Socialism from the Root Up or Socialism Its Growth Outcome by William Morris & E. Belfort Bax

Author:William Morris & E. Belfort Bax [Morris, William & Bax, E. Belfort]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Economics, Nonfiction, Philosophy
Publisher: Marxists Internet Archive
Published: 2013-01-10T15:57:38+00:00

Chapter 11

Reaction and Revolution on the Continent

When the great war which Napoleon waged against Europe came to an end by his defeat and ruin, France was once more handed over to the Bourbons, and Europe fell into the arms of reaction and sheer absolutism. The Holy Alliance, or union of reactionary monarchs, undertook the enterprise of crushing out all popular feeling, or even anything that could be supposed to represent it in the persons of the bourgeois.

But the French Revolution had shaken absolutism too sorely for this enterprise to have more than a very partial success even on the surface. The power of absolutism was undermined by various revolutionary societies, mostly (so-called) secret, which attracted to them a great body of sympathy, and in consequence seemed far more numerous and immediately dangerous than they really were. Still there was a great mass of discontent, mostly political in character, and by no means confined to the poorer classes.

This discontent went on gathering head, till in 1830, and again in 1848, it exploded into open revolt against absolutism all over Europe. This revolt, we must repeat, was in the main a mere counter-stroke to the reaction which was diligently striving to restore the aristocratic privilege which the French Revolution had abolished, and to sustain what of it had escaped its attack. In 1830 the revolt was purely bourgeois in character, and was in no sense social, but, as above said, political. In 1848 it had in some places a strong infusion of the proletarian element, which however was dominated by middle-class patriotism and ideas which led to the assertion and consolidation of nationalities. But a new element was present in these latter revolutionary movements, though at first it did not seem to influence their action much. This was the first appearance in politics of modern or scientific Socialism, in the shape of the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, first published in 1847. The rise and development of this phase will be dealt with in detail further on; at present we can do no more than call attention to the steady and continuous influence of this last-born Socialism, compared with the rapid extinction of Babeuf's propaganda, although he had a numerous body of adherents; since this fact marks a very great advance in opinion since the end of the eighteenth century.

The general effect, however, at least as seen openly, of these insurrections was little more than the shaking of absolutism and the supplanting it in various degrees by middle-class constitutionalism; and also, as aforesaid, an added impulse to the consolidation of nationalities, which later on produced the unification of Italy and of Germany, and the assertion of the independence of the Hungarian nationality.

In France the outward effects of the insurrection were most obvious and lasted the longest; but the bourgeois republic which took the place of Louis Philippe's corrupt constitutional monarchy asserted itself tyrannically enough against the proletariat, and in consequence had no strength left to meet the political adventurer Louis Napoleon,

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