The Provisional Government which emerged from the February barricades necessarily mirrored in its composition the different parties which shared in the victory.It could not be anything but a compromise between the different classes which together had overturned the July throne, but whose interests were mutually antagonistic.The great majority of its members consisted of representatives of the bourgeoisie.The republican petty bourgeoisie was represented by Ledru-Rollin and Flocon, the republican bourgeoisie by the people from the National [3] , the dynastic opposition by Cr6mieux, Dupont de I'Eure, etc.The working class had only two representatives, Louis Blanc and Albert.Finally, Lamartine in the Provisional Government;this was at first no real interest, no definite class; this was the February Revolution itself, the common uprising with its illusions, its poetry, its visionary content, and its phrases.For the rest, the spokesman of the February Revolution, by his position and his views, belonged to the bourgeoisie.
If Paris, as a result of political centralization, rules France, the workers, in moments of revolutionary earthquakes, rule Paris.The first act in the life of the Provisional Government was an attempt to escape from this overpowering influence by an appeal from intoxicated Paris to sober France.Lamartine disputed the right of the barricade fighters to proclaim a republic on the ground that only the majority of Frenchmen had that right; they must await their votes, the Paris proletariat must not besmirch its victory by a usurpation.The bourgeoisie allows the proletariat only one usurpation -- that of fighting.
Up to noon of February 25 the republic had not yet been proclaimed;on the other hand, all the ministries had already been divided among the bourgeois elements of the Provisional Government and among the generals, bankers, and lawyers of the National.But the workers were determined this time not to put up with any bamboozlement like that of July, 1830.They were ready to take up the fight anew and to get a republic by force of arms.With this message, Raspail betook himself to the Hotel de Ville.
In the name of the Paris proletariat he commanded the Provisional Government to proclaim a republic; if this order of the people were not fulfilled within two hours, he would return at the head Of 200,000 men.The bodies of the fallen were scarcely cold, the barricades were not yet disarmed, and the only force that could be opposed to them was the National Guard.
Under these circumstances the doubts born of considerations of state policy and the juristic scruples of conscience entertained by the Provisional Government suddenly vanished.The time limit of two hours had not yet expired when all the walls of Paris were resplendent with the gigantic historical words: Republique francaise! Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!
Even the memory of the limited alms and motives which drove the bourgeoisie into the February Revolution was extinguished by the proclamation of the republic on the basis of universal suffrage.Instead of only a few factions of the bourgeoisie, all classes of French society were suddenly hurled into the orbit of political power, forced to leave the boxes, the stalls, and the gallery and to act in person upon the revolutionary stage!
With the constitutional monarchy vanished also the semblance of a state power independently confronting bourgeois society, as well as the whole series of subordinate struggles which this semblance of power called forth!
By dictating the republic to the Provisional Government, and through the Provisional Government to the whole of France, the proletariat immediately stepped into the foreground as an independent party, but at the same time challenged the whole of bourgeois France to enter the lists against it.
What it won was the terrain for the fight for its revolutionary emancipation, but by no means this emancipation itself.
The first thing the February Republic had to do was, rather, to complete the rule of the bourgeoisie by allowing, besides the finance aristocracy, all the propertied classes to enter the orbit of political power.The majority of the great landowners, the Legitimists, were emancipated from the political nullity to which they had been condemned by the July Monarchy.Not for nothing had the Gazette de France agitated in common with the opposition papers; not for nothing had La Roche-Jaquelein taken the side of the revolution in the session of the Chamber of Deputies on February 24.The nominal proprietors, the peasants, who form the great majority of the French people, were put by universal suffrage in the position of arbiters of the fate of France.
The February Republic finally brought the rule of the bourgeoisie clearly into view, since it struck off the crown behind which capital had kept itself concealed.
Just as the workers in the July days had fought for and won the bourgeois monarchy, so in the February days they fought for and won the bourgeois republic.Just as the July Monarchy had to proclaim itself a monarchy surrounded by republican institutions, so the February Republic was forced to proclaim itself a republic surrounded by social institutions.
The Paris proletariat compelled this concession, too.
