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Klassenkampf in Frankreich
Karl Marx
(1850)

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Le lotte di classe in Francia The Class Struggles in France
I. La disfatta del giugno 1848.Part I: The Defeat of June 1848
Dopo la rivoluzione di luglio, accompagnando il suo compare, il duca d’Orléans, in trionfo all’Hôtel-de-Ville, il banchiere Laffitte lasciava cadere questo detto: «D’ora innanzi regneranno i banchieri». Laffitte aveva svelato il mistero della rivoluzione.

Sotto Luigi Filippo non era la borghesia francese che regnava, ma una frazione di essa: banchieri, re della Borsa, re delle ferrovie, proprietarî di miniere di carbone e di ferro e proprietarî di foreste, e una parte della proprietà fondiaria rappattumata con essi; insomma la cosidetta aristocrazia della finanza. Era essa che sedeva sul trono, che dettava leggi nelle Camere, che dispensava i posti governativi, dal ministero fino allo spaccio di tabacchi.

La borghesia veramente industriale formava una parte dell’opposizione ufficiale; era cioè rappresentata nelle Camere solo come minoranza. Tanto più decisiva se ne presentava l’opposizione, quanto più netto era lo sviluppo del dominio esclusivo dell’aristocrazia finanziaria e quanto più essa medesima, soffocate nel sangue le sommosse del 1832, 1834 e 1839, immaginava d’avere assicurato il proprio dominio sulla classe operaia. Grandin, fabbricante di Rouen, il portavoce più fanatico della reazione borghese, sia nell’Assemblea nazionale costituente, sia nella legislativa, era nella Camera dei deputati il più violento avversario di Guizot. Leone Faucher, noto più tardi pei suoi impotenti sforzi di elevarsi a Guizot della controrivoluzione francese, conduceva, negli ultimi tempi di Luigi Filippo, una guerra letteraria per l’industria contro la speculazione ed il suo caudatario, il governo. Bastiat agitava, in nome di Bordeaux e di tutta la Francia viticola, contro il sistema imperante.

La piccola borghesia, in ogni sua gradazione, ed egualmente la classe dei contadini, erano del tutto escluse dal potere politico. S’incontravano finalmente nell’opposizione ufficiale, oppure affatto al di fuori del pays légal, i rappresentanti ideologi e gli oratori delle accennate classi, i loro scienziati, avvocati, medici, ecc.; in una parola, le loro così dette «capacità».

Le necessità della propria finanza ponevano la monarchia di luglio all’intima dipendenza dell’alta borghesia; dipendenza, che divenne la sorgente inesauribile d’un crescente disagio della finanza. Impossibile subordinare l’amministrazione dello Stato all’interesse della produzione nazionale, senza ristabilire l’equilibrio nel bilancio, l’equilibrio tra le uscite e le entrate dello Stato. Ed in qual modo ristabilire quest’equilibrio, senza limitare le spese dello Stato, ossia senza vulnerare interessi, ch’erano altrettanti sostegni del sistema dominante, e senza riordinare la ripartizione delle imposte, ch’è quanto dire senza addossare all’alta borghesia stessa una parte ragguardevole del peso delle imposte?

L’indebitamento dello Stato era ben piuttosto un interesse diretto della frazione della borghesia, governante e legiferante per mezzo della Camera. Il deficit dello Stato: ecco propriamente il vero oggetto della sua speculazione e la fonte principale del suo arricchimento. Dopo ciascun anno, un nuovo deficit. Dopo il decorso di quattro o cinque anni, un nuovo prestito. Ed ogni nuovo prestito forniva all’aristocrazia finanziaria nuova occasione a truffare lo Stato, tenuto artificiosamente sospeso nelle ansie della bancarotta ed obbligato così a contrattare coi banchieri nelle condizioni più sfavorevoli. Ogni nuovo prestito offriva una seconda occasione a svaligiare il pubblico, che impiega i suoi capitali in rendita dello Stato, con operazioni di Borsa, al cui mistero erano iniziati governo e maggioranza della Camera. Erano sovratutto la situazione oscillante del credito dello Stato ed il possesso dei segreti di Stato, che davano ai banchieri, non meno che ai loro affiliati nelle Camere e sul trono, la possibilità di provocare straordinarie, improvvise oscillazioni, il cui risultato costante doveva essere la rovina d’una massa di capitalisti più piccoli e l’arricchimento favolosamente rapido dei giocatore in grande. L’essere il deficit dello Stato un diretto interesse della frazione dominante della borghesia, spiega come gli stanziamenti ordinarî dello Stato negli ultimi anni del regime di Luigi Filippo superassero di gran lunga il doppio di quelli sotto Napoleone, raggiungendo annualmente la somma di ben quasi 400 milioni di franchi, mentre la media esportazione complessiva della Francia elevavasi a 750 milioni di franchi. Le enormi somme, che per tal modo scorrevano per le mani dello Stato, davano oltracciò origine a loschi appalti, a corruzioni, a frodi, a bricconate d’ogni specie. Lo svaligiamento dello Stato, quale avveniva in grande coi prestiti, si ripeteva al minuto nei lavori dello Stato. Il rapporto tra la Camera e il governo si ramificava in rapporti tra le singole amministrazioni ed i singoli imprenditori.

Al pari degli stanziamenti dello Stato e dei prestiti dello Stato, la classe dominante sfruttava le costruzioni ferroviarie. Allo Stato le Camere addossavano i pesi principali, assicurandone i frutti d’oro all’aristocrazia finanziaria speculatrice. Si accumulavano gli scandali nella Camera dei deputati, allorchè il caso fe’ venire a galla che tutti quanti i membri della maggioranza, alcuni dei ministri compresi, partecipavano come azionisti a quelle medesime costruzioni ferroviarie, ch’essi facevano poi, in qualità di legislatori, intraprendere a spese dello Stato.

Non v’era, all’incontro, piccola riforma finanziaria, che non naufragasse di fronte all’influenza dei banchieri. Così, ad esempio, la riforma postale. Rothschild protestò. Poteva lo Stato assottigliare cespiti d’entrata, donde doveva ricavare gli interessi del suo debito sempre crescenti?

La monarchia di luglio non era altro se non una Compagnia d’azioni per lo sfruttamento della ricchezza nazionale francese, i cui dividendi si ripartivano fra ministri, Camere, 240.000 elettori ed il loro seguito. Luigi Filippo era il direttore di questa Compagnia, vero Roberto Macaire sul trono. Commercio, industria, agricoltura, navigazione, questi interessi della borghesia industriale, dovevano, sotto tal sistema, trovarsi esposti permanentemente a pericolare e intisichire. Gouvernement à bon marché, aveva essa scritto nei giorni di luglio sulla propria bandiera.

Mentre l’aristocrazia finanziaria dettava le leggi, guidava l’amministrazione dello Stato, disponeva di tutti i pubblici poteri organizzati, dominava la pubblica opinione coi fatti e colla stampa, andava ripetendosi in ogni sfera, dalla Corte al Café-Borgne, l’identica prostituzione, l’identica frode svergognata, l’identica libidine di arricchire non mediante la produzione, ma mediante la rapina dell’altrui ricchezza già creata; erompeva cioè alla superficie della società borghese la tolleranza più sfrenata, più insistentemente in attrito colle stesse leggi borghesi, degli appetiti malsani ed abbietti, nei quali trova la sua natural soddisfazione la ricchezza scaturita dal gioco, e il godimento diventa crapuleux, e denaro e lordura e sangue scorrono insieme. L’aristocrazia finanziaria, e nel suo modo di acquisto o nei suoi godimenti, non è che la risurrezione del proletariato dei pezzenti sulle altezze della società borghese.

E le frazioni non dominanti della borghesia francese gridarono: Corruzione! Il popolo gridò: à bas les grands voleurs! à bas les assassins!, allorchè nel 1847 s’impiantarono pubblicamente sulle più elevate scene della società borghese quegli stessi spettacoli, che sono di regola rappresentati dal proletariato dei pezzenti nei bordelli, negli stabilimenti dei poveri e dei pazzi, dinanzi al giudice, nei bagni e sul patibolo. La borghesia industriale vide in pericolo i proprî interessi; la piccola borghesia trovavasi urtata nella sua morale, la fantasia popolare si rivoltava, Parigi era inondata da libelli, — la dynastie Rothschild, les juifs rois de l’époque, etc., — nei quali il dominio dell’aristocrazia finanziaria veniva, con maggiore o minor spirito, denunciato e stigmatizzato.

Rien pour la gloire! La guerra non rende nulla! la paix partout et toujours! La guerra fa abbassare il corso del tre e quattro per cento!; così aveva scritto sulla sua bandiera la Francia degli ebrei di Borsa. La sua politica estera andò per tal modo a smarrirsi in una serie di mortificazioni del sentimento nazionale francese, la cui irritazione divenne acutissima quando, coll’incorporazione di Cracovia all’Austria, venne consumato l’assassinio della Polonia e Guizot entrò attivamente nella guerra del Sonderbund svizzero, a favore della Santa Alleanza. La vittoria dei liberali svizzeri in questo simulacro di guerra sollevò l’amor proprio dell’opposizione borghese in Francia; la sanguinosa insurrezione del popolo a Palermo agì come una scossa elettrica sulla massa popolare paralizzata e ne risvegliò i grandi ricordi e le passioni rivoluzionarie.[1]

Due avvenimenti economici mondiali accelerarono finalmente l’esplosione dell’universale disgusto e fecero maturare il malcontento in rivolta.

La malattia delle patate ed i cattivi raccolti del 1845 e 1846 avevano sovreccitato nel popolo il generale fermento. La carestia del 1847 aveva chiamato sulla Francia, come sul resto del continente, conflitti sanguinosi. Ed ecco, di fronte alle orgie svergognate dell’aristocrazia finanziaria, la lotta del popolo pei mezzi primi di sussistenza! Ecco a Buzançais i rivoltosi della fame giustiziati ed a Parigi gli scrocconi satolli strappati ai tribunali dalla famiglia reale!

Il secondo grande avvenimento economico, che affrettò lo scoppio della rivoluzione, fu una crisi generale del commercio e dell’industria in Inghilterra; crisi che, già preannunciata nell’autunno del 1845 dalla disfatta in massa degli speculatori d’azioni ferroviarie, e contenuta durante il 1846 da una serie di incidenti, quale l’imminente abolizione dei dazî sui cereali, eruppe finalmente nell’autunno del 1847 colle bancarotte dei grandi commercianti in coloniali di Londra, alle quali tennero immediatamente dietro i fallimenti delle Banche di provincia e la chiusura delle fabbriche nei distretti industriali inglesi. Non erasi ancora avvertita l’influenza di questa crisi nel continente, allorquando scoppiò la rivoluzione di febbraio.

La devastazione del commercio e dell’industria, operata dall’epidemia economica, rese ancor più insopportabile l’egemonia dell’aristocrazia finanziaria. In tutta la Francia, la borghesia d’opposizione bandì l’agitazione dei banchetti per una riforma elettorale, la quale doveva conquistarle la maggioranza nelle Camere ed abbattere il ministero della Borsa. A Parigi la crisi ebbe ancora questo speciale effetto di gettare sul commercio interno una massa di fabbricanti e di grandi negozianti, cui le condizioni d’allora chiudevano gli affari sul mercato estero. Essi eressero grandi stabilimenti, la cui concorrenza rovinò in massa droghieri e bottegai. Donde innumerevoli fallimenti in questa parte della borghesia parigina; donde la sua apparizione rivoluzionaria nel febbraio. È noto come Guizot e le Camere risposero ai progetti di riforma con una sfida spoglia d’equivoci, come Luigi Filippo si decise troppo tardi per un ministero Barrot, come si venne al conflitto tra il popolo e l’esercito, come il contegno passivo della guardia nazionale disarmò l’esercito, come la monarchia di luglio dovette cedere il posto ad un governo provvisorio.

Il governo provvisorio, sorto sulle barricate di febbraio, rispecchiava, di necessità, nella sua composizione i differenti partiti, che si erano divisa la vittoria. Esso non poteva essere altro che un compromesso delle diverse classi, che unite avevano rovesciato il trono di luglio, ma i cui interessi si trovavano in rapporto ostile tra loro. La gran maggioranza ne era formata da rappresentanti della borghesia: la piccola borghesia repubblicana era rappresentata da Ledru-Rollin e Flocon, la borghesia repubblicana dagli uomini del National, l’opposizione dinastica da Cremieux, Dupont de l’Eure, ecc. Due soli rappresentanti possedeva la classe lavoratrice: Luigi Blanc ed Albert. Quanto infine a Lamartine, egli nel governo provvisorio non impersonava alcun vero interesse, alcuna classe determinata; egli era la stessa rivoluzione di febbraio, la collettiva insurrezione colle sue illusioni, la sua poesia, il suo contenuto chimerico e le sue frasi. Del resto, sia per la sua posizione, sia per le sue idee, l’oratore della rivoluzione di febbraio apparteneva alla borghesia.

Se Parigi domina la Francia grazie all’accentramento politico, sono gli operai che nei momenti di convulsioni rivoluzionarie dominano Parigi. Primo atto di vita del governo provvisorio fu il tentativo di sottrarsi a tale influenza preponderante con un appello da Parigi ubbriaca alla Francia digiuna. Lamartine contestò ai combattenti delle barricate il diritto di proclamare la repubblica; a ciò era autorizzata solo la maggioranza dei francesi, il cui voto conveniva attendere; non istava al proletariato parigino di macchiare la propria vittoria con un’usurpazione. La borghesia permetteva al proletariato una sola usurpazione — quella del campo di battaglia.

Al mezzodì del 25 febbraio, la repubblica non era ancora proclamata, mentre all’incontro tutti i ministeri erano digià ripartiti tra gli elementi borghesi del governo provvisorio ed i generali, i banchieri e gli avvocati del National. Senonchè gli operai erano risoluti a non tollerare questa volta una mistificazione del genere di quella del luglio 1830. Erano pronti a riprendere la lotta ed a strappare colla forza delle armi la repubblica Tale fu il messaggio recato da Raspail all’Hôtel-de-Ville. In nome del proletariato parigino, egli intimò al governo provvisorio di proclamare la repubblica; ove l’intimazione non fosse eseguita entro due ore, egli sarebbe ritornato alla testa di duecentomila uomini. Non erano ancora freddi i cadaveri dei caduti, non ancora rimosse le barricate, gli operai non ancora disarmati e l’unica forza che loro si potesse opporre era la guardia nazionale. In tale situazione di cose, sbollirono immediatamente le savie considerazioni di Stato e gli scrupoli giuridici di coscienza del governo provvisorio. Non era trascorso il termine di due ore, e già su tutte le muraglie di Parigi brillavano le storiche parole gigantesche: République française! Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Colla proclamazione della repubblica sulla base del suffragio universale, si spegneva perfino la memoria degli intenti e dei motivi ristretti, che avevano spinto la borghesia nella rivoluzione di febbraio. Non più alcune poche frazioni della cittadinanza; erano tutte le classi della società francese, che improvvisamente si trovavano rovesciate nella cerchia del potere politico, costrette ad abbandonare i palchi, la platea e la galleria e a recitare tutte insieme sul palco scenico rivoluzionario! Col regno costituzionale, anche il simulacro d’una potenza di Stato autocrate, in antagonismo alla società borghese, veniva a svanire e con esso tutta la serie di lotte secondarie, provocate da quella potenza speciosa!

Il proletariato, mentre imponeva al governo provvisorio, e per mezzo del governo provvisorio, alla Francia, la repubblica, si affacciava d’un subito come partito autonomo al proscenio, ma nello stesso tempo si chiamava addosso il giudizio di tutta la Francia borghese. Ciò ch’esso conquistò, fu il terreno alla lotta per la propria emancipazione rivoluzionaria, non certamente quest’emancipazione stessa.

Ben piuttosto era destinata la repubblica di febbraio a portare, innanzi tutto, a compimento il dominio della borghesia, mentr’essa lasciava entrare nella cerchia del potere politico, accanto all’aristocrazia della finanza, tutte le classi possidenti. La maggioranza dei grandi proprietarî fondiarî, i legittimisti, venne estratta dal nulla politico, in cui l’aveva relegata la monarchia di luglio. Non invano la Gazette de France aveva agitato in comune coi fogli d’opposizione; non invano Larochejacquelin aveva abbracciato, nella seduta della Camera dei deputati del 21 febbraio, il partito della rivoluzione. Mediante il suffragio universale, i proprietarî nominali costituenti la grande maggioranza dei francesi, i contadini, furono investiti arbitri dei destini della Francia. La repubblica di febbraio lasciò finalmente avanzarsi risoluto il dominio della borghesia, mentre foggiavasi la corona, dietro cui si teneva celato il capitale.

Come gli operai nei giorni di luglio avevano combattuto la monarchia borghese, così combatterono nei giorni di febbraio la repubblica borghese. Come la monarchia di luglio era costretta a proclamarsi monarchia circondata da istituzioni repubblicane, così la repubblica di febbraio a proclamarsi repubblica circondata da istituzioni sociali. Il proletariato parigino aveva strappato anche questa concessione.

Un operaio, Marche, dettò il decreto, con cui il governo provvisorio appena costituito obbligavasi ad assicurare col lavoro l’esistenza dei lavoratori, a provvedere di lavoro tutti i cittadini, ecc. Ed allorquando, pochi giorni più tardi, esso dimenticò le promesse e sembrò aver perduto di vista il proletariato, una massa di 20.000 operai marciò sull’Hôtel-de-Ville, al grido di: Organizzazione del lavoro! Costituzione d’uno speciale ministero del lavoro! Riluttante e dopo lungo dibattito, il Governo provvisorio nominò una Commissione speciale permanente, incaricata di scogitare i mezzi pel miglioramento delle classi lavoratrici! Questa Commissione venne composta da delegati delle corporazioni di mestiere di Parigi e presieduta da Luigi Blanc ed Albert. Il Lussemburgo le fu assegnato a sede per le adunanze. Così i rappresentanti della classe operaia venivano banditi dal seggio del Governo provvisorio, la parte borghese del quale tenne esclusivamente in sue mani l’effettivo potere dello Stato e le redini dell’amministrazione; ed accanto ai ministeri delle finanze, del commercio, dei lavori pubblici, accanto alla Banca ed alla Borsa, sorse una sinagoga socialista, i cui sommi pontefici, Luigi Blanc ed Albert, avevano la missione di scoprire la terra promessa, di annunciare il nuovo evangelo e di dare occupazione al proletariato. Quasi a distinzione da ogni potere profano dello Stato, non veniva messo a loro disposizione alcun bilancio, alcun potere esecutivo. Era colla testa ch’essi dovevano dar di cozzo nei pilastri fondamentali della società borghese. Mentre il Lussemburgo cercava la pietra filosofale, nell’Hôtel-de-Ville si batteva la moneta avente corso.

Eppure, le pretese del proletariato parigino, in quanto soverchiavano la repubblica borghese, non potevano concretarsi altrimenti che nella nebulosità del Lussemburgo.

In comune colla borghesia gli operai avevano fatto la rivoluzione di febbraio; a fianco della borghesia cercarono essi di attuare i loro interessi, allo stesso modo con cui anche nel governo provvisorio avevano installato accanto alla maggioranza un operaio. Organizzazione del lavoro! Ma il lavoro salariato, è l’attuale organizzazione borghese del lavoro. Senz’esso, nè capitale, nè borghesia, nè società borghese. Uno speciale ministero del lavoro! Ma i ministeri delle finanze, del commercio, dei lavori pubblici, non sono forse i ministeri borghesi del lavoro? Accanto ad essi un ministero proletario del lavoro non sarebbe stato che un ministero dell’impotenza, un ministero dei pii desiderî, una commissione del Lussemburgo. Come gli operai credevano d’emanciparsi a fianco della borghesia, così ritenevano di poter compiere una rivoluzione proletaria a fianco delle altre nazioni borghesi, entro le pareti nazionali della Francia. Ma i rapporti di produzione francesi sono subordinati al commercio estero della Francia, alla sua situazione nel mercato mondiale ed alle leggi di questo. In qual modo poteva la Francia spezzarli, senza una guerra europea rivoluzionaria, che si ripercuotesse sul despota del mercato mondiale, sull’Inghilterra?

Una classe, nella quale si concentrano gli interessi rivoluzionarî della società, non appena si è sollevata, trova immediatamente nella sua stessa situazione il contenuto ed il materiale della propria attività rivoluzionaria: abbatte nemici, adotta le misure suggerite dalla necessità della lotta; poi le conseguenze dei suoi proprî atti la spingono oltre. Essa non subordina il suo còmpito a ricerche teoriche. La classe operaia francese non si trovava a quest’altezza di vedute; ell’era ancora incapace di portare a compimento la propria rivoluzione.

Lo sviluppo del proletariato industriale è sovratutto subordinato allo sviluppo della borghesia industriale. È appena sotto il dominio di questa ch’esso incomincia ad acquistare una consistenza diffusa su tutta la nazione, la quale gli permetta di dare un carattere nazionale alla propria rivoluzione; è anzi appena allora ch’esso crea i moderni mezzi di produzione, destinati appunto ad essere altrettanti mezzi della sua redenzione rivoluzionaria. È appena il dominio della borghesia industriale che strappa le radici materiali della società feudale, spianando il terreno, sul quale solamente è possibile una rivoluzione proletaria. L’industria francese è più progredita e la borghesia francese più rivoluzionariamente sviluppata di quelle del restante continente. Ma la rivoluzione di febbraio non era essa diretta immediatamente contro l’aristocrazia finanziaria? Da questa circostanza s’ebbe la prova che non era la borghesia industriale la dominatrice in Francia. La borghesia industriale può dominare solo là, ove l’industria moderna foggia a propria immagine tutti i rapporti di proprietà, e l’industria può raggiungere un simile potere solo là, ov’essa stessa abbia conquistato il mercato mondiale. Ma l’industria francese assicura, in gran parte, a sè medesima il mercato nazionale solo per mezzo di un sistema proibitivo più o meno modificato. Se il proletariato francese, per conseguenza, possiede, nel momento d’una rivoluzione a Parigi, un potere di fatto ed un’influenza, che lo spronano ad uno slancio eccessivo pei suoi mezzi, nella restante Francia esso si trova rinserrato in singoli centri industriali isolati, quasi inavvertito in mezzo al numero preponderante di contadini e piccoli borghesi. La lotta contro il capitale nella sua forma moderna d’evoluzione, nel suo momento d’efflorescenza, la lotta del salariato industriale contro il borghese industriale, è in Francia un fatto parziale, che dopo i giorni di febbraio poteva tanto meno dare un contenuto nazionale alla rivoluzione, in quanto la lotta contro i metodi secondarî di sfruttamento capitalistico, la lotta dei contadini contro l’usura dell’ipoteca, del piccolo borghese contro il grande commerciante, il grande banchiere ed il grande fabbricante, in una parola contro la bancarotta, queste varie forme di lotta trovavansi tuttora inviluppate nell’insurrezione contro l’aristocrazia finanziaria in generale. Nulla di più spiegabile adunque del tentativo da parte del proletariato di attuare il proprio interesse di fianco all’interesse borghese, anzichè farlo valere quale interesse rivoluzionario della società stessa, — e del lasciare cadere la bandiera rossa dinanzi alla tricolore. Gli operai francesi non potevano muovere passo in avanti nè torcere un capello all’ordine borghese prima che il corso della rivoluzione sollevasse la massa della nazione, ch’è tra il proletariato e la borghesia, contadini e piccoli borghesi, contro quest’ordine, contro il dominio del capitale, e li costringesse ad unirsi ai proletarî come a loro avanguardia. Solamente coll’enorme disfatta del giugno potevano gli operai guadagnarsi questa vittoria.

Alla Commissione del Lussemburgo, a questa creatura degli operai parigini, rimane il merito d’aver svelato dall’alto d’una tribuna europea il segreto della rivoluzione del secolo decimonono: l’emancipazione del proletariato. Il Moniteur era furibondo quando dovette propagare ufficialmente le «selvagge stravaganze», che sino allora giacevano sepolte negli scritti clandestini dei socialisti e solo di tempo in tempo percuotevano gli orecchi della borghesia, quali leggende lontane, metà paurose, metà ridicole. L’Europa si levò di soprassalto dal suo torpore. Nell’idea dei proletarî, adunque, i quali scambiavano l’aristocrazia finanziaria colla borghesia in generale; nella chimera di valentuomini repubblicani, i quali negavano l’esistenza stessa delle classi, o tutt’al più l’ammettevano come conseguenza della monarchia costituzionale; nelle frasi ipocrite delle frazioni borghesi sin qui escluse dal dominio, il dominio della borghesia era abolito in forza della proclamazione della repubblica. Allora tutti i realisti si metamorfosarono in repubblicani e tutti i milionarî di Parigi in lavoratori. La parola, che corrispondeva a quest’artificiale soppressione dei rapporti di classe, era la fraternité, l’universale affratellamento, l’universale fratellanza. Questa bonaria astrazione dall’antagonismo di classe, questo livellamento sentimentale degli interessi contradditorii di classe, questo estatico elevarsi al di sopra della lotta di classe, la fraternité, era il vero motto della rivoluzione di febbraio. Ciò che divideva le classi, era un semplice malinteso, e Lamartine battezzava il governo provvisorio nel 24 febbraio: un gouvernement qui suspende ce malentendu terrible qui existe entre les différentes classes. Il proletariato parigino gavazzava in questa magnanima ubbriacatura di fraternità.

Il governo provvisorio, dal canto suo, una volta costretto a proclamare la repubblica, fe’ di tutto per renderla accetta alla borghesia ed alle provincie. Si rinnegarono i sanguinosi terrori della prima repubblica francese coll’abolire la pena di morte pei delitti politici; si lasciò libertà di stampa a tutte le opinioni; l’esercito, i tribunali, l’amministrazione rimasero, salve poche eccezioni, nelle mani dei loro antichi titolari; nessuno dei grandi colpevoli della monarchia di luglio fu tratto in giudizio. I repubblicani borghesi del National si davano lo spasso di barattare nomi e costumi monarchici con antichi repubblicani. Per essi la repubblica non era che un nuovo abbigliamento da ballo per la vecchia società borghese. Il merito principale cercato dalla giovane repubblica non consisteva nello spargere terrore, sibbene piuttosto nello star continuamente essa medesima sotto l’impressione della paura, conquistandosi l’esistenza cogli adattamenti e colle cedevolezze e disarmando così ogni opposizione. Alle classi privilegiate nell’interno, alle potenze dispotiche all’estero venne solennemente dichiarato che la repubblica aveva carattere pacifico. Vivere e lasciar vivere era la sua divisa. Si aggiunse che, poco dopo la rivoluzione di febbraio, i tedeschi, i polacchi, gli austriaci, gli ungheresi, gli italiani, ciascun popolo a seconda della sua momentanea situazione, si rivoltarono. Russia ed Inghilterra, l’ultima sebbene già internamente agitata, l’altra intimidita, erano impreparate. La repubblica, adunque, non trovossi di fronte alcun nemico nazionale; così pure nessuna complicazione estera rilevante, che potesse attizzare la forza d’azione, accelerare il processo rivoluzionario, spingere in avanti il governo provvisorio o gettarlo a mare. Il proletariato parigino, che nella repubblica riconosceva la propria creatura, acclamò naturalmente ad ogni atto del governo provvisorio, che alla repubblica preparava più facile il posto nella società borghese. Da Caussidière esso si lasciò volontariamente adibire a servizî di polizia, per difendere la proprietà a Parigi, come lasciava accomodare da Luigi Blanc le contestazioni di salario tra operai e padroni. Era un point d’honneur per esso di mantenere intatto davanti agli occhi dell’Europa l’onore borghese della repubblica.

La repubblica non trovò resistenza, nè all’estero nè all’interno. Con ciò essa era disarmata. Il suo còmpito non consisteva più nella trasformazione rivoluzionaria del mondo, ma solo nel proprio adattamento alle condizioni della società borghese. Del fanatismo, con cui il governo provvisorio si sottopose a tale còmpito, niun testimonio più eloquente delle sue misure finanziarie.

Il credito pubblico ed il privato erano, naturalmente, scossi. Il credito pubblico riposa sulla fiducia che lo Stato si lasci sfruttare dagli ebrei della finanza. Ma il vecchio Stato era scomparso e la rivoluzione era diretta avanti ogni cosa contro l’aristocrazia finanziaria. Non erano peranco cessate le oscillazioni dell’ultima crisi del commercio europeo; le bancarotte si succedevano tuttora alle bancarotte.

Il credito privato trovavasi adunque paralizzato, la circolazione impedita, la produzione arenata, prima che scoppiasse la rivoluzione di febbraio. La crisi rivoluzionaria rese più acuta la commerciale. E, dacchè il credito privato riposa sulla fiducia che la produzione borghese in tutto l’àmbito dei suoi rapporti, ch’è quanto dire l’ordinamento borghese, rimanga intatta ed intangibile, in qual modo poteva agire una rivoluzione, da cui era posta in questione la base della produzione borghese, la schiavitù economica del proletariato, e la quale in faccia alla Borsa drizzava la sfinge del Lussemburgo? L’avvento del proletariato è l’abolizione del credito borghese, poichè è l’abolizione della produzione borghese e del suo ordinamento. Il credito pubblico ed il privato sono il termometro economico, che dà la misura dell’intensità d’una rivoluzione. Di quanto essi precipitano, di altrettanto si eleva l’entusiasmo e la forza creatrice della rivoluzione.

Il governo provvisorio voleva spogliare la repubblica dell’apparenza antiborghese. Doveva a tal uopo cercare anzitutto di assicurare il valore commerciale di questa nuova forma dello Stato, il suo corso alla Borsa. Col salire della repubblica sul listino di Borsa, si rialzò necessariamente il credito privato.

A fine di allontanare anche il sospetto ch’essa non volesse o non potesse sobbarcarsi alle obbligazioni assunte dalla monarchia, a fine di dar credito alla morale ed alla solvibilità borghesi della repubblica, il governo provvisorio ebbe ricorso ad una millanteria non meno indignitosa che puerile. Prima del termine legale di pagamento, sborsò ai creditori dello Stato gli interessi del 5, 4 ½ e 4%. La sfacciataggine borghese, l’orgoglio dei capitalisti si ridestarono d’un tratto, vedendo la precipitazione angosciosa, con cui si cercava di comperare la loro fiducia.

L’imbarazzo pecuniario del governo non fu naturalmente menomato da un colpo di scena, che gli toglieva di tasca la riserva di danaro sonante. Il disagio delle finanze non poteva più a lungo dissimularsi, e furono piccoli borghesi, domestici, operai che dovettero pagare la gradita sorpresa offerta ai creditori dello Stato.

Fu dichiarato che i libretti delle casse di risparmio eccedenti l’importo di 100 franchi non potessero più cambiarsi in danaro. Le somme depositate nelle casse di risparmio vennero confiscate e convertite con decreto in un debito di Stato non redimibile. Fu il modo di esasperare contro la repubblica il piccolo borghese, già tormentato anche senza di ciò. Dandogli in luogo dei suoi libretti di risparmio titoli di debito dello Stato, lo si costringeva ad andare alla Borsa per venderli ed a consegnarsi così direttamente nelle mani degli ebrei della Borsa, contro i quali egli aveva fatto la rivoluzione di febbraio.

L’aristocrazia finanziaria, che aveva dominato sotto la monarchia di luglio, aveva la sua cattedrale nella Banca. Come la Borsa regge il credito dello Stato, così la Banca quello del commercio.

Minacciata direttamente dalla rivoluzione di febbraio, non solamente nel proprio dominio, ma nella propria esistenza, la Banca cercò d’allora di screditare la repubblica, col rendere generale la mancanza di credito. Ai banchieri, ai fabbricanti, ai negozianti sospese d’un tratto il credito. Tale manovra, mentre non provocò una sùbita controrivoluzione, si ripercosse di necessità sulla Banca stessa. I capitalisti ritirarono il denaro da essi depositato nei sotterranei della Banca. I possessori di banconote si rovesciarono, per cambiarle contro oro e argento, sulle sue casse.

Senza immischiarvisi colla violenza, per via legale, il governo avrebbe potuto costringere la Banca al fallimento; bastava ch’esso adottasse un contegno passivo, abbandonando la Banca al suo destino. La bancarotta della Banca — ecco il diluvio universale, che avrebbe, in un batter d’occhio, spazzato via dal suolo francese l’aristocrazia finanziaria, la più potente e pericolosa nemica della repubblica, il piedestallo d’oro della monarchia di luglio. Ed una volta fallita la Banca, la borghesia stessa sarebbe stata costretta a considerare come ultimo e disperato tentativo di salvamento la creazione da parte del governo d’una Banca nazionale e la sommissione del credito nazionale al controllo della nazione.

Il governo provvisorio, invece, diede ai biglietti di Banca il corso forzoso. E fece di più. Convertì tutte le Banche provinciali in istituti succursali della Banque de France, alla quale lasciò coprire tutta la Francia colla sua rete. Più tardi die’ le foreste dello Stato a garanzia d’un prestito, che contrasse con essa. Così la rivoluzione di febbraio consolidava ed allargava direttamente la bancocrazia, cui era chiamata ad abbattere.

Frattanto il governo piegava sotto l’incubo d’un deficit crescente. Invano andava mendicando sacrifici patriottici. Soli gli operai gli gettavano la loro elemosina. Si dovette ricorrere ad un mezzo eroico, alla creazione d’una nuova imposta. Ma chi tassare? I lupi di Borsa, i re della Banca, i creditori dello Stato, i reddituarî, gli industriali? Questo non era affatto il modo di cattivare alla repubblica la borghesia. Ciò significava mettere a repentaglio da una parte il credito dello Stato o del commercio, mentre dall’altra si cercava di redimerlo con tanti sacrifici ed umiliazioni. Ma qualcuno doveva pagare. E chi fu sacrificato al credito borghese? Fu Jacques le bonhomme, il contadino.

Il governo provvisorio inscrisse un’imposta suppletiva di 45 cent. per franco sulle quattro imposte dirette. Agli occhi del proletariato parigino la stampa governativa fece balenare che tale imposta cadesse precisamente sulla grande proprietà fondiaria, sui detentori dei miliardi concessi dalla Ristorazione. In realtà però ne era colpita a preferenza la classe dei contadini, ossia la gran maggioranza del popolo francese. Furono essi a dover pagare le spese della rivoluzione di febbraio; da essi trasse il coefficiente più decisivo la controrivoluzione. L’imposta dei 45 centesimi era una questione di vita pel contadino francese, il quale ne fece una questione di vita per la repubblica. La repubblica, pel contadino francese, era, da questo momento, l’imposta dei 45 centesimi; e nel proletariato parigino egli ravvisava il dissipatore, che s’era accomodato a sue spese.

Mentre la rivoluzione del 1789 era incominciata collo sgravare i contadini dai pesi feudali, la rivoluzione del 1848, per non arrecare pregiudizio al capitale e per tenere in carreggiata la sua macchina dello Stato, si annunciò alla popolazione rurale con una nuova imposta.

Un solo mezzo avrebbe avuto il governo provvisorio per eliminare tutti questi inconvenienti e spingere lo Stato fuori del vecchio binario: la dichiarazione della bancarotta dello Stato. Si rammenta come Ledru-Rollin, più tardi, nell’Assemblea nazionale, recitò la commedia della virtuosa indignazione, con cui egli respinse un eccitamento di questo genere venuto dall’ebreo di Borsa, Fould, l’attuale ministro delle finanze. Era il pomo dell’albero della sapienza che Fould gli offeriva.

Mentre il governo provvisorio riconosceva la cambiale tratta dalla vecchia società borghese sullo Stato, questa veniva a scadenza. Il governo provvisorio era diventato il debitore incalzato dalla società borghese, anzichè incomberle qual creditore minaccioso, che ha da incassare titoli di credito rivoluzionarî di parecchi anni. Esso si trovava costretto a consolidare i vacillanti rapporti borghesi a fine di adempiere obbligazioni eseguibili solamente entro questi rapporti. Il credito diviene condizione della sua esistenza e le concessioni e le promesse fatte al proletariato divengono altrettante catene, ch’esso era forzato a spezzare. L’emancipazione dei lavoratori — anche come semplice frase — rappresentò per la nuova repubblica un pericolo insopportabile, poich’era una permanente protesta contro il ristabilimento del credito, che riposa sul riconoscimento incontestato e tranquillo degli esistenti rapporti economici di classe. Cogli operai si doveva adunque farla finita.

La rivoluzione di febbraio aveva cacciato l’esercito fuori di Parigi. La guardia nazionale, ossia la borghesia nelle varie sue gradazioni, costituiva l’unica forza armata. Solamente, essa non si sentiva fatta per misurarsi col proletariato. Oltre ciò era stata costretta, per quanto tenacemente resistesse, sollevando cento diversi ostacoli, ad aprire, a poco a poco e di tempo in tempo, le proprie file, lasciandovi entrare proletarî armati. Non rimaneva adunque che una via d’uscita: opporre una parte dei proletarî all’altra.

A tal fine il governo provvisorio formò 24 battaglioni di guardie mobili, ciascuno di mille uomini, giovani dai 15 ai 20 anni. Questi appartenevano, per la maggior parte, a quel proletariato di pezzenti, che in tutte le grandi città compone una massa nettamente distinta dal proletariato industriale; un posto di reclutamento per ladri e delinquenti d’ogni specie, alimentato dai rifiuti della società, da gente senza un mestiere definito, da vagabondi, gens sans feu et sans aveu, diversi secondo il grado di civiltà della loro nazione, che non smentiscono mai la loro natura di lazzaroni; perfettamente indicati per l’età giovanile, in cui il Governo provvisorio li arruolava, agli atti più eroici ed ai più esagerati sacrificî, come ai più volgari brigantaggi ed alla più sporca venalità. Il governo provvisorio li pagava con 1 franco e 50 cent. al giorno; ossia li comperava. Diede loro una speciale uniforme, distinguendoli cioè esteriormente colla blouse. A comandanti ebbero ufficiali in parte loro assegnati dell’esercito regolare, in parte nominati da essi stessi, giovani figli di borghesi, le cui rodomontate del morir per la patria e del votarsi alla repubblica li stuzzicavano.

Così il proletariato parigino si trovava in faccia ad un esercito di 24.000 uomini pieno di forza giovanile e d’audacia, cavato dallo stesso suo ambiente. E gridò evviva! alla guardia mobile che marciava attraverso Parigi. In essa riconosceva i suoi condottieri delle barricate e la considerò come la guardia proletaria in opposizione alla guardia nazionale borghese. Era un errore perdonabile il suo.

Accanto alla guardia mobile, il governo deliberò di circondarsi altresì d’un esercito industriale d’operai. Centomila operai, gettati sul lastrico dalla crisi e dalla rivoluzione, vennero arruolati dal ministero Marie entro i così detti ateliers nazionali. Questo nome così pomposo non celava se non l’applicazione degli operai a lavori di sterro noiosi, monotoni, improduttivi, per un salario di 23 soldi. Workhouses inglesi all’aria aperta: altro non erano questi ateliers nazionali. Con essi, il governo provvisorio credette d’aver messo in piedi un secondo esercito proletario contro gli stessi operai. Questa volta la borghesia s’ingannava sugli ateliers nazionali, come gli operai s’ingannavano sulla guardia mobile. Era un esercito per la sommossa, ch’essa aveva creato.

Ma uno scopo era raggiunto.

Ateliers nazionali: non era questo il nome dei laboratorî popolari, predicati da Luigi Blanc al Lussemburgo? Gli ateliers di Marie, lanciati in diretta opposizione al Lussemburgo, diedero, in forza della comune firma, il motivo ad un intrigo di qui pro quo degno della spagnuola «commedia dei servitori». Dallo stesso governo provvisorio venne diffusa, sottomano, la diceria che gli ateliers nazionali fossero la trovata di Luigi Blanc, il che sembrò tanto più credibile in quanto Luigi Blanc, il profeta degli ateliers nazionali, era membro del governo provvisorio. E nell’equivoco, metà ingenuo, metà intenzionale, della borghesia parigina, nell’opinione artificiosamente mantenuta della Francia e dell’Europa, quei workhouses erano la prima attuazione del socialismo, che con essi veniva messo alla berlina.

Non pel contenuto, ma pel titolo, gli ateliers nazionali erano la protesta incarnata del proletariato contro l’industria borghese, il credito borghese e la repubblica borghese. Sovr’essi, per conseguenza, riversavasi tutto l’odio della borghesia. In essi ella aveva trovato, in pari tempo, il punto d’attacco per avventurarsi, non appena sufficientemente rafforzata, a rompere apertamente colle illusioni di febbraio. Non v’era malessere, non malcontento dei piccoli borghesi, che non si dirigesse simultaneamente contro questi ateliers nazionali, come contro un comune bersaglio. Con vero furore calcolavano le somme inghiottite dai proletarî fannulloni, mentre la loro propria situazione diveniva ogni giorno più intollerabile. Una pensione dello Stato per un simulacro di lavoro; ecco il socialismo! andavano borbottando. Gli ateliers nazionali, le declamazioni del Lussemburgo, le marcie degli operai attraverso Parigi; qui cercavano essi l’origine della loro miseria. E contro le pretese macchinazioni dei socialisti, niuno era più fanatico del piccolo borghese, pencolante, senza difesa, sull’abisso della bancarotta.

Così nel conflitto imminente tra borghesia e proletariato, tutti i vantaggi, tutti i posti decisivi, tutti i ceti medî della società si trovavano in mano alla borghesia, nel medesimo tempo che le onde della rivoluzione di febbraio coprivano tutto il continente ed ogni nuovo corriere portava un nuovo bollettino di rivoluzione, ora dall’Italia, ora dalla Germania, ora dall’estremo sud-est d’Europa, alimentando la generale ebbrezza del popolo, col recargli queste continue testimonianze d’una vittoria, ch’esso aveva di già compiuta.

Il 17 marzo ed il 16 aprile furono le prime avvisaglie della gran lotta di classe, che la repubblica borghese nascondeva sotto le sue ali.

Il 17 marzo rivelò la situazione equivoca del proletariato, incapace di qualunque atto decisivo. Lo scopo originario della dimostrazione da esso fatta, era di risospingere il governo provvisorio sul cammino della rivoluzione, di ottenere, secondo i casi, l’esclusione dei suoi membri borghesi e di strappare una proroga del giorno fissato alle elezioni dell’Assemblea nazionale e della guardia nazionale. Ma, il 16 marzo, la borghesia rappresentata nella guardia nazionale, aveva fatto una dimostrazione ostile al governo provvisorio. Al grido di à bas Ledru-Rollin!, essa aveva invaso l’Hôtel-de-Ville. Ed il popolo si trovò costretto, il 17 marzo, a gridare: viva Ledru-Rollin!, viva il governo provvisorio! Si trovò costretto ad abbracciare, contro la borghesia, il partito della repubblica borghese, che gli sembrava messo in questione, e per tal modo consolidò il governo provvisorio, anzichè sottometterselo. Il 17 marzo svampò in una scena da melodramma e, se il proletariato parigino in quel giorno portò ancora una volta il suo corpo di gigante in mostra, tanto più aumentò nella borghesia, entro e fuori del governo provvisorio, la risoluzione di abbatterlo.

Il 16 aprile fu un malinteso, messo in piedi dal governo provvisorio insieme alla borghesia. Gli operai eransi radunati in gran numero sul Campo di Marte e nell’Ippodromo, a fine di preparare le loro elezioni per lo stato maggiore della guardia nazionale. D’un tratto si sparge la voce in tutta Parigi, da un capo all’altro, con rapidità fulminea, che gli operai s’erano raccolti armati nel Campo di Marte, sotto la direzione di Luigi Blanc, di Blanqui, di Cabet e di Raspail, per muovere di là sull’Hôtel-de-Ville, abbattere il governo provvisorio e proclamare un governo comunista. Si suona a raccolta (Ledru-Rollin, Marrast, Lamartine si contesero più tardi l’onore di tale iniziativa); in un’ora ecco 100.000 uomini sotto le armi; l’Hôtel-de-Ville è in ogni suo punto occupato da guardie nazionali; il grido di: abbasso i comunisti! abbasso Luigi Blanc, Blanqui, Raspail, Cabet! tuona attraverso tutta Parigi; ed un’enorme quantità di deputazioni, pronte tutte a salvare la patria e la società, va a rendere omaggio al governo provvisorio. Allorchè infine gli operai compaiono dinanzi all’Hôtel-de-Ville per rimettere al governo provvisorio una colletta patriottica, da essi raccolta al Campo di Marte, apprendono stupiti che la Parigi borghese, in una finta battaglia di sublime accorgimento, ha battuto la loro ombra. Il terribile attentato del 16 marzo diede il pretesto al richiamo dell’esercito a Parigi (era questo il vero intento della commedia goffamente messa in iscena) ed alle reazionarie dimostrazioni federaliste delle provincie.

Il 4 maggio si adunò l’Assemblea nazionale, uscita dal suffragio universale diretto. Il suffragio universale non possedeva la forza magica, che i repubblicani d’antico stampo gli avevano attribuito. In tutta la Francia, o per lo meno nella maggioranza dei francesi, essi ravvisavano de’ citoyens con interessi identici, vedute identiche, ecc. Era questo il loro «culto del popolo». In luogo del loro popolo immaginario, le elezioni portarono alla luce del giorno il vero popolo, cioè i rappresentanti delle diverse classi, in cui esso è diviso. Noi abbiamo veduto la ragione, per cui contadini e piccoli borghesi dovettero votare sotto la direzione della borghesia impaziente di combattere e dei grandi proprietari fondiarî anelanti alla Ristorazione. Ma, pur non essendo la miracolosa bacchetta magica dei valentuomini repubblicani, il suffragio universale possedeva però il merito ben maggiore di scatenare la lotta di classe, di far svanire rapidamente le illusioni e gli errori nei varî ceti medî della società borghese, di slanciare d’un colpo tutte le frazioni della classe sfruttatrice al culmine dello Stato, strappando loro così la maschera ipocrita, mentre la monarchia col suo sistema del censo lasciava che si compromettessero solamente determinate frazioni della borghesia, tenendo nascoste fra le quinte le altre, ch’essa circondava coll’aureola d’un opposizione collettiva.

Nell’Assemblea nazionale costituente, che si adunò il 4 maggio, erano in prevalenza i repubblicani borghesi, i repubblicani del National. Legittimisti ed anche orleanisti non s’avventuravano sulle prime a mostrarsi che sotto la maschera del repubblicanismo borghese. Solamente in nome della repubblica borghese poteva inaugurarsi la lotta contro il proletariato.

È dal 4 maggio, non dal 25 febbraio, che data la repubblica, cioè la repubblica riconosciuta dal popolo francese. Non è la repubblica imposta dal proletariato parigino al governo provvisorio, non la repubblica con istituzioni sociali, non il sogno che passava davanti agli occhi dei combattenti sulle barricate. La repubblica proclamata dall’Assemblea nazionale, la sola repubblica legittima, è la repubblica che non è affatto un’arma rivoluzionaria contro l’ordinamento borghese, ma ben piuttosto la ricostituzione politica di questo, la restaurazione politica della società borghese, in una parola: la repubblica borghese. Questa fu l’affermazione, che risuonò dalla tribuna dell’Assemblea nazionale, trovando un’eco in tutta quanta la stampa borghese, repubblicana ed antirepubblicana.

E noi abbiamo veduto come la repubblica di febbraio non fosse nè potesse essere in realtà altro che una repubblica borghese; come però il governo provvisorio, sotto l’immediata pressione del proletariato, si trovasse costretto ad annunciarla quale una repubblica con istituzioni sociali; come il proletariato parigino fosse tuttora incapace di elevarsi al disopra dell’illusione e delle chimere circa la repubblica borghese; com’esso agisse dovunque in suo servizio, allorchè si trattava realmente di venire all’azione; come le promesse fattegli divenissero un pericolo insopportabile per la nuova repubblica; come pel governo provvisorio tutto il processo della sua vita si riassumesse in una permanente lotta contro le rivendicazioni del proletariato.

Nell’Assemblea nazionale, tutta la Francia sedeva a giudizio sul proletariato parigino. Essa ruppe tosto colle illusioni sociali della rivoluzione di febbraio, proclamò netto e tondo la repubblica borghese, null’altro che borghese. Subito escluse dalla Commissione esecutiva da essa nominata i rappresentanti del proletariato, Luigi Blanc ed Albert; rigettò la proposta d’uno speciale ministero del lavoro; accolse con rumorose grida d’approvazione la dichiarazione del ministro Trélat: «trattarsi ancora unicamente di ricondurre il lavoro alle sue antiche condizioni.»

Ma tutto ciò non bastava. La repubblica di febbraio era stata una conquista degli operai, coll’aiuto passivo della borghesia. A ragione i proletari si consideravano i vincitori del febbraio, elevando orgogliosamente pretese da vincitori. Si doveva vincerli sulla strada, si doveva mostrar loro che soccombevano, non appena combattessero non più insieme alla borghesia, ma contro la borghesia. Come la repubblica di febbraio, colle sue concessioni socialistiche, aveva avuto bisogno d’una battaglia del proletariato alleato alla borghesia contro la monarchia, così era necessaria una seconda battaglia per liberare la repubblica dalle concessioni socialistiche, allo scopo di foggiare ufficialmente il dominio della repubblica borghese. Colle armi alla mano, la borghesia doveva respingere le pretese del proletariato. E la vera culla della repubblica borghese non è già la vittoria del febbraio, è la disfatta del giugno.

Il proletariato accelerò la soluzione allorchè, il 15 maggio, penetrò nell’Assemblea, cercando invano di riconquistare la propria influenza rivoluzionaria, mentre non riescì che a consegnare i suoi energici capi ai carcerieri della borghesia. Il faut en finir! Questa situazione deve avere una fine! Tale fu il grido, con cui l’Assemblea diede aperto sfogo alla risoluzione di costringere il proletariato alla lotta decisiva. La Commissione esecutiva emanò una serie di decreti provocanti, quale il divieto degli attruppamenti popolari, ecc. Dall’alto della tribuna dell’Assemblea costituente, gli operai furono direttamente sfidati, ingiuriati, dileggiati. Ma il vero fianco all’attacco lo prestavano, come vedemmo, gli ateliers nazionali. Ad essi l’Assemblea rivolse imperativamente l’attenzione della Commissione esecutiva, la quale altro non aspettava che di vedere manifestato il proprio piano come un’imposizione dell’Assemblea nazionale.

La Commissione esecutiva incominciò col rendere più difficile l’accesso agli ateliers nazionali, col convertire il salario a giornata in salario a fattura, coll’esiliare gli operai non nativi di Parigi nella Sologne, in apparenza per l’esecuzione di lavori di sterro. Questi lavori di sterro non erano che una formula retorica per palliare la loro cacciata, com’ebbero a riferire al loro ritorno gli operai ingannati ai loro compagni. Finalmente, il 21 giugno, comparve nel Moniteur un decreto che ordinava l’espulsione colla forza di tutti gli operai non coniugati, ovvero il loro arruolamento nell’esercito.

Non rimaneva via di scelta agli operai: o morir di fame o cedere. Essi risposero il 22 giugno colla terribile insurrezione, in cui s’ingaggiò la prima grande battaglia tra le due classi, che dividono la moderna società. Era la lotta per la conservazione o la distruzione dell’ordinamento borghese. Il velo che avviluppava la repubblica era squarciato.

È noto con quale valore e genialità senza esempio gli operai, privi di capi, privi d’un piano comune, privi di mezzi, per la maggior parte privi d’armi, tenessero in iscacco, durante cinque giorni, l’esercito, la guardia mobile, la guardia nazionale di Parigi e la guardia nazionale ivi riversatasi dalla provincia. È noto come la borghesia si rifacesse dell’incorso pericolo con brutalità inaudita, massacrando oltre 3000 prigionieri.

A tal punto i rappresentati ufficiali della democrazia francese trovavansi dominati dall’ideologia repubblicana che solamente dopo qualche settimana incominciarono a intravedere il significato della lotta di giugno. Erano come storditi dal fumo polveroso, in cui andava dileguandosi la loro repubblica fantastica.

L’immediata impressione apportataci dalla notizia della disfatta di giugno, ci permetta il lettore di riferirla colle parole della Neue Rheinische Zeitung:

«L’ultimo rimasuglio ufficiale della rivoluzione di febbraio, la Commissione esecutiva, è svanito davanti alla gravità degli avvenimenti, come uno scenario di nebbia. I fuochi artificiali di Lamartine si sono tramutati nei razzi incendiarî di Cavaignac. Della fraternité delle classi antagoniste, di cui l’una sfrutta l’altra, di questa fraternité proclamata in febbraio, scritta a grosse lettere sui frontoni di Parigi, su ogni carcere, su ogni caserma, la vera, la non adulterata, la prosaica espressione è la guerra civile, la guerra civile nella sua forma più terribile, la guerra del lavoro e del capitale. Questa era la fratellanza, che fiammeggiava su tutti i davanzali delle finestre di Parigi la sera del 25 giugno, allorchè la Parigi della borghesia illuminava, mentre la Parigi del proletariato bruciava, grondava sangue e gemeva. Fratellanza, ch’era durata precisamente fino a tanto che l’interesse della borghesia trovavasi affratellato coll’interesse del proletariato. — Pedanti dell’antica tradizione rivoluzionaria del 1793; socialisti sistematici, mendicanti presso la borghesia a pro del popolo ed ai quali erasi permesso di tener lunghe prediche e di compromettersi durante il tempo, in cui occorreva ninnare nel sonno il leone proletario; repubblicani che volevano tutto il vecchio ordinamento sociale borghese, con esclusione della testa coronata; oppositori dinastici, ai quali il caso aveva cacciato sotto i piedi, al posto d’un cambiamento di ministero, la rovina d’una dinastia; legittimisti, che intendevano non già buttar da un canto la livrea, ma mutarne il taglio; erano questi gli alleati, coi quali il popolo aveva fatto il suo febbraio. — La rivoluzione di febbraio era stata la «bella» rivoluzione, la rivoluzione della simpatia generale, dappoichè gli antagonismi che in essa erano scoppiati contro la monarchia, sonnecchiavano non ancor sviluppati, concordi l’uno accanto all’altro, e la lotta sociale, che ne costituiva il substrato, aveva acquistato un’esistenza puramente aerea, resistenza della frase, della parola. La rivoluzione di giugno è la rivoluzione più odiosa, la rivoluzione più antipatica, dappoichè al posto della frase si affacciava la cosa, e la repubblica spogliava essa stessa il capo del mostro, mentre ne abbatteva la corona, che lo proteggeva e lo copriva. — Ordine! era il grido di battaglia di Guizot. Ordine! sclamava Sebastiani, il Guizotin, allorchè Varsavia diventò russa. Ordine! esclama Cavaignac, quest’eco brutale dell’Assemblea nazionale e della borghesia repubblicana. Ordine! tuonano le sue mitraglie, mentre lacerano il corpo del proletariato. Delle numerose rivoluzioni della borghesia francese a partire dal 1789, niuna era stata un attentato all’ordine, poichè tutte avevano lasciato sussistere il dominio di classe, la schiavitù dei lavoratori, l’ordinamento borghese, per quanto sovente anche la forma politica di questa schiavitù mutasse. Il giugno attaccò quest’ordine. Guai al giugno!» (Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 29 giugno 1848).

Guai al giugno! ripercuote l’eco europea.

All’insurrezione di giugno il proletariato era stato trascinato dalla borghesia. Già in ciò stava la sua sentenza di condanna. Nè un bisogno immediato confessato lo aveva spinto a voler ottenere colla forza la rovina della borghesia, nè esso aveva attitudine a tal còmpito. Il Moniteur dovette ufficialmente spiegargli ch’era passato il tempo, in cui la repubblica vedevasi impegnata a render gli onori alle sue illusioni, e ci volle la sua disfatta per convincerlo della verità che il più meschino miglioramento della sua situazione rimane un’utopia entro la repubblica borghese, un’utopia, che diventa delitto, non appena vuole attuarsi. Al posto delle sue rivendicazioni, esagerate quanto alla forma, piccine e persino ancora borghesi quanto al contenuto, delle quali esso voleva strappare la concessione alla repubblica di febbraio, entrò in iscena l’ardito motto di guerra rivoluzionario: Distruzione della borghesia! Dittatura della classe operaia!

Nel tempo stesso in cui il proletariato faceva della propria bara la culla della repubblica borghese, esso costringeva questa a mostrarsi nella sua forma genuina: come Stato, cioè, il cui fine confessato è di perpetuare il dominio del capitale, la schiavitù del lavoro. Il dominio borghese, nella continua contemplazione del nemico coperto di cicatrici, irreconciliabile, invincibile (invincibile nemico, perchè la sua esistenza è la condizione di vita di quello stesso dominio), doveva, una volta sciolto da ogni catena, degenerare ben tosto nel terrorismo borghese. Allontanato provvisoriamente il proletariato dalla scena, la dittatura borghese riconosciuta ufficialmente, ai ceti medî della società borghese, piccola borghesia e classe dei contadini, a misura che la loro situazione diveniva più insopportabile ed il loro antagonismo verso la borghesia più aspro, s’imponeva la necessità di attaccarsi sempre più al proletariato. Come già nel suo sorgere, così ora nella sua disfatta, essi dovevano trovare la ragione della loro miseria.

Se l’insurrezione di giugno, dappertutto sul continente, sollevò nella borghesia la coscienza di sè stessa, facendola entrare in alleanza aperta colla monarchia feudale contro il popolo, chi fu la prima vittima di tale alleanza? La stessa borghesia continentale, costretta dalla disfatta di giugno a rafforzare il proprio dominio ed a contenere sull’infimo gradino della rivoluzione borghese il popolo, metà pacificato, metà malcontento.

La disfatta di giugno, da ultimo, svelò alle potenze dispotiche d’Europa il segreto dell’obbligo, che aveva la Francia, di mantenere, ad ogni patto, la pace coll’estero, a fine di poter condurre la guerra civile nell’interno. Per tal modo i popoli, che avevano incominciato la lotta per la loro indipendenza, venivano abbandonati in balìa della prepotenza della Russia, dell’Austria e della Prussia; ma, nello stesso tempo, il destino di queste rivoluzioni nazionali, subordinato al destino della rivoluzione proletaria, era spogliato della sua apparente autonomia, della sua indipendenza dalla grande trasformazione sociale. L’ungherese non può essere libero, non il polacco, non l’italiano, insino a che l’operaio rimane schiavo!

Finalmente, in seguito alle vittorie della Santa Alleanza, l’Europa prese una forma, per cui ogni nuova insurrezione proletaria in Francia coincide direttamente con una guerra mondiale. La nuova rivoluzione francese trovasi costretta ad abbandonare immediatamente il terreno nazionale ed a conquistare il terreno europeo, sul quale unicamente potrà svolgersi la rivoluzione sociale del secolo decimonono.

Solo adunque la disfatta di giugno creò le condizioni, entro cui la Francia può prendere in pugno l’iniziativa della rivoluzione europea. Solo tuffata nel sangue degli insorti di giugno, la tricolore diventò la bandiera della rivoluzione europea — la bandiera rossa.

E noi gridiamo: La rivoluzione è morta! — Viva la rivoluzione!



[1] Annessione di Cracovia da parte dell’Austria d’intesa colla Russia e la Prussia, 11 novembre 1846 — Guerra del Sonderbund svizzero dal 4 al 28 novembre 1847. — Sollevazione di Palermo, 12 gennaio 1848; alla fine di gennaio bombardamento della città per nove giorni da parte dei napoletani. (Questa e le restanti note in calce sono dell’editore, F. E.).

After the July Revolution of 1830, when the liberal banker Laffitte led his compère, the Duke of Orléans, in triumph to the Hôtel de Ville, he let fall the words: “From now on the bankers will rule”. Laffitte had betrayed the secret of the revolution.

It was not the French bourgeoisie that ruled under Louis Philippe, but one faction of it: bankers, stock-exchange kings, railway kings, owners of coal and iron mines and forests, a part of the landed proprietors associated with them – the so-called financial aristocracy. It sat on the throne, it dictated laws in the Chambers, it distributed public offices, from cabinet portfolios to tobacco bureau posts.

The industrial bourgeoisie proper formed part of the official opposition, that is, it was represented only as a minority in the Chambers. Its opposition was expressed all the more resolutely the more unalloyed the autocracy of the finance aristocracy became, and the more it imagined that its domination over the working class was insured after the revolts of 1832, 1834, and 1839, which had been drowned in blood. [1] Grandin, a Rouen manufacturer and the most fanatical instrument of bourgeois reaction in the Constituent as well as in the Legislative National Assembly, was the most violent opponent of Guizot in the Chamber of Deputies. Léon Faucher, later known for his impotent efforts to climb into prominence as the Guizot of the French counterrevolution, in the last days of Louis Philippe waged a war of the pen for industry against speculation and its train bearer, the government. Bastiat agitated in the name of Bordeaux and the whole of wine- producing France against the ruling system.

The petty bourgeoisie of all gradations, and the peasantry also, were completely excluded from political power. Finally, in the official opposition or entirely outside the pays légal electorate, there were the ideological representatives and spokesmen of the above classes, their savants, lawyers, doctors, etc., in a word, their so-called men of talent.

Owing to its financial straits, the July Monarchy was dependent from the beginning on the big bourgeoisie, and its dependence on the big bourgeoisie was the inexhaustible source of increasing financial straits. It was impossible to subordinate the administration of the state to the interests of national production without balancing the budget, without establishing a balance between state expenditures and revenues. And how was this balance to be established without limiting state expenditures – that is, without encroaching on interests which were so many props of the ruling system – and without redistributing taxes – that is, without shifting a considerable share of the burden of taxation onto the shoulders of the big bourgeoisie itself?

On the contrary, the faction of the bourgeoisie that ruled and legislated through the Chambers had a direct interest in the indebtedness of the state. The state deficit was really the main object of its speculation and the chief source of its enrichment. At the end of each year a new deficit. After the lapse of four or five years a new loan. And every new loan offered new opportunities to the finance aristocracy for defrauding the state, which was kept artificially on the verge of bankruptcy – it had to negotiate with the bankers under the most unfavorable conditions. Each new loan gave a further opportunity, that of plundering the public which invested its capital in state bonds by means of stock-exchange manipulations, the secrets of which the government and the majority in the Chambers were privy to. In general, the instability of state credit and the possession of state secrets gave the bankers and their associates in the Chambers and on the throne the possibility of evoking sudden, extraordinary fluctuations in the quotations of government securities, the result of which was always bound to be the ruin of a mass of smaller capitalists and the fabulously rapid enrichment of the big gamblers. As the state deficit was in the direct interest of the ruling faction of the bourgeoisie, it is clear why the extraordinary state expenditure in the last years of Louis Philippe's reign was far more than double the extraordinary state expenditure under Napoleon, indeed reached a yearly sum of nearly 400,000,000 francs, whereas the whole average annual export of France seldom attained a volume amounting to 750,000,000 francs. The enormous sums which in this way flowed through the hands of the state facilitated, moreover, swindling contracts for deliveries, bribery, defalcations, and all kinds of roguery.

The defrauding of the state, practiced wholesale in connection with loans, was repeated retail in public works. What occurred in the relations between Chamber and government became multiplied in the relations between individual departments and individual entrepreneurs.

The ruling class exploited the building of railways in the same way it exploited state expenditures in general and state loans. The Chambers piled the main burdens on the state, and secured the golden fruits to the speculating finance aristocracy. One recalls the scandals in the Chamber of Deputies when by chance it leaked out that all the members of the majority, including a number of ministers, had been interested as shareholders in the very railway constructions which as legislators they had carried out afterward at the cost of the state.

On the other hand, the smallest financial reform was wrecked through the influence of the bankers. For example, the postal reform. Rothschild protested. Was it permissible for the state to curtail sources of revenue out of which interest was to be paid on its ever increasing debt?

The July Monarchy was nothing other than a joint stock company for the exploitation of France's national wealth, whose dividends were divided among ministers, Chambers, 240,000 voters, and their adherents. Louis Philippe was the director of this company – Robert Macaire [2] on the throne. Trade, industry, agriculture, shipping, the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie, were bound to be continually endangered and prejudiced under this system. Cheap government, governement à bon marché, was what it had inscribed on its banner in the July days.

Since the finance aristocracy made the laws, was at the head of the administration of the state, had command of all the organized public authorities, dominated public opinion through the actual state of affairs and through the press, the same prostitution, the same shameless cheating, the same mania to get rich was repeated in every sphere, from the court to the Café Borgne [3] to get rich not by production, but by pocketing the already available wealth of others, Clashing every moment with the bourgeois laws themselves, an unbridled assertion of unhealthy and dissolute appetites manifested itself, particularly at the top of bourgeois society – lusts wherein wealth derived from gambling naturally seeks its satisfaction, where pleasure becomes crapuleux debauched, where money, filth, and blood commingle. The finance aristocracy, in its mode of acquisition as well as in its pleasures, is nothing but the rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society.

And the nonruling factions of the French bourgeoisie cried: Corruption! The people cried: À bas les grands voleurs! À bas les assassins! Down with the big thieves! Down with the assassins! when in 1847, on the most prominent stages of bourgeois society, the same scenes were publicly enacted that regularly lead the lumpenproletariat to brothels, to workhouses and lunatic asylums, to the bar of justice, to the dungeon, and to the scaffold. The industrial bourgeoisie saw its interests endangered, the petty bourgeoisie was filled with moral indignation, the imagination of the people was offended, Paris was flooded with pamphlets – “The Rothschild Dynasty,” “Usurers Kings of the Epoch,” etc. – in which the rule of the finance aristocracy was denounced and stigmatized with greater or less wit.

Rien pour la gloire! Nothing for glory! Glory brings no profit! La paix partout et toujours! Peace everywhere and always! War depresses the quotations of the 3 and 4 percents which the France of the Bourse jobbers had inscribed on her banner. Her foreign policy was therefore lost in a series of mortifications to French national sentiment, which reacted all the more vigorously when the rape of Poland was brought to its conclusion with the incorporation of Cracow by Austria, and when Guizot came out actively on the side of the Holy Alliance in the Swiss separatist war. [4] The victory of the Swiss liberals in this mimic war raised the self-respect of the bourgeois opposition in France; the bloody uprising of the people in Palermo worked like an electric shock on the paralyzed masses of the people and awoke their great revolutionary memories and passions. [5]

The eruption of the general discontent was finally accelerated and the mood for revolt ripened by two economic world events.

The potato blight and the crop failures of 1845 and 1846 increased the general ferment among the people. The famine of 1847 called forth bloody conflicts in France as well as on the rest of the Continent. As against the shameless orgies of the finance aristocracy, the struggle of the people for the prime necessities of life! At Buzançais, hunger rioters executed [6]; in Paris, oversatiated escrocs swindlers snatched from the courts by the royal family!

The second great economic event that hastened the outbreak of the revolution was a general commercial and industrial crisis in England. Already heralded in the autumn of 1845 by the wholesale reverses of the speculators in railway shares, staved off during 1846 by a number of incidents such as the impending abolition of the Corn Laws, the crisis finally burst in the autumn of 1847 with the bankruptcy of the London wholesale grocers, on the heels of which followed the insolvencies of the land banks and the closing of the factories in the English industrial districts. The after-effect of this crisis on the Continent had not yet spent itself when the February Revolution broke out.

The devastation of trade and industry caused by the economic epidemic made the autocracy of the finance aristocracy still more unbearable. Throughout the whole of France the bourgeois opposition agitated at banquets for an electoral reform which should win for it the majority in the Chambers and overthrow the Ministry of the Bourse. In Paris the industrial crisis had, moreover, the particular result of throwing a multitude of manufacturers and big traders, who under the existing circumstances could no longer do any business in the foreign market, onto the home market. They set up large establishments, the competition of which ruined the small épiciers grocers and boutiquiers shopkeepers en masse. Hence the innumerable bankruptcies among this section of the Paris bourgeoisie, and hence their revolutionary action in February. It is well known how Guizot and the Chambers answered the reform proposals with an unambiguous challenge, how Louis Philippe too late resolved on a ministry led by Barrot, how things went as far as hand-to-hand fighting between the people and the army, how the army was disarmed by the passive conduct of the National Guard, how the July Monarchy had to give way to a provisional government.

The Provisional Government which emerged from the February barricades necessarily mirrored in its composition the different parties which shared in the victory. It could not be anything but a compromise between the different classes which together had overturned the July throne, but whose interests were mutually antagonistic. The great majority of its members consisted of representatives of the bourgeoisie. The republican petty bourgeoisie was represented by Ledru- Rollin and Flocon, the republican bourgeoisie by the people from the National [7], the dynastic opposition by Crémieux, Dupont de l'Eure, etc. [8] The working class had only two representatives, Louis Blanc and Albert. Finally, Lamartine in the Provisional Government; this was at first no real interest, no definite class; this was the February Revolution itself, the common uprising with its illusions, its poetry, its visionary content, and its phrases. For the rest, the spokesman of the February Revolution, by his position and his views, belonged to the bourgeoisie.

If Paris, as a result of political centralization, rules France, the workers, in moments of revolutionary earthquakes, rule Paris. The first act in the life of the Provisional Government was an attempt to escape from this overpowering influence by an appeal from intoxicated Paris to sober France. Lamartine disputed the right of the barricade fighters to proclaim a republic on the ground that only the majority of Frenchmen had that right; they must await their votes, the Paris proletariat must not besmirch its victory by a usurpation. [9] The bourgeoisie allows the proletariat only one usurpation – that of fighting.

Up to noon of February 25 the republic had not yet been proclaimed; on the other hand, all the ministries had already been divided among the bourgeois elements of the Provisional Government and among the generals, bankers, and lawyers of the National. But the workers were determined this time not to put up with any bamboozlement like that of July, 1830. They were ready to take up the fight anew and to get a republic by force of arms. With this message, Raspail betook himself to the Hôtel de Ville. In the name of the Paris proletariat he commanded the Provisional Government to proclaim a republic; if this order of the people were not fulfilled within two hours, he would return at the head of 200,000 men. The bodies of the fallen were scarcely cold, the barricades were not yet disarmed, and the only force that could be opposed to them was the National Guard. Under these circumstances the doubts born of considerations of state policy and the juristic scruples of conscience entertained by the Provisional Government suddenly vanished. The time limit of two hours had not yet expired when all the walls of Paris were resplendent with the gigantic historical words:

République français! Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Even the memory of the limited alms and motives which drove the bourgeoisie into the February Revolution was extinguished by the proclamation of the republic on the basis of universal suffrage. Instead of only a few factions of the bourgeoisie, all classes of French society were suddenly hurled into the orbit of political power, forced to leave the boxes, the stalls, and the gallery and to act in person upon the revolutionary stage! With the constitutional monarchy vanished also the semblance of a state power independently confronting bourgeois society, as well as the whole series of subordinate struggles which this semblance of power called forth!

By dictating the republic to the Provisional Government, and through the Provisional Government to the whole of France, the proletariat immediately stepped into the foreground as an independent party, but at the same time challenged the whole of bourgeois France to enter the lists against it. What it won was the terrain for the fight for its revolutionary emancipation, but by no means this emancipation itself.

The first thing the February Republic had to do was, rather, to complete the rule of the bourgeoisie by allowing, besides the finance aristocracy, all the propertied classes to enter the orbit of political power. The majority of the great landowners, the Legitimists, were emancipated from the political nullity to which they had been condemned by the July Monarchy. Not for nothing had the Gazette de France agitated in common with the opposition papers; not for nothing had La Roche-Jaquelein taken the side of the revolution in the session of the Chamber of Deputies on February 24. The nominal proprietors, the peasants, who form the great majority of the French people, were put by universal suffrage in the position of arbiters of the fate of France. The February Republic finally brought the rule of the bourgeoisie clearly into view, since it struck off the crown behind which capital had kept itself concealed.

Just as the workers in the July days had fought for and won the bourgeois monarchy, so in the February days they fought for and won the bourgeois republic. Just as the July Monarchy had to proclaim itself a monarchy surrounded by republican institutions, so the February Republic was forced to proclaim itself a republic surrounded by social institutions. The Paris proletariat compelled this concession, too.

Marche, a worker, dictated the decree [10] by which the newly formed Provisional Government pledged itself to guarantee the workers a livelihood by means of labor, to provide work for all citizens, etc. And when a few days later it forgot its promises and seemed to have lost sight of the proletariat, a mass of 20,000 workers marched on the Hôtel de Ville with the cry: Organize labor! Form a special Ministry of labor! Reluctantly and after long debate, the Provisional Government nominated a permanent special commission charged with lending means of improving the lot of the working classes! This commission consisted of delegates from the corporations guilds of Paris artisans and was presided over by Louis Blanc and Albert. The Luxembourg Palace was assigned to it as its meeting place. In this way the representatives of the working class were banished from the seat of the Provisional Government, the bourgeois part of which retained the real state power and the reins of administration exclusively in its hands; and side by side with the ministries of finance, trade, and public works, side by side with the Bank and the Bourse, there arose a socialist synagogue whose high priests, Louis Blanc and Albert, had the task of discovering the promised land, of preaching the new gospel, and of providing work for the Paris proletariat. Unlike any profane state power, they had no budget, no executive authority at their disposal. They were supposed to break the pillars of bourgeois society by dashing their heads against them. While the Luxembourg sought the philosopher's stone, in the Hôtel de Ville they minted the current coinage.

And yet the claims of the Paris proletariat, so far as they went beyond the bourgeois republic, could win no other existence than the nebulous one of the Luxembourg.

In common with the bourgeoisie the workers had made the February Revolution, and alongside the bourgeoisie they sought to secure the advancement of their interests, just as they had installed a worker in the Provisional Government itself alongside the bourgeois majority. Organize labor! But wage labor, that is the existing, the bourgeois organization of labor. Without it there is no capital, no bourgeoisie, no bourgeois society. A special Ministry of Labor! But the ministries of finance, of trade, of public works – are not these the bourgeois ministries of labor? And alongside these a proletariat Ministry of Labor had to be a ministry of impotence, a ministry of pious wishes, a Luxembourg Commission. Just as the workers thought they would be able to emancipate themselves side by side with the bourgeoisie, so they thought they would be able to consummate a proletarian revolution within the national walls of France, side by side with the remaining bourgeois nations. But French relations of production are conditioned by the foreign trade of France, by her position on the world market and the laws thereof; how was France to break them without a European revolutionary war, which would strike back at the despot of the world market, England?

As soon as it has risen up, a class in which the revolutionary interests of society are concentrated finds the content and the material for its revolutionary activity directly in its own situation: foes to be laid low, measures dictated by the needs of the struggle to be taken; the consequences of its own deeds drive it on. It makes no theoretical inquiries into its own task. The French working class had not attained this level; it was still incapable of accomplishing its own revolution.

The development of the industrial proletariat is, in general, conditioned by the development of the industrial bourgeoisie. Only under its rule does the proletariat gain that extensive national existence which can raise its revolution to a national one, and only thus does the proletariat itself create the modern means of production, which become just so many means of its revolutionary emancipation. Only bourgeois rule tears up the material roots of feudal society and levels the ground on which alone a proletarian revolution is possible. French industry is more developed and the French bourgeoisie more revolutionary than that of the rest of the Continent. But was not the February Revolution aimed directly against the finance aristocracy? This fact proved that the industrial bourgeoisie did not rule France. The industrial bourgeoisie can rule only where modern industry shapes all property relations to suit itself, and industry can win this power only where it has conquered the world market, for national bounds are inadequate for its development. But French industry, to a great extent, maintains its command even of the national market only through a more or less modified system of prohibitive duties. While, therefore, the French proletariat, at the moment of a revolution, possesses in Paris actual power and influence which spur it on to a drive beyond its means, in the rest of France it is crowded into separate, scattered industrial centers, almost lost in the superior number of peasants and petty bourgeois. The struggle against capital in its developed, modern form – in its decisive aspect, the struggle of the industrial wage worker against the industrial bourgeois – is in France a partial phenomenon, which after the February days could so much the less supply the national content of the revolution, since the struggle against capital's secondary modes of exploitation, that of the peasant against usury and mortgages or of the petty bourgeois against the wholesale dealer, banker, and manufacturer – in a word, against bankruptcy – was still hidden in the general uprising against the finance aristocracy. Nothing is more understandable, then, than that the Paris proletariat sought to secure the advancement of its own interests side by side with those of the bourgeoisie, instead of enforcing them as the revolutionary interests of society itself, that it let the red flag be lowered to the tricolor [11]. The French workers could not take a step forward, could not touch a hair of the bourgeois order, until the course of the revolution had aroused the mass of the nation, peasants and petite bourgeois, standing between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, against this order, against the rule of capital, and had forced it to attach itself to the proletarians as its protagonists. The workers could buy this victory only through the tremendous defeat in June.

The Luxembourg Commission, this creation of the Paris workers, must be given the credit of having disclosed, from a Europe-wide tribune, the secret of the revolution of the nineteenth century: the emancipation of the proletariat. The Moniteur blushed when it had to propagate officially the “wild ravings” [12] which up to that time had lain buried in the apocryphal writings of the socialists and reached the ear of the bourgeoisie only from time to time as remote, half- terrifying, half-ludicrous legends. Europe awoke astonished from its bourgeois doze. Therefore, in the minds of the proletarians, who confused the finance aristocracy with the bourgeoisie in general; in the imagination of the good old republicans who denied the very existence of classes or, at most, admitted them as a result of the constitutional monarchy; in the hypocritical phrases of the factions of the bourgeoisie which up to now had been excluded from power, the rule of the bourgeoisie was abolished with the introduction of the republic. At that time all the royalists were transformed into republicans and all the millionaires of Paris into workers. The phrase which corresponded to this imaginary abolition of class relations was fraternité, universal fraternization and brotherhood. This pleasant abstraction from class antagonisms, this sentimental reconciliation of contradictory class interests, this visionary elevation above the class struggle, this fraternité, was the real catchword of the February Revolution. The classes were divided by a mere misunderstanding, and on February 24 Lamartine christened the Provisional Government “une gouvernement qui suspends ce malentendu terrible qui existe entre les différentes classes” a government that removes this terrible misunderstanding which exists between the different classes, from Lamartine's speech, 24 February 1848. The Paris proletariat reveled in this magnanimous intoxication of fraternity.

The Provisional Government, for its part, once it was compelled to proclaim the republic, did everything to make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie and to the provinces. The bloody terror of the first French republic was disavowed by the abolition of the death penalty for political offenses; the press was opened to all opinions – the army, the courts, the administration remained with a few exceptions in the hands of their old dignitaries; none of the July Monarchy's great offenders was brought to book. The bourgeois republicans of the National amused themselves by exchanging monarchist names and costumes for old republican ones. To them the republic was only a new ball dress for the old bourgeois society. The young republic sought its chief merit not in frightening, but rather in constantly taking fright itself, and in winning existence and disarming resistance by soft compliance and nonresistance. At home to the privileged classes, abroad to the despotic powers, it was loudly announced that the republic was of a peaceful nature. Live and let live was its professed motto. In addition to that, shortly after the February Revolution the Germans, Poles, Austrians, Hungarians, and Italians revolted, each people in accordance with its immediate situation. Russia and England – the latter itself agitated, the former cowed – were not prepared. The republic, therefore, had no national enemy to face. Consequently there were no great foreign complications which could fire the energies, hasten the revolutionary process, drive the Provisional Government forward or throw it overboard. The Paris proletariat, which looked upon the republic as its own creation, naturally acclaimed each act of the Provisional Government which facilitated the firm emplacement of the latter in bourgeois society. It willingly allowed itself to be employed on police service by Caussidière in order to protect property in Paris, just as it allowed Louis Blanc to arbitrate wage disputes between workers and masters. It made it a point d'honneur point of honor to preserve the bourgeois honor of the republic unblemished in the eyes of Europe.

The republic encountered no resistance either abroad or at home. This disarmed it. Its task was no longer the revolutionary transformation of the world, but consisted only in adapting itself to the relations of bourgeois society. As to the fanaticism with which the Provisional Government undertook this task there is no more eloquent testimony than its financial measures.

Public credit and private credit were naturally shaken. Public credit rests on confidence that the state will allow itself to be exploited by the wolves of finance. But the old state had vanished and the revolution was directed above all against the finance aristocracy. The vibrations of the last European commercial crisis had not yet ceased. Bankruptcy still followed bankruptcy.

Private credit was therefore paralyzed, circulation restricted, production at a standstill before the February Revolution broke out. The revolutionary crisis increased the commercial crisis. And if private credit rests on confidence that bourgeois production in the entire scope of its relations – the bourgeois order – will not be touched, will remain inviolate, what effect must a revolution have had which questioned the basis of bourgeois production, the economic slavery of the proletariat, which set up against the Bourse the sphinx of the Luxembourg? The uprising of the proletariat is the abolition of bourgeois credit, for it is the abolition of bourgeois production and its order. Public credit and private credit are the economic thermometer by which the intensity of a revolution can be measured. The more they fall, the more the fervor and generative power of the revolution rises.

The Provisional Government wanted to strip the republic of its antibourgeois appearance. And so it had, above all, to try to peg the exchange value of this new form of state, its quotation on the Bourse. Private credit necessarily rose again, together with the current Bourse quotation of the republic.

In order to allay the very suspicion that it would not or could not honor the obligations assumed by the monarchy, in order to build up confidence in the republic's bourgeois morality and capacity to pay, the Provisional Government took refuge in braggadocio as undignified as it was childish. In advance of the legal date of payment it paid out the interest on the 5-percent, 4 ½- percent and 4-percent bonds to the state creditors. The bourgeois aplomb, the self-assurance of the capitalists, suddenly awoke when they saw the anxious haste with which this government sought to buy their confidence.

The financial embarrassment of the Provisional Government was naturally not lessened by a theatrical stroke which robbed it of its stock of ready cash. The financial pinch could no longer be concealed and petty bourgeois, domestic servants, and workers had to pay for the pleasant surprise which had been prepared for the state creditors.

It was announced that no more money could be drawn on savings bank books for an amount of over a hundred francs. The sums deposited in the savings banks were confiscated and by decree transformed into an irredeemable state debt. This embittered the already hard-pressed petty bourgeois against the republic. Since he received state debt certificates in place of his savings bank books, he was forced to go to the Bourse in order to sell them and thus deliver himself directly into the hands of the Bourse jobbers against whom he had made the February Revolution.

The finance aristocracy, which ruled under the July Monarchy, had its high church in the Bank. Just as the Bourse governs state credit, the Bank governs commercial credit.

Directly threatened not only in its rule but in its very existence by the February Revolution, the Bank tried from the outset to discredit the republic by making the lack of credit general. It suddenly stopped the credits of the bankers, the manufacturers, and the merchants. As it did not immediately call forth a counterrevolution, this maneuver necessarily reacted on the Bank itself. The capitalists drew out the money they had deposited in the vaults of the Bank. The possessors of bank notes rushed to the pay office in order to exchange them for gold and silver.

The Provisional Government could have forced the Bank into bankruptcy without forcible interference, in a legal manner; it would have had only to remain passive and leave the Bank to its fate. The bankruptcy of the Bank would have been the deluge which in an instant would have swept from French soil the finance aristocracy, the most powerful and dangerous enemy of the republic, the golden pedestal of the July Monarchy. And once the Bank was bankrupt, the bourgeoisie itself would have had to regard it as a last desperate attempt at rescue, if the government had formed a national bank and subjected national credit to the control of the nation.

The Provisional Government, on the contrary, fixed a compulsory quotation for the notes of the Bank. It did more. It transformed all provincial banks into branches of the Banque de France and allowed it to cast its net over the whole of France. Later it pledged the state forests to the Bank as a guarantee for a loan contracted from it. In this way the February Revolution directly strengthened and enlarged the bankocracy which it should have overthrown.

Meanwhile the Provisional Government was writhing under the incubus of a growing deficit. In vain it begged for patriotic sacrifices. Only the workers threw it their alms. Recourse had to be had to a heroic measure, to the imposition of a new tax. But who was to be taxed? The Bourse wolves, the bank kings, the state creditors, the rentiers, the industrialists? That was not the way to ingratiate the republic with the bourgeoisie. That would have meant, on the one hand, to endanger state credit and commercial credit, while on the other, attempts were made to purchase them with such great sacrifices and humiliations. But someone had to fork over the cash. Who was sacrificed to bourgeois credit? Jacques le bonhomme, the peasant.

The Provisional Government imposed an additional tax of 45 centimes to the franc on the four direct taxes. The government press cajoled the Paris proletariat into believing that this tax would fall chiefly on the big landed proprietors, on the possessors of the milliard granted by the Restoration [13]. But in truth it hit the peasant class above all, that is, the large majority of the French people. They had to pay the costs of the February Revolution; in them the counterrevolution gained its main material. The 45-centime tax was a question of life and death for the French peasant. He made it a life and death question for the republic. From that moment the republic meant to the French peasant the 45 centime tax, and he saw in the Paris proletariat the spendthrift who did himself well at his expense.

Whereas the Revolution of 1789 began by shaking the feudal burdens off the peasants, the Revolution of 1848 announced itself to the rural population by the imposition of a new tax, in order not to endanger capital and to keep its state machine going.

There was only one means by which the Provisional Government could set aside all these inconveniences and jerk the state out of its old rut – a declaration of state bankruptcy. Everyone recalls how Ledru-Rollin in the National Assembly subsequently described the virtuous indignation with which he repudiated this presumptuous proposal of the Bourse Jew, Fould from Ledru-Rollin's speech 21 April 1849, now French Finance Minister. Fould had handed him the apple from the tree of knowledge.

By honoring the bills drawn on the state by the old bourgeois society, the Provisional Government succumbed to the latter. It had become the hard-pressed debtor of bourgeois society instead of confronting it as the pressing creditor that had to collect the revolutionary debts of many years. It had to consolidate the shaky bourgeois relationships in order to fulfill obligations which are only to be fulfilled within these relationships. Credit became a condition of life for it, and the concessions to the proletariat, the promises made to it, became so many fetters which had to be struck off. The emancipation of the workers – even as a phrase – became an unbearable danger to the new republic, for it was a standing protest against the restoration of credit, which rests on undisturbed and untroubled recognition of the existing economic class relations. Therefore, it was necessary to have done with the workers.

The February Revolution had cast the army out of Paris. The National Guard, that is, the bourgeoisie in its different gradations, constituted the sole power. Alone, however, it did not feel itself a match for the proletariat. Moreover, it was forced gradually and piecemeal to open its ranks and admit armed proletarians, albeit after the most tenacious resistance and after setting up a hundred different obstacles. There consequently remained but one way out: to play off part of the proletariat against the other.

For this purpose the Provisional Government formed twenty–four battalions of Mobile Guards, each a thousand strong, composed of young men from fifteen to twenty years old. [14] They belonged for the most part to the lumpen proletariat, which in all big towns forms a mass sharply differentiated from the industrial proletariat, a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds living on the crumbs of society, people without a definite trade, vagabonds, gens sans feu et sans aveu men without hearth or home, varying according to the degree of civilization of the nation to which they belong, but never renouncing their lazzaroni [15] character – at the youthful age at which the Provisional Government recruited them, thoroughly malleable, as capable of the most heroic deeds and the most exalted sacrifices as of the basest banditry and the foulest corruption. The Provisional Government paid them 1 franc 50 centimes a day; that is, it bought them. It gave them their own uniform; that is, it made them outwardly distinct from the blouse- wearing workers. In part it assigned officers from the standing army as their leaders; in part they themselves elected young sons of the bourgeoisie whose rodomontades about death for the fatherland and devotion to the republic captivated them.

And so the Paris proletariat was confronted with an army, drawn from its own midst, of 24,000 young, strong, foolhardy men. it gave cheers for the Mobile Guard on its marches through Paris. It acknowledged it to be its foremost fighters on the barricades. It regarded it as the proletarian guard in contradistinction to the bourgeois National Guard. Its error was pardonable.

Besides the Mobile Guard, the government decided to rally around itself an army of industrial workers. A hundred thousand workers, thrown on the streets by the crisis and the revolution, were enrolled by the Minister Marie in so-called national ateliers workshops. Under this grandiose name was hidden nothing else than the employment of the workers on tedious, monotonous, unproductive earthworks at a wage of 23 sous. English workhouses [16] in the open – that is what these national ateliers were. The Provisional Government believed that it had formed, in them, a second proletarian army against the workers themselves. This time the bourgeoisie was mistaken in the national ateliers, just as the workers were mistaken in the Mobile Guard. It had created an army for mutiny.

But one purpose was achieved.

National ateliers was the name of the people's workshops which Louis Blanc preached in the Luxembourg Palace. Marie's ateliers workshops, devised in direct antagonism to the Luxembourg, offered occasion, thanks to the common label, for a comedy of errors worthy of the Spanish servant farce. The Provisional Government itself surreptitiously spread the report that these national ateliers were the discovery of Louis Blanc, and this seemed the more plausible because Louis Blanc, the prophet of the national ateliers, was a member of the Provisional Government. And in the half-naive, half-intentional confusion of the Paris bourgeoisie, in the artificially molded opinion of France, of Europe, these workhouses were the first realization of socialism, which was put in the pillory, with them.

In their appellation, though not in their content, the national ateliers were the embodied protest of the proletariat against bourgeois industry, bourgeois credit, and the bourgeois republic. The whole hate of the bourgeoisie was therefore turned upon them. It had found in them, simultaneously, the point against which it could direct the attack, as soon as it was strong enough to break openly with the February illusions. All the discontent, all the ill humor of the petty bourgeois too was directed against these national ateliers, the common target. With real fury they totted up the money the proletarian loafers swallowed up while their own situation was becoming daily more unbearable. A state pension for sham labor, so that's socialism! they grumbled to themselves. They sought the reason for their misery in the national ateliers, the declamations of the Luxembourg, the processions of the workers through Paris. And no one was more fanatic about the alleged machinations of the communists than the petty bourgeoisie, who hovered hopelessly on the brink of bankruptcy.

Thus in the approaching melee between bourgeoisie and proletariat, all the advantages, all the decisive posts, all the middle strata of society were in the hands of the bourgeoisie, at the same time as the waves of the February Revolution rose high over the whole Continent, and each new post brought a new bulletin of revolution, now from Italy, now from Germany, now from the remotest parts of southeastern Europe, and maintained the general ecstasy of the people, giving it constant testimony of a victory that it had already forfeited.

March 17 and April 16 were the first skirmishes in the big class struggle which the bourgeois republic hid under its wing.

March 17 revealed the proletariat's ambiguous situation, which permitted no decisive act. Its demonstration originally pursued the purpose of pushing the Provisional Government back onto the path of revolution, of effecting the exclusion of its bourgeois members, according to circumstances, and of compelling the postponement of the elections for the National Assembly and the National Guard. [17] But on March 16 the bourgeoisie represented in the National Guard staged a hostile demonstration against the Provisional Government. With the cry À bas Ledru- Rollin Down with Ledru-Rollin! it surged to the Hôtel de Ville. And the people were forced, on March 17, to shout: Long live Ledru-Rollin! Long live the Provisional Government! They were forced to take sides against the bourgeoisie in support of the bourgeois republic, which seemed to them to be in danger. They strengthened the Provisional Government, instead of subordinating it to themselves. March 17 went off in a melodramatic scene, and whereas the Paris proletariat on this day once more displayed its giant body, the bourgeoisie both inside and outside the Provisional Government was all the more determined to smash it.

April 16 was a misunderstanding engineered by the Provisional Government in alliance with the bourgeoisie. The workers had gathered in great numbers in the Champ de Mars and in the Hippodrome to choose their nominees to the general staff of the National Guard. Suddenly throughout Paris, from one end to the other, a rumor spread as quick as lightning, to the effect that the workers had met armed in the Champ de Mars, under the leadership of Louis Blanc, Blanqui, Cabet, and Raspail, in order to march thence on the Hôtel de Ville, overthrow the Provisional Government, and proclaim a communist government. The general alarm is sounded – Ledru-Rollin, Marrast, and Lamartine later contended for the honor of having initiated this – and in an hour 100,000 men are under arms; the Hôtel de Ville is occupied at all points by the National Guard; the cry Down with the Communists! Down with Louis Blanc, with Blanqui, with Raspail, with Cabet! thunders throughout Paris. Innumerable deputations pay homage to the Provisional Government, all ready to save the fatherland and society. When the workers finally appear before the Hôtel de Ville, in order to hand over to the Provisional Government a patriotic collection they had made in the Champ de Mars, they learn to their amazement that bourgeois Paris has defeated their shadow in a very carefully calculated sham battle. The terrible attempt of April 16 furnished the excuse for recalling the army to Paris – the real purpose of the clumsily staged comedy and for the reactionary federalist demonstrations in the provinces.

On May 4 the National Assembly [18] met the result of the direct general elections, convened. Universal suffrage did not possess the magic power which republicans of the old school had ascribed to it. They saw in the whole of France, at least in the majority of Frenchmen, citoyens citizens with the same interests, the same understanding, etc. This was their cult of the people. Instead of their imaginary people, the elections brought the real people to the light of day; that is, representatives of the different classes into which it falls. We have seen why peasants and petty bourgeois had to vote under the leadership of a bourgeoisie spoiling for a fight and of big landowners frantic for restoration. But if universal suffrage was not the miracle – working magic wand the republican worthies had taken it for, it possessed the incomparable higher merit of unchaining the class struggle, of letting the various middle strata of bourgeois society rapidly get over their illusions and disappointments, of tossing all the sections of the exploiting class at one throw to the apex of the state, and thus tearing from them their deceptive mask, whereas the monarchy with its property qualifications had let only certain factions of the bourgeoisie compromise themselves, allowing the others to lie hidden behind the scenes and surrounding them with the halo of a common opposition.

In the Constituent National Assembly, which met on May 4, the bourgeois republicans, the republicans of the National, had the upper hand. Even Legitimists and Orléanists at first dared to show themselves only under the mask of bourgeois republicanism. The fight against the proletariat could be undertaken only in the name of the republic.

The republic dates from May 4, not from February 25 – that is, the republic recognized by the French people; it is not the republic which the Paris proletariat thrust upon the Provisional Government, not the republic with social institutions, not the vision that hovered before the fighters on the barricades. The republic proclaimed by the National Assembly, the sole legitimate republic, is a republic which is no revolutionary weapon against the bourgeois order, but rather its political reconstitution, the political reconsolidation of bourgeois society; in a word, a bourgeois republic. This contention resounded from the tribune of the National Assembly, and in the entire republican and anti-republican bourgeois press it found its echo.

And we have seen how the February Republic in reality was not and could not be other than a bourgeois republic; how the Provisional Government, nevertheless, was forced by the immediate pressure of the proletariat to announce it as a republic with social institutions; how the Paris proletariat was still incapable of going beyond the bourgeois republic otherwise than in its fancy, in imagination; how even where the republic acted in the service of the bourgeoisie when it really came to action; how the promises made to it became an unbearable danger for the new republic; how the whole life process of the Provisional Government was comprised in a continuous fight against the demands of the proletariat.

In the National Assembly all France sat in judgment upon the Paris proletariat. The Assembly broke immediately with the social illusions of the February Revolution; it roundly proclaimed the bourgeois republic, nothing but the bourgeois republic. It at once excluded the representatives of the proletariat, Louis Blanc and Albert, from the Executive Commission [19] it had appointed; it threw out the proposal of a special Labor Ministry and received with acclamation the statement of Minister Trélat: “The question now is merely one of bringing labor back to its old conditions.” from Trélat's speech of 20 June 1848

But all this was not enough. The February Republic was won by the workers with the passive support of the bourgeoisie. The proletarians rightly regarded themselves as the victors of February, and they made the arrogant claims of victors. They had to be vanquished in the streets, they had to be shown that they were worsted as soon as they did not fight with the bourgeoisie, but against the bourgeoisie. Just as the February Republic, with its socialist concessions, required a battle of the proletariat, united with the bourgeoisie, against the monarchy, so a second battle was necessary to sever the republic from socialist concessions, to officially work out the bourgeois republic as dominant. The bourgeoisie had to refute, arms in hand, the demands of the proletariat. And the real birthplace of the bourgeois republic is not the February victory; it is the June defeat.

The proletariat hastened the decision when, on the fifteenth of May, it pushed its way into the National Assembly sought in vain to recapture its revolutionary influence, and only delivered its energetic leaders to the jailers of the bourgeoisie. Il faut en finir! This situation must end! With this cry the National Assembly gave vent to its determination to force the proletariat into a decisive struggle. The Executive Commission issued a series of provocative decrees, such as that prohibiting congregations of people, [20] etc. The workers were directly provoked, insulted, and derided from the tribune of the Constituent National Assembly. But the real point of the attack was, as we have seen, the national ateliers. The Constituent Assembly imperiously pointed these out to the Executive Commission, which waited only to hear its own plan proclaimed the command of the National Assembly.

The Executive Commission began by making admission to the national ateliers more difficult, by turning the day wage into a piece wage, by banishing workers not born in Paris to the Sologne, ostensibly for the construction of earthworks. These earthworks were only a rhetorical formula with which to embellish their exile, as the workers, returning disillusioned, announced to their comrades. Finally, on June 21, a decree appeared in the Moniteur which ordered the forcible expulsion of all unmarried workers from the national ateliers or their enrollment in the army. [21]

The workers were left no choice; they had to starve or let fly. They answered on June 22 with the tremendous insurrection in which the first great battle was fought between the two classes that split modern society. It was a fight for the preservation or annihilation of the bourgeois order. The veil that shrouded the republic was torn asunder.

It is well known how the workers, with unexampled bravery and ingenuity, without leaders, without a common plan, without means and, for the most part, lacking weapons, held in check for five days the army, the Mobile Guard, the Paris National Guard, and the National Guard that streamed in from the provinces. It is well known how the bourgeoisie compensated itself for the mortal anguish it suffered by unheard–of brutality, massacring over 3000 prisoners. The official representatives of French democracy were steeped in republican ideology to such an extent that it was only some weeks later that they began to have an inkling of the significance of the June fight. They were stupefied by the gunpowder smoke in which their fantastic republic dissolved.

The immediate impression which the news of the June defeat made on us, the reader will allow us to describe in the words of the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung.” [22]

“The Executive Committee, [23] that last official vestige of the February revolution, vanished like a ghost in the face of these grave events. Lamartine's fireworks have turned into the incendiary shells of Cavaignac.

“Fraternité, the brotherhood of antagonistic classes, one of which exploits the other, this fraternity which in February was proclaimed and inscribed in large letters on the facades of Paris, on every prison and every barracks – this fraternity found its true, unadulterated and prosaic expression in civil war, civil war in its most terrible aspect, the war of labor against capital. This brotherhood blazed in front of the windows of Paris on the evening of June 25, when the Paris of the bourgeoisie held illuminations while the Paris of the proletariat was burning, bleeding, groaning in the throes of death.

“This fraternité lasted only as long as there was a consanguinity of interests between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Pedants sticking to the old revolutionary tradition of 1793; socialist doctrinaires who begged alms for the people from the bourgeoisie and who were allowed to deliver lengthy sermons and compromise themselves so long as the proletarian lion had to be lulled to sleep; republicans who wanted to keep the old bourgeois order in toto, but without the crowned head; members of the Dynastic Opposition [24] on whom chance imposed the task of bringing about the downfall of a dynasty instead of a change of government; legitimists, [25] who did not want to cast off their livery but merely to change its style – these were the allies with whom the people had fought their February revolution. What the people instinctively hated in Louis Philip was not Louis Philip himself, but the crowned rule of a class, the capital on the throne. But magnanimous as always, the people thought they had destroyed their enemy when they had overthrown the enemy of their enemies, their common enemy.

“The February revolution was the nice revolution, the revolution of universal sympathies, because the contradictions which erupted in it against the monarchy were still undeveloped and peacefully dormant, because the social struggle which formed their background had only achieved an ephemeral existence, an existence in phrases, in words. The June revolution is the ugly revolution, the nasty revolution, because the phrases have given place to the real thing, because the republic has bared the head of the monster by knocking off the crown which shielded and concealed it.

“Order! was Guizot's war-cry. Order! shouted Sebastiani, the Guizotist, when Warsaw became Russian. Order! shouts Cavaignac, the brutal echo of the French National Assembly and of the republican bourgeoisie. Order! thundered his grape- shot as it tore into the body of the proletariat.

“None of the numerous revolutions of the French bourgeoisie since 1789 assailed the existing order, for they retained the class rule, the slavery of the workers, the bourgeois system, even though the political form of this rule and this slavery changed frequently. The June uprising did assail this system. Woe to the June uprising!”

Woe to that June! Re-echoes Europe.

The Paris proletariat was forced into the June insurrection by the bourgeoisie. This sufficed to mark its doom. Its immediate, avowed needs did not drive it to engage in a fight for the forcible overthrow of the bourgeoisie, nor was it equal to this task. The Moniteur had to inform it officially that the time was past when the republic saw any occasion to bow and scrape to its illusions, and only its defeat convinced it of the truth that the slightest improvement in its position remains a utopia within the bourgeois republic, a utopia that becomes a crime as soon as it wants to become a reality. In place of the demands, exuberant in form but still limited and even bourgeois in content, whose concession the proletariat wanted to wring from the February Republic, there appeared the bold slogan of revolutionary struggle: Overthrow of the bourgeoisie! Dictatorship of the Working class!

By making its burial place the birthplace of the bourgeois republic, the proletariat compelled the latter to come out forthwith in its pure form as the state whose admitted object it is to perpetuate the rule of capital, the slavery of labor. Having constantly before its eyes the scarred, irreconcilable, invincible enemy – invincible because its existence is the condition of its own life

– bourgeois rule, freed from all fetters, was bound to turn immediately into bourgeois terrorism. With the proletariat removed for the time being from the stage and bourgeois dictatorship recognized officially, the middle strata of bourgeois society, the petty bourgeoisie and the peasant class, had to adhere more and more closely to the proletariat as their position became more unbearable and their antagonism to the bourgeoisie more acute. Just as earlier they had to find the cause of their distress in its upsurge, so now in its defeat.

If the June insurrection raised the self-assurance of the bourgeoisie all over the Continent, and caused it to league itself openly with the feudal monarchy against the people, who was the first victim of this alliances The continental bourgeoisie itself. The June defeat prevented it from consolidating its rule and from bringing the people, half satisfied and half out of humor, to a standstill at the lowest stage of the bourgeois revolution.

Finally, the defeat of June divulged to the despotic powers of Europe the secret that France must maintain peace abroad at any price in order to be able to wage civil war at home. Thus the people's who had begun the fight for their national independence were abandoned to the superior power of Russia, Austria, and Prussian, but at the same time the fate of these national revolutions was made subject to the fate of the proletarian revolution, and they were robbed of their apparent autonomy, their independence of the great social revolution. The Hungarian shall not be free, nor the Pole, nor the Italian, as long as the worker remains a slave!

Finally, with the victories of the Holy Alliance, Europe has taken on a form that makes every fresh proletarian upheaval in France directly coincide with a world war. The new French revolution is forced to leave its national soil forthwith and conquer the European terrain, on which alone the social revolution of the nineteenth century can be accomplished.

Thus only the June defeat has created all the conditions under which France can seize the initiative of the European revolution. Only after being dipped in the blood of the June insurgents did the tricolor become the flag of the European revolution – the red flag!

And we exclaim: The revolution is dead! Long live the revolution!



[1] The Paris uprising of June 5 and 6, 1832, was prepared by the Left republicans and by secret revolutionary societies including the Society of the Friends of the People. The uprising flared up during the funeral of General Lamarque, an opponent of Louis Philippe’s Government. The insurgent workers threw up barricades and defended them with great courage; the red flag was hoisted over them for the first time. The uprising of Lyons workers in April 1834, directed by the secret republican Society of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, was one of the first mass actions by the French proletariat. The uprising, supported by republicans in several other towns including Paris, was brutally suppressed. The Paris uprising of May 12, 1839, in which the revolutionary workers played a leading part, was prepared by the secret republican socialist Society of the Seasons led by Auguste Blanqui and Armand Barbès; it was suppressed by troops and the National Guard.
[2] Robert Macaire – a character portraying a clever swindler, created by the famous French actor Frederick Lemaître and immortalised in the caricatures of Honoré Daumier. The figure of Robert Macaire was a biting satire on the domination of the financial aristocracy under the July monarchy.
[3] A term applied to cafes of dubious reputation.
[4] The reference is to the repercussions of the suppression of the uprising in the free city of Cracow (the Cracow Republic) which, by decision of the Congress of Vienna, came under the joint control of Austria, Prussia and Russia, who had partitioned Poland at the end of the eighteenth century. The insurgents succeeded in seizing power in Cracow on February 22, 1846, established a National Government of the Polish Republic and issued a manifesto abolishing feudal services. The Cracow uprising was suppressed at the beginning of March; in November 1846, Austria, Prussia and Russia signed a treaty incorporating Cracow into the Austrian Empire.
[5] Annexation of Cracow by Austria in agreement with Russia and Prussia on November 11, 1846. – Swiss Sonderbund war: November 4 to 28, 1847. – Rising in Palermo: January 12, 1848; at the end of January, nine days’ bombardment of the town by the Neapolitans. Note by Engels to the edition of 1895.
[6] In the spring of 1847 at Buzaruçais (department of the Indre) the starving workers and the inhabitants of neighbouring villages looted storehouses belonging to profiteers, which led to a clash between the population and troops. Four of those who took part were executed and many others sentenced to hard labour.
[7] Le National, a liberal Paris daily produced by A. Marrast and L. A. Garnier-Pagès
[8] The dynastic opposition – an opposition group in the French Chamber of Deputies during the July monarchy (1830-48). The group, headed by Odilon Barrot, expressed the sentiments of the liberal industrial and commercial bourgeoisie and favoured a moderate electoral reform, which they regarded as a means to prevent revolution and preserve the Orleans dynasty.
[9] From Lamartine's speech of 24 February.
[10] Decree on the right to work, 25 February 1848.
[11] During the first days of the revolution, the workers of Paris demanded that the French Republic’s flag should be red, the colour of that hoisted in the workers’ suburbs of Paris during the June uprising of 1832. Bourgeois representatives insisted on the tricolour (blue-white-and-red) which had been the national standard during the French Revolution and under Napoleon 1. It had been the emblem of the bourgeois republicans grouped around the newspaper National even before 1848. In the end, the tricolour was accepted as the national standard with a red rosette fixed to the flagstaff; later, the rosette was removed.
[12] In 1848 Le Moniteur Universel printed reports on the sittings of the Luxembourg Commission alongside official documents.
[13] The reference is to the sum assigned by the King in 1825 as compensation for aristocrats whose property had been confiscated during the French Revolution.
[14] The Mobile Guards, set up by a decree of the Provisional Government on February 25, 1848, with the secret aim of fighting the revolutionary masses, were used to crush the June uprising of the Paris workers. Later they were disbanded on the insistence of Bonapartist circles, who feared that if a conflict arose between Louis Bonaparte and the republicans, the Mobile Guards would side with the latter.
[15] Lazzaroni – a contemptuous nickname for declassed proletarians, primarily in the Kingdom of Naples, who were repeatedly used in the struggle against the liberal and democratic movement.
[16] The Poor Law adopted in England in 1834 provided for only one form of relief for the able-bodied poor: workhouses with a prison-like regime in which the workers were engaged in unproductive, monotonous and exhausting labour. The people called these workhouses “Bastilles for the poor.” Here and later Marx uses the English word “workhouses.”
[17] The reference is to the elections to the National Guard and the Constituent Assembly which were to be held on March 18 and April 9, 1848, respectively. Paris workers, grouped around Blanqui, Dézamy and others, insisted on a postponement of the elections arguing that they should be prepared by thorough explanatory work among the population. As a result of the popular demonstration on March 17 in Paris, regular troops were withdrawn from the capital (after the events of April 16 they were brought back), and elections to the National Guard were postponed till April 5 and to the Constituent Assembly till April 23.
[18] The Constituent National Assembly, in power from May 4 1848 to May 1849.
[19] Commission du pouvoir executif (the Executive Commission) – the Government of the French Republic set up by the Constituent Assembly on May 10, 1848, to replace the Provisional Government which had resigned. It existed until June 24, 1848, when Cavaignac’s dictatorship was established during the June proletarian uprising. Moderate republicans predominated on the Commission; Ledru- Rollin was the sole representative of the Left.
[20] Under the decree prohibiting congregations of people adopted by the Constituent Assembly on June 7, 1848, the organisation of gatherings and meetings in the open was punishable by imprisonment of up to ten years.
[21] On June 22, 1848, Le Moniteur Universel No. 174 in the section ‘’Partie non officielle” reported an order of the Executive Commission of June 21 on the expulsion of workers between the ages of 17 and 25 from the national workshops and their compulsory enrolment in the army. On July 3, 1848, after the suppression of the June insurrection of the Paris workers, the government passed a decree dissolving the national workshops.
[22] Marx quotes from his article in Neue Rheinische Zeitung of June 29, 1848.
[23] The Executive Committee (the Commission of the Executive Government) – the Government of the French Republic set up by the Constituent Assembly on May 10, 1848, to replace the Provisional Government which had resigned. It survived until June 24, 1848, when Cavaignac’s dictatorship was established.
[24] The dynastic opposition – an oppositional group in the French Chamber of Deputies during the July monarchy (1830-48). The group headed by Odilon Barrot represented the views of the liberal industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, and favoured a moderate electoral reform, which they regarded as a means of preventing revolution and preserving the Orléans dynasty.
[25] The legitimists were supporters of the Bourbon dynasty, which was overthrown in 1830. They upheld the interests of the big hereditary landowners.


  • attack: To attack is to try to fight or to hurt.
  • finally: If something happens finally, it happens after a longtime or at the end.
  • lot: A lot means a large number or amount of people, animals, things, etc.
  • middle: The middle of something is the center or halfway point.
  • moment: A moment is a second or a very short time.
  • moment: A moment is a second or a very short time.
  • promise: To promise is to say you will do something for sure.
  • well: You use well to say that something was done in a good way.
  • approach: To approach something means to move close to it.
  • carefully: Carefully means with great attention, especially to detail or safety.
  • create: To create means to make something new.
  • loud: If a sound is loud, it is strong and very easy to hear.
  • secret: A secret is something that you do not tell other people.
  • shout: To shout is to say something loudly.
  • terrible: If something is terrible, it is very bad.
  • among: If you are among certain things, they are all around you.
  • describe: To describe is to say or write what someone or something is like.
  • ever: Ever means at any time.
  • fail: To fail means you do not succeed in what you try to do.
  • instead: Instead means in place of.
  • report: A report is something students write for school.
  • solve: To solve something is to find an answer to it.
  • suddenly: If something happens suddenly, it happens quickly and unexpectedly.
  • suppose: To suppose is to guess.
  • view: To view is to look at something.
  • content: To be content is to be happy and not want more.
  • frequently: When something happens frequently, it happens often.
  • issue: An issue is an important topic.
  • none: None means not any of someone or something.
  • represent: To represent is to speak or act for a person or group.
  • shake: To shake is to move back and forth or up and down quickly.
  • spread: To spread is to move quickly to more places.
  • belong: If something belongs to you, you own it.
  • error: An error is something you do wrong.
  • judgment: Judgment is the ability to form opinions or decisions.
  • reside: To reside means to live somewhere permanently or for a long time.
  • result: A result is something that happens because of something else.
  • roll: To roll is to move by turning over and over.
  • since: Since is used to talk about a past event still happening now.
  • wild: If something is wild, it is found in nature.
  • advantage: An advantage is something that helps you.
  • cause: To cause is to make something happen.
  • choice: A choice is the act or possibility of picking something.
  • dead: To be dead is to not be alive.
  • escape: To escape is to run away from something bad.
  • face: If you face a problem, you deal with it.
  • follow: To follow means to go behind someone and go where they go.
  • fright: Fright is the feeling of being scared.
  • ghost: A ghost is the spirit of a dead person.
  • individual: An individual is one person.
  • pet: A pet is an animal that lives with people.
  • reach: To reach means to arrive at a place.
  • return: To return is to go back to a place.
  • wise: To be wise is to use experience and intelligence to make good choices.
  • allow: To allow something to happen means to let it happen.
  • announce: To announce something is to make it known.
  • beside: When someone or something is beside you, they are next to you.
  • challenge: A challenge is something difficult to complete.
  • claim: To claim means to say that something is true.
  • condition: The condition of someone or something is the state that they are in.
  • divide: To divide something is to make it into smaller parts.
  • force: Force is a person’s strength or power.
  • lay: To lay means to put or place in a horizontal or flat position.
  • peace: Peace is a time without war.
  • protect: To protect someone is to stop them from getting hurt.
  • sudden: When something is sudden, it happens very quickly.
  • therefore: Therefore means for this reason.
  • accept: To accept something that is offered is to take it.
  • balance: To balance something is to keep it from falling.
  • hang: To hang something is to keep it above the ground.
  • necessary: If something is necessary, you must do it.
  • purpose: A purpose is the reason that you do something.
  • require: To require something is to say that it is necessary.
  • tear: To tear something means to pull it apart.
  • against: To be against something is to be touching it or opposed to it.
  • discover: To discover something is to find it for the first time.
  • fix: To fix something is to make it work.
  • pleasant: If something is pleasant, you enjoy it.
  • prevent: To prevent something is to stop it from happening.
  • save: To save something is to keep it from being hurt.
  • step: To step is to walk.
  • still: Still is used when you say that a situation keeps going on.
  • throw: To throw something is to use your hand to make it go through the air.
  • wave: A wave is a line of water that moves higher than the rest of the water.
  • certain: If you are certain about something, you know it is true.
  • chance: A chance is an opportunity to do something.
  • effect: An effect is a change made by something else.
  • far: If something is far, it is not close.
  • guard: To guard something is to take care of it.
  • immediate: If something is immediate, it happens quickly.
  • remain: To remain somewhere is to stay there.
  • rest: To rest is to stop being active while the body gets back its strength.
  • separate: If two things are separate, they are not together.
  • site: A site is a place.
  • tail: A tail is a part of an animal’s body, sticking out from its rear or back.
  • trouble: Trouble is a problem ora difficulty.
  • collect: To collect things is to group them together all in one place.
  • decision: A decision is a choice.
  • either: Either is used with or to say there are two or more possibilities.
  • forest: A forest is a place with lots of trees and animals.
  • ground: The ground is the top part of the Earth that we walk on.
  • prepare: To prepare is to get ready for something.
  • sail: To sail is to move a boat on the water.
  • spend: To spend is to use time doing something or being somewhere.
  • truth: The truth is a fact or something that is right.
  • alone: If someone is alone, they are not with another person.
  • material: A material is what is used to make something.
  • meal: A meal is a time when food is eaten like breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
  • profit: A profit is the extra money you make when you sell something.
  • shape: A shape is a simple form like a square or circle.
  • thin: If someone or something is thin, they are not fat.
  • blood: Blood is the red liquid in your body.
  • burn: To burn something is to set it on fire.
  • crop: A crop is food that a farmer grows.
  • demand: To demand something is to say strongly that you want it.
  • equal: To be equal is to be the same.
  • hole: A hole is an opening in something.
  • increase: To increase something is to make it larger or more.
  • owe: To owe is to have to pay or give back something received from another.
  • position: A position is the way something is placed.
  • raise: To raise something is to lift it up.
  • sight: A sight is something interesting to see.
  • spot: A spot is a place where something happens.
  • whole: Whole means all of something.
  • control: To control something is to make it do what you want.
  • direct: If something is direct, it goes straight between two places.
  • exam: An exam is a test.
  • example: An example of something is a thing that is typical of it.
  • limit: A limit is the largest or smallest amount of something that you allow.
  • poet: A poet is a person who writes poems.
  • scene: A scene is one part of a book or movie.
  • suffer: To suffer is to feel pain.
  • length: The length of something is how long it is from one end to the other.
  • mistake: A mistake is something you do wrong.
  • opportunity: An opportunity is a chance to do something.
  • respond: To respond is to give an answer to what someone else said.
  • yet: Yet is used to say something has not happened up to now.
  • board: A board is a flat piece of wood.
  • century: A century is one hundred years.
  • exist: To exist is to be real.
  • hidden: Hidden means to be not easily noticed or too hard to find.
  • officer: An officer is a leader in the army.
  • original: If something is original, it is the first one of that thing.
  • process: A process is the steps to take to do something.
  • wealth: Wealth is a large amount of money.
  • available: If something is available, it means you can get it.
  • determine: To determine means to choose or make a decision.
  • else: If you talk about something else, you talk about something different.
  • fair: Fair describes treating someone in a way that is reasonable or right.
  • flow: To flow is to move easily and continuously in one direction.
  • forward: If you move forward, you move in the direction in front of you.
  • level: A level is a point on a scale that measures something.
  • lone: If someone or something is lone, they are the only one of that kind.
  • crowd: A crowd is a large group of people.
  • depend: To depend on someone or something is to need them.
  • dish: A dish is a plate.
  • fresh: If something is fresh, it is new.
  • gather: To gather is to collect several things usually from different places.
  • offer: To offer is to present someone with something.
  • price: The price of something is how much it costs.
  • product: A product is something that is made.
  • property: Property is something that someone owns.
  • purchase: To purchase something is to buy it.
  • conclusion: The conclusion of something is the final part of it.
  • doubt: Doubt is a feeling of not being sure.
  • foreign: If something is foreign, it is from a different country.
  • however: However means despite or not being influenced by something.
  • lawyer: A lawyer works with the law and represents people in court.
  • policy: A policy is a rule.
  • social: If something is social, it is about many people in a community.
  • speech: A speech is something said to a group of people.
  • staff: A staff is a group of people working together in a company.
  • achieve: To achieve something is to successfully do it after trying hard.
  • already: If something happens already, it happens before a certain time.
  • bit: A bit is a small amount of something.
  • consider: To consider something means to think about it.
  • destroy: To destroy means to damage something so badly that it cannot be used.
  • entertain: To entertain someone is to do something that they enjoy.
  • extra: If something is extra, it is more than what is needed.
  • lie: To lie is to say or write something untrue to deceive someone.
  • opinion: An opinion is a thought about a person or a thing.
  • real: If something is real, it actually exists.
  • regard: To regard someone or something is to think of them in a certain way.
  • serve: To serve someone is to give them food or drinks.
  • war: A war is a big fight between two groups of people.
  • worth: If something is worth an amount of money, it costs that amount.
  • appear: To appear is to seem.
  • base: The base is the bottom of something.
  • effort: Effort is hard work or an attempt to do something.
  • enter: To enter a place is to go into it.
  • hero: A hero is a brave person who does things to help others.
  • inform: To inform someone is to tell them about something.
  • later: Later means after the present, expected, or usual time.
  • leave: To leave means to go away from someone or something.
  • though: Though is used when the second idea makes the first seem surprising.
  • various: If something is various, there are many types of it.
  • actual: Actual means that something is real or true.
  • amaze: To amaze someone is to surprise them very much.
  • charge: A charge is the price to pay for something.
  • deliver: To deliver something is to take it from one place to another.
  • earn: To earn means to get money for the work you do.
  • gate: A gate is a type of door. Gates are usually made of metal or wood.
  • occur: To occur means to happen.
  • receive: To receive something is to get it.
  • set: To set something is to put it somewhere.
  • advance: To advance is to go forward.
  • average: If something is average, it is at a normal level.
  • behind: Behind means to be at the back of something.
  • course: A course is a class in school.
  • lower: To lower something is to make it go down.
  • match: To match is to be the same or similar.
  • member: A member is a person who is part of a group.
  • mental: If something is mental, it has to do with your mind.
  • pole: A pole is a long thin stick made of wood or metal that supports things.
  • remove: To remove something is to take it away.
  • sound: To sound means to make a noise.
  • cheer: To cheer is to give a loud shout of approval or encouragement.
  • critic: A critic is someone who give their opinions about movies, books, plays.
  • event: An event is something that happens, especially something important.
  • fit: If something fits, it is small enough orthe right size to go there.
  • lack: If there is a lack of something, there is not enough of it.
  • pressure: Pressure is what you apply to make someone do something.
  • public: If something is public, it is meant for everyone to use.
  • strike: To strike someone or something is to hit them.
  • support: To support something is to like it and help it be successful.
  • task: A task is work that someone has to do.
  • term: A term is a word for something.
  • unite: To unite is to get together to do something.
  • associate: To associate means to connect something with a person or thing.
  • organize: To organize is to plan or get ready for an event.
  • recognize: To recognize something is to know it because you have seen it before.
  • regular: If something is regular, it happens often and in equal amounts of time.
  • sign: A sign is a notice giving information, directions, a warning, etc.
  • tip: A tip is a pointed end of something.
  • tradition: A tradition is something people have been doing for a long time.
  • wide: If something is wide, it is large from side to side.
  • along: Along means to move from one part of a road, river, etc. to another.
  • climb: To climb means to use your hands and feet to go up on something.
  • final: If something is final, it is the last part.
  • further: Further is used to say something is from a distance or time.
  • maintain: To maintain means to make something stay the same.
  • otherwise: Otherwise means different or in another way.
  • prove: To prove something is to show that it is true.
  • react: To react is to act in a certain way because of something that happened.
  • ride: To ride something is to travel on it. You can ride an animal, a bike, etc.
  • society: Society is people and the way that they live.
  • bite: Bite is the act of using your teeth to cut and tear into something.
  • deal: A deal is an agreement that you have with another person.
  • earthquake: An earthquake is a shaking movement of the ground.
  • hunger: Hunger is the feeling that you get when you need to eat.
  • imagine: To imagine something is to think of it in your mind.
  • rather: Rather is used when you want to do one thing but not the other.
  • trip: A trip is a journey to a certain place.
  • value: If something has value, it is worth a lot of money.
  • band: A band is a group of people who play music.
  • instrument: An instrument is something designed to do a certain task like music.
  • list: A list is a record of information printed with an item on each line.
  • magic: Magic is the power to do impossible things.
  • message: A message is a set of words that you send to someone.
  • own: To own something means to have it. That thing belongs to you.
  • rush: To rush is to go somewhere or do something very quickly.
  • share: To share something is to give some of it to another person.
  • stage: A stage is a place where actors or musicians act or sing.
  • within: You use within to say that something is inside another thing.
  • assign: To assign something to someone is to tell them to do it.
  • competition: A competition is a contest to see who is the best at something.
  • gain: If you gain something, you get more of it.
  • knowledge: Knowledge is information that you have about something.
  • major: If something is major, it is big or important.
  • mean: Mean describes someone who is unkind or cruel.
  • respect: Respect is a good opinion of someone because they are good.
  • rich: If you are rich, you have a lot of money.
  • strength: Strength is the physical power that you have.
  • vote: To vote is to officially choose between two or more things.
  • above: If something is above, it is at a higher level than something else.
  • amount: An amount is how much there is of something.
  • center: The center of something is the middle of it.
  • common: If something is common, it happens often or there is much of it.
  • cost: To cost is to require expenditure or payment.
  • different: Different describes someone or something that is not the same as others.
  • independent: If something is independent, it is not controlled by something else.
  • inside: Inside means the inner part, space or side of something.
  • master: A master is a person who is very good at something.
  • memory: A memory is something you remember.
  • proper: If something is proper, it is right.
  • scan: To scan something is to look at it very carefully.
  • section: A section is a part of something larger.

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