# The Class Struggles in France, 1848–1850

Part of a series on :
Marxism :
Theoretical works
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The Condition of the Working Class in England
The German Ideology
The Communist Manifesto
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Grundrisse
Capital
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Dialectics of Nature
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
What Is to Be Done?
The Accumulation of Capital
Philosophical Notebooks
Terrorism and Communism
The State and Revolution
Essays on Marx's Theory of Value
History and Class Consciousness
Prison Notebooks
The Black Jacobins
On Practice
Theses on the Philosophy of History
Dialectic of Enlightenment
A Critique of Soviet Economics
The Long Revolution
Guerrilla Warfare
The Wretched of the Earth
Reading Capital
The Society of the Spectacle
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Ways of Seeing
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Social Justice and the City
Women, Race and Class
Marxism and the Oppression of Women
Imagined Communities
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy
The Sublime Object of Ideology
Time, Labor and Social Domination
The Age of Extremes
The Origin of Capitalism
Empire
Late Victorian Holocausts
Change the World Without Taking Power
Caliban and the Witch
An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital
Capitalist Realism
Capital in the Anthropocene
Towards Socialism or Capitalism?
The Revolution Betrayed
Literature and Revolution
The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany
Their Morals and Ours: The class foundations of moral practice :
Philosophy
Alienation
Dialectical materialism
Ideology
Philosophy of nature
Philosophy in the Soviet Union
Reification
Marxist ethics :
Critique of political economy
Capital (accumulation)
Crisis theory
Commodity
Concrete and abstract labor
Factors of production
Falling profit-rate tendency
Means of production
Mode of production
Capitalist
Socialist
Productive forces
Scientific socialism
Surplus product
Socially necessary labour time
Value-form
Wage labour :
Sociology
Base and superstructure
Bourgeoisie
Class
Class consciousness
Classless society
Commodity fetishism
Communist society
Critical theory
Cultural hegemony
Democracy
Dictatorship of the proletariat
Soviet
Radical
Democratic centralism
Exploitation
False consciousness
Human nature
Immiseration
Imperialism
Lumpenproletariat
Metabolic rift
Proletariat
Private property
Relations of production
State theory
Working class :
History
Class struggle
Historical determinism
Primitive accumulation
Proletarian revolution
World revolution
Theory of historical trajectory :
Aspects
Aesthetics
Archaeology
Criminology
Cultural analysis
Cultural Studies
Ethics
Film theory
Geography
Historiography
Literary criticism
Marxism and religion
Sociology
Philosophy :
Common variants
Structural
Autonomist
Marxism–Leninism
Guevarism
Maoism
Titoism
Trotskyism
Neo-Gramscianism
Regulation school
Third-worldist
Hegelian
Budapest School
Frankfurt School
Humanist
Neue Marx-Lektüre
Open
Political
Praxis School
Both
Black
Classical
Communization
Feminist
Leninism
Neo
Post
Western :
Other variants
Analytical
Austromarxism
Centrist
Council communism
Eurocommunism
Instrumental
Marxism–Leninism–Maoism
Nkrumaism
Orthodox
Revisionist
Situationist
Socialism with Chinese characteristics
Wertkritik :
People
Marx
Engels
Morris
Lafargue
Kautsky
Plekhanov
Du Bois
Connolly
Lenin
Luxemburg
Liebknecht
Kollontai
Bogdanov
Stalin
Trotsky
Grossman
Zinoviev
Bloch
Lukács
Korsch
Bukharin
Ho
Serge
Gramsci
Galiev
Pashukanis
Bordiga
Benjamin
Mao
Basu
Mariátegui
Horkheimer
Dutt
Brecht
Marcuse
Kalecki
Fromm
Cox
Lefebvre
James
Adorno
Padmore
Sartre
Deutscher
Hoxha
Beauvoir
Sombart
Nkrumah
Sweezy
Emmanuel
Hill
Bettelheim
Draper
Jones
Hobsbawm
Althusser
Hinton
Williams
Freire
Mandel
Sivanandan
Miliband
Cabral
Thompson
Bauman
Fanon
Kosik
Berger
Castro
Guevara
Liebman
Heller
Guattari
Mészáros
O'Connor
Wallerstein
Mies
Tronti
Debord
Amin
Hall
Nairn
Parenti
Negri
Jameson
Gonzalo
Dussel
Harvey
Laclau
Bahro
Poulantzas
Vattimo
Badiou
Harnecker
Altvater
Anderson
Löwy
Vogel
Sison
Easthope
Rancière
Berman
Przeworski
Cohen
Therborn
Losurdo
Ture
Postone
Rodney
Bannerji
Spivak
Newton
Sakai
Wood
Federici
Wolff
Balibar
Eagleton
Kurz
Hartsock
Rowbotham
Mouffe
Geras
Brenner
Davis
Massey
Cleaver
Bishop
Haraway
Panitch
Clarke
Jessop
Davis
Wright
Fraser
Burawoy
Holloway
Rose
Screpanti
Tamás
Hampton
Cano
Žižek
Berardi
Sankara
Hennessy
McDonnell
Douzinas
Roediger
Foster
West
Ghandy
Marcos
Heinrich
Prashad
Kelley
Dean
Lordon
Linera
Fisher
Li
Coulthard
Malm
Seymour
Toscano
Bhattacharya
Moufawad-Paul
Srnicek
Horvat
Hamza
Saito :
Journals
Antipode
Capital & Class
Capitalism Nature Socialism
Constellations
Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory
Historical Materialism
Mediations
Monthly Review
New Left Review
Race & Class
Rethinking Marxism
Science & Society
Socialist Register :
Related topics
21st-century communist theorists
Anarchism
Creative destruction
Conflict theory
Criticism of Marxism
Communism
Communalism
Economic determinism
History of communism
Left-wing politics
Marxian economics
New Left
Old Left
Municipalism
Political ecology
Socialism
Authoritarian
Democratic
Market
Reformist
Revolutionary
Social
Utopian
Left-wing populism
Universal class
Vulgar Marxism
Economism
Worker cooperative
Workers' council :
Outline
Communism portal
Philosophy portal
Socialism portal :
vte :
The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 was a set of articles written by Karl Marx for the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1850. The works were collated and republished in 1895 by Friedrich Engels.

## Contents of the articles

In these works Marx analyzes the class issues and the economic relations which drove forward the social and political upheavals, which took place in France in 1848. He focuses extensively on the argument that the conflict was not between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but between different factions within the bourgeoisie. Specifically, he identifies conflicts between the industrial bourgeoisie, whose wealth and income are dependent upon the production and sale of goods; and the financial bourgeoisie, whom he identifies as bankers and stock market speculators.

### Manipulated public policy

Marx identifies a political system where the individuals responsible for the development of public policy and the direction of public funds, were the same individuals whose investments stood to be affected by these decisions. The result of this, he claims, was that public policy was manipulated for the sake of self enrichment, giving the example of extensive railroad projects being developed with public funds under the direction of legislators who were also the main investors in these endeavors.
Marx asserts, however, that, while this situation was deemed intolerable to the industrial bourgeoisie, they were not in any position to take serious action against it. The industrial bourgeoisie still occupied a comparatively privileged position within society and government and this fact, Marx argues, placed them in essentially the main camp as the financial bourgeoisie.

### Public revolt

Where Marx identifies the change in the situation that made the public revolt possible is in a set of financial crises further afield that had deleterious effects on the economic situation in France. Specifically, he identifies a set of crop failures in 1845 and 46, and then a more general economic crisis which gripped England in the late 1840s. This crisis saw a wave of bankruptcies and factory closures throughout Britain and it was in the midst of the aftershocks that this crisis sent across the European continent, Marx asserts, that the February Revolution took place.
Marx asserts in these works that England, in that time, was setting the tone for bourgeois society in general, and blames this on the nature of the trade imbalances which then existed. He paints a picture of France exporting most of its consumer goods to England, while England exports most of it consumer goods further abroad. In the same way he interprets the crises which effect England afterwards going on to effect the continent.
Thus, he claims, the general economic crisis in England led to a general economic crisis in France, and that this crisis was the cause of the revolution of February 1848. This prompts him to demonstrate why no such revolution occurred in England and for this he offers the explanation that England was more thoroughly industrialized. England, he claims, needed no revolution because the industrialists already constituted such a great power, socially and politically, that they were able to confront the runaway power of speculative finance directly. France, however, was still far more heavily agrarian, while the industrialist class, though wealthy and powerful in its own right, did not wield sufficient power to carry through such a confrontation. It was only in the aftermath of the above mentioned economic crises that the industrial bourgeoisie found themselves forced to align themselves with the agrarian classes against the financial bourgeoisie. Thus Marx concludes that, in spite of the proletarian character and slogans of the revolution the proletariat were used mostly as a prop, and that as soon as the new republic was established the proletariat were more or less ejected from the circles of power.

### Analyses

Marx goes on to describe how this use of the proletariat as a prop to dethrone the financial bourgeoisie on the behalf of the industrial bourgeoisie left the bourgeoisie so disillusioned and alienated as to fall into support for Louis Bonaparte, a man who Marx speaks of very disparagingly. He argues that Bonaparte's lack of character was central to his popularity as he was able to signify different things to different constituents and therefore build a broad base of support among groups that, according to Marx, share few mutual goals and interests.
Finally, Marx draws together the analyses of the political upheavals in France and the economic crises triggered, originally, in England and spreading outward to the continent; and from these analyses builds the argument that these upheavals in France, which seemed like a grand political shift in one nation, marked only minor change within the superstructure of a social and economic system which was multinational in character.