The author of this article is himself a worker in one of London's tailoring shops.[3] We ask the German bourgeoisie how many authors it numbers capable of grasping the real movement in a similar manner?
Before the proletariat fights out its victories on the barricades and in the battle lines it gives notice of its impending rule with a series of intellectual victories.
The reader will note how here, instead of the sentimental, moral and psychological criticism employed against existing conditions by Weitling and other workers who engage in authorship, a purely materialist understanding and a freer one, unspoilt by sentimental whims, confronts bourgeois society and its movement. Whereas craftsmen resist the collapse of their semi-medieval position and would like to unite as craftsmen, particularly in Germany and to a great extent also in France, the subjection of craft labour to large-scale industry is comprehended here as a step forward and celebrated, while at the same time, in the results and productions of large-scale industry, the real preconditions of the proletarian revolution, generated by history itself and daily generating themselves anew, are recognised and revealed.
The word Schneidershop used in the original is a mixture of the German Schneider and the English "shop".— Ed.
Endnotes
[345] Eccarius wrote his article "Die Schneiderei in London oder der Kampf des grossen und des kleinen Capitals" (which was published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue No. 5-6) with Marx's direct assistance, Marx being the editor. The editorial comment written by Marx and Engels follows directly after the article. It was later reproduced in Eccarius' Preface to his other work, also written with Marx's assistance: Eccarius, Eines Arbeiters Wiederlegung der national-ökonomischen Lehren John Stuart Mill's, Berlin, 1869, and also in the second German edition of this book published in Hottingen-Zürich, 1888.
[3] In May 1849, when the counter-revolution was on the upsurge, the Prussian Government issued an order expelling Marx and the other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from Prussia. This measure, prepared well in advance, was applied when the main uprisings in the Rhine Province had been virtually suppressed. On his return to Cologne in April 1848, Marx applied for Prussian citizenship which he had been forced to renounce in 1845 when he was living in Belgium as an emigrant. Despite the Cologne Magistrate's favourable reply to his application, however, the Cologne royal district authorities and the Minister of the Interior refused to grant it, and Marx remained a "foreigner", who could at any moment be accused of abusing hospitality and expelled. The royal district authorities' note to this effect followed on May 11, 1849, and on May 16 Marx was given 24 hours to leave Prussia. Weerth and Dronke, who did not enjoy Prussian citizenship either, received similar orders. Legal proceedings were instituted against Engels for his part in the Elberfeld uprising. The last issue, No. 301, of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung appeared on May 19, 1849.