11. Announcement of the Convocation of the Rhenish District Congress of Democratic Associations
11. Announcement of the Convocation of the Rhenish District Congress of Democratic Associations[347]
Cologne, August 4. In accordance with the decision of the Democratic Congress in Frankfurt, which resolved that Cologne should be the seat of the Executive for the Prussian Rhine Province and authorised the democratic associations there to con-vene a district congress for organising the democratic party in the province, the Central Committee of the associations here[348] invites all democratically-minded associations in the Rhine Province to appoint delegates to this congress, which will take place here on Sunday, August 13. The delegates must report their arrival in the upstairs hall of the Stollwerk premises.
The Central Committee of the three democratic associations in Cologne
Schneider II, Marx (For the Democratic Society)
Moll, Schapper Becker, Schützendorf (For the Workers' Association) (For the Association for Workers
and Employers
At a moment when reaction, operating under the name of itinerant "constitutional" congresses, is reviewing and concentrating its forces throughout the state, democrats do not need any more exhaustive exposition of the necessity for an energetic counter-attack. They merely have to make use of the same freedoms which the Association "With God for King and Fatherland"[3] and its branch associations enjoy.
Words from the decree of Frederick William III issued on March 17, 181; announcing the setting up of the army reserve.— Ed.
Endnotes
[348] From the very beginning, differences arose between shareholders and editorial board. Many of the shareholders, displeased at the revolutionary trend of the newspaper, refused their contributions. They were particularly disturbed by the articles in defence of the proletarian uprising in Paris in June 1848. This led to the editor-in-chief, Marx, seeking other financial sources (the aid of the German and Polish democrats etc.) including his own personal means. Hermann Becker, one of the leaders of the Cologne Democratic Society, despite Marx's objections, invited Wilhelm Weitling who had returned from emigration to address a general meeting. In his speech delivered on July 21, 1848, Weitling, who called himself "a democrat, socialist and communist", proclaimed as a vital task of the revolution the establishment of a dictatorial Provisional Government consisting of a narrow circle of persons—"very keen people", having in mind himself as the sole dictator. Like Gottschalk, Weitling ignored the bourgeois-democratic character of the revolution and called for immediate and revolutionary fulfilment of his Utopian plans for social transformation, considering that political questions merely distracted from the main aim. At the next meeting of the Democratic Society on August 4, Marx gave his reply. We can only judge the contents of his speech from this newspaper report. The author of this highly imperfect report, apparendy, did not clearly understand the meaning of Marx's speech and some propositions are therefore presented in very confusing and inexact manner. In his speech, Marx dealt especially with the peculiarities of the German revolution and its vital task: to eliminate the remnants of feudalism. In his controversy with Weitling, Marx stressed the close connection between political and social struggle, the inseparability and interdependence of political and social demands. The principal difference between Marx's position and that of Weiding was also manifest in the issue of the form of government which should be established after the victory of the revolution. Emphatically rejecting the idea of a one-man dictatorship, Marx saw the necessity to establish a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship founded on the union of those classes which had accomplished the revolution — proletariat, peasantry and petty bourgeoisie, The First Rhenish District Congress of Democratic Associations was held in Cologne on August 13 and 14, 1848. Marx and Engels took part in the work of the Congress. It was proposed that regional committees should be organised of representatives of democratic associations, with their headquarters in a number of cities. The Regional Committee of the Rhine Province and Westphalia was to have its seat in Cologne. The Central Committee of the three democratic associations in Cplogne (see Note 348), which was organised prior to the Congress, was confirmed as the Rhenish Regional Democratic Committee, which included, besides its President Schneider II, Marx, Schapper and Moll. Under the influence of the Communist League members — deputies to the Congress — a resolution was passed on the necessity of conducting work among the factory proletariat and also among the peasants. The Congress recommended that every possible support be rendered to the democratic press (this primarily concerned the Neue Rheinische Zeitung). The Central Committee of the three democratic associations of Cologne — the Democratic Society, the Workers' Association and the Association for Workers and Employers — was organised at the end of June on a decision of the First Democratic Congress in Frankfurt am Main. This Committee functioned as the Regional Committee until the convocation of the Rhenish Congress of Democrats. Marx was its member.
[3] At the end of 1848 or the beginning of 184-9 an abridged version of the "Demands" was published in pamphlet form by Weiler Publishers in Leipzig. The slogan at the beginning of the document, the second paragraph of point 9 and the last sentence of point 10 were omitted, and the words "The Committee" were not included among the signatories. In 1853, an abridged version of the "Demands" was printed, together with other documents of the Communist League, in the first part of the book Die Communisten-Ver schworungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, published in Berlin for purposes of information by Wermuth and Stieber, two police officials, who staged a trial against the Communists in Cologne in 1852. Later Engels reproduced the main points of the "Demands" in his essay On the History of the Communist League, published in November 1885 in the newspaper Sozialdemokrat, and as an introduction to the pamphlet: K. Marx, Enthüllungen über den Kommunisten Prozess zu Köln, Hottingen-Zürich, 1885. English translations of the "Demands of the Communist Party in Germany" appeared in the collections: The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with an introduction and explanatory notes by D. Ryazanoff, Martin Lawrence, London (1930); K. Marx, Selected Works, Vol. II, ed. V. Adoratsky, Moscow-Leningrad, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR (1936); ibid., New York (1936); Birth of the Communist Manifesto, edited and annotated, with an Introduction by D. J. Struik, International Publishers, New York, 1971, and in other publications. The letter to the editor of the Populaire and the Declaration are in Engels' handwriting. Both documents were drawn up at the end of March 1848 after Engels' arrival in Paris and reflect the struggle which the leaders of the Communist League were waging against those German petty-bourgeois emigrant leaders in Paris, Herwegh and Bornstedt among others, who intended to speed up revolution in Germany by moving in a volunteer legion organised by using private donations and subsidies from the Provisional Government of the French Republic. Appeals to enlist were accompanied by demagogic appeals to the patriotic and revolutionary sentiments of German emigrants. Marx, Engels and other members of the Central Authority of the Communist League spoke out against the adventurist nature of such plans to "export revolution" and advised German workers instead to return to their home country individually in order to take part in the revolutionary events that were brewing there. "We opposed this playing with revolution in the most decisive fashion," Engels later wrote in his work On the History of the Communist League. "To carry out an invasion, which was to import the revolution forcibly from outside, into the midst of the ferment then going on in Germany, meant to undermine the revolution in Germany itself, to strengthen the governments and to deliver the legionaries ... defenceless into the hands of the German troops." The letter and the Declaration were first published in English in the journal Science and Society, 1940, Vol. IV, No. 2. The first publication in the language of the original appeared in the collection Der Bund der Kommunisten. Dokumente und Materialien, Bd. I, 1836-1849, Berlin, 1970. The Cerman Democratic Society (below it is called the Society of German Democrats) was formed in Paris after the February revolution of 1848. The society was headed by petty-bourgeois democrats, Herwegh, Bornstedt (the latter expelled from the Communist League) and others, who campaigned to raise a volunteer legion of German emigrants with the intention of marching into