by Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1832)

Blanqui's most detailed analysis of the class structure of post-revolutionary France. Delivered in 1832, it traces the dynamics of the July Revolution of 1830 in granular detail: how the workers rose and fought while the bourgeoisie hid in their cellars, how "suits replaced work jackets in the blink of an eye" once the bullets stopped flying, how the bourgeoisie installed Louis-Philippe as king while the people were still in the workshops, and how the new regime systematically betrayed every promise of the revolution. The speech culminates in a prophecy: the bourgeoisie will ultimately prefer Russian occupation to arming the workers, because "the Cossacks frighten them less than the mob in work jackets."

Translated by Mitchell Abidor for marxists.org. Source: Louis Auguste Blanqui, ecrits sur la revolution, Editions Galilee, Paris, 1977. Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike).

The fact shouldn't be hidden that there is a war to the death between the classes that compose the nation. This truth recognized, the truly national party, the ones patriots should rally to, is the party of the masses.

Until now there have been three interests in France: that of the so-called upper classes, that of the middle or bourgeois class, and finally that of the people. I place the people last because they were always the last and because I count on an imminent application of the Gospel maxim that "the last shall be first."

In 1814 and 1815 the bourgeois class, tired of Napoleon not because of despotism (it cares little for liberty, which in its eyes isn't worth a pound of good cinnamon or a nice fat bill), but because the blood of the people being exhausted, the war was beginning to take its children from it and, even more, because it harmed its tranquility and hindered commerce. The bourgeois class then received the foreign soldiers as liberators and the Bourbons as God's envoys. They were the ones who opened the gates of Paris, who treated the soldiers of Waterloo as brigands, and who encouraged the bloody reaction of 1815.

You all remember the conduct of the deputies on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. They used what presence of mind and faculties fear left to them to ward off, to halt the combat. Preoccupied with their own cowardice, they were unready to foresee popular victory and were already trembling beneath Charles X's knife. But on Thursday the scene changed. The people were the victors. And then another terror seized them, more profound and oppressive. Farewell dreams of the Charter, of legality, of constitutional royalty, of the exclusive domination of the bourgeoisie! The powerless ghost that was Charles X faded away. In the midst of the debris, of flames and smoke, the people appeared standing on the corpse of royalty, standing like a giant, the tricolor flag in hand.

How is it that so sudden and fearsome a revelation of the force of the masses remained sterile? By what fatality did that revolution made by the people alone, and that should have marked the end of the exclusive reign of the bourgeoisie as well as the success of popular interests and might, have no other results than the establishing of the despotism of the middle class, aggravating the poverty of the workers and peasants, and plunging France a bit further into the mud?

Alas, the people, like the other old man, knew how to win, but not how to profit from its victory.

I'll cite you as an example a coachman who drove me last Saturday. After having told me of the part he played in the combats of the three days he added: "On the way to the Chamber I encountered the procession of deputies headed towards the Hotel de Ville. I followed them to see what they'd do. Then I saw Lafayette appear on the balcony with Louis-Philippe and say, 'Frenchmen, here is your King.' Sir, when I heard that word it was as if I'd been stabbed. I was blinded; I went on my way."

That man is the people.

The people, whether if in their ignorance they are enflamed with religious fanaticism or if, more enlightened, they allow themselves to be carried away by enthusiasm for liberty, the people are ever great and generous; they don't obey low monetary interests but the nobler passions of the soul, the aspirations of elevated morality.

Citizens, two principles share France, that of legitimacy and that of popular sovereignty. The first is the ancient organization of the past. This is the framework society lived in for 1400 years, and that some want to preserve by instinct of self-preservation, and others because they fear that the framework won't be able to be promptly replaced and anarchy will follow its dissolution. The principle of popular sovereignty rallies all men of the future, the masses who, tired of being exploited, seek to smash the framework that suffocates them. There is no third flag, no middle term.

For you can be sure that when the time comes the bourgeoisie will not resolve to make war. Its terror will have been increased by all the fear that will be inspired in it by the anger of a people betrayed and sold out, and you'll see the merchants brandish the white rosette and receive the enemy as a liberator, for the Cossacks frighten them less than the mob in work jackets.

Colophon

Speech Before the Society of the Friends of the People, by Louis-Auguste Blanqui, 1832.

Translated from French by Mitchell Abidor for the Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org). Source: Louis Auguste Blanqui, ecrits sur la revolution, Oeuvres completes, Tome 1, Editions Galilee, Paris, 1977. Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike).

Note: This is an abridged archival edition preserving the key sections. The full text, including the detailed analysis of the Restoration period, the Charter, and the foreign policy implications, is available at marxists.org.

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

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