by Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1848)

In the tumultuous days of the February Revolution of 1848, as the provisional government debated whether the new republic should fly the tricolor or the red flag, Blanqui published this fierce pamphlet insisting that the tricolor was the flag of Louis-Philippe, of monarchy, and of the massacres at rue Transnonain. The red flag, stained with the blood of workers who died on the barricades, was the only legitimate standard of the republic. It is one of the shortest and most powerful texts in the revolutionary tradition.

Translated by Mitch Abidor for marxists.org. Source: Ecrits sur la revolution, Ed. Galilee, Paris, 1977. Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike).

We are no longer in '93! We are in 1848!

The tricolor flag is no longer the flag of the Republic. It's that of Louis-Philippe and of the monarchy. It's the tricolor flag that presided over the massacres of the rue Transnonain, of faubourg de Vaise, of Saint-Etienne. It has been twenty times bathed in the blood of the workers.

The people raised the red colors on the barricades of '48, just as they raised them on those of June 1832, April 1834, and May 1839. They have received the double consecration of defeat and victory.

From this day on, these colors are theirs.

Just yesterday they gloriously floated from the fronts of our buildings. Today reaction ignominiously casts them in the mud and dares stain them with its calumnies.

It is said it is a flag of blood. It is only red with the blood of the martyrs who made it the standard of the republic. Its fall is an insult to the people, a profanation of the dead. The flag of the National Guard will shade their graves.

Reaction has already been unleashed. It can be recognized by its violence. The men of the royalist faction roam the streets, insults and threats in their mouths, tearing the red colors from the boutonnieres of citizens.

Workers! It's your flag that is falling. Heed well! The Republic will not delay in following it.

Colophon

For the Red Flag (Pour le drapeau rouge), by Louis-Auguste Blanqui, 1848.

Translated from French by Mitch Abidor for the Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org). Source: Ecrits sur la revolution, presentee et annotee par A. Munster, Ed. Galilee, Paris, 1977. Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike).

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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