II
The Prussian bourgeoisie, which, as the most advanced section of the whole German bourgeoisie, has a right here to be taken as representative of that whole class, is setting a term to its political existence, thanks to a lack of courage which is without parallel in the history even of that pusillanimous class and which is only excused to some extent by contemporary international events. In March and April 1848 it had the whip-hand; but hardly did the first independent stirrings of the working class begin when the bourgeoisie at once took fright and hastily retreated to shelter behind the self-same bureaucracy and the self-same feudal aristocracy which it had but a moment before conquered with the aid of the workers. The Manteuffel era[42] was the inevitable consequence. At last came the "New Era"—which the bourgeois opposition had done nothing to bring about. This unexpected piece of good fortune turned the heads of the bourgeoisie. It quite forgot the position it had created for itself by its repeated revisions of the constitution, its subordination to the bureaucracy and the feudal aristocracy (even to the extent of restoring the feudal Provincial and District Estates[43]) and its constant retreats from one position to the next. It now believed it had the whip-hand again, and quite forgot that it had itself restored all the powers hostile to it, which, subsequently reinvigorated, held the real power in the state in their possession, just as before 1848. Then the reorganisation of the army went off in its midst like a bombshell.
There are only two ways in which the bourgeoisie can gain political power for itself. Since it is an army of officers without any soldiers and can only acquire these soldiers from the ranks of the workers, it must either ensure that the workers are its allies, or it must buy political power piecemeal from the powers opposing it from above, in particular from the monarchy. The history of the English and French bourgeoisie shows that there is no other way.
But the Prussian bourgeoisie had lost all its enthusiasm — and what is more quite without reason — for forming a sincere alliance with the workers. In 1848 the German workers' party, then still at a rudimentary stage of development and organisation, was prepared to do the bourgeoisie's work for it at a very modest price, but the latter was more afraid of the slightest independent stirring of the proletariat than it was of the feudal aristocracy and the bureaucracy. Peace bought at the price of servitude appeared more desirable to it than even the mere prospect of a freedom-struggle.[44] From that time on, this holy fear of the workers had become a habit with the bourgeoisie, until finally Herr Schulze-Delitzsch began his savings-box campaign.[45] The purpose of this was to show the workers that there could be no greater happiness for them than to be exploited industrially by the bourgeoisie for the rest of their lives, and even for generations to come; and indeed, that they should themselves contribute to this exploitation by themselves supplementing their income through all manner of industrial associations, thereby enabling the capitalists to reduce their wages. But although no doubt the industrial bourgeoisie is the most uneducated of the classes that constitute the German nation, apart from the junior cavalry officers, such a campaign had from the outset no prospect of lasting success with such an intellectually advanced people as the Germans. The more intelligent of the bourgeoisie themselves could not fail to perceive that nothing could come of this, and the alliance with the workers collapsed once more.
Which left bargaining with the government for political power, to be paid for in cash — from the pockets of the people, naturally. The bourgeoisie's real power in the state consisted only in the right to approve taxation, and even that was much hedged about with ifs and buts. This, then, is where the lever needed to be applied, and a class so skilled in bargaining could surely not fail to be at an advantage here.
But no. The bourgeois opposition in Prussia — in complete contrast especially to the classical bourgeoisie of England in the 17th and 18th centuries — saw the situation like this: they would bargain for power without paying any money for it.
Simply from the bourgeois point of view and taking full account of the circumstances in which the reorganisation of the army was put forward, what policy ought the bourgeois opposition to have adopted now? If it appraised its own strength correctly, it could not have been unaware that having only just risen again from its humiliation at the hands of Manteuffel — and indeed without exerting itself to that end in the slightest — it was certainly powerless to prevent the plan being put into actual practice, a process which was in fact initiated. It could not be unaware that with every session that passed fruitlessly, the new, actually existing arrangement would be harder to abolish; that with each passing year the government would therefore offer less in exchange for the Chamber's approval. It could not be unaware that it was very far from being able to appoint and dismiss ministers, and that the longer the conflict lasted, therefore, the fewer would be the ministers it faced who would be inclined to compromise. Finally, it could not be unaware that it was above all in its own interest not to push the matter to the extreme. For at that stage in the development of the German workers, a serious conflict with the government could not fail to give rise to an independent workers' movement and thereby in the extreme case present it once again with the dilemma: either an alliance with the workers, but this time under far less favourable conditions than in 1848, or alternatively to go on bended knees before the government and confess: pater, peccavi!*
The liberal and progressist bourgeoisie[46] ought consequently to have subjected the reorganisation of the army and the necessarily concomitant increase in peace-time strength to a cool and objective examination, in which case they would probably have come to approximately the same conclusions as we ourselves. In so doing they should not have forgotten that after all they could not prevent the provisional introduction of the new system and could only delay its eventual consolidation, as long as the plan contained so many correct and useful elements. Above all therefore they ought to have taken good care not to adopt from the outset a directly hostile attitude to reorganisation; they ought on the contrary to have used this reorganisation and the finance that needed to be approved for it to obtain for themselves as much reimbursement from the "New Era" as possible, to convert the 9 or 10 million in new taxation into as much political power for themselves as possible.
And there were certainly enough things to be done in that regard! There was all Man teuf f el's legislation concerning the press and the right of association; there were all the powers accorded to the police and bureaucracy which had been taken over unchanged from the absolute monarchy; the emasculation of the courts by disputing their competence; the Provincial and District Estates; above all, the way in which the constitution was interpreted under Manteuffel, which needed to be countered by a new constitutional practice; the attrition of local self-government in the towns by the bureaucracy; and a hundred and one other things for which any other bourgeoisie in the same situation would gladly have paid a tax-increase of V2 Taler per head of population and all of which they could have obtained if they had proceeded with a modicum of skill. But the bourgeois opposition thought otherwise. As far as freedom of the press, association and assembly were concerned, Manteuffel's laws had hit upon precisely that degree of freedom under which the bourgeoisie felt comfortable. It could demonstrate gently against the government without let or hindrance; any increase in freedom would have brought less advantage to it than to the workers, and rather than give the workers freedom for an independent movement, the bourgeoisie preferred to submit to a little more coercion on the part of the government. Precisely the same thing applied to the limitation of the powers enjoyed by the police and bureaucracy. The bourgeoisie believed that with the "New Era" ministry it had already got the better of the bureaucracy, and it approved of this bureaucracy keeping a free hand to deal with the workers. It quite forgot that the bureaucracy was far stronger and more vigorous than any ministry that might be well disposed towards the bourgeoisie. And then it imagined that with the fall of Manteuffel the millennium had arrived for the bourgeoisie and that all that was left to do was to reap the ripe harvest of bourgeois hegemony, without paying a penny for it.
But what about all the finance that would have to be approved, when those few years after 1848 had cost so much money, so increased the national debt and raised taxation to such heights?— Gentlemen, you are the representatives of the youngest constitutional state in the world, and you do not know that constitutional government is the most expensive form of government in the world? Almost more expensive than Bonapartism even, which—
après moi le déluge(1)—pays off old debts by constantly incurring new ones and thus mortgages a century's resources in ten years? The golden days of limited absolutism, whose memory still haunts you, are gone forever.
But what about the clauses in the constitution relating to the continued levying of taxes once they have been approved? — Everyone knows how coy the "New Era" was about asking for money. It would not have been a great loss to have included the costs of reorganisation in the budget, in exchange for a cast-iron guarantee of concessions. It was a question of approving new taxation to cover these costs. Here was an opportunity for being miserly, and for that no better ministry could have been hoped for than that of the "New Era". You would have retained the whip-hand insofar as you had previously held it, and you would have won new instruments of power in other areas.
But would one not have strengthened reaction if one had doubled the army which is its chief weapon?—This is an issue where the progressist bourgeoisie runs into indissoluble conflict with itself. It asks of Prussia that it should play the part of the Piedmont of Germany. This requires a strong army with striking-power. It has a "New Era" ministry which secretly shares the same ideas, the best ministry which in the circumstances it can have. It denies this ministry army reinforcements.—Day after day, from morn till night, it talks about nothing but the glory of Prussia, the greatness of Prussia, the growth of Prussia's power; but it denies the Prussian army reinforcements which would only be of the same order as those which the other great powers have themselves introduced since 1814.—What is the reason for all this? The reason is that it is afraid these reinforcements might benefit only reaction, might revive the decayed officer-aristocracy and in general give the feudal and bureaucratic-absolutist party the power to inter all constitutional government with a coup d'état.
Admittedly, the progressist bourgeoisie was right not to strengthen reaction, and the army was the surest bastion of reaction. But was there ever a better opportunity to bring the army under the control of the Chamber than this very reorganisation, proposed by the ministry most well-disposed towards the bourgeoisie that Prussia had ever experienced in peaceful times? As soon as the reinforcement of the army had been declared approved on certain conditions, was not this the precise moment in which to try to settle the matter of the cadet-schools, the preferential treatment of the aristocracy and all the other grievances, and to obtain guarantees which would give the officer-corps a more bourgeois character? The "New Era" was clear about one thing only: that the reinforcement of the army had to be pushed through. The devious paths and subterfuges by which it carried reorganisation through proved more than anything its bad conscience and its fear of the deputies. This opportunity needed to be seized with both hands; such a chance for the bourgeoisie could not be expected again in a hundred years. What might not be extracted from this ministry, in point of detail, if the progressist bourgeoisie viewed the situation not as misers but as great speculators!
And then what about the practical consequences of reorganisation on the officer-corps itself! Officers had to be found for twice the number of battalions. The. cadet-schools became totally inadequate. There had never been such liberality before in peace-time; lieutenant's commissions were positively offered as bounty to students, probationary lawyers and all educated young men. Anyone seeing the Prussian army again after reorganisation found the officer-corps unrecognisable. We say this not from hearsay but from our own observation. That dialect peculiar to lieutenants had been pushed into the background, the younger officers spoke their natural mother-tongue, they were by no means members of an exclusive caste but more than at any time since 1815 represented all educated classes and all provinces in the state. Here, then, the force of events had enabled this position to be won; it was now just a matter of maintaining and making full use of it. Instead, all this was ignored and talked away by the progressist bourgeoisie, as though all these officers were aristocratic cadets. And yet since 1815 there had never been more bourgeois officers in Prussia than at that very moment.
And incidentally we would attribute the gallant conduct of the Prussian officers before the enemy in the Schleswig-Holstein war[47]
chiefly to this infusion of new blood. The old class of junior officers by themselves would not have dared to act so often on their own responsibility. In this connection the government is right in saying that reorganisation had an important influence on the "panache" of these successes; in what other respect reorganisation struck terror into the hearts of the Danes is not apparent to us.
Finally, the main point: would reinforcement of the peace-time army facilitate a coup d'état? — It is perfectly true that armies are the instrument by which coups d'état are effected, and that any reinforcement of an army therefore also increases the feasibility of a coup d'état. But the strength of army required by a great power is not determined by the greater or lesser likelihood of a coup d'état but by the size of the armies of the other great powers. In for a penny, in for a pound. If one accepts a mandate as a Prussian deputy, if one emblazons the Greatness of Prussia and Her Power in Europe on one's escutcheon, then one must also agree to the means being procured without which there can be no question of Prussia's greatness and power. If these means cannot be procured without facilitating a coup d'état, so much the worse for these gentlemen of Progress. Had they not conducted themselves in such an absurdly cowardly and clumsy fashion in 1848, the era of coups d'état would probably have been long past. In the circumstances obtaining, however, they have no choice but finally to accept the reinforcement of the army in one form or another after all and to keep their anxieties about coups d'état to themselves.
However, there are yet other aspects to the matter. Firstly, it would always have been more advisable to negotiate approval of the means for a coup d'état with a "New Era" ministry than with a ministry headed by Bismarck. Secondly, it is self-evident that every further step towards the real implementation of universal conscription makes the Prussian army a less fitting instrument for a coup d'état. As soon as the demand for self-government and the necessity of the struggle against all recalcitrant elements had once penetrated the whole mass of the people, even 20-21-year-old young men would inevitably have been caught up in the movement, and even under feudal and absolutist officers, they would necessarily have lent themselves less and less readily to the making of a coup d'état. The further the political education of the country progresses, the more intractable will become the mood of the called-up conscripts. Even the present struggle between the government and bourgeoisie must already have provided tes-timony of this.
Thirdly, the two-year term of service sufficiently outweighs the increase in the army. To the extent that reinforcement of the army increases the government's material capacity for coups d'état, to that extent will the two-year term of service lessen its moral capacity to do so. In the third year of service the continual inculcation of absolutist doctrines and the habit of obedience may bear some immediate fruit among the soldiers, and for the duration of their service. In the third year of service, when the individual soldier has scarcely anything more of a military nature to learn, our compulsory conscript already begins somewhat to resemble the long-serving soldier of the Franco-Austrian system. He acquires some of the characteristics of the professional soldier and as such is always far more compliant than the younger soldier. The retirement of the men in their third year of service would undoubtedly compensate for the recruitment of 60,000 to 80,000 - extra men, from the point of view of a coup d'état.
But there is yet another point, which is crucial. We would not deny that circumstances might arise — we know our bourgeoisie too well for that — in which a coup d'état might nevertheless be possible, even without mobilisation and simply using the standing peace-time army. However that is unlikely. In order to carry out a large-scale coup, it will almost always be necessary to mobilise. And this is what will tip the balance. The Prussian peace-time army may in certain circumstances become a mere tool in the government's hands, for domestic use; the Prussian war-time army would certainly never do so. Anyone who has ever had the opportunity of seeing a battalion first on its peace-time footing and then on a war footing will be familiar with the enormous difference in the whole attitude of the men, in their collective character. The men who had joined the army as little more than boys now return to it as men; they bring with them a fund of self-respect, self-confidence, solidity and character which benefits the whole battalion. The relationship of men to officers and officers to men is at once different. Militarily the battalion is substantially stronger for this, but politically it becomes — for absolutist purposes — totally untrustworthy. This could be seen even during the entry to Schleswig, where to the great astonishment of English newspaper-correspondents Prussian soldiers everywhere openly took part in political demonstrations and fearlessly expressed their by no means orthodox views. And this result — the political decomposition of the mobilised army for absolutist purposes — we chiefly owe to the Manteuffel period and to the "Newest" Era. In 1848 the situation was still quite different.
And that is in fact one of the most positive aspects of the Prussian military system, both before and after reorganisation: that with this military system Prussia can neither wage an unpopular war nor carry out a coup d'état which has any prospect of permanence. For even if the peace-time army did allow itself to be used for a small coup d'état, then the first mobilisation and the first threat of war would suffice to call all these "achievements" in question once more. Without the ratification of the war-time army, the heroic deeds of the peace-time army against the "enemy within" would be merely of temporary significance; and the longer this ratification takes, the harder it will be to obtain. Reactionary papers have stated that the "army", as opposed to parliament, truly represents the people. By this they meant of course only the officers. If it should ever happen that the gentlemen of the
Kreuz-Zeitung were to carry out a coup d'état, for which they would need the mobilised army, these people's representatives 4 — 137 would give them the shock of their lives, they may be sure of that.
Ultimately however that is not the main safeguard against a coup d'état either. That is to be found in the fact that no coup d'état can enable a government to convene a Chamber which will approve new taxation and loans for it; and that, even if it did manage to find a Chamber willing to do so, no banker in Europe would give it credit on the basis of resolutions passed by such a Chamber. In most European states the position would be different. But it so happens that, since the promises made in 1815[48] and the many futile manoeuvres aimed at raising money from then up until 1848, it is generally accepted that no one may lend Prussia a penny without the legal and unimpeachable approval of the Chamber. Even Herr Raphael von Erlanger, who after all did lend money to the American Confederates,[49] would scarcely entrust cash to a government that had come to power in Prussia through a coup d'état. Prussia owes this simply and solely to the narrow-mindedness of absolutism.
And this is where the strength of the bourgeoisie lies: that if the government gets into financial difficulties — which sooner cr later it is bound to do — it is itself obliged to turn to the bourgeoisie for money, and this time not to the political representatives of the bourgeoisie who are ultimately aware that they exist to provide money, but to the great financiers, who would like a profitable transaction with the government, who measure the credit-worthiness of a government by the same token as they would any private individual and are quite indifferent to the question of whether the Prussian state needs more soldiers or less. These gentlemen only discount bills of exchange which bear three signatures, and if one has only been signed by the Upper House, in addition to the government, and riot by the House of Deputies, or by a House of Deputies consisting of puppets, they regard this as unsound practice and decline the deal.
It is at this point that the military question ends and the constitutional question begins. It is immaterial by what errors and complications the bourgeois opposition is now forced into the following position: it must fight the military question through to the end, or it will lose the remnants of political power it still possesses. The government has already called in question its whole right to approve budgets. But if the government sooner or later nevertheless has to make its peace with the Chamber, is not the best policy in this situation simply to remain adamant until that moment arrives?
Now that the conflict has in fact been taken to these lengths — the answer can only be yes. The possibility of coming to an agreement on an acceptable basis with this government is more than doubtful. By overestimating its own strength, the bourgeoisie has got itself into the situation of having to use this military question as a test-case to see whether it is the decisive force in the state or nothing at all. If it wins, it will simultaneously acquire the power of appointing and dismissing minister's, such as the English Lower House possesses. If it is vanquished, it will never again achieve any kind of significance by constitutional means.
But no one familiar with our German bourgeoisie will expect such perseverance from it. The courage of the bourgeoisie in political matters is always exactly proportional to the importance that it enjoys in the civil society of the country in question. In Germany the social power of the bourgeoisie is far less than in England and even in France; it has neither allied itself with the old aristocracy as in England, nor destroyed it with the help of the peasants and workers as in France. The feudal aristocracy in Germany is still a power, a power hostile to the bourgeoisie and, what is more, allied to government. Factory industry, the basis of all social power of the modern bourgeoisie, is far less developed in Germany than in Prance and England, enormous though its progress has been since 1848. The colossal accumulations of capital that frequently occur in individual classes in England and even France are rarer in Germany. This is the reason for the petty-bourgeois character of our bourgeoisie as a whole. The circumstances in which it lives and the range of thought of which it is capable are of a petty kind; is it surprising that its whole mentality is equally petty! How could it be expected to find the courage to fight an issue through to the bitter end? The Prussian bourgeoisie knows very well how dependent it is on the government for its own industrial activity. Concessions[50] and administrative checks weigh down on it like a bad dream. The government can make difficulties for it in any new enterprise, and nowhere more so than in the political sphere! In the course of the dispute over the military question, the bourgeois Chamber can only adopt a negative stance, it is driven purely on to the defensive; meanwhile the government moves over to the attack, interprets the constitution in its own way, disciplines liberal officials, annuls liberal municipal elections, sets all the wheels of bureaucratic power in motion to impress on the bourgeoisie its status as subjects; in fact overruns one line of defence after another and thus conquers for itself a position such as even Manteuffel did not have. Meanwhile the unbudgeted spending of money and levying of taxes quietly
4* continues, and the reorganisation of the army gains new strength with every year of its existence. In short, the prospect of an eventual victory for the bourgeoisie takes on a more revolutionary character with each passing year, and the government's tactical victories in every field, as they multiply day by day, increasingly assume the form of faits accomplis. On top of this there is a workers' movement completely independent of bourgeoisie and government alike, which compels the bourgeoisie either to make the most ominous concessions to the workers, or to face up to having to act without the workers at the decisive moment. Can the Prussian bourgeoisie be expected in these circumstances to have the courage to remain adamant, come what may? It would have to have changed remarkably for the better since 1848 — by its own lights — and the yearning for compromise which has found expression daily in the sighs of the Party of Progress since the opening of this session, is not an auspicious sign. We fear that on this occasion too the bourgeoisie will have no scruples in betraying its own cause.
Endnotes
[42] Engels is referring to the time when a counter-revolutionary Brandenburg government came to power in Prussia in November 1848 (Manteuffel held in it the post of the Minister of the Interior) and soon dissolved the Prussian National Assembly. After Brandenburg's death Manteuffel was appointed Prime Minister in 1850. This government was in power until 1858, and under it all the gains of the 1848 revolution (freedom of the press, of assembly, etc.) were abolished and the moderate constitution "imposed" (granted by the King) under Brandenburg was repeatedly revised in the spirit of further curtailment of the Provincial diets' rights. Taking advantage of the bourgeoisie's cowardly and conciliatory attitude, the government turned the constitutional representative body into a fiction, restoring the police-and-bureaucratic regime and the privileges and power of the landed aristocracy and nobility.
[43] •3 The Provincial diets (Landtags) were introduced in Prussia in 1823. They consisted of representatives of four estates (princes, nobility, representatives of town and rural communities). Property and other electoral qualifications secured the majority in the Provincial diets for the nobility. The Provincial diets were convened by the King and were competent to deal only with questions of local economy and administration. The district assemblies of estates, with an even more restricted competence, were based on the same principles. Relegated to the background during the 1848-49 revolution, the Provincial diets and district assemblies of estates lost their significance which was not regained until the 1850s, during the period of reaction.
[44] Engels formulated this proposition on Marx's advice (see Marx's letter to Engels of February 11, 1865, present edition, Vol. 42).
[45] Schulze-Delitzsch, a German bourgeois economist and a leader of the Party of Progress, advocated small savings banks and loan offices, and consumer and producer cooperatives based on the workers' own means with the aim of diverting workers from the revolutionary struggle against capital. Schulze-Delitzsch advocated harmony of capitalists' and workers' interests, asserting that cooperatives could help improve workers' conditions under capitalism and save small producers and artisans from ruin.
[46] A reference to the members of the Party of Progress founded in June 1861 (the most eminent figures were Waldeck, Virchow, Schulze-Delitzsch, Forckenbeck and Hoverbeck). The Party of Progress advocated unification of Germany under Prussia, convocation of an all-German parliament, and a liberal ministry responsible to the Chamber of Deputies. Fearing a people's revolution, it did not support the basic democratic demands — universal suffrage, freedoms of the press, association and assembly. In 1866 the Party of Progress split and its Right wing founded the National Liberal Party, which capitulated to the Bismarck Government.
[47] A reference to the war launched by Prussia and Austria on Denmark in 1864 (see Note 32).
[48] Frederick William III of Prussia promised a constitution in 1815 when the patriotic feeling caused by the struggle against Napoleonic France was still strong in the country. The promise was never kept.
[49] The Confederates—representatives of the Confederacy formed by the Southern slave-holding States which seceded from the Union during the American Civil War of 1861-65 (see Note 5). p. C-i
[50] The bureaucratic regulation of industry also continued to operate in Prussia in the mid-1860s. A system of special authorisation (concessions) was introduced in a few branches of industry; unless they were granted, industrial activity was prohibited. This medieval guild legislation inhibited the development of capitalism.