Men make their own history, but not just as they please. They do not choose the circumstances for themselves, but have to work upon circumstances as they find them, have to fashion the material handed down by the past. The legacy of the dead generations weighs like [a nightmare] upon the brains of the living. At the very time when they seem to be engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, when they seem to be creating something perfectly new--in such epochs of revolutionary crisis, they are eager to press the spirits of the past into their service, borrowing the names of the dead, reviving old war-cries, dressing up in traditional costumes, that they may make a braver pageant in the newly-staged scene of universal history. . . . [T]hus did the revolution of 1789-1814, drape itself successively as the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire; and thus was it that the revolution of 1848 could find nothing better to do than to parody by turns 1789 and the revolutionary traditions of 1793-1795. . . .

. . . [T]he heroes as well as the parties and the masses of the great French revolution, though they donned Roman garb and mouthed Roman phrases, nevertheless achieved the task of their day--which was to liberate the bourgeoisie and to establish modern bourgeois society. The Jacobins broke up the ground in which feudalism had been rooted, and struck off the heads of the feudal magnates who had grown there. Napoleon established throughout France the conditions which made it possible for free competition to develop, for landed property to be exploited after the partition of the great estates, and for the nation's powers of industrial production to be utilized to the full. Across the frontiers he everywhere made a clearance of feudal institutions, in so far as this was requisite to provide French bourgeois society with a suitable environment upon the continent of Europe. As soon as the new social forms had come into being, the antediluvian titans and the resuscitated Romanism vanished. . . .

The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its figurative embellishments from the past; it must create them anew out of the future. It cannot begin its work until it has rid itself of all the ancient superstitions. Earlier revolutions had need of the reminiscences of historic pageantry, for thus only could they bemuse themselves as to their own significance. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead, for thus only can it discover its own true meaning. In those earlier revolutions, there was more phrase than substance; in the revolution that is to come, there will be more substance than phrase.

In the revolution of February 1848, the old society was taken by surprise. The people thereupon declared that this coup de main, this unexpected achievement, marked a phase in universal history, was the opening of a new epoch. On December 2nd., the February revolution was jockeyed out of its gains by a conjuring trick. As a result, what was overthrown by that revolution was no longer the monarchy, but the liberal concessions that had been wrung from the monarchy by centuries of struggle. We see, that, after all, society has not entered upon a new phase. . . . Society now seems to have gone back further than the point from which it set out on the adventure. In actual fact, however, it must first create the point of revolutionary departure--must provide the situation, the relationships, the conditions, under which alone a modern revolution can become a serious matter.

Bourgeois revolutions like those of the eighteenth century speed from success to success; they vie with one another in the lustre of their stage effects; men and things seem to be set in sparkling brilliants; every day is filled with ecstasy; but they are short-lived; their climax is soon reached; on the morning after, society has to pass through a long fit of the dumps; and only when that is over can there be a dispassionate assimilation of the achievements of the period of storm and stress. Proletarian revolutions, on the other hand, like those of the nineteenth century, are ever self-critical; they again and again stop short in their progress; retrace their steps in order to make a fresh start; are pitilessly scornful of the half-measures, the weaknesses, the futility of their preliminary essays. . . .

Let us in broad outline recapitulate the phases through which the French revolution passed between February 24, 1848, and December 1851. . . .

The first period, which began on February 24, 1848, with the fall of Louis Philippe, and ended on May 4, 1848, with the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly, was the genuine February period, and may be described as the prologue to the revolution. The official stamp was given to this phase by the way in which the improvised government of February declared itself provisional. Everything that was broached, attempted, or uttered during this period, was, like the government, declared provisional. Nobody and nothing ventured to claim the right of the thing that is, the right of actuality. The multifarious elements that had planned or caused the revolution--dynastic opposition, republican bourgeoisie, democratic republican, petty bourgeoisie, social democratic working-class--one and all found "provisional" places in the February Government.

How could it have been otherwise? The original aim of the February revolution was to bring about an electoral reform, whereby the circle of those with political privileges among the possessing classes was to be widened, and the exclusive dominance of the financial aristocracy overthrown. But when the actual conflict began, when the people had manned the barricades, when the National Guard was passive, when the resistance of the army was half-hearted, and when the King had run away, the proclamation of a republic seemed a matter of course. Each of the parties concerned in the revolution interpreted this republic in its own way. The proletariat having won it by force of arms, put the stamp of its class upon the new creation, and proclaimed the socialist republic. Thus was indicated the general significance of modern revolutions--a significance which was, however, in this case, sharply contrasted with all that was immediately practicable in view of the materials to hand, the cultural level of the masses, extant circumstances and conditions. On the other hand, the claims of all the other participants in the February revolution were recognized in the lion's share allotted them in the government. In no other period, therefore, do we find so motley a mixture of high-sounding phrases in conjunction with actual uncertainty and embarrassment, of an eagerness for innovation in conjunction with an essential persistence in the old routine, of an ostensible harmony throughout society in conjunction with real estrangement among its various elements. While the Parisian proletariat was still gloating over the great prospects opened up by the revolution, and while the workers were engaged in the earnest discussion of social problems, the old forces of society had come together, had taken counsel, and had secured unexpected support from the masses of the nation--from the peasants and the petty bourgeois, who promptly thronged into the political arena when the barriers set up by the July monarchy had fallen.

The second period, from May 4, 1848, to the end of May 1849, is the period during which the bourgeois republic was being established. Immediately after the February days, not only was the dynastic opposition surprised by the republicans, not only were the republicans surprised by the socialists, but also France as a whole was surprised by Paris. The Constituent National Assembly, elected by universal [manhood] suffrage on May 4, 1848, represented the nation. It was an embodied protest against the aspirations of the February days, and its aim was to guide the revolution back into bourgeois channels. The Parisian proletariat, quick to understand the character of this Constituent National Assembly, attempted on May 15th., nine days after the Assembly first met, to deny its existence by force, to dissolve it, to disintegrate the organic unity which the spirit of the nation had formed as a reaction against the Parisian workers. As is well known, the only result of the demonstration of May 15th was that Blanqui and his associates, the real leaders of the proletarian party, were removed from the stage for the whole period of the cycle now under consideration.

The bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe could only be followed by a bourgeois republic, this meaning that whereas, in the name of the King, a restricted portion of the bourgeoisie had ruled, now, in the name of the people, the whole bourgeoisie was to rule. The demands of the Parisian proletariat were regarded as utopian balderdash, and were to be swept aside. Such was the decision of the Constituent Assembly, to which the proletariat answered by the June insurrection, the most outstanding event in the history of European civil wars. The bourgeois republic was victorious. There rallied to its support the financial aristocracy, the industrial bourgeoisie, the middle class, the petty bourgeoisie, the army, the slum proletariat [Lumpenproletariat] (organized as the Garde Mobile), the intellectuals, the clergy, and the rural population. The Parisian proletariat stood alone. Over three thousand of the insurgents were massacred after the victory, and fifteen thousand were transported without trial. As a sequel of this defeat, the proletariat passed to the back of the revolutionary stage. It made a fresh attempt to come to the front whenever the movement seemed to be acquiring a new impetus, but each time with less energy and with a smaller result. As soon as a revolutionary ferment occurred in one of the higher social strata, the proletariat joined forces with the members of this stratum, and thus became involved in all the defeats of the various parties. One after another, the leaders of the proletariat in the Assembly and in the journalistic world became the victims of the law-courts, and more and more questionable figures stepped to the front. The proletariat then had recourse to doctrinaire experiments, to "cooperative banking" and "labour exchange" schemes. In other words, the proletariat became associated with a movement which had renounced the attempt to revolutionize the old world by the strength of its united forces, hoping rather to attain emancipation behind the back of society, privately, and within the bounds of its own restricted vital conditions. Every such attempt is foredoomed to failure. It seems as if the proletariat would be unable to rediscover its revolutionary greatness, would be unable to win for itself fresh energy out of the new alliances it has formed, until all the classes against which it fought in June, have been laid prostrate like itself. But at least it is defeated with the honours attaching to a great historical struggle. Not France alone, but all Europe, was shaken by the June earthquake; whereas the subsequent defeats, those of the upper classes, were so cheaply purchased, that the victors have to exaggerate grossly in order to make them pass as notable events. Furthermore, these defeats have been all the more shameful in proportion as the defeated party was more widely removed from the proletariat.

It is true that the defeat of the June insurgents prepared and leveled the ground for the upbuilding of the bourgeois republic, but this defeat likewise showed that there are other problems to solve in Europe than the problem "republic or monarchy." It gave a plain demonstration of the fact that here in Europe a bourgeois republic means the unbridled despotism of one class over all others. It proved that in all civilized countries where the formation of classes has reached an advanced stage of development, where modern conditions of production prevail, and where, after centuries of effort, all traditional ideas have been dissolved, the "republic" can only mean the transformational or revolutionary political form of bourgeois society, and not its conservative form of existence. . . .