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The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 was a set of articles written by Karl Marx for the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1850. The works were collated and republished in 1895 by Friedrich Engels. [1]
In these works Marx analyzes the class issues and the economic relations which drove forward the social and political upheavals, which took place in France in 1848. He focuses extensively on the argument that the conflict was not between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but between different factions within the bourgeoisie. Specifically, he identifies conflicts between the industrial bourgeoisie, whose wealth and income are dependent upon the production and sale of goods; and the financial bourgeoisie, whom he identifies as bankers and stock market speculators. [2]
Marx identifies a political system where the individuals responsible for the development of public policy and the direction of public funds, were the same individuals whose investments stood to be affected by these decisions. The result of this, he claims, was that public policy was manipulated for the sake of self enrichment, giving the example of extensive railroad projects being developed with public funds under the direction of legislators who were also the main investors in these endeavors. [2]
Marx asserts, however, that, while this situation was deemed intolerable to the industrial bourgeoisie, they were not in any position to take serious action against it. The industrial bourgeoisie still occupied a comparatively privileged position within society and government and this fact, Marx argues, placed them in essentially the main camp as the financial bourgeoisie. [2]
Where Marx identifies the change in the situation that made the public revolt possible is in a set of financial crises further afield that had deleterious effects on the economic situation in France. Specifically, he identifies a set of crop failures in 1845 and 46, and then a more general economic crisis which gripped England in the late 1840s. This crisis saw a wave of bankruptcies and factory closures throughout Britain and it was in the midst of the aftershocks that this crisis sent across the European continent, Marx asserts, that the February Revolution took place. [2]
Marx asserts in these works that England, in that time, was setting the tone for bourgeois society in general, and blames this on the nature of the trade imbalances which then existed. He paints a picture of France exporting most of its consumer goods to England, while England exports most of it consumer goods further abroad. In the same way he interprets the crises which effect England afterwards going on to effect the continent. [2]
Thus, he claims, the general economic crisis in England led to a general economic crisis in France, and that this crisis was the cause of the revolution of February 1848. This prompts him to demonstrate why no such revolution occurred in England and for this he offers the explanation that England was more thoroughly industrialized. England, he claims, needed no revolution because the industrialists already constituted such a great power, socially and politically, that they were able to confront the runaway power of speculative finance directly. France, however, was still far more heavily agrarian, while the industrialist class, though wealthy and powerful in its own right, did not wield sufficient power to carry through such a confrontation. It was only in the aftermath of the above mentioned economic crises that the industrial bourgeoisie found themselves forced to align themselves with the agrarian classes against the financial bourgeoisie. Thus Marx concludes that, in spite of the proletarian character and slogans of the revolution the proletariat were used mostly as a prop, and that as soon as the new republic was established the proletariat were more or less ejected from the circles of power. [2]
Marx goes on to describe how this use of the proletariat as a prop to dethrone the financial bourgeoisie on the behalf of the industrial bourgeoisie left the bourgeoisie so disillusioned and alienated as to fall into support for Louis Bonaparte, a man who Marx speaks of very disparagingly. He argues that Bonaparte's lack of character was central to his popularity as he was able to signify different things to different constituents and therefore build a broad base of support among groups that, according to Marx, share few mutual goals and interests. [2]
Finally, Marx draws together the analyses of the political upheavals in France and the economic crises triggered, originally, in England and spreading outward to the continent; and from these analyses builds the argument that these upheavals in France, which seemed like a grand political shift in one nation, marked only minor change within the superstructure of a social and economic system which was multinational in character. [2]
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the four-volume Das Kapital (1867–1883). Marx's political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history. His name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory.
The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a political pamphlet written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848, the Manifesto remains one of the world's most influential political documents. It presents an analytical approach to class struggle and criticizes capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, without attempting to predict communism's potential future forms.
The bourgeoisie is an elite aristocratic social class, equivalent to the upper class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their wealth and intelligentsia, as well as their great cultural and financial capital. They are sometimes divided into a petty, middle, large, upper, and ancient bourgeoisie and collectively designated as "the bourgeoisie".
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi, also known as Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi,, whose real surname was Simonde, was a Swiss historian and political economist, who is best known for his works on French and Italian history, and his economic ideas. His Nouveaux principes d'économie politique, ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population (1819) represents the first liberal critique of laissez-faire economics. He was one of the pioneering advocates of unemployment insurance, sickness benefits, a progressive tax, regulation of working hours, and a pension scheme. He was also the first to coin the term proletariat to refer to the working class created under capitalism, and his discussion of mieux value anticipates the concept of surplus value. According to Gareth Stedman Jones, "much of what Sismondi wrote became part of the standard repertoire of socialist criticism of modern industry," earning him critical commentary in the Communist Manifesto.
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, no single, definitive Marxist theory exists.
In Marxist theory, a new democratic society will arise through the organised actions of an international working class enfranchising the entire population and freeing up humans to act without being bound by the labour market. There would be little, if any, need for a state, the goal of which was to enforce the alienation of labor. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stated in The Communist Manifesto and later works that "the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy" and universal suffrage, being "one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat". As Marx wrote in his Critique of the Gotha Program, "between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". He allowed for the possibility of peaceful transition in some countries with strong democratic institutional structures, but suggested that in other countries in which workers can not "attain their goal by peaceful means" the "lever of our revolution must be force", stating that the working people had the right to revolt if they were denied political expression. In response to the question "What will be the course of this revolution?" in Principles of Communism, Friedrich Engels wrote:
Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.
The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe starting in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history to date.
Marxian class theory asserts that an individual's position within a class hierarchy is determined by their role in the production process, and argues that political and ideological consciousness is determined by class position. A class is those who share common economic interests, are conscious of those interests, and engage in collective action which advances those interests. Within Marxian class theory, the structure of the production process forms the basis of class construction.
Karl Marx's idea that the state can be divided into three subject areas: pre-capitalist states, states in the capitalist era and the state in post-capitalist society. Overlaying this is the fact that his own ideas about the state changed as he grew older, differing in his early pre-communist phase, the young Marx phase which predates the unsuccessful 1848 uprisings in Europe and in his later work.
The French Revolution of 1848, also known as the February Revolution, was a brief period of civil unrest in France, in February 1848, that led to the collapse of the July Monarchy and the foundation of the French Second Republic. It sparked the wave of revolutions of 1848.
In Marxist theory, the Lumpenproletariat is the underclass devoid of class consciousness. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the word in the 1840s and used it to refer to the unthinking lower strata of society exploited by reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces, particularly in the context of the revolutions of 1848. They dismissed the revolutionary potential of the Lumpenproletariat and contrasted it with the proletariat. Among other groups, criminals, vagabonds, and prostitutes are usually included in this category.
Classical Marxism refers to the economic, philosophical, and sociological theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as contrasted with later developments in Marxism, especially Marxism–Leninism.
Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for transitioning from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection; it is defined as a seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests.
Mahir Çayan was a Turkish communist revolutionary and the leader of People's Liberation Party-Front of Turkey. He was a Marxist–Leninist revolutionary leader. On 30 March 1972, he was killed in an ambush by Turkish Military Forces with nine of the other members of THKP-C and THKO in Kızıldere village.
In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat holds state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the post-revolutionary state seizes the means of production, compels the implementation of direct elections on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party, and instituting elected delegates into representative workers' councils that nationalise ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership. During this phase, the administrative organizational structure of the party is to be largely determined by the need for it to govern firmly and wield state power to prevent counterrevolution and to facilitate the transition to a lasting communist society. Other terms commonly used to describe the dictatorship of the proletariat include socialist state, proletarian state, democratic proletarian state, revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and democratic dictatorship of the proletariat. In Marxist philosophy, the term dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is the antonym to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The proletariat is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power. A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philosophy considers the proletariat to be exploited under capitalism, forced to accept meager wages in return for operating the means of production, which belong to the class of business owners, the bourgeoisie.
Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as early as 1850, but since then it has been used to refer to different concepts by different theorists, most notably Leon Trotsky.
Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborator, Friedrich Engels, the ultimate cause and moving power of historical events are to be found in the economic development of society and the social and political upheavals wrought by changes to the mode of production. Historical materialism provides a challenge to the view that historical processes have come to a close and that capitalism is the end of history. Although Marx never brought together a formal or comprehensive description of historical materialism in one published work, his key ideas are woven into a variety of works from the 1840s onward. Since Marx's time, the theory has been modified and expanded. It now has many Marxist and non-Marxist variants.
Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky is a book by Soviet Communist Party leader Leon Trotsky. First published in German in August 1920, the short book was written against a criticism of the Russian Revolution, Dictatorship of the Proletariat, published the previous year in Vienna, Austria by prominent Marxist Karl Kautsky.
Fascist syndicalism was a trade syndicate movement that rose out of the pre-World War II provenance of the revolutionary syndicalism movement led mostly by Edmondo Rossoni, Sergio Panunzio, A. O. Olivetti, Michele Bianchi, Alceste De Ambris, Paolo Orano, Massimo Rocca, and Guido Pighetti, under the influence of Georges Sorel, who was considered the “‘metaphysician’ of syndicalism.” The Fascist Syndicalists differed from other forms of fascism in that they generally favored class struggle, worker-controlled factories and hostility to industrialists, which lead historians to portray them as “leftist fascist idealists” who “differed radically from right fascists.” Generally considered one of the more radical Fascist syndicalists in Italy, Rossoni was the “leading exponent of fascist syndicalism.”, and sought to infuse nationalism with “class struggle.”
