Causes Of The Revolution Of 1848

The Revolutions of 1848 have been described as the “greatest revolution of the century”1. From its mild beginnings in Palermo, Sicily in January 1848, it did not take long to spread across the rest of Europe (Britain and Russia were the only countries not to experience such revolutions). “In 1848 more states on the European continent were overcome by revolution than ever before and ever since”2. The Revolutions became more radical but after June 1848 these revolutionary events began to overlap with those of counterrevolutionary actions, thus enabling the old regimes to return to power. 1848 was described as “a sunny spring of the peoples abruptly interrupted by the winter of the princes”3.

The failure of the 1848 revolutions caused gains made in the last 30 years to disappear. Europe had started the process of working together with the peace settlements of 1815 (Text 681). European powers, instead of working together, began to act in accordance with their own national interests.

The Revolutions of 1848 During the year of 1848, a revolutionary tide broke out in Europe.

The eighteenth century revolutions predate the Marxist framework which would ultimately changed the way in which revolutions are understood; as highly participatory mass-moments which sought to change some kind of social order. Gordon Wood acknowledges this as he states; “The social distinctions and economic deprivations that we today think of as the consequences of class divisions…were in the eighteenth century usually thought to be caused by abuses in government.” Skocpol also acknowledges the difference between modern and what the “liberal revolutions” of the eighteenth century. She writes that all revolutions that occur within the modern capitalist systems accomplish nothing but a more concentrated and centralized state bureaucracy. However Skocpol’s analysis takes a retrospective structuralist approach to understanding these eighteenth century social revolutions. Her analysis does not rely on the deprivation hypothesis nor any kind of ideology, but instead highlights the importance of the “revolutionary moment” where elites and peasants unite (through an “equal powers” negotiation) against the state (Stevens 10/16/17). By applying Skocpol’s model to the French, Haitian, and American Revolutions, we can see how well it holds up when applied to these various intertwined 18th century revolutions despite their drastically different outcomes.

Tocqueville and Marx both argue for an egalitarian modern society, but their idea of equality of modern social order differs, which leads to two distinctive conclusions, democracy for former and communism for latter, which is adopted by different nations in the world. Both social theorists place high importance in analysing the history of society to determine modern social order, but have differing conceptions of history that leads to their contrasting views on the fundamental nature of the capitalist society, and their distinct predictions for the future. This essay will examine Tocqueville’s and Marx’s conceptions of history and through it, understand the nature of capitalist society, and comprehend their predictions for an ideal modern state. Using their analysis, I shall argue that Marx’s prediction of the future is more compelling as compared to Tocqueville.

The revolution resulted, among other things, in the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy in France and in the establishment of the First Republic. It was generated by a vast complex of causes, the most important of which were the inability of the ruling classes of nobility, clergy, and bourgeoisie to come to grips with the problems of state, the indecisive nature of the monarch, impoverishment of the workers, the intellectual ferment of the Age of Enlightenment, and the example of the American Revolution. Recent scholarship tends to downplay the social class struggle and emphasize political, cultural, ideological, and personality factors in the advent and unfolding of the conflict. The Revolution itself produced an equally vast complex of

Historically, there are many speculations as to why and how the American Revolution started. Most historians argue that “taxation without representation” was the cause of this war. The colonist were faithful citizens of the English empire, they both benefitted from each other. England provided protection of pirates, guaranteed markets and in return the colonist increased their wealth. The conflict began when the British conquered Canada from France, now Canada was not a threat to the colonists. The British became over 130 million in dept. And that is when they enacted the stamp, sugar, and Townshend Acts on the colonist, to pay their fair share in their depts. The colonists deputed these taxes, stating that they were taxed without representation in parliament. This was the spark of the revolution and what started the conflicts. However, there is controversy as to if the American Revolution was a conservative movement or if it was radicle. Robert Eldon Brown argues that yes the American Revolution was conservative stating that America had become a middle-class society and the separation from England was a rebellion about the overpowering political and economic control that they imposed on the colonists. On the other hand, Alan Taylor and Gordon Wood proclaims that the revolution was radicle explaining that the brutal tactics used during the war was radicle and that America was not middle class it was divided in strictly the upper elite and the poor commoners, which created conflicts. “The American Revolution was as radicle as any other revolution, but in a special 18th century way” is valid because of the extremely radicle guerilla warfare tactics used that was different than other revolutions, it was a peoples war against the western imperialism, and the class difference and conflicts between the elite and commoners the war divided the society into two. Firstly, the American Revolution was radicle because a never seen before radicle guerilla warfare tactic was used by the colonist to destroy the British. Secondly, the American Revolution was the first effective war against imperialism of the west that resulted in freedom of the people. Finally, America was not composed of middle-class; there were distinct

Through the documents written by Tocqueville and Marx on the 1848 Revolution, their individual political views are expressed through their interpretations of the Revolution. Although it appears that the difference in interpretation is only by reason of socialist v. liberal, some similarities in foundations can be deduced. Both Marx and Tocqueville recognize the collapse of hierarchy, but they have differences in how to fix this problem. Also, both don’t want full equality for all and want some government interference. Tocqueville states that “I know of no country in which revolutions are more dangerous than in a democracy … there is always a danger of their becoming permanent, and one may almost say, eternal” (Tocqueville on Revolution). He

Not only are the understanding of equality and liberty key to understanding the recent and incredibly destructive period of revolution by the French people, but they are also a rich elaboration on the roots of modernity and modern culture and politics. For Tocqueville, equality and liberty, two opposing political ends, are the products of first the old regime and then the so-called democratic despotism that is drawn out of the revolution and takes advantage of the people’s response to an increasingly weak and incapable government. Tocqueville

2,000 riots broke out – by far the largest case of popular unrest in England since 1700. During the riots, rural labourers burned down farmhouses, expelled overseers of the poor, and sent threatening letters to landlords and farmers signed by the imaginary Captain Swing. Most of all, workers attacked and destroyed threshing machines. Threshing machines were used to thresh grain, especially wheat. Until the end of the 1700s, threshing grain was done manually and it was the principal form of employment in the countryside during the winter months. Starting from the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), threshing machines spread across England, replacing workers. Steam threshers could finish in a matter of weeks a task that would have normally kept workers

When reading Marx and Tocqueville one may find that both seem to stand on opposite ends of a spectrum. While Tocqueville, as a social theorist, appears to value stability in political systems over all else (Ratcliff, 2014), Marx believes revolutions are the way for which the history of humankind can progress, and that the end of history will arise from the revolt of the people for a communist society (Ratcliff, 2014). Indeed, while both Marx and Tocqueville value liberty and equality, their notions of the two are fundamentally different, resulting in different ideas of the political manifestations of these two ideals. This essay will explore the motivations behind the two works, compare the two conceptions of liberty and equality, and show why Marx and Tocqueville arrive at very different conclusions.

Though Karl Marx and Alexis de Tocqueville differ, they both contributed greatly to revolutionary concepts of their era. To better understand the analyses between politics, social, and economic changes Marx and Tocqueville discuss, we must first understand the shift of their time and the need for sociological analysis. The 19th century was a time of change and adaptation for everyone and few scholars were capable and willing to understand the impacts these changes would have on society and its entities. Both industrial and democratic revolutions affected their times and created shifts in society. The industrialization affected many aspects of society. It created a structural change in the economy shifting from agrarian income to industrial and commercial income. Technology impacted labour force and production shifting to large-scale manufacturing creating new types of investments. These changes affected class structure, migration, and workers which in turn affected economy and a shift in politics.

Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in order to give a voice to the struggling classes in Europe. In the document he expressed the frustrations of the lower class. As Marx began his document with "the history of all hitherto societies has been the history of class struggles" he gave power to the lower classes and sparked a destruction of their opressors.1 He argued that during the nineteenth century Europe was divided into two main classes: the wealthy upper class, the bourgeoisie, and the lower working class, the proletariat. After years of suffering oppression the proletariats decided to use their autonomy and make a choice to gain power. During the

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte was written by Karl Marx a few months after the December 1851 coup d’etat of Louis Bonaparte in France. In this short text, Marx further examined the revolution of 1848 and the series of political reversals which eventually led to the coup. Marx views the coup as a consequence of sharp intensifications of class antagonisms in modern bourgeois society, which is the central idea of the theory of revolutionary change presented in the Communist Manifesto. Therefore, his analysis in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte allows us to understand how his theory bears out in practice. However, in the latter text, Marx also made some adjustments to his theory. He went from a simple, bifurcate model consisting of only a dominating class and a dominated class to a more sophisticated understanding where he identifies the subgroups within the main groups, as well as the roles each of these factions played during the course of the revolution. In this paper, I will explain the revolution theory proposed by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, and how the theory was applied and adjusted in the Eighteenth Brumaire to make concrete historical sense of the events happened during the years between 1848 to 1851.

Often called “the People’s Spring”, the Revolutions of 1848 marked a time of political and social turmoil widespread across the European continent. It is during this time we see monarchies overthrown, the formation of new countries, and “radical ideologies” such as Nationalism, and Liberalism become the beliefs of the middle-class. The populations of European countries were growing at a rate never seen before. The masses started becoming agitated with the current monarchial system of government ruling across Europe in the nineteenth-century, and wanted change that would bring about individual freedom and equality. It is well known that the Revolutions of 1848 were multi-casual, and that there was not just one factor that can be