107. F. Engels. Supplement to the Preface of 1870 for The Peasant War in Germany
107. F. Engels. Supplement to the Preface of 1870 for The Peasant War in Germany[45]
The preceding passage(1) was written over four years ago. It is still valid today. What was true after Sadowa and the partition of Germany is being reconfirmed after Sedan and the establishment of the Holy German Empire of the Prussian nation.[453] So little do "world-shaking" grand performances of state[454] in the realm of so-called high politics change the direction of the historical movement.
What these grand performances of state are able to do, however, is to accelerate this movement. And in this respect, the authors of the above-mentioned "world-shaking events" have had involuntary successes, which they themselves surely find most undesirable but which, all the same, for better or for worse, they have to accept.
The war of 1866 shook the old Prussia to its foundations. After 1848 it had a hard time bringing the rebellious industrial element — bourgeois as well as proletarian — of the Western provinces,(2) under the old discipline again; still, this had been accomplished, and the interests of the Junkers of the Eastern provinces(3) again became, next to those of the army, the dominant interests in the state. In 1866 almost all Northwest Germany became Prussian. Apart from the irreparable moral injury the Prussian crown by the grace of God suffered owing to its having swallowed three other crowns by the grace of God,[455] the centre of gravity in the monarchy now shifted considerably to the west. The five million Rhinelanders and Westphalians were reinforced, first, by the four million Germans annexed directly, and then by the six million annexed indirectly, through the North German Confederation.[456] And in 1870 there were further added the eight million Southwest Germans,[457] so that in the "New Empire", the fourteen and a half million old Prussians (from the six East Elbian provinces, including, besides, two million Poles) were confronted by some twenty-five million who had long outgrown the old Prussian Junker-feudalism. In this way the very victories of the Prussian army shifted the entire basis of the Prussian state structure; the Junker domination was becoming increasingly intolerable even for the government. At the same time, however, the extremely rapid industrial development caused the struggle between bourgeois and worker to supersede the struggle between Junker and bourgeois, so that internally also the social foundations of the old state underwent a complete transformation. The basic condition for the monarchy, which had been slowly rotting since 1840, was the struggle between nobility and bourgeoisie, in which the monarchy held the balance. From the moment when it became necessary instead of protecting the nobility against the onrush of the bourgeoisie to protect all the propertied classes against the onrush of the working class, the old, absolute monarchy had to go over completely to the form of state expressly devised for this purpose: the Bonapartist monarchy. This transition of Prussia to Bonapartism I have already discussed elsewhere (The Housing Question, Part 2, pp. 26 et seq.(4)). What I did not have to stress there, but what is very essential here, is that this transition was the greatest progress made by Prussia since 1848, so much had Prussia lagged behind in modern development. It was, to be sure, still a semi-feudal state, whereas Bonapartism is, at any rate, a modern form of state which presupposes the abolition of feudalism. Hence, Prussia has had to begin to get rid of its numerous survivals of feudalism, to sacrifice Junkerdom as such. This, naturally, is being done in the mildest possible form and to the favourite tune of: Immer langsam voran\(5) Take the notorious district regulations.[458] It abolishes the feudal privileges of the individual Junker in relation to his estate only to restore them as privileges of the totality of big landowners in relation to the entire district. The substance remains, being merely translated from the feudal into the bourgeois dialect. The old Prussian Junker is being forcibly transformed into something resembling an English SQUIRE, and need not have offered so much resistance because the one is as stupid as the other.
Thus it has been the peculiar fate of Prussia to complete its bourgeois revolution — began in 1808 to 1813 and advanced to some extent in 1848 — in the pleasant form of Bonapartism at the end of this century. If all goes well and the world remains nice and quiet, and all of us live long enough, we may see — perhaps in 1900 — that the government of Prussia will actually have abolished all feudal institutions and that Prussia will finally have arrived at the point where France stood in 1792.
The abolition of feudalism, expressed positively, means the establishment of bourgeois conditions. As the privileges of the nobility fall, legislation becomes more and more bourgeois. And here we come to the crux of the relation of the German bourgeoisie to the government. We have seen that the government is compelled to introduce these slow and petty reforms. However, in its dealings with the bourgeoisie it portrays each of these small concessions as a sacrifice made to the bourgeois, as a concession wrung from the crown with the greatest difficulty, for which they, the bourgeois, ought in return to concede something to the government. And the bourgeois, though the true state of affairs is fairly clear to them, allow themselves to be fooled. This is the origin of the tacit agreement that forms the mute basis of all Reichstag and Prussian Chamber debates in Berlin. On the one hand, the government reforms the laws at a snail's pace in the interest of the bourgeoisie, removes the feudal obstacles to industry as well as those which arose from the multiplicity of small states, establishes uniform coinage, weights and measures, freedom of occupation, etc., puts Germany's labour power at the unrestricted disposal of capital by granting freedom of movement, and favours trade and swindling. O n the other hand, the bourgeoisie leaves all actual political power in the hands of the government, votes taxes, loans and soldiers, and helps to frame all new reform laws in a way as to sustain the full force and effect of the old police power over undesirable elements. The bourgeoisie buys gradual social emancipation at the price of the immediate renunciation of political power. Naturally, the chief reason why such an agreement is acceptable to the bourgeoisie is not fear of the government but fear of the proletariat.
However wretched a figure our bourgeoisie may cut in the political field, it cannot be denied that as far as industry and commerce are concerned it is at last doing its duty. The impetuous growth of industry and commerce referred to in the preface to the second edition(6) has since proceeded with still greater vigour. What has taken place in this respect since 1869 in the Rhine-Westphalian industrial region is quite unprecedented for Germany and reminds one of the upsurge in the English manufacturing districts at the beginning of this century. The same thing holds true for Saxony and Upper Silesia, Berlin, Hanover and the seaports. At last we have world trade, a really big industry, a really modern bourgeoisie. But in return we have also had a real crash,[459] and have likewise got a real, powerful proletariat.
The future historian will attach much less importance in the history of Germany from 1869 to 1874 to the roar of battle at Spi-chern, Mars-la-Tour[460] and Sedan, and everything connected there-with, than to the unpretentious, quiet but constantly progressing development of the German proletariat. As early as 1870, the German workers were subjected to a severe test: the Bonapartist war provocation and its natural effect, the general national enthusiasm in Germany. The German socialist workers did not allow themselves to be confused for a single moment. They did not show any hint of national chauvinism. They kept their heads in the midst of the wildest jubilation over the victory, demanding "an equitable peace with the French republic and no annexations". Not even the state of siege could silence them. No battle glory, no talk of German "imperial magnificence", produced any effect on them; liberation of the entire European proletariat was still their sole aim. One may say with assurance that in no other country have the workers hitherto been put to so hard a test and acquitted themselves so splendidly.
The state of siege during the war was followed by trials for high treason, for lèse majesté, for insulting officials, and by the ever increasing police chicanery of peacetime. The Volksstaat usually had three or four editors in prison at one time and the other papers too. Every party speaker of any distinction had to stand trial at least once a year and was almost always convicted. Deportations, confiscations and the breaking-up of meetings proceeded in rapid succession, thick as hail. All in vain. The place of every man arrested or deported was at once filled by another; for every broken-up meeting two new ones were called, and thus the arbitrary power of the police was worn down in one place after the other by endurance and strict conformity to the law. All this persecution had the opposite effect to that intended. Far from breaking the workers' party or even bending it, it served only to enlist new recruits and consolidated the organisation. In their struggle with the authorities and also individual bourgeois, the workers showed themselves intellectually and morally superior, and proved, particularly in their conflicts with the so-called "providers of work", the employers, that they, the workers, were now the educated class and the capitalists were the ignoramuses. Moreover, they conduct the fight for the most part with a sense of humour, which is the best proof of how sure they are of their cause and how conscious of their superiority. A struggle thus conducted on historically prepared soil must yield good results. The successes of the January elections stand unique in the history of the modern workers' movement [4 6 1] and the astonishment they caused throughout Europe was fully justified.
The German workers have two important advantages over those of the rest of Europe. First, they belong to the most theoretical people of Europe, and have retained the sense of theory which the so-called "educated" classes of Germany have almost completely lost. Without German philosophy, particularly that of Hegel, German scientific socialism — the only scientific socialism that has ever existed — would never have come into being. Without the workers' sense of theory this scientific socialism would never have entered their flesh and blood as much as is the case. What an incalculable advantage this is may be seen, on the one hand, from the indifference to theory which is one of the main reasons why the English working-class movement crawls along so slowly in spite of the splendid organisation of the individual trades, and on the other hand, from the mischief and confusion wrought by Proudhonism in its original form among the French and Belgians, and in the form further caricatured by Bakunin among the Spaniards and Italians.
The second advantage is that, chronologically speaking, the Germans were about the last to come into the workers' movement. Just as German theoretical socialism will never forget that it rests on the shoulders of Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen — t h r e e men who, in spite of all their fantastic notions and all their utopianism, stand among the most eminent thinkers of all time and whose genius anticipated innumerable things the correctness of which is now being scientifically proved by us — so the practical workers' movement in Germany ought never to forget that it developed on the shoulders of the English and French movements, that it was able simply to utilise their dearly paid experience and could now avoid their mistakes, which were then mostly unavoidable. Where would we be now without the precedent of the English TRADE UNIONS and French workers' political struggles, and especially without the gigantic impulse of the Paris Commune?
It must be said to the credit of the German workers that they have exploited the advantages of their situation with rare understanding. For the first time since a workers' movement has existed, the struggle is being waged pursuant to its three sides — the theoretical, the political and the economico-practical (resistance to the capitalists)—in harmony and in its interconnec-tions, and in a systematic way. It is precisely in this, as it were con-centric, attack that the strength and invincibility of the German movement lies.
Due to this advantageous situation, on the one hand, and to the insular peculiarities of the English and the forcible suppression of the French movement, on the other, the German workers stand for the moment in the vanguard of the proletarian struggle. How long events will allow them to occupy this place of honour, cannot be foretold. But let us hope that as long as they occupy it they will fill it fittingly. This demands redoubled efforts in every field of struggle and agitation. In particular, it will be the duty of the leaders to gain an ever clearer insight into all theoretical questions, to free themselves more and more from the influence of traditional phrases inherited from the old world outlook, and constantly to keep in mind that socialism, since it has become a science, demands that it be pursued as a science, that is, that it be studied. The task will be to spread with increased zeal among the masses of workers the ever more lucid understanding thus acquired and to knit together ever more strongly the organisation both of the party and of the trade unions. Even if the votes cast for the Socialists in January have formed quite a decent army, they are still far from constituting the majority of the German working class; encouraging as are the successes of propaganda among the rural population, infinitely more remains to be done in this field. Hence, we must make it a point not to slacken the struggle, and to wrest from the enemy one town, one constituency after the other; the main point, however, is to safeguard the true international spirit, which allows no patriotic chauvinism to arise and which readily welcomes every new advance of the proletarian movement, no matter from which nation it comes. If the German workers progress in this way, they will not be marching exactly at the head of the movement — it is not at all in the interest of this movement that the workers of any particular country should march at its head — but will occupy an honourable place in the battle line; they will stand armed for battle when either unexpectedly grave trials or momentous events demand of them added courage, added determination and energy.
Frederick Engels
London, July 1, 1874
First published in: Friedrich Engels, Der Printed according to the book Deutsche Bauernkrieg, Leipzig, 1875 FROM THE PREPARATORY MATERIALS
Endnotes
[45] The Cologne Communist trial (October 4-November 12, 1852) was organised and stage-managed by the Prussian government. The defendants were members of the Communist League, arrested in the spring of 1851 on charges of "treasonable plotting". The forged documents and false evidence presented by the police authorities were not only designed to secure the conviction of the defendants but also to compromise the proletarian organisation as a whole. Seven of the defendants were sentenced to imprisonment in a fortress for terms ranging from three to six years. The dishonest tactics of the Prussian police state to combat the international working-class movement were exposed by Engels in his article "The Late Trial in Cologne" and, in greater detail, by Marx in his pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne (see present edition, Vol. 11).
[453] Engels means the proclamation of the German Empire on January 18, 1871, at Versailles, which made King William I of Prussia the German Emperor. Here Engels parodies the name of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (962-1806) thus stressing that the unification of Germany was effected under Prussian supremacy and was followed by the Prussification of the German provinces. On die battle of Sadowa see Note 267. On the battle of Sedan see Note 293.
[454] On Engels' use of the term "Haupt- und Staatsaktion" see Note 200.
[455] See Note 269.
[456] «6 See Note 271.
[457] The South-West German states of Baden, Hesse, Bavaria and Württemberg joined the North German Confederation in the course of the Franco-Prussian war even before the official proclamation of the German Empire in January 1871. Their accession was formalised by special treaties, signed in November 1870. The federal state thus formed was officially called the German Union (Deutscher Bund), and from December 9, 1870, the German Empire (Deutsches Reich).
[458] «8 See Note 253.
[459] A reference to the 1873 crisis, which put an end to the period of rapid industrial expansion in Germany, marked by an unprecedented development of business speculation, profiteering and stock-jobbing.
[460] In the batde of Spichern in Lorraine (also called the battle of Forbach) on August 6, 1870, the Prussian troops defeated the French units. It was one of the first major engagements of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. In the battle of Mars-la-Tour (also known as the battle of Vionville) on August 16, 1870, the German troops succeeded in stopping and cutting off the retreat of the French Rhenish army from Metz.
[461] Nine Social-Democrats were elected to the Imperial Diet on January 10, 1874, polling more than 350,000, or 6 per cent of the vote. Among the elected were August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, who were then serving prison terms.