Chapter 66 Results of Part II Chapter 16 Conclusion: Towards 1848

Poverty and the proletariat are the festering ulcers of the organism of the modern state.Can they heal?The communist doctor proposes the total destruction of existing living beings... One thing is certain, if these people gain the power to act, there will be a not political but a social revolution, a war against all property , a state of utter anarchy.Will this phenomenon be in turn replaced by the nascent nation-state?What kind of moral and social foundation is it based on?Who will lift the veil of the future?What role will Russia play?An old Russian proverb says, "I sit on the shore until the wind comes."

— Hacksterhausen, "Studies on...Russia" We begin this book by examining the world in 1789.Let us close this book with a glance at the world some fifty years later, at the end of that unprecedented and most revolutionary half-century. It was an era of pinnacle.In this calculating age, when attempts were made to record all the events of the known world by means of statistics, numerous new statistical bulletins (about fifty major bulletins of this type were published between 1800 and 1848, not counting including government statistics [censuses, official surveys, etc.] or the numerous new professional or economic journals filled with statistical tables) can justly conclude that every measurable data is greater than any previous period ( or smaller).The known, mapped, and interconnected worlds are larger than in any previous era, and their interconnections are unimaginably rapid.The world's population is larger than ever before, and in some regions, beyond all expectations or previously impossible.Megacities continue to proliferate at an unprecedented rate.Industrial production reached astronomical figures: in the 1840s, some 640 million tons of coal were excavated.Only the more perverse international trade surpassed the astronomical figures of industrial production.International trade has quadrupled since 1780 to some £800 million, a much larger figure if it were not measured in a monetary unit as strong as the pound sterling.

Never before had science been so successful; knowledge had never been so widespread. More than 4,000 newspapers provide information to citizens of all countries in the world, and the number of books published in Britain, France, Germany and the United States alone reaches five figures every year.Human inventions are climbing more dizzying peaks every year.When the huge laboratory called the gasworks, pumping gas through endless underground pipes, began to light the mills (Bolton and Watt introduced gas lamps in 1798, Manchester's "Phillips and Lee" cotton mills since 1805 1,000 gas lamps were used for a long time.), followed by lighting the cities of Europe (London from 1807, Dublin from 1818, Paris from 1819, and even remote Sydney was gaslighted from 1814.) By that time, compared with this achievement, the Argand lamp (1782-1884) - the first major advancement since the invention of oil lamps and candles - was almost completely unrevolutionary in artificial lighting. .By this time, the arc lamp was also beginning to be known.Professor Wheatstone in London has planned to use submarine telegraph lines to link Britain and France.In just one year (1845), 48 million passengers had traveled on British railways.Men and women can already run along the 3,000 miles (6,000 miles in 1846 and 6,000 miles on the eve of 1850) of Great Britain.There are 9,000 miles of railroad tracks in the United States.Regular steamer routes had long connected Europe with America, and Europe with the Indies.

Undoubtedly, these achievements have their dark sides, although they cannot be easily summarized from statistical tables.How do people quantify facts that few would deny today, like the industrial revolution creating the ugliest environments humans have ever lived in, such as the vile rot and lack of fumes experienced in the back streets of Manchester; or It was the Industrial Revolution that created the most miserable world, driving unprecedented numbers of men and women from their homes and costing them their lives.Nevertheless, we can forgive the confidence and determination of the standard-bearers of progress in the 1850s: "Commerce may go on freely, leading civilization with the one hand, and peace with the other, to make mankind happier, wiser, and better." Even in the bleakest year of 1842, Lord Meston continued to make this optimistic statement: "It is God's will, sir." No one can deny that there was then the most appalling poverty.Many believe that poverty is even increasing and deepening.But can even the most pessimistic rational observer insist that, measured by the unprecedented standards of industrial and scientific achievement, it is, in material respects, worse than ever before, even than hitherto unindustrialized nations?he can not.To say that the material condition of the working poor is worse than that of the dark past, and sometimes worse than that of some vividly remembered periods, is a severe enough condemnation.Defenders of progress try to fend off the attack with the argument that this is not caused by the workings of the emerging capitalist society, but rather by the old system of feudalism, monarchy and aristocracy, still set in place on the road to well-established free enterprise caused by obstacles.In contrast, the new socialists argue that it is caused by the workings of the system.Both agree, though, that this is a phase pain in the development process.Some believe that they will be overcome within the framework of capitalism, while others believe that it is impossible.Both sides, however, rightly believed that, with man's growing control over the forces of nature, there would be bright prospects for material improvement in human life.

But when we set out to analyze the social and political structure of the world in the 1740s, we reserve the most delicate parts for a tempered and qualified review.The majority of the world's inhabitants remain as before, farmers, although in some areas, notably England, agriculture has long been a minority occupation, and the urban population has reached the edge of overtaking the rural population, as the 1851 census first showed.Slaves also fell relatively, as the international slave trade was officially abolished in 1815; actual slavery in the British colonies was abolished in 1834; and in the liberated Spanish and French colonies, slavery was banned during and after the French Revolution.But while the West Indies, with the exception of some non-British territories, were now legally free agricultural zones, slave populations continued to grow in the two remaining strongholds of Brazil and the American South.This growth was stimulated by the rapid progress of industry and commerce, which opposed any restrictions on goods and manpower, and official prohibitions made the slave trade more profitable. In 1795, the price of a black slave working in the fields in the southern United States was about $300, but in 1860, it rose to $1,800; while the number of slaves in the United States rose from 700,000 in 1792 to 2.5 million in 1840 people, and 3.2 million in 1850.They still came from Africa, but slave sales also increased in slave-owning areas, namely in the U.S. frontier states, and they were sold to rapidly expanding cotton-growing regions.

In addition, the pre-existing semi-slavery system was also being perfected, such as the export of "indentured labor" from India to the Indian Ocean islands and West Indies that produced sugar cane. Serfdom, or the legal bondage of the peasantry, was abolished in much of Europe, though it made little difference to the rural poor of traditional haciendas like Sicily or Andalusia.Yet serfdom persisted tenaciously in its main European strongholds, although after an initial massive expansion the number of male serfs in Russia had stabilized between 10 and 11 million from 1811 onwards, and That is to say, relative decline. (The expansion of serfdom during the reigns of Catherine II and Paul [Paul, 1762–1801] increased the number of male serfs from about 3.8 million to 14 million in 1811.) However, serf farming (as opposed to slavery) agriculture) was clearly in decline, its economic disadvantages became more pronounced, and, especially from the 1840s onwards, peasant resistance grew.Probably the largest serf uprising was the Galician serf uprising in Austria in 1846, which was a prelude to the general emancipation of serfs in 1848.But even in Russia there were 148 peasant riots between 1826-1834, 216 between 1835-1844, 348 between 1844-1854, and a climax in the last years before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, totaling 474 times.

At the other end of the social pyramid, except for countries like France where a direct peasant revolution took place, the status of the landed aristocracy was less likely to change than imagined.Doubtless there were countries like France and the United States in which the wealthiest men were no longer landowners. (Some rich people bought land as a token of their access to the top echelons, such as the Rothschilds. This is of course an exception.) But even in England in the 1870s, the greatest concentration of wealth was of course Still in the aristocracy; and in the American South, in Scottish, "chivalry," "romantic," and other concepts that meant nothing to the black slaves and uneducated, self-sufficient Puritan farmers they exploited ), the cotton growers even created for themselves a parody of aristocratic society.Of course, in the stability of the aristocracy, there was a change: the income of the aristocracy became more and more dependent on the bourgeoisie they despised, on the development of their industries, stock securities and real estate.

Of course, the middle class has grown rapidly, but even so, they are not overwhelmingly numerous. In 1801 there were about 100,000 taxpayers in Great Britain with an annual income of £150 or more; by the end of the period in which this book is concerned this number may have risen to about 340,000, that is to say, including their large family members, in 1.5 million people out of a total population of 21 million (1851). (Estimates of this kind are subjective, but assuming that every household classifiable as middle class had at least one servant, the 674,000 female "general domestic servants" in 1851 provide us with a The figures for the largest households. About 50,000 cooks, and "about the same number of housekeepers and maidservants" provide the smallest numbers.) Naturally, those who are catching up with middle-class standards and ways of life are more numerous. is much bigger.But these people were not all very rich. A safe guess is that the number of people with an annual income of more than 5,000 pounds is about 4,000 people, including nobles. Far.We can assume that the proportion of the middle class in other countries is clearly not higher than in the UK, and in fact is generally lower.

The working class (including the proletarians in new factories, mines, railways, etc.) naturally grows at the fastest rate.Except in the UK, however, this increase can only be measured in hundreds of thousands, not millions.The working class is still numerically insignificant compared to the total world population, and again, apart from the UK and a few other small cores, it is unorganized by any measure.However, as we have seen, the political importance of the working class has grown out of proportion to its numbers or achievements. By the 1840s, the political structure of the world had undergone profound changes, but in any case not as much as optimistic (or pessimistic) observers expected in 1800.Outside of the American continent, the monarchy remains the most common mode of governing states; even in America, the largest state (Brazil) remains an empire, and another (Mexico), at least between 1822 and 1833, was Under General Iturbide (Augustine I), the name of the empire was tried.It is true that some European kingdoms, including France, can be described as constitutional monarchies, but apart from such countries concentrated on the eastern edge of the Atlantic, despots still hold absolute predominance everywhere.Indeed, by the 1840s, the revolution had given birth to new countries: Belgium, Serbia, Greece, and Latin America.Although Belgium was an important industrial power (mainly because it followed in the footsteps of its great neighbor, France), the most important of the regimes founded by the revolution was the United States, which had already existed in 1789.The United States enjoys two great advantages: First, there is no strong neighbor or adversary who can, or does want to prevent its expansion across the vast interior to the Pacific coast-French in the "Louisiana Purchase" in 1803 Among them, a piece of land equivalent to the size of the United States at that time has actually been sold to the United States; second, its economic development is leaping forward at an extraordinary speed.The first advantage was also shared by Brazil, a peaceful secession from Portugal that avoided the fate of a generation-long Revolutionary War that would tear apart much of Spanish America; is still undeveloped.

Still, politics has changed a lot.Moreover, since about 1830, the dynamics of change have increased markedly. The Revolution of 1830 introduced moderate liberal bourgeois constitutions (anti-democratic, but equally anti-aristocratic) to the major states of Western Europe.This undoubtedly meant compromises, stemming from the fear of a mass revolution beyond the aspirations of the moderate middle classes.These compromises left the landed classes overrepresented in the government, as in England, while the emerging classes, especially the most vibrant industrial middle classes, were underrepresented in the government, as in France.Yet these compromises still tip the political balance decisively toward the middle class. After 1832, in everything that counted, British industrialists succeeded.To win the repeal of the Corn Laws, it was well worth abandoning the more extreme republican and anti-church proposals of the utilitarians.There is no question that middle-class liberalism (though not democratic radicalism) is on the rise in Western Europe.Its main opponents (the Conservatives in Britain, and those blocs generally clustered around the Catholic Church elsewhere) are on the defensive and are well aware of this.

But even radical democracies have failed to make significant headway.After 50 years of hesitation and hostility, pressure from western pioneers and farmers finally established democracy in the United States under President Jackson (1829-1837).This was roughly around the same time that the European revolution regained its momentum.Just as the period in this book was coming to an end (1847), a civil war between Swiss radicals and Catholics brought democracy to the country.But few among moderate middle-class liberals would think that such a system of government, dominated by left-wing revolutionaries and seemingly suited at best to the vulgar small producers of the hills or plains, will one day would become the quintessential political structure of capitalism and protect them against new attacks by those who had championed the system in the 1840s. Only in international politics is there an apparently general and actually infinite revolution. The world in the 1840s was dominated by the political and economic powers of Europe, plus the developing United States. The Opium War of 1839-1842 proved that the only surviving non-European power, the Chinese Empire, was no longer capable of parrying Western military and economic aggression.Nothing, it seemed, could stop the few Western armies with trade and Bibles in their entourage since then.Moreover, in the general trend of the West dominating the world, because Britain has more gunboats, trade and "Bibles" than other Western countries, it is logical to be crowned the overlord.Britain's supremacy was so absolute that it required little political control to function.With the exception of Great Britain, the other colonial powers were in decline, so Britain had no rivals.The French Empire had been reduced to controlling only a few scattered islands and trading posts, although it was now embarking on a journey across the Mediterranean in an attempt to restore its position in Algeria.Indonesia was already under the watchful eyes of Singapore, the new British trading hub, so that the Dutch, who had resumed rule in Indonesia, were no longer in competition with the British; the Spaniards retained Cuba, the Philippine Islands, and vague rights over African territories; forgotten.British trade dominated independent Argentina, Brazil, and the American South, as well as Spanish colonies, Cuba, or British colonies in India.British investments had a strong influence in the North of the United States, and indeed in every growing region of the world.In history, there has never been a great country that has exercised world hegemony like the British Empire in the mid-19th century, because the most powerful empires or hegemonic countries in history are only regional, such as the Chinese Empire, the Arab Empire and the Roman Empire .No single power has since succeeded in establishing a comparable hegemony, and indeed no one will be able to do so for the foreseeable future, since no power can claim " unique status as the world's factory. However, Britain's future decline is already clearly visible.Astute observers like Tocqueville and Hackstehausen predicted even as early as the 1830s and 1840s that the vast size and potential resources of the United States and Russia would eventually make them the world's two largest powers. giant; within Europe, Germany (as Engels predicted in 1844) would soon be competing on equal terms too.Only France has fallen decisively from the contest for international hegemony, though this has not yet been evident enough to reassure skeptical British and other statesmen. In short, the world of the 1840s was out of balance.The forces of economic, technological and social change unleashed over the past half century are unprecedented and, to even the most superficial observer, irresistible.On the other hand, however, their institutional achievements have remained rather modest.Just as Britain must not remain the only industrialized country, sooner or later legal slavery and serfdom (except in remote areas not yet touched by the new economy) must disappear.In any country where a powerful bourgeoisie is developing, the retreat of the aristocratic landowners and despots is inevitable, no matter what political compromises they attempt to retain their status, influence, and even political power.What is more, one of the great legacies of the French Revolution, the instilling of political consciousness and constant political activity in the masses, meant that sooner or later these masses must play an important role in politics. The marked acceleration of social change after 1830, and the revival of world revolution, clearly revealed that change, whatever its precise institutional nature, was inevitable and undelayable. (Of course, this does not mean that all the changes that were generally considered inevitable at the time, such as the general victory of free trade, peace and representative government, or the disappearance of the monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church, necessarily occurred.) All of the above was enough to give people in the 1840s a sense of the imminence of change.But this is not enough to explain the sense throughout Europe that a social revolution is poised to unleash.It is worth noting that the sense of urgency that change is at hand is not limited to the revolutionaries who have articulated it, nor is it limited to the ruling classes who fear the masses of the poor.The poor themselves feel that change is coming.The literate segment of the people had expressed this feeling.During the famine of 1847, the American consul reported from Amsterdam on the mood of the German emigrants passing through Holland, writing: "All well-informed people express the belief that the present crisis is so deeply intertwined with the present Of the events, 'this' must be the beginning of that great revolution which, they think, will sooner or later unravel existing things and laws." The source of the sense of urgency is that a crisis left by the old society seems to coincide with a crisis of the new society.Looking back on the 1840s, it is easy to mistake the socialists who foresaw the imminent final crisis of capitalism as dreamers who mistook hope for reality.For in fact what followed was not the collapse of capitalism but the period of its most rapid and irresistible expansion.In the 1830s and 1840s, however, the fact that the new economy would eventually be able to overcome its difficulties, that is, the difficulty that would arise with its ability to produce ever greater quantities of goods in increasingly revolutionary ways, remained rather ambiguous. increasing difficulty.Theorists of capitalism were haunted by the prospect of a "static state": they believed (unlike those of the eighteenth century or after) that the impetus for economic development was about to dry up, and this was not only a theoretical possible.Defenders of capitalism hold two attitudes toward the future of capitalism.The French (Saint-Simonians) who were to become high finance and heavy industrial chiefs were, in the 1830s, still undecided about whether socialism or capitalism was the best path to victory for industrial society.Americans like Horace Greeley ("Go West, young man" is his famous quote) were believers in utopian socialism in the 1840s.They established the Fourierian "Fallen Steyr" and explained its merits theoretically.These Fallen Steirs were similar to Israeli collective agricultural settlements (kibbutz), which were quite incompatible with what is considered "American style" today.The merchants themselves despaired.In retrospect we may not understand that such Quaker industrialists as Bright and the successful Lancashire cotton masters, during the most vigorous phase of their expansion, should have prepared to abolish the tariff with such a A widespread political blockade plunged their country into turmoil, starvation and commotion.Yet during the dreadful years of 1841-1842, industrial development faced not only trouble and loss but general suffocation for the thinking capitalist unless the obstacles to further expansion were immediately removed. For the vast majority of ordinary people, the problem is even simpler.As we have seen, in the great cities and factory areas of Western and Central Europe their condition necessarily pushed them towards social revolution.Their hatred of the rich and powerful in the miserable world in which they lived, and their dreams of a brave new world, gave their desperate eyes a purpose, even if there were only a few of them (mainly in England and France) can see that goal.Organizations that facilitate collective activity empower them.The great awakening of the French Revolution taught them that common people need not submit to injustice: "Before this time, these countries knew nothing, and their people believed that the king was the god of the world, and they must say that whatever the king did was Right. After the changes now, it will be more difficult to govern the people." This is the "ghost of communism" that haunts Europe, reflecting the fear of the "proletariat".This fear affected not only Lan Kaifu or the factory owner in northern France, but also the civil servants in agricultural Germany, the monks in Rome, and professors everywhere.It was well deserved.For the revolution that broke out in the first months of 1848 was not a social revolution only in the sense that it involved the mobilization of all social classes.It was a veritable uprising of the working poor in the great cities of central and western Europe, especially the capitals.Their power, and almost their alone, will bring down the old regime from Palermo, Italy, to the borders of Russia.When the dust settled on its ruins, it was found that workers (in France, actually socialist workers) were standing on it, demanding not only bread and jobs, but a new state and society. The weakness and incompetence of the old European order added to the inner crisis of the world of the rich and powerful, while the working poor arose.For them, this is not a wonderful moment.Had these crises occurred at another time, or under a system that allowed different factions within the ruling class to peacefully adjust their disputes, they would have been less likely to lead to revolution than the perennial quarrels at the Russian court in the eighteenth century that had led to the downfall of tsarism sex.In England and Belgium, for example, there was a great deal of conflict between farmers and industrialists, and between their respective internal factions.But it is clearly understandable that the revolutions of 1830-1832 had decided the question of power with an outcome in favor of the industrialists; otherwise, only the adventurous revolution could freeze the political status quo, which, however, must be avoided at all costs. of.That is why the sharp struggle over the Corn Laws between free-trade British industrialists and agricultural protectionists was able to start and come to fruition (1846) in the midst of the Chartist turmoil without endangering for a moment to the solidarity of all ruling classes against the threat of universal suffrage.In Belgium, although the Liberals' victory over the Catholics in the 1847 elections removed industrialists from the ranks of potential revolutionaries, the carefully judged electoral reforms of 1848 doubled the electorate (out of a population of four million) in one fell swoop. , the number of voters is still not more than 80,000), which somewhat eliminated the dissatisfaction of the core people of the lower middle class.The Revolution of 1848 therefore did not break out in Belgium, although in terms of actual suffering Belgium (or rather Flanders) was probably worse off than any part of Western Europe except Ireland. But absolutist Europe, dominated by the inflexible regime of 1815, designed to stamp out any change of a liberal or nationalist character, left even the most moderate opposition Or alternatives to revolution.They may not be prepared to rebel themselves, but unless there is an irreversible social revolution, and unless someone rises to carry out such a revolution, they will gain nothing. Sooner or later the regime of 1815 had to give way.They themselves know this. The consciousness that "history is against them" weakens their will to resist, just as the fact that history is against them weakens their ability to resist.In 1848, the first puffs of revolution (often abroad) blew them away.However, at least there must be this puff of smoke, otherwise they will not go away.Contrary to Britain and Belgium, even minor frictions among such states (rulers' disputes with the Prussian and Hungarian parliaments; the election of a "liberal" pope in 1846, that is, a a pope brought a little closer to the 19th century; resentment against a royal mistress in Bavaria, etc.), would also cause major political shocks. In theory, Louis-Philippe's France should have the political flexibility of England, Belgium, Holland, and the Danes and Scandinavians.But, in fact it doesn't.For the French ruling class (bankers, financiers and one or two big industrialists) represented only a part of the interests of the middle class, and that part whose economic policy was distasteful to the more dynamic industrialists and to different interest groups; Moreover, the memory of the Revolution of 1789 still held back reforms.For the opposition was not only the disaffected middle class, but also the politically decisive lower middle class, especially in Paris. (Despite the restricted suffrage, they still voted against the government in 1846.) The extension of the suffrage might thus have introduced potential Jacobins, the radicals, who would surely become republicans unless formally banned .Guizot, Louis-Philippe's chancellor and historian, therefore preferred to leave the task of expanding the social base of the regime to economic development.Because economic development will automatically increase the number of citizens eligible to enter political property.In fact it is.Voters rose from 166,000 in 1831 to 241,000 in 1846.However, this is not enough.The fear of the Jacobin Republic made the French political structure extremely rigid and made the French political situation increasingly tense.In England, giving a public political speech after a banquet - as the French Opposition did in 1847 - never caused any problems.But in France, it represented the prelude to the revolution. Like other political crises of the ruling classes in Europe, the Revolution of 1848 coincided with a social catastrophe, the Great Depression that had swept across the continent since the mid-1840s.Harvest failures, especially in potatoes, have been noticeable.The entire population of Ireland and, to a lesser extent, Westlicia and Flanders was starving (in the flax-growing regions of Flanders, the population fell by 5 per cent between 1846 and 1848.), Food prices are skyrocketing.Unemployment was exacerbated by industrial depression, and large numbers of the urban working poor were deprived of their meager incomes just as their cost of living skyrocketed.The situation varied from country to country and from region to region within the country, but, fortunately for the regime at the time, the most miserable people, such as the Irish and Flemish or some local factory workers, were also the least politically mature.Cotton spinners in northern France, for example, took out their desperation on the equally desperate Belgian immigrants who flooded into northern France, not on the government or even their bosses.In the most industrialized countries, however, the edge of discontent had long since been blunted by the great industrial and railroad-building boom of the 1840s. 1846-1848 were bad years, but not as bad as 1841-1842, and they were only temporary dips in the now clearly visible curve of economic prosperity.However, if Central and Western Europe are taken as a whole, the catastrophe of 1846-1848 was universal, and the mood of the masses who were always on the edge of survival was tense and agitated. A European economic catastrophe thus coincided with the apparent collapse of the old regime. A peasant uprising in Galicia in 1846; the election of a "liberal" pope in the same year; a civil war in late 1847 in which Swiss radicals defeated the Catholics; the Sicilian autonomist uprising in Palermo in early 1848, the aforementioned Events are not grass blowing in the gale, but the first howl of the wind.Everyone knows this.Few revolutions were so universally foreseen, though not necessarily correctly foreseen in which countries or on which dates, as this one.The whole continent of Europe was waiting, and they were ready to telegraph the news of the revolution from city to city at once. In 1831 Hugo wrote that he had already heard "the dull rumble of the revolution, still deep in the earth, under every kingdom of Europe, along its subterranean tunnels, from the central shaft of the mine - Paris - to the gushed out." In 1847, the voice of revolution was loud and approaching. In 1848, it was officially detonated.