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diff --git a/1346-h/1346-h.htm b/1346-h/1346-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea1ffed --- /dev/null +++ b/1346-h/1346-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4245 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, by Karl Marx</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1346 ***</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’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’s Preface</h2> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 “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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—“The Eighteenth +Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” +</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—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. +</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’, 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: “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. +</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’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. +</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 “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. +</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 “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. +</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—until finally that +situation is created which renders all retreat impossible, and the conditions +themselves cry out: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Hic Rhodus, hic salta!”<br /> +[#2 Here is Rhodes, leap here! An allusion to Aesop’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—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. +</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 +“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.” +</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—The February period; +</p> + +<p> +Second—The period of constituting the republic, or of the constitutive +national assembly (May 4, 1848, to May 29th, 1849); +</p> + +<p> +Third—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—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. +</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’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. +</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’ 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. +</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 +“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.] +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</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 “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. +</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’ +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 “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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.) +</p> + +<p> +“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.) +</p> + +<p> +“The domicile of the citizen is inviolable, except under the forms +prescribed by law.” (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 “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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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 “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. +</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’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, “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. +</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’ 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. +</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 “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. +</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’ 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. +</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 “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. +</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’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’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. +</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 +“Responsibility law” 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 “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. +</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’ 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 “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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 “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. +</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—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. +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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.] +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 +“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. +</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’ 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’ 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 +“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. +</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 “their people” +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 “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. +</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—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. +</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: “If they but dare to assail universal suffrage . +. . then . . . then we will show who we are!” Nous verrons. [#5 We shall +see.] +</p> + +<p> +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.] +</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—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. +</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 “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. +</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’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—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. +</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;—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”. +</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 & +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—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. +</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’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. +</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,—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 “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. +</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,—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’ 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? +</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 “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. +</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’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. +</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,—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. +</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—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. +</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—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. +</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, “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. +</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’ 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 “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. +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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 “Society of December 10,” 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 “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. +</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’ 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. +</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 “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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’ 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. +</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 +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.] +</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’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. +</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 “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. +</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 +“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. +</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’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. +</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 “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.” +</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’ +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’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 “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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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. +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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 “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. +</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, +“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. +</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’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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 “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. +</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—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. +</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 +“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. +</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—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.” +</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 +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 “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. +</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—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—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”: +</p> + +<p> +“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.) +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 “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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Before hastening to the end, let us sum up shortly the plan of its history: +</p> + +<p> +I.—First Period. From February 24 to May 4, 1848. February period. +Prologue. Universal fraternity swindle. +</p> + +<p> +II.—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.—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’, middle class +with the bourgeoisie and with Bonaparte. Defeat of the small traders’ +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’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: “Long live the Republic!” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 & +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. +</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’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> +“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. +</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: “Well hast thou grubbed, old mole!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 “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. +</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—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 “coup d’etat” +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—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 “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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</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’ 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</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 “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. +</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’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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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’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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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 “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. +</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;—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.] +</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 “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.] +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1346 ***</div> +</body> + +</html> + + |