Property Is Theft!: A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Reader by Proudhon Pierre-Joseph & Mckay Iain

Author:Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph & Mckay, Iain [Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph & Mckay, Iain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, Philosophy, Classics, History
ISBN: 9781849350556
Goodreads: 12423665
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2010-11-01T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVII

29 JANUARY 1849: BARROT-FALLOUX REACTION. DESTRUCTION OF THE GOVERNMENT

THE FUNERAL SERVICES for the powers that be got underway, with Louis Bonaparte presiding. This supreme transition was crucial if the way was to be prepared for the advent of the democratic, social republic. The situation in place prior to then and the events that followed December 10th, which are still being played out with inexorable logic, will demonstrate as much to us.

By plumping for royalty in 1830 and founding constitutional rule, the governments of the Thiers, Guizots and Talleyrands had, deliberately and of their own volition, laid down the principle of a further revolution. Like a grub instinctively sensitive to approaching metamorphosis, it had woven its own winding-sheet. By endowing itself after a nine month crisis with a president, a shadow of a king, it had uttered its Consummatum est524 and, before breathing its last, placed its final wishes on record.

The corruption of power had been the doing of the constitutional monarchy; the presidency’s mission is to lead the mourning for the authorities. Just as Cavaignac had been, and as Ledru-Rollin had been, Louis Bonaparte is merely an executor of that intent. Louis Philippe poured his poison into the old society: Louis Bonaparte escorted it to the burial ground. I will parade this lugubrious procession in front of you anon.

Take a close look at France: she is spent, done for. Life has retreated into itself: where the heart should be we have only the metallic chill of interests; where the thought should be, we have a torrent of opinions all contradicting one another and holding each other in check. A vermin-riddled corpse, one might say. You speak of freedom, honour, fatherland? France is dead: Rome, Italy, Hungary, Poland and the Rhineland kneel all around the coffin and recite the De Profundis!525 What once was the power and the glory of the French nation—monarchy and republic, Church and parliament, bourgeoisie and nobility, military glory, the sciences, letters, the fine arts—all of it is no more: everything has been mown down like a harvest, and tossed into the revolutionary mash. Take care not to detain this work of decomposition: don’t go mixing the living vermilion liquid with mud and sediment. That would be tantamount to killing Lazarus in the tomb a second time.

For nearly twenty years now our death has been in the making and we have occasionally thought our metamorphosis approaching its end! Nothing happened but this was interpreted by us as a sign of resurrection: the slightest sound reaching our ears rang like the trump of the Last Judgement. Yet year followed year and the big day never came. It was like the Middle Ages and their intoxicated millenarians. Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Ancona, the Quadruple Alliance, the right to search, secret societies, infernal machines, parliamentary coalitions: then came Beirut, Krakow, Pritchard, the Spanish marriages, the Russian loan; then scarcity, electoral reform, the Sonderbund and, overlaying them all, corruption!…526 Then, finally, the February Revolution, a spectacle in twelve scenes, universal suffrage,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.