lesson 23: COMMUNISM: Babeuf, Feuerbach, Marx, and Napoleon III

23.01. The Deceptive French Revolution 23.02. July Revolution of 1830 23.03. Universal Humanity 23.04. Hermeneutics of Christianity 23.05. New Players for Social Reform 23.06. Scheme of Marxism 23.07. February Revolution of 1848 23.08. Napoleon III Age

“Now the stale Communism?”

Erasing out opponents from history, Marxists forged their ancestor Marx’s myth and robbed the name. Originally, Communism meant just ‘Commoners First,’ involving neither community primacy nor co-ownership of property, much less class-struggle nor violent-revolution.

“Ah, the commoners are the masses we learned about last time, right?”

Exactly. Although German idealists such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel spoke of the nation and the world-spirit, the reality was full of equal but disagreeing faceless people. They were powerful enough to overthrow the government and cause chaos. Today, we will review their history and the philosophers who examined them.

23.01. The Deceptive French Revolution

After the revolutionary uprising of 1789, the housewives of commoners in Paris stormed into Versailles for food and captured the royal family. They occupied the Paris City Hall and established the independent Paris Commune (1789–95). Nevertheless, the bourgeoisie, which formed the National Guards, slipped the guarantee of private property into the Declaration of Human Rights, although advocating liberty and equality.

“They had no agreement more than overthrowing of the Ancien Régime.”

Babeuf (1760–97), a poor provincial surveyor, was involved in the land confiscations and after that became a secretary of the Paris Commune. Liking neither Robespierre’s dictatorship nor the bourgeois Thermidoreans, he published a political magazine TRIBUNE OF PEOPLE (protector of people) in 1794 and advocated for the sovereignty of all citizens, including women.

“No matter how powerful the housewives of Paris were, his ideas might have been radical as immediately after the absolute monarchy.”

As the Revolutionary War escalated, Babeuf proclaimed the Manifest of the Plebeians (the Commoner’s Party) in his magazine in 1795. In it, he insisted on the prohibition of private property, the communal ownership of goods, and the equal distribution of products as in the military. The bourgeois Thermidoreans arrested him and burned his magazines.

“As he insisted, a controlled economy rather would be natural during wartime. However, the bourgeoisie did not want to restrict themselves.”

The financial difficulties were also critical, and the bourgeois government issued a lot of the Assigned Bond secured by confiscated land as the substitute for currency, but that exacerbated the shortages of goods and made the commoners’ lives harder. Babeuf’s party Plebeians went underground and planned a coup d’état with the conscripted National Guards. However, just before the action in 1796, they were arrested and Babeuf was guillotined.

“His execution would solve nothing of the political and economic problems.”

Yeah. So, the dictatorial Napoleon appeared in 1799. He excited the French bourgeoisie and commoners, but in reality, he only took over France for himself, dragged them into a pointless war of expansion, and left them with a terrible debt.

“He was more troublesome than Babeuf.”

23.02. July Revolution of 1830

After Napoleon, European countries sought to restore pre-war conditions through the Vienna System. In France, the revived Bourbon king implemented exploiting politics along with the ultra-royalist chamber and the Church to compensate for the reparation of the neighboring states and the domestic lords and exacted revenge against those involved in the revolution.

“Those would have become worse than the Ancien Régime.”

Forming the Holy Alliance, Russia, Austria, and Prussia introduced the anachronistic divine right of kings. At Berin University where Fichte (1762–1814) once stoked Nationalism, theologian Schleiermacher (1768–1834) struggled to control the students. Therefore, the popular Hegel (1770–1831) was invited and narrowly managed them. Only the deaf Beethoven (1770–1827) drew on Schiller’s words from the Sturm und Drang of the pre-revolutionary era to create his Ninth Symphony in 1824, advocating musical solidarity among the disparate commoners.

“Schelling (1775–1854) also previously argued that a world divided into the material and the spiritual should be reunited through the creation of art, which is both material and spiritual.”

Bad weather led to poor harvests and high prices. Although the French king tried to divert the discontent of the commoners by invading Algeria in North Africa, the conscripted National Guards openly criticized the monarchy. To stop the liberal movement, the king prohibited all press and publishing in 1830, but this led to journalists, writers, printing factory workers, and newspaper and magazine salespeople losing jobs, taking to the streets, and leading riots of commoners in squares and bars with barricades. The king sent the National Guards, but they also switched sides. Even the Royal Guard of the Swiss mercenaries ran away. The king had to go into exile in England.

“That was the July Revolution of 1830, right?”

Hegel, who experienced the former revolution, was cold towards it, believing revolution would only bring chaos. Following him, German students had no agitation. As Hegel feared, the revolution did not end. The bourgeois chamber chose their leader Louis-Philippe I, the Duke of Orléans (1773–1850), as the new king. However, as nicknamed the “King of Stockbrokers,” he overtly implemented policies that favored the bourgeoisie and disbanded political and labor groups against the government and the company management. The commoners placed their hopes in General Lamarck who advocated freedom and equality and criticized the new king.

“It was just a bourgeois takeover of the commoners’ revolution again.”

Oppressed by the Vienna System, almost all German bourgeoise were afraid to get involved in politics, and passionate about refining their life to be neat in the Biedermeier Style. Their only luxury was to decorate their homes with genuine Indian cotton fabrics. However, these textiles brought cholera, an endemic disease in India, to Germany. The cities of the foul Europeans, who dumped excrement on the streets as ever, allowed the epidemic to spread rapidly. Hegel also died of cholera in 1831.

“Their ideas about hygiene had not progressed since the time of the nomadic Germanics.”

Cholera also reached France, where General Lamarck died in 1832. The desperate students and commoners in Paris started the June Rebellion with red flags. However, in contrast to the former July Revolution, the bourgeoisie was against them, so the students and commoners were soon suppressed.

“I read about that incident in Hugo’s LES MISÉRABLES.”

23.03. Universal Humanity

Even after Hegel’s death, Berlin University was filled with speculative Hegelians. Believing Hegel’s idea that the real is rational, they affirmed the current state of politics and society without thinking, ignoring the reality of the emergence of the masses, a lot of the diverse commoners. In addition, regarding Jesus as a dialectical unity of God and man, they also catered to Christianity.

“The Vienna system had beautifully tamed them.”

Dissatisfied with the conservative deceased Hegel, young students were rather fascinated by theologian Schleiermacher (63). As Hermeneutics, he asked his students to intuit and feel the universe beyond the revelation instead of seeing the surface. He said that even beyond each of the miserable us lies a sublime universal humanity.

“Schleiermacher made them aware the poor commoners are also a significant part of our human race.”

Hegel thought that individuals form a community by getting to know various others. In contrast, a young private lecturer at Erlangen University, Feuerbach (1804–72, 29) who had previously studied under Schleiermacher and Hegel at Berlin University, considered conversely that reasonable thinking was originally the human universal essence (Gattungswesen) but now lost and we have been divided into individuals.

“His idea was similar to Beethoven.”

He sought the cause in the shallow religion and wrote the HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY up to Spinoza centered on the conflict between Christianity and philosophy in 1833. However, the Hegelians misunderstood that it followed Hegelian Dialectics and would conclude unification by the Hegelian philosophy in the end, and welcomed the young Feuerbach into their Berlin Annual.

“Hegelians were so dogmatic that they could not distinguish between friend and foe.”

23.04. Hermeneutics of Christianity

As well, influenced by Schleiermacher, Strauss (1808–74, 27), a private lecturer at Tubingen University, published THE LIFE OF JESUS in 1835. It was a hermeneutical attempt to decipher what anonymous commoners tried to tell through the fictional myths of Jesus’ miracles. However, the Hegelians relentlessly attacked him as an atheist who completely denied the miracles of Jesus, and prevented him from becoming a professor at Zurich University.

“In every era, seniors are jealous of the talented juniors.”

Anti-Hegelian Feuerbach’s contributions to the Berlin Annual were naturally unpopular. Therefore, Feuerbach, Strauss, the Brothers Grimm (Jacob 1785–1863, Wilhelm 1786–1859), and their friends published their own Halle Annual as the Young Hegelians in 1838. In it, Feuerbach (34) openly issued the CRITIQUE OF HEGELIAN PHILOSOPHY in 1839. According to him, Hegel united many and represented them by only one such as Jesus, Napoleon, and Hegel himself, but our reality consists of diversity as ever just as diverse species and individuals persist even when a genus unifies them. The source of Hegel’s error was an inversed pseudo-embryology to derive diversity from the abstract.

“It was a complete negation of the German Idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. I wonder why they nevertheless called themselves ‘Hegelians’ too.”

Following it, he published THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY in 1841 as the right hermeneutical, embryological research. In part one, he examined the predicates of God: perfectivity, omuniscientivity, and infinitivity. The perfectivity of the Trinity is the same as the human universal essence of reason, morality, and love. Everything is known by someone, so we are omniscient as the human race. As well, indeed individuals are limited but the human race lives forever and can do anything. As long as God and we humans have the same predicates, God is in fact the very we humans and it was just made by Externalization (Entaeusserung) of our human universal essence.

“It was revolutionary that he focused on humanity as a whole. However, this idea already smells the later Totalitarianism.”

In part two, he pointed out the critical problem with Christianity. Establishing a god that monopolizes human essence separate from people, Christianity robbed humans of their reason, and reduced us to incompetence. As well, it transformed our autonomous morality to the law determined solely by God, tormenting us with a sense of sin. Furthermore, it denied our mutual love as human beings and broke us down into isolated individuals who can only rely on God’s grace. This is an abnormal Alienation (Entfremdung), where human nature out of control rules and oppresses the real us. Therefore, he insisted we should remember we are the very God and take back reason, morality, and love that originally belonged to us.

“It was an indictment of the sin of Christianity.”

23.05. New Players for Social Reform

By the way, Napoleon’s brother married Napoleon’s stepdaughter, and their son was Louis Napoleon (1808–73). However, the couple soon divorced, and after Napoleon, Louis went into exile in Switzerland with his mother. Napoleon’s true son was expected to restore the emperor after the July Revolution of 1830 but died of tuberculosis in 1832. That inspired the young Louis the ambition to be an emperor although he had no blood relation to Napoleon. Calling himself Napoleon III, he (28) attempted to advance to Paris from Strasbourg in 1836, but suppressed just in two hours, he was exiled to the United States.

“What a fishy guy.”

European artisans such as carpenters, tailors, bakers, and so on had a tradition of Wandering, namely training on a journey to be masters. Young trainees had mutual-aid associations of brothers from the same country in each foreign town. The authoritarian Vienna System made many young unsatisfied and they also left for the training journey abroad. In Paris in 1836, they organized the cross-disciplinary League of the Just (people in the right relation with God) to build the New Jerusalem in Germany as devout Lutherans. However, suspected of their Egalitarianism similar to the late Babeuf, they were chased out of France and moved to London in 1840.

“They were the active commoners.”

Although the politics were unstable as ever, France after the cholera pandemic was booming with preferential policies for the bourgeoisie and the start of the Industrial Revolution. George Sand (1804–1876) was raised by her wealthy, liberal grandmother and after her divorce in 1831, she had free romances in Paris with many men such as a young pianist, Chopin (c1810–49). She cross-dressed with smoking, loved even females, and gained immense popularity through her novels with male words.

“George Sand was a feminist of the New Age and a central figure in Paris.”

Proudhon (1809–65), a son of a Burgundy poor cooper, had no education but learned himself as a worker at a printing shop. Through proofreading books, he gained the trust of the leading intellectuals, went to Paris with a scholarship in 1838, and published WHAT IS PROPERTY? in 1840, insisting on the declaration of war against the bourgeoisie that property is robbery.

“Proudhon was the spokesperson of the poor.”

Bakunin (1814–76), a son of a Russian aristocrat family and an officer of the Imperial Guard, was interested in German Idealism and in Berlin interacted with the Young Hegelians in 1840. Marx (1818–83), the son of a wealthy Judish lawyer of Prussia, studied law at Berlin University and joined the Young Hegelians. At the same time, the dreamer Napoleon III (32) landed in Boulogne and called for an uprising again, but no one followed him, and he was soon imprisoned.

“Napoleon III might be an interesting person.”

To restrain the Young Hegelians, the old conservative Schelling (66) of Munich University was called to Berlin University in 1841. Therefore, Marx (24) moved to Cologne to publish the Rhenish Newspaper in 1842. A Prussian young rich owner of cotton-textile factories, Engels (1820–95, 22), visited Marx and they went further to Paris and published the German-French Annuals in 1843. Bakunin also came to Paris in 1844 and they (Marx 26, Engels 24, Bakunin 30) acquainted with George Sand (40) and Proudhon (35).

“Getting a jurist, a patron, a warrior, and a trickster, now all the new players were together.”

23.06. Scheme of Marxism

The Russian tsar stripped Bakunin of his citizenship but Bakunin conversely called on the Russian people to overthrow the tsar through a violent revolution. In contrast, Proudhon advocated moderate socio-economic improvement through people’s banks as Anarcho-Mutualism. Referring to Feuerbach, Marx wrote the ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHIC MANUSCRIPTS (1844) and pointed out that wage labor as a commodity is the cause of impoverishing people through four alienations: of the product, of one’s own activity, of the human universal essence, and of people’s solidarity.

“Which solution was better?”

Another person should not be forgotten. Napoleon III studied politics and economics in the Ham Fortress Prison and wrote a one-sheet brochure THE EXTINCTION OF POVERTY in 1844. In it, he declared he would save the poor by constructing a new collective settlement with education and discipline, and said, “Make them owners!” In addition, to see his dying father, he disguised himself and drastically escaped in 1846. The newspapers sparked the incident with a novel style, and his popularity skyrocketed.

“It was a so-called reform from above. Although he might just want to get the support of commoners, perhaps he was a genius in Populism.”

In the meantime, the Young Hegelians were on the verge of collapse. They criticized Feuerbach’s human universal essence as another new ideology, so, Feuerbach shifted his base to the natural history of real human life. On the other hand, they also analyzed Judaism in the same way of Feuerbach’s hermeneutics on Christianity and concluded the very Judaism caused their isolation and persecution. Referring to Feuerbach, Jew Marx and Engels countered that the natural history of real Jewish life where they had been put in created Judaism, not the other way around. These debates gave Marx and Engels a new idea, Historical-Materialism. According to their GERMAN IDEOLOGY (Idealism) in 1846, the relations of material production regulate socio-politics, even the people’s thoughts.

“In short, Feuerbach, Marx, and Engels thought the commoners’ life is the fundamental of all. Although it too called itself Materialism, it was quite different from the Cartesian Mechanical-Materialism.”

Tired of the speculative disputation among couch philosophers, Marx and Engels turned to practice. To change the relations in production, they advocated the ‘Communism’ of the commoners’ union and founded the Communist Correspondence Committee in Brussels. However, anarcho-mutualist Proudhon published THE PHILOSOPHY OF POVERTY in 1846. In it, he argued the contradiction that reforms to seek wealth actually create poverty, in particular, that Marxism may unite people but rob them of humanity just as Christianity that Feuerbach criticized. Infuriated by Proudhon’s spot-on warning, Marx wrote THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY in 1847. According to it, although Proudhon stupidly believed Ricardo’s Invested Labor Theory, a unique commodity, the labor power, can produce commodities of higher value than itself, therefore, workers are exploited the Surplus Value by the bourgeoisie.

“Proudhon foresaw the problems of Marxism in the future; meanwhile, although Marx sophisticated the argument of labor alienation, I wonder whether he knew Ricardo had already counted depreciation of the up-front invested productive means.”

Anyway, Marx and Engels could not get any commoners to their committee because it had only the demerit of being exploited as their pawns. So, they planned to freeride on the League of the Just of the German Christian socio-reformist commoners in London. With clever speech, they turned it into their ‘Communist League’ in 1847. They advocated the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the elimination of private property, and the establishment of the commoners’ (proletariat) Dictatorship with the slogan “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”

“Devout Christians and atheistic Marxism are not a good match. Many members must have left it.”

23.07. February Revolution of 1848

Then, the Potato Famine occurred throughout Europe. Although potatoes were the primary means of subsistence for peasants and the poor, they were often rotten with germs. The damage was exacerbated by over-reliance on a single variety in the hope of a good harvest. The shortage of potatoes also led to an increase in wheat and bread prices. Commoners demanded the government to take some action such as tariff reduction.

“As expected, losing diversity is risky.”

Nevertheless, the French government said, “If want to speak out in politics, become rich and get the vote-right first.” Commoners, students, and peasants stormed the bourgeois chamber, and the government opened fire, causing the February Revolution of 1848. Thus, the ‘stockbroker king’ Orléans was deposed. The movement also spread to Austria, Prussia, and other states of Germany, and the kings were forced to concede to the demands for constitution, parliament, and free press.

“It was the very instance that production changed politics. However, did Marxism influence the revolution?”

Nothing. In the first place, Marx and Engels had their party only in London. They published the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, but it was ignored. Commoners rather rushed to the public works projects such as road and railway construction that the French new republican government began. However, within the government, conservatives and bourgeois socio-reformists were at odds. Conservatives won the elections and canceled the public works projects because of unprofitable, causing the June Days Uprising of workers again, but it was suppressed in just four days and even bourgeois social reformists were expelled.

“Before any talk of class struggle, the society was in pieces.”

The conservatives needed some figure to replace King Orléans, and, depending on the popularity of bizarre dreamer Napoleon III (40), they made him their puppet president. It was also convenient to them that he was not good at French. But he was a cut above them. He spent four years of his president’s office to increase his followers in the police and the military. Originally His policy was rather close to the exiled bourgeois socio-reformists. Thus, he (44) was confirmed as Emperor by a coup d’état and a national referendum in 1852.

“As a populist of the New Age, he knew popularity is most powerful.”

23.08. Napoleon III Age

Many of the Old Age despised him. Victor Hugo (1802–85, 50) left France and relentlessly criticized Napoleon III from abroad with his works as a small fry, but Hugo himself was so petty that he asked his love for a receipt and her gratitude each time when he gave her allowance. Also, Marx (34) in London called Napoleon III a financial fraudster and denounced his supporters as poor beggars (lumpenproletariat) although, in fact, Marx fantasized an apocalyptical theory that capital unlimitedly grows as an end in itself and in poverty leeched onto Engels (32).

“Like a mirror, they saw their own cheap figures as commoners in Napoleon III.”

The anarcho-mutualist Proudhon (43) hated a dictator from before and also attacked Napoleon III repeatedly in newspapers. He was indicted, so ran to Brussels. However, the socio-reformist Napoleon III rather thought highly of him and granted him a pardon but he didn’t stop criticism of Napoleon III even after his return to Paris.

“Was Napoleon III a sort of dictator which Proudhon hated?”

The violent-revolutionist Bakunin (38) long had been instigating revolution in Germany along with the composer Wagner (1813–83, 39) and the painter Heine (1827–85, 25), and he hated the Jews as a parasitic race, including Marx attempting to freeride on commoners, even more than the bourgeoisie. He was arrested and sentenced to death but sent back to Russia. The Tsar appreciated his plucky spirit and commuted his sentence to exile in Siberia. However, there he plotted for Siberian independence like the US, and via Japan and the US he returned to Europe in 1861 and organized revolutionists in each country.

“He was too active, and his revolutionary ambition was too big.”

Napoleon III dressed himself up in Authoritarianism, but he was commonly naïve with neither prejudice nor ideal. First, he revived and expanded the public works projects of the bourgeois social reformists such as road and railway. This state-led initiative accelerated the French Industrial Revolution. In addition, as he had previously promised, he promoted the construction of a new collective settlement to make everyone an owner, However, this was not within the country, but rather the invading colonies in Africa (Algeria), Asia (Vietnam), and Latin America (Mexico), and to achieve this, he cooperated even with Britain, with which France had been in conflict for many years. Thus, he made both of bourgeoisie and commoners richer, so no one paid any attention anymore to Proudhon’s Anarcho-Mutualism or Marx and Engel’s Marxism, much less Bakunin’s Violent-Revolution at least in France at that time.

“He seemed like a dry manager of a company rather than a crafty politician of a state.”

Yeah, he was a simple Utilitarian who judges everything solely on profit or loss. But we’ll talk about Utilitarianism later.

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