Alienation and fear – the attitude of the French political elite between 1830 and 1851 towards the Parisian working classes

Abstract

During the July Monarchy in France, the lower classes, especially those living in cities, participated only marginally in political life. They were of interest to the bourgeoisie and the ruling classes, but at the same time, there was a growing sense of alienation between the poor and the wealthier inhabitants of cities, especially Paris. This sense of alienation turned into intensifying fear in 1848, when the lower classes entered politics. The reasons for this fear among a large part of the ruling elite of the Second Republic and, more broadly, the upper classes, can be found, on the one hand, in the specific nature of the popular, working-class customs of the time, clearly visible in political clubs, and, on the other hand, in acts of revolutionary violence by the people. In my opinion, the key moment was May 15, 1848, when a crowd of Parisians stormed the parliament building for the first time. This event triggered an unstoppable spiral of fear, hostility, and distrust towards workers, who were perceived as dangerous, bloodthirsty revolutionaries and destroyers of civilization. Elements of this spiral included the suppression of the June workers' uprising on the Seine, the breakup of the parliamentary left in 1849, and successive anti-worker laws, including the deprivation of voting rights for a significant portion of workers in 1850. Ultimately, this policy based on fear led to the defeat of the entire Second Republic and the coup d'état by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. In my opinion, the blame for this lies both with conservative politicians, who allowed fear to dominate their political thinking, and with revolutionaries and part of the Parisian population, who provoked these (largely understandable, though not necessarily rational) fears.