karl marx, the eighteenth bumaire of louis bonaparte (citations without page numbers means excerpted from online edition)

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timeline, excerpted from chapter 6

1. First period. From February 24 to May 4, 1848. February period. Prologue. Universal-brotherhood swindle.

2. Second period. Period of constituting the republic and of the Constituent National Assembly.

a. May 4 to June 25, 1848. Struggle of all classes against the proletariat. Defeat of the proletariat in the June days.

b. June 25 to December 10, 1848. Dictatorship of the pure bourgeois republicans. Drafting of the constitution. Proclamation of a state of siege in Paris. The bourgeois dictatorship set aside on December 10 by the election of Bonaparte as President.

c. December 20, 1848, to May 28, 1849. Struggle of the Constituent Assembly with Bonaparte and with the party of Order in alliance with him. Passing of the Constituent Assembly. Fall of the republican bourgeoisie.

3. Third period. Period of the constitutional republic and of the Legislative National Assembly.

a. May 28, 1849, to June 13, 1849. Struggle of the petty bourgeoisie with the bourgeoisie and with Bonaparte. Defeat of the petty-bourgeois democracy.

b. June 13, 1849, to May 31, 1850. Parliamentary dictatorship of the party of Order. It completes its rule by abolishing universal suffrage, but loses the parliamentary ministry.

c. May 31, 1850, to December 2, 1851. Struggle between the parliamentary bourgeoisie and Bonaparte.

(1) May 31, 1850, to January 12, 1851. The Assembly loses the supreme command of the army.

(2) January 12 to April 11, 1851. It is worsted in its attempts to regain the administrative power. The party of Order loses its independent parliamentary majority. It forms a coalition with the republicans and the Montagne.

(3) April 11, 1851, to October 9, 1851. Attempts at revision, fusion, prorogation. The party of Order decomposes into its separate constituents. The breach between the bourgeois parliament and press and the mass of the bourgeoisie becomes definite.

(4) October 9 to December 2, 1851. Open breach between parliament and the executive power. The Assembly performs its dying act and succumbs, left in the lurch by its own class, by the army, and by all the remaining classes. Passing of the parliamentary regime and of bourgeois rule. Victory of Bonaparte. Parody of restoration of empire.

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(preface to 2nd edition, Marx):" Lastly, I hope that my work will contribute toward eliminating the school-taught phrase now current, particularly in Germany, of so-called Caesarism. In this superficial historical analogy the main point is forgotten, namely, that in ancient Rome the class struggle took place only within a privileged minority, between the free rich and the free poor, while the great productive mass of the population, the slaves, formed the purely passive pedestal for these combatants. People forget Sismondi’s significant saying: The Roman proletariat lived at the expense of society, while modern society lives at the expense of the proletariat. With so complete a difference between the material, economic conditions of the ancient and the modern class struggles, the political figures produced by them can likewise have no more in common with one another than the Archbishop of Canterbury has with the High Priest Samuel."




(595-596): "But unheroic as bourgeois society is, yet it had need of heroism, of sacrifice, of terror, of civil war and of national battles to bring it into being." [and such heroism, of course, lends their world the illusion of the universal--when they confront post-revolutionary sobriety, of course, the 'icy waters' of bourgeois life reassert themselves]

(597): outstanding--the bourgeoisie has lost its fire, enter the proletariat, who have no time for the propaganda of the past: "The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself, before it has stripped off all superstition in regard to the past. Earlier revolutions required world-historical recollections in order to drug themselves concerning their own content. In order to arrive at its content, the revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead. There the phrase went beyond the content; here the content goes beyond the phrase."

(597-598): how can you summarize the brilliance of this? the proletarian revolution, as one which will--for all the halting alliances with the bourgeoisie, for all the searching criticisms and tactical confusion--have to make the leap itself ["hic rhodus, hic salta!"]

(599): Delineating three main periods: (1) The February period; (2) The period of the Constituent National Assembly [May 1848 to May 1849]; (3) The period of the National Assembly [May 1849 to December 1851].

(599-600): The first period -- provisional, as "prologue." introduced, of course, the explicit spectre of the "social republic," which the proletariat was capable of "immediately realizing in practice." [reaching, this?]

(600-603): The second period -- the elections were "a living protest against the presumptuous aspirations of the February days and was to reduce the results of the Revolution to the bourgeois scale." From bourgeois monarchy to bourgeois republic, then--to which "the Paris proletariat responded with the June insurrection... the bourgeois republic triumphed." [no doubt, the homogeneity of the revolutionaries will be interrogated--"On the side of the Paris proletariat stood none but itself."--Hobsbawm seems to prefer the term "labouring poor."]

(601): can equally be commentary on the non-viability of anarchist projects--after defeat, the proletariat sought "to achieve its salvation behind society's back, in private fashion [through cooperatives, exchange banks, etc.]" This is all merely symptomatic of its weakness and loss...

(602): it is this defeat, of course, that reveals that there are other questions, beside monarchy vs. progress. the social question is revealed unto the world--"the unlimited despotism" of the bourgeoisie.


[sections 2-6 not included in Tucker's excerpt]
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(chapter 2): "On the other hand, what was clear as daylight to it, and was publicly acknowledged at the reform banquets in the last days of Louis Philippe, was its unpopularity with the democratic petty bourgeois, and in particular with the revolutionary proletariat. These pure republicans, as is indeed the way with pure republicans, were already at the point of contenting themselves in the first instance with a regency of the Duchess of Orleans[80] when the February Revolution broke out and assigned their best-known representatives a place in the Provisional Government." [in other words, the seeds for the bourgeoisie's betrayal were in place, well before the suppression of the June insurrection--having said that, it must be noted that Marx and Engels didn't have this unambiguous a relationship to the "permanent revolution," in advance]

(chapter 2): "The republican bourgeois faction, which had long regarded itself as the legitimate heir of the July Monarchy, thus found its fondest hopes exceeded; it attained power, however, not as it had dreamed under Louis Philippe, through a liberal revolt of the bourgeoisie against the throne, but through a rising of the proletariat against capital, a rising laid low with grapeshot. What it had conceived as the most revolutionary event turned out in reality to be the most counterrevolutionary. The fruit fell into its lap, but it fell from the tree of knowledge, not from the tree of life."

(chapter 2): "Where it forbids these liberties entirely to “the others,” or permits enjoyment of them under conditions that are just so many police traps, this always happens solely in the interest of “public safety” – that is, the safety of the bourgeoisie – as the constitution prescribes. In the sequel, both sides accordingly appeal with complete justice to the constitution: the friends of order, who abrogated all these liberties, as well as the democrats, who demanded all of them. For each paragraph of the constitution contains its own antithesis, its own upper and lower house, namely, liberty in the general phrase, abrogation of liberty in the marginal note. Thus so long as the name of freedom was respected and only its actual realization prevented, of course in a legal way, the constitutional existence of liberty remained intact, inviolate, however mortal the blows dealt to its existence in actual life." [splendid deconstruction of the bourgeois game of appearances--State terror is always unintended, exception, or--if all else fails--done with a heavy heart.]

(chapter 2): "The elected National Assembly stands in a metaphysical relation, but the elected President in a personal relation, to the nation. The National Assembly, indeed, exhibits in its individual representatives the manifold aspects of the national spirit, but in the President this national spirit finds its incarnation. As against the Assembly, he possesses a sort of divine right; he is President by the grace of the people."

(chapter 2): this is all an excellent indictment of all that earnest nonsense that envelops scholars and activists of constitutional law: "he constitution, which, like Achilles, had its weak spot, also had, like Achilles, a presentiment that it must go to an early death. It was sufficient for the constitution-making pure republicans to cast a glance from the lofty heaven of their ideal republic at the profane world to perceive how the arrogance of the royalists, the Bonapartists, the democrats, the communists, as well as their own discredit, grew daily in the same measure as they approached the completion of their great legislative work of art"

(chapter 2): ABSOLUTELY--the airy islands of bourgeois principle sit on seas of blood and terror: "While the bourgeois republicans in the Assembly were busy devising, discussing, and voting this constitution, Cavaignac outside the Assembly maintained the state of siege of Paris. The state of siege of Paris was the midwife of the Constituent Assembly in its travail of republican creation. If the constitution is subsequently put out of existence by bayonets, it must not be forgotten that it was likewise by bayonets, and these turned against the people, that it had to be protected in its mother’s womb and by bayonets that it had to be brought into existence."

(chapter 2): "The period from December 20, 1848, until the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in May, 1849, comprises the history of the downfall of the bourgeois republicans. After having founded a republic for the bourgeoisie, driven the revolutionary proletariat out of the field, and reduced the democratic petty bourgeoisie to silence for the time being, they are themselves thrust aside by the mass of the bourgeoisie, which justly impounds this republic as its property. This bourgeois mass was, however, royalist. One section of it, the large landowners, had ruled during the Restoration and was accordingly Legitimist. The other, the aristocrats of finance and big industrialists, had ruled during the July Monarchy and was consequently Orleanist." [remember, he is here, specifically, not even speaking about the bourgeoisie, in general--it is a specific section, the republican bourgeoisie, the most radical bourgeoisie, that comes in for scorn. most of the bourgeoisie were monarchists, of one and another sort (condensed into the Party of Order, who Bonaparte will cast aside later, from Dec 1848-Dec 1851]. it is the republicans--who have profited immensely from the rebellion of the proletarians, but then turn the State loose on them--that are here most deserving of Marx's righteous anger. and rightly so, for nothing was expected of the rest].

(chapter 2): "Bonaparte took note of all this invective against the legislative power, learned it by heart, and proved to the parliamentary royalists, on December 2, 1851, that he had learned from them. He repeated their own catchwords against them" [absolutely--beaten by their own stick]

(chapter 2): "A motive that particularly actuated the party of Order in forcibly cutting short the duration of the Constituent Assembly’s life was the organic laws supplementing the constitution, such as the law on education, the law on religious worship, etc. To the royalists in coalition it was most important that they themselves should make these laws and not let them be made by the republicans, who had grown mistrustful." [again--then it becomes the big bourgeoisie's turn to learn the lessons it helped teach the republicans]

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(603): reactionary role of the lumpenproletariat stands noted--relevant for our interests

(603-604): the bourgeoisie is betrayed, suffering on account of its own hesitancy and obduracy: "It suppressed every stirring in society by means of the state power; every stirring in its society is repressed by means of the state power."

(604): yet, of course, the parliamentary republic enshrines the bourgeoisie, at the same time

(606): even as they have, consciously, moved well past the bourgeoisie, they recognize the progressiveness of the parliamentary form they--for a brief minute--were willing to enshrine: "In parliament the nation made its general will the law, that is, it made the law of the ruling class its general will. Before the executive power it renounces all will of its own and surrenders itself to the superior orders of something alien, of authority."

(606-607): very fruitful pages here, for an analysis of the State -- under Napoleon III, Marx is suggesting, the State has finally metastasized into something autonomous from society. it has "made itself completely independent"--the outcome of a process of centralization. ["And yet the state power is not suspended in mid-air. Bonaparte represents a class... the small peasants"]

(607): Bourbons were dynasty of landed elite; Orleans were dynasty of monarchy; and the Bonapartes are the dynasty of the peasantry, the mass of the French people [clearly, here, there is potential for relating this to analyses of fascism]

(608): CRITICAL: analysis of the small peasantry, whose dispersal and isolated nature (as well as the fact that they're more dependent on nature than exchange for their livelihoods) renders them a "great mass." "The great mass of the French nation is formed by simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sackful of potatoes." They form a class, in the sense that they live under specific conditions of production, of course. But not a class in the active sense--they're incapable of representing themselves; they must be represented. "The political influence of the small peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power subordinating society to itself." [it is absolutely imperative to intervene, here, with "Peasant Wars of the 20th Century," if that's at all appropriate--we can state, in other words, the general thesis that this is a historically specific assertion Marx is making. but it must, also, be more specific. what is crucial, also, is that on the next page--pg. 609--Marx is immediately making a distinction between the "revolutionary" and "reactionary" peasantry. Bonaparte "represents not the enlightenment, but the superstition of the peasantry."]

(610): brilliantly put--"The bourgeoisie, to be sure, is bound to fear the stupidity of the masses, as long as they remain conservative, and the insight of the masses, as soon as they become revolutionary."

(610): the untenability of the Napoleonic form of peasant property (presumably the small-holding)--the peasant does not see this as the cause of his own pauperism, but Marx is diagnosing it as such. the small-holder, obviously, cannot stay afloat--qua smallholder--for very long, in a market. it is a temporary, stop-gap measure--a temporary relief from feudalism, which will only deliver the peasantry, before long, into the lap of the urban usurer [this is relevant as we think back, and forward...]--"The bourgeois order, which at the beginning of the century set the state to stand guard over the newly arisen small holding and manured it with laurels, has become a vampire that sucks out its blood and marrow and throws them into the alchemistic cauldron of capital."

(611-612): it is this subordination of the peasantry to bourgeois capital which sets the stage, it seems, for a potential alliance between them, and the urban proletariat [this is critical, insofar as it complicates, already, the simple 'sack-of-potatoes' shibboleths]

(613): this small-holding, which is burdened by debts, isn't even vulnerable to co-option via religion, he's arguing--to naked is the nonsense being fed him

(613): same, too, goes for the Napoleonic army--it too has run its course [he has thus, traced the obsolescence of five Napoleonic ideas: the small-holding, the taxes, the bureaucracy, the priests, and the army]--"One sees: all idees napoleoniennes are the ideas of the undeveloped small holding in the freshness of its youth: for the small holding that has outlived its day they are an absurdity."

(614): and, here, pointing again to peasant-proletarian unity, it is precisely this non-viability of the State machine built on a discontented peasant base that will lay the groundwork for the proletarian revolution--in all peasant nations it was, otherwise, a "solo song [which became] a swan song"

(614): brilliant--the bourgeoisie, realizing its fate with Bonaparte: "Only theft can now save property; only perjury, religion; only bastardy, the family; only disorder, order!"

(615-616): the question, raised again, of the "autonomy" of Bonapartism. lots up for discussion, here: "Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes. But he cannot give to one class without taking from another."

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.

the communist manifesto, marx and engels

(470): "the practical application of the principles... will depend... on the historical conditions for the time being existing..."

(470): chastened by experience of the Commune -- the State is not an instrument that can be wielded, at least not naively: "One thing [that] especially was proved by the commune."

(472): interesting reflections on the necessity of the "bourgeois revolution" in Russia--"The only answer to [the question of whether it can go straight to "the higher form of communist common ownership] today is this:" world revolution. in other words, the argument is that a proletarian revolution in the West were to complement revolution in Russia, this accelerated transition could very well happen.

(474): the (in)famous claim that the "epoch of the bourgeoisie... has simplified the class antagonisms." the questions are obvious, and well-worn--while we must defend this charge against the aimlessness of the post-moderns, there are legitimate questions to ask about the homogeneity of the underclass, the probability of collective resistance, the euro-centrism of the expectation.

(475): "The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie"--see US treasury department, 150 years later.

(475): the notion of the progressive role of the bourgeoisie, which for us, raises questions but also offers a basic premise. the premise--that progress is invariably dialectical, that our apprehension of it needs to be framed by the structuring understanding of the fundamental irrationality of capitalism. and the questions, i think, relate very obviously to the pernicious questions of empire and dependent development--we must learn to re-write, rigorously, the divergent narratives of the national bourgeoisie.

(475-476): the contention here is that exploitation is more naked than before--but this does not mean, of course, that the bourgeoisie fails to cloak its own oppression in say-nothing sweet-nothings.

(477): here, underdeveloped reflections on China and the 'exportation' of bourgeois civilization. if this is used to point to Marxism as imperialism, one need only point to Marxist theories of imperialism.

(477): the "idiocy of rural life" [sack of potatoes, etc.]

(478): prefiguring the Frankfurt School--"Modern bourgeois society...is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells."

(478): an important page if we're to trace the Marxist theory of crisis--here sounds quite straightforward, with none of the complexity of Capital: overproduction followed by devaluation (or export of capital and pursuit of new markets, if possible).

(478-479): the gravedigger passage -- note to self--must write an essay on this question.

(479): a possible place where it is predicted that the "wages decrease" -- regardless, that silly objection to Marxism need only be set against the deep analysis of Capital and the concept of the reserve army of labor. [see also "pauperization" on 483)

(480-481): a wonderfully seductive teleology, of workers as scattered mass becoming active, cohesive agent--of local struggles becoming one, (inter)national struggle. if only (in that sense we have to remember that this is polemic).

(481): "...a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands..." [making space for themselves, of course--we can debate, i guess, the extent to which this is an important sociological intervention. the fixity of one's class identity was never relevant. but it is interesting, in light of the next twenty years of engels life, no?]

(481): and this, is interesting, insofar as we want to make it systematic it seems to come into conflict with the anti-elitism of the early work: "and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideolgoists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole."

(482): all other classes are "not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary; for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests..." [brief mention of 'lumpen' elements, which are here derided as reactionary--so whereto for the informal working-class? is the objection re: soweto in order? it doesn't seem like that's satisfactory... but we are going round in circles trying to resolve this formally--PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE]

(483-484): 'point' of the Communists is 'unity' -- to represent the general interests of the proletarian movement as a whole. but much will hinge on the question of what 'representation' might entail.

(484): spelling out what the abolition of private property denotes, in a society ridden purely with the class antagonism between Capital and Labor (but, in hindsight, the question of the property of the small artisan, of the peasant--these are all critical questions); and insofar as we accept the premise, who could possibly refute this? "WE by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labor of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it."

(485): "In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer." CHECK! "In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality." CHECK!

(486): "You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society. In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend."

(487): yes, the contingency of the bourgeois.

(487): "And your education! Is not that also social..."

(488): the nation as arena for battle -- "The working men have no country. WE cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word." [national as "false-consciousness"? at the very least the rejoinder has to engage the complexities of the perspective]

(490): the dictatorship of the proletariat

(490): amidst the ten-ponit plan--"a more equable distribution of the population over the country" (interesting--the end of the city? or the end of the mega-city? or what?)

(491): "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" CHECK!

(491): "feudal socialism" -- remember the history of the time, the Corn Laws and all this. noblesse oblige at its finest.

(492): Marx and Engels on Christian socialism (worth remembering that this is historically specific, of course--but can't help but think of the liberation theologians--I'm sure there's a better treatment of similar phenomena elsewhere in their work): "Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat."

(494): in critique of German Socialism appropriating French, there's a wonderful criticism of academic irrelevance and self-importance: "The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely emasculated. And, since it ceased in the hands of the German to express the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of having overcome 'French one-sidedness' and of representing, not true requirements, but the requirements of truth; not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests of Human Nature..."

(496): ouch! Proudhon as "Bourgeois Socialist" -- they've had their feud by this point. "They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat."

(498): the critique of utopian socialists--perhaps most importantly, they have no political program (they appeal over the heads of the proletariat, to Society in the abstract). though Marx and Engels applaud, here, the critical achievements of this school. "Castles in the air" become irrelevant as the class war matures.

(500): "In Germany [the communists] fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way..." [not for much longer...] "But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat... in order that after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight with the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin." [this is important, insofar as it's not as simple as declaring that the failures and repressions of 1848-9 mark a stark rupture in Marxist thought--i.e., when the 'permanent revolution' was born. these ideas were always germinating, though the later experiences of course generated awareness of the extent of the ruthlessness of the bourgeoisie.]

lecture 6, "expansion and slavery: legacies of the mexican war..."
david blight

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frederick douglass' 4th of July speech: "like Beethoven on steriods, with language as weapon."

given in 1852, in Rochester, NY, in the wake of the crisis that has gripped the country in the wake of the Compromise of 1850, as slavery expands into the West.

"why have you invited me to speak on your Fourth of July?" a critique of American hypocrisy--utilizing "by the rivers of Babylon" passage from Bible.

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in 1847, in the midst of that expansionist war (and a modest number of Northerners who opposed it; and certainly abolitionists, who saw it as a war for the expansion of slavery), Douglass called America a "nation of inconsistencies."

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the anti-slavery impulse that takes hold in the American north goes through various stages:

(1) 1830s-1840s: an expansion of organization of American abolitionisms--tended to be a kind of Garrisonian moral suasion. largely devoted to this idea of reforming or changing the heart of American people. driven very much by the Second Great Awakening.

(2) 1837, with the birth of the Liberty Party--we see this moral line take a political turn. a political party begun by some quite serious abolitionists. in the 1840s, after minimal political success, the Liberal Party becomes the Free Soil Party, in 1848 (directly in response to the expansionist war with Mexico). directly committed to keeping the West (and, America's future) free from the institution of slavery.

it is a fear of slavery, a fear of the way slavery as a system could control America's future that comes to the front and center in American politics after the Mexican War (1846-1848, following formal annexation of Texas in 1845--effective annexation had come 9 years earlier, in 1836).

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how did we get the Mexican War?

after the annexation of Texas by the United States in 1836, which was to be that great Western border that was seemingly limitless (for that matter, there was no Southern border decided upon). the US simply took Texas. Mexico never accepted the Rio Grande as the border. they assumed that, if there was a border, it would be the Nueses river, further North and East.

we've talked about how the Western expansion of the South was booming from 1820s-1840s--and there was a deep and abiding sentiment in American society, now known as Manifest Destiny, of inevitablity. a "racialism" that informed a deep commitment to these territories and their colonization.

this was seen, of course, in the policy re: Native Americans--Indian Removal Act (1830) under President Jackson in the 1830s physically removed Native Americans from their homelands. the five great tribes were, between early-mid 1830s were removed, outwest--to Oklahoma and further. that Indian removal was part and parcel of opening up this Southern frontier to the cotton boom. and the development of the greatest source of wealth in the Southern US.

in the presidential election of 1844, James K. Polk, an avid expansionist, Democrat, and a slaveholding cotton-planter from Tennesee, ran against Henry Clay (intellectual founder of the Whig party, which operated from 1833-1856 on a platform of supremacy of Congress, among other things), who also ran on an expansionist platform. But the Whigs tended to argue for expansion by negotiation(!). Polk said," negotiation=bullshit, elect me and I will give you Mexico and Oregon. "

it was a close election, Polk won by 36,000, out of 2.8 million. (Liberty Party won 16,000, mostly in NY). just before John Tyler left office, he pushed through the annexation of Texas in 1845 (not as a negotiated treaty, but as a State--i.e., without 2/3 approval of Congress). but James K. Polk became the sixth of the first ten American presidents who was a slaveholder. before the American Civil War, 2/3 of all American presidents were either slaveholders or deeply sympathetic. 2/3 of all members of the Supreme Court. James K. Polk was, as far as we know, the only president who bought and sold slaves from the Oval Office(!).

Polk ordered troops to move South to the Rio Grande in order to, in effect, see what the Mexicans would do. in early 1846, there was a brief attempt at negotiation (which was conducted in French, actually, because neither spoke the other's language). Mexico had never acknowledged the Rio Grande. there was a three-week stand-off along the river, and then on the 24th of April 1846 a Mexican cavalry contingent ambushed American troops on the other side. two weeks later, Zachary Taylor's dispatch reached to the White House, announcing that hostilities had commenced in Mexico. Polk received the news and immediately asked Congress for a declaration of war, saying "Mexico had invaded American soil(!)" Approved, even if with a number of abstentions from Northerners in Senate.

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the first major expansionist war of American history. a flurry of speculation about what soldiers, settlers might find in Mexico. Herman Melville said, "the people here are all in a state of delirium... nothing is talked about but the halls of Montezuma." Illionis paper arguing "reptiles on the path of progressive democracy."

many abolitionists had very serious things to say about the war. James Russel Lowell: "a national crime committed in behoof of slavery, our national sin." Ralph Waldo Emerson (in his private journals, however): "the US will conquer Mexico, but it will be as though a man swallows arsenic... Mexico will poison us..."

by the end of 1846, the US had established dominion over the southern half of California. in 1847, US forces conquered Mexico City. and, by the end, a treaty was negotiated, on dictated terms. Treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo, in the US lost 13,000 Americans in a year and a half of fighting, the vast majority of disease. an estimated 50,000 Mexicans died.1848, gave the US all of the western part of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, parts of Colorado). Payment was $15 million.

that same year, 1848, was a tremendous turning point (as important in American history as in Europe, some argue). as these nationalistic revolutions against monarchy were breaking out all over Europe (Austria, Hungary, Italy, Germany, France--some will succeed, some will fail), republican America was seizing territory, and launching an Empire on its own continent.

sitting in House of Representatives, young Congressman from IL, Abraham Lincoln, voted against the Mexican War every chance he got, calling Polk's justification "a half-insane mumbling of a fever dream."

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why all the fuss? what did the war unleash?

Daniel Webster, the great Whig of MA, probably the most powerful and important Northern politician, kept trying to argue that this wasn't really all that important. (the Southwest was all desert--we won't expand slavery there, "an imaginary Negro in an [inhospitable] place"

but why did so many people care?

first, Northerners (prof is admitting that he is generalizing): (1) they cared about this because there was a belief that slavery could indeed take place in the Southwest (in mining, e.g.)--and, lo and behold, what was discovered in California, but gold! and why couldn't you build canals/railroads/etc. with slaves? (2) lots of Northerners in politics favored non-extension on constitutional grounds. (3) didn't want to be complicit in the expansion of slavery--"don't ask me to vote, to create a new territory, which will become a Slave state." Northerners wanted to confine slavery to the South--make slavery sectional, but free labor national. (4) there was also racism, involved in this. they saw the West as a place that would be free for small, white farmers--free from competition from a powerful Southern oligarchy. (5) and finally, of course, there were some abolitionists around, who believed in the immorality of slavery's expansion. (and sometimes there would be a mix of all this: racism, moral opposition, etc..--Abraham Lincoln, e.g.)

the South: (1) cared, in part, because an assumption had set in that it was not just because it was considered the South's destiny, but also a necessity for its economic system ("to check the expansion of slavery would be to strangle the Southern economy and way of life"). (2) the growing slave population in existing Southern states was a possible powder-keg--they feared the "shrinking" South as an economic entity, as a political culture--an economy turning in on itself, possibly. (3) political party in the Congress. new states meant two new senators. in 1850, the ratio of slave states to free states was 1:1 (15 to 15). they wanted to sustain that parity. California will be the test case. (4) and then there's a question of State's rights--did anyone have the right to prohibit anyone else from taking their property anywhere? "you Northerners have no right to stop me from taking my wagon, my horse, and my slave, anywhere I wish."(5) there's a sense of honor, here--the legal standing of slavery in the Western territories stood as a measure of its moral standing everywhere. if you tell me that slavery is not a part of America's future, then you're telling me that it's wrong in my home. and that's unacceptable.

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the fuss, then, is this is because this is really a debate about American's future.

there were four plans put in place:

(1) Wilmont Proviso: penned by a young Democratic HofR, who got up in the midst of the Mexican War, who got up during the debates and said, "in any new territory we gain from Mexico, there won't be slavery." it became the rallying cry of the Free Soil movement. all but one Northern legislature endorsed it; all the Southern legistlatures condemned it. it passed the House of Representatives, but did not pass the Senate (where the slave states still had parity). there was a good deal of racist support for the Proviso (and here we see the mixture of Northern anti-slavery sentiments)--"I have no sympathy for the slaves... I speak on behalf of the free white men..." Keep the West free of black people, essentially.

(2) State sovereignty (South's position): ultimately, no federal legislature, President, etc., had the authority to stop slavery's expansion.

(3) Popular sovereignty: the simple idea that there would be no act of Congress--take Congress out of the story, and simply let the people in the Western territory have a vote. let there be a referendum, popular democracy. "a charm of ambiguity"about this proposal. the problem, of course, was when do you hold the vote? do you establish a rule about the #'s of ppl there. Southerners wanted the vote later in the process, because it would take them a while to take slaves/their system out there.

(4) they went back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery North of the parallel. half of California, of course, was North of that line. in the 1850s, people suggesting that we continue to draw careful geographic lines across the West.

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the election of 1848 was crucial: Democrats ran on a popular sovereignty platform, candidate was Lewis Cass. Zachary Taylor was the Whig candidate, recent war hero, "ol' rough an' ready." problem was, of course, that he was a Louisiana slaveholder, not very committed to Whig principles.

there were two new political offshoots, at this time, over this furore: (1) the conscience Whigs--a group of abolitionists created in MA who broke with the Whig party (and would never go back, harbinger of its future demise) (2) Free Soil Party, created in 1848, and ran Martin Van Buren, a former president. and they stood for one thing--stopping slavery's expansion. they took 10%!

Zachary Taylor was elected.

and, lo and behold, gold was discovered in California--and so suddenly there was a desperate need to find a middle-ground. on a night in January 1850, Henry Clay gets together with Daniel Webster and they cut a deal, that became the Compromise of 1850 (they're drunk, prof is noting).

that month, Clay would announce the five provisions of the Compromise before the Senate (holding a piece of George Washington's coffin, to boot!). people were very worried that the Union was going to unravel, and fall apart.

and indeed, it almost did.

lecture 3, "centralized state and republic"
john merriman

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two things: (1) centralization of the state, and why paris as center; (2) why the "miracle baby," Chambord, did not become King of France--why did France end up a republic, and how?

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the role of Paris is unique in European history--and it still is this way, despite various decentralization proposals. it is the most centralized state in the world, according to professors.
(Spain, Germany all examples that have two or three balancing cities, at the very least. Even England, with industry in the north in Manchester, etc.--the economic centers, etc.)

the role of Paris, in sum, is special, and particular to France.

("Paris in the French Desert"--where else, but in France, would so much of the population be considered provincials, in a deeply condescending way.)

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One of the reasons that Paris' role is so great in France has to do with the way that the French state was constructed, the way it was centralized (you only hear people with Parisian accents on the radio, even in other regions, most of the time--always people with Northern accents).

Balzac articulated the way that Parisians view provincials (dominated by role and monotony, like "frogs at the bottom of their puddles"..."they don't think about things that are serious")

One of the key economic indicators of this dominance: Lyon, France's second city--its principal bank moved itself to Paris in the 1860s!

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How did it get this way?

All states centralized, but why Paris is so uniquely centralized?

In Europe in 1500, you had about 1500 independent, territorial states. State-making, of course, was one of the central processes in early modern European history. Unification of Italy (1850s and 1860s), Germany (1871), of course. States developed their ability to extract resources from the provinces.

In the 16th century, Paris came to be France's capital ("absolutism": in the 17th century, European rulers expand their abilities to extract resources from ordinary people, expand their reach to other provinces).

Louis XIV (the "sun-god") sends people out in the provinces to do his well--they negotiate with local nobles, etc.--but ultimately, the only thing that matters is that this increases the power of the state (it's at this time that the standing armies of the central, absolute monarchy become enormous).

And along comes the French Revolution, which seeks to rationalize the administration of France. So, before, where you had to pay tolls in many parts of France, different weights/etc., they try to strengthen the center. And because their rivals are the nobles and the Church, they opt to base their administrative center on Departments.

They become strings which reach out from Paris into the different Departments--the three things that any resident of the provinces sees, then, are the ministry of war, the ministry of justice, and the ministry of the interior.

Created in 1790, and they still exist (the only major change came in 1860, when the departments around Paris were consolidated due to the city's expansion). Most are named after rivers.

The point is: in order to defeat its enemies, the revolution centralizes the State.

And next, of course, Napoleon makes state centralization even more important, as he seeks to consolidate his power.

Similarly, the Second Empire (1852-1870), his nephew (Napoleon III), uses centralization as a tool of the state, to consolidate his own power, and to undercut the residual influence of the nobility. If you wanted something, it no longer made sense to go to the local notable--the patronage of the Empire (the Center) is key, as he can provide railroads, schools, etc.

You have economic processes that clarify the power of the Center, in sum. The state can authorize economic processes that make a city (railroads, bridges, factories, etc.). The evolution of banking, as well, which further consolidates power in Paris (the State financial institutions are in Paris, and they can direct investment).

If you look at a map of the railroads, in France--all roads lead to Paris. Trains reinforce the predominance of the capital city. (Turbo-Prof, a name for somebody who lives in Paris, and teaches outside of the city, but is desperate to live in Paris. This is bad, of course, because it destroys local university life.)

The 19th century, then, accentuates all of this. (Prof reading an absurd definition of the "provincial" from the Larousse dictionary). (De Gaulle, as a further example of this, which we will talk about later: "How can you govern a country that has 440 different kinds of cheese?")

It is illegal, in France, to use names that are not officially approved.

What has not changed, in Paris, is the capacity of the center's ministries to influence life in the provinces. (In the 1980s, there were huge demonstrations favoring Catholic Church against the diktats coming down from Paris with regards to content of education).

There is no other country, in the post-communist world, where so many people work for the State. (Prof's aside: it's entirely untrue, of course, that public services don't work).

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All this, of course, becomes a salient question in debates over Europe, and the EU constitution. We will talk about this later, but prof is arguing for a vote against--"I know of no one, except professors in Paris and Lyon, who would have voted for it"

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How did this happen?

In February of 1870, you had a monarchist-dominated Assembly, elected, in which rural regions (Brittany, Normandy, etc.) wanted the restoration of a monarchy. Why does that not happen? Why did it become the Third Republic (1875/1877-1940)?

A story of decisions taken by individual people (old-style history).

There was a miracle baby (part of the Bourbon royal family), Count de Chambord. In 1820, his father was assasinated, by a liberal, who wanted to extinguish this royal line (the Bourbons, who had been restored in 1815-1830).

France goes into great mourning, because the heir to the French throne is dead.

And then, lo and behold, it turns out his widow, was pregnant! And as the country holds its breath, the baby was a boy. A miracle baby! ("Henry V")

Unforunately, he was sort of a "sad sack."

Now, there were the Orleanists, who, under King Louis Phillipe, were in power from 1830-1848, and seen as "progressive", bourgeois-liberal monarchs. Carried an umbrella! He is chased from the throne in 1848--but he had helped modernize the economy, and did not restore the Church to its original power.

Whereas the Orleanists were sharp, then, Chambord was thick as a brick.

When France collapsed after the war with Prussia, it seemed to the monarchists that their ship had come in. It's easy to make fun of Chambord, of course, but there was a strong royalist movement--and it wasn't just people looking backward. He himself said he didn't want to be a king of the old regime, but to combine monarchy with modernity.

You have to imagine him after the Commune--he comes to Paris, had never been to the city. And he goes around as a tourist. He has an entourage, but there is this tradition of popular royalism--of people who wanted the King. There was a close association, of course, between the King and the Church, so there was support in the religious regions (he has made clear that he will restore the church to its rightful place of privilege). And he stands to benefit from the religious revival of the 1870s (after crisis, religious revivals--just like after the French revolution).

But it's hard, if you're 47 years old, and you're a pretender to the throne. He had a royal accident (broke his leg), he was himself a large man. He was a big-time gambler.

Viewed hereditary monarchy as a unique form of "salvation" for France. The key, of course, to his authority, as well, is the nobility, who have been disenfranchised since the revolution (the State had been winning the battle against its nobles). Elections in the 1880s bore out the fact that this was generally popular.

This did not stop nobles from believing that had they run in elections, they would have won, on behalf on the monarchy.

Chambord, though, when disaster came was not ready, in sum. He issued anachronistic manifestos, etc. Even still, for all his limitations, he was a man of faith and loyalty to his principles. In 1789, when the Bourbons were deposed, the family's white flag was replaced by the Tricolore. Chambord refused to compromise on this principle, which was the flag of the revolution that had killed his family members. And he didn't agree, either, to the sucession of the Orleanists after his death (Chambord didn't have any children: "Without my principles, I am a fat man with a big limp"(!)).

And so, Franch, lurched into the Republic of the Moral Order. In 1875, there's an amendment to the constitution that transforms France into a republic (won by won vote). In 1877, a General tries to overthrow the Government--but fails to do so, and by the early 1880s, the Republic is consolidated. And most people wanted it--its social base was the new middle class, and the workers. Some peasants in the south, of course, were still in favor of a monarchy.

The executive is fairly weak--real stregnth lies in the assembly. This does not mean that the State is not strong, at all. A very controversial decision of this centralized government comes in 1905, for separation of the Church and State.

The State becomes the new vehicle of economic, cultural, political patronage--replaces the nobility, the Church, and the monarchy that most people did not want.