The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte [25]
passed during this period: the law reestablishing the duty on wine, and the laws on education, to suppress infidelity. While the drinking of wine was made difficult to the Frenchmen, all the more bounteously was the water of pure life poured out to them. Although in the law on the duty on wine the bourgeoisie declares the old hated French tariff system to be inviolable, it sought, by means of the laws on education, to secure the old good will of the masses that made the former bearable. One wonders to see the Orleanists, the liberal bourgeois, these old apostles of Voltarianism and of eclectic philosophy, entrusting the supervision of the French intellect to their hereditary enemies, the Jesuits. But, while Orleanists and Legitimists could part company on the question of the Pretender to the crown, they understood full well that their joint reign dictated the joining of the means of oppression of two distinct epochs; that the means of subjugation of the July monarchy had to be supplemented with and strengthened by the means of subjugation of the restoration.
The farmers, deceived in all their expectations, more than ever ground down by the law scale of the price of corn, on the one hand, and, on the other, by the growing load of taxation and mortgages, began to stir in the Departments. They were answered by the systematic baiting of the school masters, whom the Government subjected to the clergy; by the systematic baiting of the Mayors, whom it subjected to the Prefects; and by a system of espionage to which all were subjected. In Paris and the large towns, the reaction itself carries the physiognomy of its own epoch ; it irritates more than it cows ; in the country, it becomes low, moan, petty, tiresome, vexatious,--in a word, it becomes "gensdarme." It is easily understood how three years of the gensdarme regime, sanctified by the regime of the clergyman, was bound to demoralize unripe masses.
Whatever the mass of passion and declamation, that the party of Order expended from the speakers' tribune in the National Assembly against the minority, its speech remained monosyllabic, like that of the Christian, whose speech was to be "Aye, aye; nay, nay." It was monosyllabic, whether from the tribune or the press ; dull as a conundrum, whose solution is known beforehand. Whether the question was the right of petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the press or free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual freedom or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever again, the theme is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready and unchanged: Socialism! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced socialistic; socialistic, alike, is pronounced popular education; and, likewise, socialistic national financial reform. It was socialistic to build a railroad where already a canal was; and it was socialistic to defend oneself with a stick when attacked with a sword.
This was not a mere form of speech, a fashion, nor yet party tactics. The bourgeoisie perceives correctly that all the weapons, which it forged against feudalism, turn their edges against itself; that all the means of education, which it brought forth, rebel against its own civilization; that all the gods, which it made, have fallen away from it. It understands that all its so-called citizens' rights and progressive organs assail and menace its class rule, both in its social foundation and its political superstructure--consequently, have become "socialistic." It justly scents in this menace and assault the secret of Socialism, whose meaning and tendency it estimates more correctly than the spurious, so-called Socialism, is capable of estimating itself, and which, consequently, is unable to understand how it is that the bourgeoisie obdurately shuts up its ears to it, alike whether it sentimentally whines about the sufferings of humanity; or announces in Christian style the millennium and universal brotherhood; or twaddles humanistically about the soul, culture and freedom; or doctrinally matches out a system of harmony and
The farmers, deceived in all their expectations, more than ever ground down by the law scale of the price of corn, on the one hand, and, on the other, by the growing load of taxation and mortgages, began to stir in the Departments. They were answered by the systematic baiting of the school masters, whom the Government subjected to the clergy; by the systematic baiting of the Mayors, whom it subjected to the Prefects; and by a system of espionage to which all were subjected. In Paris and the large towns, the reaction itself carries the physiognomy of its own epoch ; it irritates more than it cows ; in the country, it becomes low, moan, petty, tiresome, vexatious,--in a word, it becomes "gensdarme." It is easily understood how three years of the gensdarme regime, sanctified by the regime of the clergyman, was bound to demoralize unripe masses.
Whatever the mass of passion and declamation, that the party of Order expended from the speakers' tribune in the National Assembly against the minority, its speech remained monosyllabic, like that of the Christian, whose speech was to be "Aye, aye; nay, nay." It was monosyllabic, whether from the tribune or the press ; dull as a conundrum, whose solution is known beforehand. Whether the question was the right of petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the press or free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual freedom or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever again, the theme is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready and unchanged: Socialism! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced socialistic; socialistic, alike, is pronounced popular education; and, likewise, socialistic national financial reform. It was socialistic to build a railroad where already a canal was; and it was socialistic to defend oneself with a stick when attacked with a sword.
This was not a mere form of speech, a fashion, nor yet party tactics. The bourgeoisie perceives correctly that all the weapons, which it forged against feudalism, turn their edges against itself; that all the means of education, which it brought forth, rebel against its own civilization; that all the gods, which it made, have fallen away from it. It understands that all its so-called citizens' rights and progressive organs assail and menace its class rule, both in its social foundation and its political superstructure--consequently, have become "socialistic." It justly scents in this menace and assault the secret of Socialism, whose meaning and tendency it estimates more correctly than the spurious, so-called Socialism, is capable of estimating itself, and which, consequently, is unable to understand how it is that the bourgeoisie obdurately shuts up its ears to it, alike whether it sentimentally whines about the sufferings of humanity; or announces in Christian style the millennium and universal brotherhood; or twaddles humanistically about the soul, culture and freedom; or doctrinally matches out a system of harmony and