Historical Events of the Revolutionary World Movement

Bourgeois-democratic Revolution Italy 1848

Marx and Engels on the European revolutions of 1848

and on the revolution in Italy, in particular.

The struggle for the liberation of the oppressed nations was likewise in the eyes of Marx and Engels integrally connected with this revolution. They welcomed with enthusiasm the upsurge of the national liberation movement among the Poles, Czechs, Hungarians and Italians, and saw in them allies in the fight against feudal and absolutist counter-revolution.

Warm sympathy for the Italian people, which was fighting for its freedom and independence, was expressed in a letter written by Marx to the editorial board of the Italian democratic newspaper Alba and in several articles of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in which the revolutionary events in Italy were analysed. The Italian revolution, which began with the popular uprising in Sicily in January 1848, was confronted with serious problems. The country consisted of a conglomeration of large and small states, a considerable number of which were oppressively ruled by Austria. The progressive development of Italy was only possible if she liberated herself from foreign domination and abolished the feudal and monarchical regimes. But the Italian liberals, who at the time controlled the Italian movement, were trying to unite the country "from above" within the framework of a constitutional monarchy to be headed by Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia. Marx and Engels called upon the Italian people to take the leadership of the national liberation movement into their own hands, to free themselves from the tutelage of the liberals and monarchists and to frustrate all dynastic intrigues. In many of his articles Engels demonstrated that the self-seeking policy of Charles Albert and his supporters, which counteracted the truly popular resistance to the Austrians, was largely responsible for the reverses the Italians suffered during the Austro-Italian war. He observed that only a revolutionary people's war could end Austrian domination over Italy.

Marx and Engels realised that if the revolutionary struggle was to succeed, it must not be confined within a national framework but become international; the international solidarity of the democratic and proletarian movement in all the major European countries should be counterposed to the bloc that was being formed by the internal and external counter-revolutionary forces. They saw in every revolutionary centre in any part of Europe an integral element of the general European revolutionary movement. They devoted particular attention to Italy and Hungary, where, despite the general downward trend of the European revolution, an upsurge of popular revolutionary energy was evident — a fact justifying their hopes that the reactionaries' attempts at restoration would yet be finally frustrated and the revolution be renewed with greater depth and scope.

In 1848-49 Marx and Engels became finally convinced that the bourgeoisie was step by step losing its effectiveness as an advanced opponent of feudalism. The counter-revolutionary degeneration of the European bourgeoisie—even though in certain sectors of the struggle and in certain countries (Hungary, Italy) it was still acting in a revolutionary way—made it necessary drastically to reassess the disposition of class forces in the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the conditions for its victory. Since the bourgeoisie was losing the ability to carry through bourgeois-democratic reforms by means of revolution, it fell to the working class to head the people's struggle for total liquidation of the remnants of feudalism. Thus changes in the position of the various classes by the middle of the nineteenth century led Marx and Engels to the idea of the hegemony of the working class in the bourgeois-democratic revolution—an idea which was elaborated b> Lenin in the new historic conditions of the twentieth century. During the 1848-49 revolution, Marx and Engels were already directing their efforts to preparing the working class for this role by accelerating the growth of its class consciousness and the creation of a revolutionary working-class party.