Hal Draper, "Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, V. 2: The Politics of Social Classes":
Around the latter part of 1848 and early 1849, Marx gave up the expectation that the bourgeoisie might come through after all.
This was not an easy conclusion to come to, since--in the absence of a crystal ball to foresee alternative roads--it suggested that in Germany the road of progressive economic modernization might be closed or long delayed. Marx did not adopt the conclusion on some given day; on the contrary, there are many signs of groping and oscillation, as might be expected of militants who were trying to understand an unexpected development, not in a library carrel a hundred years later but in the hurly-burly of revolutionary events.
1. WRITING OFF THE BOURGEOISIE
Even as early as July 1848 there was already an element of ambiguity in the following passage in an article by Marx:
"The [Hansemann ministry] wants to establish the rule of the bourgeoisie while at the same time striking a compromise with the old police- and feudal state. In this two-sided and contradictory task, at every turn it sees the still-to-be-established rule of the bourgeoisie and its own existence frustrated by the reactionary forces of the absolutist, feudal type--and it will succumb to the latter. The bourgeoisie cannot fight it out for its own rule without temporarily taking the people as a whole as its ally, hence without coming out more or less democratically."
There is the direct statement that "it will succumb," but the next implication is that "it will succumb unless . . ." The second view, in fact, remained the operative line for months.
A month before, in the eloquent article in which Marx defended the June uprising of the Paris workers, his bitterness toward the bourgeois executioners of the revolt did not prevent him from asking, toward the end of the article, whether this "deep gulf that has opened before us" should lead one to think that the fight for a democratic constitution makes no difference, that the difference between a democratic state form and the absolutist state form is only "empty, illusory, nil." His answer is a vigorous no. The struggles arising out of social development have to be fought to their conclusion:
"The best form of the state is that in which social antagonisms are not blurred, are not forcibly--hence only artificially, only illusorily--fettered. The best form of the state is that in which they come to a free fight and thereby to a solution."
Therefore the N.R.Z. group pushed for everything that would further a democratic-constitutional government, a complete democratiza-tion of the state. But increasingly a question mark had to be put over the issue: what social force could achieve this aim?
The answer was not worked out by meditation in the offices of the N.R.Z. It came in response to a series of shocks. In September a watershed event cast a bright light. An uprising broke out in the Frankfurt area, fought "by the workers of Frankfurt, Offenbach and Hanau, and by the peasants of the surrounding region," Engels reported. The bourgeois elements opposed the movement, and it was suppressed by the government with the help of Prussian, Austrian, and Hessian troops. Engels' article on the uprising looked at the class alignment and generalized: why the victories of the counterrevolution all over Europe?
"Because all sides know that the struggle that is looming in all civilized countries is an entirely different one, an infinitely more important one, than all previous revolutions: because in Vienna as in Paris, in Berlin as in Frankfurt, in London as in Milan, it is a question of the overthrow of the political rule of the bourgeoisie, of a transformation whose imminent consequences already fill all comfortable and puzzled citizens with dismay.
"Is there any revolutionary center in the world where the red flag, the battle symbol of the fraternizing European proletariat, has not waved over the barricades in the last five months?"
"In Frankfurt too, the parliament of the united Junkers and bourgeois was combated under the red flag.
"It is because the bourgeoisie is threatened by every uprising breaking out now--threatened directly as to its political existence and indirectly as to its social existence: this is the reason for all these defeats. The mostly unarmed people have to fight not only against the forces of the organized bureaucratic and military state which have been taken over by the bourgeoisie, but also against the armed bourgeoisie itself. Confronting the unorganized and badly armed people stand the joint forces of the other classes of society, well organized and well equipped. And that is why the people have been beaten so far, and why they will continue to be beaten till their opponents are weakened--whether because the troops get involved in war or because they have an internal split--or until some big event drives the people into desperate struggle and demoralizes their opponents."
Engels' article then points to looming events in France as the hope of renewed revolutionary elan in Europe.
At the end of August Marx, on a visit to Vienna, spoke before the Democratic Association there, and seems to have expressed an opinion about the Austrian situation that he had not yet applied to Germany. "Herr Marx," said the Viennese press report, "opined it made no difference who was Minister, for now here too--as in Paris--it was a question of the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat."
By December the pattern was clear enough for the publication of Marx's major programmatic article, "The Bourgeoisie and the Counterrevolution," which (as we have seen) indicted the bourgeoisie for going over to the counterrevolution. It contains the most powerful flagellation yet of the bourgeoisie's incapacity. A key passage, from the second part, is a good example of Marx's "thunderer" style as well as of the political interpretation he is developing:
"The German bourgeoisie had developed so sluggishly, cravenly and slowly that at the moment when it menacingly confronted feudalism and absolutism, it saw itself menacingly faced by the proletariat and by all sections of the citizenry [Burgertum, burghers; not bourgeois] whose interests and ideas were related to the proletariat. And it not only saw a class behind it but all of Europe hostilely arrayed before it. The Prussian bourgeoisie was not, as the French bourgeoisie of 1789 had been, the class that represented the whole of modern society vis-a-vis the representatives of the old society, the monarchy and the aristocracy. It had sunk down to a kind of social estate just as clearly distinct from the Crown as from the people, eager for opposition to both, irresolute before either taken individually, because it always saw both of them either before or behind; inclined from the outset to betray the people and to compromise with the crowned representative of the old society, because it itself already belonged to the old society; representing not the interests of a new society against an old one but newly revived interests inside an obsolescent society; at the helm of the revolution not because the people stood behind it but because the people pushed it on before; in the van not because it represented the initiative of a new era of society but only the rancor of an old one; a stratum that had not broken through under the old state but which now was heaved up to the surface of the new state by an earthquake; without faith in itself, without faith in the people, grumbling at those above, trembling at those below, egoistic toward both sides and conscious of its egoism, revolutionary vis-a-vis the conservatives, conservative vis-a-vis the revolutionaries, distrustful of its own catchwords, given to phrases instead of ideas, intimidated by the international storm, exploiting the international storm;--no energy in any direction, plagiarism in all directions; common because it was not original, original in its commonness--haggling over its own aspirations, without initiative, without faith in itself, without faith in the people, without a world-historical mission--a damned old codger who found himself condemned to lead and mislead the first youthful currents of a sturdy people into the channels of his own senile interests;--sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans everything--in such wise did the Prussian bourgeoisie find itself at the helm of the Prussian state after the March revolution."
It would seem that after all this strong language Marx was writing the liberal bourgeoisie off as any kind of revolutionary force.
Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
