he supremacy of its own class, that had
betrayed its leaders in this contest, it now has the effrontery to
blame the proletariat for not having risen in its defence in a bloody
struggle, in a struggle for life! Those bourgeois, who at every turn
sacrificed their common class interests to narrow and dirty private
interests, and who demanded a similar sacrifice from their own
Representatives, now whine that the proletariat has sacrificed their
idea-political to its own material interests! This bourgeois class now
strikes the attitude of a pure soul, misunderstood and abandoned, at
a critical moment, by the proletariat, that has been misled by the
Socialists. And its cry finds a general echo in the bourgeois world.
Of course, I do not refer to German crossroad politicians and kindred
blockheads. I refer, for instance, to the "Economist," which, as late
as November 29, 1851, that is to say, four days before the "coup d'etat"
pronounced Bonaparte the "Guardian of Order" and Thiers and Berryer
"Anarchists," and as early as December 27, 1851, after Bonaparte had
silenced those very Anarchists, cries out about the treason committed
by "the ignorant, untrained and stupid proletaires against the skill,
knowledge, discipline, mental influence, intellectual resources an
moral weight of the middle and upper ranks." The stupid, ignorant and
contemptible mass was none other than the bourgeoisie itself.

France had, indeed; experienced a sort of commercial crisis in 1851. At
the end of February, there was a falling off of exports as compared with
1850; in March, business languished and factories shut down; in April,
the condition of the industrial departments seemed as desperate as after
the February days; in May, business did not yet pick up; as late as
June 28, the reports of the Bank of France revealed through a tremendous
increase of deposits and an equal decrease of loans on exchange notes,
the standstill of production; not until the middle of October did a
steady improvement of business set in. The French bourgeoisie accounted
for this stagnation of business with purely political reasons; it
imputed the dull times to the strife between the Parliament and the
Executive power, to the uncertainty of a provisional form of government,
to the alarming prospects of May 2, 1852. I shall not deny that all
these causes did depress some branches of industry in Paris and in the
Departments. At any rate, this effect of political circumstances