Armies of Exiles

[Henry IX]

Well, there's lots of stands of socialism, many of which were no less patronizing. But I'm now beginning to appreciate how revolutionary socialism was quite the novelty when Marx brought it up. I can imagine the kind of ridicule Karl Marx must have gone through when he talked about the "revolutionary" potential of the proletariat. What? Revolutionaries? Those poor, miserable, grasping creatures?

The "revolutionaries" must be bourgeois, intellectual, and enlightened. They seemed rather oblivious or dismissive of enrolling the masses in it. Never mind that (in both 1830 and 1848) it was these "selfish and self-serving" masses that did the actual dangerous dirty work of fighting in the street, that enabled the "revolution" to succeed.

There is a good reason why Marxism focused so heavily on political education and class consciousness. The masses prior to the advent of revolutionary socialism tended not to rise up unless their immediate needs (food etc) were not being met. They were relatively passive during a large portion of history, and most political philosophers saw this as being due to their class not being political. Revolutionary socialists were unusual in that they saw the lower classes as not just potentially politically powerful, but as potentially the most powerful group in society.

Once revolutionary socialism had been formulated it tended to 'taint' any revolutionary discourse that did not explicitly exclude the lower classes, hence why liberal and conservative revolutionaries tended to try to rely on their own classes in their revolutions. To do otherwise was to risk both accidently unleashing a socialist revolution and having your potential revolution slandered as a socialist one, potentially reducing your support amongst the class you are trying to rally. Hence why many revolutionaries ignored or even excluded the lower classes from their efforts despite the evident strength of the lower classes.