1849-50: The Class Struggles in France, 1848-50 Karl Marx's THE CLASS STRUGGLES IN FRANCE, 1848-50 W ith the exception of only a few chapters, every important part of the revolutionary annals from 1848 to 1849 bear the heading: Defeat of the revolution!

What succumbed in these defeats was not the revolution.It was the prerevolutionary traditional appendages, results of social relationships which had not yet come to the point of sharp class antagonisms -- persons, illusions, conceptions, projects from which the revolutionary party before the February Revolution was not free, from which it could be freed not by the victory of February, but only by a series of defeats.

In a word: The revolution made progress, forged ahead, not by its immediate tragicomic achievements but, on the contrary, by the creation of a powerful, united counterrevolution, by the creation of an opponent in combat with whom the party of overthrow ripened into a really revolutionary party.

To prove this is the task of the following pages.