What is interesting about France is that its political history can be pictured as a patch of different regime types in succession. Revolutions, which played the pivotal role in change in regime types or government it adapts marks the French political history. From the French Revolution many countries across the globe have experimented on the collective power of the citizenry – the power of revolution and the promise of communism.
This paper will answer the question whether the Marxist perspective could be applied to the French experience and demonstrate how it would explain France’s political twists and turns. The paper will discuss shortly the elements of the Marxist theory as a tool for analysis and its relevance to the subject matter. However, the discussion shall be limited to the application of the Marxist’s dialectical materialist approach to France’s political experience with less focus on the mode of production; thus offering only a broad and not so in-depth view of the Marxist relevance to the French political systems.
To begin with, Marx’s Dialectical Materialism is the theoretical tool apt for the theoretical discussion and explanation to certain practices in reality. It basically posits three basic laws that serve as the foundation of the Marxist theory.
The first law is the “interpenetration of opposites” which assumes that every entity is composed of opposite sub-entities that are fundamentally contradictory to one another – whereas, such contradiction could be antagonistic or non-antagonistic. This posits the idea that only through contradiction can there be development. The first law of dialectical materialism concerns about the relationship of variables, in this case the relations of production (Curtis, 1981).
In its social sense, the first law demonstrates the contradictory relationship of the social classes in the society particularly the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (loosely, the oppressor and oppressed class). The labor of the working and the capital of the bourgeoisie are the factors of production.
The second law is the ‘transformation of quantity to quality’, which assumes that any qualitative change can only be achieved through a quantitative one. It argues that every process of development in the universe is necessarily a change in quantity first. Whereas, the change of quantity can be change in degree or amount. This law concerns the process of development (Curtis, 1981).
In its social sense, it is the power of the revolution bringing about formative changes in the society. This law delineates the clear line of Marxism against mere reformism and proposes that revolution is but essential. As the productive forces of the working class develops but it is hampered by the relations of production, that is between the worker and the capitalist (Marx, 1894). Therefore, a revolution must take place.
The third law of dialectical materialism is the ‘negation of the negation’. It presupposes that anything begins as an affirmation, then it will be negated and then negated again to produce it’s own affirmation. In its social sense, it is communism that Marx and Engels clearly explained in the historical materialism.
At this point, let us examine the contradictions in the French society prior to the French Revolution up to the present times. Let us see whether these contradictions resulted to development (which is not necessarily progress), a change in quality base on the change in quantity (the revolutions per se) and whether a negation has been achieved (thesis plus anti-thesis equals a synthesis).
From 1789 to 1994, France already had undergone nine (9) regimes. The French Revolution removed the Bourbon Monarchy and paved the way for the First Republic as it ended the feudal relations in France, but then came the First Empire built by Napoleon Bonaparte who also endorsed the victory of the Revolution. After Bonaparte’s abdication in 1814 the Bourbon Monarchy was restored. The Bourbons were removed from the throne by the Orleans branch of the royal family but then again, the revolution of 1848 abolished the July Monarchy and instituted the Second Republic. The Second Republic did not flourished for long. It has fallen by the rise of another Bonaparte, Napoleon’s nephew who became the Emperor of the Second Empire. After the defeat suffered in the Franco-Prussian war the Third Republic was born in September 4, 1870. The Vichy Government, the Fourth Republic and the Fifth Republic are the other regimes that followed (Rasmussen and Jorgen, 1995). More to our interest are a number of revolutions that transpired in France since 1789 – the French Revolution in 1789, the revolution of 1848, the coup d’ etat of 1851, the Paris Commune of 1871 and revolutions (or for some scholars it was only a mass protest) in 1968 (Johnson, 1969).
It is an established fact that ‘the structures of bourgeois and peasant power were firmly established’ in France (Johnson, 1969). The long and sustained revolutionary tradition in the country and the deep-rooted class-consciousness made the working class movement surviving for centuries (Brower, 1968). Note that prior to the French Revolution, the three social classes (monarchy, nobility and the peasants) are determined by birth. Thus in essence, the French Revolution put an end to the feudal relations in France; in effect, a new relation of production took shape – that is of the bourgeoisie and the proletariats or the capital versus labor. This is the primary contradiction that will stir the political circus in the years to come for France.
The victories of the Revolution through the First Republic include legislation on tenure, free land use, common rights, changes in land ownership and legislations on agriculture (Clapham, 1961). These legislations are beneficial for the working class. However, during the July Monarchy, France suffered a devastating economic depression. The franc was downtrodden and petite bourgeoisie was clamoring for economic stability. The working class on the other hand faced the problem of high unemployment and extreme poverty. Only one legislative effort was taken by the monarchy dedicated for the working class – the law prohibiting child labor and nothing else followed that.
In February 1848, the middle class joined with the working class and led a revolution that eventually toppled the July Monarchy and gave birth to the Second Republic. Marx pointed out that the 1848 revolution was not a proletariat-led revolution and the middle class acted upon their personal desires only. The 1848 Revolution was a bourgeois revolution. In reality, the workers were suppressed in their June Day strikes and mobilizations by the petite bourgeoisie after the February 1848 Revolution – in essence, there existed a class struggle within the bourgeois revolution of 1848 (Brower, 1968).
The next key event is Paris Commune in 1871 that gained Lenin’s attention for he dedicated a chapter in his book The State and Revolution in 1970 for his view and critique of the Paris Commune. Even Marx himself was enthusiastic about the Commune despite his wary tone when he warned the workers of France that material conditions are not favorable for the communards prior to the Commune.
The Commune ignited after the disillusionment and sufferings of the working class after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war. The Commune almost perfected the communist goal of establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat. But it failed. For Marx, the Commune may have failed due to internal and external factors but it had left a very crucial lesson – that the dictatorship of the proletariat must have ‘smashed the bureaucratic-military state machine’ and device its own organized machinery for violence (Preface to the German Edition, Communist Manifesto). Nonetheless, the Paris Commune left a synthesis or a lesson that later proved helpful.
In 1968, student protests and worker’s strikes marked the May of 1948. Some call it a revolution while others argue it was not. However, the important viewpoint is that the issues and concerns fought for in the previous revolutions are still the same issues brought by the protesters in May 1968 (Johnson 1869). This now posits the question whether there has been a formative change in quality of the social order of France, but that is a question to be answered in a different occasion.
It is clear that the driving force for great political undertakings were inspired by contradictions between classes in the French society – the feudal lords and the peasants prior to the French Revolution, the bourgeois class versus the proletariat within a revolution as in the 1848 revolution or the middle-proletariat versus the lower-proletariat in Third Republic.
There have been formative changes after revolutions but the next level of discourse would rather be a Marxist prescription of who would be leading the revolution (proletarians or petite bourgeoisie), how the bureaucratic-military state machine should have been abolished, etc., which is not exactly the subject of this paper.
Topping it all, it is given that social class structures and class-consciousness is established in France and the political history of France has been shaped according to the contradictions between such social classes; thus, a Marxist approach can provide a good viewpoint on the political development of France.
REFERENCES:
Brower, D. (1968). The new Jacobins: The French communist party and popular front. Ithaca, New York, USA: Cornell University Press
Campbell, P. (1958). French electoral systems and elections since 1789. Connecticut, USA: Archon Books
Cerny, P. and Schain, M. (1980). French politics and public policy. Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press
Clapham, J. H. (1961). The economic development of France and Germany 1815-1914. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press
Curtis, M. (1981). The great political theories, Vol. 1. USA: University of Michigan
Johnson, D. (1969). France. Aylesbury, Bucks, Great Britain: Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd.
Lenin, V. (1970). The State and revolution: The Marxist teaching on the teaching and the tasks of the proletariat in the revolution. Peking, China: Foreign Languages Press
Lenin, V. (1976). Philosophical notebooks. Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers
Rasmussen, J. and Moses, J. (1995). Major European governments. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company
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Thoughts Gone Astray 