Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte | Page 8

large collective
weapons and on the contrary, seeks to bring about its emancipation,
behind the back of society, in private ways, within the narrow bounds
of its own class conditions, and, consequently, inevitably fails. The
proletariat seems to be able neither to find again the revolutionary
magnitude within itself nor to draw new energy from the newly formed
alliances until all the classes, with whom it contended in June, shall lie
prostrate along with itself. But in all these defeats, the proletariat
succumbs at least with the honor that attaches to great historic struggles;
not France alone, all Europe trembles before the June earthquake, while
the successive defeats inflicted upon the higher classes are bought so
easily that they need the brazen exaggeration of the victorious party
itself to be at all able to pass muster as an event; and these defeats
become more disgraceful the further removed the defeated party stands
from the proletariat.
True enough, the defeat of the June insurgents prepared, leveled the
ground, upon which the bourgeois republic could be founded and
erected; but it, at the same time, showed that there are in Europe other
issues besides that of "Republic or Monarchy." It revealed the fact that
here the Bourgeois Republic meant the unbridled despotism of one
class over another. It proved that, with nations enjoying an older
civilization, having developed class distinctions, modern conditions of
production, an intellectual consciousness, wherein all traditions of old
have been dissolved through the work of centuries, that with such

countries the republic means only the political revolutionary form of
bourgeois society, not its conservative form of existence, as is the case
in the United States of America, where, true enough, the classes already
exist, but have not yet acquired permanent character, are in constant
flux and reflux, constantly changing their elements and yielding them
up to one another where the modern means of production, instead of
coinciding with a stagnant population, rather compensate for the
relative scarcity of heads and hands; and, finally, where the feverishly
youthful life of material production, which has to appropriate a new
world to itself, has so far left neither time nor opportunity to abolish the
illusions of old. [#3 This was written at the beginning of 1852.]
All classes and parties joined hands in the June days in a "Party of
Order" against the class of the proletariat, which was designated as the
"Party of Anarchy," of Socialism, of Communism. They claimed to
have "saved" society against the "enemies of society." They gave out
the slogans of the old social order--"Property, Family, Religion,
Order"--as the pass-words for their army, and cried out to the
counter-revolutionary crusaders: "In this sign thou wilt conquer!" From
that moment on, so soon as any of the numerous parties, which had
marshaled themselves under this sign against the June insurgents, tries,
in turn, to take the revolutionary field in the interest of its own class, it
goes down in its turn before the cry: "Property, Family, Religion,
Order." Thus it happens that "society is saved" as often as the circle of
its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more exclusive interest asserts
itself over the general. Every demand for the most simple bourgeois
financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for the most
commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy, is forthwith
punished as an "assault upon society," and is branded as "Socialism."
Finally the High Priests of "Religion and Order" themselves are kicked
off their tripods; are fetched out of their beds in the dark; hurried into
patrol wagons, thrust into jail or sent into exile; their temple is razed to
the ground, their mouths are sealed, their pen is broken, their law torn
to pieces in the name of Religion, of Family, of Property, and of Order.
Bourgeois, fanatic on the point of "Order," are shot down on their own
balconies by drunken soldiers, forfeit their family property, and their
houses are bombarded for pastime--all in the name of Property, of

Family, of Religion, and of Order. Finally, the refuse of bourgeois
society constitutes the "holy phalanx of Order," and the hero
Crapulinsky makes his entry into the Tuileries as the "Savior of
Society."

II

Let us resume the thread of events.
The history of the Constitutional National Assembly from the June
days on, is the history of the supremacy and dissolution of the
republican bourgeois party, the party which is known under several
names of "Tricolor Republican," "True Republican," "Political
Republican," "Formal Republican," etc., etc. Under the bourgeois
monarchy of Louis Philippe, this party had constituted the Official
Republican Opposition, and consequently had been a recognized
element in the then political world. It had its representatives in the
Chambers, and commanded considerable influence in the press. Its
Parisian organ, the "National," passed, in