Motive force of modern history: Revolution

by Rob Gowland

When the Sydney Central Branch of the CPA announced that it was holding 
a dinner to celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille on July 
14, 1789, which heralded the French Revolution, there were those who 
questioned: "why celebrate a bourgeois democratic revolution? After all, it 
brought capitalism to power in France." But the French Revolution had a 
profound effect on the history of the modern world. It was part of a 
process of change that saw the struggle for a better life spread around the 
world, develop the will and the strength to challenge capitalism and — 
despite plenty of setbacks — to deny it the global dominance it once had 
and wants to have again.

That process of change began long ago, but for convenience sake I shall 
take as my starting point another revolution, that also began in July, 
albeit a little over a decade earlier than the fall of the Bastille. 

That was the American Revolution of 1776.

It was a revolution fought over questions of taxation, parliamentary 
representation and opposition to an autocratic King.

Its ideas are embodied in a document, the Declaration of Independence, 
which the present-day rulers of the USA are fond of waving around as some 
sort of proof that their acts of international savagery are in fact based 
on high ideals of humanity, justice and freedom.

The passages they quote from the Declaration are indeed glowing statements 
of high ideals. That they have been honoured more in the breach than the 
observance does not diminish their worth.

The class that came to power in the new United States soon found its class 
interest at odds with the ideals that had inspired its own revolutionary 
phase.

Those ideals were largely the work of Tom Payne, "Citizen Tom Payne" as 
Howard Fast called him in his book of that title.

After the USA's successful War of Independence against Britain, Citizen Tom 
Payne left the US and went to France, to take part in the ferment of ideas 
that presaged the Revolution there.

There too the initial issues were taxation, representation, autocracy and 
the ownership of the land.

Louis XVI, facing bankruptcy of the royal treasury, was obliged in May, 
1789, to summon the Estates General, a body that could approve new taxes 
but which had not met for over a hundred years.

The three estates represented respectively the aristocracy, the clergy and 
the commoners — well-to-do commoners, people of property or position 
mainly, but commoners all the same, and as such, people without significant 
political rights.

But the time was ripe for change and events moved swiftly. Only a month 
after it was summoned, the Third Estate went solo, renaming itself the 
National Assembly. A month after that the people stormed the royal prison, 
the Bastille. The King took fright.

As the Revolution progressed, lopping off the heads of aristocrats, 
empowering the ordinary toiling people, breaking up estates among the 
peasants and threatening the established order in neighbouring monarchies, 
the wealthier and more powerful among the middle classes also began to take 
fright.

They had gained what they wanted from the revolution — political power — 
and they were as frightened of the people in the streets as the aristocracy 
was. They conspired against the revolution, and after less than six years 
of revolution, counter revolution triumphed in 1795 with the execution of 
Robespierre.

By 1799, only one decade after the fall of the Bastille, it was all over, 
and Napoleon was in power.

But you cannot kill ideas and a whole generation had experienced the power 
of ideas that grip the mind of the masses. France was becoming a capitalist 
country and the new capitalist class was busy developing its own 
gravediggers in the form of a working class for its growing number of 
factories and mills.

After Napoleon's defeat by Britain and its allies, Louis XVI's brother was 
installed on the throne, but he was sickly and soon died. Louis' other 
brother, Charles became king and set about re-establishing the old regime.

The people, including the new capitalists, had had enough of the old 
regime, however. They also knew how to get rid of kings. In 1830 they 
kicked Charles out and elected a new king, Louis Phillipe, the 
former Duke of Orleans.

At the time of the French Revolution, under the name Citizen Egalite 
(Equality), he had joined the citizens' militia, the National Guard, under 
Lafayette (who had fought in the American Revolution).

The regime of the "citizen king" however became increasingly reactionary 
and corrupt, until it was ousted in the torrent revolutionary activity that 
burst forth in 1848. In February, the French threw out Louis Phillipe.

This was still a bourgeois-democratic revolution, but carried to a higher 
stage and influenced by the Communist League of Marx and Engels. 
Revolutionary sentiments and aims spread across Europe. In March, 
revolutionary uprisings erupted in Germany.

In June, the workers of Paris rose up. Engels called this "the first great 
battle for power between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie". 100,000 
soldiers confronted 30,000-40,000 workers behind street barricades.

For three glorious days the armed people held the army at bay. When the 
workers' districts fell, the heroic insurgents were massacred, the 
survivors hanged or transported.

Marx and Engels, through their paper in Germany, the Neue Rheinische 
Zeitung, vigorously supported the Parisian workers.

"If 40,000 Parisian workers", wrote Engels, "could achieve such tremendous 
things against forces four times their number, what will the whole mass of 
Paris workers accomplish by concerted and co-ordinated action!"

The example of the Parisian workers inspired other mass revolutionary 
uprisings that year in Poland, Italy and Bohemia, all countries suffering 
under the rule of foreign monarchs. Late in the year there was a second 
revolutionary uprising in Germany.

These were not localised events. Revolutionary armies were formed and 
campaigns waged. Engels joined the revolutionary army in Germany, and 
exposed the fatal timidity and poor tactics of the revolutionary leaders.

In Hungary, revolutionary war raged and continued on into much of 1849 
before being finally defeated by the sheer power of the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire.

In Germany, during 1849, there were more uprisings, this time against the 
counter-revolution. Again, the soldiers in many areas sided with the 
people, and pitched battles were fought between revolutionary and counter-
revolutionary armies.

Meanwhile, the nephew of Napoleon, a wily demagogue, had returned to France 
from exile shortly after the February revolution of 1848 and got himself 
elected to the new Constituent Assembly. Posing as the protector of popular 
liberties and national prosperity, he was elected President and in 1851 he 
dissolved the Constitution and a year later proclaimed himself Emperor as 
Napoleon III.

Early in 1854, revolution reached Mexico, the people rising up against the 
dictatorship of Santa Anna. After more than a year of intensive fighting, 
Santa Anna fled the country.

Under the leadership of Benito Pablo Juarez, a federal form of government, 
universal male suffrage, freedom of speech, and other civil liberties were 
embodied in a new revolutionary constitution.

In 1857, the first world-wide financial crisis broke out. Capitalism was 
beginning as it would continue.

In Mexico, the reactionaries started a civil war against the 
revolutionaries that lasted until 1860, when the Juaristas were victorious.

The worldwide crisis prompted the capitalist north of the USA to pressure 
the south, whose neo-slave society was holding back the development of US 
capitalism.

By 1861, the country was embroiled in its own civil war — fought on the 
issue of slavery — that would last until 1865 and have a profound effect 
on Europe.

In 1864, the International Working Men's Association was formed in London, 
replacing the previous socialist sects with what Marx, who was elected to 
its executive, called "a really militant organisation of the working 
class".

Meanwhile, Juarez, as President of Mexico, had issued a decree in 1861 
suspending interest payments on foreign loans incurred by preceding (anti-
people) governments.

France, Britain and Spain decided to intervene jointly to protect their 
investments in Mexico. The prime mover in the agreement was Napoleon III of 
France.

Britain and Spain soon dropped out, but the Juaristas were not to rid their 
country of the French or France's puppet "Emperor of Mexico", Maximilian, 
until 1867.

In 1867 also, the Irish, who had risen many times against British rule — 
most notably in 1798 with help that came too late from the French — rose 
again, to be shot down in the standard response of British imperialism.

Napoleon III's foreign policy proved a failure in Europe, too. In 1870 he 
embroiled France in a disastrous war with Prussia, busy unifying the German 
principalities under Prussian dominance on behalf of German capitalism.

France's armies were defeated and Napoleon III taken prisoner.

A Government of National Defence was immediately formed in Paris, the Third 
Republic proclaimed, and the might of Prussia defied.

For four months Paris held out against German siege, but January 1871, when 
Paris neared the end of its food supply and provincial military operations 
appeared hopeless, the French Government capitulated.

Bismarck imposed harsh peace terms. Two months later, the French Government 
moved to disarm the workers. In Paris, the workers, supported by the men of 
the National Guard (the same body that "Citizen Egalite" had joined in 
1789), rose up under the banner of the Red Flag, and proclaimed a Commune.

Similar Communes were established at Lyon, Toulouse, Marseilles, Saint-
Etienne, Le Creusot and Narbonne, but were short lived. Paris was isolated.

After a heroic struggle the city fell to the counter-revolutionary 
government forces in May 1871, and a week-long massacre of Communards 
ensued.

But as Marx commented: "The principles of the Commune were eternal and 
could not be crushed; they would assert themselves again until the working 
classes were emancipated."

And they did. The movement of the working class, of the toiling peasants 
and the nationally oppressed grew in the ensuing decades, leading to 
revolution in Russia in 1905-07, in Mexico in 1911 against the dictator 
Diaz who had betrayed the legacy of Juarez, in China in 1912, in Mexico 
again in 1914, in Ireland at Easter 1916, then in Russia again in 1917, 
culminating in the first successful socialist revolution.

This in turn set off a chain reaction of revolutions and national 
liberation struggles that still continues.

The revolutionary process, of which the French Revolution was a significant 
part, has ebbed and flowed, suffering setbacks as well as securing 
victories.

In the period since the fall of the Bastille, it has carried humanity out 
of feudalism and even the remnants of slavery into bourgeois democracy in 
most of the world. In some areas it has seen people throw off the yoke of 
capitalism and begin the building of socialism.

The struggle has a way to go yet, and the obstacles are many, but the 
revolutionary struggle will continue as long as there are workers wanting 
to be free of exploitation and injustice. It is a glorious struggle of 
which we are a proud part, however small.