February Revolution (1848)
Tue Feb 22, 1848
On this day in 1848, the French February Revolution began when thousands of Parisians took to the streets to protest political suppression, leading to the founding of the Second Republic and establishment of labor reforms. Among the reforms the Second Republic passed were universal male suffrage and a guaranteed “right to work”, provided by National Workshops which gave the unemployed with a source of income.
The protests of February 22nd were triggered by the banning of political banquets, legal means of criticizing the government and fundraising for political organizing. Incidentally, communist journalist Friedrich Engels was in Paris at the time and witnessed these banquets. After the ban, thousands flooded out onto the streets to protest against the “Citizen King” Louis Philippe and his chief minister François Pierre Guillaume Guizot.
Shouting “Down with Guizot” and “Long Live the Reform”, the crowds marched past Guizot’s residence and erected barricades in the streets of Paris, where fighting broke out between the citizens and the Parisian municipal guards. French troops shot into the crowd, killing at least fifty-two people.
In the next few days, Guizot resigned and King Philippe fled the country. By February 26th, the Second Republic had been formed, with poet Alphonse de Lamartine acting as a de facto dictator over France for the next three months.
The Second Republic’s governance would be tested in the “June Days” uprising, which Karl Marx identified as a conflict between petite bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The revolting workers were crushed by force (with over 4,000 insurgents being deported to Algeria) and the Second Republic continued until elected President Louis Napoléon Bonaparte dissolved the parliament in a coup in 1851.
- Date: 1848-02-22
- Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.britannica.com, www.marxists.org.
- Tags: #Protests.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org
You must log in or register to comment.
God I wish Americans would actually do this
The Second Republic’s governance would be tested in the “June Days” uprising, which Karl Marx identified as a conflict between petite bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The revolting workers were crushed by force (with over 4,000 insurgents being deported to Algeria) and the Second Republic continued until elected President Louis Napoléon Bonaparte dissolved the parliament in a coup in 1851.
This seems like a barrel of laughs … not.
Besides, right now it seems that American society is afraid of its own shadow and happy to get their dopamine high from trolling on social media controlled by those who are inflicting the subjugation without so much as a by your leave whilst blaming anyone but themselves for school massacres and public shootings.
So our options are: oligarchy or revolution followed by coup and dictatorship.
Cool cool cool
Guess I’ll take the coup later?
This is a massive oversimplification—also, who exactly do you think is responsible for the violence? We live in a late stage capitalist nightmare that has become a well-oiled exploitation and dream crushing machine. You think everyday citizens are responsible for school massacres and “public shootings?” It’s the malaise and discontentment of a modern society run amok. People are left with zero recourse for the systemic problems bearing down on them, so they lash out. It just so happens that the ruling class doesn’t care about the kids in schools or the people on the streets, so they do nothing. And the byproduct of that inaction is more widespread fear and malaise, so the machine keeps running more efficiently when people are scared and beaten down.
People aren’t “happy to get their dopamine high,” they’re conditioned to be docile. If you think breaking out of the most streamlined subjugation and conditioning machine ever invented is a matter of just being happy being subjugated, I think you’re very wrong.
