A page of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung containing Marx’s article "The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution" and the slogan "No More Taxes!!!"
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due to it, at the same time invented the mines which were later to blow up the legal basis together with the theory of agreement.
This man introduced the indirect elections that produced an assembly to which, at a moment of sudden revolt, the Government could shout: Trop tard![149] He recalled the Prince of Prussia, the head of the counter-revolution, and did not disdain an official lie to turn the Prince's flight into a study trip.[150] He let the old Prussian laws dealing with political crimes and the old courts continue to function. Under his government the old bureaucracy and the old army gained time to recover from their fright and to reconstitute themselves completely. All the leading personalities of the old regime were left untouched in their positions. Under Camphausen the camarilla carried on a war in Posen,[151] while he himself carried on a war in Denmark. The Danish war was intended as an overflow for the superabundant patriotism of the German youth, against whom also after their return the police took the appropriate measures. This war was intended to give some popularity to General Wrangel and his notorious Guards regiments and to rehabilitate the Prussian soldiery in general. This purpose achieved, the sham war had to be ended at any price by a disgraceful armistice, which was once again agreed on at Frankfurt am Main by the same Camphausen with the German National Assembly. The outcome of the Danish war was the appointment of the "Commander-in-Chief of the two Marches"[152] and the return to Berlin of the Guards regiments which had been driven out in March.
And the war which the Potsdam camarilla waged in Posen under the auspices of Camphausen!
The war in Posen was more than a war against the Prussian revolution. It was the fall of Vienna, the fall of Italy, the defeat of the heroes of June. It was the first decisive victory gained by the Russian Tsar over the European revolution. And all this was done under the auspices of the great Camphausen, the thinking friend of history,[3] the knight of the great debate, the champion of agreement.
Under Camphausen and with his help the counter-revolution seized all important positions; it prepared an army ready for action while the Agreement Assembly debated. Under Hansemann-Pinto,[153] the Minister of action, the old police force was fitted out with new uniforms, and the bourgeoisie waged a war — as bitter as it was petty — against the people. The conclusion from these premises was
An ironical allusion to Allgemeine Geschichte vom Anfang der historischen Kenntniss bis auf unsere Zeiten, by Karl von Rotteck, a well-known work at the time. Its subtitle was: Für denkende Geschichtsfreunde (For Thinking Friends of History).—Ed.
drawn under Brandenburg's rule. The only things needed for this were a moustache and a sword instead of a head.
When Camphausen resigned we exclaimed: He has sown reaction as interpreted by the bourgeoisie, he will reap reaction as interpreted by the aristocracy and absolutism.(1)
We have no doubt that His Excellency, the Prussian envoy Camphausen, at this moment considers that he himself is a feudal lord and will have come to a peaceable agreement with this "misunder-standing".
One should not, however, commit the error of ascribing initiatives of world-historic significance to such mediocrities as a Camphausen or a Hansemann. They were nothing but the mouthpieces of a class. Their language, their actions, were merely the official echo of the class which brought them to the forefront. They were simply the big bourgeoisie placed in the forefront.
The representatives of this class formed the liberal opposition in the blissfully deceased United Diet, which Camphausen resurrected for a moment.
The gentlemen of this liberal opposition have been reproached with having betrayed their principles after the March revolution. This is a fallacy.
The big landowners and capitalists, who were the only ones represented in the United Diet, in short the money-bags, became wealthier and more educated. With the development of bourgeois society in Prussia, in other words, with the development of industry, trade and agriculture, the old estate distinctions had, on the one hand, lost their material basis.
The aristocracy itself was largely bourgeoisified. Instead of dealing in loyalty, love and faith, it now dealt primarily in beetroot, liquor and wool. Its tournaments were held mainly on the wool market. On the other hand, the absolutist state, which in the course of development had lost its old social basis, became a restrictive fetter for the new bourgeois society with its changed mode of production and its changed requirements. The bourgeoisie had to claim its share of political power, if only by reason of its material interests. Only the bourgeoisie itself could secure legal fulfilment of its commercial and industrial requirements. It had to wrest the administration of these, its "most sacred interests", from the hands of an antiquated bureaucracy which was both ignorant and arrogant. It had to demand control over the national wealth, of which it considered itself the creator. Having deprived the bureaucracy of the monopoly of so-called education and conscious of the fact that it possessed a far superior knowledge of the real requirements of bourgeois society, the bourgeoisie had also the ambition to secure for itself a political status in keeping with its social status. To attain this aim it had to be able freely to debate its own interests and views and the actions of the Government. It called this "freedom of the press". The bourgeoisie had to be able to enter freely into associations. It called this "freedom of association". As a necessary consequence of free competition, it had likewise to demand religious liberty and so on. Before March 1848 the Prussian bourgeoisie was well on the way to realising all its aims.
The Prussian state was in financial difficulties. Its borrowing power was exhausted. This was the secret behind the convocation of the United Diet. Although the Government struggled against its fate and ungraciously dissolved the United Diet, lack of money and of credit facilities would inevitably have driven it gradually into the arms of the bourgeoisie. Those who are kings by the grace of God have always bartered their privileges for hard cash, as did the feudal barons. The first great act of this world-historic deal in all the Christian-Germanic states was the emancipation of the serfs; the second great act was the constitutional monarchy. "L'argent n'a pas de maître",[3] but the maîtres cease to be maîtres as soon as they are demonetised.
And so the liberal opposition in the United Diet was nothing else than the opposition of the bourgeoisie to a political form that no longer corresponded to its interests and needs. In order to oppose the Court, the bourgeoisie had to court the people.
It may have really imagined that its opposition was for the people. Obviously, the rights and liberties which the bourgeoisie sought for itself could be demanded from the Government only under the slogan: popular rights and popular liberties.
This opposition, as we have said, was well on the way to its goal when the February storm broke.
[Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 169, December 15, 1848]
Cologne, December 11. When the March deluge — a Biblical deluge in miniature — subsided, it left on the surface of Berlin no prodigies, no revolutionary giants, but traditional creatures, thickset bourgeois figures — the liberals of the United Diet, the representatives of the conscious Prussian bourgeoisie. The main contingents for the new Ministries were supplied by the Rhine Province and Silesia, the provinces with the most advanced bourgeoisie. Behind them came a whole train of Rhenish lawyers. To the same extent that the bourgeoisie was pushed into the background by the feudal aristocracy, the Rhine Province and Silesia were replaced in the Ministries by the old Prussian provinces. The only link of the Brandenburg Ministry with the Rhine Province now is through a single Elberfeld Tory. Hansemann and von der Heydtl These two names represent for the Prussian bourgeoisie the whole difference between March and December 1848!
The Prussian bourgeoisie reached the highest positions in the state, not, however, by means of a peaceful deal with the Crown, as it had desired, but as the result of a revolution. It was supposed to defend, not its own interests, but those of the people—for a popular movement had prepared the way for the bourgeoisie — against the Crown, in other words, against itself. For the bourgeoisie regarded the Crown simply as a cloak provided by the grace of God, a cloak that was to conceal its own profane interests. The inviolability of its own interests and of the political forms corresponding to these interests, when translated into constitutiorial language, was supposed to read: inviolability of the Crown. Hence the enthusiasm of the German bourgeoisie and in particular of the Prussian bourgeoisie for the constitutional monarchy. Therefore, although the Prussian bourgeoisie welcomed the February revolution together with its repercussions in Germany because it had placed the helm of state in their hands, it also upset their plans, because their rule was thus bound by conditions which they neither wanted nor were able to fulfil.
The bourgeoisie did not raise a finger; they simply allowed the people to fight for them. Hence the rule that was transferred to them was not the rule of a general who has defeated his adversary, but the rule of a committee of public safety to which the victorious people entrusts the protection of its interests.
Camphausen was still clearly aware of this embarrassing situation, and the weakness of his Ministry was entirely due to this feeling and the circumstances that gave rise to it. Even the most shameless actions of his Government are therefore tinted by a sort of shamefaced blush. Open shamelessness and insolence were Hansemann's privilege. The red colouring is all that distinguishes these two painters one from the other.
The March revolution in Prussia should not be confused either with the English revolution of 1648 or with the French one of 1789.
refugees, a centralisation which cannot be harmed and which is therefore in a position to perform its functions. The deputy from Biela himself was of this opinion and spoke against transferring the duties of the Central Association to the Executive of the military association. But all are, of course, free to join the military association; they are only asked not to join it as associations, so that the association can never be harmed as such, but only individual persons, if perchance new persecutions should take place.
Having thus replied to each of the points mentioned in your letter, we refer you to the enclosed minutes for the further decisions of the Congress and ask you on behalf of the Congress to join the Union of German Associations founded hereby and to advise us as soon as possible of your having done so.
We appeal to you again: give way in secondary matters as others have given way and will give way in future, so as to save the main object; join the nucleus of the Union which has already been founded by several associations with much sacrifice in money and time, and which can only succeed if we all stand together, forget the past and no longer allow ourselves to be divided by minor differences of opinion!
Greetings and fraternal good wishes.
Berne, about December 25, 1848 Address: Herr N. Berger, Käfichgässlein No. 109, Bern
Written by Engels
On behalf of the Congress, The Central Commission
Julius Standau.—Ed.
REFUTATION
The literary Lumpenproletariat of Herr Dumont, which accepts with the most touching passive resistance all the kicks bestowed on it by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, is trying to revenge itself by denouncing the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung to the police on account of articles which they have not written. Thus, according to the Kölnische Zeitung of December 25, Freiligrath is alleged to be the author of a report from Cologne in the Deutsche Schnellpost, published in New York, and for that reason is said to have participated in the cat's concert dedicated to the patrons of the Kölnische Zeitung on November 3. It seems that the laurels won by "Maltheser,,a prevent the editors of the Kölnische Zeitung from sleeping.
THE NEW "HOLY ALLIANCE"
Cologne, December 30. It is already generally known that some months ago a new "Holy Alliance" was concluded between Prussia, Austria and Russia.[200] The treaty itself will very shortly be brought into the light of day and it will be possible for it to be made public. The soul of this alliance of the rulers "by the grace of God and the knout" is Russia. On the other hand, the whole of Russian policy and diplomacy, with few exceptions, is borne on the shoulders of Germans or German Russians. Indeed, wherever absolutism and counter-revolution are actively at work, Germans are always to be found, but nowhere more so than at the focal point of the permanent counter-revolution, Russian diplomacy. There, in the first place, is Count Nesselrode, a German Jew; then come Baron von Meyendorf, ambassador in Berlin, from Estonia, and his assistant, adjutant of the Tsar, Colonel Count Benkendorff, also from Estonia. Working in Austria is Count Medem, a Courlander, with several assistants, including a Herr von Fonton, all of them Germans. Baron von Brunnow, Russian ambassador in London, also a Courlander, acts as an intermediate and mediating link between — Metternich and Palmerston. Finally, in Frankfurt, Baron von Budberg, a Livonian, acts as Russian chargé d'affaires. These are a few examples. We could cite several dozen more, without mentioning the creatures of the Petersburg Tsara who occupy high and highest posts in Germany and at the same time are in high Russian pay.
The role played by the Austrian Archduchess Sophia, now the Dowager Empress, in the cause of the Holy Alliance and the enemies of the people, is so notorious as to need no description. Sophia herself, however, is in turn powerfully influenced by Grand Duchess Helena, wife of Grand Duke Michael and daughter of Prince Paul von Württemberg. Helena serves as the most intimate link between Nicholas and Sophia and the notorious Archduke Ludwig.
Moreover, already some months ago these persons agreed on the plan according to which the Austrian martial-law Emperor[3] will marry the surviving daughter[15] of the Grand-ducal married couple in order that the new "Holy Alliance" will be indissolubly welded together and Russia brought ever closer to its goal, the establishment in Germany of the most complete rule of the knout.
THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT[5]
Cologne, December 31. Never was a revolutionary movement opened with such an edifying overture as the revolutionary movement of 1848. The Pope gave it the blessing of the Church, and Lamartine's aeolian harp vibrated with tender philanthropic tunes to the text of fraternité, the brotherhood of members of society and nations.
Welcome all ye myriad creatures! Brethren, take the kiss of love![3]
Driven out of Rome, the Pope is at present staying at Gaeta under the protection of the tigerish idiot Ferdinand; Italy's " iniciatore"[203]
conspires against Italy with Austria, Italy's traditional mortal enemy, whom in happier days he threatened to excommunicate. The recent French presidential elections have given statistical proof of the unpopularity of Lamartine, the traitor. There has been no event more philanthropic, humane, and weak than the February and March revolutions, nothing more brutal than the inevitable consequences of this humanity of weakness. The proofs are Italy, Poland, Germany, and, above all, those who were defeated in June.
But the defeat of the French workers in June was the defeat of the June victors themselves. Ledru-Rollin and the other men of the Mountain were ousted by the party of the National, the party of the bourgeois republicans; the party of the National was ousted by Thiers-Barrot, the dynastic opposition; these in turn would have had to make way for the legitimists (2) if the cycle of the three restorations had not come to an end, and if Louis Napoleon were something more than an empty ballot-box by means of which the French peasants announced their entry into the revolutionary social movement, and the French workers their condemnation of all leaders of the preceding periods — Thiers-Barrot, Lamartine and Cavaignac-Marrast. But let us note the fact that the inevitable consequence of the defeat of the revolutionary French working class was the defeat of the republican French bourgeoisie, to which it had just succumbed.
The defeat of the working class in France, the victory of the French bourgeoisie was at the same time the renewed fettering of the nationalities who had responded to the crowing of the Gallic cock with heroic attempts to liberate themselves. Prussian, Austrian and English Sbirri* once more plundered, ravished and murdered in Poland, Italy and Ireland. The defeat of the working class in France, the victory of the French bourgeoisie was at the same time the defeat of the middle classes in all European countries where the middle classes, united for the moment with the people, had responded to the crowing of the Gallic cock with sanguinary insurrections against feudalism. Naples, Vienna, Berlin! The defeat of the working class in France, the victory of the French bourgeoisie was at the same time a victory of East over West, the defeat of civilisation by barbarism. The suppression of the Rumanians by the Russians and their tools, the Turks, began in Wallachia[205]; Croats, Pandours, Czechs, Serezhans[206]
and similar rabble throttled German liberty in Vienna, and the Tsar is now omnipresent in Europe. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie in France, the triumph of the French working class, the emancipation of the working class in general, is therefore the rallying-cry of European liberation.
But England, the country that turns whole nations into its proletarians, that takes the whole world within its immense embrace, that has already once defrayed the cost of a European Restoration, the country in which class contradictions have reached their most acute and shameless form—England seems to be the rock against which the revolutionary waves break, the country where the new society is stifled even in the womb. England dominates the world market. A revolution of the economic relations in any country of the European continent, in the whole European continent without England, is a storm in a teacup. Industrial and commercial relations within each nation are governed by its intercourse with other nations, and depend on its relations with the world market. But the world market is dominated by England, and England is dominated by the bourgeoisie.
The liberation of Europe, whether brought about by the struggle of the oppressed nationalities for their independence or by overthrowing feudal absolutism, depends therefore on the successful uprising of the French working class. Every social upheaval in France, however, is bound to be thwarted by the English bourgeoisie, by Great Britain's industrial and commercial domination of the world. Every partial social reform in France or on the European continent as a whole, if designed to be lasting, is merely a pious wish. And only a world war can overthrow the old England, as only this can provide the Chartists, the party of the organised English workers, with the conditions for a successful rising against their gigantic oppressors. Only when the Chartists head the English Government will the social revolution pass from the sphere of Utopia to that of reality. But any European warm which England is involved is a world war, waged in Canada as in Italy, in East Indies as in Prussia, in Africa as on the Danube. A European war will be the first result of a successful workers' revolution in France. England will head the counter-revolutionary armies, just as it did during the Napoleonic period, but through the war itself it will be thrown to the head of the revolutionary movement and it will repay the debt it owes in regard to the revolution of the eighteenth century.
The table of contents for 1849 reads: Revolutionary rising of the French working class, world war.
Written by Marx on December 31,1848
SWISS-ITALIAN AFFAIRS
Berne, December 28. The Swiss troops have hardly been withdrawn from the Lombardy border and Radetzky's chicaneries are already beginning again. He has written to the federal representatives in Tessin saying there is a disturbing trade in weapons on the frontier, and the federal representatives have talked the Tessin Government into authorising several house searches in Mendrisio. A few muskets have been found and confiscated. It cannot be foreseen on what grounds this violation of the privacy of the home and seizure of foreign property will be justified. It is only surprising that the Tessin Government has lent itself to such practices.
The Neapolitan recruiting in Lucerne and the L/r-cantons(3)
appears however to be leading nowhere. It is not as if they had not found a sufficient number of stalwart Alpine lads who would give their skins for ready money and be happy to do Croat services in Ferdinand's army; on the contrary! But the whole business is foundering on the impossibility of getting from Switzerland to Naples.
According to the enlistment agreements,[207] the recruits must be transported via Genoa, and the Turin Government refuses transit. It is now said that the recruits are to be brought to Trieste and embarked there. This news has caused great alarm among the recruits. They do not want to go to Austria. They are afraid of being put among real Croats and led against the Magyars, and they are now petitioning the Lucerne Government Council to insist on the Genoese route. Strange. As if it were not a matter of indifference to these henchmen of the counter-revolution whether they massacre Magyars or Messinese! But of course there is a big difference between Austrian paper money and Neapolitan full-weight gold ducats!
Incidentally, the Lucerne Government seems to imitate the Bernese Government in wanting to suspend the enlistment agreements till the Swiss merchants in Naples and Messina are indem-nified.[208] At least, it has inquired of the Federal Council about the arrangements for compensation. So that leaves only the L/r-cantons, and these will not suffer any encroachment upon the right of every citizen to sell himself as long as the Federal Constitution allows it, i.e. as long as the present enlistment agreements have still to run. This right of self-sale is one of the finest and oldest privileges of the free c/r-Swiss, and if these brave "first-born sons of freedom" tried to defend their "five-hundred-year-old rights" against the new Federal Constitution, it was above all on account of this special right which the new Constitution has annulled. The military enlistment agreements are really a vital matter for the L/r-cantons. For five hundred years they have been the drainage channel for the superfluous population, and hence the best guarantee for the existing barbarous state of things. Annul the enlistment agreements, and you will unleash a real revolution in these so-called clean, i.e. in fact extremely unclean, democracies.
The younger sons of peasants, now setting off for Naples and Rome, will have to stay at home; they will find no occupation either in their own cantons or in the rest of Switzerland, which is already suffering enough from "over-population"; they will form a new class of peasant proletarians, who by their very existence must bring all the old relations of property, property acquirement and law of these pastoral races, established for a thousand years, into the utmost confusion. Where would these sterile mountain lands get the means to feed the paupers deposited there from all sides on the frontier by expulsion orders? The core of such a class of paupers already exists and threatens in an exceedingly disagreeable way this traditional patriarchalism. And even if — which is not to be expected — in the next few years the European revolution observes the same respect as hitherto towards Swiss neutrality, the article of the new Federal Constitution forbidding enlistments is preparing a revolutionary ferment which will eventually completely uproot the oldest and most firmly entrenched seat of reactionary barbarism in Europe. Like the monarchies, the reactionary republics are going under, dying of pecuniary consumption, of the "pale melancholy of financial need".
A BOURGEOIS DOCUMENT
Cologne, January 4. In England, where the rule of the bourgeoisie has reached the greatest development, public charity too, as we know, has assumed the most noble and magnanimous forms. In English workhouses(4)—public institutions in which the surplus labour population is allowed to vegetate at the expense of bourgeois society — charity is cunningly combined with the revenge which the bourgeoisie wreaks on the wretches who are compelled to appeal to its charity. Not only do the poor devils receive the most wretched and meagre means of subsistence, hardly sufficient for the propagation of the species, their activity, too, is restricted to revolting, unproduc-tive, meaningless drudgery, such as work at the treadmill, which deadens both mind and body. These unfortunate people have committed the crime of having ceased to be an object of exploitation yielding a profit to the bourgeoisie — as is the case in ordinary life — and having become instead an object of expenditure for those born to derive benefit from them; like so many barrels of liquor which, left unsold in the warehouse, become an object of expenditure to the wine merchant. To bring home to them the full magnitude of their crime, they are deprived of everything that is granted to the lowest criminal — association with their wives and children, recreation, talk — everything. Even this " cruel charity" of the English bourgeoisie is due not to sentimental but to thoroughly practical and rational reasons. On the one hand, if all the paupers in Great Britain were suddenly thrown into the street, bourgeois order and commercial activity would suffer to an alarming extent. On the other hand, British industry has alternate periods of feverish over-production, when the demand for hands can hardly be satisfied, and the hands are nevertheless to be obtained as cheaply as possible, followed by periods of slack business, when production is far larger than consumption and it is difficult to find useful employment even at half pay for half the labour army. Is there a more ingenious device than the workhouse for maintaining a reserve army in readiness for favourable periods while converting them in these pious institutions during unfavourable commercial periods into machines devoid of will, resistance, claims and requirements?
The Prussian bourgeoisie differs favourably from the English bourgeoisie, since in contrast to British political arrogance reminiscent of pagan Rome it displays Christian humility and meekness in the most servile reverence before throne, altar, army, bureaucracy and feudalism; instead of displaying the commercial energy which conquers whole continents, it engages in domestic retail trade of a Chinese type, and tries to confound the impetuous titanic spirit of inventiveness in industry by clinging staunchly and virtuously to the traditional semi-guild routine. But the Prussian bourgeoisie ap-proaches its British ideal in one respect — in its shameless maltreatment of the working class. That, as a body, it in general lags behind the British bourgeoisie, is due simply to the fact that, on the whole, as a national class, it has never achieved anything of importance and never will, because of its lack of courage, intelligence and energy. It does not exist on a national scale, it exists only in provincial, municipal, local, private forms, and in these forms it confronts the working class even more ruthlessly than the English bourgeoisie. Why is it that since the Restoration the peoples longed for Napoleon, whom they had just before chained to a lonely rock in the Mediterranean(5)? Because it is easier to endure the tyranny of a genius than that of an idiot. Thus the English worker can feel a certain national pride in face of the German worker, because the master who enslaves him enslaves the whole world, whereas the master of the German worker, the German bourgeois, is himself everybody's servant, and nothing is more galling and humiliating than to be the servant of a servant.
We publish here without any alterations the "Worker's Card', which proletarians engaged on municipal works have to sign in the good city of Cologne; this historical document shows the cynical attitude of our bourgeoisie towards the working class.
WORKER'S CARD
§ 1. Every worker must strictly obey the instructions and orders of all municipal supervisors, who have been sworn in as police officers. Disobedience and insubordination will entail immediate dismissal.
§2. No worker is allowed to move from one section to another or to leave the building-site without the special permission of the supervisor.
§3. Workers purloining wheelbarrows, carts or other equipment from another section in order to use them in their work will be dismissed.
§4. Drunkenness, disturbance of the peace, and starting up squabbles, quarrels and fights entail immediate dismissal.—In appropriate cases moreover legal proceedings will be taken against the culprits.
§ 5. A worker arriving ten minutes late at his place of work will be given no work on that particular half day; if this should occur three times he may be dismissed altogether.
§6. If workers are dismissed at their own request or by way of punishment, they will receive their wages at the next regular pay-day in accordance with the work done.
§ 7. A worker's dismissal is noted in the Worker's Card.—Should the dismissal be by way of punishment, the worker, according to the circumstances, is barred from re-employment either at the same place of work or at all municipal works.
§ 8. The police are always to be informed when workers are dismissed by way of punishment and of the reasons for their dismissal.
§9. Should workers have any complaints to make against the building-site supervisor, these are to be lodged with the town clerk of works through an elected delegation of three workers. This officer will examine the cause of the complaint on the spot and give his decision.
§ 10. The working hours are from six thirty in the morning to twelve noon and from one o'clock in the afternoon till evening darkness sets in. (Wonderful style!)
§11. The worker is employed on these conditions. §12. Payment is made on the building-site on Saturday afternoon.
The sworn building-site supervisor, for the present [...] whose instructions have to be obeyed.
Assigned to section of ... and has etc. Signature of the building-site supervisor
Could the Russian edicts of the Autocrat of All the Russias to his subjects be couched in more Asiatic terms?
The municipal, and even "all municipal supervisors, who have been sworn in as police officers", must be "strictly obeyed". "Disobedience and insubordination will entail immediate dismissal." First of all, therefore, passive obedience. Then, according to §9, the workers have the right to complain to "the town clerk of works". The decisions of this pasha are irrevocable and directed, of course, against the workers, if only in the interests of the hierarchy. And once this decision has been taken and the municipal interdict laid upon the workers, woe to them, for they will then be placed under police surveillance. The last semblance of their civic freedom disappears,
Cologne Signaturel of the worker or sign f for, according to §8, "the police are always to be informed when workers are dismissed by way of punishment and of the reasons for their dismissal".
But gentlemen, if you dismiss a worker, if you terminate a contract by which he gives his labour for your wages, what on earth has the police to do with this termination of a civil agreement? Is the municipal worker a convict? Have you denounced him to the police because he did not pay due deference to you, his hereditary, most wise and noble-minded masters? Would you not deride the citizen who denounced you to the police for having broken some delivery contract, or failed to pay a bill when it was due, or drunk too much on New Year's eve? Of course you would! But as regards the worker you are bound by no civil agreement, you lord it over him with the caprice of the lords by the grace of Godl The police must, on your behalf, keep a record of his conduct.
Under § 5, a worker arriving ten minutes late is punished with the loss of half a day's labour. What a punishment in comparison with the offence! You are centuries late, but the worker is not allowed to arrive ten minutes after half past six without losing half a working day.
Finally, in order that this patriarchal arbitrariness should not be in any way restricted and the worker be entirely dependent on your whim, you have left the mode of punishment, as far as possible, to the discretion of your uniformed servants. Dismissal and denunciation to the police is, according to § 4, to be followed in "appropriate cases", that is in cases which you will be pleased to regard as appropriate, by "legal proceedings against the culprits". Under §5, the worker who arrives late for the third time, i.e. ten minutes after half past six, "may" be dismissed altogether. In case of dismissal by way of punishment, §7 states, "the worker, according to the circumstances, is barred from re-employment either at the same place of work or at all municipal works", and so on and so forth.
What scope for the whims of the annoyed bourgeois is given in this criminal code of our municipal Catos, these great men who grovel before Berlin!
This model law shows what sort of Charter our bourgeoisie, if it stood at the helm of state, would impose on the people.
Written by Marx on January 4, 1849
A NEW-YEAR GREETING
Cologne, January 8. That priests and precentors, vergers and organ-blowers, barbers and night-watchmen, field guards, grave-diggers etc. send us New-Year greetings, is a custom that is as old as it is ever recurrent, and one which leaves us cold.
The year 1849, however, is not content with the traditional. Its arrival has been marked by something unprecedented, a New-Year greeting from the King of Prussia.[3]
It is a New-Year wish addressed not to the Prussian people, nor "To my dear Berliners", but "To my army".[210]
This royal New-Year message looks on the army "with pride" because it remained loyal
"when" (in March) "revolt disturbed the peaceful development of liberal institutions towards which I wished cautiously to lead My people".
Previously people spoke of the March events, of "misunder-standings", and so forth. Now there is no longer need for disguise: the March "misunderstandings" are cast in our face as "revolt".
The royal New-Year greeting breathes on us the same spirit as that which emanates from the columns of the "Dame of the Cross".(6) Just as the former speaks of "revolt", so the latter speaks of inglorious "March criminals", of the criminal rabble which upset the tranquillity of Court life in Berlin.
If we ask why the March "revolt" should be so particularly revolting, we are told in reply: "because it disturbed the peaceful development of liberal (!!) institutions etc."
If you were not peacefully at rest in Friedrichshain,[211] you March rebels, you would now have to be rewarded with "powder and shot" or penal servitude for life. By your wickedness did you not indeed disturb "the peaceful development of liberal institutions"? Does one need to be reminded of that royal Prussian development of "liberal institutions", of the most liberal development in the squandering of money, of the "peaceful" expansion of bigotry and royal Prussian Jesuitry, of the peaceful development of police and barrack rule, of spying, deception, hypocrisy, arrogance, and finally the most disgusting brutalisation of the people alongside of the most shameful corruption among the so-called upper classes? There is all the less need for such a reminder because we have only to look around, to stretch out our hands, in order to see that "disturbed development" again in full bloom and to refresh ourselves with a double edition of the above-mentioned "liberal institutions".
"My army," the royal message of greetings goes on to say, "has kept its old glory and won new glory."
Indeed it has! It has won so much glory that at most the Croats could lay claim to greater.
But where and how has it won it? In the first place:
"It adorned its banners with new laurels when Germany required our weapons in Schleswig."
The Prussian Note sent by Major Wildenbruch to the Danish Government[212] is the basis on which the new Prussian glory has been erected. The entire conduct of the war conformed excellently to that Note, which assured the Danish Herr cousin(7) that the Prussian Government was not at all in earnest, it was merely throwing out a bait to the republicans and throwing sand in the eyes of other people in order to gain time. And to gain time is to gain everything. Later agreement would be reached in the jolliest of ways.
Herr Wrangel, about whom public opinion was led astray for rather a long time, Herr Wrangel left Schleswig-Holstein secretly like a thief in the night. He travelled in civilian clothes in order not to be recognised. In Hamburg all the innkeepers declared that they could not give him shelter. They considered their houses, and the windows and doors in them, to be dearer to them than the laurels of the Prussian army, which were despised by the people although embodied in this illustrious gentleman. We should not forget either that the only success in this campaign of useless and senseless movements hither and thither, which was wholly reminiscent of the procedure of the old imperial courts of justice (see our issues at the time[3]), was a strategic mistake.
The only surprising thing about this campaign is the inexpressible cheek of the Danes, who mischievously hoaxed the Prussian army and completely cut off Prussia from the world market.
To complete the Prussian glory in this connection, one must include also the peace negotiations with Denmark and the Malmö armistice which resulted from them.[213]
If the Roman Emperor,b on sniffing a coin in the receipts from the public conveniences, could say: "Non olet" (it does not smell), the Prussian laurels won in Schleswig-Holstein, on the other hand, are marked in ineradicable characters: "Olet!" (it stinks!).
Secondly, "My army victoriously overcame hardships and dangers when it was necessary to combat insurrection in the Grand Duchy of Posen".
As far as the "victoriously overcome hardships" are concerned, they are as follows: Prussia, firstly, exploited the magnanimous illusion, fostered by smooth words from Berlin, of the Poles, who regarded the "Pomeranians" as German comrades-in-arms against Russia, and therefore calmly disbanded their army, let the Pomeranians march in, and only reassembled their scattered military cadres when the Prussians most vilely maltreated them when they were defenceless. And as for the Prussian feats of heroism! The heroic deeds of the "glorious" Prussian army were accomplished not during the war, but after the war. When Mieroslawski was presented to the June victor, Cavaignac's first question was how the Prussians had managed to be defeated at Miloslaw. (We can prove this by eyewitnesses.) 3,000 Poles, hardly armed with scythes and pikes, struck twice and twice forced 20,000 Prussians to retreat, although the latter were well organised and liberally equipped with weapons.[214] In its wild flight the Prussian cavalry itself threw the Prussian infantry into confusion. The Polish insurrection kept its hold on Miloslaw, after twice driving the counter-revolutionaries out of the city. Still more shameful than the Prussians' defeat at Miloslaw was their final victory at Wreschen, prepared for by a defeat.[215] If an unarmed but Herculean opponent confronts a coward armed with pistols, the coward flees and fires his pistols from a respectable distance. That is how the Prussians behaved at Wreschen. They fled to In 1648 the bourgeoisie was allied with the modern aristocracy against the monarchy, the feudal aristocracy and the established church.
In 1789 the bourgeoisie was allied with the people against the monarchy, the aristocracy and the established church.
The revolution of 1789 (at least in Europe) had as its prototype only the revolution of 1648; the revolution of 1648 only the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain.[154] Both revolutions were a century in advance of their prototypes not only in time but also in content.
In both revolutions the bourgeoisie was the class that really headed the movement. The proletariat and the non-bourgeois strata of the middle class had either not yet any interests separate from those of the bourgeoisie or they did not yet constitute independent classes or class sub-divisions. Therefore, where they opposed the bourgeoisie, as they did in France in 1793 and 1794, they fought only for the attainment of the aims of the bourgeoisie, even if not in the manner of the bourgeoisie. All French terrorism was nothing but a plebeian wayoi dealing with the enemies of the bourgeoisie, absolutism, feudalism and philistinism.
The revolutions of 1648 and 1789 were not English and French revolutions, they were revolutions of a European type. They did not represent the victory of a particular class of society over the old political order; they proclaimed the political order of the new European society. The bourgeoisie was victorious in these revolutions, but the victory of the bourgeoisie was at that time the victory of a new social order, the victory of bourgeois ownership over feudal ownership, of nationality over provincialism, of competition over the guild, of the division of land over primogeniture, of the rule of the landowner over the domination of the owner by the land, of enlightenment over superstition, of the family over the family name, of industry over heroic idleness, of bourgeois law over medieval privileges. The revolution of 1648 was the victory(8) of the seventeenth century over the sixteenth century; the revolution of 1789 was the victory of the eighteenth century over the seventeenth. These revolutions reflected the needs of the world at that time rather than the needs of those parts of the world where they occurred, that is England and France.
There has been nothing of all this in the Prussian March revolution. The February revolution actually abolished the constitutional monarchy and nominally abolished the rule of the bourgeoisie. The Prussian March revolution was intended to establish nominally a constitutional monarchy and to establish actually the rule of the bourgeoisie. Far from being a European revolution it was merely a stunted after-effect of a European revolution in a backward country. Instead of being ahead of its century, it was over half a century behind its time. From the very outset it was a secondary phenomenon, and it is well known that secondary diseases are harder to cure and at the same time cause more harm than the primary diseases do. It was not a question of establishing a new society, but of resurrecting in Berlin a society that had expired in Paris. The Prussian March revolution was not even a national, German revolution; from the outset it was a provincial Prussian revolution. All sorts of provincial uprisings — in Vienna, Cassel, Munich etc.—took place alongside it and contested its lead.
Whereas 1648 and 1789 gained boundless self-confidence from being at the apex of creation, it was the ambition of the Berlin revolution of 1848 to constitute an anachronism. Its light was like that of the stars which reaches us, the inhabitants of the Earth, only after the bodies from which it emanated have been extinct for a hundred thousand years. The March revolution in Prussia was, on a small scale — just as it was on a small scale in everything — such a star for Europe. Its light was that of the corpse of a society which had long ago decayed.
The German bourgeoisie developed so sluggishly, timidly and slowly that at the moment when it menacingly confronted feudalism and absolutism, it saw menacingly confronting it the proletariat and all sections of the middle class whose interests and ideas were related to those of the proletariat. The German bourgeoisie found not just one class behind it, but all Europe hostilely facing it. Unlike the French bourgeoisie of 1789, the Prussian bourgeoisie, when it confronted the monarchy and aristocracy, the representatives of the old society, was not a. class speaking for the whole of modern society. It had sunk to the level of a kind of social estate as clearly distinct from the Crown as it was from the people, with a strong bent to oppose both adversaries and irresolute towards each of them individually because it always saw both of them either in front of it or behind it. From the first it was inclined to betray the people and to compromise with the crowned representative of the old society, for it itself already belonged to the old society; it did not represent the interests of a new society against an old one, but renewed interests within an obsolete society. It stood at the helm of the revolution not because it had the people behind it but because the people drove it before them; it stood at the head not because it represented the initiative of a new social era but only because it represented the
Endnotes
[149] Trop tard! (too late!)—apparently by analogy with Troppo tardi! Cf. Note 122.
[150] During the March revolution of 1848 the Prince of Prussia fled to England, but on June 4, aided by the Camphausen Ministry, he returned to Berlin. At the sitting of the Prussian National Assembly on June 6 Camphausen sought to present this cowardly flight of the Prince as a journey undertaken for educational purposes.
[151] After the March revolution of 1848 in Germany an insurrection of the Poles broke out in the Duchy of Posen for their liberation from the Prussian yoke. The mass of the Polish peasants and artisans took part in it together with members of the lesser nobility. The Prussian Government was forced to promise that a commission would be set up to carry out the reorganisation of Posen: creation of a Polish army, appointment of Poles to administrative and other posts, recognition of Polish as the official language etc. On April 14, 1848, however, the King ordered the division of the Duchy of Posen into an eastern Polish part and a western "German" part, which was not to be "reorganised". During the months following the suppression of the Polish insurrection by the Prussian military, in violation of all agreements with the Poles, the demarcation line was pushed further and further east and the promised "reorganisation" was never carried out. Under the impact of the March revolution, the national liberation movement of the German population in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which had been incorporated into the Kingdom of Denmark by decision of the Vienna Congress (1815), grew in strength and became radical and democratic, forming part of the struggle for the unification of Germany. Volunteers from all over the country rushed to the aid of the local population when it rose in arms against Danish rule. Prussia, Hanover and other states of the German Confederation sent to the duchies federal troops under the command of the Prussian General Wrangel. However, the Prussian Government which feared a popular outbreak and an intensification of the revolution sought an agreement with Denmark at the expense of the general German interests. The situation was complicated by the intervention of Britain, Sweden and Tsarist Russia in favour of the Kingdom of Denmark. The seven months' armistice concluded between Prussia and Denmark at Malmö on August 26, 1848 (see Note 75), in fact preserved Danish rule in Schleswig and Holstein. The war, resumed at the end of March 1849, ended in 1850 with the victory of the Danes and the two duchies remained part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
[152] On September 15, 1848, General Wrangel, who was associated with the reactionary Court clique, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Brandenburg military district, which included Berlin. The Markgrafschaft (Marches) of Brandenburg, the original core of Prussia, consisted in the Middle Ages of two parts, the Kurmark and the Neumark, hence the title of the general: "Commander-in-Chief of the two Marches."
[153] Concerning Hansemann-Pinto see Note 44. The "Government of Action" which succeeded the Camphausen Government was in power from June 25 to September 21, 1848, Auerswald being formally its head. Hansemann, Finance Minister as in the Camphausen Ministry, actually directed the Ministry's activity.
[200] See Note 170.
[15] The riot which took place on October 24, 1848, in Freiburg (Fribourg) was organised by the Catholic priests led by Bishop Marilley, and aimed at overthrowing the democratic Government of the canton. It was quickly suppressed.
[5] An allusion to General Pfuel's participation in the suppression of the national liberation uprising in Posen, a duchy under Prussia's rule, which took place in the spring of 1848. On his orders the insurgents who had been taken prisoner had their heads shaved and their hands and ears branded with lunar caustic (in German Höllenstein, i.e. stone of hell); hence his nickname "von Höllenstein".
[203] After the popular uprising in Rome on November 16, 1848 (see Note 121), Pius IX fled on November 24 to the fortress of Gaeta in die Kingdom of Naples.
[205] In the summer of 1848, the anti-feudal movement and the struggle for complete liberation from the rule of the Turkish SultaA gained strength in the Danube principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which formally remained autonomous possessions of Turkey. The movement in Wallachia grew into a bourgeois revolution. In June 1848, a Constitution was proclaimed, a liberal Provisional Government was formed and George Bibesco, the ruler of Wallachia, abdicated and fled from the country. On June 28, 1848, a 12,000-strong Russian army corps entered Moldavia and in July Turkish troops also invaded the country. The Russian and Turkish intervention helped restore the feudal system and the subsequent entry of Turkish troops into Wallachia with the consent of the Tsarist Government brought about the defeat of the bourgeois revolution there. There were bloody reprisals against the population in Bucharest. A proclamation of the Turkish government commissioner Fuad-Effendi declared it necessary to establish "law and order" and "eliminate all traces of the revolution".
[206] Pandours—irregular infantry units of the Austrian; army recruited mainly in the South-Slav provinces of the Austrian Empire. Serezhans—see Note 112.
[207] See Note 172.
[208] The reference is to the Swiss citizens living in the Kingdom of Naples who suffered maltreatment and material losses as a result of the suppression of the popular uprising in Naples on May 15, 1848 (see Note 118), and the fierce four-day bombardment and plunder of Messina early in September 1848, after it had been captured by the royal troops sent by Ferdinand II to crush the revolutionary movement in Sicily.
[210] "To my dear Berliners"—an appeal of Frederick William IV published in the morning of March 19, 1848, during the people's uprising in Berlin. "To my people and the German nation"—an appeal of Frederick William IV published on March 21, 1848. "To my army"—a New-Year message of Frederick William IV signed by him in Potsdam on January 1, 1849, and published in the Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger No. 3, January 3, 1849.
[211] Friedrichshain—a park in Berlin where the insurgents killed on the barricades during the uprising on March 18, 1848, were buried.
[212] On April 8, 1848, during his secret mission on behalf of the King of Prussia, Major Wildenbruch handed a Note to the Danish Government which stated that Prussia was not fighting in Schleswig-Holstein to rob Denmark of the duchy but merely to combat "radical and republican elements in Germany". The Prussian Government tried every possible means to avoid official recognition of this compromising document.
[213] See Note 75.
[214] The reference is to the battle at Miloslaw on April 30, 1848, during the national liberation insurrection in the Duchy of Posen (see Note 151). As a result, the Polish insurgents commanded by Mieroslawski forced the Prussian troops under General Colomb to retreat.
[215] The reference is apparently to the battle at Sokoluv, near Wreschen (Wrzesnia), where on May 2, 1848, a 3.000-strong Prussian detachment under General Hirschfeld attacked the insurgents commanded by Mieroslawski, who was leading them north to Kujavia intending to continue the struggle there. The insurgents beat off the Prussian attacks and continued their march northwards. But owing to the enemy's superiority in manpower and armaments and disagreements among the commanders, the insurgents were compelled to capitulate on May 9, 1848.
[154] 15 Marx refers to the revolution in the Netherlands in 1566-1609 which was a combination of the national liberation war against absolutist Spain and the anti-feudal struggle of the progressive forces. The revolution ended with the victory of the north, where Europe's first bourgeois republic — the United Provinces (the Dutch Republic)—was established, and with the defeat of the southern provinces, which remained under Spanish rule.
[3] This article, as well as a number of other reports below, was written by Engels during his forced stay in Switzerland. On September 26, 1848, a state of siege was declared in Cologne and an order was issued for the arrest of some of the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, including Engels. Engels emigrated from Prussia to Belgium, where he was arrested by the Brussels police and on October 4 deported to France. After a short stay in Paris Engels went on foot to Switzerland (see his travel notes "From Paris to Berne" in Vol. 7 of the present edition, pp. 507-29). About November 9 Engels arrived in Berne via Geneva and Lausanne and remained there until January 1849. While in emigration he regularly sent to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung articles and various items of information.