13. Preface to the Pamphlet Karl Marx Before the Cologne Jury
For a better understanding of the proceedings presented here it will suffice to summarise the chief events leading up to them.
The cowardice of the German bourgeoisie had given the feudal, bureaucratic, absolutist reaction a breathing space in which to recover from the shattering blows of March 1848 to such an extent that a second decisive struggle became imminent as early as the end of October. The fall of Vienna,(1) after a long, heroic resistance, emboldened the Prussian camarilla to attempt a coup d'état. The tame Berlin "National Assembly" was still too wild for it. It would have to be dissolved and an end put to the revolution.
On November 8, 1848 the Brandenburg-Manteuffel Ministry was formed. On the 9th it transferred the seat of the Assembly from Berlin to Brandenburg so that it might "freely" deliberate under the protection of bayonets, undisturbed by the revolutionary influences of Berlin. The Assembly refused to leave: the civic militia refused to take action against the Assembly. The Ministry dissolved the civic militia, disarmed it without encountering any resistance and declared Berlin in a state of siege. The Assembly replied on November 13, indicting the Ministry for high treason. The Ministry chased the Assembly from one meeting place in Berlin to the next. On the 15th the Assembly resolved that the Brandenburg Ministry had no right to dispose of government money and to levy taxes as long as it, the Assembly, could not freely continue meeting in Berlin.
This resolution to block taxation could only become effective if the people resisted the collecting of taxes by force of arms. And at that time there was no shortage of arms in the hands of the civic militia. Nevertheless, hardly anyone ventured beyond passive resistance. Only in few places were any preparations made to meet force with force. The boldest call to do just that came from the Committee of the democratic associations of the Rhine Province which had its seat in Cologne and consisted of Marx, Schapper and Schneider.
The Committee did not delude itself by imagining that the victorious coup d'état in Berlin could be successfully reversed by any campaign on the Rhine. The Rhine Province had five fortresses; about a third of the entire Prussian army including a large number of regiments from the Eastern provinces was stationed in it, in Westphalia, Mainz, Frankfurt and Luxemburg alone. In Cologne and other cities the civic militia had already been disbanded and disarmed. But the intention was not to achieve an immediate victory in Cologne where a state of siege had only been lifted a few weeks before. The point was to set the other provinces an example and thus to rescue the revolutionary honour of the Rhine Province. And that had been done.
The Prussian bourgeoisie had surrendered one stronghold after another to the government for fear of what were at that time the still half-dreaming convulsions of the proletariat. It already long regretted its earlier hankerings for power and ever since March it had been so crazed with fear that it did not know which way to turn, confronted as it was by the double threat of the forces of the old society grouped around the absolute power, on the one side, and the fledgling proletariat with its dawning consciousness of its class position, on the other. The Prussian bourgeoisie did what it always did in moments of decision — it backed down. And the workers were not so stupid as to fight for the bourgeoisie without the aid of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, in their eyes — particularly on the Rhine — Prussian issues were purely local issues; if they were ever to go into the firing line on behalf of the bourgeoisie, then it would have to be in and for Germany as a whole. It was a significant portent that even at that time, the idea of "Prussian leadership" [166] had absolutely no attraction for the workers.
In short, the government was victorious. One month later, on December 5, it was in a position to dissolve once and for all the Berlin Assembly, which had managed to prolong a rather shabby existence until then and to impose a new constitution, which however only became effective once it had been reduced to a mere constitutional farce.
On November 20, the day after the Committee launched its appeal, the three signatories were summoned to appear before the examining magistrate and proceedings for rebellion were instituted against them. At the time there was no mention of arrests, even in Cologne. On February 7, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had to submit to its first press trial; Marx, myself and Korff, the responsible publisher, appeared before a jury and were acquitted.[167] On the following day the case against the Committee was heard. The people had already reached its own verdict, having two weeks previously elected one of the defendants, Schneider, deputy for Cologne.
Marx's speech for the defence was obviously the highpoint of the proceedings. It is especially interesting in two respects:
Firstly, because it needed a communist to make clear to the bourgeois jury that the actions he had taken and for the sake of which he was now standing accused before them, were of a kind which in reality it was the duty and obligation of their class, of the bourgeoisie, not simply to perform, but to carry through to their uttermost implications. This fact alone suffices to throw light on the attitude of the German, and above all the Prussian, bourgeoisie during the revolutionary period. At stake was the question: who was to rule — the forces of society and the state that rallied around the absolute monarchy: the big feudal landowners, the army, the bureaucracy, the clergy, or the bourgeoisie? The only interest of the still emerging proletariat in these struggles lay in the extent to which the victory of the bourgeoisie would provide it with enough light and air to further its own development, with elbow-room on the battlefield where one day it will triumph over all other classes. But the bourgeoisie, and the petty bourgeoisie along with it, refused to make a move when the hostile government attacked the seat of their power, dispersed their parliament, disarmed their civic militia and even placed them under a state of siege. It was then that the communists stepped into the breach and called on them to do their damned duty. Both of them, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, constituted the new society and stood together in one camp against the old feudal society. Of course, the appeal went unheeded and by an irony of history this self-same bourgeoisie was now to sit in judgment over the revolutionary proletarian Communists, on the one hand, and over the counter-revolutionary government, on the other.
Secondly, however — and this gives the speech its specific significance, even for our time — in the face of the government's hypocritical legality it preserves a revolutionary standpoint from which many could take an example even today.—Did we call on the people to take up arms against the government? Indeed we did, and it was our duty to do so. Did we break the law and depart from the foundations of law? Very well, but the laws we broke had already been torn up by the government and trampled upon before the eyes of the people. As for legal foundations, they no longer exist. As vanquished enemies we can be eliminated, but no one has the right to condemn us.
The official parties, from the Kreuz-Zeitung[168] to the Frankfurter, reproach the Social Democratic Workers' Party with being a revolutionary party, with refusing to recognise the legal foundations established in 1866 and 1871,[169] and thereby — at least this is the refrain of everyone right down to the National Liberals [17]°— with putting itself beyond the limits of common law. I shall ignore the monstrous insinuation here that anyone can place himself beyond the bounds of common law simply by expressing an opinion. That is the police state pure and simple, which one should better practise on the quiet, while preaching the constitutional state out loud. But what are then the legal foundations of 1866, if not revolutionary? The Federal Constitution is violated and war declared on the confederates.[171] Not at all, says Bismarck, it was the others who violated the treaty. The answer to which is that a revolutionary party would have to be simple-minded in the extreme if it proved unable to find at least as convincing grounds for any uprising as those put forward by Bismarck for his in 1866.— So a civil war is provoked for that was what the war of 1866 amounted to. But every civil war is a revolutionary war. The war is conducted by revolutionary means. Alliances are concluded with foreign powers against Germans. Italian troops and ships are brought into the battle, Bonaparte is enticed with prospects of acquiring German territory on the Rhine. A Hungarian legion is formed to fight against its hereditary sovereign for revolutionary goals. Reliance is placed on Klapka in Hungary, and Garibaldi in Italy. Victory is won and — three crowns existing by divine right are swallowed up: Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse and Nassau — each of which was just as legitimate, just as "hereditary" and existed just as much "by divine right" as did the crown of Prussia.[12] Finally, a constitution is imposed on the remaining confederates, which in Saxony, for example, was accepted just as freely as Prussia had accepted the Peace of Tilsit at one time.[173]
Do I complain about all this? Not at all. There is no point in complaining about historical events. On the contrary, the problem is to comprehend their causes and hence also their effects, which are by no means exhausted. But we do have the right to demand that people who have done all these things should refrain from
accusing others of being revolutionaries. The German Empire was created by revolution — admittedly, a revolution of a particular kind, but no less a revolution for all that. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. A revolution is a revolution, regardless of whether it was made by the Prussian crown or a tinker. If the government of the day makes use of the existing laws to rid itself of its opponents, then it acts like every government. But if it imagines that it can strike them an even more violent blow by thundering the expletive "Revolutionary!" at them — then at best only the philistines will take fright. "Revolutionary yourself!" will be the cry that echoes back from every corner of Europe.
But the preposterous demand that anyone should cast aside his revolutionary nature, a thing which arises inevitably from historical circumstances, becomes utterly comic when it is applied to a party which is first placed outside the confines of common law, i.e. beyond the law itself, and which is then confronted with the demand that it should recognise the foundations of that very law which has been specifically abolished for it.[174]
The fact that people have to waste time even discussing such a matter provides yet further evidence of the politically backward state of Germany. In the rest of the world everyone knows that all existing political systems are the product of nothing but revolutions. France, Spain, Switzerland and Italy — there are as many governments existing by right of revolution as there are countries. In England even the Whig Macaulay acknowledges that the present legal order is based on one revolution after another (REVOLUTIONS HEAPED UPON REVOLUTIONS). For the last hundred years America has celebrated its revolution on every 4th of July.[175] In the majority of these countries there are parties which will only continue to abide by the existing legal order as long as the latter can force them to do so. But if anyone in France, for example, were to accuse the Royalists or Bonapartists of being revolutionary, he would simply be laughed to scorn.
Only in Germany, where politically nothing is ever dealt with thoroughly (for otherwise it would not be torn into two parts, Austria and Germany so-called) and where for that very reason the memories of past, but only half digested ages continue to vegetate eternally in people's minds (which is why the Germans call themselves a nation of thinkers)—only in Germany can anyone possibly require a party to be bound by the existing so-called legal order not only in fact but also morally. A party must promise in advance that, come what may, it will not overthrow the legal order it is fighting against, even if it is able to do so. In other words, it must commit itself to upholding the existing political order for all eternity. This and this alone is what is meant when people demand that German Social Democracy should cease to be "revolutionary".
But the German philistine — and his opinion is still German public opinion — is a special sort of person. He has never made a revolution. The revolution of 1848 was made for him by the workers — to his horror. But all the more has he had to suffer revolutions. For the people who have made revolutions in the last three hundred years in Germany — and they showed it — were the princes. Their very rank, and ultimately their sovereignty, was the fruit of rebellions against the Emperor. Prussia set an example to them all. Prussia was only able to become a kingdom after the "Great Elector" (2) had conducted a successful uprising against his feudal overlord, the crown of Poland, thus securing the independence of the Duchy of Prussia from Poland.[176] Ever since Frederick II, Prussia's rebellion against the German Empire had been made into a system; Frederick "spat" upon the Imperial constitution in quite a different manner than our worthy Bracke upon the Anti-Socialist Law. Then came the French Revolution(3)
and both the princes and the philistines suffered it with tears and sighs. In 1803, by decision of the Imperial Deputation, the German Empire was distributed among the German princes by the French and the Russians in a highly revolutionary manner, because the princes could not agree on how to divide it up themselves.[177] Then came Napoleon and permitted his very special protégés, the rulers of Baden, Bavaria and Württemberg^ to take possession of all counties, baronies and cities which had been subject only to the Emperor, and which lay in or between their territories. Immediately after this the same three traitors carried out the last successful rebellion against their Emperor,(4) and, with Napoleon's assistance, they established their own sovereignty and thereby finally tore apart the old German Empire.[178] After that, Napoleon, the de facto German Emperor, redistributed Germany about every three years among his loyal retainers, the German princes and others. Finally, there came the glorious liberation from foreign domination and as a reward Germany was treated as a universal source of compensation for princes down on their luck and was divided up and sold off by the Congress of Vienna, i.e. by Russia, France and England. And the German philistines, scattered like so many sheep in around 2,000 separate scraps of territory, were shared out among the various 36 sovereigns, for the majority of whom they would even today "most humbly lay down their lives", as if for their hereditary sovereigns. And none of this is supposed to have been revolutionary — how right Schnapphahnski-Lichnowski was when he exclaimed in the Frankfurt Parliament, "With regard to historical right there does not exist no date!"[179] The fact is that it never had one!
Thus what the German philistine shamefacedly demands from the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party can only have one meaning: that this party should become as philistine as he. It should on no account take part in revolutions, but should suffer them instead. And if the government which has come to power by counter-revolution and revolution puts the same preposterous demand, this only means that revolution is good as long as it is made by Bismarck for Bismarck & Co., but reprehensible when it is made against Bismarck & Co.
London, July 1, 1885
Frederick Engels
Endnotes
[166] This expression was used in the royal proclamation of March 21, 1848, in which Frederick William IV declared his readiness to stand "at the head [an die Spitze] of the whole fatherland in order to save Germany". During the campaign for the unification of Germany this expression was used to describe Prussia's intention to unite the country under its supremacy. p. 305.
[167] The trial of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung began on February 7, 1849. Karl Marx, editor-in-chief, Frederick Engels, co-editor, and Hermann Korff, responsible publisher, were tried by a Cologne jury court. They were accused of slandering Chief Public Prosecutor Zweiffel and calumniating the police officers who had arrested Gottschalk and Anneke, in the article "Arrests" published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 35, July 5, 1848 (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 177-79). Marx's and Engels' defence counsel at the trial of February 7 was Karl Schneider II. The jury acquitted the defendants. For Marx's and Engels' speeches at this trial see present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 304-22.
[168] The Kreuz-Zeitung's party — a n a m e given from 1851 to the end of the 19th century to the extreme Right wing of the Prussian Conservative Party grouped round the Neue Preussische (Kreuz-) Zeitung.
[169] The reference is to the formation of the North German Confederation under Prussian supremacy. As a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Austria and the South-German states remained outside the Confederation (see Note 171). The victory of Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War led to the national unification of Germany and the foundation of a German Empire in which the Prussian monarchy played the leading role.
[17] This refers to Leges barbarorum (laws of the barbarians)—codes of law which originated between the 5th and 9th centuries and were, in the main, a written record of the customary or prescriptive law of the various Germanic tribes.
[171] Engels is referring to the steps taken by Prussia on the eve of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866: on June 8, Prussian troops invaded the Duchy of Holstein which, according to the treaty between Prussia and Austria, was under Austrian jurisdiction and belonged to the German Confederation. Following a decision by the member-states of the German Confederation, initiated by Austria, to mobilise the federal army, Prussia declared its withdrawal from the Confederation and on June 16 began hostilities against Saxony, Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse, and Nassau, all members of the Confederation. On June 17, Austria declared war on Prussia. The German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) was an ephemeral union of German states formed by decision of the Congress of Vienna in June 1815 and originally comprised 35 absolutist feudal states and 4 free cities. The central body of the German Confederation was the Federal Diet which consisted of representatives of the German states. Though it had no real power, it was nevertheless a vehicle of feudal and monarchical reaction. For all practical purposes the Confederation sealed Germany's political and economic fragmentation and retarded its development. The German Confederation ceased to exist during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.
[12] The reference is to the insurrection of the Illyrian tribes (A.D. 6-9) sparked off by oppression on the part of the Roman administration, and unbearable taxes. It swept over Dalmatia and Pannonia, that is the whole of Illyricum. The insurgents killed Roman soldiers and merchants, attacked Macedonia and threatened Italy. Fifteen Roman legions were brought together to suppress the insurrection which was not quelled until the August of A.D. 9, following three military expeditions under the command of Tiberius and Germanicus. p. 30
[173] The Constitution of the North German Confederation (the Confederation included 19 states and 3 free cities) was approved on April 17, 1867 by the Constituent Reichstag of the Confederation (it held sessions between February 24 and April 17, 1867) and reaffirmed Prussia's de facto domination. The Prussian King was proclaimed President of the Confederation and Commander-in-Chief of the federal armed forces; he was also put in charge of foreign policy. The legislative powers of the Confederation's Reichstag, which was elected by universal suffrage, were extremely limited: the laws it adopted became valid only after approval by the Federal Council and endorsement by the President. This constitution later became the basis for the Constitution of the German Empire. Saxony, which fought on Austria's side in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, was forced after the war to become a member of the North German Confederation and then submit to this constitution. The treaties of Tilsit were signed on July 7 and 9, 1807 by Napoleonic France and Russia and Prussia, members of the fourth anti-French coalition. The treaty imposed harsh terms on Prussia, which lost nearly half its territory to the German states dependent on France, was made to pay indemnities, and had its army reduced.
[174] A reference to the Anti-Socialist Law, or Exceptional Law against the Socialists (Gesetz gegen die gemeingefährlischen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokrate), introduced by Bismarck's government with the support of a majority in the Reichstag on October 21, 1878 for the purpose of combatting the socialist and working-class movement. The law deprived the Social-Democratic Party of Germany of its legal status; it prohibited all its organisations, workers' mass organisations and the socialist and workers' press, decreed confiscation of socialist literature, and subjected Social-Democrats to repression. The Social-Democratic Party, however, with the active assistance of Marx and Engels, managed to gain the upper hand over both the opportunist and "ultra-left" elements within its ranks. By correctly combining illegal work with utilising all legal possibilities the Party considerably increased and extended its influence among the masses while the Anti-Socialist Law was in force. The law was abrogated on October 1, 1890. For Engels' appraisal of it see his article "Bismarck and the German Working Men's Party" (present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 407-09).
[175] The reference is to the American War of Independence (1775-83). On July 4, 1776 the Declaration of Independence was passed by the delegates of 13 North American colonies at a Congress in Philadelphia. The Declaration proclaimed secession from England and the formation of an independent republic — the United States of America. It formulated such bourgeois-democratic principles as freedom of the individual, equality before the law, sovereignty of the people, and exerted a major influence on the European revolutionary movement and the French Revolution in particular. However, the democratic rights proclaimed were from the very start violated by the American bourgeoisie and plantation owners, who excluded the common people from political life and preserved slavery.
[176] In 1611, the Polish Diet adopted a decision on the unification of the Duchy of Prussia with Brandenburg under Hohenzollern rule. This was done despite the opposition of a group of deputies who supported Poland's rights to East Prussia. However, the Duchy of Prussia remained a territory held in fee by Poland. This decision was implemented in 1618 when the Elector of Brandenburg, Johann Sigismund, received the Duchy of Prussia in fee from the Polish King in return for his promise to take part in the war against Sweden. Under the Wielawa-Bydgoszcz Treaty of 1657 Poland finally renounced its supreme rights to the Duchy of Prussia in favour of Brandenburg.
[177] On October 8-10, 1801, France and Russia signed a secret convention on the regulation of territorial issues in Rhenish Germany in favour of Napoleonic France, using as a pretext the need to compensate those German states whose possessions on the left bank of the Rhine had been seized by France during its wars against the first and second coalitions. This convention found reflection in the Russo-French declaration of June 3, 1802, under which 112 German states (nearly all ecclesiastical possessions and imperial towns) with a total population of three million were handed over to Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden, which were dependent on Napoleonic France, and also to Prussia. Formally this was done under the terms of a resolution adopted by what was known as the Imperial Deputation, a commission made up of representatives of the states incorporated in the German Empire and elected by the Imperial Diet in October 1801. The resolution was adopted on February 25, 1803 after long discussions and under pressure from France and Russia.
[178] Under the terms of the Peace Treaty signed by France and Austria at Pressburg (Bratislava) on December 26, 1805, Bavaria and Württemberg, which took part in the war waged by Napoleonic France against the third coalition, were granted the status of independent kingdoms. Baden, which also fought on France's side, became an independent grand duchy in 1806 after the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist.
[179] Engels is quoting the Prussian officer, Prince Felix Lichnowski, who spoke on the Polish question in the Frankfurt National Assembly on July 26, 1848 (see also present edition, Vol. 7, p. 369).