The 1848

With revolutions spread across much of Arab world, and under the surface in the rest of it, the epoch resembles nothing more than it does the revolutions of 1848 across Europe – the continental revolution that prompted Marx & Engels to issue their Manifesto, and the history of which they later recounted in the pages of the New York Times under Marx’s by-line.

I’ve been reading and keeping notes on philosophical and Marxist-Leninist theories of revolutions, and on historical accounts, in my spare time for some years now. This research has not reached a stage of completion sufficient to permit a full and convincing articulation of the theory. (And anyhow who would publish a text that did not originate from a research university?) But events have forced my hand: they’ve given me a rare opportunity to apply and test my theory – in real time, so to speak.

Both the scope of the 1848 and the rapidity of its spread – scarcely less slow in an age of newspapers and the infancy of steam-powered rail than it was in our age of the internet and social media – offer fertile ground to draw parallels. Paris was revolutionized on February 24^th, Vienna on March 13^th, and Berlin on March 18^th – all capitals of large and organized regimes. More than two dozen capitals of petty German states followed suit, the repercussions were felt in Italy, Poland, and even in London, and the Hungarians took advantage of the situation to assert briefly their independence from the Austrian Empire.

The revolutions began in the cities, and held sway there as long as unanimity among the classes who raised them prevailed. The leading elements in Paris were proletarian, the French bourgeoisie having gained their revolution beginning in 1789. In Berlin and Vienna, and in the smaller German states, the leading elements were petit bourgeois, the “German shopocracy.” The German economy so far lagged the French and English in industry that there was no proletariat to speak of. Students played a prominent role, particularly in Vienna.

Of course the revolutions of 1848 did not succeed; those who made them, with but few exceptions, gained nothing by them.

The regimes temporarily evicted from their capitals exploited the passions – and the objective differences of interest – of the classes that had equally temporarily been allied with each other; they made concessions they were later able to withdraw; they gathered loyal, regular troops.

At the end of October, monarchist troops retook Vienna by force against an armed militia with the students in the front ranks. Berlin fell the next month – without a fight.

That left the National Assembly, convened in Frankfurt the previous spring to write a constitution that would unify Germany and secure political and civil rights to the classes who sent them there…

…to continue its debates. Marx speaks with contempt of their proceedings. And nothing came of this assembly, even though it had had support of regular troops (from the smaller German states) sufficient to attack Denmark over the Schleswig-Holstein the summer before. A feebly conducted insurrection was crushed by the Prussians, even while the invading Hungarians were camped at the gates of Vienna.

All was over by July of 1849. In France, matters were finally settled by the coup d’etat of Louis Bonaparte in December 1851.

What does this mean for today’s revolutions?

What about Libya? (Hint: The regime never lost control of the capital.)

What about Egypt? (Hint: it’s not enough to debate a constitution.)

My next posts will apply the lessons of 1848, and the class analysis of revolution generally, to the new revolutions and the revolutionaries who started them, one-by-one.