against the proletariat; on June 13, 1849, the bourgeoisie had the
+small traders' National Guard broken up; on December 2, 1851, the
+National Guard of the bourgeoisie itself vanished, and Bonaparte
+attested the fact when he subsequently signed the decree for its
+disbandment.  Thus the bourgeoisie had itself broken its last weapon
+against the army, from the moment when the small traders' class no
+longer stood as a vassal behind, but as a rebel before it; indeed, it
+was bound to do so, as it was bound to destroy with its own hand all its
+means of defence against absolutism, so soon as itself was absolute.
+
+In the meantime, the party of Order celebrated the recovery of a power
+that seemed lost in 1848 only in order that, freed from its trammels in
+1849, it be found again through invectives against the republic and the
+Constitution; through the malediction of all future, present and past
+revolutions, that one included which its own leaders had made; and,
+finally, in laws by which the press was gagged, the right of association
+destroyed, and the stage of siege regulated as an organic institution.
+The National Assembly then adjourned from the middle of August to the
+middle of October, after it had appointed a Permanent Committee for the
+period of its absence.  During these vacations, the Legitimists
+intrigued with Ems; the Orleanists with Claremont; Bonaparte through
+princely excursions; the Departmental Councilmen in conferences over the
+revision of the Constitution;--occurrences, all of which recurred
+regularly at the periodical vacations of the National Assembly, and upon
+which I shall not enter until they have matured into events.  Be it here
+only observed that the National Assembly was impolitic in vanishing from
+the stage for long intervals, and leaving in view, at the head of the
+republic, only one, however sorry, figure--Louis Bonaparte's--, while,
+to the public scandal, the party of Order broke up into its own royalist
+component parts, that pursued their conflicting aspirations after the
+restoration.  As often as, during these vacations the confusing noise of
+the parliament was hushed, and its body was dissolved in the nation, it
+was unmistakably shown that only one thing was still wanting to complete
+the true figure of the republic: to make the vacation of the National
+Assembly permanent, and substitute its inscription--="Liberty, Equality,
+Fraternity"--by the unequivocal words, "Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The National Assembly reconvened in the middle of October.  On November
+1, Bonaparte surprised it with a message, in which he announced the
+dismissal of the Barrot-Falloux Ministry, and the framing of a new.
+Never have lackeys been chased from service with less ceremony than
+Bonaparte did his ministers.  The kicks, that were eventually destined
+for the National Assembly, Barrot & Company received in the meantime.
+
+The Barrot Ministry was, as we have seen, composed of Legitimists and
+Orleanists; it was a Ministry of the party of Order.  Bonaparte needed
+that Ministry in order to dissolve the republican constituent assembly,
+to effect the expedition against Rome, and to break up the democratic
+party.  He had seemingly eclipsed himself behind this Ministry, yielded
+the reins to the hands of the party of Order, and assumed the modest
+mask, which, under Louis Philippe, had been worn by the responsible
+overseer of the newspapers--the mask of "homme de paille."  [#1 Man of
+straw] Now he threw off the mask, it being no longer the light curtain
+behind which he could conceal, but the Iron Mask, which prevented him
+from revealing his own physiognomy.  He had instituted the Barrot
+Ministry in order to break up the republican National Assembly in the
+name of the party of Order; he now dismissed it in order to declare his
+own name independent of the parliament of the party of Order.
+
+There was no want of plausible pretexts for this dismissal.  The Barrot
+Ministry had neglected even the forms of decency that would have allowed
+the president of the republic to appear as a power along with the
+National Assembly.  For instance, during the vacation of the National
+Assembly, Bonaparte published a letter to Edgar Ney, in which he seemed
+to disapprove the liberal attitude of the Pope, just as, in opposition
+to the constitutive assembly, he had published a letter, in which he
+praised Oudinot for his attack upon the Roman republic; when the
+National Assembly came to vote on the budget for the Roman expedition,
+Victor Hugo, out of pretended liberalism, brought up that letter for
+discussion; the party of Order drowned this notion of Bonaparte's under
+exclamations of contempt and incredulity as though notions of Bonaparte
+could not possibly have any political weight;--and none of the Ministers
+took up the gauntlet for him.  On another occasion, Barrot, with his
+well-known hollow pathos, dropped, from the speakers' tribune in the
+Assembly, words of indignation upon the "abominable machinations,"
+which, according to him, went on in the immediate vicinity of the
+President.  Finally, while the Ministry obtained from the National
+Assembly a widow's pension for the Duchess of Orleans, it denied every
+motion to raise the Presidential civil list;--and, in Bonaparte, be it
+always remembered, the Imperial Pretender was so closely blended with
+the impecunious adventurer, that the great idea of his being destined to
+restore the Empire was ever supplemented by that other, to-wit, that the
+French people was destined to pay his debts.
+
+The Barrot-Falloux Ministry was the first and last parliamentary
+Ministry that Bonaparte called into life.  Its dismissal marks,
+accordingly, a decisive period.  With the Ministry, the party of Order
+lost, never to regain, an indispensable post to the maintenance of the
+parliamentary regime,--the handle to the Executive power.  It is readily
+understood that, in a country like France, where the Executive disposes
+over an army of more than half a million office-holders, and,
+consequently, keeps permanently a large mass of interests and existences
+in the completest dependence upon itself; where the Government
+surrounds, controls, regulates, supervises and guards society, from its
+mightiest acts of national life, down to its most insignificant motions;
+from its common life, down to the private life of each individual;
+where, due to such extraordinary centralization, this body of parasites
+acquires a ubiquity and omniscience, a quickened capacity for motion and
+rapidity that finds an analogue only in the helpless lack of
+self-reliance, in the unstrung weakness of the body social itself;--that
+in such a country the National Assembly lost, with the control of the
+ministerial posts, all real influence; unless it simultaneously
+simplified the administration; if possible, reduced the army of
+office-holders; and, finally, allowed society and public opinion to
+establish its own organs, independent of government censorship.  But the
+Material Interest of the French bourgeoisie is most intimately bound up
+in maintenance of just such a large and extensively ramified
+governmental machine.  There the bourgeoisie provides for its own
+superfluous membership; and supplies, in the shape of government
+salaries, what it can not pocket in the form of profit, interest, rent
+and fees.  On the other hand, its Political Interests daily compel it to
+increase the power of repression, i.e., the means and the personnel of
+the government; it is at the same time forced to conduct an
+uninterrupted warfare against public opinion, and, full of suspicion, to
+hamstring and lame the independent organs of society--whenever it does
+not succeed in amputating them wholly.  Thus the bourgeoisie of France
+was forced by its own class attitude, on the one hand, to destroy the
+conditions for all parliamentary power, its own included, and, on the
+other, to render irresistible the Executive power that stood hostile to
+it.
+
+The new Ministry was called the d'Hautpoul Ministry.  Not that General
+d'Hautpoul had gained the rank of Ministerial President.  Along with
+Barrot, Bonaparte abolished this dignity, which, it must be granted,
+condemned the President of the republic to the legal nothingness of a
+constitutional kind, of a constitutional king at that, without throne
+and crown, without sceptre and without sword, without irresponsibility,
+without the imperishable possession of the highest dignity in the State,
+and, what was most untoward of all--without a civil list.  The
+d'Hautpoul Ministry numbered only one man of parliamentary reputation,
+the Jew Fould, one of the most notorious members of the high finance.
+To him fell the portfolio of finance.  Turn to the Paris stock
+quotations, and it will he found that from November 1, 1849, French
+stocks fall and rise with the falling and rising of the Bonapartist
+shares.  While Bonaparte had thus found his ally in the Bourse, he at
+the same time took possession of the Police through the appointment of
+Carlier as Prefect of Police.
+
+But the consequences of the change of Ministry could reveal themselves
+only in the course of events.  So far, Bonaparte had taken only one step
+forward, to be all the more glaringly driven back.  Upon his harsh
+message, followed the most servile declarations of submissiveness to the
+National Assembly.  As often as the Ministers made timid attempts to
+introduce his own personal hobbies as bills, they themselves seemed
+unwilling and compelled only by their position to run the comic errands,
+of whose futility they were convinced in advance.  As often as Bonaparte
+blabbed out his plans behind the backs of his Ministers, and sported his
+"idees napoleoniennes," [#2 Napoleonic ideas.] his own Ministers
+disavowed him from the speakers' tribune in the National Assembly.  His
+aspirations after usurpation seemed to become audible only to the end
+that the ironical laughter of his adversaries should not die out.  He
+deported himself like an unappreciated genius, whom the world takes for
+a simpleton.  Never did lie enjoy in fuller measure the contempt of all
+classes than at this period.  Never did the bourgeoisie rule more
+absolutely; never did it more boastfully display the insignia of
+sovereignty.
+
+It is not here my purpose to write the history of its legislative
+activity, which is summed up in two laws passed during this period: the
+law reestablishing the duty on wine, and the laws on education, to
+suppress infidelity.  While the drinking of wine was made difficult to
+the Frenchmen, all the more bounteously was the water of pure life
+poured out to them.  Although in the law on the duty on wine the
+bourgeoisie declares the old hated French tariff system to be
+inviolable, it sought, by means of the laws on education, to secure the
+old good will of the masses that made the former bearable.  One wonders
+to see the Orleanists, the liberal bourgeois, these old apostles of
+Voltarianism and of eclectic philosophy, entrusting the supervision of
+the French intellect to their hereditary enemies, the Jesuits.  But,
+while Orleanists and Legitimists could part company on the question of
+the Pretender to the crown, they understood full well that their joint
+reign dictated the joining of the means of oppression of two distinct
+epochs; that the means of subjugation of the July monarchy had to be
+supplemented with and strengthened by the means of subjugation of the
+restoration.
+
+The farmers, deceived in all their expectations, more than ever ground
+down by the law scale of the price of corn, on the one hand, and, on the
+other, by the growing load of taxation and mortgages, began to stir in
+the Departments.  They were answered by the systematic baiting of the
+school masters, whom the Government subjected to the clergy; by the
+systematic baiting of the Mayors, whom it subjected to the Prefects; and
+by a system of espionage to which all were subjected.  In Paris and the
+large towns, the reaction itself carries the physiognomy of its own
+epoch ; it irritates more than it cows ; in the country, it becomes low,
+moan, petty, tiresome, vexatious,--in a word, it becomes "gensdarme."
+It is easily understood how three years of the gensdarme regime,
+sanctified by the regime of the clergyman, was bound to demoralize
+unripe masses.
+
+Whatever the mass of passion and declamation, that the party of Order
+expended from the speakers' tribune in the National Assembly against the
+minority, its speech remained monosyllabic, like that of the Christian,
+whose speech was to be "Aye, aye; nay, nay."  It was monosyllabic,
+whether from the tribune or the press ; dull as a conundrum, whose
+solution is known beforehand.  Whether the question was the right of
+petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the press or free trade,
+clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual freedom or the
+regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever again, the theme
+is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready and unchanged:
+Socialism! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced socialistic;
+socialistic, alike, is pronounced popular education; and, likewise,
+socialistic national financial reform.  It was socialistic to build a
+railroad where already a canal was; and it was socialistic to defend
+oneself with a stick when attacked with a sword.
+
+This was not a mere form of speech, a fashion, nor yet party tactics.
+The bourgeoisie perceives correctly that all the weapons, which it
+forged against feudalism, turn their edges against itself; that all the
+means of education, which it brought forth, rebel against its own
+civilization; that all the gods, which it made, have fallen away from
+it.  It understands that all its so-called citizens' rights and
+progressive organs assail and menace its class rule, both in its social
+foundation and its political superstructure--consequently, have become
+"socialistic."  It justly scents in this menace and assault the secret
+of Socialism, whose meaning and tendency it estimates more correctly
+than the spurious, so-called Socialism, is capable of estimating itself,
+and which, consequently, is unable to understand how it is that the
+bourgeoisie obdurately shuts up its ears to it, alike whether it
+sentimentally whines about the sufferings of humanity; or announces in
+Christian style the millennium and universal brotherhood; or twaddles
+humanistically about the soul, culture and freedom; or doctrinally
+matches out a system of harmony and wellbeing for all classes.  What,
+however, the bourgeoisie does not understand is the consequence that its
+own parliamentary regime, its own political reign, is also of necessity
+bound to fall under the general ban of "socialistic."  So long as the
+rule of the bourgeoisie is not fully organized, has not acquired its
+purely political character, the contrast with the other classes cannot
+come into view in all its sharpness; and, where it does come into view,
+it cannot take that dangerous turn that converts every conflict with the
+Government into a conflict with Capital.  When, however, the French
+bourgeoisie began to realize in every pulsation of society a menace to
+"peace," how could it, at the head of society, pretend to uphold the
+regime of unrest, its own regime, the parliamentary regime, which,
+according to the expression of one of its own orators, lives in
+struggle, and through struggle?  The parliamentary regime lives on
+discussion,--how can it forbid discussion?  Every single interest, every
+single social institution is there converted into general thoughts, is
+treated as a thought,--how could any interest or institution claim to be
+above thought, and impose itself as an article of faith?  The orators'
+conflict in the tribune calls forth the conflict of the rowdies in the
+press the debating club in parliament is necessarily supplemented by
+debating clubs in the salons and the barrooms; the representatives, who
+are constantly appealing to popular opinion, justify popular opinion in
+expressing its real opinion in petitions.  The parliamentary regime
+leaves everything to the decision of majorities,--how can the large
+majorities beyond parliament be expected not to wish to decide?  If,
+from above, they hear the fiddle screeching, what else is to be expected
+than that those below should dance?
+
+Accordingly, by now persecuting as Socialist what formerly it had
+celebrated as Liberal, the bourgeoisie admits that its own interest
+orders it to raise itself above the danger of self government; that, in
+order to restore rest to the land, it own bourgeois parliament must,
+before all, be brought to rest; that, in order to preserve its social
+power unhurt, its political power must be broken; that the private
+bourgeois can continue to exploit the other classes and rejoice in
+"property," "family," "religion" and "order" only under the condition
+that his own class be condemned to the same political nullity of the
+other classes, that, in order to save their purse, the crown must be
+knocked off their heads, and the sword that was to shield them, must at
+the same time be hung over their heads as a sword of Damocles.
+
+In the domain of general bourgeois interests, the National Assembly
+proved itself so barren, that, for instance, the discussion over the
+Paris-Avignon railroad, opened in the winter of 1850, was not yet ripe
+for a vote on December 2, 1851.  Wherever it did not oppress or was
+reactionary, the bourgeoisie was smitten with incurable barrenness.
+
+While Bonaparte's Ministry either sought to take the initiative of laws
+in the spirit of the party of Order, or even exaggerated their severity
+in their enforcement and administration, he, on his part, sought to win
+popularity by means of childishly silly propositions, to exhibit the
+contrast between himself and the National Assembly, and to hint at a
+secret plan, held in reserve and only through circumstances temporarily
+prevented from disclosing its hidden treasures to the French people.  Of
+this nature was the proposition to decree a daily extra pay of four sous
+to the under-officers; so, likewise, the proposition for a "word of
+honor" loan bank for working-men.  To have money given and money
+borrowed--that was the perspective that he hoped to cajole the masses
+with.  Presents and loans--to that was limited the financial wisdom of
+the slums, the high as well as the low; to that were limited the springs
+which Bonaparte knew how to set in motion.  Never did Pretender
+speculate more dully upon the dullness of the masses.
+
+Again and again did the National Assembly fly into a passion at these
+unmistakable attempts to win popularity at its expense, and at the
+growing danger that this adventurer, lashed on by debts and unrestrained
+by reputation, might venture upon some desperate act.  The strained
+relations between the party of Order and the President had taken on a
+threatening aspect, when an unforeseen event threw him back, rueful into
+its arms.  We mean the supplementary elections of March, 1850.  These
+elections took place to fill the vacancies created in the National
+Assembly, after June 13, by imprisonment and exile.  Paris elected only
+Social-Democratic candidates; it even united the largest vote upon one
+of the insurgents of June, 1848,--Deflotte.  In this way the small
+traders' world of Paris, now allied with the proletariat, revenged
+itself for the defeat of June 13, 1849.  It seemed to have disappeared
+from the field of battle at the hour of danger only to step on it again
+at a more favorable opportunity, with increased forces for the fray, and
+with a bolder war cry.  A circumstance seemed to heighten the danger of
+this electoral victory.  The Army voted in Paris for a June insurgent
+against Lahitte, a Minister of Bonaparte's, and, in the Departments,
+mostly for the candidates of the Mountain, who, there also, although not
+as decisively as in Paris, maintained the upper hand over their
+adversaries.
+
+Bonaparte suddenly saw himself again face to face with the revolution.
+As on January 29, 1849, as on June 13, 1849, on May 10, 1850, he
+vanished again behind the party of Order.  He bent low; he timidly
+apologized; he offered to appoint any Ministry whatever at the behest of
+the parliamentary majority ; he even implored the Orleanist and
+Legitimist party leaders--the Thiers, Berryers, Broglies, Moles, in
+short, the so-called burgraves--to take hold of the helm of State in
+person.  The party of Order did not know how to utilize this
+opportunity, that was never to return.  Instead of boldly taking
+possession of the proffered power, it did not even force Bonaparte to
+restore the Ministry dismissed on November 1; it contented itself with
+humiliating him with its pardon, and with affiliating Mr. Baroche to the
+d'Hautpoul Ministry.  This Baroche had, as Public Prosecutor, stormed
+before the High Court at Bourges, once against the revolutionists of May
+15, another time against the Democrats of June 13, both times on the
+charge of "attentats" against the National Assembly.  None of
+Bonaparte's Ministers contributed later more towards the degradation of
+the National Assembly; and, after December 2, 1851, we meet him again as
+the comfortably stalled and dearly paid Vice-President of the Senate.
+He had spat into the soup of the revolutionists for Bonaparte to eat it.
+
+On its part, the Social Democratic party seemed only to look for
+pretexts in order to make its own victory doubtful, and to dull its
+edge.  Vidal, one of the newly elected Paris representatives, was
+returned for Strassburg also.  He was induced to decline the seat for
+Paris and accept the one for Strassburg.  Thus, instead of giving a
+definite character to their victory at the hustings, and thereby
+compelling the party of Order forthwith to contest it in parliament;
+instead of thus driving the foe to battle at the season of popular
+enthusiasm and of a favorable temper in the Army, the democratic party
+tired out Paris with a new campaign during the months of March and
+April; it allowed the excited popular passions to wear themselves out in
+this second provisional electoral play it allowed the revolutionary
+vigor to satiate itself with constitutional successes, and lose its
+breath in petty intrigues, hollow declamation and sham moves; it gave
+the bourgeoisie time to collect itself and make its preparations
+finally, it allowed the significance of the March elections to find a
+sentimentally weakening commentary at the subsequent April election in
+the victory of Eugene Sue.  In one word, it turned the 10th of March
+into an April Fool.
+
+The parliamentary majority perceived the weakness of its adversary.  Its
+seventeen burgraves--Bonaparte had left to it the direction of and
+responsibility for the attack--, framed a new election law, the moving
+of which was entrusted to Mr. Faucher, who had applied for the honor.
+On May 8, he introduced the new law whereby universal suffrage was
+abolished; a three years residence in the election district imposed as a
+condition for voting; and, finally, the proof of this residence made
+dependent, for the working-man, upon the testimony of his employer.
+
+As revolutionarily as the democrats had agitated and stormed during the
+constitutional struggles, so constitutionally did they, now, when it was
+imperative to attest, arms in hand, the earnestness of their late
+electoral victories, preach order, "majestic calmness," lawful conduct,
+i. e., blind submission to the will of the counter-revolution, which
+revealed itself as law.  During the debate, the Mountain put the party
+of Order to shame by maintaining the passionless attitude of the
+law-abiding burger, who upholds the principle of law against
+revolutionary passions; and by twitting the party of Order with the
+fearful reproach of proceeding in a revolutionary manner.  Even the
+newly elected deputies took pains to prove by their decent and
+thoughtful deportment what an act of misjudgment it was to decry them as
+anarchists, or explain their election as a victory of the revolution.
+The new election law was passed on May 31.  The Mountain contented
+itself with smuggling a protest into the pockets of tile President of
+the Assembly.  To the election law followed a new press law, whereby the
+revolutionary press was completely done away with.  It had deserved its
+fate.  The "National" and the "Presse," two bourgeois organs, remained
+after this deluge the extreme outposts of the revolution.
+
+We have seen how, during March and April, the democratic leaders did
+everything to involve the people of Paris in a sham battle, and how,
+after May 8, they did everything to keep it away from a real battle.  We
+may not here forget that the year 1850 was one of the most brilliant
+years of industrial and commercial prosperity; consequently, that the
+Parisian proletariat was completely employed.  But the election law of
+May 31, 1850 excluded them from all participation in political power; it
+cut the field of battle itself from under them; it threw the workingmen
+back into the state of pariahs, which they had occupied before the
+February revolution.  In allowing themselves, in sight of such an
+occurrence, to be led by the democrats, and in forgetting the
+revolutionary interests of their class through temporary comfort, the
+workingmen abdicated the honor of being a conquering power; they
+submitted to their fate; they proved that the defeat of June, 1848, had
+incapacitated them from resistance for many a year to come finally, that
+the historic process must again, for the time being, proceed over their
+heads.  As to the small traders' democracy, which, on June 13, had cried
+out: "If they but dare to assail universal suffrage . . . then
+. . . then we will show who we are!"--they now consoled themselves with
+the thought that the counter-revolutionary blow, which had struck them,
+was no blow at all, and that the law of May 31 was no law. On May 2,
+1852, according to them, every Frenchman would appear at the hustings,
+in one hand the ballot, in the other the sword. With this prophecy they
+set their hearts at ease.  Finally, the Army was punished by its
+superiors for the elections of May and April, 1850, as it was punished
+for the election of May 29, 1849.  This time, however, it said to itself
+determinately: "The revolution shall not cheat us a third time."
+
+The law of May 31, 1850, was the "coup d'etat" of the bourgeoisie.  All
+its previous conquests over the revolution had only a temporary
+character: they became uncertain the moment the National Assembly
+stepped off the stage; they depended upon the accident of general
+elections, and the history of the elections since 1848 proved
+irrefutably that, in the same measure as the actual reign of the
+bourgeoisie gathered strength, its moral reign over the masses wore off.
+Universal suffrage pronounced itself on May 10 pointedly against the
+reign of the bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie answered with the banishment
+of universal suffrage.  The law of May 31 was, accordingly, one of the
+necessities of the class struggle.  On the other hand, the constitution
+required a minimum of two million votes for the valid ejection of the
+President of the republic.  If none of the Presidential candidates
+polled this minimum, then the National Assembly was to elect the
+President out of the three candidates polling the highest votes.  At the
+time that the constitutive body made this law, ten million voters were
+registered on the election rolls.  In its opinion, accordingly,
+one-fifth of the qualified voters sufficed to make a choice for
+President valid.  The law of May 31 struck at least three million voters
+off the rolls, reduced the number of qualified voters to seven millions,
+and yet, not withstanding, it kept the lawful minimum at two millions
+for the election of a President.  Accordingly, it raised the lawful
+minimum from a fifth to almost a third of the qualified voters, i.e., it
+did all it could to smuggle the Presidential election out of the hands
+of the people into those of the National Assembly.  Thus, by the
+election law of May 31, the party of Order seemed to have doubly secured
+its empire, in that it placed the election of both the National Assembly
+and the President of the republic in the keeping of the stable portion
+of society.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+The strife immediately broke out again between the National Assembly and
+Bonaparte, so soon as the revolutionary crisis was weathered, and
+universal suffrage was abolished.
+
+The Constitution had fixed the salary of Bonaparte at 600,000 francs.
+Barely half a year after his installation, he succeeded in raising this
+sum to its double: Odillon Barrot had wrung from the constitutive
+assembly a yearly allowance of 600,000 francs for so-called
+representation expenses.  After June 13, Bonaparte hinted at similar
+solicitations, to which, however, Barrot then turned a deaf ear.  Now,
+after May 31, he forthwith utilized the favorable moment, and caused his
+ministers to move a civil list of three millions in the National
+Assembly.  A long adventurous, vagabond career had gifted him with the
+best developed antennae for feeling out the weak moments when he could
+venture upon squeezing money from his bourgeois.  He carried on regular
+blackmail.  The National Assembly had maimed the sovereignty of the
+people with his aid and his knowledge: he now threatened to denounce its
+crime to the tribunal of the people, if it did not pull out its purse
+and buy his silence with three millions annually.  It had robbed three
+million Frenchmen of the suffrage: for every Frenchman thrown "out of
+circulation," he demanded a franc "in circulation."  He, the elect of
+six million, demanded indemnity for the votes he had been subsequently
+cheated of.  The Committee of the National Assembly turned the
+importunate fellow away.  The Bonapartist press threatened: Could the
+National Assembly break with the President of the republic at a time
+when it had broken definitely and on principle with the mass of the
+nation?  It rejected the annual civil list, but granted, for this once,
+an allowance of 2,160,000 francs.  Thus it made itself guilty of the
+double weakness of granting the money, and, at the same time, showing by
+its anger that it did so only unwillingly.  We shall presently see to
+what use Bonaparte put the money.  After this aggravating after-play,
+that followed upon the heels of the abolition of universal suffrage, and
+in which Bonaparte exchanged his humble attitude of the days of the
+crisis of March and April for one of defiant impudence towards the
+usurping parliament, the National Assembly adjourned for three months,
+from August 11, to November 11.  It left behind in its place a Permanent
+Committee of 18 members that contained no Bonapartist, but did contain a
+few moderate republicans.  The Permanent Committee of the year 1849 had
+numbered only men of order and Bonapartists.  At that time, however, the
+party of Order declared itself in permanence against the revolution; now
+the parliamentary republic declared itself in permanence against the
+President.  After the law of May 31, only this rival still confronted
+the party of Order.
+
+When the National Assembly reconvened in November, 1850, instead of its
+former petty skirmishes with the President, a great headlong struggle, a
+struggle for life between the two powers, seemed to have become
+inevitable.
+
+As in the year 1849, the party of Order had during this year's vacation,
+dissolved into its two separate factions, each occupied with its own
+restoration intrigues, which had received new impetus from the death of
+Louis Philippe.  The Legitimist King, Henry V, had even appointed a
+regular Ministry, that resided in Paris, and in which sat members of the
+Permanent Committee.  Hence, Bonaparte was, on his part, justified in
+making tours through the French Departments, and--according to the
+disposition of the towns that he happened to be gladdening with his
+presence--some times covertly, other times more openly blabbing out his
+own restoration plans, and gaining votes for himself On these
+excursions, which the large official "Moniteur" and the small private
+"Moniteurs" of Bonaparte were, of course, bound to celebrate as
+triumphal marches, he was constantly accompanied by affiliated members
+of the "Society of December 10" This society dated from the year 1849.
+Under the pretext of founding a benevolent association, the
+slum-proletariat of Paris was organized into secret sections, each
+section led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist General at the
+head of all.  Along with ruined roues of questionable means of support
+and questionable antecedents, along with the foul and adventures-seeking
+dregs of the bourgeoisie, there were vagabonds, dismissed soldiers,
+discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves, sharpers, jugglers,
+lazzaroni, pickpockets, sleight-of-hand performers, gamblers, procurers,
+keepers of disorderly houses, porters, literati, organ grinders, rag
+pickers, scissors grinders, tinkers, beggars--in short, that whole
+undefined, dissolute, kicked-about mass that the Frenchmen style "la
+Boheme" With this kindred element, Bonaparte formed the stock of the
+"Society of December 10," a "benevolent association" in so far as, like
+Bonaparte himself, all its members felt the need of being benevolent to
+themselves at the expense of the toiling nation.  The Bonaparte, who
+here constitutes himself Chief of the Slum-Proletariat; who only here
+finds again in plenteous form the interests which he personally pursues;
+who, in this refuse, offal and wreck of all classes, recognizes the only
+class upon which he can depend unconditionally;--this is the real
+Bonaparte, the Bonaparte without qualification.  An old and crafty roue,
+he looks upon the historic life of nations, upon their great and public
+acts, as comedies in the ordinary sense, as a carnival, where the great
+costumes, words and postures serve only as masks for the pettiest
+chicaneries.  So, on the occasion of his expedition against Strassburg
+when a trained Swiss vulture impersonated the Napoleonic eagle; so,
+again, on the occasion of his raid upon Boulogne, when he struck a few
+London lackeys into French uniform: they impersonated the army; [#1
+Under the reign of Louis Philippe, Bonaparte made two attempts to
+restore the throne of Napoleon: one in October, 1836, in an expedition
+from Switzerland upon Strassburg and one in August, 1840, in an
+expedition from England upon Boulogne.] and so now, in his "Society of
+December 10," he collects 10,000 loafers who are to impersonate the
+people as Snug the Joiner does the lion.  At a period when the
+bourgeoisie itself is playing the sheerest comedy, but in the most
+solemn manner in the world, without doing violence to any of the
+pedantic requirements of French dramatic etiquette, and is itself partly
+deceived by, partly convinced of, the solemnity of its own public acts,
+the adventurer, who took the comedy for simple comedy, was bound to win.
+Only after he has removed his solemn opponent, when he himself takes
+seriously his own role of emperor, and, with the Napoleonic mask on,
+imagines he impersonates the real Napoleon, only then does he become the
+victim of his own peculiar conception of history--the serious clown, who
+no longer takes history for a comedy, but a comedy for history.  What
+the national work-shops were to the socialist workingmen, what the
+"Gardes mobiles" were to the bourgeois republicans, that was to
+Bonaparte the "Society of December 10,"--a force for partisan warfare
+peculiar to himself.  On his journeys, the divisions of the Society,
+packed away on the railroads, improvised an audience for him, performed
+public enthusiasm, shouted "vive l'Empereur," insulted and clubbed the
+republicans,--all, of course, under the protection of the police.  On
+his return stages to Paris, this rabble constituted his vanguard, it
+forestalled or dispersed counter-demonstrations.  The "Society of
+December 10" belonged to him, it was his own handiwork, his own thought.
+Whatever else he appropriates, the power of circumstances places in his
+hands; whatever else he does, either circumstances do for him, or he is
+content to copy from the deeds of others, but he posing before the
+citizens with the official phrases about "Order," "Religion," "Family,"
+"Property," and, behind him, the secret society of skipjacks and
+picaroons, the society of disorder, of prostitution, and of theft,--that
+is Bonaparte himself as the original author; and the history of the
+"Society of December 10" is his own history.  Now, then, it happened
+that Representatives belonging to the party of order occasionally got
+under the clubs of the Decembrists.  Nay, more.  Police Commissioner
+Yon, who bad been assigned to the National Assembly, and was charged
+with the guardianship of its safety, reported to the Permanent Committee
+upon the testimony of one Alais, that a Section of the Decembrists had
+decided on the murder of General Changarnier and of Dupin, the President
+of the National Assembly, and had already settled upon the men to
+execute the decree.  One can imagine the fright of Mr. Dupin.  A
+parliamentary inquest over the "Society of December 10," i. e., the
+profanation of the Bonapartist secret world now seemed inevitable.  Just
+before the reconvening of the National Assembly, Bonaparte circumspectly
+dissolved his Society, of course, on paper only.  As late as the end of
+1851, Police Prefect Carlier vainly sought, in an exhaustive memorial,
+to move him to the real dissolution of the Decembrists.
+
+The "Society of December 10" was to remain the private army of Bonaparte
+until he should have succeeded in converting the public Army into a
+"Society of December 10."  Bonaparte made the first attempt in this
+direction shortly after the adjournment of the National Assembly, and he
+did so with the money which he had just wrung from it.  As a fatalist,
+he lives devoted to the conviction that there are certain Higher Powers,
+whom man, particularly the soldier, cannot resist.  First among these
+Powers he numbers cigars and champagne, cold poultry and garlic-sausage.
+Accordingly, in the apartments of the Elysee, he treated first the
+officers and under-officers to cigars and champagne, to cold poultry and
+garlic-sausage.  On October 3, he repeats this manoeuvre with the rank
+and file of the troops by the review of St. Maur; and, on October 10,
+the same manoeuvre again, upon a larger scale, at the army parade of
+Satory.  The Uncle bore in remembrance the campaigns of Alexander in
+Asia: the Nephew bore in remembrance the triumphal marches of Bacchus in
+the same country.  Alexander was, indeed, a demigod; but Bacchus was a
+full-fledged god, and the patron deity, at that, of the "Society of
+December 10."
+
+After the review of October 3, the Permanent Committee summoned the
+Minister of War, d'Hautpoul, before it.  He promised that such breaches
+of discipline should not recur.  We have seen how, on October 10th,
+Bonaparte kept d'Hautpoul's word.  At both reviews Changarnier had
+commanded as Commander-in-chief of the Army of Paris.  He, at once
+member of the Permanent Committee, Chief of the National Guard, the
+"Savior" of January 29, and June 13, the "Bulwark of Society," candidate
+of the Party of Order for the office of President, the suspected Monk of
+two monarchies,--he had never acknowledged his subordination to the
+Minister of War, had ever openly scoffed at the republican Constitution,
+and had pursued Bonaparte with a protection that was ambiguously
+distinguished.  Now he became zealous for the discipline in opposition
+to Bonaparte.  While, on October 10, a part of the cavalry cried: "Vive
+Napoleon! Vivent les saucissons;" [#2 Long live Napoleon! Long live the
+sausages!] Changarnier saw to it that at least the infantry, which filed
+by under the command of his friend Neumeyer, should observe an icy
+silence.  In punishment, the Minister of War, at the instigation of
+Bonaparte, deposed General Neumeyer from his post in Paris, under the
+pretext of providing for him as Commander-in-chief of the Fourteenth and
+Fifteenth Military Divisions.  Neumeyer declined the exchange, and had,
+in consequence, to give his resignation.  On his part, Changarnier
+published on November 2, an order, wherein he forbade the troops to
+indulge, while under arms, in any sort of political cries or
+demonstrations.  The papers devoted to the Elysee interests attacked
+Changarnier; the papers of the party of Order attacked Bonaparte; the
+Permanent Committee held frequent secret sessions, at which it was
+repeatedly proposed to declare the fatherland in danger; the Army seemed
+divided into two hostile camps, with two hostile staffs; one at the
+Elysee, where Bonaparte, the other at the Tuileries, where Changarnier
+resided.  All that seemed wanting for the signal of battle to sound was
+the convening of the National Assembly.  The French public looked upon
+the friction between Bonaparte and Changarnier in the light of the
+English journalist, who characterized it in these words: "The political
+servant girls of France are mopping away the glowing lava of the
+revolution with old mops, and they scold each other while doing their
+work.
+
+Meanwhile, Bonaparte hastened to depose the Minister of War, d'Hautpoul;
+to expedite him heels over head to Algiers; and to appoint in his place
+General Schramm as Minister of War.  On November 12, he sent to the
+National Assembly a message of American excursiveness, overloaded with
+details, redolent of order, athirst for conciliation, resignful to the
+Constitution, dealing with all and everything, only not with the burning
+questions of the moment.  As if in passing he dropped the words that
+according to the express provisions of the Constitution, the President
+alone disposes over the Army.  The message closed with the following
+high-sounding protestations:
+
+"France demands, above all things, peace . . . Alone bound by an oath, I
+shall keep myself within the narrow bounds marked out by it to me
+. . . As to me, elected by the people, and owing my power to it alone, I
+shall always submit to its lawfully expressed will.  Should you at this
+session decide upon the revision of the Constitution, a Constitutional
+Convention will regulate the position of the Executive power.  If you do
+not, then, the people will, in 1852, solemnly announce its decision.
+But, whatever the solution may be that the future has in store, let us
+arrive at an understanding to the end that never may passion, surprise
+or violence decide over the fate of a great nation. . . .  That which,
+above all, bespeaks my attention is, not who will, in 1852, rule over
+France, but to so devote the time at my disposal that the interval may
+pass by with-out agitation and disturbance.  I have straightforwardly
+opened my heart to you, you will answer my frankness with your
+confidence, my good efforts with your co-operation.  God will do the
+rest."
+
+The honnete, hypocritically temperate, commonplace-virtuous language of
+the bourgeoisie reveals its deep meaning in the mouth of the
+self-appointed ruler of the "Society of December 10," and of the
+picnic-hero of St. Maur and Satory.
+
+The burgraves of the party of Order did not for a moment deceive
+themselves on the confidence that this unbosoming deserved.  They were
+long blase on oaths; they numbered among themselves veterans and
+virtuosi of perjury.  The passage about the army did not, however,
+escape them.  They observed with annoyance that the message, despite its
+prolix enumeration of the lately enacted laws, passed, with affected
+silence, over the most important of all, the election law, and,
+moreover, in case no revision of the Constitution was held, left the
+choice of the President, in 1852, with the people.  The election law was
+the ball-and-chain to the feet of the party of Order, that hindered them
+from walking, and now assuredly from storming.  Furthermore, by the
+official disbandment of the "Society of December 10," and the dismissal
+of the Minister of War, d'Hautpoul, Bonaparte had, with his own hands,
+sacrificed the scapegoats on the altar of the fatherland.  He had turned
+off the expected collision.  Finally, the party of Order itself
+anxiously sought to avoid every decisive conflict with the Executive, to
+weaken and to blur it over.  Fearing to lose its conquests over the
+revolution, it let its rival gather the fruits thereof.  "France
+demands, above all things, peace," with this language had the party of
+Order been apostrophizing the revolution, since February; with this
+language did Bonaparte's message now apostrophize the party of Order:
+"France demands, above all things, peace."  Bonaparte committed acts
+that aimed at usurpation, but the party of Order committed a
+"disturbance of the peace," if it raised the hue and cry, and explained
+them hypochrondriacally.  The sausages of Satory were mouse-still when
+nobody talked about them;--France demands, above all things, peace."
+Accordingly, Bonaparte demanded that he be let alone; and the
+parliamentary party was lamed with a double fear: the fear of
+re-conjuring up the revolutionary disturbance of the peace, and the fear
+of itself appearing as the disturber of the peace in the eyes of its own
+class, of the bourgeosie.  Seeing that, above all things, France
+demanded peace, the party of Order did not dare, after Bonaparte had
+said "peace" in his message, to answer "war."  The public, who had
+promised to itself the pleasure of seeing great scenes of scandal at the
+opening of the National Assembly, was cheated out of its expectations.
+The opposition deputies, who demanded the submission of the minutes of
+the Permanent Committee over the October occurrences, were outvoted.
+All debate that might excite was fled from on principle.  The labors of
+the National Assembly during November and December, 1850, were without
+interest.
+
+Finally, toward the end of December, began a guerilla warfare about
+certain prerogatives of the parliament.  The movement sank into the mire
+of petty chicaneries on the prerogative of the two powers, since, with
+the abolition of universal suffrage, the bourgeoisie had done away with
+the class struggle.
+
+A judgment for debt had been secured against Mauguin, one of the
+Representatives.  Upon inquiry by the President of the Court, the
+Minister of Justice, Rouher, declared that an order of arrest should be
+made out without delay.  Manguin was, accordingly, cast into the
+debtors' prison.  The National Assembly bristled up when it heard of the
+"attentat."  It not only ordered his immediate release, but had him
+forcibly taken out of Clichy the same evening by its own greffier.  In
+order, nevertheless, to shield its belief in the "sacredness of private
+property," and also with the ulterior thought of opening, in case of
+need, an asylum for troublesome Mountainers, it declared the
+imprisonment of a Representative for debt to be permissible upon its
+previous consent.  It forgot to decree that the President also could be
+locked up for debt.  By its act, it wiped out the last semblance of
+inviolability that surrounded the members of its own body.
+
+It will be remembered that, upon the testimony of one Allais, Police
+Commissioner Yon had charged a Section of Decembrists with a plan to
+murder Dupin and Changarnier.  With an eye upon that, the questors
+proposed at the very first session, that the parliament organize a
+police force of its own, paid for out of the private budget of the
+National Assembly itself, and wholly independent of the Police Prefects.
+The Minister of the Interior, Baroche, protested against this trespass
+on his preserves.  A miserable compromise followed, according to which
+the Police Commissioner of the Assembly was to be paid out of its own
+private budget and was to be subject to the appointment and dismissal of
+its own questors, but only upon previous agreement with the Minister of
+the Interior.  In the meantime Allais had been prosecuted by the
+Government.  It was an easy thing in Court, to present his testimony in
+the light of a mystification, and, through the mouth of the Public
+Prosecutor, to throw Dupin, Changarnier, Yon, together with the whole
+National Assembly, into a ridiculous light.  Thereupon, on December 29,
+Minister Baroche writes a letter to Dupin, in which he demands the
+dismissal of Yon.  The Committee of the National Assembly decides to
+keep Yon in office; nevertheless, the National Assembly, frightened by
+its own violence in the affair of Mauguin, and accustomed, every time it
+has shied a blow at the Executive, to receive back from it two in
+exchange, does not sanction this decision.  It dismisses Yon in reward
+for his zeal in office, and robs itself of a parliamentary prerogative,
+indispensable against a person who does not decide by night to execute
+by day, but decides by day and executes by night.
+
+We have seen how, during the months of November and December, under
+great and severe provocations, the National Assembly evaded and refused
+the combat with the Executive power.  Now we see it compelled to accept
+it on the smallest occasions.  In the affair of Mauguin, it confirms in
+principle the liability of a Representative to imprisonment for debt,
+but to itself reserves the power of allowing the principle to be applied
+only to the Representatives whom it dislikes,-and for this infamous
+privilege we see it wrangling with the Minister of Justice.  Instead of
+utilizing the alleged murder plan to the end of fastening an inquest
+upon the "Society of December 10," and of exposing Bonaparte beyond
+redemption before France and his true figure, as the head of the
+slum-proletariat of Paris, it allows the collision to sink to a point
+where the only issue between itself and the Minister of the Interior is.
+Who has jurisdiction over the appointment and dismissal of a Police
+Commissioner?  Thus we see the party of Order, during this whole period,
+compelled by its ambiguous position to wear out and fritter away its
+conflict with the Executive power in small quarrels about jurisdiction,
+in chicaneries, in pettifogging, in boundary disputes, and to turn the
+stalest questions of form into the very substance of its activity.  It
+dares not accept the collision at the moment when it involves a
+principle, when the Executive power has really given itself a blank, and
+when the cause of the National Assembly would be the cause of the
+nation.  It would thereby have issued to the nation an order of march;
+and it feared nothing so much as that the nation should move.  Hence, on
+these occasions, it rejects the motions of the Mountain, and proceeds to
+the order of the day.  After the issue has in this way lost all
+magnitude, the Executive power quietly awaits the moment when it can
+take it up again upon small and insignificant occasions; when, so to
+say, the issue offers only a parliamentary local interest.  Then does
+the repressed valor of the party of Order break forth, then it tears
+away the curtain from the scene, then it denounces the President, then
+it declares the republic to be in danger,--but then all its pathos
+appears stale, and the occasion for the quarrel a hypocritical pretext,
+or not at all worth the effort.  The parliamentary tempest becomes a
+tempest in a tea-pot, the struggle an intrigue, the collision a scandal.
+While the revolutionary classes gloat with sardonic laughter over the
+humiliation of the National Assembly--they, of course, being as
+enthusiastic for the prerogatives of the parliament as that body is for
+public freedom--the bourgeoisie, outside of the parliament, does not
+understand how the bourgeoisie, inside of the parliament, can squander
+its time with such petty bickerings, and can endanger peace by such
+wretched rivalries with the President.  It is puzzled at a strategy that
+makes peace the very moment when everybody expects battles, and that
+attacks the very moment everybody believes peace has been concluded.
+
+On December 20, Pascal Duprat interpellated the Minister of the Interior
+on the "Goldbar Lottery."  This lottery was a "Daughter from Elysium";
+Bonaparte, together with his faithful, had given her birth; and Police
+Prefect Carlier had placed her under his official protection, although
+the French law forbade all lotteries, with the exception of games for
+benevolent purposes.  Seven million tickets, a franc a piece, and the
+profit ostensibly destined to the shipping of Parisian vagabonds to
+California.  Golden dreams were to displace the Socialist dreams of the
+Parisian proletariat; the tempting prospect of a prize was to displace
+the doctrinal right to labor.  Of course, the workingmen of Paris did
+not recognize in the lustre of the California gold bars the lack-lustre
+francs that had been wheedled out of their pockets.  In the main,
+however, the scheme was an unmitigated swindle.  The vagabonds, who
+meant to open California gold mines without taking the pains to leave
+Paris, were Bonaparte himself and his Round Table of desperate
+insolvents.  The three millions granted by the National Assembly were
+rioted away; the Treasury had to be refilled somehow or another.  In
+vain did Bonaparte open a national subscription, at the head of which he
+himself figured with a large sum, for the establishment of so-called
+"cites ouvrieres."  [#3 Work cities.] The hard-hearted bourgeois waited,
+distrustful, for the payment of his own shares; and, as this, of course,
+never took place, the speculation in Socialist castles in the air fell
+flat.  The gold bars drew better.  Bonaparte and his associates did not
+content themselves with putting into their own pockets part of the
+surplus of the seven millions over and above the bars that were to be
+drawn; they manufactured false tickets; they sold, of Number 10 alone,
+fifteen to twenty lots--a financial operation fully in the spirit of the
+"Society of December 10"! The National Assembly did not here have before
+it the fictitious President of the Republic, but Bonaparte himself in
+flesh and blood.  Here it could catch him in the act, not in conflict
+with the Constitution, but with the penal code.  When, upon Duprat's
+interpellation, the National Assembly went over to the order of the day,
+this did not happen simply because Girardin's motion to declare itself
+"satisfied" reminded the party of Order of its own systematic
+corruption: the bourgeois, above all the bourgeois who has been inflated
+into a statesman, supplements his practical meanness with theoretical
+pompousness.  As statesman, he becomes, like the Government facing him,
+a superior being, who can be fought only in a higher, more exalted
+manner.
+
+Bonaparte-who, for the very reason of his being a "bohemian," a princely
+slum-proletarian, had over the scampish bourgeois the advantage that he
+could carry on the fight after the Assembly itself had carried him with
+its own hands over the slippery ground of the military banquets, of the
+reviews, of the "Society of December 10," and, finally, of the penal
+code-now saw that the moment had arrived when he could move from the
+seemingly defensive to the offensive.  He was but little troubled by the
+intermediate and trifling defeats of the Minister of Justice, of the
+Minister of War, of the Minister of the Navy, of the Minister of
+Finance, whereby the National Assembly indicated its growling
+displeasure.  Not only did he prevent the Ministers from resigning, and
+thus recognizing the subordination of the executive power to the
+Parliament; he could now accomplish what during the vacation of the
+National Assembly be had commenced, the separation of the military power
+from the Assembly--the deposition of Changarnier.
+
+An Elysee paper published an order, issued during the month of May,
+ostensibly to the First Military Division, and, hence, proceeding from
+Changarnier, wherein the officers were recommended, in case of an
+uprising, to give no quarter to the traitors in their own ranks, to
+shoot them down on the spot, and to refuse troops to the National
+Assembly, should it make a requisition for such.  On January 3, 1851,
+the Cabinet was interpellated on this order.  The Cabinet demands for
+the examination of the affair at first three months, then one week,
+finally only twenty-four hours' time.  The Assembly orders an immediate
+explanation Changarnier rises and declares that this order never
+existed; he adds that he would ever hasten to respond to the calls of
+the National Assembly, and that, in case of a collision, they could
+count upon him.  The Assembly receives his utterances with inexpressible
+applause, and decrees a vote of confidence to him.  It thereby resign
+its own powers; it decrees its own impotence and the omnipotence of the
+Army by committing itself to the private protection of a general.  But
+the general, in turn, deceives himself when he places at the Assembly's
+disposal and against Bonaparte a power that he holds only as a fief from
+that same Bonaparte, and when, on his part, he expects protection from
+this Parliament, from his protege', itself needful of protection.  But
+Changarnier has faith in the mysterious power with which since January,
+1849, he had been clad by the bourgeoisie.  He takes himself for the
+Third Power, standing beside the other Powers of Government.  He shares
+the faith of all the other heroes, or rather saints, of this epoch,
+whose greatness consists but in the interested good opinion that their
+own party holds of them, and who shrink into every-day figures so soon
+as circumstances invite them to perform miracles.  Infidelity is,
+indeed, the deadly enemy of these supposed heroes and real saints.
+Hence their virtuously proud indignation at the unenthusiastic wits and
+scoffers.
+
+That same evening the Ministers were summoned to the Elysee; Bonaparte
+presses the removal of Changarnier; five Ministers refuse to sign the
+order; the "Moniteur" announces a Ministerial crisis; and the party of
+Order threatens the formation of a Parliamentary army under the command
+of Changarnier.  The party of Order had the constitutional power hereto.
+It needed only to elect Changarnier President of the National Assembly
+in order to make a requisition for whatever military forces it needed
+for its own safety.  It could do this all the more safely, seeing that
+Changarnier still stood at the head of the Army and of the Parisian
+National Guard, and only lay in wait to be summoned, together with the
+Army.  The Bonaprtist press did not even dare to question the right of
+the National Assembly to issue a direct requisition for troops;--a legal
+scruple, that, under the given circumstances, did not promise success.
+That the Army would have obeyed the orders of the National Assembly is
+probable, when it is considered that Bonaparte had to look eight days
+all over Paris to find two generals--Baraguay d'Hilliers and St. Jean
+d'Angley--who declared themselves ready to countersign the order
+cashiering Changamier.  That, however, the party of Order would have
+found in its own ranks and in the parliament the requisite vote for such
+a decision is more than doubtful, when it is considered that, eight days
+later, 286 votes pulled away from it, and that, as late as December,
+1851, at the last decisive hour, the Mountain rejected a similar
+proposition.  Nevertheless, the burgraves might still have succeeded in
+driving the mass of their party to an act of heroism, consisting in
+feeling safe behind a forest of bayonets, and in accepting the services
+of the Army, which found itself deserted in its camp.  Instead of this,
+the Messieurs Burgraves betook themselves to the Elysee on the evening
+of January 6, with the view of inducing Bonaparte, by means of politic
+words and considerations, to drop the removal of Changarnier.  Him whom
+we must convince we recognize as the master of the situation.
+Bonaparte, made to feel secure by this step, appoints on January 12 a
+new Ministry, in which the leaders of the old, Fould and Baroche, are
+retained.  St Jean d'Angley becomes Minister of War; the "Moniteur"
+announces the decree cashiering Changarnier; his command is divided up
+between Baraguay d'Hilliers, who receives the First Division, and
+Perrot, who is placed over the National Guard.  The "Bulwark of Society"
+is turned down; and, although no dog barks over the event, in the
+Bourses the stock quotations rise.
+
+By repelling the Army, that, in Changarnier's person, put itself at its
+disposal, and thus irrevocably stood up against the President, the party
+of Order declares that the bourgeoisie has lost its vocation to reign.
+Already there was no parliamentary Ministry.  By losing, furthermore,
+the handle to the Army and to the National Guard, what instrument of
+force was there left to the National Assembly in order to maintain both
+the usurped power of the parliament over the people, and its
+constitutional power over the President?  None.  All that was left to it
+was the appeal to peaceful principles, that itself had always explained
+as "general rules" merely, to be prescribed to third parties, and only
+in order to enable itself to move all the more freely.  With the removal
+of Changarnier, with the transfer of the military power to Bonaparte,
+closes the first part of the period that we are considering, the period
+of the struggle between the party of Order and the Executive power.  The
+war between the two powers is now openly declared; it is conducted
+openly; but only after the party of Order has lost both arms and
+soldier.  With-out a Ministry, without any army, without a people,
+without the support of public opinion; since its election law of May 31,
+no longer the representative of the sovereign nation sans eyes, sans
+ears, sans teeth, sans everything, the National Assembly had gradually
+converted itself into a French Parliament of olden days, that must leave
+all action to the Government, and content itself with growling
+remonstrances "post festum."  [#4 After the act is done; after the
+fact.]
+
+The party of Order receives the new Ministry with a storm of
+indignation.  General Bedeau calls to mind the mildness of the Permanent
+Committee during the vacation, and the excessive prudence with which it
+had renounced the privilege of disclosing its minutes.  Now, the
+Minister of the Interior himself insists upon the disclosure of these
+minutes, that have now, of course, become dull as stagnant waters,
+reveal no new facts, and fall without making the slightest effect upon
+the blase public.  Upon Remusat's proposition, the National Assembly
+retreats into its Committees, and appoints a "Committee on Extraordinary
+Measures."  Paris steps all the less out of the ruts of its daily
+routine, seeing that business is prosperous at the time, the
+manufactories busy, the prices of cereals low, provisions abundant, the
+savings banks receiving daily new deposits.  The "extraordinary
+measures," that the parliament so noisily announced fizzle out on
+January 18 in a vote of lack of confidence against the Ministry, without
+General Changarnier's name being even mentioned.  The party of Order was
+forced to frame its motion in that way so as to secure the votes of the
+republicans, because, of all the acts of the Ministry, Changarnier's
+dismissal only was the very one they approved, while the party of Order
+cannot in fact, condemn the other Ministerial acts which it had itself
+dictated.  The January 18 vote of lack of confidence was decided by 415
+ayes against 286 nays.  It was, accordingly put through by a coalition
+of the uncompromising Legitimists and Orleanists with the pure
+republicans and the Mountain.  Thus it revealed the fact that, in its
+conflicts with Bonaparte, not only the Ministry, not only the Army, but
+also its independent parliamentary majority; that a troop of
+Representatives had deserted its camp out of a fanatic zeal for harmony,
+out of fear of fight, out of lassitude, out of family considerations for
+the salaries of relatives in office, out of speculations on vacancies in
+the Ministry (Odillon Barrot), or out of that unmitigated selfishness
+that causes the average bourgeois to be ever inclined to sacrifice the
+interests of his class to this or that private motive.  The Bonapartist
+Representatives belonged from the start to the party of Order only in
+the struggle against the revolution.  The leader of the Catholic party,
+Montalembert, already then threw his influence in the scale of
+Bonaparte, since he despaired of the vitality of the parliamentary
+party.  Finally, the leaders of this party itself, Thiers and
+Berryer--the Orleanist and the Legitimist--were compelled to proclaim
+themselves openly as republicans ; to admit that their heart favored
+royalty, but their head the republic; that their parliamentary republic
+was the only possible form for the rule of the bourgeoisie Thus were
+they compelled to brand, before the eyes of the bourgeois class itself,
+as an intrigue--as dangerous as it was senseless--the restoration plans,
+which they continued to pursue indefatigably behind the back of the
+parliament.
+
+The January 18 vote of lack of confidence struck the Ministers, not the
+President.  But it was not the Ministry, it was the President who had
+deposed Changarnier.  Should the party of Order place Bonaparte himself
+under charges?  On account of his restoration hankerings?  These only
+supplemented their own.  On account of his conspiracy at the military
+reviews and of the "Society of December 10"?  They had long since buried
+these subjects under simple orders of business.  On account of the
+discharge of the hero of January 29 and June 13, of the man who, in May,
+1850, threatened, in case of riot, to set Paris on fire at all its four
+corners?  Their allies of the Mountain and Cavaignac did not even allow
+them to console the fallen "Bulwark of Society" with an official
+testimony of their sympathy.  They themselves could not deny the
+constitutional right of the President to remove a General.  They stormed
+only because he made an unparliamentary use of his constitutional right.
+Had they not themselves constantly made an unconstitutional use of their
+parliamentary prerogative, notably by the abolition of universal
+suffrage?  Consequently they were reminded to move exclusively within
+parliamentary bounds.  Indeed, it required that peculiar disease, a
+disease that, since 1848, has raged over the whole continent,
+"Parliamentary Idiocy,"--that fetters those whom it infects to an
+imaginary world, and robs them of all sense, all remembrance, all
+understanding of the rude outside world;--it required this
+"Parliamentary Idiocy" in order that the party of Order, which had, with
+its own hands, destroyed all the conditions for parliamentary power,
+and, in its struggle with the other classes, was obliged to destroy
+them, still should consider its parliamentary victories as victories,
+and imagine it hit the President by striking his Ministers.  They only
+afforded him an opportunity to humble the National Assembly anew in the
+eyes of the nation.  On January 20, the "Moniteur" announced that the
+whole the dismissal of the whole Ministry was accepted.  Under the
+pretext that none of the parliamentary parties had any longer the
+majority--as proved by the January 18 vote, that fruit of the coalition
+between mountain and royalists--, and, in order to await the
+re-formation of a majority, Bonaparte appointed a so-called transition
+Ministry, of whom no member belonged to the parliament-altogether wholly
+unknown and insignificant individuals; a Ministry of mere clerks and
+secretaries.  The party of Order could now wear itself out in the game
+with these puppets; the Executive power no longer considered it worth
+the while to be seriously represented in the National Assembly.  By this
+act Bonaparte concentrated the whole executive power all the more
+securely in his own person; he had all the freer elbow-room to exploit
+the same to his own ends, the more his Ministers became mere
+supernumeraries.
+
+The party of Order, now allied with the Mountain, revenged itself by
+rejecting the Presidential endowment project of 1,800.000 francs, which
+the chief of the "Society of December 10" had compelled his Ministerial
+clerks to present to the Assembly.  This time a majority of only 102
+votes carried the day accordingly since January 18, 27 more votes had
+fallen off: the dissolution of the party of Order was making progress.
+Lest any one might for a moment be deceived touching the meaning of its
+coalition with the Mountain, the party of Order simultaneously scorned
+even to consider a motion, signed by 189 members of the Mountain, for a
+general amnesty to political criminals.  It was enough that the Minister
+of the Interior, one Baisse, declared that the national tranquility was
+only in appearance, in secret there reigned deep agitation, in secret,
+ubiquitous societies were organized, the democratic papers were
+preparing to reappear, the reports from the Departments were
+unfavorable, the fugitives of Geneva conducted a conspiracy via Lyons
+through the whole of southern France, France stood on the verge of an
+industrial and commercial crisis, the manufacturers of Roubaix were
+working shorter hours, the prisoners of Belle Isle had mutinied;--it was
+enough that even a mere Baisse should conjure up the "Red Spectre" for
+the party of Order to reject without discussion a motion that would have
+gained for the National Assembly a tremendous popularity, and thrown
+Bonaparte back into its arms.  Instead of allowing itself to be
+intimidated by the Executive power with the perspective of fresh
+disturbances, the party of Order should rather have allowed a little
+elbow-room to the class struggle, in order to secure the dependence of
+the Executive upon itself.  But it did not feel itself equal to the task
+of playing with fire.
+
+Meanwhile, the so-called transition Ministry vegetated along until the
+middle of April.  Bonaparte tired out and fooled the National Assembly
+with constantly new Ministerial combinations.  Now he seemed to intend
+constructing a republican Ministry with Lamartine and Billault; then, a
+parliamentary one with the inevitable Odillon Barrot, whose name must
+never be absent when a dupe is needed; then again, a Legitimist, with
+Batismenil and Lenoist d'Azy; and yet again, an Orleansist, with
+Malleville.  While thus throwing the several factions of the party of
+Order into strained relations with one another, and alarming them all
+with the prospect of a republican Ministry, together with the there-upon
+inevitable restoration of universal suffrage, Bonaparte simultaneously
+raises in the bourgeoisie the conviction that his sincere efforts for a
+parliamentary Ministry are wrecked upon the irreconcilable antagonism of
+the royalist factions.  All the while the bourgeoisie was clamoring
+louder and louder for a "strong Government," and was finding it less and
+less pardonable to leave France "without an administration," in
+proportion as a general commercial crisis seemed to be under way and
+making recruits for Socialism in the cities, as did the ruinously low
+price of grain in the rural districts.  Trade became daily duller; the
+unemployed hands increased perceptibly; in Paris, at least 10,000
+workingmen were without bread ; in Rouen, Muehlhausen, Lyons, Roubaix,
+Tourcoign, St. Etienue, Elbeuf, etc., numerous factories stood idle.
+Under these circumstances Bonaparte could venture to restore, on April
+11, the Ministry of January 18; Messieurs Rouher, Fould, Baroche, etc.,
+reinforced by Mr. Leon Faucher, whom the constitutive assembly had,
+during its last days, unanimously, with the exception of five
+Ministerial votes, branded with a vote of censure for circulating false
+telegraphic dispatches.  Accordingly, the National Assembly had won a
+victory on January 18 over the Ministry, it had, for the period of three
+months, been battling with Bonaparte, and all this merely to the end
+that, on April 11, Fould and Baroche should be able to take up the
+Puritan Faucher as third in their ministerial league.
+
+In November, 1849, Bonaparte had satisfied himself with an
+Unparliamentary, in January, 1851, with an Extra-Parliamentary, on April
+11, he felt strong enough to form an Anti-Parliamentary Ministry, that
+harmoniously combined within itself the votes of lack of confidence of
+both assemblies-the constitutive and the legislative, the republican and
+the royalist.  This ministerial progression was a thermometer by which
+the parliament could measure the ebbing temperature of its own life.
+This had sunk so low by the end of April that, at a personal interview,
+Persigny could invite Changarnier to go over to the camp of the
+President.  Bonaparte, he assured Changarnier, considered the influence
+of the National Assembly to be wholly annihilated, and already the
+proclamation was ready, that was to be published after the steadily
+contemplated, but again accidentally postponed "coup d'etat."
+Changarnier communicated this announcement of its death to the leaders
+of the party of Order; but who was there to believe a bed-bug bite could
+kill?  The parliament, however beaten, however dissolved, however
+death-tainted it was, could not persuade itself to see, in the duel with
+the grotesque chief of the "Society of December 10," anything but a duel
+with a bed-bug.  But Bonaparte answered the party of Order as Agesilaus
+did King Agis: "I seem to you an ant; but shall one day be a lion."
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The coalition with the Mountain and the pure republicans, to which the
+party of Order found itself condemned in its fruitless efforts to keep
+possession of the military and to reconquer supreme control over the
+Executive power, proved conclusively that it had forfeited its
+independent parliamentary majority.  The calendar and clock merely gave,
+on May 29, the signal for its complete dissolution.  With May 29
+commenced the last year of the life of the National Assembly.  It now
+had to decide for the unchanged continuance or the revision of the
+Constitution.  But a revision of the Constitution meant not only the
+definitive supremacy of either the bourgeoisie of the small traders'
+democracy, of either democracy or proletarian anarchy, of either a
+parliamentary republic or Bonaparte, it meant also either Orleans or
+Bourbon!  Thus fell into the very midst of the parliament the apple of
+discord, around which the conflict of interests, that cut up the party
+of Order into hostile factions, was to kindle into an open
+conflagration.  The party of Order was a combination of heterogeneous
+social substances.  The question of revision raised a political
+temperature, in which the product was reduced to its original
+components.
+
+The interest of the Bonapartists in the revision was simple: they were
+above all concerned in the abolition of Article 45, which forbade
+Bonaparte's reelection and the prolongation of his term.  Not less
+simple seemed to be the position of the republicans; they rejected all
+revision, seeing in that only a general conspiracy against the republic;
+as they disposed over more than one-fourth of the votes in the National
+Assembly, and, according to the Constitution, a three-fourths majority
+was requisite to revise and to call a revisory convention, they needed
+only to count their own votes to be certain of victory.  Indeed, they
+were certain of it.
+
+Over and against these clear-cut positions, the party of Order found
+itself tangled in inextricable contradictions.  If it voted against the
+revision, it endangered the "status quo," by leaving to Bonaparte only
+one expedient--that of violence and handing France over, on May 2, 1852,
+at the very time of election, a prey to revolutionary anarchy, with a
+President whose authority was at an end; with a parliament that the
+party had long ceased to own, and with a people that it meant to
+re-conquer.  If it voted constitutionally for a revision, it knew that
+it voted in vain and would constitutionally have to go under before the
+veto of the republicans.  If, unconstitutionally, it pronounced a simple
+majority binding, it could hope to control the revolution only in case
+it surrendered unconditionally to the domination of the Executive power:
+it then made Bonaparte master of the Constitution, of the revision and
+of itself.  A merely partial revision, prolonging the term of the
+President, opened the way to imperial usurpation; a general revision,
+shortening the existence of the republic, threw the dynastic claims into
+an inevitable conflict: the conditions for a Bourbon and those for an
+Orleanist restoration were not only different, they mutually excluded
+each other.
+
+The parliamentary republic was more than a neutral ground on which the
+two factions of the French bourgeoisie--Legitimists and Orleanists,
+large landed property and manufacture--could lodge together with equal
+rights.  It was the indispensable condition for their common reign, the
+only form of government in which their common class interest could
+dominate both the claims of their separate factions and all the other
+classes of society.  As royalists, they relapsed into their old
+antagonism into the struggle for the overlordship of either landed
+property or of money; and the highest expression of this antagonism, its
+personification, were the two kings themselves, their dynasties.  Hence
+the resistance of the party of Order to the recall of the Bourbons.
+
+The Orleanist Representative Creton moved periodically in 1849, 1850 and
+1851 the repeal of the decree of banishment against the royal families;
+as periodically did the parliament present the spectacle of an Assembly
+of royalists who stubbornly shut to their banished kings the door
+through which they could return home.  Richard III murdered Henry VI,
+with the remark that he was too good for this world, and belonged in
+heaven.  They declared France too bad to have her kings back again.
+Forced by the power of circumstances, they had become republicans, and
+repeatedly sanctioned the popular mandate that exiled their kings from
+France.
+
+The revision of the Constitution, and circumstances compelled its
+consideration, at once made uncertain not only the republic itself, but
+also the joint reign of the two bourgeois factions; and it revived, with
+the possibility of the monarchy, both the rivalry of interests which
+these two factions had alternately allowed to preponderate, and the
+struggle for the supremacy of the one over the other.  The diplomats of
+the party of Order believed they could allay the struggle by a
+combination of the two dynasties through a so-called fusion of the
+royalist parties and their respective royal houses.  The true fusion of
+the restoration and the July monarchy was, however, the parliamentary
+republic, in which the Orleanist and Legitimist colors were dissolved,
+and the bourgeois species vanished in the plain bourgeois, in the
+bourgeois genus.  Now however, the plan was to turn the Orleanist
+Legitimist and the Legitimist Orleanist.  The kingship, in which their
+antagonism was personified, was to incarnate their unity, the expression
+of their exclusive faction interests was to become the expression of
+their common class interest; the monarchy was to accomplish what only
+the abolition of two monarchies--the republic could and did accomplish.
+This was the philosopher's stone, for the finding of which the doctors
+of the party of Order were breaking their heads.  As though the
+Legitimate monarchy ever could be the monarchy of the industrial
+bourgeoisie, or the bourgeois monarchy the monarchy of the hereditary
+landed aristocracy! As though landed property and industry could
+fraternize under one crown, where the crown could fall only upon one
+head, the head of the older or the younger brother! As though industry
+could at all deal upon a footing of equality with landed property, so
+long as landed property did not decide itself to become industrial.  If
+Henry V were to die tomorrow, the Count of Paris would not, therefore,
+become the king of the Legitimists, unless he ceased to be the King of
+the Orleanists.  Nevertheless, the fusion philosophers, who became
+louder in the measure that the question of revision stepped to the fore,
+who had provided themselves with a daily organ in the "Assemblee
+Nationale," who, even at this very moment (February, 1852) are again at
+work, explained the whole difficulty by the opposition and rivalries of
+the two dynasties.  The attempts to reconcile the family of Orleans with
+Henry V., begun since the death of Louis Philippe, but, as all these
+dynastic intrigues carried on only during the vacation of the National
+Assembly, between acts, behind the scenes, more as a sentimental
+coquetry with the old superstition than as a serious affair, were now
+raised by the party of Order to the dignity of a great State question,
+and were conducted upon the public stage, instead of, as heretofore in
+the amateurs' theater.  Couriers flew from Paris to Venice, from Venice
+to Claremont, from Claremont to Paris.  The Duke of Chambord issues a
+manifesto in which he announces not his own, but the "national"
+restoration, "with the aid of all the members of his family."  The
+Oleanist Salvandy throws himself at the feet of Henry V. The Legitimist
+leaders Berryer, Benoit d'Azy, St. Priest travel to Claremont, to
+persuade the Orleans; but in vain.  The fusionists learn too late that
+the interests of the two bourgeois factions neither lose in
+exclusiveness nor gain in pliancy where they sharpen to a point in the
+form of family interests, of the interests of the two royal houses.
+When Henry V. recognized the Count of Paris as his successor--the only
+success that the fusion could at best score--the house of Orleans
+acquired no claim that the childlessness of Henry V. had not already
+secured to it; but, on the other hand, it lost all the claims that it
+had conquered by the July revolution.  It renounced its original claims,
+all the title, that, during a struggle nearly one hundred years long, it
+had wrested from the older branch of the Bourbons; it bartered away its
+historic prerogative, the prerogative of its family-tree.  Fusion,
+accordingly, amounted to nothing else than the resignation of the house
+of Orleans, its Legitimist resignation, a repentful return from the
+Protestant State Church into the Catholic;--a return, at that, that did
+not even place it on the throne that it had lost, but on the steps of
+the throne on which it was born.  The old Orleanist Ministers Guizot,
+Duchatel, etc., who likewise hastened to Claremont, to advocate the
+fusion, represented in fact only the nervous reaction of the July
+monarchy; despair, both in the citizen kingdom and the kingdom of
+citizens; the superstitious belief in legitimacy as the last amulet
+against anarchy.  Mediators, in their imagination, between Orleans and
+Bourbon, they were in reality but apostate Orleanists, and as such were
+they received by the Prince of Joinville.  The virile, bellicose part of
+the Orleanists, on the contrary--Thiers, Baze, etc.--, persuaded the
+family of Louis Philippe all the easier that, seeing every plan for the
+immediate restoration of the monarchy presupposed the fusion of the two
+dynasties, and every plan for fusion the resignation of the house of
+Orleans, it corresponded, on the contrary, wholly with the tradition of
+its ancestors to recognize the republic for the time being, and to wait
+until circumstances permitted I the conversion of the Presidential chair
+into a throne.  Joinville's candidacy was set afloat as a rumor, public
+curiosity was held in suspense, and a few months later, after the
+revision was rejected, openly proclaimed in September.
+
+Accordingly, the essay of a royalist fusion between Orleanists and
+Legitimists did not miscarry only, it broke up their parliamentary
+fusion, the republican form that they had adopted in common, and it
+decomposed the party of Order into its original components.  But the
+wider the breach became between Venice and Claremont, the further they
+drifted away from each I other, and the greater the progress made by the
+Joinville agitation, all the more active and earnest became the
+negotiations between Faucher, the Minister of Bonaparte, and the
+Legitimists.
+
+The dissolution of the party of Order went beyond its original elements.
+Each of the two large factions fell in turn into new fragments.  It was
+as if all the old political shades, that formerly fought and crowded one
+another within each of the two circles--be it that of the Legitimists or
+that of the Orleanists--, had been thawed out like dried infusoria by
+contact with water; as if they had recovered enough vitality to build
+their own groups and assert their own antagonisms.  The Legitimists
+dreamed they were back amidst the quarrels between the Tuileries and the
+pavilion Marsan, between Villele and Polignac; the Orleanists lived anew
+through the golden period of the tourneys between Guizot, Mole, Broglie,
+Thiers, and Odillon Barrot.
+
+That portion of the party of Order--eager for a revision of the
+Constitution but disagreed upon the extent of revision--made up of the
+Legitimists under Berryer and Falloux and of those under Laroche
+Jacquelein, together with the tired-out Orleanists under Mole, Broglie,
+Montalembert and Odillon Barrot, united with the Bonapartist
+Representatives in the following indefinite and loosely drawn motion:
+
+"The undersigned Representatives, with the end in view of restoring to
+the nation the full exercise of her sovereignty, move that the
+Constitution be revised."
+
+At the same time, however, they unanimously declared through their
+spokesman, Tocqueville, that the National Assembly had not the right to
+move the abolition of the republic, that right being vested only in a
+Constitutional Convention.  For the rest, the Constitution could be
+revised only in a "legal" way, that is to say, only in case a
+three-fourths majority decided in favor of revision, as prescribed by
+the Constitution.  After a six days' stormy debate, the revision was
+rejected on July 19, as was to be foreseen.  In its favor 446 votes were
+cast, against it 278.  The resolute Oleanists, Thiers, Changarnier,
+etc., voted with the republicans and the Mountain.
+
+Thus the majority of the parliament pronounced itself against the
+Constitution, while the Constitution itself pronounced itself for the
+minority, and its decision binding.  But had not the party of Order on
+May 31, 1850, had it not on June 13, 1849, subordinated the Constitution
+to the parliamentary majority?  Did not the whole republic they had been
+hitherto having rest upon the subordination of the Constitutional
+clauses to the majority decisions of the parliament?  Had they not left
+to the democrats the Old Testament superstitious belief in the letter of
+the law, and had they not chastised the democrats therefor?  At this
+moment, however, revision meant nothing else than the continuance of the
+Presidential power, as the continuance of the Constitution meant nothing
+else than the deposition of Bonaparte.  The parliament had pronounced
+itself for him, but the Constitution pronounced itself against the
+parliament.  Accordingly, he acted both in the sense of the parliament
+when he tore up the Constitution, and in the sense of the Constitution
+when he chased away the parliament.
+
+The parliament pronounced the Constitution, and, thereby, also, its own
+reign, "outside of the pale of the majority"; by its decision, it
+repealed the Constitution, and continued the Presidential power, and it
+at once declared that neither could the one live nor the other die so
+long as itself existed.  The feet of those who were to bury it stood at
+the door.  While it was debating the subject of revision, Bonaparte
+removed General Baraguay d'Hilliers, who showed himself irresolute, from
+the command of the First Military Division, and appointed in his place
+General Magnan, the conqueror of Lyon; the hero of the December days,
+one of his own creatures, who already under Louis Philippe, on the
+occasion of the Boulogne expedition, had somewhat compromised himself in
+his favor.
+
+By its decision on the revision, the party of Order proved that it knew
+neither how to rule nor how to obey; neither how to live nor how to die;
+neither how to bear with the republic nor how to overthrow it; neither
+how to maintain the Constitution nor how to throw it overboard; neither
+how to co-operate with the President nor how to break with him.  From
+what quarter did it then, look to for the solution of all the existing
+perplexities?  From the calendar, from the course of events.  It ceased
+to assume the control of events.  It, accordingly, invited events to don
+its authority and also the power to which in its struggle with the
+people, it had yielded one attribute after another until it finally
+stood powerless before the same.  To the end that the Executive be able
+all the more freely to formulate his plan of campaign against it,
+strengthen his means of attack, choose his tools, fortify his positions,
+the party of Order decided, in the very midst of this critical moment,
+to step off the stage, and adjourn for three months, from August 10 to
+November 4.
+
+Not only was the parliamentary party dissolved into its two great
+factions, not only was each of these dissolved within itself, but the
+party of Order, inside of the parliament, was at odds with the party of
+Order, outside of the parliament.  The learned speakers and writers of
+the bourgeoisie, their tribunes and their press, in short, the
+ideologists of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie itself, the
+representatives and the represented, stood estranged from, and no longer
+understood one another.
+
+The Legitimists in the provinces, with their cramped horizon and their
+boundless enthusiasm, charged their parliamentary leaders Berryer and
+Falloux with desertion to the Bonapartist camp, and with apostacy from
+Henry V. Their lilymind [#1 An allusion to the lilies of the Bourbon
+coat-of-arms] believed in the fall of man, but not in diplomacy.
+
+More fatal and completer, though different, was the breach between the
+commercial bourgeoisie and its politicians.  It twitted them, not as the
+Legitimists did theirs, with having apostatized from their principle,
+but, on the contrary, with adhering to principles that had become
+useless.
+
+I have already indicated that, since the entry of Fould in the Ministry,
+that portion of the commercial bourgeoisie that had enjoyed the lion's
+share in Louis Philippe's reign, to-wit, the aristocracy of finance, had
+become Bonapartist.  Fould not only represented Bonaparte's interests at
+the Bourse, he represented also the interests of the Bourse with
+Bonaparte.  A passage from the London "Economist," the European organ of
+the aristocracy of finance, described most strikingly the attitude of
+this class.  In its issue of February 1, 1851, its Paris correspondent
+writes: "Now we have it stated from numerous quarters that France wishes
+above all things for repose.  The President declares it in his message
+to the Legislative Assembly; it is echoed from the tribune; it is
+asserted in the journals; it is announced from the pulpit; it is
+demonstrated by the sensitiveness of the public funds at the least
+prospect of disturbance, and their firmness the instant it is made
+manifest that the Executive is far superior in wisdom and power to the
+factious ex-officials of all former governments."
+
+In its issue of November 29, 1851, the "Economist" declares editorially:
+"The President is now recognized as the guardian of order on every Stock
+Exchange of Europe."  Accordingly, the Aristocracy of Finance condemned
+the parliamentary strife of the party of Order with the Executive as a
+"disturbance of order," and hailed every victory of the President over
+its reputed representatives as a "victory of order."  Under "aristocracy
+of finance" must not, however, be understood merely the large bond
+negotiators and speculators in government securities, of whom it may be
+readily understood that their interests and the interests of the
+Government coincide.  The whole modern money trade, the whole banking
+industry, is most intimately interwoven with the public credit.  Part of
+their business capital requires to be invested in interest-bearing
+government securities that are promptly convertible into money; their
+deposits, i. e., the capital placed at their disposal and by them
+distributed among merchants and industrial establishments, flow partly
+out of the dividends on government securities.  The whole money market,
+together with the priests of this market, is part and parcel of this
+"aristocracy of finance" at every epoch when the stability of the
+government is to them synonymous with "Moses and his prophets."  This is
+so even before things have reached the present stage when every deluge
+threatens to carry away the old governments themselves.
+
+But the industrial Bourgeoisie also, in its fanaticism for order, was
+annoyed at the quarrels of the Parliamentary party of Order with the
+Executive.  Thiers, Anglas, Sainte Beuve, etc., received, after their
+vote of January 18, on the occasion of the discharge of Changarnier,
+public reprimands from their constituencies, located in the industrial
+districts, branding their coalition with the Mountain as an act of high
+treason to the cause of order.  Although, true enough, the boastful,
+vexatious and petty intrigues, through which the struggle of the party
+of Order with the President manifested itself, deserved no better
+reception, yet notwithstanding, this bourgeois party, that expects of
+its representatives to allow the military power to pass without
+resistance out of the hands of their own Parliament into those of an
+adventurous Pretender, is not worth even the intrigues that were wasted
+in its behalf.  It showed that the struggle for the maintenance of their
+public interests, of their class interests, of their political power
+only incommoded and displeased them, as a disturbance of their private
+business.
+
+The bourgeois dignitaries of the provincial towns, the magistrates,
+commercial judges, etc., with hardly any exception, received Bonaparte
+everywhere on his excursions in the most servile manner, even when, as
+in Dijon, he attacked the National Assembly and especially the party of
+Order without reserve.
+
+Business being brisk, as still at the beginning of 1851, the commercial
+bourgeoisie stormed against every Parliamentary strife, lest business be
+put out of temper.  Business being dull, as from the end of February,
+1851, on, the bourgeoisie accused the Parliamentary strifes as the cause
+of the stand-still, and clamored for quiet in order that business may
+revive.  The debates on revision fell just in the bad times.  Seeing the
+question now was the to be or not to be of the existing form of
+government, the bourgeoisie felt itself all the more justified in
+demanding of its Representatives that they put an end to this tormenting
+provisional status, and preserve the "status quo."  This was no
+contradiction.  By putting an end to the provisional status, it
+understood its continuance, the indefinite putting off of the moment
+when a final decision had to be arrived at.  The "status quo" could be
+preserved in only one of two ways: either by the prolongation of
+Bonaparte's term of office or by his constitutional withdrawal and the
+election of Cavaignac.  A part of the bourgeoisie preferred the latter
+solution, and knew no better advice to give their Representatives than
+to be silent, to avoid the burning point.  If their Representatives did
+not speak, so argued they, Bonaparte would not act.  They desired an
+ostrich Parliament that would hide its head, in order not to be seen.
+Another part of the bourgeoisie preferred that Bonaparte, being once in
+the Presidential chair, be left in the Presidential chair, in order that
+everything might continue to run in the old ruts.  They felt indignant
+that their Parliament did not openly break the Constitution and resign
+without further ado.  The General Councils of the Departments, these
+provisional representative bodies of the large bourgeoisie, who had
+adjourned during the vacation of the National Assembly since August 25,
+pronounced almost unanimously for revision, that is to say, against the
+Parliament and for Bonaparte.
+
+Still more unequivocally than in its falling out with its Parliamentary
+Representatives, did the bourgeoisie exhibit its wrath at its literary
+Representatives, its own press.  The verdicts of the bourgeois juries,
+inflicting excessive fines and shameless sentences of imprisonment for
+every attack of the bourgeois press upon the usurping aspirations of
+Bonaparte, for every attempt of the press to defend the political rights
+of the bourgeoisie against the Executive power, threw, not France alone,
+but all Europe into amazement.
+
+While on the one hand, as I have indicated, the Parliamentary party of
+Order ordered itself to keep the peace by screaming for peace; and while
+it pronounced the political rule of the bourgeoisie irreconcilable with
+the safety and the existence of the bourgeoisie, by destroying with its
+own hands in its struggle with the other classes of society all the
+conditions for its own, the Parliamentary regime; on the other hand, the
+mass of the bourgeoisie, outside of the Parliament, urged Bonaparte--by
+its servility towards the President, by its insults to the Parliament,
+by the brutal treatment of its own press--to suppress and annihilate its
+speaking and writing organs, its politicians and its literati, its
+orators' tribune and its press, to the end that, under the protection of
+a strong and unhampered Government, it might ply its own private
+pursuits in safety.  It declared unmistakably that it longed to be rid
+of its own political rule, in order to escape the troubles and dangers
+of ruling.
+
+And this bourgeoisie, that had rebelled against even the Parliamentary
+and literary contest for the supremacy of its own class, that had
+betrayed its leaders in this contest, it now has the effrontery to blame
+the proletariat for not having risen in its defence in a bloody
+struggle, in a struggle for life! Those bourgeois, who at every turn
+sacrificed their, common class interests to narrow and dirty private
+interests, and who demanded a similar sacrifice from their own
+Representatives, now whine that the proletariat has sacrificed their
+idea-political to its own material interests! This bourgeois class now
+strikes the attitude of a pure soul, misunderstood and abandoned, at a
+critical moment, by the proletariat, that has been misled by the
+Socialists.  And its cry finds a general echo in the bourgeois world.
+Of course, I do not refer to German crossroad politicians and kindred
+blockheads.  I refer, for instance, to the "Economist," which, as late
+as November 29, 1851, that is to say, four days before the "coup d'etat"
+pronounced Bonaparte the "Guardian of Order" and Thiers and Berryer
+"Anarchists," and as early as December 27, 1851, after Bonaparte had
+silenced those very Anarchists, cries out about the treason committed by
+"the ignorant, untrained and stupid proletaires against the skill,
+knowledge, discipline, mental influence, intellectual resources an moral
+weight of the middle and upper ranks."  The stupid, ignorant and
+contemptible mass was none other than the bourgeoisie itself.
+
+France had, indeed; experienced a sort of commercial crisis in 1851.  At
+the end of February, there was a falling off of exports as compared with
+1850; in March, business languished and factories shut down; in April,
+the condition of the industrial departments seemed as desperate as after
+the February days; in May, business did not yet pick up; as late as June
+28, the reports of the Bank of France revealed through a tremendous
+increase of deposits and an equal decrease of loans on exchange notes,
+the standstill of production; not until the middle of October did a
+steady improvement of business set in.  The French bourgeoisie accounted
+for this stagnation of business with purely political reasons; it
+imputed the dull times to the strife between the Parliament and the
+Executive power, to the uncertainty of a provisional form of government,
+to the alarming prospects of May 2, 1852.  I shall not deny that all
+these causes did depress some branches of industry in Paris and in the
+Departments.  At any rate, this effect of political circumstances was
+only local and trifling.  Is there any other proof needed than that the
+improvement in business set in at the very time when the political
+situation was growing worse, when the political horizon was growing
+darker, and when at every moment a stroke of lightning was expected out
+of the Elysee--in the middle of October?  The French bourgeois, whose
+"skill, knowledge, mental influence and intellectual resources," reach
+no further than his nose, could, moreover, during the whole period of
+the Industrial Exposition in London, have struck with his nose the cause
+of his own business misery.  At the same time that, in France, the
+factories were being closed, commercial failures broke out in England.
+While the industrial panic reached its height during April and May in
+France, in England the commercial panic reached its height in April and
+May.  The same as the French, the English woolen industries suffered,
+and, as the French, so did the English silk manufacture.  Though the
+English cotton factories went on working, it, nevertheless, was not with
+the same old profit of 1849 and 1850.  The only difference was this:
+that in France, the crisis was an industrial, in England it was a
+commercial one; that while in France the factories stood still, they
+spread themselves in England, but under less favorable circumstances
+than they had done the years just previous; that, in France, the export,
+in England, the import trade suffered the heaviest blows.  The common
+cause, which, as a matter of fact, is not to be looked for with-in the
+bounds of the French political horizon, was obvious.  The years 1849 and
+1850 were years of the greatest material prosperity, and of an
+overproduction that did not manifest itself until 1851.  This was
+especially promoted at the beginning of 1851 by the prospect of the
+Industrial Exposition; and, as special causes, there were added, first,
+the failure of the cotton crop of 1850 and 1851; second, the certainty
+of a larger cotton crop than was expected: first, the rise, then the
+sudden drop; in short, the oscillations of the cotton market.  The crop
+of raw silk in France had been below the average.  Finally, the
+manufacture of woolen goods had received such an increment since 1849,
+that the production of wool could not keep step with it, and the price
+of the raw material rose greatly out of proportion to the price of the
+manufactured goods.  Accordingly, we have here in the raw material of
+three staple articles a threefold material for a commercial crisis.
+Apart from these special circumstances, the seeming crisis of the year
+1851 was, after all, nothing but the halt that overproduction and
+overspeculation make regularly in the course of the industrial cycle,
+before pulling all their forces together in order to rush feverishly
+over the last stretch, and arrive again at their point of departure--the
+General Commercial Crisis.  At such intervals in the history of trade,
+commercial failures break out in England, while, in France, industry
+itself is stopped, partly because it is compelled to retreat through the
+competition of the English, that, at such times becomes resistless in
+all markets, and partly because, as an industry of luxuries, it is
+affected with preference by every stoppage of trade.  Thus, besides the
+general crisis, France experiences her own national crises, which,
+how-ever, are determined by and conditioned upon the general state of
+the world's market much more than by local French influences.  It will
+not be devoid of interest to contrast the prejudgment of the French
+bourgeois with the judgment of the English bourgeois.  One of the
+largest Liverpool firms writes in its yearly report of trade for 1851:
+"Few years have more completely disappointed the expectations
+entertained at their beginning than the year that has just passed;
+instead of the great prosperity, that was unanimously looked forward to,
+it proved itself one of the most discouraging years during the last
+quarter of a century.  This applies, of course, only to the mercantile,
+not to the industrial classes.  And yet, surely there were grounds at
+the beginning of the year from which to draw a contrary conclusion; the
+stock of products was scanty, capital was abundant, provisions cheap, a
+rich autumn was assured, there was uninterrupted peace on the continent
+and no political and financial disturbances at home; indeed, never were
+the wings of trade more unshackled. . . .  What is this unfavorable
+result to be ascribed to?  We believe to excessive trade in imports as
+well as exports.  If our merchants do not themselves rein in their
+activity, nothing can keep us going, except a panic every three years."
+
+Imagine now the French bourgeois, in the midst of this business panic,
+having his trade-sick brain tortured, buzzed at and deafened with rumors
+of a "coup d'etat" and the restoration of universal suffrage; with the
+struggle between the Legislature and the Executive; with the Fronde
+warfare between Orleanists and Legitimists; with communistic
+conspiracies in southern France; with alleged Jacqueries [#2 Peasant
+revolts] in the Departments of Nievre and Cher; with the advertisements
+of the several candidates for President; with "social solutions"
+huckstered about by the journals; with the threats of the republicans to
+uphold, arms in hand, the Constitution and universal suffrage; with the
+gospels, according to the emigrant heroes "in partibus," who announced
+the destruction of the world for May 2,--imagine that, and one can
+understand how the bourgeois, in this unspeakable and noisy confusion of
+fusion, revision, prorogation, constitution, conspiracy, coalition,
+emigration, usurpation and revolution, blurts out at his parliamentary
+republic: "Rather an End With Fright, Than a Fright Without End."
+
+Bonaparte understood this cry.  His perspicacity was sharpened by the
+growing anxiety of the creditors' class, who, with every sunset, that
+brought nearer the day of payment, the 2d of May, 1852, saw in the
+motion of the stars a protest against their earthly drafts.  They had
+become regular astrologers The National Assembly had cut off Bonaparte's
+hope of a constitutional prolongation of his term; the candidature of
+the Prince of Joinville tolerated no further vacillation.
+
+If ever an event cast its shadow before it long before its occurrence,
+it was Bonaparte's "coup d'etat."  Already on January 29, 1849, barely a
+month after his election, he had made to Changarnier a proposition to
+that effect.  His own Prime Minister.  Odillon Barrot, had covertly, in
+1849, and Thiers openly in the winter of 1850, revealed the scheme of
+the "coup d'etat."  In May, 1851, Persigny had again sought to win
+Changarnier over to the "coup," and the "Miessager de l'Assemblee"
+newspaper had published this conversation.  At every parliamentary
+storm, the Bonapartist papers threatened a "coup," and the nearer the
+crisis approached, all the louder grew their tone.  At the orgies, that
+Bonaparte celebrated every night with a swell mob of males and females,
+every time the hour of midnight drew nigh and plenteous libations had
+loosened the tongues and heated the minds of the revelers, the "coup"
+was resolved upon for the next morning.  Swords were then drawn, glasses
+clinked, the Representatives were thrown out at the windows, the
+imperial mantle fell upon the shoulders of Bonaparte, until the next
+morning again drove away the spook, and astonished Paris learned, from
+not very reserved Vestals and indiscreet Paladins, the danger it had
+once more escaped.  During the months of September and October, the
+rumors of a "coup d'etat" tumbled close upon one another's heels.  At
+the same time the shadow gathered color, like a confused daguerreotype.
+Follow the issues of the European daily press for the months of
+September and October, and items like this will be found literally:
+
+"Rumors of a 'coup' fill Paris.  The capital, it is said, is to be
+filled with troops by night and the next morning decrees are to be
+issued dissolving the National Assembly, placing the Department of the
+Seine in state of siege restoring universal suffrage, and appealing to
+the people.  Bonaparte is rumored to be looking for Ministers to execute
+these illegal decrees."
+
+The newspaper correspondence that brought this news always close
+ominously with "postponed."  The "coup" was ever the fixed idea of
+Bonaparte.  With this idea he had stepped again upon French soil.  It
+had such full possession of him that he was constantly betraying and
+blabbing it out.  He was so weak that he was as constantly giving it up
+again.  The shadow of the "coup" had become so familiar a spectre to the
+Parisians, that they refused to believe it when it finally did appear in
+flesh and blood.  Consequently, it was neither the reticent backwardness
+of the chief of the "Society of December 10," nor an unthought of
+surprise of the National Assembly that caused the success of the "coup."
+When it succeeded, it did so despite his indiscretion and with its
+anticipation--a necessary, unavoidable result of the development that
+had preceded.
+
+On October 10, Bonaparte announced to his Ministers his decision to
+restore universal suffrage; on the 16th day they handed in their
+resignations; on the 26th Paris learned of the formation of the Thorigny
+Ministry.  The Prefect of Police, Carlier, was simultaneously replaced
+by Maupas; and the chief of the First Military Division Magnan,
+concentrated the most reliable regiments in the capital.  On November 4,
+the National Assembly re-opened its sessions.  There was nothing left
+for it to do but to repeat, in short recapitulation, the course it had
+traversed, and to prove that it had been buried only after it had
+expired.  The first post that it had forfeited in the struggle with the
+Executive was the Ministry.  It had solemnly to admit this loss by
+accepting as genuine the Thorigny Ministry, which was but a pretence.
+The permanent Committee had received Mr. Giraud with laughter when he
+introduced himself in the name of the new Ministers.  So weak a Ministry
+for so strong a measure as the restoration of universal suffrage! The
+question, however, then was to do nothing in, everything against the
+parliament.
+
+On the very day of its re-opening, the National Assembly received the
+message from Bonaparte demanding the restoration of universal suffrage
+and the repeal of the law of May 31, 1850.  On the same day, his
+Ministers introduced a decree to that effect.  The Assembly promptly
+rejected the motion of urgency made by the Ministers, but repealed the
+law itself, on November 13, by a vote of 355 against 348.  Thus it once
+more tore to pieces its own mandate, once more certified to the fact
+that it had transformed itself from a freely chosen representative body
+of the nation into the usurpatory parliament of a class; it once more
+admitted that it had itself severed the muscles that connected the
+parliamentary head with the body of the nation.
+
+While the Executive power appealed from the National Assembly to the
+people by its motion for the restoration of universal suffrage, the
+Legislative power appealed from the people to the Army by its "Questors'
+Bill."  This bill was to establish its right to immediate requisitions
+for troops, to build up a parliamentary army.  By thus appointing the
+Army umpire between itself and the people, between itself and Bonaparte;
+by thus recognizing the Army as the decisive power in the State, the
+National Assembly was constrained to admit that it had long given up all
+claim to supremacy.  By debating the right to make requisitions for
+troops, instead of forthwith collecting them, it betrayed its own doubts
+touching its own power.  By thus subsequently rejecting the "Questors'
+Bill," it publicly confessed it impotence.  The bill fell through with a
+minority of 108 votes; the Mountain had, accordingly, thrown the casting
+vote It now found itself in the predicament of Buridan's donkey, not,
+indeed, between two sacks of hay, forced to decide which of the two was
+the more attractive, but between two showers of blows, forced to decide
+which of the two was the harder; fear of Changarnier, on one side, fear
+of Bonaparte, on the other.  It must be admitted the position was not a
+heroic one.
+
+On November 18, an amendment was moved to the Act, passed by the party
+of Order, on municipal elections to the effect that, instead of three
+years, a domicile of one year should suffice.  The amendment was lost by
+a single vote--but this vote, it soon transpired, was a mistake.  Owing
+to the divisions within its own hostile factions, the party of Order had
+long since forfeited its independent parliamentary majority.  It was now
+plain that there was no longer any majority in the parliament.  The
+National Assembly had become impotent even to decide.  Its atomic parts
+were no longer held together by any cohesive power; it had expended its
+last breath, it was dead.
+
+Finally, the mass of the bourgeoisie outside of the parliament was once
+more solemnly to confirm its rupture with the bourgeoisie inside of the
+parliament a few days before the catastrophe.  Thiers, as a
+parliamentary hero conspicuously smitten by that incurable
+disease--Parliamentary Idiocy--, had hatched out jointly with the
+Council of State, after the death of the parliament, a new parliamentary
+intrigue in the shape of a "Responsibility Law," that was intended to
+lock up the President within the walls of the Constitution.  The same
+as, on September 15, Bonaparte bewitched the fishwives, like a second
+Massaniello, on the occasion of laying the corner-stone for the Market
+of Paris,--though, it must be admitted, one fishwife was equal to
+seventeen Burgraves in real power--; the same as, after the introduction
+of the "Questors' Bill," he enthused the lieutenants, who were being
+treated at the Elysee;--so, likewise, did he now, on November 25, carry
+away with him the industrial bourgeoisie, assembled at the Circus, to
+receive from his hands the prize-medals that had been awarded at the
+London Industrial Exposition.  I here reproduce the typical part of his
+speech, from the "Journal des Debats":
+
+"With such unhoped for successes, I am justified to repeat how great the
+French republic would be if she were only allowed to pursue her real
+interests, and reform her institutions, instead of being constantly
+disturbed in this by demagogues, on one side, and, on the other, by
+monarchic hallucinations.  (Loud, stormy and continued applause from all
+parts of the amphitheater).  The monarchic hallucinations hamper all
+progress and all serious departments of industry.  Instead of progress,
+we have struggle only.  Men, formerly the most zealous supporters of
+royal authority and prerogative, become the partisans of a convention
+that has no purpose other than to weaken an authority that is born of
+universal suffrage.  (Loud and prolonged applause).  We see men, who
+have suffered most from the revolution and complained bitterest of it,
+provoking a new one for the sole purpose of putting fetters on the will
+of the nation. . . .  I promise you peace for the future."  (Bravo!
+Bravo! Stormy bravos.)
+
+Thus the industrial bourgeoisie shouts its servile "Bravo!" to the "coup
+d'etat" of December 2, to the destruction of the parliament, to the
+downfall of their own reign, to the dictatorship of Bonaparte.  The rear
+of the applause of November 25 was responded to by the roar of cannon on
+December 4, and the house of Mr. Sallandrouze, who had been loudest in
+applauding, was the one demolished by most of the bombs.
+
+Cromwell, when he dissolved the Long Parliament, walked alone into its
+midst, pulled out his watch in order that the body should not continue
+to exist one minute beyond the term fixed for it by him, and drove out
+each individual member with gay and humorous invectives.  Napoleon,
+smaller than his prototype, at least went on the 18th Brumaire into the
+legislative body, and, though in a tremulous voice, read to it its
+sentence of death.  The second Bonaparte, who, moreover, found himself
+in possession of an executive power very different from that of either
+Cromwell or Napoleon, did not look for his model in the annals of
+universal history, but in the annals of the "Society of December 10," in
+the annals of criminal jurisprudence.  He robs the Bank of France of
+twenty-five million francs; buys General Magnan with one million and the
+soldiers with fifteen francs and a drink to each; comes secretly
+together with his accomplices like a thief by night; has the houses of
+the most dangerous leaders in the parliament broken into; Cavalignac,
+Lamorciere, Leflo, Changarnier, Charras, Thiers, Baze, etc., taken out
+of their beds; the principal places of Paris, the building of the
+parliament included, occupied with troops; and, early the next morning,
+loud-sounding placards posted on all the walls proclaiming the
+dissolution of the National Assembly and of the Council of State, the
+restoration of universal suffrage, and the placing of the Department of
+the Seine under the state of siege.  In the same way he shortly after
+sneaked into the "Moniateur" a false document, according to which
+influential parliamentary names had grouped themselves round him in a
+Committee of the Nation.
+
+Amidst cries of "Long live the Republic!", the rump-parliament,
+assembled at the Mayor's building of the Tenth Arrondissement, and
+composed mainly of Legitimists and Orleanists, resolves to depose
+Bonaparte; it harangues in vain the gaping mass gathered before the
+building, and is finally dragged first, under the escort of African
+sharpshooters, to the barracks of Orsay, and then bundled into convicts'
+wagons and transported to the prisons of Mazas, Ham and Vincennes.  Thus
+ended the party of Order, the Legislative Assembly and the February
+revolution.
+
+Before hastening to the end, let us sum up shortly the plan of its
+history:
+
+I.--First Period.  From February 24 to May 4, 1848.  February period.
+Prologue.  Universal fraternity swindle.
+
+II.--Second Period.  Period in which the republic is constituted, and of
+the Constitutive National Assembly.
+
+1. May 4 to June 25, 1848. Struggle of all the classes against the house
+of Mr. proletariat. Defeat of the proletariat in the June days.
+
+2. June 25 to December 10, 1848. Dictatorship of the pure bourgeois
+republicans.  Drafting of the Constitution. The state of siege hangs
+over Paris.  The Bourgeois dictatorship set aside on December 10 by the
+election of Bonaparte as President.
+
+3. December 20, 1848, to May 20, 1849.  Struggle of the Constitutive
+Assembly with Bonaparte and with the united party of Order.  Death of
+the Constitutive Assembly.  Downfall of the republican bourgeoisie.
+
+III.--Third Period.  Period of the constitutional republic and of the
+Legislative National Assembly.
+
+1. May 29 to June 13, 1849.  Struggle of the small traders', middle
+class with the bourgeoisie and with Bonaparte.  Defeat of the small
+traders' democracy.
+
+2. June 13, 1849, to May, 1850.  Parliamentary dictatorship of the party
+of Order.  Completes its reign by the abolition of universal suffrage,
+but loses the parliamentary Ministry.
+
+3. May 31, 1850, to December 2, 1851.  Struggle between the
+parliamentary bourgeoisie and Bonaparte.
+
+a. May 31, 1850, to January 12, 1851.  The parliament loses the supreme
+command over the Army.
+
+b. January 12 to April 11, 1851.  The parliament succumbs in the
+attempts to regain possession of the administrative power.  The party of
+Order loses its independent parliamentary majority.  Its coalition with
+the republicans and the Mountain.
+
+c. April 11 to October 9, 1851. Attempts at revision, fusion and
+prorogation. The party of Order dissolves into its component parts. The
+breach between the bourgeois parliament and the bourgeois press, on the
+one hand, and the bourgeois mass, on the other, becomes permanent.
+
+d. October 9 to December 2, 1851. Open breach between the parliament and
+the executive power. It draws up its own decree of death, and goes
+under, left in the lurch by its own class, by the Army, and by all the
+other classes. Downfall of the parliamentary regime and of the reign of
+the bourgeoisie. Bonaparte's triumph. Parody of the imperialist
+restoration.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The Social Republic appeared as a mere phrase, as a prophecy on the
+threshold of the February Revolution; it was smothered in the blood of
+the Parisian proletariat during the days of 1848 but it stalks about as
+a spectre throughout the following acts of the drama.  The Democratic
+Republic next makes its bow; it goes out in a fizzle on June 13, 1849,
+with its runaway small traders; but, on fleeing, it scatters behind it
+all the more bragging announcements of what it means do to.  The
+Parliamentary Republic, together with the bourgeoisie, then appropriates
+the whole stage; it lives its life to the full extent of its being; but
+the 2d of December, 1851, buries it under the terror-stricken cry of the
+allied royalists: "Long live the Republic!"
+
+The French bourgeoisie reared up against the reign of the working
+proletariat;--it brought to power the slum-proletariat, with the chief
+of the "Society of December 10" at its head.  It kept France in
+breathless fear over the prospective terror of "red anarchy;"--Bonaparte
+discounted the prospect when, on December 4, he had the leading citizens
+of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Boulevard des Italiens shot down
+from their windows by the grog-inspired "Army of Order."  It made the
+apotheosis of the sabre; now the sabre rules it.  It destroyed the
+revolutionary press;--now its own press is annihilated.  It placed
+public meetings under police surveillance;--now its own salons are
+subject to police inspection.  It disbanded the democratic National
+Guards;--now its own National Guard is disbanded.  It instituted the
+state of siege;--now itself is made subject thereto.  It supplanted the
+jury by military commissions;--now military commissions supplant its own
+juries.  It subjected the education of the people to the parsons'
+interests;--the parsons' interests now subject it to their own systems.
+It ordered transportations without trial;--now itself is transported
+without trial.  It suppressed every movement of society with physical
+force;--now every movement of its own class is suppressed by physical
+force.  Out of enthusiasm for the gold bag, it rebelled against its own
+political leaders and writers;--now, its political leaders and writers
+are set aside, but the gold hag is plundered, after the mouth of the
+bourgeoisie has been gagged and its pen broken.  The bourgeoisie
+tirelessly shouted to the revolution, in the language of St. Orsenius to
+the Christians: "Fuge, Tace, Quiesce!"--flee, be silent, submit!--;
+Bonaparte shouts to the bourgeoisie: "Fuge, Tace, Oniesce!"--flee, be
+silent, submit!
+
+The French bourgeoisie had long since solved Napoleon's dilemma: "Dans
+cinquante ans l'Europe sera republicaine ou cosaque."  [#1 Within fifty
+years Europe will be either republican or Cossack.] It found the
+solution in the "republique cosaque."  [#2 Cossack republic.] No Circe
+distorted with wicked charms the work of art of the bourgeois republic
+into a monstrosity.  That republic lost nothing but the appearance of
+decency.  The France of to-day was ready-made within the womb of the
+Parliamentary republic.  All that was wanted was a bayonet thrust, in
+order that the bubble burst, and the monster leap forth to sight.
+
+Why did not the Parisian proletariat rise after the 2d of December?
+
+The downfall of the bourgeoisie was as yet merely decreed; the decree
+was not yet executed.  Any earnest uprising of the proletariat would
+have forthwith revived this bourgeoisie, would have brought on its
+reconciliation with the army, and would have insured a second June rout
+to the workingmen.
+
+On December 4, the proletariat was incited to fight by Messrs. Bourgeois
+& Small-Trader.  On the evening of that day, several legions of the
+National Guard promised to appear armed and uniformed on the place of
+battle.  This arose from the circumstance that Messrs. Bourgeois &
+Small-Trader had got wind that, in one of his decrees of December 2,
+Bonaparte abolished the secret ballot, and ordered them to enter the
+words "Yes" and "No" after their names in the official register.
+Bonaparte took alarm at the stand taken on December 4.  During the night
+he caused placards to be posted on all the street corners of Paris,
+announcing the restoration of the secret ballot.  Messrs. Bourgeois &
+Small-Trader believed they had gained their point.  The absentees, the
+next morning, were Messieurs. Bourgeois & Small-Trader.
+
+During the night of December 1 and 2, the Parisian proletariat was
+robbed of its leaders and chiefs of barricades by a raid of Bonaparte's.
+An army without officers, disinclined by the recollections of June, 1848
+and 1849, and May, 1850, to fight under the banner of the Montagnards,
+it left to its vanguard, the secret societies, the work of saving the
+insurrectionary honor of Paris, which the bourgeoisie had yielded to the
+soldiery so submissively that Bonaparte was later justified in disarming
+the National Guard upon the scornful ground that he feared their arms
+would be used against themselves by the Anarchists!
+
+"C'est Ic triomphe complet et definitif du Socialism!"' Thus did Guizot
+characterize the 2d of December.  But, although the downfall of the
+parliamentary republic carries with it the germ of the triumph of the
+proletarian revolution, its immediate and tangible result was the
+triumph of Bonaparte over parliament, of the Executive over the
+Legislative power, of force without phrases over the force of phrases.
+In the parliament, the nation raised its collective will to the dignity
+of law, i.e., it raised the law of the ruling class to the dignity of
+its collective will.  Before the Executive power, the nation abdicates
+all will of its own, and submits to the orders of an outsider of
+Authority.  In contrast with the Legislative, the Executive power
+expresses the heteronomy of the nation in contrast with its autonomy.
+Accordingly, France seems to have escaped the despotism of a class only
+in order to fall under the despotism of an individual, under the
+authority, at that of an individual without authority The struggle seems
+to settle down to the point where all classes drop down on their knees,
+equally impotent and equally dumb
+
+All the same, the revolution is thoroughgoing.  It still is on its
+passage through purgatory.  It does its work methodically: Down to
+December 2, 1851, it had fulfilled one-half of its programme, it now
+fulfils the other half.  It first ripens the power of the Legislature
+into fullest maturity in order to be able to overthrow it.  Now that it
+has accomplished that, the revolution proceeds to ripen the power of the
+Executive into equal maturity; it reduces this power to its purest
+expression; isolates it; places it before itself as the sole subject for
+reproof in order to concentrate against it all the revolutionary forces
+of destruction.  When the revolution shall have accomplished this second
+part of its preliminary programme, Europe will jump up from her seat to
+exclaim: "Well hast thou grubbed, old mole!"
+
+The Executive power, with its tremendous bureaucratic and military
+organization; with its wide-spreading and artificial machinery of
+government--an army of office-holders, half a million strong, together
+with a military force of another million men--; this fearful body of
+parasites, that coils itself like a snake around French society,
+stopping all its pores, originated at the time of the absolute monarchy,
+along with the decline of feudalism, which it helped to hasten.  The
+princely privileges of the landed proprietors and cities were
+transformed into so many at-tributes of the Executive power; the feudal
+dignitaries into paid office-holders; and the confusing design of
+conflicting medieval seigniories, into the well regulated plan of a
+government, work is subdivided and centralized as in the factory.  The
+first French revolution, having as a mission to sweep away all local,
+territorial, urban and provincial special privileges, with the object of
+establishing the civic unity of the nation, was hound to develop what
+the absolute monarchy had begun--the work of centralization, together
+with the range, the attributes and the menials of government.  Napoleon
+completed this governmental machinery.  The Legitimist and the July
+Monarchy contribute nothing thereto, except a greater subdivision of
+labor, that grew in the same measure as the division and subdivision of
+labor within bourgeois society raised new groups and interests, i.e.,
+new material for the administration of government.  Each Common interest
+was in turn forthwith removed from society, set up against it as a
+higher Collective interest, wrested from the individual activity of the
+members of society, and turned into a subject for governmental
+administration, from the bridges, the school house and the communal
+property of a village community, up to the railroads, the national
+wealth and the national University of France.  Finally, the
+parliamentary republic found itself, in its struggle against the
+revolution, compelled, with its repressive measures, to strengthen the
+means and the centralization of the government.  Each overturn, instead
+of breaking up, carried this machine to higher perfection.  The parties,
+that alternately wrestled for supremacy, looked upon the possession of
+this tremendous governmental structure as the principal spoils of their
+victory.
+
+Nevertheless, under the absolute monarchy, was only the means whereby
+the first revolution, and under Napoleon, to prepare the class rule of
+the bourgeoisie; under the restoration, under Louis Philippe, and under
+the parliamentary republic, it was the instrument of the ruling class,
+however eagerly this class strained after autocracy.  Not before the
+advent of the second Bonaparte does the government seem to have made
+itself fully independent.  The machinery of government has by this time
+so thoroughly fortified itself against society, that the chief of the
+"Society of December 10" is thought good enough to be at its head; a
+fortune-hunter, run in from abroad, is raised on its shield by a drunken
+soldiery, bought by himself with liquor and sausages, and whom he is
+forced ever again to throw sops to.  Hence the timid despair, the sense
+of crushing humiliation and degradation that oppresses the breast of
+France and makes her to choke.  She feels dishonored.
+
+And yet the French Government does not float in the air.  Bonaparte
+represents an economic class, and that the most numerous in the
+commonweal of France--the Allotment Farmer.  [#4 The first French
+Revolution distributed the bulk of the territory of France, held at the
+time by the feudal lords, in small patches among the cultivators of the
+soil.  This allotment of lands created the French farmer class.]
+
+As the Bourbons are the dynasty of large landed property, as the Orleans
+are the dynasty of money, so are the Bonapartes the dynasty of the
+farmer, i.e. of the French masses.  Not the Bonaparte, who threw himself
+at the feet of the bourgeois parliament, but the Bonaparte, who swept
+away the bourgeois parliament, is the elect of this farmer class.  For
+three years the cities had succeeded in falsifying the meaning of the
+election of December 10, and in cheating the farmer out of the
+restoration of the Empire.  The election of December 10, 1848, is not
+carried out until the "coup d'etat" of December 2, 1851.
+
+The allotment farmers are an immense mass, whose individual members live
+in identical conditions, without, however, entering into manifold
+relations with one another.  Their method of production isolates them
+from one another, instead of drawing them into mutual intercourse.  This
+isolation is promoted by the poor means of communication in France,
+together with the poverty of the farmers themselves.  Their field of
+production, the small allotment of land that each cultivates, allows no
+room for a division of labor, and no opportunity for the application of
+science; in other words, it shuts out manifoldness of development,
+diversity of talent, and the luxury of social relations.  Every single
+farmer family is almost self-sufficient; itself produces directly the
+greater part of what it consumes; and it earns its livelihood more by
+means of an interchange with nature than by intercourse with society.
+We have the allotted patch of land, the farmer and his family; alongside
+of that another allotted patch of land, another farmer and another
+family.  A bunch of these makes up a village; a bunch of villages makes
+up a Department.  Thus the large mass of the French nation is
+constituted by the simple addition of equal magnitudes--much as a bag
+with potatoes constitutes a potato-bag.  In so far as millions of
+families live under economic conditions that separate their mode of
+life, their interests and their culture from those of the other classes,
+and that place them in an attitude hostile toward the latter, they
+constitute a class ; in so far as there exists only a local connection
+among these farmers, a connection which the individuality and
+exclusiveness of their interests prevent from generating among them any
+unity of interest, national connections, and political organization,
+they do not constitute a class.  Consequently, they are unable to assert
+their class interests in their own name, be it by a parliament or by
+convention.  They can not represent one another, they must themselves be
+represented.  Their representative must at the same time appear as their
+master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited governmental power,
+that protects them from above, bestows rain and sunshine upon them.
+Accordingly, the political influence of the allotment farmer finds its
+ultimate expression in an Executive power that subjugates the commonweal
+to its own autocratic will.
+
+Historic tradition has given birth to the superstition among the French
+farmers that a man named Napoleon would restore to them all manner of
+glory.  Now, then, an individual turns I up, who gives himself out as
+that man because, obedient to the "Code Napoleon," which provides that
+"La recherche de la paternite est interdite," [#5 The inquiry into
+paternity is forbidden.] he carries the name of Napoleon.  [#6
+L. N. Bonaparte is said to have been an illegitimate son.] After a
+vagabondage of twenty years, and a series of grotesque adventures, the
+myth is verified, and that man becomes the Emperor of the French.  The
+rooted thought of the Nephew becomes a reality because it coincided with
+the rooted thought of the most numerous class among the French.
+
+"But," I shall be objected to, "what about the farmers' uprisings over
+half France, the raids of the Army upon the farmers, the wholesale
+imprisonment and transportation of farmers?"
+
+Indeed, since Louis XIV., France has not experienced such persecutions
+of the farmer on the ground of his demagogic machinations.
+
+But this should be well understood: The Bonaparte dynasty does not
+represent the revolutionary, it represents the conservative farmer; it
+does not represent the farmer, who presses beyond his own economic
+conditions, his little allotment of land it represents him rather who
+would confirm these conditions; it does not represent the rural
+population, that, thanks to its own inherent energy, wishes, jointly
+with the cities to overthrow the old order, it represents, on the
+contrary, the rural population that, hide-bound in the old order, seeks
+to see itself, together with its allotments, saved and favored by the
+ghost of the Empire; it represents, not the intelligence, but the
+superstition of the farmer; not his judgment, but his bias; not his
+future, but his past; not his modern Cevennes; [#7 The Cevennes were the
+theater of the most numerous revolutionary uprisings of the farmer
+class.] but his modern Vendee.  [#8 La Vendee was the theater of
+protracted reactionary uprisings of the farmer class under the first
+Revolution.]
+
+The three years' severe rule of the parliamentary republic had freed a
+part of the French farmers from the Napoleonic illusion, and, though
+even only superficially; had revolutionized them The bourgeoisie threw
+them, however, violently back every time that they set themselves in
+motion.  Under the parliamentary republic, the modern wrestled with the
+traditional consciousness of the French farmer.  The process went on in
+the form of a continuous struggle between the school teachers and the
+parsons;--the bourgeoisie knocked the school teachers down.  For the
+first time, the farmer made an effort to take an independent stand in
+the government of the country; this manifested itself in the prolonged
+conflicts of the Mayors with the Prefects;--the bourgeoisie deposed the
+Mayors.  Finally, during period of the parliamentary republic, the
+farmers of several localities rose against their own product, the
+Army;--the bourgeoisie punished them with states of siege and
+executions.  And this is the identical bourgeoisie, that now howls over
+the "stupidity of the masses," over the "vile multitude," which, it
+claims, betrayed it to Bonaparte.  Itself has violently fortified the
+imperialism of the farmer class; it firmly maintained the conditions
+that Constitute the birth-place of this farmer-religion.  Indeed, the
+bourgeoisie has every reason to fear the stupidity of the masses--so
+long as they remain conservative; and their intelligence--so soon as
+they become revolutionary.
+
+In the revolts that took place after the "coup d'etat" a part of the
+French farmers protested, arms in hand, against their own vote of
+December 10, 1848.  The school house had, since 1848, sharpened their
+wits.  But they had bound themselves over to the nether world of
+history, and history kept them to their word.  Moreover, the majority of
+this population was still so full of prejudices that, just in the
+"reddest" Departments, it voted openly for Bonaparte.  The National
+Assembly prevented, as it thought, this population from walking; the
+farmers now snapped the fetters which the cities had struck upon the
+will of the country districts.  In some places they even indulged the
+grotesque hallucination of a "Convention together with a Napoleon."
+
+After the first revolution had converted the serf farmers into
+freeholders, Napoleon fixed and regulated the conditions under which,
+unmolested, they could exploit the soil of France, that had just fallen
+into their hands, and expiate the youthful passion for property.  But
+that which now bears the French farmer down is that very allotment of
+land, it is the partition of the soil, the form of ownership, which
+Napoleon had consolidated.  These are the material condition that turned
+French feudal peasant into a small or allotment farmer, and Napoleon
+into an Emperor.  Two generations have sufficed to produce the
+inevitable result the progressive deterioration of agriculture, and the
+progressive encumbering of the agriculturist The "Napoleonic" form of
+ownership, which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century was the
+condition for the emancipation and enrichment of the French rural
+population, has, in the course of the century, developed into the law of
+their enslavement and pauperism.  Now, then, this very law is the first
+of the "idees Napoleoniennes," which the second Bonaparte must uphold.
+If he still shares with the farmers the illusion of seeking, not in the
+system of the small allotment itself, but outside of that system, in the
+influence of secondary conditions, the cause of their ruin, his
+experiments are bound to burst like soap-bubbles against the modern
+system of production.
+
+The economic development of the allotment system has turned bottom
+upward the relation of the farmer to the other classes of society.
+Under Napoleon, the parceling out of the agricultural lands into small
+allotments supplemented in the country the free competition and the
+incipient large production of the cities.  The farmer class was the
+ubiquitous protest against the aristocracy of land, just then
+overthrown.  The roots that the system of small allotments cast into the
+soil of France, deprived feudalism of all nutriment.  Its boundary-posts
+constituted the natural buttress of the bourgeoisie against every stroke
+of the old overlords.  But in the course of the nineteenth century, the
+City Usurer stepped into the shoes of the Feudal Lord, the Mortgage
+substituted the Feudal Duties formerly yielded by the soil, bourgeois
+Capital took the place of the aristocracy of Landed Property.  The
+former allotments are now only a pretext that allows the capitalist
+class to draw profit, interest and rent from agricultural lands, and to
+leave to the farmer himself the task of seeing to it that he knock out
+his wages.  The mortgage indebtedness that burdens the soil of France
+imposes upon the French farmer class they payment of an interest as
+great as the annual interest on the whole British national debt.  In
+this slavery of capital, whither its development drives it irresistibly,
+the allotment system has transformed the mass of the French nation into
+troglodytes.  Sixteen million farmers (women and children included),
+house in hovels most of which have only one opening, some two, and the
+few most favored ones three.  Windows are to a house what the five
+senses are to the head.  The bourgeois social order, which, at the
+beginning of the century, placed the State as a sentinel before the
+newly instituted allotment, and that manured this with laurels, has
+become a vampire that sucks out its heart-blood and its very brain, and
+throws it into the alchemist's pot of capital.  The "Code Napoleon" is
+now but the codex of execution, of sheriff's sales and of intensified
+taxation.  To the four million (children, etc., included) official
+paupers, vagabonds, criminals and prostitutes, that France numbers, must
+be added five million souls who hover over the precipice of life, and
+either sojourn in the country itself, or float with their rags and their
+children from the country to the cities, and from the cities back to the
+country.  Accordingly, the interests of the farmers are no longer, as
+under Napoleon, in harmony but in conflict with the interests of the
+bourgeoisie, i.e., with capital; they find their natural allies and
+leaders among the urban proletariat, whose mission is the overthrow of
+the bourgeois social order.  But the "strong and unlimited
+government"--and this is the second of the "idees Napoleoniennes," which
+the second Napoleon has to carried out--, has for its mission the
+forcible defence of this very "material" social order, a "material
+order" that furnishes the slogan in Bonaparte's proclamations against
+the farmers in revolt.
+
+Along with the mortgage, imposed by capital upon the farmer's allotment,
+this is burdened by taxation.  Taxation is the fountain of life to the
+bureaucracy, the Army, the parsons and the court, in short to the whole
+apparatus of the Executive power.  A strong government, and heavy taxes
+are identical.  The system of ownership, involved in the system of
+allotments lends itself by nature for the groundwork of a powerful and
+numerous bureaucracy: it produces an even level of conditions and of
+persons over the whole surface of the country; it, therefore, allows the
+exercise of an even influence upon all parts of this even mass from a
+high central point downwards: it annihilates the aristocratic gradations
+between the popular masses and the Government; it, consequently, calls
+from all sides for the direct intervention of the Government and for the
+intervention of the latter's immediate organs; and, finally, it produces
+an unemployed excess of population, that finds no room either in the
+country or in the cities, that, consequently, snatches after public
+office as a sort of dignified alms, and provokes the creation of further
+offices.  With the new markets, which he opened at the point of the
+bayonet, and with the plunder of the continent, Napoleon returned to the
+farmer class with interest the taxes wrung from them.  These taxes were
+then a goad to the industry of the farmer, while now, on the contrary,
+they rob his industry of its last source of support, and completely sap
+his power to resist poverty.  Indeed, an enormous bureaucracy, richly
+gallooned and well fed is that "idee Napoleonienne" that above all
+others suits the requirements of the second Bonaparte.  How else should
+it be, seeing he is forced to raise alongside of the actual classes of
+society, an artificial class, to which the maintenance of his own regime
+must be a knife-and-fork question?  One of his first financial
+operations was, accordingly, the raising of the salaries of the
+government employees to their former standard and the creation of new
+sinecures.
+
+Another "idee Napoleonienne" is the rule of the parsons as an instrument
+of government.  But while the new-born allotment, in harmony with
+society, in its dependence upon the powers of nature, and in its
+subordination to the authority that protected it from above, was
+naturally religious, the debt-broken allotment, on the contrary, at odds
+with society and authority, and driven beyond its own narrow bounds,
+becomes as naturally irreligious.  Heaven was quite a pretty gift thrown
+in with the narrow strip of land that had just been won, all the more as
+it makes the weather; it, however, becomes an insult from the moment it
+is forced upon the farmer as a substitute for his allotment.  Then the
+parson appears merely as the anointed blood-hound of the earthly
+police,--yet another "idee Napoleonienne."  The expedition against Rome
+will next time take place in France, but in a reverse sense from that of
+M. de Montalembert.
+
+Finally, the culminating point of the "idees Napoleoniennes" is the
+preponderance of the Army.  The Army was the "point of honor" with the
+allotment farmers: it was themselves turned into masters, defending
+abroad their newly established property, glorifying their recently
+conquered nationality, plundering and revolutionizing the world.  The
+uniform was their State costume; war was their poetry; the allotment,
+expanded and rounded up in their phantasy, was the fatherland; and
+patriotism became the ideal form of property.  But the foe, against whom
+the French farmer must now defend his property, are not the Cossacks,
+they are the sheriffs and the tax collectors.  The allotment no longer
+lies in the so-called fatherland, but in the register of mortgages.  The
+Army itself no longer is the flower of the youth of the farmers, it is
+the swamp-blossom of the slum-proletariat of the farmer class.  It
+consists of "remplacants," substitutes, just as the second Bonaparte
+himself is but a remplacant," a substitute, for Napoleon.  Its feats of
+heroism are now performed in raids instituted against farmers and in the
+service of the police;--and when the internal contradictions of his own
+system shall drive the chief of the "Society of December 10" across the
+French frontier, that Army will, after a few bandit-raids, gather no
+laurels but only hard knocks.
+
+It is evident that all the "idees Napoleoniennes" are the ideas of the
+undeveloped and youthfully fresh allotment; they are an absurdity for
+the allotment that now survives.  They are only the hallucinations of
+its death struggle; words turned to hollow phrases, spirits turned to
+spooks.  But this parody of the Empire was requisite in order to free
+the mass of the French nation from the weight of tradition, and to
+elaborate sharply the contrast between Government and Society.  Along
+with the progressive decay of the allotment, the governmental structure,
+reared upon it, breaks down.  The centralization of Government, required
+by modern society, rises only upon the ruins of the military and
+bureaucratic governmental machinery that was forged in contrast to
+feudalism.
+
+The conditions of the French farmers' class solve to us the riddle of
+the general elections of December 20 and 21, that led the second
+Bonaparte to the top of Sinai, not to receive, but to decree laws.
+
+The bourgeoisie had now, manifestly, no choice but to elect Bonaparte.
+When at the Council of Constance, the puritans complained of the sinful
+life of the Popes, and moaned about the need of a reform in morals,
+Cardinal d'Ailly thundered into their faces: "Only the devil in his Own
+person can now save the Catholic Church, and you demand angels."  So,
+likewise, did the French bourgeoisie cry out after the "coup d'etat":
+"Only the chief of the 'Society of December 10' can now save bourgeois
+society, only theft can save property, only perjury religion, only
+bastardy the family, only disorder order!"
+
+Bonaparte, as autocratic Executive power, fulfills his mission to secure
+"bourgeois order."  But the strength of this bourgeois order lies in the
+middle class.  He feels himself the representative of the middle class,
+and issues his decrees in that sense.  Nevertheless, he is something
+only because he has broken the political power of this class, and daily
+breaks it anew.  Hence he feels himself the adversary of the political
+and the literary power of the middle class.  But, by protecting their
+material, he nourishes anew their political power.  Consequently, the
+cause must be kept alive, but the result, wherever it manifests itself,
+swept out of existence.  But this procedure is impossible without slight
+mistakings of causes and effects, seeing that both, in their mutual
+action and reaction, lose their distinctive marks.  Thereupon, new
+decrees, that blur the line of distinction.  Bonaparte, furthermore,
+feels himself, as against the bourgeoisie, the representative of the
+farmer and the people in general, who, within bourgeois society, is to
+render the lower classes of society happy.  To this end, new decrees,
+intended to exploit the "true Socialists," together with their
+governmental wisdom.  But, above all, Bonaparte feels himself the chief
+of the "Society of December 10," the representative of the
+slum-proletariat, to which he himself, his immediate surroundings, his
+Government, and his army alike belong, the main object with all of whom
+is to be good to themselves, and draw Californian tickets out of the
+national treasury.  An he affirms his chieftainship of the "Society of
+December 10" with decrees, without decrees, and despite decrees.
+
+This contradictory mission of the man explains the contradictions of his
+own Government, and that confused groping about, that now seeks to win,
+then to humiliate now this class and then that, and finishes by arraying
+against itself all the classes; whose actual insecurity constitutes a
+highly comical contrast with the imperious, categoric style of the
+Government acts, copied closely from the Uncle.
+
+Industry and commerce, i.e., the business of the middle class, are to be
+made to blossom in hot-house style under the "strong Government."  Loans
+for a number of railroad grants.  But the Bonapartist slum-proletariat
+is to enrich itself.  Peculation is carried on with railroad concessions
+on the Bourse by the initiated; but no capital is forthcoming for the
+railroads.  The bank then pledges itself to make advances upon railroad
+stock; but the bank is itself to be exploited; hence, it must be
+cajoled; it is released of the obligation to publish its reports weekly.
+Then follows a leonine treaty between the bank and the Government.  The
+people are to be occupied: public works are ordered; but the public
+works raise the tax rates upon the people; thereupon the taxes are
+reduced by an attack upon the national bond-holders through the
+conversion of the five per cent "rentes" [#9 The name of the French
+national bonds.] into four-and-halves.  Yet the middle class must again
+be tipped: to this end, the tax on wine is doubled for the people, who
+buy it at retail, and is reduced to one-half for the middle class, that
+drink it at wholesale.  Genuine labor organizations are dissolved, but
+promises are made of future wonders to accrue from organization.  The
+farmers are to be helped: mortgage-banks are set up that must promote
+the indebtedness; of the farmer and the concentration of property but
+again, these banks are to be utilized especially to the end of squeezing
+money out of the confiscated estates of the House of Orleans; no
+capitalist will listen to this scheme, which, moreover, is not mentioned
+in the decree; the mortgage bank remains a mere decree, etc., etc.
+
+Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all
+classes; but he can give to none without taking from the others.  As was
+said of the Duke of Guise, at the time of the Fronde, that he was the
+most obliging man in France because he had converted all his estates
+into bonds upon himself for his Parisians, so would Napoleon like to be
+the most obliging man in France and convert all property and all labor
+of France into a personal bond upon himself.  He would like to steal the
+whole of France to make a present thereof to France, or rather to be
+able to purchase France back again with French money;--as chief of the
+"Society of December 10," he must purchase that which is to be his.  All
+the State institutions, the Senate, the Council of State, the
+Legislature, the Legion of Honor, the Soldiers' decorations, the public
+baths, the public buildings, the railroads, the General Staff of the
+National Guard, exclusive of the rank and file, the confiscated estates
+of the House of Orleans,--all are converted into institutions for
+purchase and sale.  Every place in the Army and the machinery of
+Government becomes a purchasing power.  The most important thing,
+however, in this process, whereby France is taken to be given back to
+herself, are the percentages that, in the transfer, drop into the hands
+of the chief and the members of the "Society of December 10."  The
+witticisms with which the Countess of L., the mistress of de Morny,
+characterized the confiscations of the Orleanist estates: "C'est le
+premier vol de l'aigle," [#10 "It is the first flight of the eagle" The
+French word "vol" means theft as well as flight.] fits every fight of
+the eagle that is rather a crow.  He himself and his followers daily
+call out to themselves, like the Italian Carthusian monk in the legend
+does to the miser, who displayfully counted the goods on which he could
+live for many years to come: "Tu fai conto sopra i beni, bisogna prima
+far il conto sopra gli anni."  [#11 "You count your property you should
+rather count the years left to you."] In order not to make a mistake in
+the years, they count by minutes.  A crowd of fellows, of the best among
+whom all that can be said is that one knows not whence he comes--a
+noisy, restless "Boheme," greedy after plunder, that crawls about in
+gallooned frocks with the same grotesque dignity as Soulonque's [#12
+Soulonque was the negro Emperor of the short-lived negro Empire of
+Hayti.] Imperial dignitaries--, thronged the court crowded the
+ministries, and pressed upon the head of the Government and of the Army.
+One can picture to himself this upper crust of the "Society of December
+10" by considering that Veron Crevel [#13 Crevel is a character of
+Balzac, drawn after Dr. Veron, the proprietor of the "Constitutional"
+newspaper, as a type of the dissolute Parisian Philistine.] is their
+preacher of morality, and Granier de Cassagnac their thinker.  When
+Guizot, at the time he was Minister, employed this Granier on an obscure
+sheet against the dynastic opposition, he used to praise him with the
+term: "C'est le roi des droles."  [#14 "He Is the king of the clowns."]
+It were a mistake to recall the days of the Regency or of Louis XV. by
+the court and the kit of Louis Bonaparte's: "Often did France have a
+mistress-administration, but never yet an administration of kept men."
+[#15 Madame de Girardin.]
+
+Harassed by the contradictory demands of his situation, and compelled,
+like a sleight-of-hands performer, to keep, by means of constant
+surprises, the eyes of the public riveted upon himself as the substitute
+of Napoleon, compelled, consequently, everyday to accomplish a sort of
+"coup" on a small scale, Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois social
+system into disorder; he broaches everything that seemed unbroachable by
+the revolution of 1848; he makes one set people patient under the
+revolution and another anxious for it; he produces anarchy itself in the
+name of order by rubbing off from the whole machinery of Government the
+veneer of sanctity, by profanting it, by rendering it at once nauseating
+and laughable.  He rehearses in Paris the cult of the sacred coat of
+Trier with the cult of the Napoleonic Imperial mantle.  But when the
+Imperial Mantle shall have finally fallen upon the shoulders of Louis
+Bonaparte, then will also the iron statue of Napoleon drop down from the
+top of the Vendome column.  [#16 A prophecy that a few years later,
+after Bonaparte's coronation as Emperor, was literally fulfilled.  By
+order of Emperor Louis Napoleon, the military statue of the Napoleon
+that originally surmounted the Vendome was taken down and replaced by
+one of first Napoleon in imperial robes.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End Project Gutenberg Etext of Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
+
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