The President was to be a protracted Cavaignac; the Legislative Assembly a protracted Constituent Assembly.They hoped to reduce the political power of the masses of the people to a semblance of power, and to be able to make sufficient play with this sham power itself to keep continually hanging over the majority of the bourgeoisie the dilemma of the June days: realm of the National or realm of anarchy.
The work on the constitution, which was begun on September 4, was finished on October 23.On September 2 the Constituent Assembly had decided not to dissolve until the organic laws supplementing the constitution were enacted.Nonetheless, it now decided to bring to life the creation that was most peculiarly its own, the President, on December 4, long before the circle of its own activity was closed.So sure was it of hailing, in the homunculus of the constitution, the son of his mother.As a precaution it was provided that if none of the candidates received two million votes, the election should pass over from the nation to the Constituent Assembly.
Futile provisions! The first day of the realization of the constitution was the last day of the rule of the Constituent Assembly.In the abyss of the ballot box lay its sentence of death.It sought the "son of his mother" and found the "nephew of his uncle." Saul Cavaignac slew one million votes, but David Napoleon slew six million.Saul Cavaignac was beaten six times over.
December 10, 1848, was the day of the peasant insurrection.Only from this day does the February of the French peasants date.The symbol that expressed their entry into the revolutionary movement, clumsily cunning, knavishly naive, doltishly sublime, a calculated superstition, a pathetic burlesque, a cleverly stupid anachronism, a world-historic piece of buffoonery and an indecipherable hieroglyphic for the understanding of the civilized -- this symbol bore the unmistakable physiognomy of the class that represents barbarism within civilization.The republic had announced itself to this class with the tax collector; it announced itself to the republic with the emperor.Napoleon was the only man who had exhaustively represented the interests and the imagination of the peasant class, newly created in 1789.By writing his name on the frontispiece of the republic, it declared war abroad and the enforcing of its class interests at home.Napoleon was to the peasants not a person but a program.With banners, with beat of drums and blare of trumpets, they marched to the polling booths shouting: Plus d'impots, a bas les riches, a bas la republique, vive I'Empereur !
No more taxes, down with the rich, down with the republic, long live the emperor! Behind the emperor was hidden the peasant war.The republic that they voted down was the republic of the rich.
December 10 was the coup d'état of the peasants, which overthrew the existing government.And from that day on, when they had taken a government from France and given a government to her, their eyes were fixed steadily on Paris.For a moment active heroes of the revolutionary drama, they could no longer be forced back into the inactive and spineless role of the chorus.
The other classes helped to complete the election victory of the peasants.To the proletariat, the election of Napoleon meant the deposition of Cavaignac, the overthrow of the Constituent Assembly, the dismissal of bourgeois republicanism, the cessation of the June victory.To the petty bourgeoisie, Napoleon meant the rule of the debtor over the creditor.For the majority of the big bourgeoisie, the election of Napoleon meant an open breach with the faction of which it had had to make use, for a moment, against the revolution, but which became intolerable to it as soon as this faction sought to consolidate the position of the moment into a constitutional position.Napoleon in place of Cavaignac meant to this majority the monarch), in place of the republic, the beginning of the royalist restoration, a sly hint at Orléans, the fleur-de-lis hidden beneath the violet.
Lastly, the army voted for Napoleon against the Mobile Guard, against the peace idyll, for war.
Thus it happened, as the Neue Rheinische Zeitung stated, that the most simple-minded man in France acquired the most multifarious significance.
Just because he was nothing, he could signify everything save himself.
Meanwhile, different as the meaning of the name Napoleon might be in the mouths of the different classes, with this name each wrote on his ballot:
Down with the party of the National, down with Caivaignac, down with the Constituent Assembly, down with the bourgeois republic.Minister Dufaure publicly declared in the Constituent Assembly: December 10 is a second February 24.
Petty bourgeoisie and proletariat had voted en bloc for Napoleon, in order to vote against Cavaignac and, by pooling their votes, to wrest the final decision from the Constituent Assembly.The more advanced sections of the two classes, however, put forward their own candidates.Napoleon was the collective name of all parties in coalition against the bourgeois republic; Ledru-Rollin and Raspail were the proper names, the former of the democratic petty bourgeoisie, the latter of the revolutionary proletariat.
