1848 Revolutions

[goalkeeper]

Lets discuss them

So the 1848 revolutions saw uprisings across Europe against the Old Order by a wide range of groups e.g. communists/socialists (in as much as those terms were defined at the time), bourgeois liberals (in the actual sense, not the rev left slur) and nationalists.

There a few interesting points to made about the impact of them on politics:
1)In the German lands it saw the emergence of independent working class politics.
2)In the German lands, the failure of the uprising and fear among liberals caused by the "popular passions" of the lower classes arguably led to the Liberals making compromise with the establishment in favour of some liberal concessions. So can the 1848 revolutions be seen, in Germany at least, as the last revolutionary moment of the bourgeoisie and liberalism?

[Geiseric]

I don't think the german bourgeoisie was any more progressive than the french or british, but it's true that they were forced by the threat of revolution if they didn't allow the SPD to form and grow. Class consciousness after 1848 went down for a few decades, but it was revived as soon as the legal parties which included Leibnacht, Bebel, and Kautsky, along with many french socialists like Lasselle, showed that a class struggle was possible.

On top of everything, the prominent socialists such as Juares totally sold out during 1848. That's how I understood it when I was reading the book Marx wrote about it.

[goalkeeper]

I don't think the german bourgeoisie was any more progressive than the french or british, but it's true that they were forced by the threat of revolution if they didn't allow the SPD to form and grow. Class consciousness after 1848 went down for a few decades, but it was revived as soon as the legal parties which included Leibnacht, Bebel, and Kautsky, along with many french socialists like Lasselle, showed that a class struggle was possible.

On top of everything, the prominent socialists such as Juares totally sold out during 1848. That's how I understood it when I was reading the book Marx wrote about it.

I meant that the liberal bourgeoisie tried to carry out a revolution in Germany in 1848, but after failing and being scared by the involvement of the working class opted for compromise with the old order in return for concession like a limited constitution, limited parliament, economic liberalisation etc and become fully integrated into the existing order and were no longer revolutionary. So 1848 was perhaps the last revolutionary moment of the bourgeoisie, as they went from trying to overthrow monarchies in favour of republics or democracies and instead accommodated themselves with the kings and princes. At the same time a clearly more progressive and revolutionary political subject came into being; the working class

[GiantMonkeyMan]

My understanding was that they were bourgeois revolutions driving for a unified bourgeois nation state in order to protect their interests that had become more pronounced with industrialisation providing the bourgeoisie with more control over the means of production. Hence the attempts to unify both Italy and Germany along approximate cultural grounds and the Hungarian and Ukraine nationalist movements.

They also made obvious the power and strength of united proletarian struggle. You had communists agitating in France and Belgium that were successful and threatened the existing order (and soon suppressed).

[l'Enfermé]

Essentially, yes, that's the usual Marxist position. But it's hard to speak of an emergence of "independent working class politics" in Germany following 1848. This didn't happen until the couple of years that preceded the founding of Lassalle's ADAV in 1863. The events in France, though, which was the center of the socialist worker's movement until the butchering of the Commune in 1871 and the years of reaction that followed, which resulted in Germany becoming the center of the movement, were rather similar also. The bourgeoisie lost any claims to being revolutionary in France in 1848 also.

[goalkeeper]

But it's hard to speak of an emergence of "independent working class politics" in Germany following 1848. This didn't happen until the couple of years that preceded the founding of Lassalle's ADAV in 1863.

Well there was Stephan Born's Workers Brotherhood that emerged in 1848, which used a similar symbol to Lassalle (two clasped hands). In September of 1848 the Brotherhood issued a circular saying: “We workers must help ourselves.The workers of Germany must strive to constitute a moral force in the state, to become a powerful body that weathers every storm, that thrusts forward and every forward with its impetus defeats and sweeps aside all that stands in its way of a freer and better shaping of circumstances”. Not quite revolutionary working class politics ("moral force in the state"), but certainly a step towards working class politics and the working class as a distinct political subject.

[l'Enfermé]

Well there was Stephan Born's Workers Brotherhood that emerged in 1848, which used a similar symbol to Lassalle (two clasped hands). In September of 1848 the Brotherhood issued a circular saying: “We workers must help ourselves.The workers of Germany must strive to constitute a moral force in the state, to become a powerful body that weathers every storm, that thrusts forward and every forward with its impetus defeats and sweeps aside all that stands in its way of a freer and better shaping of circumstances”. Not quite revolutionary working class politics ("moral force in the state"), but certainly a step towards working class politics and the working class as a distinct political subject.
The Worker's Brotherhood pretty much ceased to exist by 1850 though, and it didn't actually foster independent working class politics, it only sought to reconcile the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.