eric hobsbawm, the age of capital (chapter 1: 'springtime of peoples')

(10): "There have been plenty of greater revolutions in the history of the modern world, and certainly plenty of more successful ones. Yet there has been none which spread more rapidly and widely, running like a brushfire across frontiers, countries and even oceans."

(10): French Republic proclaimed February 24, 1848; German revolution(s), Italy and Hungary in March... "Within a matter of weeks no government was left standing in an area of Europe which is today occupied by all or part of ten states [France, West Germanyh, East Germany, Austria, Italy, Czechoslovakea, Hungary, part of Poland, Yugoslavia, and Romania] not counting lesser repercussions in a number of others."

(10): YET--"within six months of its outbreak its universal defeat was safely predictable, within eighteen months of its outbreak all but one of the regimes it overthrew had been restored, and the exception (the French Republic) was putting as much distance as it could between itself and the insurrection to which it owed its existence."

(12-13): Radicals, Hobsbawm's suggesting, had a simple model--a French revolution towards a "unitary centralized democratic republic of Germany, Italy, or Hungary or whatever the country happened to be..." But "moderates... were enmeshed in a web of complex calculations, based essentially on the fear of democracy which they believed to equal social revolution."

(13-17): "Their common characteristics:"

(1) "They all succeeded and failed rapidly, and in most cases totally..." (France counter-attack by April, when conservatives made it to the assembly en masse on the backs of a "politically-inexperienced" peasantry; and then the revolutionary workers were defeated in Paris, in June; Hapsburg reaction by June; in Germany and Austria the old regimes regained power "between the summer and the end of the year); remaining parts of Italy and Hungary recaptured by summer 1849). "There had been one and only one major irreversible change: the abolition of serfdom in the Habsburg Empire."

(2) "All the revolutions had something else in common, which largely accounts for their failure. They were, in fact or immediate anticipation, social revolutions of the labouring poor. They therefore frightened the moderate liberals whom they pushed into power and prominence... at least as much as the supporters of the old regimes." Adding that though the communists didn't have a major role in events in Germany, events in France in February, where the 'leaders were socialists and communists and its provisional government included a mechanic,' frightened them. In sum, page 17: "Eighteen forty-eight failed because it turned out that the decisive confrontation was not between the old regimes and the united 'forces of progress', but between 'order' and 'social revolutions.' Its crucial confrontation was not that of Paris in February but that of Paris in June, when the workers, manoeuvred into isolated insurrection, were defeated and massacred... It is characteristic of the ferocity of the hatred of the rich for the poor that some three thousand were slaughtered after defeat, while another twelve thousand were arrested, mostly to be deported to Algerian labour camps." The revolution was strongest, Hobsbawm adds, where radicals were able to lead or do without the moderates--this was most likely in lands where national liberation was the point of unity (i.e., Italy and Hungary, which is where the revolutions lasted the longest)

(20): KEY: "As we shall see the reactionary 1850s were to be, in economic terms, a period of systematic liberalization. In 1848-9 moderate liberals therefore made two important discoveries in Western Europe: that revolution was dangerous and that some of their substantial demands (especially in economic matters) could be met without it. The bourgeoisie ceased to be a revolutionary force."

(20-21): discussing the role of 'intellectuals' and of the petty-bourgeoisie -- many of them, he's arguing, were important for the 'democratic left,' but certainly not 'foundational'. many of the youth of this class, in fact, would do very well for themselves in the reactionary years of the 50s and 60s.

(21): KEY: "As for the labouring poor, they lacked the organization, the maturity, the leadership, perhaps most of all the historical conjuncture, to provide a political alternative. Strong enough to make the prospect of social revolution look real and menacing, they were too weak to do more than frighten their enemies." The weaknesses, enumerated: (1) "numerical deficiency"--not always a majority in the cities, which were anyway counterbalanced by the weight of the peasantry; (2) ideological and political immaturity. "The most politically conscious and activist stratum among them consisted of the pre-industrial artisans... The poor and unskilled in the cities and, outside Britain, the industrial and mining proletariat as a whole, had hardly any developed political ideology as yet."

(22-23): KEY: even though he is noting their political non-organization, he is also arguing that "we should not underestimate [their] potential." in one sense, they were yet to be 'bought off' by capitalism, as their pauperism was very evident. moreover, they weren't able to concentrate on their economic demands; their demands had an invariably 'political' content, without which "no revolution is made." It was "organization, ideology and leadership" which were underdeveloped.

(24): "They ought to have been bourgeois revolutions, but the bourgeoisie drew back from them."

(25): important--a lasting consequence of 1848, Hobsbawm is arguing, was that it forced "the defenders of the social order... to learn the politics of the people." Absolutism for its own sake--or tradition for tradition's sake--no longer withstood popular scrutiny.