Vulgar democrats

[jondwhite]

In a couple of Marx's works, he refers to 'vulgar democrats'. What was he getting at?

[imposs1904]

jondwhite wrote:

In a couple of Marx's works, he refers to 'vulgar democrats'. What was he getting at?

Could you link to the articles or passages where he makes the reference. The context could explain what he's getting at.

[ALB]

I think he and Engels simply meant "ordinary" or "pure and simple" or "common or garden" democrats, i.e people who wanted a democratic republic and nothing else, as opposed to people like them who wanted a democratic republic and socialism. Their equivalent in England would have been the Radical wing of the 19th century Liberal Party. I don't think "vulgar" was meant in any particularly derogatory sense (which it has more in English than in German or French — the German word he would have used is "Vulgärdemokratie".). Even "vulgar Marxists" (not that Marx used the term) only means "unsophisticated Marxists" not Marxists who tell dirty jokes.

[twc]

Here is the section of Engels 1895 Introduction to “Class Struggles in France” that describes the vulgar democracy.

I give a free translation because I’ve lifted this section from its immediate context.

Engels, 1895, wrote:

After the defeat of the revolution in the year 1849, Marx and Engels did not share the illusions of the vulgar democracy that grouped itself around the upstart provisional governments in partibus, [i.e. the post-revolutionary governments then emerging throughout Europe during the immediate reaction].

This vulgar democracy deluded itself on an imminent decisive victory of the “people” over the reactionary “usurpers” of the revolution.

We, however, foresaw a long struggle, after the removal of these reactionary “usurpers” of the revolution, between the antagonistic groups now concealed within this supposedly united “people” itself.

The vulgar democracy confidently expected renewed outbreaks of the revolution every day.

We declared as early as the autumn of 1850 that the first chapter of the revolutionary period was now closed, and that nothing further was to be expected until the outbreak of a new world crisis.

For this reason we were excommunicated—as traitors to the revolution—by the very people who later, almost without exception, rushed to make their peace with Bismarck—so far, of course, as Bismarck found them worth his trouble.

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