KARL MARX

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234 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
distinction between eighteenth-century bourgeois revolutions whose very
speed and brilliance made them short-lived, and nineteenth-century
proletarian revolutions which possessed a slow thoroughness born of
constant interruption and self-criticism. Turning to the recent coup d'etat,
Marx found unacceptable the excuse that the nation was taken unawares:
'A nation and a woman are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which
the first adventurer that came along could violate them. The riddle is not
solved by such turns of speech, but merely formulated differently. It
remains to be explained how a nation of thirty-six millions can be surprised
and delivered unresisting into captivity by three swindlers.' 56
Marx then summarised the period dealt with in his Class Struggles.
The success of Bonaparte was due to his having organised the Lumpenproletariat
of Paris under the cover of a 'benevolent society', with himself
at their head. However, this immediate force had to be set against the
long-term factors in Bonaparte's favour. The first of these was the old
finance aristocracy who 'celebrated every victory of the President over its
ostensible representatives as a victory of order'. And the reason for this
was evident: 'If in every epoch the stability of the state power signified
Moses and the prophets to the entire money-market and to the priests
of this money-market, why not all the more so today, when every deluge
threatens to sweep away the old states, and the old state debts with
them?' 57
The industrial bourgeoisie, too, saw in Louis Napoleon the man who
could put an end to recent disorders. For this class, 'the struggle to
maintain its public interests, its own class interests, its political power,
only troubled and upset it, as it was a disturbance of private business'. 58
When trade was good, the commercial bourgeoisie raged against political
squabbles for fear that trade might be upset; when trade was bad, they
blamed it on the instability of the political situation. In 1851 France had
indeed passed through a minor trade crisis and this, coupled with constant
political ferment, had led the commercial bourgeoisie to cry 'Rather an
end to terror than terror without end' 59 - a cry well understood by
Bonaparte.
Marx devoted the last part of his article to a closer examination of the
class basis of Bonaparte's power. To Marx this seemed to be non-existent:
'The struggle seems to be settled in such a way that all classes, equally
impotent and equally remote, fall on their knees before the rifle-butt.' 60
The explanation was that, having perfected parliamentary power only to
withdraw it, the revolution had now to perfect the executive power in
order then to destroy it. Marx outlined the history of this bureaucracy:
This executive power with its enormous bureaucratic and military