France's Financial Situation (Marx, 1861)

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The Times, which at first praised the imperialist coup d’éclat moderately and then lauded it in hyperboles, makes a sudden switch today from panegyrics to criticism.

The way in which this manoeuvre is executed is typical of the Leviathan of the English press:

“We will leave to others the task of congratulating Caesar on his admission that he is a finite and fallible being, and that, indisputably reigning by the power of the sword, he does not pretend to rule by virtue of Divine right. We had rather inquire what have been the financial results of ten years of Imperial sway, which are better worth thinking of than the phrases in which those results have been made known.... The Executive did what it pleased; the Ministers were responsible to the Emperor alone; the state of the finances was entirely concealed from the public and the Chambers. The annual form of voting a budget, instead of a check, was a mask; instead of a protection, a delusion. What, then, have the French people achieved by placing their liberties and their possessions at the disposal of a single man?... M. Fould himself admits that between 1851 and 1858 extraordinary credits have been opened to the amount of 2,800,000,000 francs, and that the deficit for the present year amounts to no less than 1,000,000,000 francs.

“We do not know how these sums were raised, but assuredly it has not been by taxation. We are told that four millions paid by the Bank of France for the renewal of its privileges have been spent, that five millions and a half of the Army Dotation Fund have been borrowed, and that securities of different kinds have been thrown into circulation. As to the present state of affairs, our Correspondent in Paris assures us that there is not money in the Treasury to pay the half-yearly dividends due next month. Such is the disastrous, the disgraceful state of French Finance, after ten years of brilliant and successful Imperialism, and it is only now, at a moment when it is unable to discharge its current obligations, that the French Government has taken the nation in some degree into its confidence and shown it a little of the reality that has lain hidden behind the glamorous phantasmagoria of the financial prosperity of which it has been so often assured. Nay, at this very moment the Revue des Deux Mondes is being prosecuted for making statements with regard to the financial position of France, the only fault of which is that they are far too rosy.”

The Times goes on to enquire into the causes of this collapse. During the imperialist decade France’s exports have more than doubled. Agriculture has developed along with industry, and the railway system with both. The credit system, only incipient before 1848, has shot up in all directions. All these developments did not arise from any decree of the Emperor’s, but from the revolutionary changes in the world market since the discovery of gold in California and Australia. Then what has caused the catastrophe?

The Times mentions the extraordinary expenditures on the army and navy, the natural fruit of Louis Bonaparte’s efforts to play Napoleon in Europe. It mentions the wars, and finally the gigantic outlays on public works in order to occupy the entrepreneurs and the proletariat and keep them in good humour.

“But,” it continues, “all this is insufficient to account for this frightful deficit, the largest of which the history of manjcind furnishes us with an example.... To the aggressive military and naval armaments, public works, and occasional wars, has been added a shameless and universal system of pillage. A shower of gold has descended upon the Empire and its supporters. The enormous fortunes suddenly and unaccountably acquired have been the cause of scandal and wonder till scandal grew dumb and wonder weak from the frequency, indeed the universality, of the phenomenon. Modern France has taught us better to understand those passages in Juvenal’s satires which treat suddenly acquired wealth as a crime against the people. The splendid mansions, the brilliant equipages, the enormous wastefulness of men who till the coup d’état notoriously starved, have been in every one’s mouth. The Court has been conducted on a scale of almost incredible wastefulness. New palaces have arisen as by the wand of an enchanter, and the splendours of the ancien régime have been surpassed. Extravagance has had no limits but public money and public credit; the one is gone and the other shattered. This is what ten years of Imperialism have done for France.”

The most important question for Europe is without doubt whether the imperialist finance system can be converted into a constitutional finance system, as the correspondence between Louis Bonaparte and Fould contemplates.

What is involved here is not the momentary intentions of persons. It is the economic conditions for the life of the restored empire. The financial fraud system could only be converted into a prosaic finance system by eliminating corruption as a general means of government; by reducing the army and navy to a peace footing, and therefore by abandoning the Napoleonic character of the present regime; finally, by complete renunciation of the plan followed hitherto of binding a part of the middle class and of the city proletariat to the existing government by means of great government construction projects and other public works. Would not meeting all these conditions mean: Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas?

Is it actually believed that the modest system of Louis Philippe can be brought into being again under Napoleonic auspices? As little as that the July monarchy could be established under the drapeau blanc.

We therefore called the coup d’éclat of November 14 a comedy from the outset, and did not doubt for a moment that this comedy had only two aims in view: remedying the immediate difficulty and — getting through the winter. Once these two goals had been achieved, the war bugles would blow in the spring and the attempt would be undertaken to make the war pay its own way this time. It should not be forgotten that up to now—and this was a necessary consequence of a merely simulated Napoleonism—Decembrist France has pfaid for all its glory out of the French state treasury.

After a brief period of wavering, the English press has arrived at the same conclusions with respect to the seriousness of the November 14 promises and the possibility of their being carried out.

Thus, The Times of to-day says in the leader cited above:

“The Emperor gives up the power of originating extraordinary credits. This is exactly one of those pieces of self-denying virtue which usually precede, but seldom survive, a new French loan.”

And its Stock Exchange article says:

“Whether the financial sanctity suddenly adopted at the crisis of the Treasury sickness will outlast the fit for a long time after the Exchequer has been replenished and a new loan secured, is now the question.... Public opinion, it is asserted, will force the Emperor, whether he will or not, to carry out Fould’s programme. Would it not be more correct to say that every one is prepared to accept this self-delusion, while army and navy contractors and speculators firmly rely on it that in the spring, after the present danger has been weathered, the Moniteur will find sufficient reasons, in ‘the changed circumstances of Europe’, or the necessity of rectifying something that somewhere threatens French honour, the Catholic faith, or the civilisation and liberty of the human race, for a recurrence to the old financial system, which can never be permanently abandoned in any country under military dictatorship, and unpossessed of constitutional rights that are universal and inviolable?”

The Economist expresses itself similarly. It concludes its analysis with the following words:

“Despite the decree, political risk must still be the first thought of a man who looks to his dynasty as something which any incidental failure may uproot.”

So far, Louis Bonaparte has only exposed Europe to dangers because he himself has been continually exposed to danger in France. Is it believed that his danger to Europe will decrease to the same extent as the danger to himself in France increases? Only if the internal danger is given time to explode.