The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte [53]
by a raid of Bonaparte's. An army without officers, disinclined by the recollections of June, 1848 and 1849, and May, 1850, to fight under the banner of the Montagnards, it left to its vanguard, the secret societies, the work of saving the insurrectionary honor of Paris, which the bourgeoisie had yielded to the soldiery so submissively that Bonaparte was later justified in disarming the National Guard upon the scornful ground that he feared their arms would be used against themselves by the Anarchists!
"C'est Ic triomphe complet et definitif du Socialism!"' Thus did Guizot characterize the 2d of December. But, although the downfall of the parliamentary republic carries with it the germ of the triumph of the proletarian revolution, its immediate and tangible result was the triumph of Bonaparte over parliament, of the Executive over the Legislative power, of force without phrases over the force of phrases. In the parliament, the nation raised its collective will to the dignity of law, i.e., it raised the law of the ruling class to the dignity of its collective will. Before the Executive power, the nation abdicates all will of its own, and submits to the orders of an outsider of Authority. In contrast with the Legislative, the Executive power expresses the heteronomy of the nation in contrast with its autonomy. Accordingly, France seems to have escaped the despotism of a class only in order to fall under the despotism of an individual, under the authority, at that of an individual without authority The struggle seems to settle down to the point where all classes drop down on their knees, equally impotent and equally dumb
All the same, the revolution is thoroughgoing. It still is on its passage through purgatory. It does its work methodically: Down to December 2, 1851, it had fulfilled one-half of its programme, it now fulfils the other half. It first ripens the power of the Legislature into fullest maturity in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has accomplished that, the revolution proceeds to ripen the power of the Executive into equal maturity; it reduces this power to its purest expression; isolates it; places it before itself as the sole subject for reproof in order to concentrate against it all the revolutionary forces of destruction. When the revolution shall have accomplished this second part of its preliminary programme, Europe will jump up from her seat to exclaim: "Well hast thou grubbed, old mole!"
The Executive power, with its tremendous bureaucratic and military organization; with its wide-spreading and artificial machinery of government--an army of office-holders, half a million strong, together with a military force of another million men--; this fearful body of parasites, that coils itself like a snake around French society, stopping all its pores, originated at the time of the absolute monarchy, along with the decline of feudalism, which it helped to hasten. The princely privileges of the landed proprietors and cities were transformed into so many at-tributes of the Executive power; the feudal dignitaries into paid office-holders; and the confusing design of conflicting medieval seigniories, into the well regulated plan of a government, work is subdivided and centralized as in the factory. The first French revolution, having as a mission to sweep away all local, territorial, urban and provincial special privileges, with the object of establishing the civic unity of the nation, was hound to develop what the absolute monarchy had begun--the work of centralization, together with the range, the attributes and the menials of government. Napoleon completed this governmental machinery. The Legitimist and the July Monarchy contribute nothing thereto, except a greater subdivision of labor, that grew in the same measure as the division and subdivision of labor within bourgeois society raised new groups and interests, i.e., new material for the administration of government. Each Common interest was in turn forthwith removed from society, set up against it as a higher Collective interest,
"C'est Ic triomphe complet et definitif du Socialism!"' Thus did Guizot characterize the 2d of December. But, although the downfall of the parliamentary republic carries with it the germ of the triumph of the proletarian revolution, its immediate and tangible result was the triumph of Bonaparte over parliament, of the Executive over the Legislative power, of force without phrases over the force of phrases. In the parliament, the nation raised its collective will to the dignity of law, i.e., it raised the law of the ruling class to the dignity of its collective will. Before the Executive power, the nation abdicates all will of its own, and submits to the orders of an outsider of Authority. In contrast with the Legislative, the Executive power expresses the heteronomy of the nation in contrast with its autonomy. Accordingly, France seems to have escaped the despotism of a class only in order to fall under the despotism of an individual, under the authority, at that of an individual without authority The struggle seems to settle down to the point where all classes drop down on their knees, equally impotent and equally dumb
All the same, the revolution is thoroughgoing. It still is on its passage through purgatory. It does its work methodically: Down to December 2, 1851, it had fulfilled one-half of its programme, it now fulfils the other half. It first ripens the power of the Legislature into fullest maturity in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has accomplished that, the revolution proceeds to ripen the power of the Executive into equal maturity; it reduces this power to its purest expression; isolates it; places it before itself as the sole subject for reproof in order to concentrate against it all the revolutionary forces of destruction. When the revolution shall have accomplished this second part of its preliminary programme, Europe will jump up from her seat to exclaim: "Well hast thou grubbed, old mole!"
The Executive power, with its tremendous bureaucratic and military organization; with its wide-spreading and artificial machinery of government--an army of office-holders, half a million strong, together with a military force of another million men--; this fearful body of parasites, that coils itself like a snake around French society, stopping all its pores, originated at the time of the absolute monarchy, along with the decline of feudalism, which it helped to hasten. The princely privileges of the landed proprietors and cities were transformed into so many at-tributes of the Executive power; the feudal dignitaries into paid office-holders; and the confusing design of conflicting medieval seigniories, into the well regulated plan of a government, work is subdivided and centralized as in the factory. The first French revolution, having as a mission to sweep away all local, territorial, urban and provincial special privileges, with the object of establishing the civic unity of the nation, was hound to develop what the absolute monarchy had begun--the work of centralization, together with the range, the attributes and the menials of government. Napoleon completed this governmental machinery. The Legitimist and the July Monarchy contribute nothing thereto, except a greater subdivision of labor, that grew in the same measure as the division and subdivision of labor within bourgeois society raised new groups and interests, i.e., new material for the administration of government. Each Common interest was in turn forthwith removed from society, set up against it as a higher Collective interest,