Chapter 11

After the first revolution had converted the serf farmers into freeholders, Napoleon fixed and regulated the conditions under which, unmolested, they could exploit the soil of France, that had just fallen into their hands, and expiate the youthful passion for property. But that which now bears the French farmer down is that very allotment of land, it is the partition of the soil, the form of ownership, which Napoleon had consolidated. These are the material condition that turned French feudal peasant into a small or allotment farmer, and Napoleon into an Emperor. Two generations have sufficed to produce the inevitable result the progressive deterioration of agriculture, and the progressive encumbering of the agriculturist The “Napoleonic” form of ownership, which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century was the condition for the emancipation and enrichment of the French rural population, has, in the course of the century, developed into the law of their enslavement and pauperism. Now, then, this very law is the first of the “idees Napoleoniennes,” which the second Bonaparte must uphold. If he still shares with the farmers the illusion of seeking, not in the system of the small allotment itself, but outside of that system, in the influence of secondary conditions, the cause of their ruin, his experiments are bound to burst like soap-bubbles against the modern system of production.

The economic development of the allotment system has turned bottom upward the relation of the farmer to the other classes of society. Under Napoleon, the parceling out of the agricultural lands into small allotments supplemented in the country the free competition and the incipient large production of the cities. The farmer class was the ubiquitous protest against the aristocracy of land, just then overthrown. The roots that the system of small allotments cast into the soil of France, deprived feudalism of all nutriment. Its boundary-posts constituted the natural buttress of the bourgeoisie against every stroke of the old overlords. But in the course of the nineteenth century, the City Usurer stepped into the shoes of the Feudal Lord, the Mortgage substituted the Feudal Duties formerly yielded by the soil, bourgeois Capital took the place of the aristocracy of Landed Property. The former allotments are now only a pretext that allows the capitalist class to draw profit, interest and rent from agricultural lands, and to leave to the farmer himself the task of seeing to it that he knock out his wages. The mortgage indebtedness that burdens the soil of France imposes upon the French farmer class they payment of an interest as great as the annual interest on the whole British national debt. In this slavery of capital, whither its development drives it irresistibly, the allotment system has transformed the mass of the French nation into troglodytes. Sixteen million farmers (women and children included), house in hovels most of which have only one opening, some two, and the few most favored ones three. Windows are to a house what the five senses are to the head. The bourgeois social order, which, at the beginning of the century, placed the State as a sentinel before the newly instituted allotment, and that manured this with laurels, has become a vampire that sucks out its heart-blood and its very brain, and throws it into the alchemist’s pot of capital. The “Code Napoleon” is now but the codex of execution, of sheriff’s sales and of intensified taxation. To the four million (children, etc., included) official paupers, vagabonds, criminals and prostitutes, that France numbers, must be added five million souls who hover over the precipice of life, and either sojourn in the country itself, or float with their rags and their children from the country to the cities, and from the cities back to the country. Accordingly, the interests of the farmers are no longer, as under Napoleon, in harmony but in conflict with the interests of the bourgeoisie, i.e., with capital; they find their natural allies and leaders among the urban proletariat, whose mission is the overthrow of the bourgeois social order. But the “strong and unlimited government”—and this is the second of the “idees Napoleoniennes,” which the second Napoleon has to carried out—, has for its mission the forcible defence of this very “material” social order, a “material order” that furnishes the slogan in Bonaparte’s proclamations against the farmers in revolt.

Along with the mortgage, imposed by capital upon the farmer’s allotment, this is burdened by taxation. Taxation is the fountain of life to the bureaucracy, the Army, the parsons and the court, in short to the whole apparatus of the Executive power. A strong government, and heavy taxes are identical. The system of ownership, involved in the system of allotments lends itself by nature for the groundwork of a powerful and numerous bureaucracy: it produces an even level of conditions and of persons over the whole surface of the country; it, therefore, allows the exercise of an even influence upon all parts of this even mass from a high central point downwards: it annihilates the aristocratic gradations between the popular masses and the Government; it, consequently, calls from all sides for the direct intervention of the Government and for the intervention of the latter’s immediate organs; and, finally, it produces an unemployed excess of population, that finds no room either in the country or in the cities, that, consequently, snatches after public office as a sort of dignified alms, and provokes the creation of further offices. With the new markets, which he opened at the point of the bayonet, and with the plunder of the continent, Napoleon returned to the farmer class with interest the taxes wrung from them. These taxes were then a goad to the industry of the farmer, while now, on the contrary, they rob his industry of its last source of support, and completely sap his power to resist poverty. Indeed, an enormous bureaucracy, richly gallooned and well fed is that “idee Napoleonienne” that above all others suits the requirements of the second Bonaparte. How else should it be, seeing he is forced to raise alongside of the actual classes of society, an artificial class, to which the maintenance of his own regime must be a knife-and-fork question? One of his first financial operations was, accordingly, the raising of the salaries of the government employees to their former standard and the creation of new sinecures.

Another “idee Napoleonienne” is the rule of the parsons as an instrument of government. But while the new-born allotment, in harmony with society, in its dependence upon the powers of nature, and in its subordination to the authority that protected it from above, was naturally religious, the debt-broken allotment, on the contrary, at odds with society and authority, and driven beyond its own narrow bounds, becomes as naturally irreligious. Heaven was quite a pretty gift thrown in with the narrow strip of land that had just been won, all the more as it makes the weather; it, however, becomes an insult from the moment it is forced upon the farmer as a substitute for his allotment. Then the parson appears merely as the anointed blood-hound of the earthly police,—yet another “idee Napoleonienne.” The expedition against Rome will next time take place in France, but in a reverse sense from that of M. de Montalembert.

Finally, the culminating point of the “idees Napoleoniennes” is the preponderance of the Army. The Army was the “point of honor” with the allotment farmers: it was themselves turned into masters, defending abroad their newly established property, glorifying their recently conquered nationality, plundering and revolutionizing the world. The uniform was their State costume; war was their poetry; the allotment, expanded and rounded up in their phantasy, was the fatherland; and patriotism became the ideal form of property. But the foe, against whom the French farmer must now defend his property, are not the Cossacks, they are the sheriffs and the tax collectors. The allotment no longer lies in the so-called fatherland, but in the register of mortgages. The Army itself no longer is the flower of the youth of the farmers, it is the swamp-blossom of the slum-proletariat of the farmer class. It consists of “remplacants,” substitutes, just as the second Bonaparte himself is but a “remplacant,” a substitute, for Napoleon. Its feats of heroism are now performed in raids instituted against farmers and in the service of the police;—and when the internal contradictions of his own system shall drive the chief of the “Society of December 10” across the French frontier, that Army will, after a few bandit-raids, gather no laurels but only hard knocks.

It is evident that all the “idees Napoleoniennes” are the ideas of the undeveloped and youthfully fresh allotment; they are an absurdity for the allotment that now survives. They are only the hallucinations of its death struggle; words turned to hollow phrases, spirits turned to spooks. But this parody of the Empire was requisite in order to free the mass of the French nation from the weight of tradition, and to elaborate sharply the contrast between Government and Society. Along with the progressive decay of the allotment, the governmental structure, reared upon it, breaks down. The centralization of Government, required by modern society, rises only upon the ruins of the military and bureaucratic governmental machinery that was forged in contrast to feudalism.

The conditions of the French farmers’ class solve to us the riddle of the general elections of December 20 and 21, that led the second Bonaparte to the top of Sinai, not to receive, but to decree laws.

The bourgeoisie had now, manifestly, no choice but to elect Bonaparte. When at the Council of Constance, the puritans complained of the sinful life of the Popes, and moaned about the need of a reform in morals, Cardinal d’Ailly thundered into their faces: “Only the devil in his Own person can now save the Catholic Church, and you demand angels.” So, likewise, did the French bourgeoisie cry out after the “coup d’etat”: “Only the chief of the ‘Society of December 10’ can now save bourgeois society, only theft can save property, only perjury religion, only bastardy the family, only disorder order!”

Bonaparte, as autocratic Executive power, fulfills his mission to secure “bourgeois order.” But the strength of this bourgeois order lies in the middle class. He feels himself the representative of the middle class, and issues his decrees in that sense. Nevertheless, he is something only because he has broken the political power of this class, and daily breaks it anew. Hence he feels himself the adversary of the political and the literary power of the middle class. But, by protecting their material, he nourishes anew their political power. Consequently, the cause must be kept alive, but the result, wherever it manifests itself, swept out of existence. But this procedure is impossible without slight mistakings of causes and effects, seeing that both, in their mutual action and reaction, lose their distinctive marks. Thereupon, new decrees, that blur the line of distinction. Bonaparte, furthermore, feels himself, as against the bourgeoisie, the representative of the farmer and the people in general, who, within bourgeois society, is to render the lower classes of society happy. To this end, new decrees, intended to exploit the “true Socialists,” together with their governmental wisdom. But, above all, Bonaparte feels himself the chief of the “Society of December 10,” the representative of the slum-proletariat, to which he himself, his immediate surroundings, his Government, and his army alike belong, the main object with all of whom is to be good to themselves, and draw Californian tickets out of the national treasury. An he affirms his chieftainship of the “Society of December 10” with decrees, without decrees, and despite decrees.

This contradictory mission of the man explains the contradictions of his own Government, and that confused groping about, that now seeks to win, then to humiliate now this class and then that, and finishes by arraying against itself all the classes; whose actual insecurity constitutes a highly comical contrast with the imperious, categoric style of the Government acts, copied closely from the Uncle.

Industry and commerce, i.e., the business of the middle class, are to be made to blossom in hot-house style under the “strong Government.” Loans for a number of railroad grants. But the Bonapartist slum-proletariat is to enrich itself. Peculation is carried on with railroad concessions on the Bourse by the initiated; but no capital is forthcoming for the railroads. The bank then pledges itself to make advances upon railroad stock; but the bank is itself to be exploited; hence, it must be cajoled; it is released of the obligation to publish its reports weekly. Then follows a leonine treaty between the bank and the Government. The people are to be occupied: public works are ordered; but the public works raise the tax rates upon the people; thereupon the taxes are reduced by an attack upon the national bond-holders through the conversion of the five per cent “rentes” [#9 The name of the French national bonds.] into four-and-halves. Yet the middle class must again be tipped: to this end, the tax on wine is doubled for the people, who buy it at retail, and is reduced to one-half for the middle class, that drink it at wholesale. Genuine labor organizations are dissolved, but promises are made of future wonders to accrue from organization. The farmers are to be helped: mortgage-banks are set up that must promote the indebtedness; of the farmer and the concentration of property but again, these banks are to be utilized especially to the end of squeezing money out of the confiscated estates of the House of Orleans; no capitalist will listen to this scheme, which, moreover, is not mentioned in the decree; the mortgage bank remains a mere decree, etc., etc.

Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes; but he can give to none without taking from the others. As was said of the Duke of Guise, at the time of the Fronde, that he was the most obliging man in France because he had converted all his estates into bonds upon himself for his Parisians, so would Napoleon like to be the most obliging man in France and convert all property and all labor of France into a personal bond upon himself. He would like to steal the whole of France to make a present thereof to France, or rather to be able to purchase France back again with French money;—as chief of the “Society of December 10,” he must purchase that which is to be his. All the State institutions, the Senate, the Council of State, the Legislature, the Legion of Honor, the Soldiers’ decorations, the public baths, the public buildings, the railroads, the General Staff of the National Guard, exclusive of the rank and file, the confiscated estates of the House of Orleans,—all are converted into institutions for purchase and sale. Every place in the Army and the machinery of Government becomes a purchasing power. The most important thing, however, in this process, whereby France is taken to be given back to herself, are the percentages that, in the transfer, drop into the hands of the chief and the members of the “Society of December 10.” The witticisms with which the Countess of L., the mistress of de Morny, characterized the confiscations of the Orleanist estates: “C’est le premier vol de l’aigle,” [#10 “It is the first flight of the eagle” The French word “vol” means theft as well as flight.] fits every fight of the eagle that is rather a crow. He himself and his followers daily call out to themselves, like the Italian Carthusian monk in the legend does to the miser, who displayfully counted the goods on which he could live for many years to come: “Tu fai conto sopra i beni, bisogna prima far il conto sopra gli anni.” [#11 “You count your property you should rather count the years left to you.”] In order not to make a mistake in the years, they count by minutes. A crowd of fellows, of the best among whom all that can be said is that one knows not whence he comes—a noisy, restless “Boheme,” greedy after plunder, that crawls about in gallooned frocks with the same grotesque dignity as Soulonque’s [#12 Soulonque was the negro Emperor of the short-lived negro Empire of Hayti.] Imperial dignitaries—, thronged the court crowded the ministries, and pressed upon the head of the Government and of the Army. One can picture to himself this upper crust of the “Society of December 10” by considering that Veron Crevel [#13 Crevel is a character of Balzac, drawn after Dr. Veron, the proprietor of the “Constitutional” newspaper, as a type of the dissolute Parisian Philistine.] is their preacher of morality, and Granier de Cassagnac their thinker. When Guizot, at the time he was Minister, employed this Granier on an obscure sheet against the dynastic opposition, he used to praise him with the term: “C’est le roi des droles.” [#14 “He Is the king of the clowns.”] It were a mistake to recall the days of the Regency or of Louis XV. by the court and the kit of Louis Bonaparte’s: “Often did France have a mistress-administration, but never yet an administration of kept men.” [#15 Madame de Girardin.]

Harassed by the contradictory demands of his situation, and compelled, like a sleight-of-hands performer, to keep, by means of constant surprises, the eyes of the public riveted upon himself as the substitute of Napoleon, compelled, consequently, everyday to accomplish a sort of “coup” on a small scale, Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois social system into disorder; he broaches everything that seemed unbroachable by the revolution of 1848; he makes one set people patient under the revolution and another anxious for it; he produces anarchy itself in the name of order by rubbing off from the whole machinery of Government the veneer of sanctity, by profaning it, by rendering it at once nauseating and laughable. He rehearses in Paris the cult of the sacred coat of Trier with the cult of the Napoleonic Imperial mantle. But when the Imperial Mantle shall have finally fallen upon the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, then will also the iron statue of Napoleon drop down from the top of the Vendome column. [#16 A prophecy that a few years later, after Bonaparte’s coronation as Emperor, was literally fulfilled. By order of Emperor Louis Napoleon, the military statue of the Napoleon that originally surmounted the Vendome was taken down and replaced by one of first Napoleon in imperial robes.]