Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

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of the changing political scene in France during 1848-4 9 against a back-
ground of class and economic interest. Marx's general judgement on the
failure of the recent revolutionary upsurge was given to the opening
words:

With the exception of only a few chapters, every more important part

of the annals of the revolution from 1848 to 1849 carries the heading:

Defeat of the revolution!

What succumbed in these defeats was not the revolution. It was the

pre-revolutionary traditional appendages, results of social relationships

which had not yet come to the point of sharp class antagonisms -

persons, illusions, conceptions, projects from which the revolutionary

party before the February Revolution was not free, from which it could

be freed not by the victory of February, but only by a series of defeats.

In a word: the revolution made progress, forged ahead, not by its

immediate tragicomic achievements, but, on the contrary, by the

creation of a powerful, united counter-revolution, by the creation of an

opponent in combat with whom, only, the party of overthrow ripened

into a really revolutionary party.^33

Marx continued with an analysis of the July Monarchy, likening it to a
joint-stock company with the state continually kept on the verge of
bankruptcy so that the bankers and brokers could speculate on its debts
to the ruin of the small investor.^34 The resulting general discontent
erupted into revolution with the severe effect on French industry of the
1845-4 6 commercial and industrial crisis in England. But the provisional
government set up after the February barricades could do no more than
mirror the disagreements of the various classes that had created it. It was
to some extent a criticism of his own past actions in Germany when
Marx declared that it was an illusion for the workers to have hoped for
emancipation alongside the bourgeoise or inside the national walls of
France. The inevitable result of the May elections, he continued, was a
bourgeois republic against which the workers could but revolt in vain.
But their very defeat only prepared a future victory:

. .. the June defeat has created all the conditions under which France
can seize the initiative of the European revolution. Only after being
dipped in the blood of the June insurgents did the tri-colour become
the flag of the European revolution - the red flag!
And we exclaim: The revolution is dead! - Long live the revolution!,s

Marx's second article discussed the contradictions of the new consti-
tution promulgated in the autumn of 1848 and the opportunities this
afforded Louis Napoleon, who won an overwhelming victory in the presi-
dential elections in December. Napoleon was the only man who had