French Revolution of 1848 - The Second Republic - Class Struggles Within The Revolution

Class Struggles Within The Revolution

To the French elite, the June Days uprising was something of a red scare. Karl Marx saw the "June Days" uprising as strong evidence of class conflict. Marx saw the revolution as being directed by the desires of the middle-class While the bourgeoisie agitated for "proper participation", the workers themselves had other concerns. Many of the participants in the 1848 Revolution were of the so-called petite bourgeoisie (the owners of small properties, merchants, shopkeepers, etc.). Indeed the "petite" or petty bourgeoisie outnumbered the working classes (unskilled laborers working in mines, factories and stores, paid for their ability to perform manual labor and other work rather than their expertise) by about two to one in 1848. However, the financial position of the petty bourgeoisie was extremely tenuous. Because of the economic recession of 1846–47, the petty bourgeoisie had developed a great burden of debt as they attempted to stay in business. By 1848, in Paris alone 21,000,000 francs of this debt was "overdue." In the provinces another 11,000,000 francs of commercial paper (business loans) were overdue. During the February Revolution a united front had been presented by all classes of society who were in opposition to Louis Philippe. Both the industrial bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie had joined with the working classes in the February Revolution in order to obtain "proper participation" in the government for all sections and classes in society. However, as the working classes became more dissatisfied with the small share of this participation they actually received, they revolted and sought to have their demands heard in the streets. All the "propertied classes of the February Revolution," i.e. the finance bourgeoisie, the industrial bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, became fearful of the workers revolt. Thus, the industrial bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie turned on their former allies in the February Revolution and moved to repress the working class uprising during the June Days. No class worked harder to suppress the workers revolt than did the petty bourgeoisie. However, since February, because slow sales and economic dislocations of the Revolution, the financial condition of the small merchants and shopkeepers of the petty bourgeoisie had deteriorated even further. As of June 1848, over 7,000 shopkeepers and merchants in Paris had not paid their rent since February. During the June Days, the creditors holding all the commercial paper for those loans and the landlords to whom the back rent was owed (i.e. the finance bourgeoisie), forestalled most attempts to enforce judgement to collect on those debts and back rent owed by the petty bourgeoisie. Once the worker revolt was put down, however, the creditors and landlords began to assert their claims for back rent and overdue debts in court. Bankruptcies and foreclosures rose dramatically following June 1848. It was as if the petty bourgeoisie returned home after their heroic fight against the working class on behalf of the propertied classes only to find that their allies in that fight (i.e. the finance bourgeoisie) had turned against them and turned them out of their businesses and homes. The petty bourgeoisie gathered in a large demonstration at the National Assembly to force the government to inquire into the problem of foreclosures and requiring an extension of debt for all those businessmen who could prove that their insolvency was caused by the Revolution itself. Although a plan containing this proposal was introduced in the National Assembly, the plan was rejected in the end. Thus, the petty bourgeoisie was betrayed and left to its own resources. the result was the pauperization of the petty bourgeoisie. Eventually, individual shopkeepers and merchants left their own failed businesses and sought wage labor and thus became part of the laboring class themselves.

Accordingly, the provisional government, which had been created to address the concerns of the all classes of French society, did not have enough of a foothold in the working classes to be successful in this effort. Therefore, in the end, the provisional government tended to address only the concerns of the liberal bourgeoisie and forgot the concerns of the working class and the concerns of the petty bourgeoisie. Support for the provisional government was especially weak in the countryside, where a vast amount of France's population was agricultural and traditionally less revolutionary. Though the peasantry countryside did have their own concerns, such as food shortages as a result of bad harvests, the concerns of the bourgeoisie were still too far-off from those of the lower classes. Also, the memory of the French Revolution was still fresh in the minds of the French.

The Thermidorian reaction and the ascent of Napoleon III to the throne are evidence that the people preferred the safety of an able dictatorship to the uncertainty of revolution. Louis Napoleon portrayed himself as "rising above politics. Each class saw Louis Napoleon as a re-enactment of the "great days" of Napoleon Bonaparte. The various classes of France each had different visions of what a return to the days of Napoleon Bonaparte would mean and they supported Louis Napoleon for different reasons. This phenomenon was precisely what Karl Marx meant when he said "History repeats itself: the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce." The various classes and political groupings in France each had different reasons for supporting Louis Napoleon in the election of December 10, 1848. Louis Napoleon, himself encouraged this by "being all things to all people." Both the Legitimists (Bourbons) and the Orleans (Citizen King Louis-Philippe) monarchists saw Louis Napoleon as the beginnings of a royalist restoration in France. The army voted for Napoleon (against the Mobile Guard which supported Cavaignac in same election) because they saw Napoleon as a supporter of an active foreign policy—war instead of peace. The big industrial bourgeoisie supported Louis Napoleon as a means of breaking with the proletariat and the other revolutionary forces. They felt that Louis Napoleon would suppress all further revolutionary activity. Even sections of the proletariat supported Louis Napoleon (over the petty bourgeoisie socialist Alexandre Ledru-Rollin who was also in the electoral race) because they saw Louis Napoleon as a means of getting rid of the hated Cavaignac and the hated bourgeoisie republicanism of the National Assembly which had betrayed the proletarian interests in the recent June Days. The petty bourgeoisie saw Louis Napoleon as the rule of the debtor over the creditor, as their savior against the large finance capitalists, who had denied them any kind of relief from their crushing debts despite the loyal support the petty bourgeoisie had provided the propertied interests in the June Days suppression of the revolution.

Then there was the peasantry, which overwhelmingly supported Louis Napoleon. The support of the peasantry for Louis Napoleon was so strong that the election of Louis Napoleon has been seen as a coup d' état or an insurrection of the peasantry. Thus, one might argue, without the support of these large lower classes, the revolution of 1848 would not carry through, despite the hopes of the liberal bourgeoisie.