The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850

An important work by Marx summarizing the experience of the French Revolution of 1848. Written from the end of 1849 to the end of March 1850 and from October to November 1, 1850, initially three articles written by Marx and Engels for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, under the general title “From 1848 to 1849”, and in 1895, Engels wrote an introduction and supplemented a fourth chapter to make it more complete, and published in a single edition. In 1942, the first Chinese version was translated by Ke Bainian and published by Yan’an Liberation Publishing House under the title The Class Struggles in France.

From 1848 to 1849, a vigorous bourgeois democratic revolution swept across Europe. After the defeat of the revolution, the reactionary forces of various countries regained power and frantically suppressed the revolution, thus dragging the European workers’ movement into a low ebb. In this situation, it became the central task to sum up the experience and lessons of the 1848 Revolutions in Europe and further formulate the tactics of the proletarian revolution. Therefore, Marx chose France, the most classic country in modern history in terms of class contradictions and class struggle, and deeply analyzed the French Revolution of 1848 with the viewpoint and method of historical materialism, so as to write this work. The full text of The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 consists of four parts. In Part I, “The Defeat of June 1848”, Marx reviewed the history of the period from the February Revolution of 1848 to the June Uprising, analyzed the causes of the February Revolution in France, the nature of the provisional government and the reasons and historical significance of the defeat of the June Uprising, and expressed the necessity and inevitability of introducing the dictatorship of the proletariat in a concentrated manner. He held that the reactionary rule of the July Monarchy triggered the February Revolution, but the provisional government that emerged from the February barricades was essentially a bourgeois government. It took various measures to suppress the demands of the proletariat and stood ready to suppress the resistance of the proletariat. This stirred up the anger of the proletariat and eventually led to the massive June Uprising. In terms of the June Uprising, Marx believed its significance to be: “the first great battle was fought between the two classes that split modern society. It was a fight for the preservation or annihilation of the bourgeois order.” The June Uprising ended in defeat, which taught the proletariat the truth “that the slightest improvement in its position remains a utopia within the bourgeois republic”, and the proletariat must abandon utopia, overthrow the bourgeois system and introduce the dictatorship of the proletariat. This was the first time in the history of development of Marxism that the concept of “dictatorship of the proletariat” was used.

Part II, “From June 1848 to June 13, 1849”, mainly introduced the history of the period from the defeat of the June Uprising to the June 13, 1849, defeat of the petty bourgeoisie. In the course of introducing this period of history, Marx revealed the scientific connotation of the right to work in view of the problem of changing all the provisions of the “right to work” into “the right to public relief” in the constitution of the bourgeois republic. He pointed out that “behind the right to work stands the power over capital; behind the power over capital, the appropriation of the means of production, their subjection to the associated working class and, therefore, the abolition of wage-labor, of capital and of their mutual relations.” “It was the first to express the formula in which, by common agreement, the workers’ parties of all countries in the world briefly summarize their demand for economic transformation: the appropriation of the means of production by society.”

In Part III, “The Consequences of the June 13, 1849”, by reviewing the history of the Legislative Assembly period, Marx profoundly analyzed the situation of the class structure in France, expounded that the proletariat should form an alliance with the peasants, act as a leading class in the revolution and firmly grasp the idea of revolutionary leadership, and put forth the famous conclusion that “Revolutions are the locomotives of history.” At the same time, Marx drew a clear line between revolutionary socialism and all kinds of utopian socialism. He pointed out that revolutionary socialism “is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.”

In Part IV, “Abolition of Universal Suffrage in 1850”, Marx first clarified the economic reasons for the defeat of the French revolution of 1848 and the victory of the bourgeois reactionary forces. In his view, “given this general prosperity, wherein the productive forces of bourgeois society are developing as luxuriantly as it is possible for them to do within bourgeois relationships, a real revolution is out of the question.” “Such a revolution is possible only in periods when both of these factors—the modern forces of production and the bourgeois forms of production—come into opposition with each other.” On this basis, Marx pointed out that economic prosperity was the fundamental reason for the victory of French bourgeois reactionary forces. In addition, Marx also revealed the essence of the bourgeois universal suffrage. He held that that the interpretation of the Constitution belongs only to those who accepted it, that “its wording must be construed in its viable meaning and that the bourgeois meaning was its only viable meaning. That is to say, such universal suffrage could not exceed the limits set by the bourgeoisie, and when it affected the interests of the bourgeoisie, it would be abolished by the bourgeoisie, thus demonstrating that bourgeois universal suffrage served to realize the interests of the bourgeoisie.

The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 explained the thought of the strategy and tactics of the proletarian revolution, enriched and developed the theory of scientific socialism. It was “Marx’s first attempt to explain a piece of contemporary history by means of his materialist conception, on the basis of the prevailing economic situation.” It is a classic example for applying the doctrine of class struggle and the conception of history to the study of social and historical events in the conception of history and an important milestone in the development of Marxism.