On Liberals: They Always Side With Authoritarians When Their Interests Are Threatened by the Working Class

And how it's never their fault when they fail to accomplish their stated objectives

I just finished a good book on the momentous year of 1848, that year of multiple revolutions and wars in Europe by Mike Rapport, a Scottish historian, appropriately enough called 1848: Year of Revolution. Rapport is clearly no Marxist, but his rendition of the events of that year are thorough and he writes a good chronological narrative.

His description of how revolutions against authoritarian monarchy and aristocracy initially succeeded in multiple countries, only to collapse—sometimes in a few months and other times in a few years—was hauntingly familiar.

Liberals in those days, as they are now, were vested in the capitalist system of the time, and they wanted more power for themselves in government. Generally, they wanted the right to vote for all the propertied classes(meaning owners of real property), the abolition of aristocratic privilege and serfdom, and written constitutions enshrining those changes into law.

Many of them were employers who wanted to have a plentiful supply of labor when they needed it; others were professionals like lawyers and academics. They realized that in order to succeed in overthrowing, or radically reforming, the old aristocratic regimes they needed the support of at least the urban working classes, and in some countries they even figured out they needed the support of the rural peasantry and small farmers.

In order to obtain that support, they wrote and gave speeches with high-flying liberation rhetoric, resurrecting the old French Revolution slogan of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, advocated for freedom of speech and religion, and excoriated the old aristocracy for being too authoritarian, too selfish, and too primitive.

In many countries—France, most of the smaller German states of the time, Prussia, all the constituent parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and most of the Italian states, they were successful at first. Kings and princes were overthrown and fled; even Pope Pius went into exile from Rome. They established the Second Republic in France, and the Habsburg monarchy teetered, losing all of its Italian possessions, Hungary, and even fleeing Vienna for a time.

In every country, though, they needed the support of large sections of the working class to take power—people who seldom owned real property and who had demands of their own. The most common were a right to work(which was often an assault on the privileges of the masters in the old feudal guild system), a ten hour work day, a right to vote for themselves, and a say in how they should work.

That last demand was often inspired by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, who published The Communist Manifesto at the beginning of that fateful year. I should also point out that almost no one was calling for women’s suffrage, but it was 1848.

When the working classes got loud and started demonstrating and organizing, in every single instance, the liberals either tried to repress them themselves, using the existing police and their own armed militias or newly raised armies, decried violence and destruction of property, and either switched their support to the old aristocracy(which in many countries still maintained some control over existing standing armies) in exchange for at least a royal promise of a written constitution and protection against the working classes, who they feared and despised.

In some countries, such as Prussia and France, authoritarians like Otto von Bismarck and Louis Napoleon(soon to be Emperor Napoleon III) were able to play both sides of the liberal/working class divide, promising the liberals order and safety and the workers the abolition of taxes that the liberal revolutionary regimes had imposed on them.

Then, in their writings and speeches after the forces of reaction had won, liberals blamed the working classes for failing to support them without question, as if the latter had any material or ideological incentive to do so in the first place.

Marx noticed this at the time, and derided the liberal bourgeoisie with the observation that History repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce, a clear reference to the First Republic and the rise of Napoleon I, which also came about because the liberals of the time feared the working class more than it did an authoritarian regime.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Like the liberals of the 19th century, those of today don’t want to talk about a system that might be better than capitalism; they want to portray it as the most desirable economic system possible, and to keep the working class in its place.

They fear and loathe working class people as ignorant and violent, and when it looks like the latter might actually be getting organized to achieve more power for themselves, they always either try to channel that power in ways they can control(as they managed to contain the American labor movement in the 1930s and 40s, and more recently the movement Bernie Sanders almost inadvertently started) or endorse straight-out authoritarian repression(as they did against Occupy Wall Street, the French Yellow Vest movement and the Canadian truckers).

The lessons of history are clear. Real populists of any sort who want to see the working class have real political and economic power must never, ever, entrust their fate to liberals. The liberals will turn on them every time it looks like they might actually succeed, and smear and blame the workers for trying in the first place.

Thank you for reading. Good night, and good luck.