第40章

Petty bourgeois socialism, socialism par excellence, is distinct from this bourgeois socialism, to which, as to every variety of socialism, sections of the workers and petty bourgeois naturally rally.Capital hounds this class chiefly as its creditor, so it demands credit institutions; capital crushes it by competition, so it demands associations supported by the state; capital overwhelms it by concentration, so it demands progressive taxes, limitations on inheritance, taking over of large construction projects by the state, and other measures that forcibly stem the growth of capital.

Since it dreams of the peaceful achievement of its socialism -- allowing, perhaps, for a second February Revolution lasting a brief day or so the coming historical process naturally appears to it as an application of systems which the thinkers of society, whether in companies or as individual inventors, devise or have devised.Thus they become the eclectics or adepts of the existing socialist systems, of doctrinaire socialism, which was the theoretical expression of the proletariat only as long as it had not yet developed further into a free historical movement of its own.

While this utopian doctrinaire socialism, which subordinates the total movement to one of its stages, which puts in place of common social production the brainwork of individual pedants and, above all, in fantasy does away with the revolutionary struggle of the classes and its requirements by small conjurers' tricks or great sentimentality, while this doctrinaire socialism, which at bottom only idealizes present society, takes a picture of it without shadows, and wants to achieve its ideal athwart the realities of present society; while the proletariat surrenders this socialism to the petty bourgeoisie; while the struggle of the different socialist leaders among themselves sets forth each of the so-called systems as a pretentious adherence to one of the transit points of the social revolution as against another -- the proletariat rallies more and more around revolutionary socialism, around communism, for which the bourgeoisie has itself invented the name of Blanqui.This 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.

The scope of this exposition does not permit of developing the subject further.

We have seen that just as in the party of Order the finance aristocracy necessarily took the lead, so in the party of "anarchy" the proletariat.

While the different classes, united in a revolutionary league, grouped themselves around the proletariat, while the departments became ever more unsafe and the Legislative Assembly itself ever more morose toward the pretensions of the French Soulouque, the long deferred and delayed by --election of substitutes for the Montagnards, proscribed after June 13, drew near.

The government, scorned by its foes, maltreated and daily humiliated by its alleged friends, saw only one means of emerging from this repugnant and untenable positions revolt.A revolt in Paris would have permitted the proclamation of a state of siege in Paris and the departments and thus the control of the elections.On the other hand, the friends of order, in face of a government that had gained victory over anarchy, were constrained to make concessions, if they did not want to appear as anarchists themselves.

The government set to work.At the beginning of February, 1850, provocation of the people by chopping down the trees of liberty.In vain.

If the trees of liberty lost their place, the government itself lost its head and fell back, frightened by its own provocation.The National Assembly, however, received this clumsy attempt at emancipation on the part of Bonaparte with ice-cold mistrust.The removal of the wreaths of immortelles from the July column was no more successful.It gave part of the army an opportunity for revolutionary demonstrations and the National Assembly the occasion for a more or less veiled vote of no confidence in the ministry.In vain the government press threatened the abolition of universal suffrage and the invasion of the Cossacks.In vain was Hautpoul's direct challenge, issued to the Left in the Legislative Assembly itself, to betake itself to the streets, and his declaration that the government was ready to receive it.Hautpoul received nothing but a call to order from the President, and the party of Order, with silent, malicious joy, allowed a deputy of the Left to mock Bonaparte's usurpatory longings.In vain, finally, was the prophecy of a revolution on February 24.The government caused February 24 to be ignored by the people.

The proletariat did not allow itself to be provoked to revolt, because it was on the point of making a revolution.