Chapter 29 Chapter 1 Development Chapter 6 Revolution 6

6 Although divided by nationality and class due to differences in local conditions, the revolutionary movements of 1830-1848 still maintained many things in common.First, as we have seen before, they are still largely a minority organization of middle-class intellectual conspirators, often in exile or confined to the world of the educated and weak. (Of course, when the revolution breaks out, ordinary people will also become active. Of the 350 dead in the Milan uprising in 1848, only about 12 were students, employees, or people from the landlord class; 74 were women, children, and the rest were handicraftsmen or workers.) Second, they retained a set of political procedures, strategies and tactical ideas inherited from the Revolution of 1789, and a strong sense of international solidarity.

The first commonality is easy to explain.Except in the United States, Great Britain, and perhaps Switzerland, Holland, and Scandinavia, mass movement organizations and traditions are almost non-existent in social life in normal times (rather than before and after the revolution); In addition, other regions do not have the conditions to appear.A newspaper with a weekly circulation of more than 60,000 copies and a much larger readership, such as the Chartist The Northern Star of April 1839, was utterly unimaginable elsewhere. 5,000 seems to have been the most common circulation for newspapers, although semi-official newspapers or (from the 1830s onwards) entertainment magazines may exceed 20,000 in countries like France.And even in constitutional countries like France and Belgium, the legal mobilization of the extreme left is only intermittently recognized, and its organization is more often seen as illegal.So, while the phantom of democracy exists only among a limited class of legally entitled political powers (some of which have influence among the non-privileged), the basic methods of mass politics—public movements, mass organizations that exert pressure on the government , petitions, face-to-face speaking tours with ordinary people, etc.—there is little possibility of implementation.Probably no one but the British would seriously consider a mass movement of signatures or demonstrations for universal suffrage in Parliament, or mass propaganda or pressure campaigns to repeal an unpopular law, as in the case of the British Chartists and the anti- The Corn Law Coalition each tried to do.Major changes in the constitution mean a break in legitimacy, and even more so in society.

Illegal organizations are naturally smaller than legal ones, and their social makeup is far less representative.It is well established that when a general Carbonarist secret society evolves into a proletarian revolutionary organization, such as the Blanquists, its membership in the middle class decreases relatively, while the membership of the working class, that is, artisans and skilled journeymen, decreases in number. rise accordingly. The members of the Blanquists of the late 1830s and 1840s are said to have come mainly from the lower classes.The same was true of the Germanic League of Illegals (later to become the League of Just and the Communist League of Marx and Engels), whose backbone consisted of German journeymen in exile.But such cases were quite exceptional at the time.As in the past, a large number of conspirators were mainly from the professional class, minor nobles, university and high school students, journalists, etc.; perhaps in the heyday of the Carbonari Party (except for the countries of the Iberian Peninsula), there was also a small number of young officers.

Furthermore, to some extent, the entire European and American Left continues to struggle with a common enemy, with a common aspiration and a common program (represented by "British, French, German, Scandinavian, Polish, Italian, Swiss , Hungary and residents of other countries").The Fraternal Democrats wrote in their Declaration of Principles: "We reject, criticize, and condemn all hereditary inequalities and 'racial' distinctions, and therefore we hold that kings, nobles, and A usurper. It is our political creed that the government is elected by and responsible to all the people.” Would radicals or revolutionaries disagree with such content?A bourgeois revolutionary, he will favor a country in which property can be freely used economically, although property can no longer enjoy the political privileges of the past (such as the electoral property qualification restrictions stipulated in the 1830-1832 constitution); Communist or communist revolutionist, he must argue that property must be socialized.Undoubtedly, there will come (as we saw in Chartism in England) a time when allies formerly opposed to kings, nobles, and privileges will become fighting enemies, and the basic conflict will be The conflict between the bourgeoisie and the working class.But by 1848, outside Britain, the moment of conflict had not yet come.In only a few countries the big bourgeoisie remains openly in the camp of the government.Even the most self-conscious proletarian communists see themselves as the extreme left of the radical and democratic movement in general, and generally see the establishment of a "bourgeois-democratic" republic as the indispensable beginning of the further development of socialism.The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, is a future manifesto against bourgeois war and (at least for Germany) the present joint manifesto.And when Germany's most advanced middle class—the Rhineland industrialists—asked Marx in 1848 to be editor-in-chief of their radical organ, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, they not only expected him to accept, they expected him to Don't just make this newspaper an organ of communism, but more importantly, make it the spokesperson and leader of the Germanic radicals.

The European left not only shares a common revolutionary view, but also a common revolutionary image.This imagery stems from the revolutions of 1789 and 1830.The country in the image is in the midst of a political crisis leading to riots. (With the exception of the Iberian peninsula, the Carbonarist ideology of organizing elite-led riots or uprisings, regardless of the overall political or economic climate, is increasingly viewed with suspicion. Especially in Italy where similar attempts have repeatedly failed, such as 1833- All the more so after the disastrous end to the riots instigated by Napoleon's nephew Louis in 1834, 1841-1845, and in 1836.) Barricades will be erected in capitals; Center) rushed to the town hall, hoisted whatever tricolor flag, and proclaimed a republic and a provisional government.The country will then accept this new regime.The extreme importance of the capital is generally accepted, although it was not until after 1848 that the government began to redesign the capital to facilitate the suppression of revolutionaries by troops.

Armed citizens will form the National Army, democratic elections for the Constituent Assembly will be formally held, the provisional government will become the definitive government, and a new constitution will come into force.The new government will then offer fraternal support to other revolutions that are almost certain to follow.What happened next belongs to the post-revolutionary era.For the post-revolutionary era, the French paradigm of 1792-1799 also provides a fairly specific model of what to do and what not to do.Naturally, the most radical revolutionaries can easily turn their focus to defending the revolution against subversion by domestic and foreign counter-revolutionaries.It can also be argued that the more left-wing a politician is, the more likely he is to favor the Jacobin principles of centralization and the creation of a strong administration as opposed to (Girondinian) principles of federalism, decentralization, or decentralization.

This common view was reinforced by a strong tradition of internationalism, which survived even among those secessionist nationalists who refused to accept the inherent hegemony of any country (i.e., France, or Paris).Even without taking into account the obvious fact that the liberation of most European countries seemed to mean the failure of absolutism, the course of the revolution would have been the same in all countries.National discrimination (which, as the Brothers of Democracy believed, "has been exploited in all ages by the oppressors of the people") would disappear in a world of fraternity.Attempts to create international revolutionary groups never ceased, from Mazzini's "Young Europe" - an international organization intended to replace the old-fashioned Carbonarari-Masonry - to the "Democratic League for the United World" in 1847. Association for the Unification of All Countries).In nationalist movements, this kind of internationalism has gradually declined in importance as countries have gradually won their independence and relations between peoples have not been as friendly as might have been imagined.It is gaining strength in those social-revolutionary movements that increasingly accept a proletarian orientation.The International, as an organization and a song, would become an integral part of the socialist movement later in the century.

One incidental factor which strengthened nationalism in 1830-1848 was emigration.Most political fighters on the left in continental Europe have been exiles for a while, many for decades.They were concentrated in a relatively small number of refugee areas and places of refuge: France, Switzerland, and to a lesser extent England and Belgium (the Americas were too far away for temporary political migration, although they attracted some).The largest group of such exiles were the 5,000-6,000 Polish immigrants exiled after the failed revolution of 1831, followed by Italians and Germans (increased by the large number of non-political immigrants).By the 1840s, a small group of wealthy Russian intellectuals, while studying abroad, had absorbed Western revolutionary ideas, or pursued a more benign atmosphere than Nicholas I's dungeons and drill grounds.In Paris and far away Vienna, the two cultural cities that illuminate Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Eastern Mediterranean, students and wealthy people from weak or backward countries can be seen everywhere.

In refugee centers, exiles organize, discuss, quarrel, communicate, criticize, and plan to liberate their own country and the country of others.First the Poles, then the Italians (Garibaldi in exile fought for the freedom of the Latin American countries), they became in effect an international army of revolutionary fighters. Between 1831 and 1871, not a single uprising or war of liberation anywhere in Europe was fought without the assistance of Polish military specialists or combat detachments.This was true even of the only armed uprising (1839) during the English Chartist period.However, they are not the only ones doing this. Harro Harring of (self-proclaimed) Denmark was a fairly typical liberator of people in exile who fought for Greece (1821) and then Poland (1830-1831).A member of Mazzini's Young Germany, Young Italy, and, somewhat vaguely, Young Scandinavia, he also crossed oceans to fight for a planned United States of Latin America before returning to Europe to join the Revolution of 1848 , and stayed in New York for this purpose; at the same time published works entitled "The People", "Blood Drops", "A Man's Words" and "A Scandinavian Poem". (It was with great misfortune that he incurred the enmity of Marx, who, in his Cantata of the Exiles, left the record of the man for posterity with his unstoppable gift for satirical invective.)

A common destiny and a common ideal link these exiles and sojourners together.Most of them face the same problems of poverty and police surveillance, illegal correspondence, espionage, and the ubiquitous spies.Like fascism in the 1930s, absolutism in the 1830s and 1840s united its common enemy.And when communism, whose purpose was to explain the world's social crises and propose solutions, a century later attracted the intellectually curious to its capital, Paris, it added a serious allure to the city's glamour. . (“Life would be meaningless without the French woman. But when there is so much dark side to the world, come on!”) ​​In these refuge centers, exiles formed temporary but often permanent groups of exiles, while plotting the liberation of mankind.They don't always like or approve of each other, but they understand each other and know that their destiny is shared.Together they prepare and wait for the revolution in Europe. In 1848, it came and failed.