Re-writing an already completed assignment

Vasquez 1

Vasquez 2

Ludwin Vasquez

Professor Paul Warren

PHP 4510

April 2, 2021

Set #2: The Civil War in France”

(Q1) According to Marx, the state assumed a repressive character, siding with the capitalists against labor or workers in order to ensure the dominance of the bourgeoisie over workers.

(Q2) Marx is talking about the 1848 revolution in France. In February the bourgeoisie overthrew the monarchy and established the second republic. In June, the workers rebelled. The ruling classes are mainly the bourgeoisie and the less powerful landlords (remnants of the old feudal system). They were against the workers or producing masses.

(Q3) The second French Empire was what followed the second French Republic. The first republic was established as a result of the Revolution of 1789 and the first empire was the one established by Napoleon Bonaparte after the coup. Louis Bonaparte or Napoleon III led the coup that overthrew the parliamentary republic after a series of unrests in 1848. Marx characterizes it as a farce because it professed to represent peasants, a group not involved in the antagonism of capitalists and workers. It also professed to serve workers by overthrowing parliamentarism and the republic, which Marx considered as directly ruled by capitalists. It professed to serve the capitalists by maintaining their supremacy over workers. Finally, it professed to serve all by reviving national pride and nationalism through the imperial system, which Marx considered a farce, a chimera.

(Q4) Marx sees state power as maintaining the rule of the capitalists and even helping them to enslave workers by the even more powerful imperial system. As the state helps capitalists, they continue to grow, markets expand, profits expand, and their power increases. However, Marx does consider the French state to be corrupt and even contradictory.

(Q5) The empire represented repression and worked in favor of the capitalists. Opposite to that, the Paris Commune worked in the interests of the workers. The aspiration for the workers in the 1948 revolution was a social republic that surpassed the rule of the monarchy over lower classes. Seeing the failure of the second republic and empire, they formed their own republic.

(Q6) To abolish the standing or professional army, which is salaried and replace it with a national guard, which is composed of workers, a militia.

(Q7) Mainly workers and they were organized into municipal councillors.

(Q8) The commune was marked by direct democracy rather than parliamentary or representative democracy. Workers were elected to councillor positions due to universal suffrage and held short terms with workman’s wages. The legislative and executive were not separated. Public dignitaries and their high wages were also abolished.

(Q9) Parson power is the church as a religious body with political rights and powers such as owning property. The commune first took their right to own land. Priests were sent to “private life” meaning to hold a regular vocation and if they wanted to continue sharing their religion, then it should be done how the apostles did it, without any professional salary and luxuries, working day-to-day with the masses.

(Q10) The commune planned to develop a loose system of government as opposed to a centralized government. The root of its power was local and was organized from a bottom-up approach. Every local town was to be a commune and elect delegates to a central town and every central town to the National Delegation in Paris. Marx also adds that the delegates would have to answer to their constituents, and they could be revoked at any time.

(Q11) Marx means that the state power of the bourgeoisie state has been victim to governance by a parasitic class that does not really work. He specifies by listing corrupt vestries, councillors who occasionally show up for work, hereditary magistrates and officers who do not follow their laws. The main thing that makes them parasitic is that they clog the upwards mobility of other more capable individuals.

(Q12) The true secret of the commune was that it was a government composed of working-class people. It resulted in it not being repressive.

(Q13) Marx responds that the commune indeed wants to abolish private property. He says that it merely wishes to appropriate or recuperate what the capitalists have taken from the laborers. However, he does mention that it aimed to make individual property possible.

(Q14) Marx says that the members of the commune are not utopian, they do not follow an exact list of things to do which will bring them into a utopia. They understand that they are not going to fix things instantly but it will take a series of struggles and historical development.

(Q15) The most immediate boon that the commune held for the peasantry was the removal of making them pay the reparations of previous wars, war taxes. They would also use resources for education rather than to pay priests. In addition, the commune was a cheaper and more responsive government.