In the National Assembly all France sat in judgment upon the Paris proletariat.The Assembly broke immediately with the social illusions of the February Revolution; it roundlv proclaimed the bourgeois republic, nothing but the bourgeois republic.It at once excluded the representatives of the proletariat, Louis Blanc and Albert, from the Executive Commission it had appointed; it threw out the proposal of a special Labor Ministry and received with acclamation the statement of Minister Trelat: "The question now is merely one of bringing labor back to its old conditions."But all this was not enough.The February Republic was won by the workers with the passive support of the bourgeoisie.The proletarians rightly regarded themselves as the victors of February, and they made the arrogant claims of victors.They had to be vanquished in the streets, they had to be shown that they were worsted as soon as they did not fight with the bourgeoisie, but against the bourgeoisie.just a s the February Republic, with its socialist concessions, required a battle of the proletariat, united with the bourgeoisie, against the monarchy, so a second battle was necessary to sever the republic from socialist concessions, to officially work out the bourgeois republic as dominant.The bourgeoisie had to refute, arms in hand, the demands of the proletariat.And the real birthplace of the bourgeois republic is not the February victory; it is the June defeat.
The proletariat hastened the decision when, on the fifteenth of May, it pushed its way into the National Assembly sought in vain to recapture its revolutionary influence, and only delivered its energetic leaders to the jailers of the bourgeoisie.II faut en finir ! This situation must end! With this cry the National Assembly gave vent to its determination to force the proletariat into a decisive struggle.The Executive Commission issued a series of provocative decrees, such as that prohibiting congregations of people, etc.The workers were directly provoked, insulted, and derided from the tribune of the Constituent National Assembly.But the real point of the attack was, as we have seen, the national ateliers.The Constituent Assembly imperiously pointed these out to the Executive Commission, which waited only to hear its own plan proclaimed the command of the National Assembly.
The Executive Commission began by making admission to the national ateliers more difficult, by turning the day wage into a piece wage, by banishing workers not born in Paris to the Sologne, ostensibly for the construction of earthworks.These earthworks were only a rhetorical formula with which to embellish their exile, as the workers, returning disillusioned, announced to their comrades.Finally, on June 21, a decree appeared in the Moniteur which ordered the forcible expulsion of all unmarried workers from the national ateliers or their enrollment in the army.
The workers were left no choice; they had to starve or let fly.
They answered on June 22.with the tremendous insurrection in which the first great battle was fought between the two classes that split modern society.It was a fight for the preservation or annihilation of the bourgeois order.The veil that shrouded the republic was torn asunder.
