This tax was at that time very moderate. It was only the value of three days' work: but what was more important was that all those were declared passive citizens who were serviteurs à gages (wage earners), a definition by which the working class was expressly excluded from the franchise. After all, in such questions the essential point is not the extent, but the principle.
This meant the introduction of a property qualification, the establishment of a definite amount of property as the condition of the franchise—this first and most important of all political rights—and in the determination of public policy.
All those who paid no direct tax at all, or less than this fixed amount, and those who were wage earners, were excluded from control of the State and were made a subject body. The ownership of capital had become the condition for control over the State, as was nobility, or ownership of land, in the Middle Ages.
This principle of property qualification remains (with the exception of a very short period during the French Republic of 1793, which perished from its own indefiniteness and from the whole state of society at the time, which I cannot here discuss further) the leading principle of all constitutions which originated in the French Revolution.
In fact, with the consistency which all principles have, this one was soon forced to develop into a different quantitative scope. In the constitution of 1814, according to the classified list promulgated by Louis XVIII., a direct tax of three hundred francs (eighty thalers) was established, in place of the value of three days' work, as a condition of the franchise. The July Revolution of 1830 broke out, and nevertheless, by the law of April 19, 1831, a direct tax of two hundred francs (about fifty-three thalers) was required as a condition of the franchise.
What under Louis Philippe and Guizot was called the pays légal—that is, the country as a legal entity—consisted of 200,000 men; for there were not more than 200,000 electors in France who could meet the property requirement, and these exercised sovereignty over more than 30,000,000 inhabitants. It is here to be noted that it makes no difference whether the principle of property qualification, the exclusion of those without property from the franchise, appears, as in the constitutions referred to, in direct and open form, or in a form in one way or another disguised. The effect is always the same.
So the second French Republic in 1850 could not possibly revoke the general direct franchise, once proclaimed, which we shall later consider, but adopted the expedient of granting the franchise (law of May 31,1850) only to such citizens as had been domiciled in a place without interruption for at least three years. For, because workingmen in France are frequently compelled by conditions to change their domicile and to look for work in another commune, it was hoped, and with good reason, that extremely large numbers of workingmen, who could not bring proof of three years uninterrupted residence in the same place, would be excluded from the franchise.
Here you have a property qualification in disguised form. It is still worse in our country, since the promulgation of the three-class election law, under which, with variations according to locality, three, ten, thirty, or more voters without property, of the third class of electors, have only the same franchise as one single capitalist who belongs to the first class; so that, in fact, if the proportion were only one to ten, nine men out of every ten who had the franchise in 1848 have lost it through the three-class election law of 1849, and exercise it only in appearance.[48]
But this is only the average situation. In reality, conditions vary greatly in different localities, and they are often still more unfavorable, most unfavorable in fact where the inequality of property is most developed; thus for instance, in Düsseldorf twenty-six voters of the third class have no more power than one rich man.
If we return from this discussion to our main thought, we have shown, and shall continue to show, in what manner, since the time when, through the French Revolution, the capitalist element obtained sovereignty, its principle, the possession of capital, has now become the controlling principle of all social institutions; how the capitalist class, proceeding in just the same manner as the nobility in the Middle Ages with land ownership, impresses now the controlling and exclusive stamp of its particular principle, the possession of capital, upon all institutions of society. The parallel between the nobility and the capitalist class is, in this respect, complete. We have already seen this with regard to the most important fundamental point, the constitution of the Empire. As in the Middle Ages landholding was the prevailing principle of representation in the German parliaments, so now, by a direct or disguised property qualification, the amount of tax, and therefore, since this is determined by the capital of an individual, the holding of capital, is what, in the last instance, determines the right of election to legislative bodies and therefore of participation in the control of the State.