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Classical Social Theory and the French Revolution of 1848 Author(S): Craig Calhoun Source: Sociological Theory, Vol Classical Social Theory and the French Revolution of 1848 Author(s): Craig Calhoun Source: Sociological Theory, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 210-225 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/201896 . Accessed: 23/10/2013 06:37 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sociological Theory. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.12.11.80 on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 06:37:39 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CLASSICAL SOCIAL THEORY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848* CRAIGCALHOUN University of North Carolina Three of the classic "founding fathers" of sociology (Comte, Marx and Tocqueville) were contemporary observers of the French Revolution of 1848. In addition, another important theoretical tradition was represented in contemporary observations of 1848 by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. The present paper summarizes aspects of the views of these theoretically minded observers, notes some points at which more recent historical research suggests revisions to these classical views, and poses three arguments: (1) The revolution of 1848 exerted a direct shaping influence on classical social theory through lessons (some now subject to revision) learned from observation of the revolutionary struggles. (2) The 1848 revolution influenced classical social theory indirectly by contributing to the submergence of the radical French revolutionary tradition (along with utopian socialism) after the defeat of the June insurrectionaries and Bonaparte's coup. (3) Both writers in the classical tradition and current researchers have failed to thematize adequately a basic transformation in effectiveness of national integration, communication and administration which made 1848 in crucial ways much more akin to 1789 than it was direct evidence for the growth of class struggle and the likelihood of further revolution in advanced capitalist countries. To Alexis de Tocqueville and Karl Marx, we shall again see great public agitationsand sociologically the foremost among contem- great political parties. (1971: 15) porary observers, the mid-19th century revolutions seemed not only echoes of Marx also saw the struggle in class 1789 and other predecessors but harbingers terms, of course, and blamed the bour- of something new. Tocqueville saw a threat geoisie for forcing the workers into combat. to social order in the increasing protest of Like Tocqueville, he saw the future pres- 1847 and 1848 which was posed not just by aged in the June days: revolution but by the eruption of an insidious, continually growing, struggle The workerswere left no choice; they had to of class against class. In October 1847, starve or take action. They answered on Tocqueville (not unlike Karl Marx), drafted June 22 with the tremendous insurrection a "manifesto" (planned for publication by in which the first great battle was fought modern a group of parliamentary associates though between the two classes that split It was a for the or never in fact published). He identified the society. fight preservation actors in in terms of annihilation of the bourgeois order. The veil political struggle that shroudedthe was torn asunder. economic identities: republic underlying (1850: 67; emphasisin original) will be between Soon the political struggle Liberal republicans had formulated the the Haves and the Have-nots; property notion of "permanent revolution" in the will be the great battlefield; and the main but it was amid will turn on the more or early nineteenth century, political questions the defeats of 1848 that it came to take on less modificationsof the rights of profound the not of reform but of a propertyowners that are to be made. Then meaning gradual need to extend the revolutionary struggle beyond bourgeois limits: * An earlier version of this paper was presented to The Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, March to 1988. I am to those in attendance at that While the democraticpetty bourgeoiswish grateful the revolution to a conclusion as meeting, and to the editor and anonymous reviewers bring of Sociological Theory for comments which helped quickly as possible, and with the achievement, me to improve on that earlier version. at most, of the above demands, it is our This content downloaded from 129.12.11.80 on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 06:37:39 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848 211 interest and our task to make the revolution many ways conservative), the autonomously permanent, until all more or less possessing political (or liberal), and the economistic classes have been forced out of their position (or radical). Indeed, Aron finds this trian- of dominance,the proletariathas conquered gulation of perspectives to be a mirror of state power, and the association of prolet- the conflict itself, with its monarchist, liberal arians, not only in one country but in all democratic and radical/socialistforces. And the dominant countries of the world, has advancedso far that the he suggests that something of the same competitionamong is characteristic of twentieth proletarians in these countries has ceased triangulation and that at least the decisive productive century social conflicts: forces are concentratedin the hands of the proletarians.(Marx and Engels, 1850:281)' ... .in the course of the period from 1848 to 1851, France experienceda political conflict Yet the revolution was not permanent, which, more than any other episode in the and the struggles of 1848 to 1851 were historyof the nineteenthcentury, resembles among the last major upheavals of a the politicalconflicts of the twentiethcentury. As a matter of in this one can passing revolutionary era rather than a fact, period new observe a triangularconflict between what beginning. are knownin the twentieth as fascists In this I want to a few century paper, suggest more or less liberaldemocrats, and socialists, in which the French revolution of ways which we find again between 1920 and 1933 1848 helped to shape classical social theory. in Weimar, Germany, and which is still I will first look at the views of contempor- observableto a certainextent in present-day aneous theorists on the revolution, arguing France. (1968: 303-4) particularly that one important contem- porary view in 1848 failed, precisely because There is some truth to this characterization, of its defeat in the revolution, to gain full given the limited range of comparison representation in classical social theory. (i.e., which 19th century conflict is most I will briefly note some of the revisions similar to those of the 20th century) but later historical research has imposed on there is even more reason for caution. the understanding of 1848 received from Bonapartism, for example, may have shared the classical theorists. Lastly, I will suggest with fascism a combination of nationalism, a crucial sense in which the 1848 revolution appeals to order and efficiency, but fascism should be seen as tied to Western Europe's was emphatically not a carry over of old- past more than its future, something par- regime monarchism but a specific creation tially obscured by the forward-looking of modernity. Hitler, moreover, is flattered orientation of the most influential contem- far too much in any comparison with Louis porary theoretical observers. Bonaparte; the comparison is only some- what less outrageous for Mussolini. There were, of course, some structuralsimilarities to the situations within which these different I "rightist" movements came to power, and In a widely read essay, Raymond Aron has in the politics of personality which tri- described the views of 1848 taken by umphed partially in 1848 and fully in the Comte, Tocqueville and Marx. Not only 1930s. Even if we granted more similarity was each of these a contemporary witness to the ideological forces than I find justified, to the events of that revolutionary year we would still have to note the very different (and two of them participants of note). structural underpinnings available to move- Aron reasonably enough takes Comte, ments of left or right in the twentieth Tocqueville and Marx to be among the century: effective national communication founders of three great traditions of soci- systems and administrative apparatuses, ological theory: the exclusively social (in for example. 1848 is better seen as 'Given Marx's later theoretical stress on Perhaps chronology precise would a crucial definition of classes, it is worth noting the imprecision suggest, representing junc- of phrasing here-e.g. "more or less possessing ture between the classical age of revolutions classes") and the modern era, halfway between the This content downloaded from 129.12.11.80 on Wed, 23 Oct 2013 06:37:39 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 212 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY French revolution and the rise of fascism. In the midstof politicalconvulsion, when the In any case, we must be clear as to which spirit of revolutionarydestruction is abroad, dimensions are similar and which are the mass of the people manifesta scrupulous obedience towardsthe intellectualand moral different. Whether the glass be half full or half Aron's of theoretical guides from whom they acceptdirection, and empty, strategy whom even a is an one. I shall upon they may press temporary comparison interesting in their and urgent summarize and his dictatorship, primary augment descriptions need of a preponderantauthority. Thus do and contrasts, and then take the occasion individual dispositions show themselves to to point out how one crucial dimension to be in harmony with the course of social the intellectual lineage is left out, for relations as a whole, in teaching us that reasons very directly related to 1848.
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