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Marx, Karl, 1818-1883

"Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte"

He had turned
off the expected collision. Finally, the party of Order itself anxiously
sought to avoid every decisive conflict with the Executive, to weaken
and to blur it over. Fearing to lose its conquests over the revolution,
it let its rival gather the fruits thereof. "France demands, above
all things, peace," with this language had the party of Order been
apostrophizing the revolution, since February; with this language
did Bonaparte's message now apostrophize the party of Order: "France
demands, above all things, peace." Bonaparte committed acts that aimed
at usurpation, but the party of Order committed a "disturbance of
the peace," if it raised the hue and cry, and explained them
hypochrondriacally. The sausages of Satory were mouse-still when
nobody talked about them;--France demands, above all things, "peace."
Accordingly, Bonaparte demanded that he be let alone; and the
parliamentary party was lamed with a double fear: the fear of
re-conjuring up the revolutionary disturbance of the peace, and the fear
of itself appearing as the disturber of the peace in the eyes of its own
class, of the bourgeosie.


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